How Shame Can Influence Autoimmune Health
There are a few ways the body can contract a thyroid or autoimmune condition. They are either genetically passed down, through surrounding environment, improper nourishment through diet or through trauma.
I find it a bit strange that there are so many people talking about mindset and positive thinking and yada yada but no one talks about how trauma of all kinds can and does affect one’s autoimmune health.
I contracted hashimoto’s thyroiditis, in part, due to generational trauma. I had known for years that trauma lives in the body but was also trying to deny my own inheritance of that trauma. I would subconsciously tell myself it wasn’t really happening or that what had happened wasn’t bad enough to contract an autoimmune condition.
But eventually, my trauma kept building and building and building and since I had spent almost all of my adult life living with family that caused this trauma, it was hard to get away from. So, my attempts to hide from it were not on purpose - it was simply the way my mind, body and spirit were trying to protect me. Because that’s what the body does, it tries to do the best it can to bring things into homeostasis and when it can’t regulate itself due to an energy blockage caused by trauma it hides the trauma within the cells of the body and gut to keep it “safe”.
But it isn’t really safe there, is it? Keeping that trauma trapped is what creates the perfect environment for it to infiltrate the cell walls and lining of the gut. And when hidden away like this, that’s exactly what happens. There have been a number of studies over the past several years indicating that there is a significant correlation between trauma, especially in early life and the development of thyroid disorders.
Throat chakra
Now, let’s talk about how this happens energetically. The thyroid gland sits on the throat, right on top of the throat chakra. If you’re unfamiliar with the chakras of the body, ayurveda or yoga, the throat chakra rules communication. It is how we express ourselves outwardly to the world.
But when we inherit shame, we begin to distrust ourselves. We may question who we are, try to become someone else, we may step away from our core selves and try to become or embody someone else, we may try to “fit in”, we may try to hide from our shame or convince ourselves we’ve healed it when we haven’t or that it isn’t that bad when it is.
I’ve done many of the above things and if there is one piece of advice I would give to my younger self it would be to be unafraid of stepping outside of what is “accepted as the culturl norm” or what is accepted by others around me and begin embracing my own unique self.
How I’m healing my shame:
The way I’ve been healing my shame is four-fold:
First, I identify the shame.
Then, I dig deeper and find the root cause.
Next, I notice how the shame I have is impacting my daily behavoir(s). I name those behaviors.
Finally, I observe those behaviors in action and when I can make a different, new or better choice.
Yesterday, I saw someone I know on Instagram ask “Why does it still hurt much? Why does the pain not go away?” in regards to losing their mother. And although grief is different from shame, healing them requires taking the blind-fold off your eyes and looking at the object and situation objectively.
I often see people asking similar questions like, “Why am I still feeling this way?”, “Why is this so hard?” or “Why does this keep coming up again?”
The answers to all of these questions is the same and it’s an answer I have had to reckon with myself over the past six months because I have finally been able to begin healing some long standing trauma now that I no longer live with the family that caused it and do not have to hide or protect myself the way I used to.
I’ll tell you something I’ve come to realize. It sounds counterintuitive, but running into the fire head on is actually much easier and more rewarding than running away from it. Running away only makes the fire bigger. It’s funny because I see people complaining about this all the time - yet the people that do complain are the ones that find comfort in pretending like things are fine when they’re not, they don’t like to go deep (meaning they keep things surface level and never ask themselves those hard hitting questions).
While I’ve never been a surface level person, I can wholeheartedly relate to ignoring my issues and trying to be someone else - someone without issues because it just felt too damn painful to be me sometimes.
My trauma:
When I was a young girl, I remember my grandmother sitting me down and asking me if I had any friends. I have always been a bit of a loner and really only had one friend. So I told her that. In response she said something like good because you cannot trust friends. The only people you can trust are family.
When your mother was your age she would come home daily and tell me everything that happened in her life. She asked my mother why should would choose to confide in her rather than her girl friends and my mother’s response was that friends are back-stabbing. She can only trust her mother.
Now, my mother’s relationship to her mother is quite complicated and I have had to listen to my mother complain about my grandmother almost daily, how much she abused her, how difficult it was to live with her and what a nightmare she is. So, it’s beyond me that she would choose to share her private life with her and then later complain about how my grandmother would read her diary and invade her privacy and all the other myriad ways she cause trauma.
When I first heard my grandmother say those words to me, I didn’t understand it and I didn’t agree with it either. I mean, how was I supposed to carve out a life for myself if I couldn’t trust anyone. This trust issue felt pervasive. It surrounded me and over time I built up mistrust in myself and later on had a hard time building and holding on to female friendships.
With no guidance to lead me in another direction as a young adult and an ambitious drive that pushed me to work myself into the ground, I developed intense chronic fatigue followed by hashimoto’s and now a thyroid issue.
I’m not perfect but coming to terms with issues like these is something that has been incredibly helpful in healing. Because truthfully, it is impossible to heal trauma that is kept buried. You’ve got to bring it to the surface if you want to heal it and that surface may be rocky. You’re going to need support. We all do.