Overcoming Shame
In Brojo we often talk about self-confidence and self-acceptance as universal goals for us as people. The deeper you as an individual can the tap into these two values the greater your happiness and wellbeing will become. Shame and guilt are the dark sides of your intrinsic wellbeing. The more shameless you can become in your life the more powerful you will be as a person. Being able to walk into a room of people and every one of them knows everything about you and you don’t give a shit is true freedom. I haven’t reached this level yet, but through my own journey through shame, I am so much closer than I ever have been before.
Shame is something I have lived with a lot in my life, shame about my weight, my looks, losing my hair, my sexual performance, my bank balance, my address, the condition of my skin………the list goes on.
For me, shame is part of a trifecta of emotions that erode our self-confidence and self-acceptance. The other two are guilt and embarrassment and whilst they are separate emotions, they are also linked and can form a very toxic cocktail.
The first step in overcoming these emotions is to understand them
Shame
Shame is a powerful social emotion that is born out of the belief that we have violated cultural/social laws that dictate our behaviour. Shame is the inner critic inside your head that tells you you’re bad for taking this action.
An area this really manifested itself in for me, was approaching random women; in the street, in a shop, the library, the beach etc. I felt shame around this, that it wasn’t normal and I was wrong for doing it. I had all these stories in my head that I was bothering them, that they would think I was weird or creepy. Yet when I approached girls in a nightclub or bar I felt no shame at all, as the social rules I lived by said it was ok to do this, that in fact, this was the appropriate place to try and meet women. This is not the only area of my life that shame has played a big part, the common factor though in all of these areas is my desire to conform to rules that I perceived to be important, but that I didn’t have a part in setting.
Embarrassment
The thing with embarrassment that sets it apart from shame is that it requires other people to know. My shame about approaching women was prevalent before I took any external action; just sitting at home thinking about approaching was enough to cause me shame. The feeling of embarrassment kicked in when I felt that some sort of action that was deemed less desirable, such as the women rejecting my attempts at connection was observed by other people. A more light-hearted example of this is if you have ever been walking along and tripped over, the first thing most people do is look around to see if anyone saw them trip as it can be perceived as being clumsy or inattentive by others.
After much reflection, I couldn’t come up with a situation where I genuinely felt embarrassed without the possibility/actuality of other people knowing about my actions.
Guilt
Guilt reflects your internal compass and the values that guide you. When you stray from these values, guilt is the consequence of your choices. As I mentioned before if shame is the feeling that you are wrong, then guilt is the feeling you done something wrong. In Brojo we talk a lot about value-based living and how we have found through our own experiences if you don’t live life in alignment with these values your self-confidence and self-acceptance takes a massive hit.
If I go back to the example I used before around approaching women. My feelings of guilt would be triggered through me undertaking certain actions, for example using manipulation to try and build connection would make me feel guilty as I would know what I was doing was bullshit and not in line with my values.
Your Shadow Self
Shame, guilt, and embarrassment are the hallmarks of your shadow self, the parts of your character you are afraid of letting the world see. This shadow self is created through actions you have taken, beliefs you have developed and by the pressures of society bombarding you about your inadequacies. For most of us, we perceive our shadow selves as being the worst of the worst, things/ideas so bad that to share them would mean instant ostracization from the world and the people we love.
The interesting thing is that it’s amazing how common the things we hide from others are. For me, it was shame around my sexual performance and how my very masculinity was tied to performing like a porn star on speed in every encounter I had with a woman. The shame that I attached to any perceived ‘failure’ sexually and the guilt from my efforts to hide this through lies and deception made me physically ill at times, my belief structure was so closely tied to this version of masculinity I lived in fear of sexual failure. This of course became a self-fulfilling prophecy where by my fear of sexual failure drove sexual failures, creating more shame and requiring more lies to cover up. It wasn’t until I started to talk about my shame of sexual failure and my guilt around covering it up, that I started to realize that this was a really common fear and something that most men had experienced in their lives. The other surprising lesson that I learned was that rather than drive people away and isolate me from society, my honesty about my personal suffering created a greater connection with others. It reinforced my belief that fundamentally people want to connect and support one another and its often-other societal factors that drive us away from this fundamental aspect of humanity.
This action cast light onto the area of myself I had always tried to hide and it was just the start of my journey in this area. Since then I have tried to be as open and honest as I can be with the world around me. In essence I have tried to make friends with my shadow self through sharing it with others and learning that what I saw as the blackest of black was not nearly as dark as I thought and that many if not all of the things that I had tried to hide were things that others had experienced as well.
The Weight You Carry
The thing that I feel makes shame and guilt in particular so toxic is the fact that they remain long after the action that caused them has passed. I liken it to the idea of carrying a backpack and every time you are driven by societal rules to feel shame for who you really are you add a weight to this backpack. Every time you shy away from taking action based on your values, you add to this backpack. If you never do anything to remove any of the weight you have added over the years this can crush you as a person and lead to very dark places. Many of the guys I have coached have discussed how close shame and guilt has driven them to take their own lives, some have even been pushed into action by this weight. I believe one of the reasons behind New Zealand’s high rate of youth suicide is our belief, particularly in males that its feminine to talk about how you feel and share the burdens you carry. That somehow by doing this, you are less of a man than those who just suck it up and deal with it.
