Module 2 - Clearing Shame

I recently came upon the work of one Dr. Mario Martinez, who is a clinical neuropsychologist, and the
author of a book called THE MIND-BODY CODE.
You can listen to a fascinating podcast that Dr. Martinez conducted on the SoundsTrue network with Tami
Simon, if you download the INSIGHTS AT THE EDGE podcast. A lot of the information in this post comes
from that interview, which you can also find here:http://bit.ly/1FzaBWL
Dr. Martinez has spent his life studying the ways that our thoughts and emotions affect our physical
health. He is particularly interested in the harmful ways that SHAME affects the mind and body.
And he is especially focused on the powerful and negative effects that TRIBAL SHAMING can have on
the human body, and on our emotional lives.

The Language of Shame

What is tribal shaming, you ask?
OK, here goes:
Walk with me through this So...we are all born into a certain tribe, right? This tribe can be our family, our
religion, our neighborhood, our nationality, our culture, etc.
Tribes are important to human beings in fact, they are essential. There is arguably nothing more vital to
the ongoing existence of the human race than the cohesion and protection of a tribe. Our ancestors
endured the fight for survival in the ancient world only because they clung together and shared resources.
Even today in the modern world, tribes are still absolutely essential. Tribes keep babies alive and old
people safe. Tribes care for the sick and the weak. Tribes provide protection, nourishment and warmth to
vulnerable individuals (and we are all vulnerable individuals at some point or another)but most
importantly, tribes provide MEANING.
Simply put: Our tribe of origin tells us who we are. Our tribe tells us what to believe and how to behave.
Each tribe is governed by its own rules. These rules constitute the honor code that defines every tribes
essence. No matter what the tribe, these rules are always sacred and must be sacred because
without those rules, the collective will fall apart, and without the collective, individual people are doomed.
Oftentimes, tribal rules are LITERALLY sacred. These rules are often composed of strict religious
commandments and edicts that must be obeyed rigorously, sometimes on pain of death.
But even when tribal rules are more subtle than literal commandments, they are still sacred. Every family
is tribe, and therefore every family has its own moral and cultural code its own guidelines that signal:
THIS IS HOW WE DO THINGS AROUND HERE.

Thus, the people who raised you injected you with certain rules, habits, morals, and standards. The rules
of your tribe might have been lofty (such as: IN THIS FAMILY, WE ARE ALL RELIGIOUS
FUNDAMENTALISTS) or the rules might have been lowly (such as: IN THIS FAMILY, WE ARE ALL
ABUSIVE ALCOHOLICS) or the rules might have been insanely contradictory (such as: IN THIS
FAMILY, WE ARE RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISTS AND WE ARE ABUSIVE ALCOHOLICS)
Whatever the situation, though, the rules were definitely the rules, and they were made quite clear to you
from the beginning.
In order to remain safe and accepted within the boundaries of the tribe, you must follow these rules.
Maybe as you grew up, those rules continued to make sense to you. If so, then you got lucky. Because
then your lifes course is clear all you need to do is obey your familiar tribal rules (and pass those rules
down to your offspring) and everything will be safe and clean and simple.
Or maybe not.
Maybe as you grew older, you found that your own values and morals and standards and
aspirations were completely different than those that had been taught to you by your tribe of
origin.

Maybe you realized that you didnt WANT to be a religious fundamentalist.

Maybe you didn't want to be an abusive alcoholic.

Maybe in your tribe, nobody gets a formal education but you wanted to go earn a PhD.

Maybe in your tribe, everyone is expected to get a higher education but you never
liked school, and couldnt finish.
Maybe in your tribe, girls are supposed to become mothers at a young age and never to
work outside the home but you wanted to be a childless career woman.

artist.

Maybe in your tribe, everyone is expected to be a farmer but you wanted to be an

Maybe in your tribe, everyone is expected to be an artist but you wanted to go into
business.
Maybe in your tribe you were taught to be suspicious and hateful of strangers but you
wanted to love the world with a more open heart.

Maybe in your tribe, its considered deeply wrong to be gay but you happen to be gay.

