You are not your brokenness (why shame is a lie)

Josh Rosa
Aug 20, 2024
4 min read

You are not your brokenness (what to do when you feel shame)

healing brokenness

You are not fundamentally broken, you are not that mistake that you keep replaying, you are not a composition of your shame, you need to start giving yourself some grace and understanding that you have flaws and mess up, it is good to know and be aware of this but not giving yourself any compassion is just beating up on yourself when you are already down.

The truth is that you will continue to remain in the things that have broken you if you continue to believe that it is what you deserve. You will tell yourself repeatedly that it’s right and justified that you feel this way, it’s not.

what to do when you feel shame:

Accountability
Self-compassion
Grow/Heal

Accountability

This can be such a sour word for people who have not done the work to heal and grow (we’ll get there later). The reality is that accountability takes a level of emotional maturity that sadly most people have not developed, being able to know what you did wrong and taking ownership of it is the difference between it owning you and you owning it.

We cannot and will not grow from something we are afraid to identify.

The truth is that we remain in our brokenness or our shame because of a power dynamic. We think that what we have done or what has been done to us is ours to make home in. You are under no obligation to continue to live in the past.

Be clear about the role you played in it and understand that you are imperfect, you will make mistakes and that is the reality of life but what you do next matters most.

Being accountable looks like:

If needed and/or possible apologizing to the people you’ve hurt.
Being clear on why you did the things you did especially with yourself.
Learning what your triggers are.
Learning from the actions you took.
Resolving to no longer put yourself in that situation.

Self-compassion

For a lot of us, this can be a really hard one to take in.

We struggle to have compassion with ourselves because we are so used to pointing out our own flaws. We tend to be our biggest enemies because no one knows your mind better than you do and no one spends more time with you, ironically you love you the least.

Self-compassion is not about not taking accountability or giving yourself a free pass on your mistakes, it’s about learning to love yourself enough that you don’t hold your mistakes captive in your mind.

Self-compassion is truly about learning to love yourself even in your flaws.

To be very clear here, you should always identify your mistakes and be clear about that but don’t start bashing who you are based on bad moments of life. Allowing yourself the same love that you would give someone else in your situation.

Self-compassion looks like:

Speaking into the bad moments and reminding yourself that isn’t who you are when the memories come back up.
Reminding yourself that mistakes happen and changing for the better.
Practicing gratitude that you are no longer in that or that you are working to get out of that.
Identifying the good things in you.

Grow & heal

The worst thing that you could ever do in the healing process is stop.

The reality is that anything you are trying to heal if you don’t go through the growing pains of it, it becomes stiff, useless, and remains broken.

I often connect this to a story I tell about my torn labrum (in my shoulder) the pain that it took in physical therapy by moving the thing that hurt the most, is the very reason I can move my shoulder today.

Your fear of moving in your pain is the reason your pain has made you immobile.

To grow we must go through what hurt us and be able to heal it through the process of rehabilitation. You can not make home in your wounds and then wonder why you remain in them.

Growth comes from being able to identify what happened and not reverting to it again!

Growing and healing look like:

Giving yourself genuine time to unpack (but not remaining with the luggage).
Identifying what went wrong (but not dwelling in it).
Realizing what you actually deserve.
Growing into a person that is no longer afraid of their past.

In a world that wants to convince you that you are your mistakes, you need to be louder than it.

The truth is that lies have to be loud and extra because the truth is calm and quiet.

You are under no obligation to continue to remain where you used to be and under no obligation to allow shame to rule your heart.

You are free.. be free.

It is the same with people as it is with riding a bike. Only when moving can one comfortably maintain one’s balance.

— ALBERT EINSTEIN