Transmuting Shame: None of Us Need to Be Fixed

“Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love, belonging, and connection.” ~Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart

This past year, I started the journey of investigating—maybe even befriending—“my” shame.

I use quotes around the “my” because most of the shame is not mine; much of it is internalized sexism, racisim, anti-blackness and homophobia, and/or intergenerational—it was passed down to me. And while I didn’t choose to internalize or inherit it, it is my responsibility to care for “my” shame, to tenderize it with love and compassion so it may be transmuted. I get to alchemize and grow flowers rooted within the rich compost of my healing journey, fertilized by ancestral gifts.

Shame is one of the most uncomfortable experiences, so much so that we often project our shame onto others to provide some relief from the discomfort. I learned this at the Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) teacher training intensive I had the privilege to attend in the fall.

During the MSC training, I received the blessing of the dharma of shame and learned about its antidote—mindful self-compassion. Five wise practitioners, including Chris Germer, one of the co-founders of the eight-week MSC program, guided about thirty individuals (from across the United States, including some folks from overseas) to experience the power of self-compassion through a week-long workshop.

Chris shared a wisdom gem I will never forget: shame is rooted in our universal need and desire to be loved. The innocence of shame touched something deep in me; it felt like permission, or an invite, to see the exiled parts of myself battling shame.

I had never really talked about shame before training to offer mindful self-compassion. It felt like if I talked about the shame, if I named it, you would see the thin film of shame that I felt covered my body for much of my childhood into young adulthood. It felt like if I named it, you would know I was not worthy of the love I felt desperate for.

There was shame around being a girl, then a woman; there was shame around being expansive in my sexual orientation and gender expression; there was shame in being a survivor of domestic and sexual violence; there was shame around socioeconomic status… the list goes on.

Mindful self-compassion has helped me look beyond the victim mentality I used to strongly identify with. I see that, like all of us, I have been shaped by early experiences with caregivers and by the environments I have grown in. I see that, like most of us, I have always done the best I could with the tools available to me at the time. And in my experience, I have leaned on—and clung to—many maladaptive tools like using substances to escape.

Today, I am grateful to know the shame comes from an innocent place and that it can be transmuted into compassion for myself and for all beings everywhere.

I don’t remember where I first learned this, but Brené Brown also talks about shame’s roots in the universal need for belonging. When we feel we are separate from the rest of the world, when we feel we don’t belong, there is a specific form of pain and suffering that emerges.

In my experience, feeling like I did not belong, feeling separate, created deep wounds of unworthiness and otherness. Brené goes on to talk about “fitting in” being the opposite of belonging. And in my desperate attempts to belong and be loved, I leaned into the facade of “fitting in,” and the wounding deepened.

In writing about my lived experience—releasing what’s been floating around for years in my mind-body space—I am reminded of Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart.

She defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love, belonging, and connection.”

She offers “shame 1-2-3s”: (1) We all have it. Shame is universal and one of the most primitive emotions that we experience. The only people who don’t experience it are those who lack the capacity for empathy and human connection. (2) We’re all afraid to talk about it. Sometimes we can feel shame when we just say the word “shame.” But it’s getting easier as more people are talking about it. And (3) The less we talk about it, the more control it has over us. Shame hates being spoken.

So, here is my first writing—likely one of many—on shame, as I continue this sacred journey of becoming a mindful self-compassion teacher and offering one of the mindfulness-based programs for mental health that’s been most impactful for me.

I’ll close with one more share, offered by a beautiful mentor, one of the facilitators of the teacher training intensive: “No one here needs to be fixed.”

As he shared this at the opening to the week-long intensive, I felt my body soften and exhale. It was received as a love note to little river exiles: I am not bad, I am not unworthy, I do not need fixing. Like all of us, I deserve love, belonging, and connection. We all do; no matter what has happened in the past, no matter what the future holds. Right here, right now, we deserve and are worthy of love, belonging, and connection.

May we feel love, belonging, and connection. May we know we are loved, we belong, and we are interconnected. May we support each other on the journey of self-liberation.