Maybe in your tribe, you were taught to expect nothing but poverty and oppression and
deprivation out of life but you saw the world differently, and wanted to expand your mind into a
field of joyful abundance and prosperity.
In other words, maybe the rules of your tribe didnt work for you anymore. Maybe you decided to break
your tribal rules, and choose your own path. Maybe you went out and found a new tribe, composed of
people who felt more like family to you than your own family did.

And maybe your tribe of origin was totally OK with that. Maybe your tribe celebrated your differences and
cheered you on, and said All we want is for you to be happy! If so, God bless them. Because that is rare.
Chances are, they probably were NOT totally OK with that.
Because its exceedingly rare for a tribe of origin to celebrate the departure of one of its members. They
REALLY dont like it when you break the rules. Remember those tribal rules are SACRED. Even when
the rules are totally dysfunctional and dark and insane, those rules are still sacred. Adherence to those
rules determines cohesion, and cohesion determines survival so nothing less than life itself is at stake
here!
Or, at least thats how the tribe sees it.
So.if you dare to leave your tribe of origin or if you dare to question the rules of your tribe it is
extremely likely that you will be punished.
Sometimes that punishment can be violent and extreme like: excommunication, shunning, disowning,
physical abuse, or even murder (such as in the dreadful cases of honor killings of young girls by their
own family members.)
But oftentime the punishment is more subtle. If you dare to leave the tribe, or if you dare challenge the
tribe, the weapon that they are most likely to use against you is SHAME.
SHAME is the most powerful and degrading tool that a tribe has at its disposal. Shame is the nuclear
option. Shame is how they keep you in line. Shame is how they let you know that you have abandoned
the collective. Violence may be fast and brutal, but shame is slowbut still brutal. Shame is like a
computer chip that the tribe implants into you, in order to be able control you and make you suffer so
that even when you are geographically far away from the tribe, they can still flip that switch and make you
feel the agony of guilt over having betrayed them.
The tribe will shame you by saying things like, Now that youre a big fancy city girl, you think youre better
than us, dont you?
Or:

Now that youve got a college education, you think youre better than us
Now that you dont drink anymore, you think youre better than us
Now that youve lost all that weight, you think youre better than us
Now that youre happily married, you think youre better than us
Now that you have a good job, you think youre better than us
Now that you speak French, you think youre better than us
Now that you live in California, you think youre better than us

They will accuse you of being a traitor. They will use words like abandonment and betrayal and
disloyalty. They will sometimes say these words as a joke, but you know damn well that they arent
joking. They will remind you that you werent there where Dad died, that you werent there when your
nephew was born, that you can never be counted on for anything. They will mock you, and then brush it
off, saying, Hey, dont get so upset were just joking. Its all in fun.

But it isnt all in fun. Its dead serious, and its potentially deadly, because shame makes people sick.
Shame can literally take years off your life. At best, it just makes you terribly, lingeringly sad.
Your tribe of origin is letting you know in no uncertain terms: YOU ARE NO LONGER ONE OF US.
Those words (spoken or unspoken) are the ultimate tools of tribal shame. Because nothing is more
painful to a human than the accusation that you are a traitor. It is terrible to be told YOU ARE NO
LONGER ONE OF US. (Remember, we are pack animals; we need the approval of our pack.) It is terrible
to be accused of abandonment and betrayal.
In short if you dare to leave the tribe, the tribe will shame the living hell out of you, and that shame will
hurt you. Shame is a fierce and burning energy. The power of tribal shame is not to be underestimated.
Tribal shame is capable of ruining lives, and killing people. Shame corrodes the soul. It also corrodes the
mind, and the physical body. Tribal shame will make you sick. It will send you into a spiral of psychic
misery and physical infection.
Dr. Mario Martinez been able to show how tribal shame rots people from within keeping them in a
constant state of inflammation, anxiety, unease, and disease.
But it gets worse!

