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This morning when I woke up, I felt some intense and dark heavy energy. For the last 6 years, meditation has been my refuge when I was faced with challenging emotions. For this reason, I put on my favorite meditation music, sat and started to listen to my internal world. I have verified what Teal teaches, which is that strong emotional triggers can be used as a rope to get deep within yourself and to get unique insights about the healing that needs to be brought forth. Often the strong energy of the trigger will bring on an altered state of consciousness. In this altered state of consciousness, you can see yourself from a higher perspective.
The first energy I felt was connected to the loss of my two children that I have not been able to talk with for almost a year now. A wave of shame ensued. How bad do you have to be if your own children aged 11 and 13 refuse to have any contact with you? At a conscious level, I can understand the psychological dynamics at play. I intellectually understand that because of the many complex aspects involved in this situation I should not be so hard on myself. However I find that my inner child is unable to separate from the deep shame created by this separation.
In my coaching role over the years, I have worked with many people that have daddy issues. Some of them had the most horrible fathers but the children were still trying to have a relationship with their father. They were doing this despite an obvious lack of reciprocity. I am not saying I was the perfect father as I can see that I have made many mistakes along the way as a father. I did what I could with what I knew at the time. Losing all contact with both of my children (like I never existed for them in the first place) feels utterly unfair and cruel. It feels so painful.
At this time during my meditation, I remembered my talk with my friend Avtar in Atenas, Costa Rica. He was telling me that I was making the pain worse by creating a story about the situation that would make me feel worse and solicit other people’s support. I challenged him. I told him that there is a part of us that requires validation, care and concern when we are confronting pain and suffering. Dismissing and discounting the part of us that is suffering is even more damaging. I shared my personal experience with him that I had become an expert at coping. Earlier in my life, I developed the ability to perform & function no matter what the circumstance. I had created a spiritual personality that could always see the silver lining in everything and even convince myself that situations that are traumatic are “all perfect”. While this is true from a higher dimensional perspective, it was only after being with Teal that I realized that I was bypassing and that I had repressed a lot of traumas this way. As a result, they kept manifesting externally. This is exactly what happened with the loss of my children.
My spiritual personality had shut down my inner child and left me disconnected. I had lost my spontaneity and my aliveness. Avtar and I agreed that it is important to avoid the two extremes of identifying with the story around the pain and repressing it. There is always a higher alternative which is to fully experience the energy around the trigger without a story and let this energy runs its course without resistance within ourselves.
As I reflected back on our conversation, I let myself fully experience the pain without identification or without the need to create a story around my pain. I went to a higher perspective and saw that I was continuously creating and emitting the energy of loss in my life. I dove into the energy of loss and I saw my life from this perspective. I re-experienced the loss of intimate partners that I was so close to. I felt their betrayal. I felt the pain of losing my stepson. I felt the pain of losing most of my friends who cut all contact with me after I made the decision to leave the cult I was a member of when I was 23. I felt the pain of losing my own children after a horrendous court battle. I felt the pain of suffering the betrayal of colleagues and employees that I worked with so closely for a long time. I have a self-concept that I am a good guy however all these events seem to show a different story. They show a herd of people angry with me, seeing me as an awful person. I acknowledged this fact and sank into the deep shame underneath all these events.
In the meditation, I was brought back to my parents and I was shown their shame. Shamanism teaches us that we inherit all of the unresolved issues of our parents through our genes. My mother lost her own mother when she was 3 years old after a neighbor had reported the abuse of the new stepfather. She became a foster child raised by an old lady. She was taught to shower in the dark because her own nudity was considered shameful. She was forbidden to turn on the light to do her homework so as to not waste the money of her caretaker. She was instructed to use worn ugly clothes in order to not attract the envy and the negative attention of people that were paying for her upbringing through subsidies with their tax money. My mother’s first love died in his early twenties from terminal illness.
My father’s story is also built upon shame. Unbeknownst to him (until he was in his sixties), his mother became pregnant with him after a love affair with a Nazi officer during the Second World War. She moved away and managed to hide the truth of the situation. However in order to avoid a possible punishment, she gave her son away to an old lady in the countryside. She would send her money, and rarely would visit. Though she loved him, she was incapable of hiding her own feelings of shame about this liaison from her son. It was only after getting more stable in her life and marrying the man that I thought was my grandfather that she took her son back. He was 10 years old. At that time, he hardly knew any French and was acting more like a wild animal than a boy of his age. Considering their background, my parents did relatively well. However, all of the shame they were not able to transform was passed to my sister and to myself.
