Healing the Shame that Binds You

by John Bradshaw

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memory. Then he asked us to make a movie of the experience: to divide it into acts and to run it as a film. Then he asked us to run the

parents

temperance of the mind. Its opposite is curiositas,

limits. Healthy shame at this stage is the

Toxically shamed people tend to become more and more stagnant as life goes on. They live in a guarded, secretive and defensive way. They try to be more than human (perfect and controlling) or less than human (losing interest in life or stagnated in some addictive behavior).

SHAME AS THE SOURCE OF SPIRITUALITY

The Toxically Destructive Faces of Shame (LDL Shame) The affect of shame is important

In my book Family Secrets, I show how secrets (in this case, unexpressed and concealed feelings) operate destructively in the interpersonal relationships in the family.

psyche. Even though I was married, I was isolated and alone. I never really felt connected to my wife, and I had no connecting skills. Toxic shame is experienced in this developmental

deepening toxic shame.

shame

human emotion can become internalized. When internalized, an emotion stops functioning as an emotion and becomes an identity.

The trauma of abandonment,

The need to identify with someone, to feel a part of something and belong somewhere, is one of our most basic needs.

When children have shame-based parents, they identify with them.

ABANDONMENT: THE LEGACY OF BROKEN MUTUALITY

Mirroring is done by one’s primary caregivers and is crucial in the first years of life. Abandonment includes the loss of mirroring. Parents who are shut down emotionally (all shame-based parents) cannot

mirror and affirm their children’s emotions.

Children record their parents’ actions at their worst. When Mom and Dad, or stepparent or caregiver, are most out of control, they are the most threatening to the child’s survival. The child’s amygdala, the survival alarm center in their brain, registers these behaviors the most deeply. Any subsequent shame experience that even vaguely resembles that past trauma can easily trigger the words and scenes of the original trauma.

SHAME AS FALSE SELF

of how internalized shame fuels the addictive process and how addictions create more shame, which sets one up to be more shame-based. Addicts call this cycle the squirrel cage.

Shame begets shame. The cycle begins with the false belief system shared by all addicts: that no one could want them or love them as they are. In fact, addicts can’t love themselves. They are an object of scorn to themselves.

The shame turns one into what Kellogg has termed a “human doing,” rather than a human being.

The victimization could be incest, molestation, rape, voyeurism, exhibitionism, indecent liberties or phone calls, cybersex or pornography. In every case there is an acting out of shame and a victimization of the innocent.

The demand for a false self to cover and hide the authentic self necessitates a life dominated by doing and achievement.

Everything depends on performance and achievement rather than on

being. Being requires no measurement; it is its own justification. Being is grounded in an inner ...

Toxic shame is spiritual bankruptcy.

One can imagine a situation and feel deep shame. One can be alone and trigger a shaming spiral through internal self-talk. The more one experiences shame, the more one is ashamed, and the beat goes on.

Children will invest as much energy as is needed to ensure the preservation of family harmony, even if it means sacrificing themselves to do so by developing psychological disorders.

Needy children need parents, so adult children turn lovers into parents, someone to take care of their needs.

Shame-based families operate according to the laws of social systems. When a social system is dysfunctional, it is rigid and closed. All the individuals in that family are enmeshed in a kind of trancelike frozenness. They take care of the system’s need for balance, rather than their own needs for growth.

Our families are where we first learn about ourselves. Our core identity comes first from the mirroring eyes of our primary caretakers. Our destiny depends to some extent on the health of our caretakers.

In a family, the whole family as an organism is greater than any individual in the family. The family is defined by the relationship between the parts, rather than the sum of the parts.

The chief component in the family system is the marriage. If the marriage is healthy and functional, the family will be healthy and functional. If the marriage is dysfunctional, then the family will be dysfunctional.

Dynamic homeostasis means that whenever a part of the system is out of balance, the rest of the members of the system will try to bring it back into balance.

The children in a dysfunctional family take on rigid roles necessitated by the family’s need for balance. For example, if a child is not wanted, he or she will try to balance the family by not being any trouble, by being helpful, perfect, super-responsible or invisible. This is the Lost Child role. I capitalize it to show that it is a dysfunctional role.

When the fear, hurt and loneliness of the shame in a dysfunctional family reaches high levels of intensity, one person, often the most sensitive, becomes the family Scapegoat. The function of this role is to lessen the pain all the members are in.

Third children often carry the dynamics of their parent’s marriage.

When two adult children meet and fall in love, the child in each looks to the other to fill his or her needs.

The ecstatic consciousness is highly selective. Lovers focus on sameness and are intrigued by the newness of each other. Soon, however, real differences in socialization begin to emerge. The two families of origin rear their shame-based heads. Now the battle begins! Who will take care of whom? Whose family rules will win out? The more shame-based each person is, the more each other’s differences will be intolerable. “If you loved me, you’d do it my way,”

One must be in control of all interactions,

1. The identification with shame-based models and the carrying of their unexpressed shame. 2. The trauma of abandonment and the shame binding all one’s feelings, needs and drives. 3. The interconnection and magnification of visual memories or scenes, and the retaining of shaming auditory and kinesthetic imprints.

Without acknowledging our core feelings, we lose our sense of self. Our false selves are based on our survival skills. Our false selves are like the script for a play. The script tells us what feelings we should have. We learn to accept the scripted feelings as authentic.

Variations of this scenario happen in the best of families. Parents who have had their own sexuality shamed cannot handle their children’s natural sexuality. When their child explores his sexuality, parents react with disapproval or worse, disgust. Global comments such as “That’s bad,” “Don’t ever touch yourself there,” “Go get decent—put on your clothes,” or “Cover your privates” link sexuality to something bad, dirty and disgusting. This part of us must be disowned. The feeling of shame becomes linked to sexuality.

A child growing up in such a family (many of us) comes to believe and feel that sexuality is shameful.