When shame inhabits your body, you are distressed, humiliated, and embarrassed by who you believe yourself to be.
It is a terrible feeling. It’s an unforgiving, internal place of exclusion, and a deep sense of failure that may be born of your childhood trauma, rejection, or more recent emotional wounds.Gratefully, you don’t have to suffer there alone much longer. Healing shame is entirely possible and you are entirely deserving of the freedom that comes from a life built on self-respect and dignity.How do you get there? You start with the inexorable tie between the body and mind.
How the Body Lives in Shame
To live with shame is to live with a fear of interpersonal connection. Relationships carry the fear of rejection that leads to shyness, sabotage, and suspicion. The body reflects this. Chronic, unrepaired shame often shows up physically as a deflated state, much like the shut-down gait and stature of a traumatized person. Shame may cause you to do the following:
look down or avert your eyes
hide your face
move about with a collapsed posture
shrink yourself smaller
blush
You may also be prone to
nausea
chest tightness
fatigue or lethargy
It’s as if your body pulls back from connection…even if it is what you long for most.The deep-seated sense of undeservedness is locked in your nervous system. Somatic therapy treatment for shame is the way to find lasting relief and finally open a path toward expressing your true self.
Somatic Therapy Treatment for Healing Shame
Your therapist is crucial in guiding the process of helping you identify and track the physical pain and tension created by shame. It is vitally important to track this connection. By uncovering and exploring sensations and feelings in your body, you start to recognize how your collapsed “shame posture” factors into your neck and back pain. You also start to link the digestive trouble and stiffness in your joints result from the unconscious way you hold your body away from others and make yourself small. This explorative process becomes transformative too. As the past experiences that informed and shaped your shame are powerfully brought into the present, you can effectively and capably deal with them. Avoidance goes out the window, empowered awareness comes in.
At that point, you are able to release the stuck versions of yourself. You can consciously extend your spine and stand up taller, confidently raise your head and look people in the eye expectantly. Life has promise. You are physically free to embrace it.Simply put, somatic therapy treatment for healing shame can reduce
Restlessness and discomfort
Physical stress and tension
Loss of focus and concentration
Meanwhile, it inspires positive feelings like
Hope
Confidence
Resilience
Self-esteem
All this adds up to you being better positioned to:
Identify what you are feeling
Avoid triggers
Reduce stress before it spirals
Activate self-care techniques
Seeking Out a Somatic Therapist
Releasing shame and discharging strain in the body is not an overnight process. It is also not a solitary process. Gently working shame out of your body and mind is most possible with support, empathy, and compassion. That guidance is important for progressing interpersonally as well as somatically.
Of course, any psychotherapeutic approach requires some chemistry between practitioner and patient. Somatic therapy is a specialty that requires someone with experience and training. The therapy sessions and the potential for healing are much more effective when you feel comfortable in both a physical and emotional way.
Let’s begin the journey from shame to healing to really loving yourself. You are worth the time and effort.If you would like support and are looking for a psychotherapist, please contact us for a free consultation to learn about how we can be of service.
To attain somatic counseling benefits for yourself, read more about somatic therapy. Serving Boulder, Longmont, Denver...
