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How Shame Destroys Happiness

How Shame Destroys Happiness

How Shame Destroys Happiness

Shame can eat at your soul like termites in a building, chomping away at the foundation until the building crumples and falls. Toxic shame can do the same thing to a person’s soul.

Toxic shame comes in many forms, but finding its source isn’t easy.

In the work I do with clients, I devote the second session to “Inner Child” work. I take my clients back to their childhood, to the “Inner Child” who remembers things that the adult might have put behind them. Actually, there are modules in the brain, much like subconscious storage units, where a child might store an event or a belief that it doesn’t understand. But then, that child will make faulty assumptions about its own worth based on something it can’t even remember.

A few weeks ago, as I recorded an Inner Child MP3 for one of my clients, a beautiful 26-year-old from the Middle East, she started to weep.

When I’d asked, “What are your really ashamed of?”

She said, “I’m ashamed of being a girl.” It was an “Ah ha!” moment for her. She consciously knew that because of her culture, boys were valued more than girls, treated better, had more opportunities, but it never occurred to her that she was deeply ashamed of being a woman. Of just being herself.

Because I have clients from all over the world, last week I had a 46 year-old beauty from Saudi Arabia, with exactly the same bad wiring. Being female is shameful.

I have African American clients who feel ashamed of being black. I have gay clients who feel ashamed of being gay.

When you are ashamed of what or who you are, that’s Toxic Shame. And that’s taking someone else’s opinion about you, and internalizing it.

What to do?

Never give anyone permission to make you feel ashamed of who or what you are. Become a detective and search out any invisible beliefs that might be stealing your happiness. Awareness Therapy, Hypnotherapy, Cognitive Behavior Modification along with Past Life Regressions can uncover the subconscious beliefs that might be sabotaging your happiness.

If you need help, please call me.

Sending you love,

Stephanie

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