Transcending Feeling Broken, Ashamed and Inadequate.

Feelings of brokenness, shame and inadequacy are about the very foundation of who we believe we are. Basically, we feel that something is wrong with us.

But this fundamentally wrong belief is also where we have the opportunity to heal ourselves. These feelings are the symptoms of a healing crisis. Something inside has cracked and healing is about to happen. 

Let’s say you have an infection and you take some remedies. After two or three days you start to feel sick. Why is that? The remedies have dealt with the infection. Now your body deals with the toxins and dead pathogens.

Your body is temporarily overloaded, and that’s why you feel sick. This temporary sickness is, in fact, a sign that the treatment has succeeded, even if it doesn’t feel that way. 

In the same way, you first have to bring whatever is feels wrong, repressed or unacceptable about yourself to the surface, so you can deal with it. If you want to heal, there is no other way around. You have to face the pain. 

What happens if you don’t deal with the pain?

If you bury these feelings inside, if you keep them away from your awareness, you start to dissociate from a part of yourself.

With time, all these things that are not acceptable will grow stronger. They will create a new identity, your shadow. Soon, without even realising, there will be two of you: the  Acceptable You and the Unacceptable You. 

There are two identities sharing the same body, but not communicating with each other. At best, they will ignore each other. At worst, they will start to fight. There can be only one of you, right? This is what physical, emotional and spiritual sickness is. A split, followed by a conflict between two ‘foreign’ entities. 

Yes, you can take remedies and try to kill the ‘enemy’. But because you created that enemy in the first place, it’s only a matter of time until you create it again.

The dis-ease comes back because that which you are trying to kill with pills, fasting or other treatments is a part of YOU.   

When we go through pain, we need to accept that pain is part of us, and indirectly, we accept that part of us we were trying to hide. That’s how we heal. 

I’m not saying that pills, exercise, or healthy food are not good for you and are not contributing to heal you. But if you have an illness, then trying to ‘cure’ what is ‘wrong’ with you, trying to ‘fight’ the enemy is not going to work.

The only way to heal from an illness is to accept yourself fully. 

I encourage you to look out for your physical symptoms and your shadow aspects, and be open to learn what you need to do to bring these aspects into a unified whole and to acknowledge your genius.

When you feel shame, guilt, or inadequacy, ask yourself: which part of myself I am trying to hide, or to ‘fix’? That’s exactly that part of you that you must learn to accept. 

When you search for integration move inwards. Become your own medicine!

We usually look for answers outside. We go to the doctor, to the shaman, to the spiritual guru, to the coach or we travel to faraway places.

When you start to look for answers inside you become your own medicine.

Bring all of your broken parts together, including those you are ashamed of the most. Make peace with ‘the enemy’, which are your ‘shadow aspects’.

Accept yourself fully. When you own your brokenness, your shame and your inadequacy, this is when you become whole, this is when you heal. 

With Love and Respect


Rolf Krahnert

​rolfkrahnert.com