By Bart Sharp

Toxic shame is when we are raised in a home where we are placed in situations that we are controlled in an abusive way/s that create our self image as less than.  We create us in a false way to be able to fit into a dysfunctional home environment and lose a part of the truth of who we are as a result.  Those who have had toxic shame as children and then as adults are in a shaming environment we revert back to those old behaviors through out our life.  We can break the patterns created in a toxic shameenvironment by addressing our shamed child within us.

I recently worked with a woman who seemed to be in kind of a shock.  She told me the word that described her self was ungrounded.  Especially in situations that were stressful with others, she could not have the focus to speak her own mind.  She also found it difficult to remember details such as what she had read, the information appeared to pass right through her.

As we explored her life she told me of her mother and father and the unsafe environment that she grew up in.  She had little control with two parents who were intimidating and sometimes physically punitive.  It made the young girl feel overwhelmed with her interactions with the parents.  She was always nervous that she would do or say the wrong thing leaving her with a sometimes overwhelming anxiety.

The most brilliant thing she could do, as a protective device was to bring her awareness outside of herself as the little girl’s mind and spirit left in some ways.  She went out of her present state of being to function in daydreams, fantasies and in states of minor shock.  The benefit was that the painful experiences with her parents were not so intense.

Being partially disembodied or out of body is a common experience for those who grew up in stressful homes and/or were abused in some way as children.  It is a defensive mechanism that directs us away from feeling so much of the pain back then. Often these people as adults are triggered by the same behaviors that they experienced as children.  For example, my client would become extremely nervous and would begin to stutter when people began to raise their voice, she lost her concentration.  The belittlement in her childhood was the toxic shame that would always guide her back to the behaviors of her past.   Also these people who ‘go out of themselves’ are often more psychic and/or more in tune with their surroundings.  They often develop their intuitive abilities as a way to predict aggression in their environment.

I began to work with the ashamed young girl that existed within the woman, those places that were suppressed deep inside that created the need to go out of her body.  Many of these were fractured parts of the woman existed.  As an intuitive therapist I began to help her identify the body memories of these suppressed experiences to find the part of the girl/woman separated. For example as she talked about how her mother yelled at her we could feel the tension in her stomach react to the recalled memory then we would begin the journey of finding a part of her that left as a result to the traumatizing experience with mom.  When the split part was reintegrated the tension in the stomach permanently went away and the person felt more present in themselves when around intimidating people.

By reliving the childhood experience my client learned how to feel them again inside of her as they resurfaced.  When the past energetic memories came back she had an opportunity to begin clearing them herself or with me.  The woman’s anxieties and fears continued to be relived as her body showed these old stressed memories to her, such as a tension in her stomach.  They were the same places she felt them as a child when her parents mistreated her.   Now the woman did energetic clearings to shift the memories to a neutral experience so they would no longer trigger her to being anxious or to stutter.

As dozens of these traumatized parts resolved the woman became more present within herself, her body felt better and happier.  Through several weeks of work she was able to be present when others were angry and loud.  The ashamed disembodied places inside of her were integrated back and she did not revert to the nervous stutter when the stress was on. The woman’s actions to the toxic shame of her childhood had changed greatly and she was enjoying the fruits of it.

By Bart Sharp

Sometimes when we feel we are stuck in our personal growth we are close to breaking through to something greater in our therapeutic progress.  It may feel like we are totally in our limitations when actually we are making great personal progress.  Like the saying goes, “The darkest hour is right before the dawn.”

One of my clients told me that after doing sessions with me he was feeling more anger and rage than he had experienced in years in his spiritual growth.  He saw the sessions as counterproductive, however it was really progress in his personal development.  Finally my client was feeling what was occurring in his body, anger and shame.

Children who are shamed, aggressed upon or live in fear, there is the one thing that many of these young ones are not permitted to express is anger.  They have a knowing back then that the situation would only become worse if they asserted themselves.  It is a brilliant strategy to stay out of the way.  Many children do this but unfortunately shame themselves later for it.  As a result the anger then is suppressed even deeper in their psyche and body.  There it is held suppressed as a part of their unconscious.