Self Sabotage
Tribal shaming also sometimes causes people to sabotage their own lives to abandon their own
callings, and to jettison their own true paths, and to forbid themselves to be happy. It is often the case that
people simply cannot endure tribal shaming any longer, and so they fail on purpose, in order to be
welcomed back into the tribe in order to balance things out again, and in order to become one of us
once more.
Because heres the really crazy thing about a tribe, as Dr. Martinez points out: THEY WILL ALWAYS TAKE
YOU BACK IF YOU FAIL. They will always welcome you back home if you are suffering. They wont love
you so much when you are happy and successful, because thats very threatening to them, as it
challenges everything they believe. (If you do well in life on your own terms, at first your tribe may
welcome you home as a returning hero, of course, but when they see how different you are from them
now, they will not like your success at all and they will shame you for it.)
But they will always take you back when you fail.
They will take you back when you are sick, when you are weak, when you are humbled and broken. They
will welcome you back with open arms and sweet loving care, and you will once again be able to feel the
warm safety and companionship of the tribe.
So heres what people often do they sabotage themselves, in order to come home again. We make
ourselves sick, weak, humbled and broken, in order to be welcomed home.

THATS how much we long for the approval of the tribe; we will even ruin our own lives in order to achieve
it. But at what cost?
(Remember, by the way it is not only your tribe of origin who is capable of working this dark magic of
shame upon you; it can be ANY tribe that you have joined and then dared to leave or to challenge.
Friends, neighbors, co-workers, team-members, gang-members, political cronies, church-members,
fellow drug addicts, fellow yogis, fellow book club membersany tribe can turn against an individual who
dares to step out of line, or who dares to question the rules, or who dares to ascend beyond what is
expected or allowed. And the stakes are always the same: Our way or the highway. Conform, or you will
be eternally punished.)
I want you to ask yourself this question, in all honesty have you ever sabotaged yourself, in order to be
welcomed back into the tribe?
I have done it. I can promise you that I have done it many times. But I wonder if you have done it?
Did you drop out of school, so you wouldnt be the only one in your tribe with a higher
education?

Did you commit a crime, so the tribe would embrace you?

Did you marry someone you didnt love, so the tribe would accept you as being normal?

Did you start drinking again, or over-eating again, or smoking again, so the tribe would
re-embrace you?
Did you subconsciously conspire to lose all your money, so you wouldnt appear to be
better than anyone in your tribe?

Did you get fired again, so you wouldn't appear to be better than your tribe?

Did you plummet back into depression and anxiety, so that you would never be happier
than anyone in your tribe?

Did you hide your true sexuality, so your tribe wouldnt judge and exclude you?

Did you pretend to believe in a version of God that you dont believe in, so the tribe would
not shame you or banish you?
Or did you bravely choose exactly the life you really wanted for yourselfbut now you cannot seem to
rest easily within it? You built the life you wanted for yourself, but now (even though everything looks good
on the outside) you are making yourself miserable, anyhow. Are you walking around feeling eternally
guilty, and exhausting yourself working so hard for the benefit of everyone else just to keep yourself
punished and shamedbecause somehow your tribe of origin has convinced you that you do not deserve
the abundance and happiness that you have fought so hard to earn?

Revolution & Resolution

ENOUGH. Enough of all that. Enough of the tribal shaming.

So what are we to do about it?

What are we to do, to combat the power of tribal shaming, and to feel free to pursue our own true paths in
life and, most of all, to feel free to be a SUCCESS? (And by success here, I mean not only a financial
success, but an emotional success a person who is happy and at peace, living as she feels she was
MEANT to livenot necessarily how she was TAUGHT to live.)
Here comes the revolutionary part.
Dr. Martinez spends a lot of time working with people who have left their tribes of origin, or who have
exceeded their tribal expectations, and who appear to have done very well in life, but who are suffering
the consequences of reaching too high and doing TOO well in life (from their tribal perspective.) His goal
is to liberate these people from the prison of shame, so that they can feel contented and easeful about
themselves.
He does an exercise with them that I think is AMAZING, and which you can do at home. I did it. Its pretty
transformative.
It goes like this:
1. Sit quietly in meditation. Allow your mind and your breathing to settle.
2. Ask yourself this question: Who is the person in the world living or dead whom I
would most need to abandon, in order to live my own true path with happiness and peace? (Its a
heavy question. Really think about it. The answer may shock you. But allow that persons name
to rise up in you mind. Be 100% honest. Be 100% brave.)
3. Ask yourself again: What person in my life (or in my history, living or dead) would be most
betrayed, if I were to become a happy, peaceful, successful and prosperous soul? Really think
about it. Got the name? Good.
4. Now, there is something that you must SAY ALOUD to that person. (You dont say it aloud
to the REAL person, of course because they could never handle it, and they might not even be
alive anymore but you must say these words aloud to the idea of this person.) Here are the
magic words: I am going to abandon you now. I am going to betray you now.
5. Repeat this process, pausing as long as necessary between emotional responses, until
you can say it aloud without emotional response.

