Healing the Shame That Binds You

by John Bradshaw

In itself, shame is not bad. Shame is a normal human emotion. In fact, it is necessary to feel shame if one is to be truly human. Shame is the emotion that gives us permission to be human. Shame tells us of our limits. Shame keeps us in our human boundaries, letting us know we can and will make mistakes and that we need help. Our shame tells us we are not God. Healthy shame is the psychological foundation of humility.

What I discovered was that shame as a healthy human emotion can be transformed into shame as a state of being. As a state of being shame takes over one’s whole identity. 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.

Evil is real and is a permanent part of the human condition. “To deny that evil is a permanent affliction of humankind,” says the philosopher Ernst Becker in his book Escape from Evil, “is perhaps the most dangerous kind of thinking.” He goes on to suggest that in denying evil, humans have heaped evil on the world. Historically, great misfortunes have resulted from humans, blinded by the full reality of evil, thinking they were doing good but dispensing miseries far worse than the evil they thought to eradicate. The Crusades during the Middle Ages and the Vietnam War are examples that come to mind.

There is no such thing as pure good in human affairs. Those who claim it are seriously deluded and will likely be the next perpetrators of evil.

Three hundred years later Darwin would posit blushing as that which distinguishes us from all other animals. Darwin knew that the mother of the blush was shame. For Darwin, shame defines our essential humanity.

This stage has also been referred to as “second” or “psychological” birth. The child is beginning to separate. Saying “no” and “it’s mine” and throwing temper tantrums are the first testing of boundaries. What a child needs most is a firm but understanding caregiver, who in turn needs to have her own needs met through her spouse and her own resources. Such a caregiver needs to have resolved the issues in her own source relationships and needs to have a sense of self-responsibility. When this is the case, such a caregiver can be available to the child and provide what the child needs. No parent is perfect and none can do this perfectly. They simply need to be “good enough.”

Richard Bandler suggested that one of the major blocks to creativity was the feeling of knowing you are right. When we think we are absolutely right, we stop seeking new information. To be right is to be certain, and to be certain stops us from being curious. Curiosity and wonder are at the heart of all learning. Plato said that all philosophy begins in wonder. So the feeling of absolute certainty and righteousness causes us to stop seeking and learning.

Most people have a way to go in terms of developing intimacy and connecting skills when they get married or enter a long-term relationship. But the great thing about a committed relationship is that the relationship itself is a form of therapy. If both partners are committed, most of their differences can be worked out and even appreciated. Shame as the root feeling of humility allows each partner to appreciate and accept the other’s foibles and idiosyncrasies. Knowing and accepting my own limitations allows me to accept my perceptions of my partner’s limitations. Giving and receiving unconditional love is the most effective and powerful way to personal wholeness and happiness.

It has been said that creative people see more in any given reality than others see.

She was never told she was unwanted or that her mother was enraged at her for her very existence, but she felt it and knew it with the intelligence that governs affects in the nondominant hemisphere of the brain.

Hell, in my opinion, is never finding your true self and never living your own life or knowing who you are. This is the fate that lies at the end of the journey of ever-deepening toxic shame.

One feels good being a caregiver. How could I be flawed and defective when I’m taking care of all these people?

Perfectionism always creates a superhuman measure by which one is compared. And no matter how hard one tries, or how well one does, one never measures up. Not measuring up is translated into a comparison of good versus bad, better versus worse. Good and bad lead to moralizing and judgmentalism. Perfectionism leads to comparison making. Kaufman writes: “When perfectionism is paramount, the comparison of self with others inevitably ends in the self feeling the lesser for the comparison.”

We need to control because our toxic shame drives us outside ourselves. We objectify ourselves and experience ourselves as lacking and defective. Therefore, we must move out of our own house. The striving for power flows from the need to control. Achieving power is a direct attempt to compensate for the sense of being defective. When one has power over others, one becomes less vulnerable to being shamed. Power seeking often becomes a total dedication and life task. In its most neurotic form it is an out-and-out addiction. Individuals spend all their energies planning, scheming, gaming and jockeying for position in order to climb the ladder of success. Power is inherent in certain roles or positions. Such roles are often sought as jobs to cover up shame.

They often strive for inherent power jobs and secure their position by finding people who are less secure and weaker to work for them. To share power is precisely what such people are unable to do.

Caregiving and helping as defensive strategies against toxic shame lead to enabling or rescuing. A caregiving spouse of an alcoholic actually enables the alcoholic’s disease, thereby increasing his toxic shame. Parents often enable or rescue their children, doing for them what they could do for themselves. The children wind up feeling inadequate and defective. Rescuing or enabling is robbery. It robs the other person of a sense of achievement and power, thereby increasing toxic shame.

As I write, I think of the daughter of a minister I counseled. She was shame-based to the core. She thought of herself as the Whore of Babylon. She had been abandoned by her shame-based, self-righteous minister father. He was so busy saving souls and being Mr. Wonderful that he had no time for her. I remember being at a conference years later and seeing this man and his obese wife. He was still pompous and passive-aggressive. Such men are dangerous. They hide their shame with patronizing self-righteousness, and they transfer it to their children and disciples.

As forms of energy, the disowned parts of us exert considerable influence. Shame-based people tend to be exhausted a lot of the time. They spend a lot of energy holding on to their false-self masks and hiding their disowned parts. I have compared it to holding a beach ball under water. Virginia Satir compares it to keeping guard over hungry dogs locked in the basement. The repressed parts exert lots of pressure by forcing us to keep their opposites going.