This type of suppressed anger becomes an unconscious influence in our life guiding us to health issues, addiction, depression and more.  So many of my clients do not come to me to resolve anger but other by-products that are created from suppression of emotions.  Many do not realize the rage that is within them.  However when the issues are explored and cleared the anger and rage began to come up.

It is predictable for anger to reappear because the body desperately wants us to let this huge weight go.  Repressed anger and rage is a degenerating force inside of us.  When we begin the process of exploration to resolve the past the body brings the energetic memories of the old show angers up.

My client’s body was so ready so ready for him to release his rage that it came up in prolific ways.  Unfortunately it scared him and he stepped back from doing therapeutic work.  After time he realized this and came back to do my personal work.  When we feel the angst and/or in crises it is the perfect time to go deeply into the situation.

When we have issues from our past come up, look at them as an opportunity to permanently release pains of the past.  Our body and unconsciousness is trying to present this to us.  We have the possibility to change if we choose to continue to do the self-improvement work.

By Bart Sharp

The whole nature of shame is that we were told in some way, verbally or non-verbally that we were less than creating the invalidation of the great beings that we knew we were as infants or children.  Babies come into this world knowing intrinsically they are great beings however they lose this perspective when the adult oriented world tells them how limited they are.  Some parents do this in innocent ways while others are abusive.  Those who are told in unkind ways not only hold the shame but we create strong reactions to the messages that we are less than such as; anger, rage, addiction, depression, anxiety, insecurity and more.  All too often the root of these emotions and behaviors is shame based.

Healing shame begins to change all of the other behaviors and emotions.  When we release shame we connect to something much greater, joy.  Joy is the feeling when everything in us feels complete.  When we first embark on this journey of healing shame we experience joy in periods of our life, however the more we resolve and clear out shame our joy remains within us.  Joy is the state of a child, it is who we really are.  Finding joy as an adult is different than childhood but regardless it is a very powerful place to create our life from.

Bart Sharp works with healing shame using individual therapy either by phone or in person.

By Bart Sharp

Shame is a limiting belief within all of us that helps us recognize we have limitations.  However when we are raised in homes that are dysfunctional and operate from a viewpoint of toxic shame it leads us to anger, depression, various addictive behaviors and more.  Overcoming shame is the underlying component that must be recognized if we truly wish to be completely clear of our dysfunctional past. Below are some insights in overcoming shame.

A child’s perception of power is in how much they are loved by their parents, family and allowed to discover themselves.  When a child is raised in this environment they grow in their own identify and are affirmed that they are valuable.   As adults this power is transformed into all what the person wishes to become and achieve.  The love the adult received as a child transfers to the belief the adult deserves to receive their dreams.

On the opposite perspective the child who is not loved as much and taught they are lesser beings have the outlook that they deserve less.  The messages that the parents gives to the child that they are wrong transfers to their beliefs as adults.  Unconsciously the adult believes that they should receive less in life.  The shamed that was projected onto them becomes a core belief that they deserve less in life.

Shame is an unconscious belief within an individual that affects them in a variety of ways.  It becomes an invisible sabotage that affects how they manifest.

If we wish to have a fuller power it is imperative that we explore our past in how we were deemed lesser.  It can be projected onto or taught to us in obvious and subtle ways.  We as adults can change the way that we create our lives by exploring our shamed self.  Then the basis of our person power can change.

By Bart Sharp

The dampening of the flame that toxic shame is associated with can be created during various stages of an infant’s life.  Some children are shamed in every stage of development where as others are limited to a few stages.  As the shame is repressed into memory the frustration begins to impact the heart and soul of the child.  The toxic shame begins to take various forms of expression such as anger, passive aggressive behaviors, depression, resentments, lack of confidence, lack of inner direction and more shame.  The child becomes an adult carrying these limitations into everyday life.

The process of healing of toxic shame begins in exploring these limitations and discovering your story.  It is the cognitive realization of what happened in your life.  It is the therapy of finding how your emotional wounds were created.  Recognizing our past is essential in healing.

