05/13/2025
I'm at day 4 of the 9-day international Intensive training in NVC in Croatia organized by the Center for Nonviolent Communication and wooww... What an adventure already! It has already been so rich in learning, connection and fun! I'm so grateful to be teaching alongside with people I admire: Liv Larsson, Dmitriy Kopina Ivana Pejić and Mitch Miyagawa
After 3 days of teaching everyday, I have a day off and I have to say it feels really good. It's not called an intensive training for nothing...
This morning, I was so grateful to be able to assist a session on shame given by Liv Larsson. It was such a powerful experience for me. I reconnected with a very early experience of shame.
When I was about 8 years old, I was a pretty good student in school. One day, my teacher decided to compare my grade to another student, the "worst" academic student of the classroom (let's call him Victor). She started reading out loud my grades and his grade, comparing them:
Assignment 1: Myriam, 9/10, Victor 2/10
Assignment 2: Myriam 9,5/10, Victor 3/10.... and so on.
It was a very shameful moment for me.
During Liv's exercise, I was able to really feel the shame in my body. Liv has powerful model about shame called the needs compass.
She describes 4 ways we often react to make shame disappear:
a. it's my fault (and I start to blame myself)
b. it's your fault (and I start blaming you, being angry at you)
c. i hide, withdraw, freeze or flight
d. I rebel, and start doing the thing that created shame even more
In my experience, after feeling the shame in my body, I immediately notice that I would go to withdrawing and wanting to hide.
I also remembered that a couple of days that this incident happened in my classroom, Victor was so angry at me that he hit me in the stomach and I was unconscious for a while. I learned the hard way that day that being publicly compared to others is very dangerous for me, and that I should avoid it as much as possible.
I've been reflecting from this morning about it and how it impacts the way I relate to competition and to being compared... Definitely a scary place for me and one that very quickly leads to shame.
I'm so grateful for this work, I feel inspired to look at other areas of shame in my life and I definitely want to integrate this model and more exercises on shame on the work that I do in hashtag
Another highlight for me was to lead some singing (video coming soon) and some silent disco dance in the woods this morning! I love being able to share some of my different passions. I really feel at the right place here :)
And it's not over, 5 more days to go! Some pictures to give you a better idea of what's going on!