For this incarnation, I chose to be the son of two parents who were struggling with huge shame issues. During this meditation, I saw my soul contract with shame. 4 years ago, during a spiritual experience, I saw how earth was a prison planet. I saw a vision that we were all souls that had deviated from the divine plan. I saw that from our own freewill, we started to hurt other beings in the universe and as a result, were brought to earth to re-learn the consequences of our actions to become benevolent again. From this perspective, we are like fallen angels using earth as our purgatory. Our sense of guilt has brought us to our human experience.
For a couple of years, I volunteered in jail as a chaplain to provide spiritual guidance to inmates. I realized that most convicts carry an immense amount of guilt and this is how they become a match to the experience of jail. There are a lot of people that have committed much worse actions that walk freely in the world today. If they experience no guilt, they would not end up in jail. This is why someone like Doc (Teal’s abuser) is still walking freely today. In this new meditation I saw how shame, even more than guilt, was the energy that was attaching us to earth. It is acting just like the force of gravity.
In the spiritual community, people see Love as being the opposite of Fear. From this new perspective, I could see how all fears stem from shame. When I am jealous, I feel ashamed about not being good enough for my partner. When I am afraid to do public speaking, I am ashamed to look like a fool. When I am afraid to lose my job, I am ashamed that I cannot support myself or ashamed of the disapproval of my supervisor. Most conflicts in relationship emerge from shame as well. We are desperately trying to make each other wrong so that we can be good. This is a deep realization I had with Teal a couple of weeks ago and now, we decided to practice owning our shame consciously rather than deflecting it in order to avoid conflict escalation.
I recently read the excellent book of Ross Rosenberg called ‘The Human Magnet Syndrome: Why We Love People Who Hurt Us’. He describes the codependent, narcissistic and borderline personality disorders and how they play out in relationship dynamics. As a result of reading this book, I realized that all personality disorders live within us in various degrees because they are the direct result of emotional abuse or neglect that took place in our childhood. From that perspective, there is no mental illness but only traumas that have not been released or integrated. When I realized this true cause of personality disorders, I began to see that these personality disorders all come from the shame we acquired in the face of trauma.
As a child, if something bad happens to us, we need to create meaning to deal with the suffering and most of time the meaning we create is that we are bad and this is why we deserve to get into painful experiences. The personality disorder we will develop will depend upon our degree of powerlessness in face of trauma and our own predisposition for coping. Of the three types, the codependent is the least powerless. While still raised in an environment where their emotional needs cannot be met, they are able to somehow affect the response of their caretakers. For example, a child like myself could have felt powerless with his mom’s mood swings, emotional unavailability and dark suicidal thoughts however he may have been able to get his mom’s attention by crying to evoke her pity at the very least. Codependents learn to control other people through various emotional manipulation strategies because they are not able to meet their emotional needs directly.
The codependent has a desperate need to appear to be the good guy to cover up his own inner shame. The two other disorders (Narcissists and Borderlines) develop from complete and utter powerlessness to create any needed emotional reactions from their early caretakers and they will split into 2 groups. The first group develops the ability to shut down their feelings as a coping mechanism to cover their own shame. These people can end up being narcissists, sociopaths or psychopaths. They become unable to feel. They replay their own inner drama externally, often by creating great pain around them. More often than not, men will adopt this coping mechanism because they are head centered. When the individual is unable to stop feeling as a coping mechanism, they will most likely develop borderline personality disorder. This often translates into self-injury, self-hate, suicidal tendencies and emotional deregulation. Women who are more heart centered are most likely to develop this personality disorder. This personality type creates a lot of turmoil around them however they are creating a living hell for themselves more so than for anyone else.
Some of the descriptions of these personality types may appear extreme, however we should consider that each one of us demonstrates some of these traits depending on the amount of unresolved trauma we experienced. And you will always find shame at the core of each dysfunction. Skilled therapists are reluctant to use these labels (narcissist or borderline) because they know their clients will automatically feel shame as a result of being put into that box, which would make the therapy unproductive. These terms are only useful when used from the point of view of self-observation and accessing the wealth of knowledge and tools available around them. They are not useful as a shaming mechanism.