To go discover a deeper resolve is a process of uncovering shame deeper than the mind but body memories.  This process begins in understanding how it occurred by recalling the stories of our shamed life.  Next as you recall the stories feel how our body is reacting when we relive the incidents.   The energy of our limitations is stored into our body.  Each memory that we have judged as bad or wrong is stored in our body.  It never really goes away.  For most it is a life of suppressing these experiences so that they are not felt.

There is something very powerful in exploring the past.   You can re-live the experience feel where it is occurring in your body.  For example while you review an experience you may feel the anger that you suppressed in your stomach or an anxious feeling in your heart or a thick heavy sensation in your lower intestines.  It is the energetic memory of the incident.  It is important to fully feel this energy, get accustomed to it and recognize it as an integral part of you.

When you feel the experience your body often is recreating what it was feeling back in the original experience.  It can be intense.  It is important not to judge it but to experience it.  It is what we did not process it fully back then otherwise it would not be such a traumatic experience.  Allowance is the key in resolving shaming events of your past.  Letting the infant or child or your past to have these feelings under a nurturing and non-judging presence by your adult-self. Patiently contemplate the perceptions that occur while you are present with this past memory.

When we discover and release our past toxic shame we begin to create a new perspective in how we see ourselves in the world.  Releasing the secret underlying messages that we are less and cannot achieve our dreams unleashes a more authentic self that can receive all of life more easily.  We can change the basis of our beliefs and limitation and manifest our lives differently.

Bart Sharp is an Access Facilitator who specializes in helping others release suppressed emotions such as shame on energetic memory level.  Through this experience Bart has witnessed people making dynamic changes in their lives through private sessions and learning techniques to clear their limitations on their own.

By Bart Sharp

When we are in a home environment where were we are continually made to feel lesser than, belittled and/or abused the child experiences toxic shame.  Toxic shame can happen in many forms from an alcoholic neglectful parent, abusive father, dominating siblings and many more.  The child is taught early own to compromise their own identity and self-worth in order to fit into the dysfunctional situation.  Below is a story of one of the ways toxic shame is created.

Some children may feel underneath others; their brothers, sisters and friends.  They desperately want them to be liked and played with.  There is something of an intrinsic value that this needy child could not identify in them selves that makes them feel separate from others.

The needy child seeks this unknown quality in others through winning their approval and attention.  This child would even compromise them self in order to get attention.  They would play the subservient role in order to form friendships with others.  In the end it is a dis-satisfying relationship and reinforces the belief that something unknown is still lacking in this child with less.  They are seeking an internal gift that none of their siblings or friends could give to them.

In the beginnings of an infant’s life when the parents receive their child into the world they can look at the child with love and excitement, through that transference occurs.  The baby is given a flame of love.  It is an energy that comes within the mother and father and through their caring, love and hope.  The gift is then set to grow.

The flame gives the child strength and an inner well-being.  A spirit evolves inside to explore and thrive.

If the infant is brought into the world without the gifts of love and kindness the child interprets this as their own fault.  A conclusion is drawn that there is something wrong with them.  Not on an intellectual level but something deep inside is wounded.  The inner flame is not nurtured and built upon by the parents.

There are many aspects of this gift the parents have for the child.  Some children are literally unwelcome, others are loved but the parents are not fully committed to be a mother or father.  Some parent’s carry significant wounds themselves so there is less presence in caring and loving to give to the infant.  The baby does not comprehend these aspects they sense the deficiency inside the parents and take the blame on them selves.

When a baby comes into the world they are the essence of joy.   As they grow into infancy the happiness that they are is an expression of love that is close to divine and at the same time innocent.   It is the child’s gift that they have to give to their parents and the world.  It is healing for the parents to receive their baby, as they can be inspired of this pure love that they once were.  It also reaffirms to the infant or child that they have value, giving them encouragement to share of them selves out into the world.

If the child is not acknowledged of their gift of love and are not affirmed something begins to sour. They eventually begin to buy into their parents beliefs that the world is not a magical place.  The child believes that they are not magical.  The flame inside falters and the child begins to believe in the adult world of a lack of love.  Most importantly the child feels shame that they were incapable of making a difference.

