Healing the Shame that Binds You

by John Bradshaw

To have shame as an identity is to believe that one’s being is flawed, that one is defective as a human being. Once shame is transformed into an identity, it becomes toxic and dehumanizing.

Total self-love and acceptance is the only foundation for happiness and the love of others.

Giving and receiving unconditional love is the most effective and powerful way to personal wholeness and happiness.

Bullies shame other children the way they themselves have been shamed.

As the years go on, very little is needed to trigger these collages of shame memories. A word, a similar facial expression or a scene can set it off. Sometimes an external stimulus is not even necessary. Just going back to an old memory can trigger an enormously painful experience. Shame as an emotion has become frozen and embedded into the core of the person’s identity. Shame is deeply internalized.

Finally, when shame has been completely internalized, nothing about you is okay. You have the sense of being a failure. There is no way you can share your inner self because you are an object of contempt to yourself.

Toxic shame feels irremediable: If I am flawed, defective and a mistake, then there is nothing that can be done about me. Such a belief leads to impotence. How can I change who I am? Toxic shame also has the quality of circularity. Shame begets shame.

If our primary caregivers are shame-based, they will act shameless and pass their toxic shame onto us. There is no way to teach self-value if one does not value oneself.

The job of parents is to model. Modeling includes how to be a man or woman; how to relate intimately to another person; how to acknowledge and express emotions; how to fight fairly; how to have physical, emotional and intellectual boundaries; how to communicate; how to cope and survive life’s unending problems; how to be self-disciplined; and how to love oneself and another. Shame-based parents cannot do any of these. They simply don’t know how.

The impact of not having one’s parents’ time creates the feeling of worthlessness. The child is worth less than his parents’ time, attention or direction. The young child’s egocentricity always interprets events egocentrically. If Mom and Dad are not present, it’s because of me. There must be something wrong with me or they would want to be with me.

“One is free from depression,” writes Alice Miller in The Drama of the Gifted Child, “when self-esteem is based on the authenticity of one’s own feelings and not on the possession of certain qualities.”

Toxic shame’s greatest enemy is the statement “I love myself.” To say “I love myself” can become your most powerful tool in healing the shame that binds you. To truly love yourself will transform your life.