Play Full Episode: Understanding Shame

Recorded during Kambiz Naficy’s Stockholm, Sweden meditation workshop, this is a piercing talk about the cause of all negativity in human beings.

• All negative emotions, beliefs, and actions arise from what we call “toxic shame.”
• The message of shame is, there is something wrong with me that cannot be fixed, I am not O.K, I am not worthy. Shame is the feeling that there is something incomplete about me, and I am flawed, or I can never satisfy my parents expectations.
• Every human needs to know that they are wanted and truly valued by this world.
• Toxic shame is such a powerful emotion and so well hidden that most people do not even detect its existence.
• Parents who cannot love unconditionally inject shame into their children’s souls. Some parents shame the child with statements like, you are so bad you are killing your Mama. These statements control the naughty child, yet they deeply shame the child.
• All of the psychological problems are multi-generational. If your parents shamed you, then someone must have shamed your parents when they were children.
• When you understand shame through this talk, you will never shame other people, and the cycle of shame will stop with you.
• Here are the types of the families that unknowingly create shame in their children:

1-The Neglecting Family: Father comes home late always tired; he loves you but he is emotionally absent; or Mother has migraines or is depressed so as a child, you face absent or needy parents. You might have gotten shamed just for being playful. In the case of neglecting family, the child comes to the conclusion that If my parents do not notice me, then, I must not be worth much.

2- The Controlling Family: This kind of family that has rigid rules, which are unexplained. Such families are very dysfunctional on the inside, but they appear very impressive on the outside. Controlling families want society to look at them with lots of respect. Internally controlling families are trying to keep hell from braking lose through very rigid rules. When there are very rigid laws, children lose their individual souls in laws and rigid expectations. This means that the child cannot express her or his autonomy and gets shamed for trying to be who they are.

3- The Enmeshed Family: Here everyone’s personal boundaries have broken down. There is no place where Mom ends and daughter’s individual emotions begin. Like if my mother is sad, I have to be sad, and if my father is bankrupt I am bankrupt…. Enmeshed families have no boundaries, and children lose their “self” in other family members and problems. When we lose our deep truth and Self, we acquire toxic shame.

4- The Abusive Family: These are families in which there are inappropriate jokes, shaming sexual abuse, cruel punishments, or inappropriate nudity.

• Here are some symptoms of people who carry toxic shame:

1. They are very afraid of romantic intimacy for fear of being “discovered.”
2. They play the role of either victim or the aggressor.
3. They can hide their shame by being extremely impressive and perfectionistic in everything that they do.
4. They do not feel like you they belong to any group. Shamed people feel like outsiders, everywhere they go, they feel like the odd one out.
5. They are hopeless because they feel that they can never measure up and they can never fix their “flaws.”
6. Shamed people are very judgmental of other people.

 

• How to heal yourself from shame? You have to enter into shame, embrace shame, knowing that shame is something you were infected with by the previous generation, not something that you are. You were born with pure Glory!