Today, I did an exercise where I listed all the things I am ashamed of. To my surprise, there was over one hundred items in this list! It felt like I was finally being authentic and it helped me release a very heavy emotional burden that I felt I have been carrying for a very long time. I am only sharing with you a few of them because I am too ashamed of the rest 😉
- I am ashamed that I have been such a terrible father that my children have chosen not to have a relationship with me
- I am ashamed that I am so unattuned that people sometimes see me as dangerous
- I feel ashamed of my heavy French accent after 20 years in the US
- I am ashamed that I trigger my significant other often
- I feel ashamed that I am not valuable enough to my father that he decided not to go to my wedding with Teal
- …
This exercise helped me so much that I would like to invite you to share your own shame list with all of us in the comments below. We should consider that most institutionalized religions and most social organizations are anchored in shame. I am finding that one of the fastest ways to advance on the path of liberation is to become consciously aware of your shame.
Wow… thank you Ale…… I have few words after reading… your heart and courage come through…. you are liberating yourself… what a gift …… courage …..
I am ashamed of my codependency
I am ashamed of being abandoned by both of my parents and becomoning a foster child although they were still around.
I am ashamed of being a sexual abuse victim
I am ashamed of oversharing personal shit especially when I get drunk
I am ashamed of the fact that I have been caught watching porn
I am ashamed of my body some times
I am ashamed of sharing things about others or my personal view of them later when I realized that I was not okay to do
I am ashamed of the fact that I believe I am a bad person
thank you! this was really good. I will do my own shame list maybe I share it later. Universum led me to this today and it touched me.
Thank you, Ale!! This is such a valuable blog post! I am going to do the shame list exercise. So glad to read your blog! 😀
I cannot even come close to explaining with words what this entry has done for me Ale. I am certain that I will find healing in creating “the list”. I am scared fucking shitless at this very moment. Literally shaking. I think that it horrifies one of the largest “facets” of my (Borderline lol) personality to think it might be integrated into the the whole of me. it is desperate for autonomy… as if it’s about to be pushed off of a cliff on to rocks, not water. I’m doing it. This afternoon when I have privacy to fall the fuck apart…. and my shame is frightened that it will be eliminated. I don’t want to eliminate it.. I just want it to stop attempting to be the thing between me and complete self-awareness. I will post my list after a bit. My gratitude is enormous at this moment… let’s see how I feel about that this afternoon!!! <3
I really resonate with what you’ve said here. Especially the part about this prison planet. I truly believe that if you have incarnated here, you aren’t innocent.
Thank you Ale! Your blog is encouraging and inspiring.
I feel shame for not meeting my parents expectations
I feel shame for not having been present with my grandmother when she died.
I feel shame when I see how much people would need my help and I decide not to give it to them
I felt shame for most of the erotic fantasies (and often dreams) I had from the age 12 till …sometimes even today. Today I understand how the way I was shamed for my sexual energy as a child (from age 4) lead to this fantasies and it’s ironic that it ended in a spiral of shame wherein I felt something was “wrong with me” instead of seeing that I am just terrified of showing my self (all of my inner children) in how I truly felt towards girls: very insecure, not desirable, still confused and in pain (by my childhood experiences) and powerless.
I feel shame for not having been able to show my first love how much I loved her.
I feel shame for being just 169cm high
I often feel shame for feeling weak or powerless.
I feel shame for my resistance towards doing more intense shadow work : )
Thank you for sharing Ale!
Let’s see… I am ashamed
– of having vast gaps in general factual knowledge about this world
– of my high emotional sensitivity
– my inability to follow through with things
– of the mistakes I have made raising my children so far
– of being unable to make both of my kids happy at the same time
– of my unawareness of what is really going on in my subconscious
– of my seemingly inedaquate physical shape (too fat, too old)
– of doing things wrong and then losing my temper because I’m so ashamed – vicious circle of shame
Feeling shame makes me furious!
I can see that my whole furious being, all the defense mechanisms that I have put up, come from being shamed by my father. His whole ego is based on shaming others because he has been crippled by shame.
