What does shame feel like in the body? It might feel like stooped shoulders, or hanging your head until your neck is permanently crooked. It might feel like all your muscles are weak, as if the very air is too heavy and it’s all your fault, anyway.
When we carry shame for a long time, our bodies adapt. We may not remember feeling any other way and so the heaviness and weakness, the aches and pains, become frozen. We might pretend we’ve put away those feelings of shame and deny that we still feel it. We buried shame a long time ago. We moved on. We don’t realize that we are at war with our bodies when we hang on to shame.
And that could be the problem. When we bury emotions instead of releasing them, those emotions stay stuck in the body and cause all sorts of physical symptoms. At first, the physical symptoms are very demanding. If we ignore them, those symptoms become chronic. Then, the best we can do is make peace with our bodies by beginning to release stuck shame.
Question for the day: What is the first step in starting “peace talks” with your body?
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