The Soul of Shame: Retelling the Stories We Believe About Ourselves

by Curt Thompson

Furthermore, in a shame encounter that takes place before language is fully developed, it is not as if the child thinks in terms of Mom isn’t happy with me—cognition is not yet developed enough for this. Rather, the child is being governed by the parts of the brain (brainstem, limbic circuitry and portions of the right hemisphere) that simply respond to emotional shifts. We first develop a felt sense of shame rather than a rational explanation of a series of events. With repeated exposure to events such as these, we pay attention to and, via our early neuroplastic flexibility, more permanently encode these shame networks. Thus, they become more easily able to fire later on, even when activated by the most minor or even unrelated stimuli.