20. Facing The Pain
REVEALING SHAME STARTS THE HEALING
We have learnt to cope by suppressing our emotions and our pain. The healing of shame happens as we learn to appropriately express our feelings and problems. We admit to ourselves, "I have a problem". We become aware of what we do to cope. We talk to another person about it, a counselor or a safe and trusted friend, in a safe place where we can be honest with ourselves and the other person. This person will listen to us and help us recognise, observe and share our emotions. We realise that feelings do not always require a response. Feelings are not always trustworthy. They will pass and we can let them go. We can grow, live responsibly and have self-worth. We can forgive and be forgiven.
Guilt and shame is the way we are built to respond to 'wrong doing'. We all have a conscience: something inside that tells us right from wrong. Sometimes wrong is done to us, other times we do wrong and sometimes stuff just happens, but guilt and shame are emotions that we must look at to discover how to heal and live a whole life. What we do with them is what is important. All emotion is healthy when it is directed appropriately.
We biologically grow closer when we come together to achieve, to get something done and to share our hardships. Trust begins to emerge when we have a sense that another person is driven by things other than their own self-gain. With trust comes a sense of value: real value for who we are.
"Value, by definition, is the transference of trust. You can’t convince someone you have value, just as you can’t convince someone to trust you. You have to earn trust by communicating and demonstrating that you share the same values and beliefs."
Simon Sinek
"I lived for so long with my secrets that I was always in fear of discovery and never felt real peace. I lived with the thought that if people knew the real me, they would leave me and I would have to face abandonment again.
A real relationship is based on intimacy - 'In To Me I See' and 'In To Me I Allow You To See'. Once we expose our flaws to a safe person, we can learn to live honestly with the 'real us'. Someone in my journey told me, 'whatever you bury alive, stays alive - AND GROWS.' How true that was for me. When you face the pain, you get the new life!"