Want to be a Shame-slayer?
Clients bring goals they want to achieve through our work together.
But to be honest, we can’t even address it right away.
Because shame is in the room.
Nothing can move until shame is directly addressed.
It’s a paralyzer, and it’s the greatest obstacle to transformation.
For anything related to personal growth, particularly sex and relationships, shame is pretty much guaranteed to play a part.
There are many layers of shame. Sometimes there’s even shame about the shame.
It’s important to name and address each layer.
Here’s how this shows up in my own life: I might feel inadequate when it’s time to set a boundary. As a coach/therapist, shame tells me I should “know better” than to freeze, in spite of the fact that I know freezing is an automatic defensive response of the nervous system and it’s logical from a survival standpoint.
I might even give myself a hard time about the fact that I feel bad about freezing.
Can you see the double whammy?
So how do we deal with this?
By deshsmifying all the layers of shame. One by one.
As a Somatic Sex and Relationship coach I’m trained to be a shame warrior and I have many tools in my toolbox to deal with it.
I can smell shame miles away, and I know it’s the first thing to address.
Shame is pervasive and it can be disguised as just about anything. You truly need to develop a special shame detector to identify it.
And it has a tell. Shame uses preformative, judgemental or evaluative words.
Pay special attention every time you or others use such words like:
Should…
Need to…
Ought to…
Supposed to…
It would be better if I…
Inappropriate
Not normal
Unhealthy
Promiscuous
Loose
Indecent
Vulgar
Shameless
Perverted
Cheap
Slutty
Naughty
Feel free to add to the list in the comments below.
Shame slaying is a powerful tool. Sometimes it’s all you need.
Sometimes clients plan to work with me for a while, but once I address their shame head on, they feel done right away.
Shame-slaying is all they need.
Pretty cool, right? Maybe you’re next …