By Bart Sharp

The lie about negative emotions (especially our past ones) that people believe is that the pain can hurt us.  So many of us were taught this as children to avoid our feelings or get through them as quickly as possible. Or as children they were too overwhelmed due to that we were not allowed to express our emotions thus we began to numb ourselves or disconnect from our feelings.  If we can perceive these feelings as what they are, feeling with an energetic/visceral component we can get the memory that stimulates the fear of the present.

For example breaking up with a girlfriend may bring up a variety of emotions such as grief, rage and anger.  It is important when these feelings come up to identify them and be present with the energy of it.  You will discover a new language inside of you, our emotions have an specific energy, through experience you will know it.  Also, specific emotions often appear in certain places.  If it is anger you may feel it in your stomach.  When you feel it, be present with it, even ask the energy/your body questions to find out as much as you can about it.  You may get answers from your body.  This is a process of getting you out of your head and into a greater reserve of awareness, your body.

I like to feel the intensity of an emotion such as anger or rage and let that energy out by screaming into a pillow or hitting my bed.  I feel a literal transference of the anger or rage coming out of my stomach and through my mouth when I scream.  I always feel better afterwards.   I never place the anger or rage towards the other person as that would be a form of aggression.  Aggression recreates the anger or emotion.  Instead set your target to identify, express and release it.

After you release the current emotions there may be more underlying emotions.  It is good to ask the question, “Are these feelings from my present or my past?”  Trust your inner voice and your body with what thoughts come up.  I often get the information in a flash like a quick image of my mother or information comes up from my stomach about the situation at hand.  I begin processing whatever comes into my awareness.  I may not understand it but experience has taught me to trust it.

I may ask next,  “Where is this stored in my body?”   Then I will receive sensation of tension, distress or some other message within me.  I then place my attention on that body part.  I feel the sensations.  I ask my body questions such as, “Where did this originate?”  “Did it come from my mother?”  “Did it occur before I was two years old?”  I respect my hunches and what information that my body tells me.  I get a lot of my sensations from my gut that give me valuable information.

Doing this type I work I release from the past and the patterns it uses to unconsciously influence my present day-to-day life.  With this freedom I am able to see my present situations more clearly and without the influences of past fears.

By Bart Sharp

I met Titus a few months ago as he came to me to let go of what he called “his insane anger towards his father, the most painful relationship of his life”.   As Titus told some of the stories of his life he spoke of how he was mistreated by his father and stated in detail of how his father had chosen time and time again to alienate Titus and other family members from him through his aggression.  I listened to Titus’ non-stop blaming of his life on his father for twenty minutes before I directed the angry man away from the attacks with one question. “What was your part in this Titus?”

Titus stopped.  For a long moment he could not respond.  Then finally said, “He is the person that created the crimes, what do you mean, ‘What is my part?’  I did nothing wrong here.”  I promptly agreed with Titus that he may have done nothing wrong in this situation but finding blame and how the other person wronged him will not find Titus much freedom from his anger.

The purpose of looking back at our past it is to find information and observe our feelings.  We are looking for the clarity to find out what we were contributing in the situations.  Even if it is a role of a victim or reacting in response with aggression we played a part of the conflict with our own life.

Titus and I took three of the stories of his father and began to break down what he did in the conflict, which was to fight back and be the protector of the other younger siblings.  Then Titus explored and felt the sensations of anger in his body when he relived the experiences.  From there Titus and I began to do energetic clearings on those type of memories and he finally began to receive relief from his rage.

When we relive our past and continue to blame the other person we find little to no resolve in the situation especially when it re-activates our anger.  We are basically re-stimulating the memory.  It then activates our adrenal glands through the resentments and we become charged by the emotional memory. For many they are unconscious of this pattern and do so to re-stimulate themselves in the negativity, as a way to activate their adrenal glands. The unconscious reward is they are stimulated from a negative experience, but none the less stimulated in this futile way.

It is a sad story for Titus that he spent much of his adult hood reliving his pains again and again.  Now he has an opportunity to finally let go of his past at a deeper level and live a much calmer, productive life.

