When I let my shame take over, I wasn’t helping my partner. I was hurting him. In trying to relieve my own terrible feelings, I pointed the blame at him. It was as if moving my problem outside of myself would make things easier to fix. Well-intentioned criticism was my favorite defense mechanism. And it backfired, big time.
As dramatic as it sounds now, I thought that to love someone was to save them. This was because I hoped to be miraculously ‘saved,’ myself. I wanted my relationships to somehow remove all of my responsibility, guilt and fear. And because I refused to love my own imperfections, I hadn’t been able to accept them in another.
Therapeutic mumbo-jumbo aside: it was time to put my big girl pants on. I was not Cinderella, riding off into the sunset with Prince Charming. He wasn’t going to take all my worries away, or chase perfection the way I demanded. That would be ridiculous.
Realizing what I had done to our relationship was like waking up from a nightmare and finding that I had burned the house down in my sleep. Luckily, my partner stuck around long enough to see this shift occur, and lived patiently through my ups and downs. Today, we are stronger than ever. He’s not perfect, and neither am I. We don’t have to be.
Once I fully accepted myself, I was free to express unconditional love for others. I had to stop putting him at the top of my ‘fix-it’ and ‘help me’ lists. When I finally quit looking to him for validation and just focused on my recovery instead, any ‘faults’ I’d seen in him before were actually my own. There were no shortcuts, here; I had to accept these shortcomings as mine, and take daily action to improve them. Unpacking shame is a lifelong process…one that does not include trying to fix, oversee or control anyone else.
The way we treat others is a spiritual extension of the way we treat ourselves. We can choose acceptance and love, or we can choose fear and shame. If we’re unsure of which path we’re on, all we have to do is notice how other people seem to us.
Unpacking my personal shame has improved nearly every area of my life. My friendships have become more fun and accepting, my professional life is more positive and flexible, and my self-esteem has skyrocketed. It’s not that I’ve fixed all of my issues and insecurities. I’ve just learned how to live with them until I grow out of them.
Feelings aren’t facts, and shame is a just feeling. It’s a deep-seated, nasty, potentially destructive feeling, but a feeling nonetheless. Shame doesn’t shape reality unless we allow it to.
I hope that by sharing my own experience, I can offer some hope to others. If this story resonates with you, feel free to share in the comments below.