Hello,
This is Kambiz Nafisi,
Spiritual guide,
And today I want to speak to you about a very debilitating emotion that plagues millions of people,
And these people are not even aware of it.
It's called toxic shame.
Shame is that gnawing feeling,
The gnawing emotion of I'm not good enough,
I'm worthless and unwanted,
I cannot enjoy the best things that life has to offer,
And I am unlucky.
I keep making mistakes.
Shame enters a child when they first develop an ego at around 18 months of age.
Most children,
Most adult children who never received unconditional love and acknowledgement,
Carry some sort of shame that gives them the feeling that I can't measure up,
I'm not good enough.
There are four types of families that instill shame in their children.
I'll go through these four types.
The first type of family is the absent family.
The members are like ships going through the night.
They don't notice each other's presence.
They don't know much about each other's emotions.
Each person gets their meal from the refrigerator,
Goes back to their room.
There are no family sit-down lunches and dinners,
And the children have the feeling that if mom and dad are emotionally absent,
Then I must be worthless.
Another type of family is the controlling family.
These families look really,
Really good to the neighbors.
These families have a lot of unspoken and unexplainable rules,
Like mom tells daughter to be back from her date at exactly 9 p.
M.
,
Daughter asks why,
And mom says because I'm mom.
So there's so many rigid,
Unexplained rules that the children feel like they can never measure up and be acknowledged by the parents for their own goodness,
And therefore the children pick up a sense of shame.
Another type of family that instills shame in children is the enmeshed family.
In the enmeshed family,
There are no healthy boundaries.
You don't know where mom ends,
Where daughter begins.
So mom's depression becomes daughter's depression,
Or dad gets involved with alcoholism,
Misses a day at the office,
The son calls the boss at the office and makes up an excuse that dad has a cold.
These people in the family,
The enmeshed family,
They walk in on each other in the bathroom,
They read each other's memoirs,
They have each other's passwords,
They borrow each other's clothes.
There are just no healthy boundaries.
And finally,
We have the abusive families.
The members of the abusive families undergo sexual abuse,
Physical abuse,
Verbal abuse.
It's just a very dangerous environment within the family,
And because there's fear,
Abusive families are surrounded by a sense of secrecy,
So that nobody outside the family knows that the abuse is going on.
And a lot of times,
Members of the family protect the secret from outsiders.
Toxic shame can come from other sources or other incidents.
For example,
A failed romance in school can create shame in the person,
Or a severe illness during grade school can give a child shame.
Something as simple as wetting your bed when you're three years old can give you shame.
A lot of ladies,
Women,
The first time they have their period,
If the parents are not open-minded people and somehow shame the sexuality of the daughter,
Then the daughter can pick up shame over her own womanhood.
There are times when a mom will turn around to a child and say,
You know,
I had already had too many kids by the time I got pregnant with you,
So I tried to abort you,
And thank God I didn't abort you because I love you now.
Statements like that also bring about shame in the child.
Shamed people exhibit certain qualities that I will go over with you right now.
A shamed person has big problems getting into intimate relationships.
In other words,
As soon as the relationship starts to become really intimate,
The shamed person feels like if this lover or partner gets too close to me,
They're going to discover something very shameful about me.
So a shamed person might have a reflex to drive away a loved one just as the loved one is getting too close.
Shamed people have a tendency to hide themselves from the world.
So you have a great pianist,
Somebody who's very,
Very good at watercoloring,
And these people don't have an Instagram page,
They don't have websites,
You can't see their art or hear their art.
They want to stay little because they feel shameful,
So they hide from the world.
Also,
Shamed people become very,
Very perfectionistic.
They want to hide their shame by never,
Ever showing a flaw or a mistake or weakness.
Shamed people confuse looking good with feeling good.
So if you know people who always look absolutely gorgeous,
Absolutely perfect,
All the shirts are ironed,
All the shoes are polished,
There is just not a flaw physically in terms of cosmetics,
In terms of the wardrobe.
These people are typically trying to hide the insecurity of somehow being imperfect.
Sometimes shamed people turn into prison torturers.
Shamed people carry a lot of anger,
And it's anger that's been bent inward towards themselves.
So because there's so much anger and frustration towards the self,
Then this turns or can turn into abuse and violence and aggression towards other people.
At the same time,
Some of the world's best healers are shamed people.
If you were shamed somehow,
And you are suffering from the emotion of shame,
You might dedicate your life to healing shame in other people.
So very,
Very conscientious,
Excellent healers may have been previously shamed in their own lives.
I'll give you some exercises in terms of how you can heal your shame.
One is identify the type of family that you grew up in.
Was it a neglectful family,
Controlling,
Enmeshed,
Or abusive?
Number two,
Understand that you were not born with shame.
Shame was given to you.
And also,
Shame always comes from your negative perception of what just happened.
If you're four years old,
And you wet your bed,
And your mom is washing your mattress with a lot of effort,
Your perception at that moment,
Watching your mom wash your mattress,
That perception may be a negative perception.
And that's how you pick up shame,
Through how you perceive the incident going on.
So somebody who has a failed romantic relationship in high school comes up with a perception,
May come up with a perception that I am a loser in love,
And I am unlucky in love.
So that's a perception.
At this age,
If you reframe that original negative perception,
And come up with a more mature,
Realistic perception,
Then you can get rid of shame.
Another exercise in healing shame,
Practice vulnerability.
Shame nourishes itself through secrecy,
Through perfectionism.
People don't want to show or admit to shame.
If you practice vulnerability,
And admit the fact that you are suffering from shame,
Just the disclosure,
Just the confession to shame,
Just the ability to be vulnerable vis-a-vis shame,
Will start to take the wind out of the sails of shame.
Another exercise.
If you see a sudden change and drop in your personality,
In your behavior,
In your energy level,
See if you can identify that sudden energy change,
That sudden change in your disposition.
See if you can trace that to shame.
That'll help your mindfulness a lot.
As you become more mindful,
You have less and less shame.
Ask yourself,
Are you trying to hide from the world?
What keeps you from having a Facebook,
Instagram page,
Or a website page?
What keeps you from displaying your paintings or your sculpture?
If you feel like you're hiding from this world,
Then you're carrying a lot of shame.
Finally,
When it comes to intimate relationships.
As your relationships start to become more intimate,
Do you find some excuses to drive the person away because you are terrified that they will discover something shameful in you?
In closing this talk,
I'll say that in my coming full circle approach to healing shame,
I give you plenty of exercises so that you can get rid of this imaginary,
Self-induced,
And very negative emotion called toxic shame.
God bless.
Godspeed.
