One of the main obstacles to healing is inauthentic shame, or externally provoked, when we do not understand its true purpose. Another surprising and unexpected obstacle is empathy. Empathy is wonderful, but it can be a problem if we feel it only for other people and not for ourselves.
The problematic aspect of empathy is that, if we do not practice it well, it only has to do with the other and not with oneself. If what we do has to do with us, it seems that it was not empathy but selfishness.
On the other hand, too much empathy can cause us to spend so much time meeting the needs of others that we become disconnected and lose empathy for ourselves, since it is most likely that we do not give priority to self-acceptance and that we do not give much importance to ourselves. to yourself.
Hyper-empathic people don’t even know what they really want because they are busy serving others, so the job is to regain a sense of self and begin to understand your own voice, your personal point of view, and your sense of what is. that is true and important to him.
THE other big obstacle to self-acceptance is shame. The function of shame is to monitor your behavior, if what you do is beneficial, if you comply with what you have agreed to do, if what you do is in accordance with your moral code. Shame that is not healthy and authentic can be hyper-critical and authoritarian because it is based on very strict and inflexible codes of values. Unhealthy shame can be brutal, making self-acceptance an unlikely option. This type of shame does not know how to work with people or with yourself and does not know how to do things with a compassionate look. Healthy shame, on the other hand, does not impose or criticize but questions, is it really safe to do or say this? Always check with yourself.
Notice that the message of healthy shame focuses on the action, on what you have done, not on your being. He doesn’t yell at you or insult you. It focuses on action and what you can do to make amends when you’ve made a mistake.
The problem with shame is that many of us found out about it by being shamed. From the time we were little, we heard all kinds of nasty things about ourselves. We were told by our parents or other authority figures. The messages we heard could be: “don’t answer me, because the one who knows how things are is me”, “you must be better, try harder”, “you embarrass me” etc.
These false messages stick with us and we develop beliefs based on them. Somehow we start to think that there is something “wrong” with us. Instead, when we adopt an empathic look at shame and understand its true purpose, we can say: “this blush or this inability to speak and this feeling of danger are just signs of my shame that tells me: be careful”.
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