Best Self Magazine

Releasing Shame to Reclaim Your Self Worth

Releasing Shame, Reclaiming Self Worth, by Emily Madill, photograph by Steve Snider

Photograph by Steve Snider

Identifying and confronting the root causes of shame allows you to release yourself from its limiting clutches and reclaim your self-worth

On this grand life adventure, we all suffer, we all have hurts, and at some point or another we all experience shame.

When we keep shame hidden, it has a way of taking hold of our spirit. It has a way of tricking us into thinking we aren’t enough just as we are.  When we let shame guide our path, we minimize who we are. Through our suffering, we fuel shame’s power over us.

We all have stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Some of our stories help us, but some of our stories harm us. The stories that harm us are generally the ones we feel desperate to keep hidden in the dark. When we set our stories free, we shine light on what feels impossibly heavy and dark. When we lift the lid on the darkness of our shame, we begin to remember the essence of who we are.

Who we are, and our sense of self-worth, have nothing to do with what has happened in our lives because our spirit and worth are always intact. When we remove the dark cloak of shame, we begin to see ourselves. We start to remember we are so much more than the stories we tell ourselves.

Our hurts and our stories can keep us stuck in a lifetime of shame and guilt, or they can elevate us to our highest path — a path where we love who we are, no matter what dark storms we’ve traveled through, a path where we love ourselves all the more for all of our travels and all of our darkness and light.

Whatever our shame stories are, the content isn’t what is at the core of the pain; it is how we hang on to

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