Shame, group energy & the inner-critic

About a month ago, I put my big girl pants on and stood up in front of a room of about 40 strangers to share ideas from my book. I have shared ideas with my community before (you here and on my Substack and Instagram) and I've done a couple of podcasts (here's a link to one if you would like to listen) but it felt magnitudes more vulnerable to be in front of a group in person - all eyes on me as I stood up to teach my ideas.

Eek.

But something special happened in that room at the Om & Bass festival and I have been trying to crystallise and understand it in my mind so that I can share some of the good stuff with you here.

1. Everyone believes they are alone in shame but together is the remedy

All weekend, at Om & Bass, I had the joy of going to different workshops – breathwork, meditation, yoga, sound baths, movement, dance, tapping and whenever people were asked by a workshop facilitator – what is in the way of you feeling good in your life? The answers came back:

I never feel good enough, I don’t feel worthy, my head gets in my way, my self-worth, my anxious brain, I don’t make time for myself, I am bottom of the list, my imposter syndrome…

When I opened the doors to my workshop I was with my own insecurities – “no one will come” AND what I had heard was in my head too, bringing a quiet hope that perhaps people would turn up. At this sunny, smiling, dancing event there were a lot of people quietly struggling with their inner-relationship.

In they came…at first just two and then more and more. Women and men. People in their 20s to 60s. I closed the doors with the room full – 38 people and then I saw others sitting outside, settling in cross-legged by the open patio doors, listening in from the grass…more people than could fit in the room came.

Everyone found their place and I began. I started by explaining who I am and about my work and book, I defined an inner-critic and outlined the huge impact it can have on mental health, physical wellbeing and on the shape of our lives and onwards to the world. I spoke about my own experience of my inner-critic over my life - how much pain it has cause me.

And then I asked people to close their eyes while I led them to understand their critic more. I saw people feverishly writing, there was a tangible discomfort - shifting bodies and fidgeting, a few people began to quietly cry. And then as the exercise ended and people "came back" to the room, I invited them to look around. To see and acknowledge this room full of people - all of whom has been reflecting on their inner-pain and self-criticism. To absorb that they are not alone in this part of their lives and selves.

Gulp.

Nothing was said or shared.

And yet - so much was said and shared.

With no words - pain and witnessing and humanity and vulnerability and community was said and shared.

Where do we have spaces to bond in what is hard?

What is the impact of us holding this stuff alone?

I stood - sweating like a crazy person, holding the moment - and what I saw was a need for connection in our pain. And how very hard (agonising really) it is to name our internal struggles out loud and sit with them.

How hard but how healing it is, to be together.

Everyone who has an inner-critic, believes they are a special kind of broken. But the truth is we share that belief and only in coming together and naming it, can we start to break the bind of shame. That's also why I started the session talking about how bad my head can be. And why I start my book writing from inside my mental health collapse.

2. Discomfort isn't sexy but it's powerful

When I arrived at the festival I had that, "Oh no everyone is much cooler than me" feeling - all glitter and face paint, yoga bods and festival wear (or at least that is the filter my critic dropped over my eyes on arrival). There was so much joy there - a silent disco grooving away in the sun, a group lying in a forest bathing meditation in a nearby copse, Tai Chi to your left, groups eating vegetarian Jerk curries and bopping to the DnB DJ in the main field. I would say the vibe was "healthy feel good" - laughter, dancing, movement, wellness.

And then there was my workshop....pahahahahaha.

More, "let's sit in the shit" vibe. Not upbeat. Not at all.

You know me, I cracked a few jokes and smiled a lot but still...

I will admit. I had hoped that I would be in a fist punching high after delivering my workshop - buzzing adrenaline and "I did it! Whoop!" energy.

Not so much.

I felt quiet.

Because my workshop wasn't a high. And I think that matters.

We can grow self-worth through adding positives to our life (I share my thoughts on these in my book, and you can read about them here- The 7 Truths of Living Well) but I believe self-worth is also about how we learn to hold ourselves through our darkest days. If my identity and self-acceptance relies on me always being in the easiest parts of me to like, then I am setting myself up for failing and more self-criticism.

It's hard to turn towards what causes us pain in ourselves. It's easier to sit in the sun.

So when I looked at those 40 people AND at myself for standing up there and bloody doing it, I felt a quiet pride and recognition of bravery.

