Shame Detox

September 8, 2010

Shame is powerful and toxic.  It is a form of control through judgment, a way of dictating what makes us worthy of love.  Shame seeks to alter our behaviors through sending an energy current into our aura that invokes a sense of rejection, punishment, dirtiness, imperfection, being wrong, having shown an ugly face of humanity, crossed a taboo, revealed a secret, been inappropriate or weak to our animal instinct rather than shown civility.  It may even suggest that our physical attributes or character traits are flawed, too fully revealed for the comfort of another.  We can accept the shame into our sense of self, engage in a power struggle in order to defend ourselves or learn to be neutral to outside judgment. 

When we feel shame for our words, actions or physical body it is a form of poison.  The energy enters our aura with a signature of self-rejection, even self-hatred.  Our physical and spiritual bodies absorb the toxic message and move farther away from peace.  In balance, our inner guidance is meant to be finely tuned to the needs of our authentic self.  When we hide or suppress our authentic self we detach from our intuitive truth.  Then our physical body responds chemically to the sensations of stress, tension and fear that are created in response to the toxicity of shame.  On both the physical and mental level, barriers are built to hearing our spiritual guidance.

Shame is commonly used to rear children to fit into social structure and invoke a sense of morality.  This programs us to feel guilt for thoughts or activities we were taught are shameful, even when there is not another person present to judge us.  Abusers use shame to emotionally manipulate their victims.  They claim betrayal if the victim reveals the abuse; energetically turning it around to make the victim feel responsible for their abuse.  Use of shame and guilt to control human behavior wounds and suppresses the light aspects of our nature along with the shadow aspects.  A healthier way to establish a sense of moral guidance or socially appropriate boundaries is to acknowledge the behavior or words as valid while expressing that they make the witness or recipient feel uncomfortable.  In this scenario, the person responding takes responsibility for their own feelings and communicates their boundaries without punishing the other or trying to control the situation.

When presented with the energy of shame as a conscious adult, its impact depends on the person delivering it and whether it hits us where we have a prior wound from shame.  It may feel good to openly communicate that whatever is being judged in us is perfectly acceptable.  But we also have the option to go beyond sending a return-volley of energy in the power struggle.  When we heal wounds from past shame, we can become unscathed by other’s judgments and even find humor in their attempts to control. We heal these wounds through self-love and the help of others experienced in shifting outdated behaviors and belief systems.  Clairvoyant reading is one path to identify the wounds from shame and heal our energetic body from layers of shame based suppression.  Ultimately when we detoxify our lives we are healing future generations and stopping the cycle of abuse.

  • v. scott thompson says:

    It took me a minute to tune in to what You are saying in this. In the context of situation You are talking about, indeed shame (feelings of unworthyness before others) and guilt (an internally perceived sense of unworthyness and responsibility for perceived misdeeds) are counterproductive and neutrality hs there better. However, excess of neutrality and imperviourness to guilt and shame can become escapist and harmful. Such can lead to blissful feeling while performing acts of torture. For those less conscious guilt and shame may be all that stands between decency and holocaust. I am leary of too much 6th chakra without 4th. Raja Yoga was Aliester Crowley’s path. Happy Ganesha’s birthday!

    • Natalie says:

      As humans we have both shadow and light within us. On a primal level, shame and guilt may be the only psychological structure preventing some people with very wounded souls from acting in a harmful way. What I am suggesting here is that shame is more often used in a way that causes more harm than good. That many have been shamed for their body, their sexualality, their valid emotional responses to life’s experiences, for “not knowing better” when noone had taught them a certain life skill and they fumbled through doing their best.

  • v. scott thompson says:

    You are totally valid in Your evaluation. I am sensitized to the issue because I gave recently observed healing tools misused to remove Love and empathy, replacing these with negative emotional reflexes to intentionally create focused and targeted human weopons. You are currently the only one I trust to work whth the structure of my energetic systems.I have witnessed an entire room of people tricked into erasing identity, personality, connections to others: sense of the significance of individual persons, acts and events and the belhef that mistakes are possible. I surrendered my fear, but not my resistance and so did not lose these as the others calmly consented to their destruction. I remember because I didnt consent to removal of my answers to questions because answers are supposedly “limiting”. You are a Blessing mermaid in a spiritual sea that contains also sharks. I am grateful for one truly trustworthy soul.

  • Sandy Paul says:

    I think that shaming ourselves and others is a big part of the fallen nature of the human soul. In my spiritual journey, becoming free of shame and shame-based thinking has taken tremendous inner work. Much of that work has been to fully accept that God loves me – as I am, and like a loving parent, wants to help me change and grow into my potential. There is a place for regret, for sorrow over our faults and failures, a place for true repentance (turning away from unhealthy and immoral thoughts and behavior), but there is no healthy place for living in shame. As you say, it is toxic, and Christ came to set us free and heal us of it.

  • Phillip says:

    I’m willing to face and feel my own healthy nontoxic shame when I am occasionally wrong. It serves me well in reminding me that my behaviors affect people I may love. The difference between my healthy shame (or humility) and carried or toxic shame is startling, however. I don’t believe a human can face and analyze toxic shame because it is unspecific, formless, and monstrous. Healthy shame knows precisely why it exists and shows it to me immediately. Toxic shame is carried in the body as PTSD and in the spirit as unworthiness or the Shame Existence Bind, where we constantly question whether we deserve the very air we breathe, our space on the planet, the food we eat, and the thousand legitimate human needs we’re born worthy of. It is only specific in that it identifies me as the perpetrator of whatever it is.

    It is the detox from toxic shame that becomes the issue. A healthy mature adult will simply realize that he/she has been carrying someone else’s shame and drop it.

    • Natalie says:

      Its been a few years since I wrote this, thanks for sharing your thoughts. Shame is a complex topic. We are all responsible for our actions whether we choose to take responsibility or not. I’m looking at it from a energy healers perspective, as that is my specialty. Much of what happens in the energy world isn’t consciously known to the person carrying it. I value the psychological and emotional healing modalities equally. And as you say a healthy mature adult can change their mind and heal their heart but from my perspective a healthy adult can still have unresolved shame in their soul memory.

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