Chapter 21
A Radical Way to Banish Shame from Your Life

In April 2015, Elizabeth Gilbert wrote an epic Facebook post about tribal shame and the work of Dr. Mario Martinez, who wrote a book called The Mind-Body Code.

He studies the ways our thoughts and emotions affect our physical health and he is particularly interested in the harmful ways that shame affects the mind and body.

Liz Gilbert’s post is so worth the read, but the short version is this: “…if you dare to leave your tribe of origin—or if you dare to question the rules of your tribe—it is extremely likely that you will be punished. Sometimes that punishment can be violent and extreme…. But oftentimes the punishment is more subtle.… The weapon they are most likely to use against you is shame. Shame is how they keep you in line. Shame is how they let you know that you have abandoned the collective.”

It wasn’t until about six months later that I made the connection and saw that this is exactly what had happened between my mother and me. It also dawned on me that I had spent most of my life believing (unconsciously) that my mother had the power to destroy me.

So I spent a lot of time bending and contorting myself to get her love and approval, because I feared her disapproval (which in my mind equaled destruction). I also hid from her, especially if I suspected that she wouldn’t like or approve of something I had done. Even though I didn’t think, intellectually, that she would actually and literally kill me, in my body it felt like a possibility.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Because of the training I’ve received and the work I have done on this issue (which includes studying the concept of victim consciousness), I knew whether it was possible or not didn’t really matter.

In the past, I would have gone into victim mode. I would have used the revelation as an excuse and a reason to believe my mother is/was evil and that I needed to protect myself.

Instead, I chose to notice how this thought and the resultant emotion(s) had been showing up all over my life, for years. I asked myself if it was serving me (hell no!). Slowly, over the course of a couple of months, the fear started to melt away, and the belief that she has the power to destroy me started to wither and die. What once was etched in stone is now ghostly…sort of like something written on an Etch-A-Sketch and then shaken off.

Getting back to Liz Gilbert’s post…

In it she outlined an exercise that Dr. Martinez created to help people liberate themselves from fear and shame and it occurred to me that you might find this exercise helpful. I have modified it to suit us.

Step 1: Sit quietly and allow your mind and your breathing to settle. Acknowledge in your mind that you need(ed) to abandon your mother in order to live your life the way you want. Acknowledge that she felt/will feel betrayed.

Step 2: Say, aloud: “Mom, I am going to abandon you now. I am going to betray you now.”

Liz says this is powerful because you are saying the opposite of what you have probably spent your life trying to prove: that you haven’t betrayed or abandoned your mother. You may have even made yourself sick trying to prove that you are loyal, that you have done nothing wrong, that you haven’t changed.

But it doesn’t work because she doesn’t believe you. Because she knows (and you know, too) that when you chose a different way for yourself, you betrayed and abandoned her. You changed because you needed to. You left her behind because that was the only way to become the person you were meant to be.

And? It’s all good. Why? Because it doesn’t mean that you don’t love her.

As Liz said, “this exercise has nothing to do with love.” You can always love your mother. This exercise is about breaking the spell of shame and the only way to do that is to take ownership of your life, and to admit to the consequences of leaving your mother’s values behind.

Step 3: Become your mother (in your mind). Say to yourself (in her voice) these words: “I completely understand. I forgive you. All I want is for you to be happy.”

It’s important that you hold both sides of this imagined conversation.

Step 4: Rebuild what Dr. Martinez calls your own “field of honor.” Shaming works because it attacks your sense of honor. Liz Gilbert puts it this way: “Every tribe is governed by its own code of honor, and once you have broken that honor code, the tribe will accuse you (overtly or subtly) of having no honor at all. This accusation is what makes you sick. This is what makes you suffer.”

So you must rebuild your own field of honor, in order to make yourself healthy again.

You do this by making a list of all the times you have been honorable, starting as young as you can remember. What was the first honorable act of your life? Go from there and write down all the ways in which you have been honorable.

“You are truly an honorable person. Honor is within you. You must rebuild that field of honor, because it is your only defense against shaming, which will always seek to destroy your sense of honor in order to make you weak and to bring you back ‘home.’”

S ep 5: Feel righteous anger (and note here that I am not suggesting that you act on it…just feel it).

You will know that you are standing in your field of honor when your first reaction to attempts to shaming you are righteous anger. You will know that you are on the road to emotional health and recovery when [your mother] tries to shame you, and rather than absorb that shame, you instead react with righteous anger.

Dr. Martinez suggests that there is a role in your life for healthy anger, for appropriate anger, for righteous anger. Righteous anger is a fast, hot fire that burns up the poison of shaming, and protects your field of honor. This is the anger that rises up like a dragon and says, “Don’t you dare try to shame me!” This anger is correct and just and fair. You are entitled to it. You must claim it.

You are a person of honor who does not deserve to be shamed. Righteous anger protects you from judging yourself when your mother tries to shame you so learn how to feel it when and if you experience shaming.

Repeat after me: “I do not deserve to be shamed!”

Practice as often as you need.