Nicole LePera

But I couldn't and I still struggle in those overwhelmed moments to articulate what I'm feeling.

Yeah.

Because I'm so shut down that I have an idea that a feeling is happening, but I can't connect enough to kind of decide, am I angry?

Am I resentful?

Am I sad?

What is this feeling?

Because, again, we're talking about a physiology, a physiological state that's preventing that ability to connect.

Because, again, in childhood, when we didn't have the ability to have someone help regulate us, when we assign the meaning that we are unworthy, when our body begins to then cope as if we're unworthy, shame is, again, another very protective emotion.

We're very social creatures.

We are much safer, especially our ancestors, in a group of people than as an individual on the tundra where the lion could kill us.

So to attune to the social cues of not only our core family, but of society around us and to figure out what is appropriate versus inappropriate.

Again, I'm really simplifying, right?

To figure out how to stay connected, those moments where we feel shame.

And for a long time, I would have never said I'm shameful.

Because it didn't land for me as the more traditional, I'm embarrassed, my cheeks are red.

But it was so baked in to all of these protective patterns where I was even avoiding feeling that rejection, that abandonment, because it was too painful.

So even something like shame, again, is important when it's socially appropriate, right?

When we are behaving in a way that might cause someone harm and we care about them, so we want to act in a different way.

But so many of us assign shame as a sense of worthiness, right?

It's kind of we need to separate that from guilt.