The Dirty Little Secret About Personal Growth Work

Wanna hear a dirty little secret about personal growth?

We all love the “ah-HA!” moment during self-examination, that moment when we finally see why we’ve been doing this irrational thing or feeling so much anxiety about that particular issue. It’s fantastic to finally understand something that’s been causing us suffering.

And then the very next thing that follows the relief of the “Ah-HA” is almost always shame.

Shame for having done or said or reacted the way we have for so long. And it can be like a huge hangover that follows such a positive experience of finally getting what we’ve been doing “wrong.”  Shame is the frowning finger-wagger that shows up, hand on hip, to look at us amidst the broken cookie jar and tell us how bad we’ve been.

It’s a huge freakin’ bummer to have just experienced relief in understanding and then immediately dive into a shame spiral about how we should’ve known better.

“Oh my god, that was so obvious! Why am I so stupid that I didn’t see that before?”

Yeah, well, lemme tell you something.

That’s a bunch of crap.

I say this to every client, every friend, every family member, and MYSELF, when I hear that kind of rhetoric:

You were doing the best you could with the information you had at the time. You couldn’t know any better until you were ready and supported enough to know it.

We don’t blame a small child for not innately knowing how to tie her shoes, do we? And yet it’s so simple, you could say that it was obvious and she should’ve figured it out. But obviously, that’s ridiculous. That child doesn’t know it until she’s been taught or shown by someone.

The same is true for all of us. Regardless of the simplicity or obvious nature of the truth once we see it, there was no way to know it until we were given a way to see it.

The next time you’re experiencing a shame hangover, try to remember that the antidote is self-forgiveness. You’re the only one who can relieve your own suffering, and what you have to do is say this to yourself:

Sweetie, I know you were doing the best you could at the time. You didn’t understand the truth about what you were doing, and how could you have? Life is about making mistakes and learning from them. I accept and forgive your mistakes. And it doesn’t change the fact that I love you.”