Spiritual Shame
Have you ever felt bad about feeling bad or feared that you are bringing “bad” things into your life because of your mood or negative feelings? If so, you’re not alone.
In today’s musings I discuss something called “spiritual shame”. What it is, how it can affect you and how you can work through it.
Audio Transcription:
Hello, and welcome to my musings.
Today I’ve been thinking about “spiritual shame”. What it is, how it feels, what it means to me and to you in our day to day lives.
If you’ve read my bio on my website, then you know I grew up surrounded by spiritual teachings and the law of attraction and how to create the life we desire. And while this had its exciting and uplifting aspects, it also had a dark side.
I grew up knowing that everything is energy and that we attract what we think about, or more appropriately we attract at the level of our vibration. And this can be very exciting when things are going well, but very scary when I was in the pits and didn’t like what I was seeing in my life.
When I was in the midst of chaos, or life was rough I felt guilty that I was creating this because you know, “we create our own reality”, and I was obviously doing it wrong.
I felt ashamed, like I was failing, that I should be doing better. I now know that this has a name, “spiritual shame”, and I see it so much in our society today.
We live in a society that preaches positivity and that’s great as long as it’s balanced. I think the goal is to feel good or neutral, but in order to get there, we have to let the emotions flow through us.
I think people are afraid to feel what they perceive to be “negative” emotions. Like if they feel bad, bad things will happen. That they may be struck by lightning if they feel angry toward someone. That they’ll never get ahead if they feel sad about a situation. Or they may just feel stuck and unsure of how to move forward and then feel incredible guilt, which keeps them in a judgement loop that’s hard to escape.
I’m here to tell you that if this was true, that if our thoughts and feelings were so easily manifested, then it would work for the “positive” thoughts as well. We’d all be millionaires, living at the beach, would be debt free, and driving the car of our dreams! Think about that for a minute.
So, now let me tell you what I think.
I do believe that everything is energy.
I do believe that we attract what we focus on, but there is more to it than that. It’s more nuanced.
I believe that we don’t need to be afraid of our emotions. We all have them! We are human.
And in fact, emotions are just energy that needs to move through us! It’s really that simple. Something happens, we get triggered, feel emotions and our best course of action is to let them move on through. The trouble that we can get into, and the reason the emotions stick around for awhile, is a few things.
One is that we get hooked into the story. We keep replaying it in our minds and it keeps stoking the fire. My mentor said to me once that the story is just the catalyst to get the energy moving and this is so true!
Another reason the emotions can feel stuck is that we don’t let ourselves feel them. We push them down. We say “we’re fine”, that all is well, but in doing so we are resisting feeling them.
And another is that we judge ourselves for having strong emotions. So, not only are we feeling uncomfortable, we’re then beating ourselves up for feeling uncomfortable and if we go back to spiritual shame, we’re sure we’re ruining our lives.
So, let’s look at this a little differently.
What if a feeling bubbles up or something happens, and you feel strong emotions? Are you open to another way of being with this?
If you’re up for it, play with this for a bit.
An uncomfortable emotion bubbles up (or explodes) in you. This is your job in that moment:
First, Let the feeling move through you. Experience it! Really feel it! Do you need to cry? Write? Move your body? Yell into your pillow? Do what works for you in a safe way.
Second, notice when you go back to the impetus or trigger for the emotion. It’s really common for us to feel the feelings and then go back to the “cause”. Remember, the cause or trigger, was just there for you to release the emotion and let it move through.
And third, be gentle with yourself. Don’t judge and beat yourself up for having uncomfortable feelings! It’s normal. It’s human. It’s more than ok, in fact, it’s necessary.
Ok, so I feel like I shared a lot. This is work that takes practice and is so much of the work/play that I do with my clients, but I wanted to get this out in the open so that you can start to free yourself from spiritual shame if it is something you struggle with.
You are perfect, just the way you are. There is nothing bad or wrong about you. You are a human being doing the best you can and you’re doing a great job!
I invite you to practice the steps I outlined, feel the feelings fully, without judgement and detach from the story.
And until next time, remember, that true peace is always just one breath away.
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