A Better You Series #2 – Dealing With Shame
Is Shame Stopping You From Moving Forward?
This post uncovers the problems and impact of internalised toxic shame and how you can recover from it based on my personal experience. It is a fraction of what it is and what it could be. Your personal journey and what works for you is your take. Hope it helps.
Continuing from the previous post on ‘How You Can Pick Yourself Up’, you are entering a section where I focus on highlighting ‘shame’ as one of the stopper from moving forward.
My Story With Toxic Shame
I am bound by shame. Since teen, I am ashamed of my body due to fats. Growing up to adult, I feel ashamed about my work as it is not a ‘proper real job’. In the family system, I play a caretaker role, ensuring my parents burden is lessen and put their needs above mine. Going out to the work field, I continued the role to take care of my fellow partners’ and friends’ needs first. I was not being authentic and I dislike being vulnerable with others.
It was until this day I realised..
the core of all my compulsive behaviours are due to shame.
The strongest impact on me – I felt ashamed to take action towards my goals, leads to stagnation, isolation, and compulsive behaviours.
Shame-Based Pattern
Shame has been my dad’s state of being for some years, I noticed. Before he passed on, I witnessed a lively soul transformed into a helpless being in matter of years. It is one the most heartbreaking experience in life, when you are not be able to help your loved ones but to watch them slowly ‘dying’ off.
Do you ..
Tend to be exhausted easily – trying to hold on to the false masks and hiding disliked parts of self?
Tend to be over controlling of yourself, people or the environment so you don’t make mistakes or embarrass yourself?
Tend to relate everything to yourself? Taking things personally.
Tend to be defensive by proofing you are always right?
Tend to be afraid of hurting others due to past hurt?
These relate to toxic shame.
The Recommended Book
Reading John Bradsaw’s book on “Healing The Shame That Binds You” was eye and heart opening, leading to many tearful moments. The following sharing are based on the book’s content.
What is Shame?
Shame is a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behaviour.
Healthy Shame VS Internalised Shame
Shame is a healthy human emotion, it keeps us grounded. Healthy shame shows limits on what we could and could not do as a human being.
But when it’s transferred into a state of being, when it is internalised, it destroys the authentic self by creating a false self.
What does shame-bind means?
To be shame-bound means that whenever you feel any feeling, need or drive, you immediately feel ashamed.
Shame is powerful.
It is also one of the major destructive forces in life.
When one felt one’s true self is defective and flawed, we would refuse our “real selves” and create a more powerful false self.
We eventually disown ourselves.
Carry-On Shame As An Identity
When we have shame based parents, we would identify and carry the parents’ disowned part of self with them.
Which sounds like this..
“I am flawed and defective as a human being”.
Then, it became an identity instead of an emotion.
When we identified with this idea, it’s no longer just an emotion. Healthy shame tells us our limitations and keep us grounded. When shame is internalised, you have a sense of being a failure.
Thus, exposing your inner self is a risk.
PS: The book explained the sources of toxic shame in details, do read the book for deeper understanding.
“A person with internalised shame believes he is inherently flawed, inferior and defective.”
John Bradsaw
The Source of Toxic Shame Comes From Primary Relationship
Toxic shame is primarily foster in significant relationships. Particularly from the family or caretakers.
Children needs attention and time from the parents, when they did not receive the mirroring they needed – to acknowledge their emotions and to allow them to express, the children would feel neglected.
As the children grew up they are called the adult children where they would turn their lover to be their parents, someone to take care of them or to be taken care of.
The Family System
We all play certain roles in the family system. We learned about ourselves from the family. My role in the family is to lessen the pain of all members. John Bradshaw mentioned the ‘Hero’ role he played for the family where he give up his reality to take care of the family system and keep it in whole.
Overtime our behaviour tend to become unconscious, where we focus on other person but not ourselves. We would avoid our pain for years with a script telling “don’t be you”.
Worth is Based On The Outside Achievements
We as the children believed our parents have absolute power on us, to bond with them, we mirror and echo them. We are often praised and loved for our achievements and performance. That’s one way of telling us that we are loved based on our achievements.
Emotional Neglect and Abandonment
Emotional abandonment happens when a child’s emotions are not acknowledge and when a child was not allowed to express. We would lose contact with it and learned that our emotional needs are not important.
Especially when our parents are showing their strong emotions but they do not allow us to show ours, we would then perceived that parents can do what they want but we could not.
Another implication that our needs are abandoned and not important leading to repression and dissociation from emotions. These are the unconscious survival mechanisms.
Repression is the defense our true self uses to put its desires, needs, and feelings aside in order to survive.