HOLY COW! That totally blew my mind when I first heard it! Talk about powerful words!!!!
The reason these words are so powerful and radical is because they are the OPPOSITE of what we have
likely spent our lives trying to prove to our tribe of origin. We have likely spent our whole lives trying
desperately to prove to that person (or to those people) that we HAVENT betrayed them! We are
constantly trying to show them that we HAVENT abandoned them! We break ourselves in half and

exhaust ourselves completely (and maybe even bankrupt ourselves, or give ourselves chronic diseases)
trying to prove that WE ARE LOYAL, and that WE ARE STILL PART OF THE TRIBE, and that WE HAVE
DONE NOTHING WRONG, and that WE HAVENT CHANGED AT ALL, and that WE WILL NEVER
LEAVE YOU BEHIND, and that WE ARE STILL ONE OF YOU!
But it doesnt work, does it? Because they never really believe you, do they? Deep down inside, you know
that they still consider you a traitor, dont they? Because they are letting you know that you're a traitor. No
matter what you do.
Because they know (and you secretly know it, too) this truth you kind of HAVE abandoned them. You
HAVE betrayed them. You DID choose a totally different way of life. You HAVE completely changed.
(Because you needed to!) You really are no longer one of them. (Because you would have suffocated to
death, to remain trapped within that constricting tribal code.) You really HAVE left them behind. (Because
that was the only way to become the person that your destiny called you to be.)
and thats all OK.
This is the radical part: You totally abandoned your tribe of origin, and thats totally FINE. In fact,
sometimes its absolutely necessary.
If people never questioned or abandoned their tribes of origin, the world would never evolve. There would
be no creativity, no exploration, no courageous leaps of faith, no reforms, no change, no beautiful
transformations.
If you want to create, to explore, to leap, to reform, to transform, then it is necessary sometimes to admit
that you have left your tribe of origin behind. You must hear yourself say these powerful words aloud:
I AM GOING TO ABANDON YOU NOW. I AM GOING TO BETRAY YOU NOW.
Which does not mean that you do not LOVE them. This exercise has nothing to do with love. You can
always love them. That love can always remain intact. You can even still care about your tribe, and look
after them with acts of generosity none of that needs to change. This exercise is about a totally
different issue from love. This is about breaking the spell of tribal shame. The only way to break that spell
(Martinez suggests) is to take complete ownership of your own true path in life, and to admit to the
consequences of leaving your tribes values behind.
(Another point: Curiously, after having done this exercise, I felt MORE loving toward those in my tribe who
have tried to shame me over the years because I felt like I understood them better. With that
understanding, was easier for me to regard them with a lighter heart.)

Forgiving Yourself
Then comes the next step.

You must now (in your imagination) become the other person the person who has been shaming you
for years. And you must say to yourself (in the voice of the other person) these powerful words: I
completely understand. I forgive you. All I want is for you to be happy.
Of course, it is exceedingly unlikely that the real person could ever say these words to you! To say that
would be an abandonment of their own honor codebut you need to say them to yourself. You need to
hold both sides of this imagined conversation.
Practice it with me.
You: Im going to abandon you now. Im going to betray you now.
Your Primary Tribal Shamer (speaking through you): I understand completely, I forgive you. All I want is
for you to be happy.
Repeat, repeat, repeat
Its pretty freaking life-changing.
(I did this exercise myself, and I cannot even tell you how radical it felt, and how much easier I breathed
after I said those devastatingly powerful words: I AM GOING TO ABANDON YOU NOW. I AM GOING TO
BETRAY YOU NOW. I was also surprised about WHO I needed to say those words TOand you may be
surprised, as well. You may need to do this exercise with a number of people in your life. Just be honest
who would feel most abandoned if you were to become successful? Stop trying to convince them that
you arent abandoning them. Let them feel abandoned. Its OK. Its what needs to happen.)
Dr. Martinez reports that after people have done this exercise their cortisol levels and stress levels
drop dramatically, as do their levels of inflammation and disease. Because you are finally free. Youve
been carrying around that tribal shame forever, and finally you have begun to shake it off But, wait
theres more!

