by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
Shame, Guilt, and Trauma – The Unholy Trinity – Are The Greatest Barriers to REAL Life
If you’re feeling ‘stuck’, lost, or that you need to make some serious changes in your life then the odds are that there’s a war unfolding inside you.
This ‘war’ isn’t a flashy Marvel-style showdown, but a subtle, exhausting dance between the ‘part’ of you that wants to be whole and the ‘part’ of you that’s pretending to be something else and so has ended up being fragmented instead:
This is the Shadow Dance:
The ongoing, inner conflict between your ego (the mask you wear to survive) and your shadow (the truth you’re avoiding about yourself and life).
It’s not a always a fair fight because most people spend their lives letting ego lead, while the shadow festers in the wings.
Here’s the truth, though:
The only reason the Shadow Dance keeps going is because of unprocessed emotional ‘stuff’.
This ‘stuff’ (A.K.A emotional baggage) creates fear – fear of facing yourself, fear of seeing the world as it is, and a fear of dropping the performance and being real.
Sadly, most of this fear isn’t real or justified because of the threat of actual, physical danger – instead it’s actually F.E.A.R (“False Evidence Appearing Real”): a matrix of confusion that we project for ourselves to live in because we think we can’t handle emotional discomfort (we can).
At the centre of all this F.E.A.R?
The Unholy Trinity of Shame, Guilt, and Trauma.
These three emotional forces are the real villains behind the masks we wear; they distort our sense of self, fracture our connection to truth, and keep us clinging to bullshit stories about who we are.
Let’s dig a little deeper:
The Unholy Trinity: Shame, Guilt, and Trauma – What We’ll Cover in this Article
- Shame, Guilt, and Trauma – The Unholy Trinity – Are The Greatest Barriers to REAL Life
- 1. Shame: The Inner Whisper That Says “The Problem is YOU”
- 2. Guilt: The Guardian of the False Self
- 3. Trauma: The Fortress of the Ego
- The Common Link: Fear of Truth
- The Way Out: Awareness, Acceptance, Action
- 2. Acceptance (Integrate the Shadow)
- 3. Action (Trust Yourself and Life)
- Final Thoughts: The Holy Work of Facing the Unholy
1. Shame: The Inner Whisper That Says “The Problem is YOU”
Shame isn’t “I did something bad” (that’s guilt) but the much more nefarious core sensation that “I AM bad“.
This kind of unresolved toxic shame is the most corrosive emotion because it attacks your very identity and convinces you that you are fundamentally broken, unlovable, or unworthy.
When we’ve started to identify as an extension of this kind of shame, then we create a mask (the ego) in order to try and hide from the feelings:
We become the perfect partner, the overachiever, the selfless friend, the nice guy, the funny one or anything else that we think will help us to avoid people seeing what we fear (F.E.A.R) is our rotten core.
The ego loves this – it feeds on shame because shame creates a sense of dependency on the mask and makes us WANT to keep believing the lies it shows us.
After all, you can’t afford to be real if real means rejection (which is unfortunate because REALNESS is the opposite of ego).
Here’s the twist, though:
Most of this shame was inherited through childhood experiences, social conditioning, and cultural programming.
The truth is, you were never the problem, but something made you believe you deserved to keep living as if you were.
And that’s how the Shadow Dance continues…
2. Guilt: The Guardian of the False Self
Guilt is different from shame because it’s about our actions and goals instead of our identity (and so it says things like “I did something wrong” or “What I really want to do with my life is wrong“).
Of course, we can and do do ‘bad’ things sometimes but – in many cases – the thing you feel guilty for isn’t actually ‘wrong’ – it just doesn’t fit the role you’re playing.
Want to rest? Feel guilty.
Want to set a boundary? Guilt time.
Want to follow your desires, express something true, and live unapologetically? More guilt.