The Risk of Being Vulnerable
Being vulnerable is exposing oneself especially the shame aspects of self. Mistakes reveal the vulnerable self. To be ‘strong’, we would do what we could to not show the flawed self.
The vulnerable aspects of self are shamed, thus, we disowned and separated from our sense of self.
The Hiding Places of Toxic Shame
The characterological styles of shame included – perfectionism, rage, arrogance, criticism, blame, controlling, caregiving, helping, envy, people pleasing, and being nice.
Rage As The Cover Up
Rage is said to be a cover up for shame, which intensify into hatred which acquires power. When one is in rage, it perceives to have more power over the others, thus, one feel less vulnerable to being shamed. As long as one gets away with rage, one becomes a rage addict.
If one is phobia with one’s own anger, one will be sad most of the time, which acts as mood-alter to rage.
Being Nice As The Cover Up
Being nice is also a cover up for toxic shame. Playing a role as a caregiver in the family system is said to be a person who feels flawed, powerless and hopeless. By helping out, it distracts the feeling of one’s inadequacy.
Eventually, the goal of a nice person is on one’s own image.
PS: Explore more cover ups from the book.
“Neurotic shame is the root and fuel of all compulsive and addictive behaviours.”
John Bradsaw
The Compulsive & Addictive Behaviours Fueled By Regenerating Shame
Compulsive and addictive behavior is defined by John Bradsaw as ‘a pathological relationship to any mood-altering experience that has life-damaging consequences’.
Pia Mellody defined addiction as ‘any process used to avoid or take away intolerable reality’.
The mental obsession is the first mood alteration where thinking take us out of the emotions. The second mood alteration occurs when we act out after the obsession occurs – to drinking, eating, spending, working, and gambling etc.
The addiction hides the shame and the shame fuels the addiction.
The internalised shame fuels the addictive process and create more shame. The new shame you experience will fuels the cycle of addiction. The toxic shame fuels the addiction and regenerates itself.
The Different Kinds of Addictions
- Addiction to food & drinks – alcohol, drugs, food etc.
- Addiction to an emotion – rage, sadness, fear, shame, guilt, excitement etc.
- Addiction to thoughts – detailing etc.
- Addiction to activity – work, buy, sex, read, gamble, watch etc.
The Recovery Process
Without recovery, we would carry the toxic shame for generations. In recovery, you are shifting by externalising the shame to a healthy emotion rather than identifying with it.
You can give up the role in the family system, properly grieve on abandonment, integrate the disowned parts of yours, choose to love and forgive yourself. Liberating from pain and moving forward to your desired life.
Being aware of the dynamics of shame give us power – just by naming them.
To come out of shame, we need to show up, out of hiding and isolation.
First, naming it to reclaim our power and then externalising it.
Shame turned toxic due to premature exposed unexpectedly or repeatedly. The most important thing we can do is to risk the exposure of self. We cannot shift our internalised shame until we ‘externalise’ it.
The Externalisation Process
Honestly share our feelings with someone we trusted.
Reestablish with someone non-shaming whom can mirror and echo us
Practice the Twelve Step program.
Write and debrief our past shaming and abandonment experience – externalise feelings, grieve and connect with them.
Recognise the disowned parts of us by making it conscious and integrate them.
Externalising the voices in the head by replacing them with nurturing voices.
Learn how to deal with critical shaming people and handle our mistakes.
PS: Find out more solutions from the book.
Establish Security-Giving Personal Relationships
Since we started to developed shame from personal relationships, we can also use personal relationships to heal from it. Find a person or a group of significant others whom you trust and expose yourself.
Intimacy requires the ability to be vulnerable. Being vulnerable is to share emotions with another. When we risk reaching out and have a dialogue about it in non-shaming relationships, we begin to heal our shame.
Sometimes we would feel overwhelmed or confused, worse or better, but the most important key is to feel. When one is numb to emotions, one loses contact with oneself.
Shame-based intellectuals love to analyze.
Go slowly to identify and express the emotions.
Self Acceptance
When you can fully accept yourself, you will have the freedom to hear and see what we hear and see instead of what you should hear and see. You will have the freedom to choose to love instead of what you should love or should not.
John Bradsaw
Your addiction has been your false secure base – your primary relationship. To let go of your false secure base, you will need to rejoin human race.
The Way Out Is In
Embracing darkness (reservoir of toxic shame) to find the light (authentic self).
Acknowledging our mistakes help us to embrace our vulnerability.
Grieving On The Pain Of Abandonment
Reviewing the past pain is the pathway to recovery. Go back to resolve the issues especially from the origin family, so you could grow up and leave ‘home’.
Leaving home entails making contact with the hurt and lonely child who was abandoned some time ago. To reconnect with the wounded child, we have to go back, reenact and re-experience the emotions that were blocked. The unmet and unresolved needs must be reeducated with new insights and corrective experiences.
