Shame and Punishment

"If I screw up, I deserve to be shamed and punished."

That's not my voice. At the same time, it is.

Earlier this week, I was overwhelmed with having too many things on my plate, and feeling stuck and not making progress in any of them.

That frustration led me to write this previous tweet - that I feel like shit.

After a short meditation later that night and an intense IFS session the next morning, I started to feel better. I took the rest of the week to give myself space to process what just happened, and what I had discovered.

The discovery I made - some 18 years ago, after a brutal experience getting punished by a teacher, a part of me internalized that if I screw up, I deserve to be punished.

All the students in my class were returning from school assembly, I think. I was maybe class monitor. It was my responsibility to stop everyone from making noise, otherwise adjacent classes would be disrupted.

I was failing at my job. Miserably. In a desperate attempt to get everyone's attention, I said "fine, make as much noise as you want."

A teacher walked in exactly that moment.

**SLAP**

Left cheek. I barely registered it. I think the mental pain overtook any physical pain I had felt.

The next moment, I found myself kneeling down in the teacher's classroom with my hands crossed, holding my ears.

I felt utter humiliation and shame. And I remember being filled with this feeling that "this is not fair! I was trying to do my job, and I did not get a chance to explain myself!"

The entire experience disappeared into my subconscious, from where it has apparently been coming out whenever I screw up to tell me that "I deserve to be punished."

And there I was, punishing myself. Last week, whenever I would go out, I'd eat a dessert, look down at my belly, and say "I deserve to be fat."

Oh my god, how unkind I was towards myself.

But also this part of me that was formed and frozen in an experience as a 12 or 13 year old teenager, did not know any better. He internalized this lesson, that if we screw up, we deserve to be shamed and punished.

With my partner's help, I discovered this voice. I spent an entire morning in a deep IFS meditation speaking as my adult SELF to this teenager part of me.

(IFS = Internal Family System. I learnt about it from the book No Bad Parts)

I heard his frustration. I felt the burden he was carrying all these years, silently, while holding his ears with an "I'm sorry" face.

I spoke to this part, with the kindness and empathy that he should have received.

"What happened to you was not right. The adult should have asked you to explain yourself. Even if you messed up, the adult should have tried to understand you first, even help you, and even if you had to be reprimanded, it can be done in a way that does not shatter your dignity and cause you humiliation. You did not deserve any of it."

"But you don't have to hold on to it anymore. I am here now. I will take care of us. When we face a setback, we may feel sad or upset or disheartened. But a setback is just that, a setback. We can pause, give ourselves space, and then get back to working on ourselves and our goals. All without a moment of shaming or punishing ourselves. Because when we face a setback, what we really deserve is kindness and empathy. And I am going to do that for us, from now on."

After saying all this to my teenager self out loud with my eyes closed, I felt tears streaming down my cheeks as I felt and imagined hugging this young part of me.

I felt a huge burden release from around my chest, near my heart.

When I opened my eyes, I felt light and happy.

--

To perform this meditation, I used the help of a voice journal app built by my friend Abhinav Rai. It's called WhatsHappening.

While most of my meditation was a self-paced voice journaling session, WhatsHappening went through my session and asked me really thoughtful questions, which helped me further process my thoughts and feelings.