By Bart Sharp

An anger management Quiz can be quite simple.  Is your anger passive or active?  If it is passive, in other words the anger you experience is for most part not expressed but held inside of you.  Instead of taking an anger management quiz read the below story and receive some effective tools in how to release your suppressed anger.  If you follow the simple tools like Peter did, you may never have a passive form of anger working against you again.

Peter was a quiet man who worked in an office as a computer programmer.  The work itself had its demands like most jobs.  But what overwhelmed Peter was his boss occasionally confronting him with parts of his performance he was performing up to par.  However, Peter was not singled out as the only person, the supervisor had strong expectations for everyone.

When Peter went home he experienced negative thoughts about his boss as he relived the incidents time and time again.  Those experiences grew into dread about what would happen the next time he was confronted and how he would like to react to this person above him.   Peter found himself harboring much anger towards this man who he had less than a dozen negative experiences with during his three-year tenure there.  In fact there was much that he respected about his boss.

When Peter went home or was in periods of time that he was quiet he would often find himself mentally reliving the resentments towards his boss in his head.  Oddly enough it effected his body as well.  Peter could feel the stress in his stomach as well as he relived the past and projected into an unknown future.

The fact of the matter was that this was not a new behavior for Peter as he resented other people who were authority figures, adversaries and people he was close to that he felt treated him unfairly.  It always seemed like there were a few people in his life that fit into this mold.

As Peter sat with his frustration with his boss an intuitive therapist had told him to feel the experience and not think it.  Willing to do this differently Peter sat quietly and felt the distress in his body.  After a few minutes of sitting with the uncomfortable sensations Peter could clearly feel the most intense area of stress were in his lower intestines on his right side.  The longer he remained focused on the sensations Peter developed more of an acute sensitivity to the energetic memories.  They felt in an odd way painful mainly because he was now hypersensitive to what they were, but the discomfort was not the same as a hurt from an injury.  It was the actual memory of the distress that Peter was experiencing.

Through practice over time Peter became adept at feeling these spots in his body that held an energetic memory of his emotions, especially anger and trauma. They would feel like hard rock shapes that resonated when he thought of the unpleasant occurrences in his life.   As Peter sat and paid attention to the uncomfortable parts in his body they would eventually soften and they appeared to transform into something lighter inside.  Peter saw a direct correlation to resolving the energetic memories and having fewer resentments in his thought processes.

After getting more guidance from his therapist friend Peter learned that his boss was not the first person he held resentments towards, it was a reoccurring pattern in his life.   The pains he felt from the experiences with his boss went back to an older source, his father.  Peter began to recall the memories with his father and feel them in the same ways he did with his boss.  Peter would relive those impossible, unhappy times and feel his body react in extremely stressful ways.  Although he felt the energies of shame, fear and anger in his body, but due to the fact he was coached of when doing this work he knew not to judge any of it as wrong or bad but to strictly observe it.   The reality was that these energetic memories of childhood were only the past hidden away and in most cases, suppressed away in fear.  Now Peter knew that none of this could hurt him, even if he had once believed they could as a child.  Peter observed the stories of his father controlling and abusing him, felt those sensations in his body in a non-judging way and they slowly began to change.

Peter had hundreds of these memories inside of him and they would reactivate when he was in a situation similar to the situations he had with his dad.  Peter’s boss was much like his father and therefore stimulated these past energies.  Since he has been working on the past with his father Peter has changed in his reactions to his boss.  He lost his distress, he can now receive criticism easily because an unconscious fear that has been there since his childhood is no longer reacting with him.

Peter continues to work for short times during the day on these memories when they come up.  It is simply the process of having a negative thought, then feeling the place that it parallels the thought with a body discomfort and being present with it.  He actually nurtures it through his presence with the energetic memory.  Peter will also ask his body where the memory originated.  Through practice Peter began to sometimes see an image of the memory in his consciousness.  Peter simply trusted that this is what the body distress is working from.  He proceeds with the work with a better idea of what memory is currently being stimulated.

As Peter evolved with his skills the level of depth to change his life improved.  He also began to pair this body memory work with energetic clearings.  This took the work much deeper at a faster pace.

