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You feel ashamed or embarrassed when your Inner Critic faults your thoughts or behavior. That activates an intense young personality subself who floods you with shame. As an infant, if you sensed disapproval or indifference in your caregivers, you began to grow a wordless "bad me" feeling. You may also have evolved a Happy Child, who brings you "Good Me" feelings - pride, self respect, and non-egotistical self love. The Shamed Child is sure s/he is worthless, inadequate, unlovable, and undeserving. S/He may be living in the past, and not know or believe you're an adult with dependable talents, skills, and resources. In moder-ation, this valuable young subself helps to balance the Egotist / Narcissist subself, who focuses only on your needs and opinions. When your Shamed Child and/or Guilty Child activates, several Guar-dian subselves activate to soothe them and hide your glaring worthless-ness from other people. When a Shamed Child and Guardian subselves dominate someone's thoughts and behaviors, they have "an inferiority complex" and are usually self-neglectful. Before recovery, shame-based (wounded) people seem to prefer each other for partners and associates. self-improvement Lesson 1 provides an effective way to (a) entrust the Shamed Child to the loving Nurturer subself, (b) tone down the Inner Critic, (c) empower the Happy Child, and (d) help Guardian subselves to trust the resident true Self to provide reliable security. Over time, these changes shift excessive shame toward healthy pride, humility, and self love. More detail / research / close |
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