The other day, I came across this meme or infographic (or something!) about understanding inclusion. It was a list of definitions of terms related to inclusion, but the definitions used a book analogy to describe them. One of them really stood out to me and prompted this post about shame today.

The definitions were for equality, diversity, equity, acceptance, belonging and justice:

1. Equality is that everyone gets the same book.

2. Diversity is that everyone gets different types of books.

3. Equity is that everyone gets the book that’s right for them.

4. Acceptance is understanding that everyone reads different types of books.

5. Belonging is reading any book you want without fear of being judged.

6. Justice is fighting to make sure everyone has access to books. 

The one that stood out to me in that moment was belonging … reading any book you want without fear of being judged … because it reminded me of something Brené Brown talks about when she describes shame.

She says something like,

“Shame is believing that you’re not worthy of love, connection or belonging.”

And I could really relate to that feeling based on my own experience of shame in my life.

So, my brain went down a “think about shame” road and I decided to write about it today because a key piece of what I help you with and something directly related to sexual confidence is shame.

I was originally going to look at shame a little later but after seeing the meme and after a conversation I had with a couple of clients that ended up being about shame, I figured now was the time instead.

To me, shame is believing that you’re wrong as who you are. So, a belief that there’s something fundamentally wrong about you … not just something you did or whatever, but you as a human. And as a result, you hide in some way.

That was the story of my life until I started doing the work to shift it. I lived from a place of shame and made decisions from that place for a long time.

Like Amy Logan says,

“Shame is a motherfucker.”

It’s a motherfucker for a few reasons, one of which is that it has ripple effects into pretty much every part of life, especially when it comes to intimacy, sex, connection, authenticity, honesty, being present … all the things that go into creating optimal and healthy sex … which I’ll be talking more about later. But generally, it’s because shame wants to hide.

That hiding might look like silencing or editing or censoring yourself and not communicating from fear of being judged or rejected for your uniqueness.

This was huge for me in terms of my fantasies and desires as well as my sexuality. Based on societal and religious influences and experiences of judgment, I figured I’d keep being judged and so I kept things silent for a long time.

Another version of that might look like feeling embarrassed about who you are or what you desire, so not communicating or expressing those things.

Or closing off or isolating or disconnecting because it feels scary to be open or vulnerable. This disconnection might be with yourself and your true desires as well as with others. Being authentic, honest and vulnerable feels like a very scary thing. It sure did for me.

Hiding might also look like holding back from exploring new things.

Perfectionism or putting on masks or controlling things to appear a certain way is another way of hiding and this is also something I did a lot. It was all about creating an image that would be accepted and covering up what I thought was faulty based on past messages.

Not being present and maybe being in your head with all kinds of self-criticism is another way that shame can show up.

Same with numbing out to not feel things or to protect yourself.

Regardless of how it shows up, the result is not having what you want in your sex life.

It’s all about contraction - - protection from being found out, protection from other people finding out that you really are shameful. Which brings up another reason why it’s a motherfucker … because it’s this loop that keeps you going in shame.

But it is possible to change that and implement tools and processes that support you in noticing when the old shame stuff comes up and shifting it so you can move forward, rather than staying stuck in the shame.

Because the truth is that you’re NOT shameful. You’re amazing exactly as you are and you can be in your power and confidently express yourself.

That’s what I came to realize as well. Now, I focus on living from expansion, confidence and power … not that shame never shows up because it does … but it’s no longer the driving force behind my thoughts, feelings, decisions and actions and I can shift it when it does show up.

And it’s one of the main reasons I do what I do in my coaching. It requires:

• Becoming aware of the old stories and shifting those.

• Discovering or rediscovering who you really are and reprogramming your mind with that instead.

• And expressing and exploring sexually.

Part of becoming aware of what’s going on for you is related to what I call loops or cycles.

From the things that influence us (e.g. societal influences, experiences), we create beliefs or programs in our unconscious mind.  When new information comes to us through our senses, we filter it through those beliefs and all that’s going on in our unconscious feeds the narrative, or the thoughts, in our heads (e.g. I suck, there’s something wrong with me, what will they think, I’m not good enough, etc.).

That narrative creates a physiology or physical state with physical symptoms and also creates feelings (e.g. shame, fear response, racing heart, clenched jaw).

That results in our actions or non-actions (e.g. silence ourselves, procrastinate).

And that gives us our results, which are ones that we don’t want (e.g. don’t talk about what we really want, so still have shitty sex and not what we want, still have that conflict or discrepancy between what we want inside our head and what our actual sex life is like).

That feeds back into the narrative and reinforces it. And the loop continues because we live from the old, unconscious stories. I call this the cycle of stuckness.

Typically, we try to change our actions or set goals or get determined. But by doing that without dealing with what’s underneath, change doesn’t happen, or it doesn’t happen sustainably, because it’s the unconscious stuff that drives things. It’s like driving with the emergency brake on and it just gets frustrating as we go down that road.

So, we get to shift the underlying stuff and the narrative in our head. But the underlying stuff is key because if we only work on the narrative in our head through things like affirmations without also becoming aware of and shifting the underlying beliefs, we still stay in that emergency brake scenario.

When you shift the underlying stuff, your thoughts change for real and become more serving to you. Then the feelings shift and the actions change to what you want to do and the results become what you want.

And that creates a new loop because those results feed into the new narrative and it continues. This is the place of confidence and power. I call this the cycle of sustainable change.

It doesn’t mean that the shame never comes up again and sometimes we may still even listen to the shame for a bit. But we can usually notice and shift it sooner and we start to do that quicker and we have the awareness and tools to shift out of it and create what you want.

So, we get to work through all of that together, as well as getting clear on who you are through several methods I’ve developed, reprogramming your mind with who you really are through various techniques and putting it all into practice.

I’ve got 1:1 spots open right now to support you in doing this and in going from shame in whatever way it shows up for you to being in your own power and creating a sex life you really want.

You can sign up for a sex conversation session here. We’ll take a look at what you want to create, what’s going on for you now and what’s keeping you stuck. And if we’re a good fit to work together, we’ll chat about that, too.

I can’t wait to work with you!