Afterwards a lot of people came to find me, to ask me questions or to tell me about their struggles and seek advice. Others gave me some amazing feedback - the two words that I received the most?

Powerful - this was so powerful, thank you for coming and please keep going.

Natural - you spoke so naturally and I can feel how much you know and care.

And I think these words can help guide us all - it is natural to struggle and it is powerful to own this and claim it as part of being human and part of our multi-faceted identities.

3. The first step? Turn up as you are.

Thinking about the festival more this little sentence came to me:

The first step in healing isn't self-love, it's fully acknowledging your self-hate and struggles.

I absolutely loved being at the festival. I love being in "feel good" - who doesn't? But I also remembered that, over the years, I have sat in yoga classes or meditation spaces or other settings and been guided to "open up to self-love" or to feel something good and lovely and just not been able to feel it or go there.

In fact, often I would actually be noticing a fierce rejection of this, a resistance to self-acceptance. A total block to self-care.

Or a burning anger with myself - because shouldn't I be able to do this? And aren't I just standing in my own way? And isn't self-love just another f*cking thing that I am getting wrong?

Or (a bit later in my healing) a deep sadness that this was so hard for me - how much I needed this feeling and to change my relationship with myself.

And a kind of grief, for all the years of pain I had lived, hating my body and berating myself and endlessly pushing myself on and on, living in ways that felt depleting and punishing. Endlessly in cycles of burnout, stress and then depression.

It's different for me now, I do feel that valuing of myself much more easily. But it's not consistent.

I say this to you, because often we are waiting to feel something to begin - courage, hope, strength, a positive outlook, a sense of deserving change - but this is too far away. So we don't begin.

I believe we begin when we bring awareness to how hard it is right now. Not in the hope it can be different but because we are tired of it always being the same.

Exhaustion often kickstarts change. Being tired of the relentless repetition of it all.

Teaching that workshop was a reminder to me - just turn up and acknowledge yourself, be open to the difficulty being acknowledged. Just step in and sit down, feeling crap. This is often the first step towards self-worth.

4. Imperfect is good enough (possibly actually perfect)

My self-doubt hasn’t gone.

"You're not saying anything new. It's nothing special" pings about in my brain.

or

"You don't really know anything - there are people more expert than you - you'll be called out."

or

"Who wants to hear from a therapist who sometimes hates herself?"

All of these thoughts are resident in my head.

But that workshop changed something for me.

If I was open to truly seeing what it meant for people to be there (really absorbing this and being moved by it) then I had to be open to seeing my part in creating the content, writing my book, shaping the workshop, practising it and being the person to stand up and do it.

So alongside my critic, now I have another part - the speaker, the leader - not a leader way out in front, not healed, not perfect, far from it. But a new belief, sat next to the doubt, that I can do this and that it matters that I do.

It's easy for me to dismiss myself. But I don't want to dismiss the people who came and took part. I watched people feel safe enough to go to their secret pain – they wrote about it, they listened and reflected, I saw people cry and hug each other at the end. They wrote down what their inner-critic tells them and left me post-its detailing something their inner-critic says to them, so I can unshame this experience for others and spread the experience wider.

And I saw how moving it was when I invited them to look around and absorb that they were not alone in this – they were part of a roomful of people; all genders, ethnicities, ages, issues, shapes, backgrounds – they belonged and they weren’t alone.

I watched one woman cry as I explained how hard it has been in my head over the years.

A man found me hours after the workshop to thank me for explaining how, if we saw two people on the street and one of them was the inner-critic and the other, the part of us on the receiving end, we would probably want to intervene to stop a horrible, attacking and mean interaction.

Brave, generous, self-hating humans came and gave their time.

Can we begin to see and value this in each other? This multi-faceted humanity.

And can we practice claiming this for ourselves?

This is what the workshop meant to me.

(having a bit of a weep writing this).

There's loads more I could say and I probably will. I will share more as I reflect and I hope there will be other opportunities coming up where I can share this experience with others (and share in it myself).

In conclusion - the workshop was a big deal.

If you know of any festivals, local community mental health groups or others spaces I could go to - please drop me an email. And get in touch if any of this has landed for you - emily@emilymccoyshares.co.uk

If you know someone who struggles with self-acceptance then please offer them this email and community too.

Emily x