Our lost childhood must be grieved.
It is our past inability to express the emotions, our pain was invalidated. To discharge the emotions, we need time and support to nourish the abandoned child. Delayed grief is the core of post-traumatic stress disorder.
The grief feelings are mainly anger, hurt, sadness, loneliness, remorse, and depression. This is a process that needed some amount of time with guidance.
Exercise – Write A Letter To Your Parent(s)
One of the practice is to write a letter to your parent(s), telling them what you needed but you did not received. John suggests to write with non dominant hand to resemble a child.
“Until we resolve our source relationships, we are never really in another relationship.”
Gurieff
The core of all problems is the sense of inadequacy.
“Shame-based parents cannot accept their own weaknesses, feelings, vulnerability, and dependency needs. Thus, they cannot accept the children’s neediness, feelings, weakness, vulnerability, and dependency.”
John Bradsaw
Your responsibility as an adult is to become the nurturing parent to your wounded child. Setting boundaries and being assertive is one way.
Exercise To Eternalise The Shaming Voice
Write in the evening daily to review any shaming voices –
Overreaction Diary – Where were you upset? Where did you overreact? What was the context? Who was there? What was said to you?
Overreaction example – Mum: “Why didn’t you help me, you are so selfish.” I replied in an agitated tone: : “You didn’t ask for help, I only come when you ask for it.”
The Underlying Shame – ‘You are a bad daughter only care about yourself but not your mum. Good daughter will help without asking.’
Taking time to write in a relax manner and expressing it with emotional voltage. Then, answer the voice.
The answering – ‘I am a decent daughter. I am focusing on my needs so I could take good care of myself by ensuring my cup is full so I can help and support mum sustainably. I choose to help when mum ask for it, mum could learn to ask for help by expressing instead of expecting help without vocalising.’
Integrating Disowned Part Of You (Shadow Side)
What do you disliked about yourself or others?
The split off of yours would feel ashamed when you need help, when you feel angry, sad, and when you are sexual or assertive. To not be needy, we don’t feel what we feel.
Each split off is like a little self of you constantly calling for your attention.
Awareness is the most crucial part. You are turning your shadow into light which free up the energy of shame.
PS: Check out John’s practice on ‘making peace with all your villagers’.
Accept Yourself Unconditionally
For what you dislike about yourself. Will you love yourself for that?
When we are at one with ourselves, even we have negative feelings about ourselves, it is possible to choose love. If you decide to love yourself, you are willing to give yourself time and attention.
How much time do you spend with yourself?
Do you allow yourself to rest properly?
“I love myself and I accept myself unconditionally.”
PS: John talks about reframing mistakes and allow spontaneity in the book.
Self Assertion Rights
Your rights from ‘When I Say No, I Feel Guilty’ by Manuel Smith
You have the right to judge your own behaviour, thoughts, and emotions, and to take the responsibility for their initiation and consequences.
You have the right to offer no reasons or excuse for justifying your behaviour.
You have the right to judge if you are responsible to judge other people’s behavior.
You have the right to say ‘I don’t know’.
You have the right to change your mind.
You have the right to be independent of the good-will of others before coping with them.
You have the right to say ‘I don’t understand’.
You have the right to say ‘I don’t care.’
You have the right to make mistakes and be responsible for them.
Dealing With Relationships
Shame could be triggered in our old and new relationships.
Most shame-based people have anger deficits especially when one does not know how to express anger healthily.
When You Are Hurt
Because we have been hurt badly, we would feel bad to hurt others. One healthy way of expressing is ‘If I have hurt you, I want to own my part in it. I also know that some of it is about you and your history.”
When You Receive Criticism
There are few ways to handle it.
Confess and admit.
Ask for clarification.
Confront using ‘I’ messages – ‘when you.., I interpret that you…”
Confirming – ‘no matter what you say, I am still a worthy person..”
Comfort – “I hear your frustration and I know how upsetting it is..”
Confuse – use unfamiliar words as a stopper.
These are what I have learned by compiling the gist of the book in a simpler manner.
I highly recommend you to read the book of John Bradshaw on “Healing From Shame That Binds You” to discover the depth about toxic shame and the recovery process.
If shame is an identity of yours, one thing you should know is that..
most of us are bound by shame to a certain extend.
So you are not alone in this.
And you can still make changes about it.
This is just the beginning.
I wish to support your journey in becoming a better self while I am walking my recovery path. The trick I learned to move forward is by acknowledging the shame aspects of self while showing up with daily incremental habits.
See you on the next post.
Thank you for reading.
Vic Qi Pan (Abbhya)
Dot In A Circle 
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