Things Get Smaller When You Talk About Them
shame thrives in silence and secrecy.
when we feel shame about something and then keep those things to ourselves, the shame grows exponentially because our silence reinforces that what we are shameful about is in fact something shameful.
but have you ever felt the release of saying “i admit, i’m not great at this”, or “i admit, i made this mistake”,
or “i am embarrassed by this but i am also human”.
fighting our shame can be as simple as communicating our needs in the face of our judgements about those needs. it can be asking for help despite feeling guilty for doing so. it can be expressing our feelings despite wishing we felt otherwise. it can be naming our feelings out loud. it can be initiating that hard conversation about what we are dealing with so that we don’t have to sit with the weight of it on our own.
in my experience, things that feel huge and overwhelming and burdensome in my head get a lot smaller when i talk about them. things go from “omg omg omg i’m such a terrible person because i did x,y, and z” to “hey [person i love] i did x,y, and z and i’m feeling really bad about it. can you reassure me i’m not a terrible person?”. things go from unforgivable and all-consuming to hard conversations. things go from an unbearable lonely experience to something i can get comfort around.
talk about something shameful and it goes from something overtaking your mind to something out in the open. talk about something shameful and it goes from a lonely secretive experience to something that makes you human.