Rebuilding Evidence of Your Honor

Then comes the next step.
You now have to rebuild what Dr. Martinez calls your own field of honor.
You see, tribal shaming works because it attacks your deepest sense of your own honor. Every tribe is
governed by its own code of honor, and once you have broken that honor code, the tribe will accuse you
(overtly or subtly) of having no honor at all. This accusation is what makes you sick. This is what makes
you suffer. Without a code of honor, after all, we are NOTHING worse than dirt. So you must rebuild
your own field of honor, in order to make yourself healthy again.
How do you do this?

You must do an accounting of your own life, and make a list of all the times in your life that you have been
honorable. Start with earliest childhood what was the first honorable act of your life? Go from there.
Write it all down. Maybe you have not always honored the sacred code of your tribe of origin, but chances
are you honored SOMETHING perhaps your own creative path, or your truest friendships, or your
curiosity, or the truth, or your work ethic, or your health, or a loved one, or your cat.
Write it all down. Focus on the true history of your own honor for it is all in there. You are truly an
honorable person. Honor is within you. You must rebuild that field of honor, because it is your only
defense against tribal shaming, which will always seek to destroy your sense of honor in order to make
you weak and to bring you back home.

Testing Your Honor

Once you have rebuilt your evidence of honor, the last step is this: RIGHTEOUS ANGER. Whoa! Ready?
It goes like this:
You will know that you are standing firmly within your field of honor when your first reaction to attempts at
tribal shaming becomes RIGHTEOUS ANGER. You will know that you are on the road to emotional health
and recovery when a member of your tribe tries to shame you, and rather than absorb that shame and
turn it into sickness and poisonyou instead react with RIGHTEOUS ANGER.
This response is your field of honor reacting as a defensive shield to attack and this is a very good
thing. This is the appropriate response to someone attempting to control you with shame.
Now, a quick word on anger: It is not healthy, obviously, to spend your life feeling furious, or to be
constantly simmering with unspoken resentment. If you are a person like me, who tries to be big-hearted
and forgiving, you have probably spent your life battling against anger and trying to eradicate it from your
mind. But Dr. Martinez suggests that there is a role in your life for healthy anger, for appropriate anger, for
RIGHTEOUS ANGER. Righteous anger is a fast, hot fire that burns up the poison of tribal shaming, and
protects your own field of honor. This is the anger that rises up like a dragon and says, Dont you DARE
try to shame me!
This anger is correct and just and fair.and totally necessary for your health. You are entitled to it. You
must lay claim to it. You are a person of honor, who never deserves shaming, ever. Guilt yes, shame
never.
A side note on guilt vs. shame. Guilt is related to an action, shame is an identity. Guilt: I made a mistake,
Im sorry. Shame: I am a mistake, Im unworthy.
Guilt is adaptive and helpful its holding something weve done or failed to do up against our
values and feeling psychological discomfort.
Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore
unworthy of love and belonging.
Brene Brown

This is the anger that protects you from the wrath of the most judgmental people in your life (even the
ones whom you love and adore ESPECIALLY them!) Righteous anger even protects you from the
wrathful judgment of the dead for it is the case that the dead can still shame you from beyond the
graveor, at least, they will try to.
So learn to get angry whenever you experience the toxic wrath of tribal shaming. Be righteous about it.
Strike back. Defend yourself from both the living and the dead. When you can do thatthats when
you will know that you are on your true path at last. Thats when you will begin to be FREE. Thats when
you will have a chance at happiness and deep, satisfying health. Whew.