In a years time of using these simple tools Peter has dramatically changed.  He no longer holds long terms resentments to other people. He remembers the unpleasant times with his father but does not have severe reactions to recalling the memories.  He looks at them in a detached point of view.  Since Peter no longer is habituated to being passively angry at the people he is closest to.  His focus has changed to live more happily minute to minute and not live in his past distresses.  He actually feels content when he is quiet and alone.  The weight of resentments do not plague him, instead he creates things in his life that he enjoys such as meditating, having a girlfriend, making art and gardening.

By Bart Sharp

This anger management test is the third and final in a series of articles designed to stimulate our own perspectives in how we manage anger.  Anger management is an area of living that has no specific process in how we manage our anger or for that matter how we have created it.  It is different for everyone, therefore an anger management test may be difficult to create and assess.  This anger management test is designed to open our perspectives and give us some ideas on how to manage and deal with anger.  Below this short list of questions are comments designed to enhance our knowledge of anger and anger management.

1.  When you are angry what does your anger do inside of you?  To be held back or does it goes out in expression?

2.  Are using strategies or techniques to let go of the anger you experience in your daily life?

3.  Do you become angry over the same situations time and time again?

4. When you experience anger: Is it to be avoided and considered bad?

5.  Were you scared of your parents when they were angry?  If yes, to what degree, of violence, intimidation, punishment, verbal attacks did you experience?

6.  When you experience anger: Is it to be avoided and considered bad? Do you judge other people as less than because they do not meet a standard that you have set?

1.  When we express anger we are in the process of letting it go.  With the exception of aggression it does not matter how we express anger to get a releasing affect; although some techniques are more effective than others.  A common misidentification people make is that we do not have to take direct action to the person or situation we are angry at. We do however need to process it in some way.

The more we hold our anger back and not express it we turn it inside of us, it then becomes an energy working against us.

2.  Finding a variety of strategies to work with anger is usually the best.  There are varieties of techniques available but finding tools that help us get in touch with the physical or visceral sensations that occur inside of us when we are angry helps us come to terms with the experience easier.  In my opinion intellectually processing the situation will be more affective once the physical sensations of anger are released, calmed or out of the crises

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3.  If you become angry time and again in the same situations there is some experience probably from your past that triggers it to be relived.  By going back and seeing the judgments we made of how wrong that situation was or even the rightness of it (a judgment as well) we see how we began to become stuck in that point of view.  We can free ourselves by examining those past judgments, to feel the pain of them, to find forgiveness and maybe allowance of our past.  Therefore when we meet that situation again we view it differently, we are not automatically reverting back to the out emotions of the past but seeing the situation totally from our present tense.

4.  The purpose of anger is stimulate us to action.  If we look beyond the right and wrong of it and look to what is occurring for us that is the source of it we break into a new place with anger.  We do something when we get angry, even if it is simply stating “I am angry because ____ is happening.”   Sometimes that is enough.   Most importantly some kind of expression is needed, remember no one needs to get hurt when anger is expressed in order for it to be released.

If we are angry and we are physical with our expression, that anger transfers over to the person we touch, (any kind of touch).  Something to keep in mind when you are angry.

5.  If you were extremely scared of the punishments you could receive from your parents it was probably not a safe environment for you.  We may rationalize how our parents did the best they could and they loved us therefore it was OK.  Those justifications maybe true however if we were scared of our parents reactions as a child, we may have those fears inside of us manipulating our reactions to relationships now.   We have strong tendencies to re-create unresolved parts that we experienced with our parents through other people.  Just a thought to consider when looking for your next sweetheart.

6.  If we see others as less than us maybe the question to ask is: “What judgment and/or fear have I created about this person that is really a reflection of the fears in myself?”  For example if an employee who seems to ostracize specific fellow workers who appeared to not work as hard as she did.  When she makes that judgment they do not meet the standard and then begins to ostracize them: Most likely there is a fear that she did shoddy work at one time, maybe a fear that she is not enough therefore she has set a judging standard of what enough is, or was let down by people who she depended on, therefore she has judgments that she will be let down again.  Finding how she created that reality through her judgments would be a tremendous load off her back.