Writer’s Block. Inner Critic. Projects start with enthusiasm, then slide into oblivion. Writers know these stories well. We call ourselves lazy, disorganized, silly. There are a million programs and courses claiming to help or cure these afflictions. In my world, the struggle to write is a cue. The root of the issue is shame.

Shame. It is the most insidious of our emotions, a slippery hybrid of rage and grief, replicating quicker than any virus, penetrating more deeply than the sharpest arrow, bearing the weight of a thousand elephants and as hard to pin down as smoke. I feel my shame as fog, maybe because I grew up on Canada’s East Coast, where both shame and fog are part of the landscape and have been for generations: low-lying billows of cloudy moisture that chill summer days into darkened dampness, obscure vision, hide landmarks, and threaten navigation while ruining our hair and our mood.  We learn to live with it. Ah, it’ll burn off by noon, we console ourselves as we don sweaters and wait it out. Over time we learn strategies to navigate when we can barely see the road, and over time, we don’t notice it at all. Can’t change the weather, we shrug. Life goes on.

Like fog over a town, shame roiling through our inner landscape penetrates everywhere and everything, obscures our vision, slows movement to a crawl, dampens desire to do anything except stay warm and dry and wait it out. Unlike fog, though, shame won’t just burn off, lift, or otherwise vanish on its own. We can’t control the weather. We can, however, choose to own the foggy apparitions of shame we carry. Owning the shame as our creation, and a genius one at that, is what invites the fog to lift and WOW, there it is:  a life of warm, sunny clarity, with visibility infinite and energy focused on who we are and can become, rather than creeping around obstacles and reinforcing patterns that keep us swirling in circles, searching and grasping for what is there if we only choose to see it.

What is shame?

To me shame is many things, wears many disguises, is multifunctional and multitasking, as slippery as it is wispy and, like an early morning on a spring ocean, is blinding and chilling to the core. Shame within me is a wailing wilful child, face streaked with tears of frustration, screaming at a world that punishes rather than listens to the knowledge of the universe she embodies and longs to share. Shame is also a lithe seductress, gliding in and around heart and lungs and gut, tingling and inviting, then clenching and wringing the very air and desire from body and mind, blocking the energy that is life, diverting it slightly, connivingly, with whispered stories of  ‘you’re not good enough’, ‘don’t waste your time’ and  ‘how dare you…who do you think you are?’ And shame is a decaying sticky blanket of undigested thoughts and dreams, half-chewed projects, and regurgitated memories, coating and polluting clear quantum energy into halting spurts of festering ooze. In the moment, shame blinds us to our words, our desires, our purpose, diverting or disconnecting our bodies and intellect from the divine signal that we are. In its grip, in any and all of its forms, we forget the divine and infinite being that we are and come to embrace the shame as ‘just who we are,’ if we notice it at all. And that is its most powerful venom: that of becoming normal and unnoticed in our existence, convincing us to shrink and twist ourselves to fit the stories shame continually hisses in our awareness.

Where does shame come from?

Everywhere, starting with the DNA from the parents who conceived you. Their shame, accumulated from their lives and the DNA of their parents, is all handed to you at the moment of conception. Your nervous system grows to it, and collects its own patterns and stories from what you hear in utero, and what you experience at birth and in childhood, all without your awareness or language to express it. As children, we experienced shame as a tool to ensure our compliance. Public scoldings, placed in corners or in hallways to be humiliated, being criticized or called out for missing a question, stepping out of line, being late … in other words, being human. Dare to feel it, to cry at the sadness, to rage at the unfairness, and more shame: what a sissy, big baby, until at some point, there is no more feeling. Numb, detached, hidden. As an adult, we are legally our own person yet internally, we continue to run the patterns of childhood, our training effective, our detachment complete, with reminders to keep us in line. Get over it already. It was in the past. Just move on. And all the while, shame keeps pumping out its poison. No compassion for anyone, especially yourself, who feels, who want to explore the roots of their agony, who want to choose different, do different, and make amends for the damage done by unjust, controlling, narrow-minded regimes. Pick a cause, any cause. Look at the anger, the sadness, the fierceness with which varied and opposing paradigms are ‘right’ and those in disagreement are ‘wrong.’ Oh, not cuddled enough as a child, someone sneers. Dismiss the sheer power of what is running our world into the ground. Shame. Yes, on us as children. Reinforced in us as adults, by us as adults. No clear way forward, no ownership of the internal blinding, festering fog of deceit running our lives.

We all want to be seen, heard, and acknowledged, yet we cannot if we do not first see, hear, and acknowledge ourselves and the truth of our experience. Lacking awareness, or bracing against the slimy blanket of shame, we give over our wants to others, raging for the attention we so rightly deserve, and so wrongly try to wring what we seek from ‘out there’ rather than allowing it to flow from within.

