Whenever I meet with somebody who is asking for their first steps in healing or recovery from something, they usually have an answer in mind before I say anything.
Most want insight. A breakthrough. Understanding their patterns and finding the root of it.
All of these are useful. And they lead to the piece almost everybody skips.
“Unshaming” – a term I learned from David Bedrick.
WHAT YOU’RE ACTUALLY CARRYING
Most people don’t realize the degree or the magnitude of the shame they’re carrying, because shame doesn’t announce itself. It rarely shows up as a thought you could write down.
It’s more like a weighted vest that we wear our whole life without remembering how we even put it on, or why it’s even there.
It feels like an armored bracing. A held quality in the body that never quite lets go, even on the good days.
And because you’ve worn it since before you could name it, it doesn’t feel like something you’re carrying. It feels like who you are.
WHY YEARS OF WORK HASN’T MOVED IT
Here is what I see often.
Someone has done the work. Years of it. Therapy, books, courses, retreats. They can explain their patterns better than most professionals can.
And the vest hasn’t moved.
If that’s you, chances are you hadn’t really looked at the shame that was sitting underneath. You were working on the reaction to it.
The reaction is the part that shows up – the flare, the withdrawal, the argument, the shutdown. Oftentimes, it’s why we lose our shit. It’s the loudest thing in the room, so it becomes the thing you work on.
But the reaction is downstream. Something underneath it is still running, and it will keep producing reactions for as long as it goes unaddressed.
WHAT UNSHAMING ACTUALLY IS
Unshaming is not letting yourself off the hook.
That’s the objection I hear most, and it’s worth answering directly, because the people who need this the most are the ones that are most suspicious of it. They’ve built a whole identity on holding themselves to account, and being hard on themselves becomes their way to ensure they don’t slip up again. Anything that sounds like a pass gets rejected on sight.
It isn’t a “pass.” It’s getting accurate – with compassion.
Accurate means looking at what you actually had to work with at the time. Not what you know now. Not what you’d do today with twenty more years of understanding.
What you had then.
THE SENTENCE MOST PEOPLE HAVE NEVER SAID TO THEMSELVES
You did the best you could with the skills that you had and the conditioning that you inherited at the time.
Read that slowly, because all of it matters.
The skills you had at the time. Nobody sat you down and explained to you what a protective boundary was. Nobody walked you through what to do when your body floods and your judgment goes offline.
And the conditioning that you inherited. You didn’t choose your role models. You learned relationship by watching people who were also never taught.
If you’re embarrassed by some of the choices you’ve made, or the way that you’ve reacted, a good place to start is to truly see where your conditioning came from – relieving the pressure on yourself – and how relieving it is to know that you often didn’t even stand a chance.
That is not an excuse. An excuse says it doesn’t matter. This says something different: it says you were not failing at something you were adequately trained in.
Those are not the same sentence. And the difference between them is the entire point.
THIS DOESN’T END
I want to be careful not to present this as a step you complete.
I believe we’re constantly growing to greater levels of the practice of unshaming ourselves.
Every time my work reaches more people, I get to expand what I can hold – more judgment from others, more criticism, and more people telling me who they think I am. That capacity to hold it all doesn’t arrive on its own, without the deep inner work.
So the vest comes off in layers. What made it possible to be visible at one level won’t carry you at the next.
WHERE TO START
If you’re wanting to grow to your next level, or expand to your next level of liberation, the work is to take the vest off first.
It’s easier said than done. But that’s where becoming Trigger-Proof actually starts.
And when you do, freedom, vulnerability, resilience, and intimacy expand.
We all want authentic relationships. Very few have taken the steps to rewire the shame that stops them from having access to it.
Explore the Trigger-Proof Experience
Your guide on the side,
Nima
TAKE THE NEXT STEP
Go Beyond Understanding Your Patterns
Healing shame begins with recognizing the conditioning behind your emotional reactions. But understanding your patterns and actually changing how you respond are two different things.
The Trigger-Proof Experience is a live, guided experience with Nima Rahmany designed to help you explore what’s driving your emotional triggers, work with the patterns keeping you stuck, and begin creating meaningful change.
Move beyond simply understanding your reactions and experience the work for yourself.
Explore the Trigger-Proof Experience →