Guilt keeps you chained to your social conditioning, which keeps your ego where it is, and prevents your Shadow Self from being integrated so you can feel, think, and BE real again:
It’s the voice of your inner critic, trained by years of ‘shoulds’ and ‘musts’ – it tells you that your real self is unacceptable and so you better change (hide) to conform to the world (which is unreal anyway because the world is not reality).
So, what do you do when guilt is driving you?
You retreat into the role, you water yourself down, you apologise for your truth and become unreal.
Once again, the mask stays on, the ego wins, and the Shadow Dance continues.
3. Trauma: The Fortress of the Ego
If shame is the root of the ego and guilt is the leash, then trauma is the full fortress.
In sort, trauma builds walls and keeps us rigidly locked inside ourselves by constantly reminding us that “The world isn’t safe. People aren’t safe. I’m not safe”.
Trauma doesn’t always come from dramatic events:
Sometimes, it’s death by a thousand emotional cuts like the absence of validation or the unpredictability and undependability of ‘love’…the small but constant betrayals of being unseen.
Trauma embeds itself into the nervous system which doesn’t just make you feel something – it makes you become someone else and develop a personality for mere survival instead of REAL life.
It causes you adopt survival strategies: pleasing, performing, perfecting, numbing; it causes you to fear (F.E.A.R) your own emotions and to project your fragmentation out into the universe around you; it causes you to lose yourself in an attempt to ‘protect’ yourself.
The more trauma you carry, the more rigidly you cling to your mask because it’s not just about approval anymore (like with shame and guilt) – it’s about literal survival.
(Or, at least, that’s what we think when we’re trauma-driven – really it stops us living).
This is the deepest level of emotional ‘stuff’ and often the most difficult to face (some people never face certain traumas because it’s simply too painful and they don’t know how to do it).
The Common Link: Fear of Truth
The Unholy Trinity all lead to the same outcome – you live in fear of the truth which stops you from growing REAL.
(Because the only way to really grow real is to 1) Uncover the truth, and, 2) Live and breathe the truth).
- Truth about who you are (because you’re not ready to face your shame and allow it to dissolve instead of drive your life).
- Truth about what you want (because you want to be accepted and win approval to fill the Void and to fit into the roles you’ve been asked to play).
- Truth about how you feel (because your feelings are seen as physical danger instead of emotional discomfort – which you can always handle).
- Truth about what happened (because of how the truth might threaten your ego and the stories it depends on).
Whenever you face the truth, you have to drop the mask” (which is why I like to say “The truth will set you free (but first it will piss you off and make you miserable”).
And if you drop the mask, what happens?
Shame says you’ll be rejected. Guilt says you’ll be bad. Trauma says you won’t survive.
If you believe these LIES then you stay in the Shadow Dance, your life repeats the same loops, and you stay in a dreamworld that’s fast becoming a nightmare.
It doesn’t have to be that way, though, because there’s an option that’s way more REAL.
The Way Out: Awareness, Acceptance, Action
Let’s get practical for a second:
Nobody needs to live under the crushing weight of the Unholy Trinity and watch their lives spiral into deeper and deeper unreality.
You can walk the path back into wholeness by going through a process of Awareness, Acceptance, Action (this is the framework I use with my coaching clients over the period of a four-month container):
1. Awareness (Deconstruct the Ego)
The first step is always to start noticing when you’re acting from ego instead of your REALNESS.
You can do this by learning to monitor your thoughts, detaching from the unreal ones, and shifting focus to your real vision (see the free thought log tool on this site to get started with this: Hamster Wheel Thought Log).
You can also start questioning yourself and paying more attention to how you show up (as either real or unreal):
- When are you performing?
- When are you filtering yourself?
- When are you avoiding stillness and chasing distraction?
Awareness is brutal at first because you start seeing just how often you’re being unreal but it’s the first step to freedom because the ego thrives on autopilot and awareness breaks the loop.
