I get it. Child throwing a tantrum in front of a bunch of glowering strangers in a store? Phone call from school saying your kiddo had misguided behavior on the playground? Teen is grumpy and non-social in front of your guests? Or maybe you’ve lost your shit with your kids or fought with your partner in front of others? SHAME. When we and/or our kids are navigating that feeling we can do a lot to lessen its intensity. Here’s why we want to do that: Shame is a feeling that takes up a lot of space on our nervous systems. We will then have less bandwidth to show up with compassion for ourselves and others. Shame is inevitable in life. Sitting in the soup of it is not and modeling and teaching our kids a different experience with it can go a long way towards them having not carrying unnecessary burdens into adulthood. Let’s break this down:

So much of our shame comes from behavior (our own and/or our kids) that is developmentally appropriate and HUMAN. We were shamed or are ashamed for our human-ness showing up.
How much shame shows up also indicates where our social and emotional skill set needs some development. Lots of shame? Boost self-awareness and self-management (see the Cultivating Wellness Course in the SHIFT membership area for that work).
Misguided (not bad, please don’t use that phrase!) behavior communicates a lagging skill and/or getting needs met in a (usually) non-relational way. We unpack this in Community Calls every week so hopefully you’ll join us there!
Many of us were shamed for getting our needs met and/or not having the skill to navigate the situation. Read that again. And we perpetuate that in our own relationships and families until we learn to do differently and better.
We can manage shame and any uncomfortable feeling by following the steps for Healthy Emotion Processing. Will following those steps make the discomfort disappear? Probably not. But will following the steps lower the intensity of the feelings so you can access other parts of your brain and stay in connection with yourself and/or others? Yes.
Some of us need professional help to heal shame and learn different skills to navigate situations differently and better than what we currently know how to do. There are a lot of free and low cost resources out there to do that. The SHIFT community is one of those low cost places to do that btw!