The weight of the world (shame).
My relationship with weight is a headed one. Something I have always struggled (if you can call it that) with as a heavier girl.
From a young child, I can remember so many conversations about weight and how you looked and being able to go after your dreams only as a certain size. Nothing directed at me persae, but I was witness to it and therefore it definitely ingrained in my subconscious and had me playing a smaller person as a bigger girl.
Shame for not fitting the standard.
Not to mention, the norm of society as I was growing up in the 90’s/ early 2000’s; the beauty standard of thin and all of the women portrayed in the shows and beyond.
Shame, described as a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behaviour in the dictionary.
& by Brené Brown as the intensly painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love, belonging and connection.
Spiritually, shame being the energy of the extra weight that we carry - hiding ourselves amongst layers of what we’re supposed to be.
The boxes we are supposed to fit in.
Shame is one of our most primitive emotions, meaning that whether you are aware of it or not or whether you fully understand what it means, we all carry it in some form or another (until we don’t). I know that I was to some degree aware of shame but another layer was learning how it truly affected me.
As noted in Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown, the less we talk about shame, the more control it has over us - being an emotion (energy in motion) that lives within us until we are able to break free. Brown notes (as well as some of my own) through research that some examples of shame can include shame for:
hiding addictions and/ or recovery
raging at your kids
not having a partner
being assaulted.
infertility
flunking out of school
not being where we thought we would be, career or life wise
the list is endless.
This comes forth in a blog entry with shame being a deep emotion that I was moving through this past season. It hit me like a ton of bricks and without even realizing it (until I did), I was resorting back to old habits.
I had been doing considerably well in my movement and food practices, learning and honouring what made me feel good, not in my old thought process’ of needing to be fixed, rather living more intentionally and healthy. The weight coming off me was a bonus, I was here for how I was beginning to feel.
But then, as things do - my nervous system started resorting back to its old patterns, what had always been safe for me. Food. For a variety of reasons now, I had just made an intense transition from full time to stability to figuring it out and trusting that what I was doing was going to be more than worth it.
&I had some layers of a past sexual assault arise. Deep shame in how things were handled and my part in things. So much hurt and shame over the reactions that I now know played a role in my downward spiral of partying, being a tad promiscuous and on the road to deep mental health.
Until I picked myself up and began honouring the different parts of me again, a deeper recognition and belief that we are all doing the best we can, on a whole damn nervous system level.
It’s controlling everything. Including my choice of “safety” in going back to my old habits. The difference each time it happens; you catch yourself a little quicker each time you resort back.
A promise to yourself that you’re going to do the best that you can do every single damn day (regardless of your vice or habit) and give yourself the grace, compassion and empathy for exactly where you are.
Because if you are unable to talk and move through that shame somatically, it will just continue to arise and play a bigger and bigger role in your demise.
Into taking a look at shame from earlier in my journey? Read here.