Is there a way out?
Absolutely.

Shame is energy, patterned to stories that, as mentioned, we are born with or acquire through our lives. Processing that energy is owning that we ourselves are divine energy, within and moving through our bodies for the human experience, bodies that are designed to be efficient processors of all energy, including food, thoughts, memories and emotions like shame. Allowing the stories and sensations to move and be digested, rather than avoid or shut them down, is the equivalent of the sun burning off the fog. Within all energy is information, and allowing that information to be processed and integrated both lifts the fog and expands our awareness, our knowledge, our lives as a result. And we create it all.

How do we invite the energy to move?

Generations of information is embedded in a human body. Much of the information is layered with shame, and from a time before we had language to speak it. Quantum TLC ™ (TLC meaning Triggering Life Choices, although Tender Loving Care is also in order for the awesome beings we are!) uses breath, relaxation and awareness of internal cues to engage the body’s natural ability to process energy. QTLC ™ in fact is the only way to digest information stored in the body. The brain cannot move memories stored in the body, so talking it out may help somewhat but in itself is not enough. My awareness, in my body, relaxed into the sensation, breathing and inviting the energy to move…

That screaming child: I listen to her. Acknowledge her. Cuddle her. Tell her she’s safe and smart and it’s OK. She has nothing to be ashamed of. She knew more than the people tasked to train her. And she’s reminding me that I still know more about me than any external system possibly can.

That slinky temptress, whispering promises of safety and contentment that only serve to keep me silent and isolated and on the fast track to an early death from toxic buildup of the energy that I am … I hold her, I thank her, for there was a time when those beliefs helped me survive until I could reconnect with my life. I acknowledge her, and remind her that I need that protection no longer. Internal safety is a superpower. No external force can touch it. Choosing from internal reference is choosing aligned with divine signal. No need to hate them ‘out there’ for who and what they are. Be who I am. Lead and invite by example, not by rage or coercion or manipulation. Be my divine energy in flow.

That decaying, sticky blanket … I pick it up. Examine it inch by inch. Shake it out. Hang it to air in the fresh breeze of awareness. Touch the beliefs deeply embedded in its wisps, hold them, feel them, choose if they continue to serve. There is the chilling dampness of a shameful moment relived, then a release … warmth and tingles, lightness, and a sensation of space … energy and place once filled with blocked energy now open for new, the tightness or sadness or rage also gone, digested as a quantum snack and absorbed for me to use as I choose, rather than mindlessly engaged in a pattern that no longer serves.

I do this now. I will do it again, and again, and again, as layers melt and more layers present, an infinite spiral in the infinite playground that is my life. Shame will always be on my playground. It will no longer be the playground bully. Given the attention it craves without a fight, it is my friend, telling me secrets I keep from myself, showing me shortcuts through the woods and abandoned lots within to where I want to be, giving me a shove or a smack when I need to notice something and in my mindful embrace, shares what it knows and drifts off like fog rising to the sky, revealing a clear path forward.

We can’t change the weather, or anything in the external world. There will always be fog. There will always be shame. We can choose how to use it: to maintain our stories and spin in circles, or to engage the spiral of evolution and plunge in, trusting we know the way. Choice, like internal safety, is also a superpower, along with the knowledge that we cannot get our own life wrong. There is no wrong or right. There just is. Like fog and shame and all we create, including our writing and the process we use to find our words, is both beautiful and genius.

How do I Learn About Quantum TLC ™?

As a CODE Model Coach™, I engage Quantum TLC ™ for my own discoveries and can guide you in learning how to engage it for yourself.

CODE Model™ or Creation Out of Deep Energy™,  and Quantum TLC ™ are part of the WEL-Systems® body of knowledge developed by Louise LeBrun.

Interested in learning more?

Visit
https://wel-systems.com/self-directed-evolution/

This new space for exploration includes articles, audio files, and referrals to CODE Model Coaches™ who can support and guide your journey.

Contact me

I can offer:

• 1 on 1 conversations/explorations/coaching to discuss your writing and the story behind the story of not writing
• Whispers from Within ™, a 10-day email exchange that delves into writing and limiting beliefs through daily writing and written conversation
• Small group conversations, in person or virtual, among those of us called to write, exploring what lights us up in writing and what challenges us.

If any of these options resonate or pique your curiosity, email me and we’ll set up a time to chat.

Thanks for reading and for showing up!

Jennifer

Jennifer Hatt is an author, communications consultant, publishing doula and CODE Model Coach™ .
ownyourstorynow.com