Sanctuary for Heart Magic :Unwinding Spines & Unleashing Hearts utilizing Network Spinal Chiropractic in Boulder, Colorado: spiritual path

BREAKING UP WITH SHAME

Exposing our hidden selves

Shame, which is an underlying sense that we ourselves are somehow bad or wrong, is a well grooved inner pathway for most. Some people might first default to blame, which is simply shame projected outwards onto others. Why do we carry around with us this sense that we are, or could be, bad or wrong? Why is it that when other people disagree with how we are, or have opinions about how we should be, that we nearly immediately go into self-defense in the form of hatred or rejection of ourselves? Shame is one of the most pervasive and debilitating feeling states. When we feel it we tend to freeze, withdraw and judge ourselves. We think thoughts along the lines of “if only I could be better or different than I am, then I wouldn’t be deficient, or bad or wrong, and people would love and include me.” Talk about one of the most painful states of being in which there seems to be no good way out. From the perspective of shame the only answer is for you to be different or better than you are in order to be loved and accepted. This is battle that you will always end up losing. You will lose because your sense of being loved and included is outside of you, and you will forever be chasing it because being loved and included is the most primary of all human needs and wants.

We have endless strategies to avoid feeling shame. One of the most primary ones is to stay hidden, to not allow others to see who we are, to put up fronts and be inauthentic so that people won’t judge us. If we don’t let people see us then they can’t reject us or tell us that we are wrong. If there is no one “real” at home inside of us for people to see then we can’t be accountable to being “wrong”. If we just stay quiet enough, keep the peace, pretend to not know much including knowing who we are or what value we have to contribute or share, then we can avoid the painstaking judgment of others. That is until we can’t. There will be a time when someone judges us, when they disagree with us, when they perceive some kind of insufficiency in our actions or beingness. There is no hiding then. The cloak is off and we are exposed. This is when the shame gets in. We might react in anger, recoil in self-defense, or completely cut ourselves off from our own heart. We are left with the feeling that we are bad and wrong, and often beating ourselves up about it or lashing out at others.

You might be wondering where does shame come from. It’s simple really. It comes from a belief that you are bad or wrong. Where did the belief come from? The belief in badness or wrongness is such a pervasive societal belief that you would be hard pressed not to have pick it up somewhere along your human journey. Maybe someone told you were bad or wrong when you were growing up. Perhaps you learned it socially through peers groups, in school, or in your family. It’s actually not so important where you picked up the belief, rather what is important is that you identify the belief living inside of yourself. That you see it and recognize that you are now the source of it. You are the one that keeps that belief alive, active, and true for you in your own psyche.

NEVER BEEN WRONG

Graceful learning

What if you’ve never ever been wrong? Seems like a bold question, eh? Would you believe it if I told you that you never have been? For a moment you might feel some relief at that thought, but most people will go on to validate for themselves how it’s not true. They will conjure up all of the times they’ve been bad or wrong in the past. They will reinforce the belief in their wrongness or badness for themselves. Most people don’t really want to believe that they are right and good. When I speak about right and wrong as it relates to us as beings, I am not talking about detailed or factual information. Yes you can be inaccurate about facts, or in recalling certain details, or about information. What I am pointing to rather is who you are, including the things that you do and say. If someone is frequently found to be insisting on their rightness by needing to be right about facts and information it’s often because they feel deeply wrong inside as to who they are. It’s simply another shame avoidance strategy.

Imagine for a minute if you could really embrace non-badness and non-wrongness. If that could really be a reality for you. How would you feel? For most I would imagine that you would feel some sense of freedom. It would be the end of self-doubt, the end of self-hatred and the beginning of an availability to life that you might have never experienced before. See most of what we believe to be bad/good or wrong/right is based on what other people think or what culture/society says we should be like. It’s not based on our own knowing. If it was we would all just be being ourselves and wouldn’t think twice about it. But almost no one is being fully and authentically who they are all of the time.

Let’s talk about actions and things we say. First of all people who love themselves and know that they are right and good don’t harm other people. There simply isn’t motivation for it. Doing harm to others is an outward expression that comes from a deep sense of self-hatred and self-rejection (i.e. shame). Believe it or not, and it’s of course up to you to choose for yourself, but there are no actions or words that are bad or wrong. Yikes. You might disagree and you are more than welcome too, however the shame cycle never ends for you then. You perceive some action or word as wrong in another. You project that wrongness onto that person who now feels shame from your projection regarding their words or actions. In response they act in some distorted fashion in order to not feel the shame. Same goes for your own words and actions. What we perceive and feel we create. The cycle continues unchecked into infinity.

