Breaking the Shame Cycle: How Somatic Work Helps Us Unwind the Patterns that Bind Us
Recently, I was discussing the nature of shame with a friend and how it can trap us in a painful cycle that perpetuates itself.
Here’s how it often goes:
An old wound or unprocessed emotion gets triggered, leaving me feeling unworthy, not good enough, or flawed. That feeling is painful and overwhelming, so I reach for something to numb it, like a drink, comfort food, shopping, or scrolling endlessly on my phone.
But then comes another layer of shame. I feel bad about how I tried to escape my feelings. I criticize myself for drinking, eating, spending, or zoning out. That shame becomes another painful emotion I can’t bear to sit with, so I reach again for the same numbing behaviors.
And the loop continues. Action leads to reaction, which leads to more action. Over time, this cycle builds momentum, weaving together patterns that keep me stuck and create more consequences to untangle in the future. It’s like adding more threads to an already tangled knot.
In many yoga traditions and Eastern spiritual philosophies, this endless process is described as the force that binds us to suffering and perpetuates the ongoing cycle of life, death, and rebirth. But you don’t have to use spiritual terms to see how this plays out in everyday life. We’re constantly running from our pain, covering it up, then feeling ashamed about how we covered it up, and taking yet more actions to bury that shame.
This is where somatic work becomes so powerful.
Somatic practices teach us how to turn toward the body rather than away from it. Instead of spinning off into thoughts or numbing behaviors, we learn to gently stay present with the sensations that arise, such as tightness, heat, trembling, hollowness, heaviness, or countless others. These physical sensations often reveal how repressed or unprocessed emotions manifest in our bodies, carrying the residue of past experiences we’ve never fully felt or expressed. By staying with these sensations, we begin to release the emotional charge beneath them, rather than burying it deeper through avoidance or distraction.
When we’re able to feel our feelings in the body, fully and compassionately, we interrupt the cycle. We no longer need to keep layering behaviors on top of our pain to avoid it. And in doing so, we begin to unwind those old patterns, thread by thread.
Rather than adding new layers of suffering that we’ll have to deal with down the line, we begin working through the backlog of old hurts and stories we’ve been carrying. We’re moving in the opposite direction: dissolving rather than accumulating, liberating rather than binding.
For me, this is one of the deepest gifts of somatic work. It’s a way of stepping off the hamster wheel of shame and reaction, and coming home to the body as a place of wisdom, healing, and genuine freedom.
Sam (they/them) is a Registered Clinical Counsellor, Somatic Therapist and IFS Therapist working online and in-person in Vancouver BC.
If you’re curious about exploring how somatic practices can help you break free from shame cycles and old emotional patterns, fill out the form below to book a consult call.
