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Everyone needs a sense of shame, but no one needs to feel ashamed. —Frederick Nietzsche
A toxically shamed person is divided within himself and must create a false-self cover-up to hide his sense of being flawed and defective. You cannot offer yourself to another person if you do not know who you really are.
Intimacy requires vulnerability and a lack of defensiveness. Intimacy requires healthy shame.
Giving and receiving unconditional love is the most effective and powerful way to personal wholeness and happiness.
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).
Internalized shame is like LDL cholesterol. It is destructive and if unchecked can ultimately kill us. Internalized or toxic shame lethally disgraces us to the point where we have no limits or boundaries. With LDL shame, we are no longer perfectly imperfect—we are totally imperfect.
SHAMELESS ACTING IN
More than Human Compulsivity Obsessive
Perfectionistic
Controlling
Blame
Righteousness Intimacy Dysfunction
Passive/Aggressive
Judgment Self-Deprivation Criticism/Contempt
Disgust
Rigid, All-Knowing Conscience or Puritanical, Scrupulous Conscience
A shame-based person will guard against exposing his inner self to others, but more significantly, he will guard against exposing himself to himself.
SHAME AS CODEPENDENCY
internalized shame is the essence of codependency, since toxic shame is a rupture of the authentic self that necessitates developing a false self. With a false self, intimacy is impossible.
“a pathological relationship to any mood-altering experience that has life-damaging consequences.”
The workaholic with his work and the alcoholic with his booze are having a love affair. Each one alters the mood to avoid the feeling of loneliness and hurt in the underbelly of shame.
I used to drink to solve the problems caused by drinking. The more I drank to relieve my shame-based loneliness and hurt, the more I felt ashamed. Shame begets shame.
We are not material beings on a spiritual journey; we are spiritual beings who need an earthly journey to become fully spiritual.
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. —Joel Covitz Emotional Child Abuse
We cannot heal what we cannot feel.
Perhaps the most important rules are about feelings, interpersonal communication and parenting.
control is the major defense strategy for shame.
Always be right in everything you do.
to be abandoned by someone who is physically present is much more crazy-making.
By taking on the role of supplying his shame-based parent’s narcissistic gratification, the child secures love and a sense of being needed and not abandoned. This process is a reversal of the order of nature. Now the child is taking care of the parents’ needs, rather than the parents taking care of the child’s needs.
“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.”
The ownership of children by parents, and the belief that children are willful and need their wills broken, provide a rationale for spanking children. Jesus said nothing about spanking children.
The more dysfunctional the system, the more closed and rigid are the roles it assigns. In families that are chemically, sexually or violently dysfunctional, the needs of the system are overt. The system dispenses its roles for the members to play in order to keep balance.
The spiral is one of the most devastating aspects of dysfunctional shame. Once in motion, it can cause the reliving of other shameful experiences and thereby solidifies shame further within the personality.
Shame internalization has four major consequences. A shame-based identity is formed, the depth of shame is magnified and frozen, autonomous shame activation or functional autonomy results, and finally, internal shame spirals are made operative.
In school we were compared to the perfect mark. As we failed to make that mark, we were graded on a descending scale, the lowest mark being an F. Think for a moment of the symbolism of the F as a mark. It is associated in mental imagery with the F word. When a child becomes a failure in school, it’s not long before there is an association with being a failure as a person—a fuck-up. Children get this association very quickly in school. They also associate “bad” grades with being a bad or defective person. And most often the children who are failing are already shame-based when they come to
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Our schools display an enormous bias in educating the mind rather than the whole person. We place major emphasis on reasoning, logic and math, with almost no concern for emotions, intuition and creativity. Our students become memorizing mimics and dull conformists, rather than exciting and feeling creators.
High school is the time of puberty. And puberty is a time of intense exposure and vulnerability. Whatever toxic shame a person carries from childhood will be tested in high school. Often teenage groups look for a scapegoat, someone everyone can dump and project their shame onto. This was Arnold’s fate. He was viciously shamed by his female peer group. This accounted for his problem with women.
WHEN GOD IS A DRUG—RELIGIOUS ADDICTION Mood alteration is an ingredient of compulsive/addictive behavior. Addiction has been described as “a pathological relationship to any mood-altering experience that has life-damaging consequences.” Toxic shame has been suggested as the core and fuel of all addiction.
Another indicator of the hopelessness that is rooted in and results from our shame is our feverish overactivism and compulsive lifestyle.
overactivism as a sign of the restlessness and lack of inner peace that flows from our shame. We are human doings because we have no inner life. Our toxic shame won’t let us go inward. It is too painful. It is too hopeless. As Sheldon Kopp says, “We can change what we are doing, but we can’t change who we are.” If I am flawed and defective as a human person, then there’s something wrong with me. I am a mistake. I am hopeless.
Projection is used when repression fails. It is a major source of conflict and hostility in human relationships.
Turning Against Self.
Thoreau when he said that the mass of humanity live lives of quiet desperation. Berne felt that very few people live truly authentic lives.
These tragic scripts are set up through the shaming of our basic powers: to know, love and feel.
LIFE EXPERIENCES A person’s experiences help shape the script. What is happening in the family is a major factor in script formation. If Mom’s an alcoholic, a child may take on a helper or rescuing role. As the child experiences attention and praise for this role, it becomes a strong element in sealing the script as a rescuer.
Children growing up in a shame-based, dysfunctional family may learn to experience anxiety and distress as a way of life. Later they may feel uncomfortable if things are going too well.
Perfectionism is learned when one is valued only for doing. When parental acceptance and love are dependent upon performance, perfectionism is created. The performance is always related to what is outside the self. The child is taught to strive onward. There is never a place to rest and have inner joy and satisfaction.
“addictiveness” to describe the problem. I’ve seen thousands of addicts who stop one addiction and start a new
one. The key recovery issue centers on the grief work.
