Hello friends.
Today I wanted to talk to you about guilt and shame and the way that these show up in our lives,
Especially as empaths and highly sensitive souls.
So let's begin in just understanding the difference between guilt and shame.
Guilt is when we've done something that we feel bad about.
It's some sort of action.
And in the work I do,
It often accompanies saying no,
Holding our own boundaries,
Doing something that supports ourselves rather than the other.
As empaths,
As highly sensitive souls,
Many of us carry an immense amount of guilt.
And I know I did for a long,
Long time until I started healing and regulating my nervous system.
So guilt,
I did something bad.
Shame on the other hand,
Shame is when we think we are bad.
And so shame comes from a variety of different places.
But for many of the people that I work with,
Empaths and highly sensitive souls,
Something happened in childhood that created this sense of I am bad.
And it can be a whole host of different things.
Sometimes it's living with a parent with mental illness,
Or when your parents get divorced,
Or there can be all kinds of things that happen that when we're little and young and don't have the capacity to process what's going on in the adult world,
We take this on as a story about ourselves.
So my parents split up,
I must be bad.
My parents don't have the capacity to hold my emotions,
I must be bad.
My business isn't successful,
I must be bad.
So those are just a few random examples of ways that shame shows up.
And shame,
Of course,
Thrives in secrecy,
Silence,
And judgment.
And the antidote to shame is empathy.
And so for many of us highly sensitive souls,
We are deeply empathic.
We are empaths in a lot of cases as well.
So we are very,
Very generous with ourselves in the outside world.
And many of us have this deep need and desire for perfectionism,
Mostly from the way we operate in the world.
And this is a trauma response that comes up and keeps us stuck in this guilt and shame spiral.
So allowing ourselves to first know the difference between these two emotions,
And then respond in loving kindness to what we notice in ourselves,
Is a powerful opportunity to bring healing and expansion into your life.
So I hope that this description and explanation was helpful for you.
Some of this information comes directly from Brene Brown's book,
Atlas of the Heart,
The definitions as they were.
They can also be found elsewhere,
But that is part of what supported me to bring this to you today.
So my name is Anita Kaiser,
My business is Anita Kaiser Wellness,
And I have lots of meditations and tabalums and talks here on Insight Timer.
I'd love for you to check some of them out and leave me a review for this if you found it supportive.
I hope you have a beautiful day and I look forward to connecting again soon.
