Shame is like poison in that its damage increases the longer its inside you. It took me a number of years to learn that speaking about the shame sooner would take away a lot of its power.
I have some memories from junior high or high school that still pop back up because I think I held onto them too long before I shared them with someone. I can still feel that churn in my gut when I think about them. It's weakened as I've gotten better at releasing shame more quickly, but it's still there.
That's in contrast to recent memories where I'm a lot more accepting of how a situation turned out. I know now that when I feel that physical shame reaction I need to tell someone I trust. I can own the decision/consequences, try to accept I'm imperfect and then take what I can to learn from it before releasing. I can't let it linger inside of me slowly forming a bruise.
This weekend I finished Richard Wagamese's Medicine Walk. It is a treatise in the effects of decades of bottling up shame. You felt a lot of empathy for this wounded warrior who had held on to so much shame that it had taken over his life. As he took this final medicine walk with his son, one of the underlying themes that struck me was how many things he had held inside himself and never spoke of to anyone else. How sad I felt that he hadn't had anyone he could reach out to to help him draw out this poison out.
As the book went on, he slowly released the shame to his son in the form of his untold stories. What started out as a character you thought you had every reason to turn against, turned into a much more complex individual who had many odds stacked against him from early in life.
Shame often lies below the surface. It got me thinking about the individuals in my life who may be dealing with shame that has been sitting there for awhile and if the actions I see bubbling to the surface might be rooted in this poison.
Being a Force for Good 