Oftentimes, at the root of perfectionism and people pleasing is shame –

the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging (Brené Brown). 

Shame is different than guilt; guilt says “I did a bad thing” whereas shame says “I am the bad thing” (we’ll get more into that in the course). 

In the book The Gifts of Imperfection, there is an idea called Shame Resilience, which is 

"the ability to recognize shame, to move through it constructively while maintaining worthiness and authenticity, and to ultimately develop more courage, compassion, and connection as a result of our experience." 

How do we develop resilience to such deep-cutting shame? 

1) Recognizing when it comes up

2) Identifying what activates it

3) Talking about it by saying it

My name is Marisa and as a trauma survivor, recovering perfectionist and people pleaser, I'm all too familiar with shame. 

I grew up feeling ashamed and being shamed. 

I grew up with a caregiver who told me on multiple occasions that they wished I had never been born, that I wasn’t good enough and I would never be good enough. I always felt like I had to apologize for my existence, and then in turn, I felt like I had to hustle to prove and justify my existence. 

Hearing such things on repeat from such a young age planted a deeply rooted belief that there was something wrong with me and I needed to DO whatever I could to earn the love, acceptance, and belonging that is woven into our biological nature, especially in children. That belief – that shame – told me that there must be something wrong with me if my own caregivers couldn’t give me the unconditional love I kept hearing about at school and church. I felt so alone, so isolated, so ashamed of myself.

Shame is an intensely painful experience – one that I know is not just unique to me, because chances are, if you’re reading this, you might have experienced a whole lot of shame too.

“Shame loses power when it is spoken.”

A big motivating factor for the work I do is to help people feel seen, heard, and less alone. And I’ve found that even just acknowledging or validating someone’s experience – by pointing a finger at my own shame that kept me stuck – can set them on a completely different trajectory and set the foundation for healing and compassion to take root.

While so much of the work in this course is going to be moving toward and forward with compassion, part of that work is also about addressing and releasing shame – or cultivating shame resilience as Brené Brown would say  – without shaming ourselves for having shame! 

Your first practice in self-compassion: identify any shame that might come up around the things you had to do to survive (maybe this looks like perfectionism, people pleasing, fawning, feigning, freezing, fighting) and decide if you're ready to release it.

"Self-compassion involves acting the same way towards yourself when you are having a difficult time, fail, or notice something you don’t like about yourself. Instead of just ignoring your pain with a “stiff upper lip” mentality, you stop to tell yourself “this is really difficult right now,” how can I comfort and care for myself in this moment?

Instead of mercilessly judging and criticizing yourself for various inadequacies or shortcomings, self-compassion means you are kind and understanding when confronted with personal failings – after all, who ever said you were supposed to be perfect?"

-Dr. Kristen Neff, https://self-compassion.org/the-three-elements-of-self-compassion-2/

These quotes by Brené Brown and Kristen Neff create the nucleus for this course, for the work I do, and for the support and empowerment I hope to pass onto you. 

You are not alone, and you are worthy.