Often times feelings of shame and trauma can be intertwined so it would make sense that if we feel shame, we might want to get rid of it, perceiving it as something “bad”. But does this vilifying and shaming actually get rid of shame? We live in a culture that is obsessed with self-improvement and productivity which can often promote this ill treatment of parts of ourselves. When we are constantly being bombarded with “5 ways to get healthy” or “ do this to optimise your wellbeing”, it could be hard to not feel like you’re doing something wrong. As a person with complex trauma who grew up with parents who had their own unresolved wounds and trauma, I’ve always had a way of being that was really harsh on myself. But as I move forward on this 17th year of my healing journey, I’m able to be more and more compassionate, kind and curious to myself and yes, even to all those pesky parts of me which I always hated. From my own experience and from folks I’ve worked with I found that it is quite common to want to get rid of these shameful parts in hopes that it will bring some sort of resolution, perhaps resulting in more self-love, trauma resolution or healing and/or transforming deeply ingrained patterns, behaviors, strategies or conditioned tendencies. Then there’s those of us who might rather just pretend we don’t have any shame, detaching from our body so we don’t have to feel any of it. Either way, this kind of approach usually just continues the spiral of inner chaos and shaming the shame like a dog chasing it’s own tail. If we look at this from a somatic trauma-informed lense, what could sometimes happen is that trauma freezes these wounded parts of us in the past. And these frozen often times younger parts of us hold on to beliefs ( I am broken, It is always my fault) and emotions ( shame, fear, grief, unworthiness). It is quite normal that we don’t want to feel this pain of the past, so our soma ( nervous system and body-mind as a living organism) does it’s job of self-protection and works hard to keep all those parts hidden or exiled. This is where we might avoid by distracting ourselves with work or other “busyness”, ignore, numb out and detach from feeling our body, or shame ourselves – cue the inner critic or perfectionist part- which has become quite a prevalent way of being in our modern industrialised “western” world. We may think that by exiling these parts we will finally not have to feel any pain, discomfort, or distress by avoiding overwhelming emotions, bodily sensations, memories or beliefs. But the truth is this won’t make it all go away, it all just gets suppressed and thrown into a pressure cooker inside us just waiting to explode like a two year old having a temper tantrum. Healing and transformation only come once we start to acknowledge, accept, validate and love all those parts that we keep locked away in the basement. This is integration and the process of whole-ing! It’s kind of like having a little puppy, it may try to get your attention by chewing on your shoe or barking at you a million times until you notice them and play with them. These younger parts that live inside us are just like that puppy, just waiting to be seen, heard, and witnessed. Thanks to studies on conscious and love-centred parenting and we now know that scolding and other fear-based coercive punishing of children (and puppies) only increases levels of fear and anxiety, so why would we want to repeat the same thing to ourselves? In my own personal somatic parts practice as well as while working with clients, I have adopted the belief that “there are no bad parts” and that they all have wisdom. Which comes from a humanist perspective as well ad the Internal Family Systems framework conceptualised by Dr. Richard Swartz. Through somatic awareness, sensing and feeling, and embodiment insight and integration we can learn to listen to and separate all these parts of ourselves from our Highest Self or Self energy, and this concept actually which actually originates from ancient and indigenous traditions like Buddhism and Yoga. It can be counterintuitive to view these exiled parts that are perhaps “lazy”, “unhealthy”, or even “self-destructive” ( like the shamed parts, the critical part, the addictive part, the people pleaser part) as wise, but have you ever considered that they may have been helpful, or maybe even saved your life, at some point? It makes sense that we may hate them if they have caused us suffering and destruction, but often times they came into being to help us survive a difficult expereience(s) and have good intentions. When our basic human needs of safety, belonging and dignity aren’t being met, our genius nervous system figures out ways to adapt so we can get those needs met! I used to really hate my inner critic. I viewed it as my mothers voice, that was mean, aggressive, constantly pushing me harder and judging me. I can see now that originally this critical part was meant for good, as a first generation Polish-American immigrant I wanted to make my parents proud. I thought that if I only worked hard enough, got the best grades and became totally perfect, finally my parents and everyone around me would accept me and I wouldn’t feel so alone. We moved around a lot and I went through 3 schools in the first five years of elementary school. My parents were constantly at work trying to make sure I had a better future, and I was left feeling all alone and like I didn’t belong anywhere. Of course this inner critic part came into existence, it wanted to help feel belonging, worthy and safe! Over time this critical part started to make me more and more anxious,…
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