I am ashamed, that
– my girlfriend is 55 and I am 33
– I do not rank very high in my formal education degree
– I work as a seller in a bakery
– I feel shitty and mistreated in my job, but still do not leave it
– I had my first girlfriend when I was 32
– I do not have a lot of money
– my parents gave me a lot of money
– I never clean my flat
– I cannot have my girlfriend over to my flat, because it is so messy
…
Thank you for sharing this Ale. I found it enormously useful to read. I will list my shameful stuff later. Love. Yasin
Beautiful insights. Thank you so much for sharing. I am very ashamed of every unkind and selfish act I have done and how that has hurt others, especially those dearest to me. I’m deeply ashamed of my disconnection, apathy and uncertainty about living and my incredible lack of knowing about why I am here (on earth). Perhaps your prison analogy is true…
Ale,
Another great post. This is exactly the issue I’ve been struggling with too. This is also what the issue around me really was at the end of our first workshop together. Some of it mine, but much of it was the shame of the others with me at point as mirror. I recognized this at the time, and that is why I handled it “Almost Too Well”, as someone later told me.
Marcel
I came to a conversation with God yesterday.
Question after question handed me, I answered without hesitation, without excuses.
Here I am, 6 hour long drive… again. The road becomes a journey deep inside myself.
My constant answer was; I could’ve done better, I should’ve known better, I should’ve been more compassionate, I should not have lived in such suffering, such emotional pain, such physical pain, I shouldn’t be such a fiasco. I should be better, have more by now.
The feeling is, SHAME. I remembered the hundreds of things I’ve done when I felt shame.
From early childhood, up to yesterday.
When I was done, I felt it in my body. It seeped into every cell, every organ.
Then there was a pause. Another question.
CAN YOU FORGIVE YOURSELF? To be brutally honest…. NO. I CANT. I full heartedly believe I SHOULD’VE done better.
Silence…
Allright then. Said the feeling- voice- power whatever it seems to be.
And it proceeded: given the amount of awareness that you had at each and everyone of the days you have walked this world, you have done and been exactly what you could. Not an ounce less, not an inch more.
But because you still hold yourself accountable for all you have done and experienced, I shall now do
MY JOB.
YOU ARE HEREBY FORGIVEN.
Your are forgiven for living in pain.
You are forgiven for feeling scared, and not knowing what to do.
You are forgiven for all you have wasted.
You are forgiven for every lie you have told.
You are forgiven for everything you have stolen.
You are forgiven for all your pride, arrogance and despotism .
You are forgiven for all you have manipulated.
You are forgiven for closing your heart, and for being cold, short, and cruel.
You are forgiven for having been given many talents, but you still don’t know what to do with yourself.
You are forgiven for forgetting who you truly are, for buying into your cultures programming, for adapting into your environments.
You are forgiven for taking two steps forward and 3 steps backward.
You are forgiven for asking,and then throwing it away.
You are forgiven for all love you shunned away.
You are forgiven for not knowing how to relate to your own sons.
You are forgiven for the thousands of cigarettes you have smoked.
You are forgiven for not being able to take care of animals, and little, fragile things.
You are forgiven for all the hours you went to sleep, when confronted by challenges.
You are forgiven for being bipolar, schizophrenic, having eczema, vitiligo, dermatitis, allergies, depression, obsessive thinking, for having narcolepsy, and for having been on public assistance.
BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY, YOU ARE HEREBY, FORGIVEN,
FOR BEING HUMAN.
You have been living a human expression. IT IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE, to be a human, a being that perceives itself separate from creation, and not live filled with shame, sooner or later.
I ask you now, to sit in a place that has been there all along.
Come here, now. Sit in this throne. I made it for you, before the beginning of time.
I hereby place upon you a crown of stars, for you are ruler of OUR kingdom, and you do so beautifully. I hereby clothe you in a platinum light dress. It is your right.
For you are my loved one, my heart, I adore you. I have been with you through it all.
I commend every and all efforts, every and all gestures. All of it. Your are amazing. I love you, infinitely.
Go on, keep living your life, do as you see fit.
Remember, no matter what you think, it is the most magnificent offering, I could ever have. YOU.
I am LOVE. I do not shame you. I do not blame . I do not punish.
But it is you, who do not accept this. Until you do, I wait for you, however long it takes.