Shame, motivation, and moving through it
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If being hard on yourself worked, it would’ve worked by now.
Shame can work as a motivator. However, it’s not the act of feeling shame alone that’s going to do that. Shame is a terrible feeling, sickening twisting feeling of not sitting right with yourself. We naturally want to get away from it, push it away. Shame can be a motivator for change, but you need to be able to sit with it and accept it, and then work with it to see where you want to improve, what you want to change.
However, sometimes shame isn’t…warranted, for lack of a better phrase. Abuse survivors often report feeling shame after and during their abuse, and this can be used by perpetrators to keep control over their victims. This shame can be paralysing, and because it’s external - it’s shame coming from an outside source, it doesn’t offer the same insight and motivation for change.
What I’m trying to say is, the way to use shame, either for motivation or to see a bad situation for what it is, you need to learn to sit with it and move through it. And that’s difficult, because it’s a terrible feeling and we don’t want to let those feelings in.
Shame also snowballs. Last year I had a snowball situation. It started with just some things dropping off my to do list accidentally. Then I tried to hide that, cover for my mistake. That led to other things slipping. I stopped holding myself accountable to myself. I stopped doing all the things I know would help, because in order to move past it I would have to bring my shame out into the light, really look at myself and my actions, and where they failed to meet my image of myself.
For me that’s the kicker with shame. It’s where I don’t meet the image of myself. It’s different from not meeting my own expectations, because they are always high, and I’ve learned to accept when I can’t meet my own (sometimes) ridiculous standards. But when I miss the image I have of myself? That’s not me failing to achieve something, that’s me failing to be the person I know I am. It’s not leaning into my strengths - my emotional intelligence, or communication skills, my openness. It’s the opposite of that, I hide away, shy away from feeling vulnerable and competent, and instead curl in on myself, pushing away and hiding from everything that would help me.
In a way, shame stops you from really being vulnerable with yourself. When looking over behaviour or thought patterns, shame will make it difficult to push through and really bring out the parts you like least about yourself. Because again, you’re looking at places where you don’t meet the image you have in your head. But the thing is, it’s only when you look at what circumstances lead you to acting in a shameful way that you can find out what you need to change those patterns. Is it accountability? Is it therapy? A different environment? Under the shame is some habit or pattern that you want to change, and to get there, you need to drag it all out into the light.
So last year, I let my shame snowball and this is what I wish I’d done instead:-
- Admitted to myself what was going on. The issue with shame as a motivator is that it requires you to see how you’re not acting in the way you picture yourself acting, and then you can make a plan to get back to where you want to be, and know you can be. It might not even be all your fault, circumstances can make it difficult to act how you would want to, but you still need to sit up and look over what the shame is covering, and dig into it.
- Reached out and asked for help. I have an amazing support network, and I know I’d have got the help I needed if I’d have just asked. In fact, in conversations with my boss about this time he pointed out that in the year or so he’d been my line manager I’d never asked him for help
- Been kinder to myself. Accountability doesn’t mean berating yourself. It means sitting down and seeing where you’re not where you need and want to be and what’s lacking in making that happen. Giving yourself constructive feedback is the key, and trying different ways to support your needs. Kindness requires being firm at times, and being gentle to yourself at other times, but always treating yourself well, and not slipping into insulting yourself.
Ironically just as I was getting to a really productive space again, I was made redundant. However, I’m taking those lessons in accountability forward into this new potential self employment phase of my life, and I’m really enjoying it.
If you spent a lot of this newsletter wondering how you sit with your feelings without them overwhelming you, I wrote a whole series last year on sitting with your feelings with concrete tips and steps to try: https://selfcarebackpack.com/blog/category/feelingfeelings/