As you begin your journey to becoming a more complete man, be prepared to feel shame and guilt as you discover deficiencies in your life. When I started to see the areas where I should have shown up better, I felt awful. I simply couldn’t believe that I had made those mistakes or acted the way that I did. Of course, I couldn’t see the errors at the time, or I wouldn’t have made them. Sometimes we must take a higher viewpoint to see what is going on. It can be too difficult, or even impossible, to see something when we are deep in it. There is a reason why even professional athletes have coaches to help.
Going back to shame and guilt, be prepared for these emotions to bring up feelings that you haven’t been taught how to acknowledge, yet alone process appropriately. You might feel like you cannot escape what you are experiencing and that is OK. When our son was sick, I was completely overwhelmed with what I was feeling. I later learned about the term emotional overload and I believe that is what I was dealing with. In a nutshell, emotional overload is when so many things are going on at once for someone and you cannot process what is taking place. A deeper dive into that someday might be worth the time.
I’ve come to understand that when I make a connection between a situation and how I was feeling, a realization if you will, that shame and guilt were one of the first things that I felt. I was so embarrassed about how I handled something or how I did not handle it. It was very easy for me to get emotional because I felt so bad about myself that it would derail me from being able to see the entire picture and to process and learn from it. I’ve had to work and practice with real-life examples to get better with my processing. It isn’t easy, especially at first but it does get better with practice.
The challenge is to give yourself a bit of grace as you are working on developing a new skill. It’s like learning to read and write or to ride a bike. It is uncomfortable at first, and you could hurt yourself in the beginning but, eventually, you start to get the hang of things, and you build confidence in your abilities.
We can be our own worst enemies; I know that I was very hard on myself when my journey first began. Falling into a negative trap is so convenient as it is a simple escape. The real work is being able to feel the shame and guilt without it preventing you from learning and growing from the experience and those feelings. It is OK to acknowledge what you are feeling but then ask yourself why you are feeling them. Spend whatever time that you need to answer that question. Once you start to see what is going on inside of your body in those moments, true growth can begin to be unlocked and that is where the real magic begins.
