Shame & Addiction
16, 23, 30 October & 6, 13, 20 November 2024
18:30 – 20:00 UK time, via Zoom
I am fascinated by shame. As a trauma therapist, I work every day with people who have shame. Their shame has given rise to a host of safety mechanisms: different manifestations of the addictive personality.
The addictive personality is, most often, the result of shame.
Shame is an emotion that most of us find unbearable.
We believe that shame, the thought processes surrounding our shame, and how much we despise these things, is all in our head.
It is not all in your head.
Shame, the feeling of shame that you brush up against when you are triggered, is very much in the body.
Let’s better understand shame as it is held in the body
In this series of classes, we will work with awareness of the how shame manifests in our physicality and what we may do to manage our triggers.
By doing this we will begin to change the way we think. We will open up new possibilities for ourselves.
Shame is deeply visceral, triggering a primal part of the brain that wants nothing but to keep us safe.
This threat is felt, deeply, in the body. We hate the feeling. We leap out of it.
This is why movement and breathwork are important tools.
Shame is usually in place because of negative childhood experiences.
Addiction, anxiety, and compulsion are what we do with that sense of shame. This, especially over time, makes our coping mechanisms extremely important to us.
When we hit shame, we react in ways that allow us a fast escape out of it, often harming ourselves, or others, in the process. These reactions become habitual and lead to labels, disorders.
Until we’re willing to work with shame, we tend to put down one coping mechanism to pick up another. Someone who seeks help for addiction may stop drinking but get a shopping habit – something that temporarily soothes in the same way.
Such put down/pick up behaviour is happening everywhere, all the time. When we become aware of shame, and what we do with it, we can begin to work with it differently.
Join me for six Kundalini Global yoga classes to explore Shame & Addiction through the lens of my work as a trauma therapist as it relates to the mind/body connection.
Do something amazing.
In these classes we will also explore the ability to be present, the stillness of right here, right now. We will work on your ability to step out of your painful past.
Your body is amazing and you have much agency over how you experience it in any moment.
Join me for these six classes and let’s begin an exploration into the safety mechanisms you have in place to mask your shame and how to work with awareness of them, via your body, to help soothe your mind.
