Shame. How does it Show up in the body?

Body. The head goes down and to the side (most often to the left). The look goes down after the head and a person looks at the left heel, as if he wants to look away as much as possible, but his legs are standing still. The body twists, as if it wants to run away and hide. The shoulders are twisted as far as possible, the chest is pressed inward as much as possible. As if a person wants to shrink to occupy a minimum amount of space. All gestures are very close to the body, hugging themselves. Hands often cover his face, he wants to hide his eyes with his hands. Sometimes we can rub our nose or scratch an eyebrow to be able to hide behind our hand. The knees and legs are soft. As we have said, a person’s cheeks turn red, this reaction almost always appears.

Hormones. At the hormonal level, adrenaline is also produced when shame appears. Under the action of adrenaline, blood rushes to the head so that a person can quickly make a decision. Under adrenaline, our face gets red in shame.

Body language. When the intensity of shame is not still high (shyness), the first thing that appears on the face is a stupid smile and the person begins to giggle. He lowers his head down and giggles. When the intensity of shame grows, the lips tighten and the person begins to prim them.

Breathing. A person holds his breath when he exhales. When exhaling, he physically becomes smaller, so he wants to exhale and hold his breath.

Look. The look goes inside, although it is physically visible that a person is looking at the floor. As shame is a social emotion, from time to time a person looks at witnesses: “How are they? Are they still there? Do they still hate me? Did they somehow change their attitude towards me? Are they gone?” It means that a glance from time to time furtively looks at the observers.

Inner sensations. The inner feelings of shame are very bright. A person feels one point – the solar plexus (the upper abdomen part between the ribs, where they begin to diverge). There is a very strong burning sensation in it, it burns there.

Direction. There is no direction either forward or backward, neither upward nor downward, the body wants to roll in place, as if a person wants to run away from himself, but you can’t run away from yourself. Like a dog who wants to catch its tail and runs in a circle. And while a person is so “running”, inside he feels a collapse, he wants to shrink to the point of the solar plexus and disappear – “go bright red with shame.”

Speech. At the moment of shame, blood rushes to the head, and then goes to the legs. So a person, as in fear, becomes speechless, his speech becomes tongue-tied, speech defects and stuttering appear, a person cannot formulate what he wants to say.

Shame. Processing

Shame is felt only in the moment. If the situation has passed, and you feel shame, it means that you reshape the situation inside yourself in secondary emotions. For example, you were at the school board and said some nonsense, the whole class laughed at you, the teacher looked down on you, you wanted to melt into the ground, run out of the classroom, forget about everything. When you were at the blackboard, you burned with shame, but when you came home, you no longer felt shame. If you remember a story and again burn with shame, it happens already in secondary feelings. Most often, the repeated shame that occurs in the memories, and not here and now, will be much higher in intensity than it was in the moment, because you wind it up. In the moment, we always live primary emotions (shame in this example), and at home, outside the situation, we process secondary feelings based on our beliefs, and it will be a completely different story.

Shame is actually an aversion to oneself; you don’t like yourself. You say to yourself: “You are not worthy expressing yourself, to be as you are, you must be some other.” This is the key issue. You can feel shame, as an emotion born in the moment in the current situation – this is a completely normal situation. But if you feel shame at the level of feeling that often haunts you in life, if it hurts you at the level of your inner convictions, it means that you have a problem, there is no love for yourself, you feel disgust with yourself.

When we see an object outside, towards which we are disgusted, we want to move away as far as possible, distance ourselves from it. How does this mechanism work with shame?

If you want to belong to a significant group (i.e., to reduce the distance as much as possible), you yourself move away from it because you feel shame and disgust with yourself. You do not push others aside “You are not worthy”, but push yourself aside “I am not worthy.” It means that you distance from society on the basis of your inner beliefs that something is wrong with you. And that can be a big problem. A person in need of love, with a basic need for acceptance and attention, distance himself and does not allow other people as he is afraid of feeling shame.

