Shame
"It's so embarrassing to be this way ... I don't want anyone to know …"
“I just wish I were invisible … I feel kind of sick about myself … I hate to be seen.”
Shame can be disabling, and often feels like a problem in its own right. It comes as a chronically distressing side effect of many anxiety and mood disorders. Sometimes – it’s at their very root. It lends its terrible energy to the bodily memories of trauma. It's a distortion, rather like an optical illusion that unfairly stigmatizes the self. And it can morph into a habitual pattern of self-punishment. Shame is a shape-shifter. It's often what brings people into therapy.
How we work with shame depends on the underlying issue producing it.
I’ve written in these pages about depression, anxiety, relational issues … yet in considering shame, I find myself humbled by its complexity. Let me offer a few bullet points:
Shame is learned, and bound to a universal, excruciating life experience: the bodily sense of “having done something ‘terribly wrong’.” Whether or not this is actually true, we believe it is true.
Shame involves a powerful parasympathetic nervous system response to profound emotion – it is, in essence, a freeze state. In this state, we want to hide, to shrink, to disappear. The syndrome of chronic shame triggers us into this state over and over.
Shame has baked-in social utility – it pressures the individual to conform to norms, and thus belong. But with unbelonging comes the potential for disconnection, isolation, living as an outcast. To suffer with chronic shame is to feel like an outcast within oneself.
The resulting belief is: that one is somehow defective, unworthy of love and respect, even deserving of self-punishment. And shame is a form of self-punishment.
Shame thrives in inner darkness, and feeds on aloneness. The cure for shame is light, air, and connection; this often begins with the light, air, and connection of compassionate therapy.
Liberation from shame comes with seeing the distortions for what they are, and section by section, replacing the funhouse mirror of distress with a clear mirror that reflects your human reality.
Questions?
Feel free to call me at 917-446-1683, or contact me here.
I provide a free consultation by phone or HIPAA-secure video platform.