When I think about shame and when it first entered my life, I get transported back to grade 7.

A boy in my class leaned over towards my desk and asked if I had gotten my period yet.

I hadn’t, and regardless of my answer I felt trapped in this box of shame.

Like it would be shameful either way, whether I had gotten my period or I hadn’t.

From all the commercials I had seen on TV it felt like this big secret, and at that time, I didn’t even know what it meant to bleed, all I knew was that it was bad for other people to know if it was happening or not.

And I had already learned to associate ‘bad’ with shame.

So I made it the boy’s fault and brought it to my teachers attention (I told on him for asking me such a personal question).

In hindsight, I’m proud of myself for drawing a boundary and reaching out to the authoritative figure in the situation for support.

I’m also grateful for that experience because It made me understand how shame works.

When we feel ashamed, we notice how awful and uncomfortable it feels, and what often ends up happening is that we shame the person who ‘caused’ us to feel shame in the first place.

And so the never ending spiral of shame begins.

Most of the time though, the person who caused the feeling of shame to arise isn’t someone outside of ourselves, it’s us.

And so begins the entrapment of shaming ourselves, and then shaming ourselves for shaming ourselves.

Let me give you an example:

You know when you do something or something happens that causes you to feel embarrassed or ashamed, and then after the incident you think about that situation over and over and again and with each replay you turn up the volume on shame?

You’re aware this doesn’t feel good but it’s like you can’t stop, and then you feel bad and ashamed of yourself for not being able to stop feeling so bad and ashamed.

So why do we do this?

We do this because our minds understand how painful shame is to experience, and our minds are programmed to protect ourselves from suffering. So as a means to protect ourselves, we make sure we DEEPLY understand how painful this experience was so that it never happens again.

What I want everyone and their dog to understand is:

Shame is not a natural human emotion.

Shame is something we were taught to feel.

I believe that shame is one of the biggest reasons people develop substance abuse in their lives.

When we look at our motives for abusing a substance, we aren’t looking to destroy our lives.

We’re looking to numb the pain of our lives.

Over time, what shame teaches us is that there are parts of ourselves that are seen as ‘less desirable’ and at the core, humans want to feel loved, accepted and supported.

So we will do absolutely everything and anything in our power to hide those less desirable sides of ourselves, lock the door and throw away the key.

But hiding them away doesn’t take the pain away, it actually adds to our pain because we aren’t truly being ourselves anymore.

We’re trying to be a version of ourselves that we were taught would get us more unconditional love, acceptance and support.

And how painful does that existence become,

when we’re literally doing everything ‘right’, by suppressing all the ‘wrong’ and ‘bad’ sides of ourselves and still – we aren’t receiving the love and connection that we so deeply crave and need…

So what do we do? We turn to substances to numb that pain.

We drink to feel better, we smoke to feel higher, we eat to feel more whole.

But what would happen if we looked at shame as our greatest teacher?

Not in the way that we’ve been doing all this time, but in a way where we go into our shame with the intention to UNLEARN from it.

What if we went on a journey within ourselves and followed the thread of shame to each locked door, and opened our hearts to meeting ourselves here.

What if we got brave enough to unlock the door, and got to know these parts of ourselves, without shame?

What if we became lovingly curious about these sides of ourselves we’ve suppressed, and we began the heroine journey of lovingly embracing all the parts of ourselves that we were taught to cringe?

What if that,

was the very thing that would set us free?