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Good Morning everyone. Today, I have the pleasure to introduce a colleague of mine to you. This is Leslee Dodd a life coach and recovery coach who specializes in eating disorders. I asked her to blog about a subject that she encounters in her practice quite a bit .
A shame spiral is one of the biggest set backs we might face when we set out to change our lives. Leslee's is amazing at breaking through these with her clients.
Leslee Dodd, PhD
Life Coach
Have you ever had the experience of being embarrassed about
something you did or feeling ashamed over a mistake? Maybe it was actually a
small thing but it felt big to you. You feel a wash of shame come over you;
maybe your face turns red or goes white. And then you begin to remember all the
other mistakes and times when you felt embarrassed or frustrated or stupid and
your mind starts whirling and you find yourself cataloging all the mistakes
from your past and pretty soon you realize that you are actually a worthless human
being who never gets anything right, a loser and someone who doesn’t deserve
and will never get the life you dream of. You start hearing words like never
and always in your mind. This is what I call the shame spiral. Picture a vortex
or tornado. Something happens in the
present that triggers your shame and suddenly you are getting sucked into the
vortex and all your past mistakes are whirling around in your mind and you get
sucked deeper and deeper until you can’t see out and life looks hopeless. I
used to have this experience fairly often. I would spin down pretty quickly
into a dark and lonely place.
Then I realized something that sounds so simple, like a no
brainer, but turns out not to be so easy; at least for me. If I could somehow
create even a nanosecond of space between whatever triggered my shame and
getting pulled into the vortex, I could stop spiraling down or at least not get
pulled in as deeply. In effect keep myself in the present just long enough to
get some perspective. Realize that I was not going to disappear.
First I had to learn to recognize when I was triggered. I
discovered holding my breath was one of the first signs. Trigger, wash of
shame, hold my breath, get pulled into the shame spiral, and end up in varying
degrees of darkness was my pattern. So, I began to force myself to stop and breath.
Simple right. Maybe. Trigger, wash of shame, breath. It took me years to figure
this out and to actually learn to do it.
Now, more often than not, the process goes something like
this; trigger, wash of shame, breathe.
In the millisecond it takes to breath my lizard brain
relaxes a bit and my mammal brain begins to take over. I can then ask myself if
what I am hearing in my mind is really true. Am I really truly worthless? Am I really truly stupid and a failure? Am I
doomed to live a life of despair? Sound melodramatic? If it does, if this hasn’t
ever happened to you, go read something else. I find that more than one of my
coaching clients has had a similar experience. It feels good to know I’m not
the only one.
Try it.
You can contact Leslee through LinkedIn at:
or at these great places too:
https://twitter.com/leslee_dodd
www.pinterest.com/204leslee/
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