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No one to shame share, I’m too embarrassed. Okay, who even can I get to be like my shame partner that I can talk about shame. The first place is recognizing when it is that you’re feeling it. You’re talking about an experience that you had in junior high that was really painful that no one knows about besides your mom, and it says your mom has passed, which like breaks my heart. But what I want to convey is it is not so important that we are able to share our past experiences with people, it’s getting to the emotion and the beliefs beneath the experience. So when you reflect on that experience in junior high, when it sounds like just a nightmare and I honestly, when I read your question, I had shame wash over me thinking about junior high. It’s what were the emotions that I felt? What were the beliefs that I had about myself in that experience? Because none of us really are all going to have the same experiences. Even if they’re similar, we all have such different backgrounds that no experiences are going to be the same.
But, the way that we work through our shame is to get beneath the experience to what feelings did we experience? Because we all have experienced those same feelings, those same beliefs. So in journaling about that experience, and you’re saying, can I type it out? Absolutely. Writing, you will hear Dr. Skinner reinforce journaling over and over, you’ll hear me talk about EMDR over and over, you’ll get sick of me saying it. But absolutely write it out and get curious for, what were my feelings? What were my beliefs about myself? Because my belief I always go to is, how am I making sense of being left out? I’m not good enough. Something is wrong with me. I’m different. I don’t belong.
So the first place that I would start isn’t just, and you’re being so brave to say, can I type it out and send it? I wouldn’t even start there. I would go to your journaling, write out the experience and get curious to what emotions am I feeling as I bring up this experience? What beliefs do I have about myself when I bring up this experience? That’s where I would start. But you’re so brave and thank you for your question.