Guest Post: Shannon on Shame (It's worse for you than junk food)

This is a piece I wrote years ago and am resharing in support of our October 2019 theme of Letting Go. One of the great things about yoga is that as you learn to notice your body you also learn to notice the patterns in your mind. Most of us would really prefer to avoid too much time with uncomfortable thoughts and this is a practice I stumbled upon for releasing shame patterns in a more permanant way. Give it a try! - Shannon Leigh

Shame:  It's Worse For You Than Junk Food

I used to have these memories that when I remembered them flooded me with this horrible, hot sense of shame.  Like the time I told a friend – attempting and failing abysmally to compliment – that he looked like he’d lost about 1,000 pounds… ugh.  The shame, always very out of proportion with the situation, was positively debilitating.  It could knock me fetal.

Here is another example:
When I was in high school, I ran track.  Once, during a spring meet, one of my favorite teammates was determined to beat her own record.  Wanting to support her I cheered so hard that I made it seem as if I were cheering against two of my other teammates who were also running that race.  My mom, quiet and subtle, tried to stop me, but I knew the heart of my actions and, because I meant no offense, I refused to see that what I was doing could cause offense.  My mom went home and told my dad.  When I walked in after the meet he met me at the door and said, “I hear you made a real ass of yourself at the track meet.”  What my mom’s subtlety had failed to convey my dad’s unvarnished words made clear: I realized I might have (very publicly) hurt someone’s feelings and I was mortified… for years.

I can look at this memory now and see it simply.  I made a mistake – frankly, it’s one of the least consequential mistakes of my life.  But for some reason, this memory (and others like it) had this horrible power over me.  Whenever I was tired, or hungover, or sick, or even just a little down, my mind would find a shame memory and skip on it like a scratched record… again and again and again, and I would flood with misery every time.

A few years ago I was working on a piece of writing in which I attempted to imitate my own internal mental chatter.  As part of this project, decided to write these most painful memories on paper.  It turns out that I had stumbled on what I now consider to be the A#1 method to purge these old demons.  Writing down the memories forced me to relive the moments in excruciating detail, and as I did that the memories shifted into clearer focus.  I was able to see how trivial they actually were.  They stopped coming back around as often and never hit me again with the same intensity.

In the years since I accidentally purged my own demons, I think I have become a safe place to talk about shame.  Many of my friends have confessed that they shame themselves internally in the same way and  I’ve realized that this horrible inner-flagellation is universal.  We all do it.

I’m writing this because shame that lives in us on that cellular level is not healthy.  It’s worse than junk food and finding a way to release it frees up an abundance energy which allows us to focus on other (much better) things.

So here’s an exercise:  This weekend write down your worst shame memory in detail, then tuck it away and go for a long walk, or a run, or just get up and move around for a few minutes.  Any sort of movement will help your body release the holding pattern that keeps these thoughts spinning around.  If you need to, call a friend and share the experience.  Talking isn’t as effective as writing, but using them together is powerful.  Give it a try!  If you can get rid of these thought patterns around shame you’ll feel like you’ve lost about 1,000 pounds… but you won’t catch me mentioning it.  At least not in those words!