2. Acceptance (Integrate the Shadow)
This means feeling the truth instead of resisting it or distorting it (because of ego and emotional ‘stuff) -no bypassing, no judging, just letting yourself feel what you’ve been avoiding instead of accepting.
Here is a general strategy for each ‘arm’ of the Unholy Trinity:
- Shame: Let it rise. Name it. Remind yourself: I’m not ‘bad’; I’m REAL.
- Guilt: Ask yourself: Is this real guilt or just social programming? If it’s real guilt, learn whatever lesson it’s teaching you, and then let it go (only unreal guilt and social programming lingers).
- Trauma: Let your body speak and get it moving again by breathing, doing somatic exercises like yoga, or getting out in nature. You need to start regulating your nervous system and taking more aligned action until you have evidence that the fiction (not facts) that trauma shows you is unreal (F.E.A.R).
You can’t think your way to healing – you have to feel your way there and align yourself with the natural drive inside yourself towards wholeness (instead of the unnatural one towards fragmentation).
3. Action (Trust Yourself and Life)
Take action that aligns with who you really are – there are more posts on this site and in my books that go into more detail (this is a good start: REAL Action is the Only Cure for Anything: Changing Things in a REAL Way).
In general, you need to start doing things like this in a habitual way:
- Speak the truth.
- Set boundaries (say “Yes” to what’s real and “No” to what’s unreal).
- Create from the heart instead of just doing what your mind has been told or what it tells you).
- Do what you need to do without explaining or justifying yourself (unless you want to).
- Learn to not accept other people’s baggage or ‘stuff’ and to take it onboard as your own.
Action proves to your nervous system that the world won’t collapse if you stop hiding.
The more real you are, the more the mask falls away, and the more free you become.
Final Thoughts: The Holy Work of Facing the Unholy
Shame, guilt, and trauma are not evidence that you’re broken – they’re evidence that you’re human.
They are not the enemy but hiding from them is because it causes your life to spiral out of control and to become more and more unreal.
When you face them, you reclaim your energy – this allows you to reclaim your identity in realness and to stop living reactively and start living intentionally.
You come home to yourself because here’s the truth:
Wholeness is not becoming someone new – it’s remembering who you were before the mask (which is why we can say realness isn’t achieved, it’s received).
This real version of you that’s revealed isn’t afraid of the truth.
It is the truth.
Stay real out there,
P.S. If you’re ready to grow real in your own life and overcome the limitations of shame, guilt, and trauma then book a free call with me and I’ll help you start moving right away.
Trust: A Manual for Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace is a book about learning to return to your realness by cultivating trust in yourself and trust in life.
It contains practical exercises and dedicated meditations (Transformational Bridges) to take you DEEP in knowing yourself and life.
This book will answer many of the questions you have growing REAL and flowing towards wholeness. It covers everything from shame to addiction to the unconscious mind and synchronicity (and way more).
Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness is a book designed to help you look at your life from the inside-out so that you can stop holding yourself back and go get what you really want.
It contains 166 practical ‘Revolutions’ for awareness and over 8,000 Self-Guidance Questions for you to uncover new insight about yourself, the world, and reality that you can translate into action and start building your real life on the realest possible foundation.
Shadow Life is an exploration of the human shadow and the hidden side of our personalities. It looks at the masks we wear, where these masks come from, and how we can take them off.
The book explores how we can better manage our relationships with shame, guilt, and trauma in order to remove the Mask that the world has asked us to wear (and that we forgot we were wearing) so we can live an authentic life with less drama, chaos, or BS whilst we’re still around.
The Flow Builder Journal has everything you need to make the next 21-weeks of your life a turning point.
It has monthly, weekly, and daily (morning and evening) check-ins, tools and reflections to keep you in the zone and keep you flowing with zest and momentum.
If you want to get unstuck and grow REAL then check it out.
Download EGO/SHADOW/TRUST - a free guide to transformation that will walk you through the vital stages of Awareness, Acceptance, and Action with practical strategies to implement right away.
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