“Shame Shames; That shame may not even be ours.  We take on the feelings of other generations.  We Can break the subconscious patterns of shame.  It’s not about who’s at fault, it’s about how we end it,” JB Copeland.  No one is unique in this—every family has a history of shame over something.  We all have a history of things that make us feel less than in some way, and we aren’t sure why.  It can manifest in so may ways—we never confront people when we’ve been wronged, we try to please people by putting everything we need last, we don’t ask for help, we repeat the patterns of self-deprecation and low self-worth because we feel a certain way about ourselves whether we can explain it or not.  If we look at this strictly from an historical perspective, society has shifted continuously and the definition of what is “acceptable” has shifted with it.  For Pete’s sake there was a time when we let each other die if we couldn’t gather enough food, then it became about the amount of money we brought in or how we earned a living, then the type of clothes we wore, then the type of house we have and the things in it.  But there are other things too—like how we look, how we feel about our nose or our legs and why we can’t explain how annoyed we are with those features or how we do certain things—like we just don’t dance in public etc.  Those things aren’t ours.

We feel so much shame in this family and it is deeply rooted on both sides.  I can trace the moment it was passed to my mother and I can trace the moment it was passed to me—and I can see the moments that I’m passing it to my son.  So that’s key.  This isn’t about carrying those things anymore and it isn’t about blaming those people because the truth is, they really may not have known better.  It’s about understanding what happened in those moments, knowing what was handed to us, and seeing the potential where we can do the same thing—and then stopping that pattern.  We can’t change what happened but we can stop it from happening again.  I know shame for my appearance has stopped me from even trying things that I know I would have loved.  It has stopped me from believing that I could achieve my biggest goals.  It has allowed me to accept poor treatment in many scenarios because I felt I deserved it.  And I spent too much time trying to prove my worth, and in that journey, I further solidified that I was somehow unworthy—and I exhausted myself in the process.  The weight of shame wears us down because we never knew we weren’t meant to carry it.  We never understood we could stop carrying it at any time.            

I’m looking at a physical representation of shame every time I walk into my Aunt’s house.  There are real patterns of addiction to various degrees in the family and addiction led my Aunt to do some terrible things.  I know she felt shame about what she did every day—and she felt pain about the loss that she knew resulted from the things that happened in that house.  Only that would have prevented her from reaching out for the help she so clearly needed.  We have other patterns of shame in the family including making people feel shame over who they are, specifically for things they can’t control.  It’s a deflecting mechanism for the shame others carry as well.  In that regard, this isn’t so much about the shame that was passed down but rather what carrying shame can do.  It can take something beautiful and render it completely useless.  It can destroy the most solid of foundations.  Our inability to admit our wrong and correct it is one of the most destructive things.  Follow that with the realization that we were wrong and too proud to admit it, and we end up carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders, and we will collapse every time.      

It’s up to us to stop the patterns of shame even if that means admitting the shame we feel and what has happened.  The other person doesn’t even have to acknowledge their role in it.  We simply need to be ready to take on our responsibility for what happened and deciding that we are going to do things differently.  We do this by having compassion for those who passed on a pattern that they didn’t even know they had or didn’t know how to break.  We remember that we are one, we aren’t targeted by these people, they didn’t know any better and they were repeating what they were taught.  When we receive shame it feels like one of the most personal things ever but it really isn’t.  We want to break the pattern and we do that with love, and appreciation and practicing gratitude.  That will guide us to our purpose and finding our purpose gives us our passion, the ground to change our patterns.  With purpose we aren’t afraid to face the pain of years of trauma and shame that was passed down because no one knew what to do with.  Our foundation doesn’t have room to carry that any longer and we are strong enough to say that is enough.  The shame ends with us.