Ask yourself how much better you would feel about yourself if you no longer had to carry the weight of shame and guilt on your own. Would freeing yourself of this make a massive difference in your self-worth and self-confidence?
Making Friends with Your Shadow Self & Lightening Your Load.
I wanted to share some of the things I have found that really made a difference for me in dealing with shame and guilt. These are techniques I still use and that I encourage my coaching client to utilize as well.
1) Share – the more you can talk about your shadow self with others, the more you will see that what drives your shame and guilt is similar to the people around you. The easiest way to do this starts small with people you already have a relationship with and build from there. When it came to my shame around my sexual performance I started by discussing it with people I trusted and it now got to the stage where I can stand up in front of a room full of strangers (women included) and feel almost no anxiety in sharing my journey. In short, I no longer see it as shameful. At Brojo we have a tool to help with this called the shame grid and if you would like to know more about this drop me a message and I will share it with you.
2) Support network – Linked closely to the first point. Create/find a network or group of like-minded supportive people who you can share these sorts of things with. When you in a room and you hear other people sharing powerful and personal stories, it makes it so much easier to let go of the weight holding you down. Just the simple act of talking about it and sharing your burden will make it seem lighter. If you’re in Auckland then come and check out a Brojo event, the community of men that make up Brojo is one of the most powerful and supportive tools for self-development you will ever find.
3) Don’t play by the rules – As I mentioned, shame is an emotion driven by societal definitions of right and wrong. The whole random approach vs nightclub thing. Yet when I actually explored this ‘rule’ rationally I realized that it was utter bullshit, there is no such thing as the right place or wrong place to approach someone and attempt to create a connection. This rule, like many others that I applied to my life, wasn’t helpful for me. I do accept that society has many rules that are helpful, such as road rules for example that give me some level of assurance that everyone else will behave in a similar manner. I am certainly not advocating anarchy; however, I would challenge you to explore the rules you live by in your life and be curious about how helpful or harmful they are for you and your development.
4) Shame² - Consider the idea that shame is normal and it’s something you will feel. There are things in my life I still feel shame over and maybe always will, this is natural after a lifetime of being told what is ok and what is not. One of the most toxic cycles to avoid is to start feeling shame about being ashamed; it’s a bottomless pit. Give yourself permission to feel shame when you feel it. This is linked closely with self-compassion and the understanding that as a human you’re perfectly imperfect and that it’s ok to be who you are.
5) Avoidance – Consider situations or people who reinforce your shame and guilt. Do you need to put yourself in these situations? Sometimes the answer might be yes as you’re in the process of challenging rules that require you to confront your emotions, other times the answer will be no. A network of compassionate and supportive people can be great for building you up, a group of people that are bad fits for you can be just as effective at tearing you down.
6) Comfortable being uncomfortable – Understand that as part of any growth you undertake, you will be forced to confront situations you feel uncomfortable in. If you're going to challenge the rules and overturn the guilt of not taking action you’re going to experience the very things you have turned away from in the past. Again, it comes down to giving yourself permission to feel this way. It unlikely you will overturn a lifetime of programming in a day so understand that it’s a journey and that it may require many trips before you reach the destination you are aiming for. As long as you're operating in the discomfort zone, your growing.
To wrap this up, I wanted to share a personal example around body image and how I managed to change my own programming and let go of a chunk of shame I carried around for a long time. I mentioned right at the start of this article my shame around losing my hair, and the journey to becoming shameless around this was a very long and expensive one. As you have probably deduced by now, as a young Kiwi bloke I attached a large chunk of my self-worth to my perceived ability to attract women. In order to maximize my opportunity, I felt that I needed to present a certain type of image and play a certain type of character. My hair was very much part of my image and so when I started to lose it my confidence plummeted. Whenever I left the house I felt naked in a way; that everybody who saw me was staring at my thinning hair. I started walking staring at the ground, avoiding eye contact, avoiding social situations, I stopped approaching women, I wore hats all the time and I spent hours in front of mirrors brushing it to trying to cover up what I could.
As my hair got progressively thinner I eventually spent thousands of dollars on hair regrowth treatments (which did actually slow down my hair loss, so they do work to some degree) to minimize what I perceived to be an obvious and shameful defect in my appearance. My deepest fear was that the loss of my hair meant that I was a lesser man and that because of this no women would ever find me attractive. Everyone of these actions reinforced my belief that there was something wrong with me because of my receding hairline.
So how did I start to undo my programming?
I forced myself to stop wearing hats everywhere (I use the word force, deliberately as it was fucking hard to do) and at first despite by best intentions I still ended up wearing a hat most of time. As I kept at going, it became progressively less frequent.
I forced myself to share my fears with my friends/family (starting with the ones I felt most comfortable with).
I forced myself to be honest about my efforts to slow down my hair loss.
I started making jokes about my hair loss and drawing peoples attention to it, what I found was most people didn’t really care even if they did notice it.
I forced myself to approach women.
I eventually shaved my head and embraced my baldness.
Fast forward to my current situation and I am ok with being bald, I’m happily married proving at least one women sees me as attractive, I don’t feel any need to try and cover my lack of hair (I do wear hats for sun sense reasons though), I no longer care if other people notice or even comment on my baldness and most telling is that if a treatment was invented that was guaranteed to work I know it wouldn’t be a priority for me to seek it out. That’s not to say I wouldn’t take the opportunity if it was available as I did like having my hair, just that my desire to do so wouldn't be driven by shame.
