Have Shame and/or Triggers? Tools to Conquer Your Inner Demons so you can Love Yourself

We all have things about ourselves that we don’t want anyone to know. We might worry that if someone found out these things, they wouldn’t love us or want to be around us anymore.

We feel shame when we there’s a difference between who we think we should be and where we’re at. There’s two ways you can decrease this gap: from the top down or from the bottom up. Lower your expectations (top down), reframe the beliefs you have about yourself or self improve (bottom up). Easier said than done, but realizing this made me less hard on myself (decrease the gap by lowering expectations), which allowed me to have space to self improve (decrease the gap by increasing self assessment).

While it’s good to have high standards, if your high standards aren’t serving you, it’s time to readjust so they aren’t paralyzing you. Remember you can always adjust them back.

When we give ourselves hard timelines and goals to reach or compare ourselves to others, we aren’t managing our expectations of ourselves and it can be a downward spiral.

Catching our thoughts and being self-aware is the first step to stopping destructive thoughts. Self-awareness is important because its linked to having happier relationships, being more successful, and living happier lives.

We might also have limiting beliefs that are holding us back. Maybe we think we’re not that smart, not that technical, too selfish, too bossy… Whatever it is we need to find evidence to disprove that. Often just pausing and asking ourselves, ‘Is that true?’ might be enough to get us out of our heads. Listing out reasons that counter our limiting beliefs is a great way to prove ourself wrong. If we’re extra stubborn, getting a friend or having a coach (aka me 🙋!), can help us break out our our beliefs can be more convincing than ourselves.

Last taking actions that build love in ourselves will show ourselves we are who we want ourselves to be. Richard C. Schwartz, Phd, creator of Internal Family Systems, and author of No Bad Parts believes when we are healed of our traumas we are self-led, and we will move with compassion, creativity, curiosity, calm, confidence, clarity, courage, and connectedness. I believe that proactively moving in that manner also helps us love ourselves.

Sometimes deep rooted shame from traumas from our past and the exercises from above might not be enough. This is where inner child work, shadow work, parts work or internal family systems comes in. They’re all generally covering the same thing. How do we love the parts about ourselves we shame? More to come in future posts!

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