Seeds of Shame

Hello and welcome to Episode 9 of This Little Light Of Mine.  My name is James Powell and I’m glad that you’re able to join me for today’s episode, Seeds of Shame.

Before I get started I want to give a big shout out to a few community members who are blowing me away with their sharing, encouragement and insights as we discover, heal and grow forward in love together.

• Poulami from Lit.Wings in India
• Mark aka NotDefining in the UK
• Sway from Polite but Savage podcast coming out of Dubai
• Harvey from New Zealand
• Michael from New York

In today’s episode I’m taking you WAY back to some of my earliest memories from a pre-school Jimmy (yup… I was Jimmy back then).  As I do my own inner child work and travel back to ages 3/4/5/6 I can clearly see the imprint of early trauma and can almost pinpoint where toxic shame entered my life as a young boy.

What I’ve learned in recovery is that trauma comes from the inhibition of emotion AND the earlier in life that you start to block or supress your emotions the deeper the damage can be.  

As you’ll hear in today’s episode, when it came to learning about shame, my visceral brain was so quick to learn and remember.  In an instant I locked in shame and created an imprint that dominated my future.  

Once this type of shame-based imprint has been set, ongoing painful experiences that reinforce the original imprint, continue to lay down new pathways in your brain and you become more and more sensitive to painful stimuli as you progress through life… as I look back at my life experience I can see how true this is. 

In the most basic terms, here’s what I’m talking about; once shame sets in it grows and grows until you GO BACK and address things from where they began…. This is the premise of inner child work.  This is also why, when it comes to trauma, it is important that we take the time to go back to the source of pain and to lovingly ask powerful questions like “what happened to me?” and you process your trauma. 

We need to stop running from our trauma, we need to stop having our experiences silenced and we need to stop numbing our painful feelings.

We need to process our trauma, feel our feelings and move through them.

I hope you enjoy today's episode; Seeds of Shame.

James

IG: @MyLightShinesBright