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Brené Brown defines shame as: “The intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging—something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection.”

Shame is the belief that I am a bad person versus Guilt which is the belief that my actions were bad/wrong.

I always like to remind my clients that a belief is not a fact. A belief is a thought that we’ve said to ourselves over and over again but that still does not make it a fact!

Shame is very toxic to the brain and body and is 100% toxic to a parent-child relationship.

In the above illustration, the child is looking at the monster of shame. When someone is feeling shame, they may view themselves as a monster or it can feel as though there is a monster in their mind, telling them that they are “worthless”, “not good enough”, “flawed” etc.

Individuals with shame have very low self-worth and want to hide their true selves from the world. This often leads to depression, anxiety, eating disorders, addiction, and other harmful behaviours.

Shame says hide and cover up your true self.

“Shame is at the root of all insecure attachment. An avoidant partner isn’t pushing away closeness, they are pushing away shame”, says therapist/author Julie Mennano. She says: “The degree to which you hide is the degree to which you’ll have blocks to connection to others.”

The more one pushes away shame, the more it persists. “What we resist, persists”.

The Many Causes of Shame

– In previous generations, shame was often used as a parenting strategy. The belief was that if my words are hurtful enough, my child won’t repeat the behaviour because of the pain they felt from the shaming words. This is extremely destructive.

– Drs. Julie and John Gottman from the Gottman Couples Institute in Seattle, outline the Four Horsemen of a Relationship from their thousands of hours of research on couples. The Four Horsemen are: Blaming, Sarcasm, Contempt and Stonewalling. It makes sense that these four horsemen of a couples’ relationship are also toxic and eroding to a parent-child relationship and lead to shame in a child/teen.

– Dr. Gregory Jantz: “Shame has various root causes. Sometimes shame is instilled in early childhood by the harsh words or actions of parents or other authority figures, or from bullying by peers. Shame can stem from a person’s own poor choices or harmful behaviour.”

– When one is living their life out of alignment with their true values, and they continue to make their own poor choices, this results in deep shame.

– Rejection – when a parent rejects you, you don’t hate them or blame them, you internalize this rejection and you hate and blame yourself.

– “Feeling inferior can lead to shame about the self. This is a chronic type of shame with long-lasting effects”. ~ Arlene Cuncic. A person may feel inferior due to a disabling health condition, learning disabilities, bullying, parents’ criticising/blaming/stonewalling/contempt etc.

How to Release Shame?

– One of the ways to release shame is to start acknowledging it. Putting words to it is the opposite of hiding it. When shame no longer has to hide, it can be worked through. Sharing with a compassionate family member, therapist, partner or friend can help to heal shame.

– Integrity – when one becomes disciplined about living their life according to their values, they can release their shame.

– Repair – when one takes full responsibility for their wrong-doings and apologizes, they are helping themselves heal from their shame and they are helping the person who was the recipient of their wrong-doings, heal.

– Externalizing shame. Recognizing shame is not about who you are as a person – it is an internalized experience. If one can externalize the experience, one can release the shame.

– Self-Compassion is an antidote to shame.

Dr. Chris Germer of the Centre for Mindfulness Self-Compassion says:

“Shame is an innocent emotion that arises from the wish to be loved. The wish to be loved is the engine that drives the train of shame.”

Each time we feel shame, we can remember that we are having this feeling because we wish to be loved. This helps us be more kind and gentle towards ourselves.

Through Self-Compassion, we can choose to love ourselves.

Dr. Kristin Neff has an extremely valuable website with many free audio recordings (no email required) to help one build self-compassion. You, or your teen could choose a self-compassion recording to listen to, and for younger children, you could listen and then create your own simplified version.

The following quote highlights the antidote to shame, … LOVE …

As parents, our goal is to be the “clear-eyed loving person” who beams light back to our loved ones “when life and shame and sorrow occlude their own light”.

Sending you light 🙌

Warmly,

Sharon