If there is no reason for shame in adequate reality (you are smart, well-read, you look decent and everything is fine with you), and you are too shy, afraid to show the products of your creativity to the world, you cannot convey your thought because of shyness, there is a high probability that you do not love, do not accept yourself, do not consider yourself worthy to belong to the group with which you are currently interacting.

And, of course, this will always be accompanied by an internal comparison, i.e. assessment. If you compare yourself with someone, it means that you constantly evaluate other people (bad/good, able/unable). It turns out that you demonstrate things from which you yourself constantly suffer in society. It cannot be that you are afraid of an external assessment, but you do not evaluate yourself. After all, you already have the focus of attention on comparison, it is important for you, it happens inside you. Such duality occurs very often.

Shame. A healthy Way of Processing

As we say that shame is associated with self-love, it is a criterion that you do not like yourself for some reason now. And you need to understand the details: “What exactly don’t I like about me right now?”

For example, we can be ashamed of the fact that we do not know anything, we cannot answer the question. So, I do not accept that I do not know everything in the world, I am ashamed to be stupid. In general I consider myself stupid and I’m afraid that they will expose me, they will catch me on stupid things.

The same thing can happen when I paint a picture and present it to the world. I feel embarrassed inside, ashamed, and think: “Is this picture worthy of attention? Is it well painted? Most likely it is not very well painted.” Then the desire to look into the eyes of a person who will now evaluate my canvas comes. At the time of evaluation, a person who is ashamed perceives that people around are not evaluating the canvas, but himself. For a person who has an acute need for love and who is very close to shame, such things are indistinguishable at the subconscious level. Showing the results of his work to the world, a person says “Here I am”, and if in response he hears criticism about his work, he always perceives it as a sharp pain and a dagger in his heart. For such a person, any criticism is always perceived as personal.

Let’s turn to the strategy of processing shame.

Step 1. Ask questions to yourself and find answers:

If you feel burning in the solar plexus, you begin curling up and giggling, hide your eyes, it is important to ask yourself:

 
What don’t I accept in myself now?
What don’t I like in myself now?
What do I judge in myself?
What censure do I fear from my environment?
What quality do I consider awful now?
What my behavior do I consider disgusting?
 

Step 2. Find tenderness to yourself

We need to understand what is good in this situation. What is the positive intention of this quality? Our task is to find a context in which this quality or behavior is good. “Yes, I can’t find the answer to this question now, but if you want, I will find out. After all, if you don’t know anything is basically good, how to live if you know everything?” We must find tenderness to ourselves, tenderness = acceptance. Or, “Yes, I don’t feel the time because I am very involved in the current process, and as a result I am often late, but the people next to me also don’t notice the time because they are completely involved in interesting communication. After all, when we are OK, we do not notice the time.” Finding a positive intention of our quality or behavior, we must make friends with this quality, otherwise shame won’t disappear.

Only acceptance cures of shame.

Step 3. Find the observer’s eyes

 
Whom do you compare yourself with?
 

Having answered this question, you need to find the eyes of the observer and realize for whom you now want to be beautiful and whose love you want to receive. This awareness is too unexpected. For some reason, you felt shame in front of an absolutely stranger who doesn’t want anything from you (the seller in the store or a casual passer-by), but looking for the eyes of an observer, you can often find mom or dad in this role.

Unconsciously, we cannot notice such things, such reactions are already a part of our established personality, so we need to learn to be conscious.

Step 4. Do something pleasant for yourself

You need to offer yourself some action that will confirm that you love yourself, to give yourself some pleasure. What does pleasure mean? Pleasure is doing what you like. It can be anything: write what you like, watch or listen to what you like, absolutely any action that brings pleasure to you. When we love another person, we are very observant, it is sincerely interesting for us to notice the most delicate moments in what he likes, we strive to ensure that our loved one enjoys what we do or offer. And it is very nice. When you can treat yourself in the same way – this is love for yourself. To do it, first of all, you need to learn to look at yourself with acceptance and sincere interest, observe yourself and allow yourself to do what you like.