So then what about learning? How do we learn if we don’t feel shame? How do we up level and become more refined, loving and aware creatures towards ourselves and others? Well again believe it or not, we don’t have to be bad or wrong in order to learn, and learning doesn’t mean that we are/were bad or wrong. People can give their opinion to us, of something we did or shared, without us going into shame. We can both stay open to the feedback and then decide what we want to do with that information. Is there something constructive that we could learn from that person’s information without going into wrongness? Could we just receive that information and note it or integrate it. Perhaps there is nothing bad or wrong about what we did or didn’t do, but only learning to be had. Also what if when you shared your experience of others with them you simply shared impact rather than judgment. What if you took accountability for how you feel about what occurred while still providing information to another person about how their words/behaviors impacted you. This is a high level skill yet it is learnable.

We are all constantly learning and it doesn’t mean we are bad or wrong. When you get this you can break up with shame. While at one stage of your development perhaps shame was a good learning strategy for you, it’s also one that at some point quits serving you. It limits your growth and keeps you disconnected from yourself, which in turn helps and serves no one.

Dr. Amanda Love, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado

CHOOSING YOUR IDENTITY

Creating a new experience of life

It can often seem like we are not choosing who we are, but rather that we simply are who we are. You might wonder what it even means to choose your identity. To begin with your identity is made up. It is composed of a slew of thoughts, feelings, beliefs and assumptions, many of which you might not even be aware of, which is why it seems that you are not choosing who you are. However if you take just a little bit of time and come up with a handful of words or phrases that currently describe you, then you will start to get a clearer picture of how you see yourself. This is important to do if you would like to see that your identity is in fact made up by you (consciously or not) and become more deliberate in the choosing of it for yourself.

Why is your identity so important anyways? Your identity dictates what actions you will take or not take, what emotions you will have or not have, how much risk or safety you need, how you relate to other people and yourself, the information your body will receive or not receive, what you belief is possible or impossible, and how you view the world and all of its happenings. I hope you can see that identity is a pretty big deal. It influences your entire experience of life. Good news is you are not stuck with the one you have! Identity in indeed malleable, but you must first realize that it can be changed by you if you so desire.

Just to be clear there is nothing wrong with any identity. Choosing one identity over another identity is not better or worse, but rather only provides different experiences for you. Ultimately you are not any of the identities that you conjure up. You are that which is before all characteristics and qualities, but that is another conversation. So make that list of qualities and characteristics that you currently feel like you possess. What are the primary thoughts and emotions that you experience on a regular basis? What beliefs do you have that inspire those thoughts and emotions? How do you imagine other people see/view you? What do you present to others or the world and how is that different than when you are by yourself? Get as clear and concise of a picture of who you currently believe or know yourself to be. Now ponder if there is any way in which you would like to experience something that you are currently experiencing differently. Would you like to feel different, see yourself differently, relate to others differently, have different opportunities, feel different in your body, make more money, impact others more, etc.? If the answer is yes then it all begins with a shift in identity. We can’t experience anything differently until we first become different.

A NEW YOU

Bridging the non-real gap

Now that you have gotten clearer on who you currently are, you must also create what you would like your new identity to be. If you came up with some ways in which you would like to experience life differently than you must ask yourself, “who would I need to be in order to have those experiences?” What type of person would experience life in the ways that you want to experience it? Write down whatever those characteristics, qualities, thoughts, and emotions are for someone who would experience what you desire to experience. Then notice the gap between your current sense of self and the sense of self you need to have in order to experience life in these new ways. That gap, which really isn’t a gap, but rather only a set of habits based on assumptions of who you are and who you aren’t, and a doing of yourself one way versus another way.

To bridge the non-real gap we must do, feel and think ourselves like the version of ourselves that we now desire to experience. We must break the habits of our previous self by laying down the habits of our next self. This is where people often drop the ball because this takes work and effort. It will take energy, determination and discipline in order to make the shift because your old way of doing yourself is effortless, routine and predicable. It takes very little energy. Building a new self is like a baby building its body. It takes a ton of energy. In a way you do become like a baby again. You are learning and laying down patterns that you have not learned or laid down before. There will be uncertainty or lack of clarity, a sense like you don’t know where you are going or how to get there. That is all normal. You don’t know yet because you haven’t traversed this terrain before. If you already knew then it wouldn’t be a new version of you.

As always your desire is the guiding light. The more clear you are in your desire of what you want to be now, the more clear the path will seem to you even if you don’t know what direction is up/down or right/left. Turning the light up on your desire is also your source of energy. Without desire we don’t feel much motivation to create or bring new things to light. With desire we are lit up. We are motivated, inspired, and take action in the direction of our new found dreams. Along with creating new behaviors, habits, thoughts, feelings and emotions, there will be a letting go of the old ways of being. It is like a sweet good-bye. A good-bye that is done in gratitude for who you’ve been and everything you’ve created from this sense of you. It’s kind of like selling a car you really love, but you know it’s time for an upgrade because the old one just can’t do all the things you need it to anymore. You want to have new experiences so it’s time to upgrade, it’s time for a change.

We are by our very nature creators. We are the source of our creations. How do you want to play with the toys in your sandbox today? How do you want to experience life? You are the source of it all. Turn the light up on yourself, see who you are now and create who you need to be in order to experience life how you desire to now.

Dr. Amanda Love, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado