What Shame Teaches Us
What comes to your mind upon hearing shame? Is it a feeling of resistance “I don’t experience shame”, “we don’t talk about shame”, or perhaps “people have it worse than me, I don’t have the rights to feel shame”.
What is Shame?
Brene Brown, research professor studying courage, vulnerability, shame and empathy described shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging. Shame is never known to lead us towards positive change.”
Shame is a neurobiological response to feeling abandoned.
In the Still Face Experiment study performed in 1975, babies were observed for their reactions to temporary maternal unavailability. In the study it was shown that when their mother did not respond to their attempts of connection that they have heightened stress and would use various forms of actions, words, and behaviors to get the attention of the mother.
When young, as babies, we are hardwired to establish connection. All humans have the core need and desire to connect with others. When the connection with our most trusted adults is lost, we feel a huge sense of distress, shame and fear. The purpose of shame in here is to keep us safe from danger and to seek protection from our parents. Hence when we notice being disconnected from a caregiver, our shame response causes us to do everything we can to get the connection back and to feel safe once more.
Shame is not just experienced in childhood it can be experienced in adulthood too. When a supervisor, partner, family member or a friend constantly activate the stress response in us through hurtful actions, words or behaviors, the shame response can be activated resulting in traumatic experience and feeling unsafe just like how a parent disconnects from their babies.
The solution:
Avoiding shame at all costs suppresses the feeling and urge to form healthy connections with others. When we avoid shame we may:
blame others for causing us to be who we are
blame ourselves for being unworthy of attention and support
deny the experience and feeling
feel helpless, hopeless
turn to addictions, external validations
The way out of shame is not to suppress it or deny it, but to accept it and attend to it.
Every time we experience shame we send a stress message to our body that we are not safe.
To begin your healing process, observe yourself and be aware of the times you feel triggered, or shame.
Remind yourself that shame is part of the human experience, it does not define who you are and you are not alone.
Next, show self-compassion to yourself using positive affirmations “I honor what I feel now and remind myself I am enough”.
Know that it is ok to feel the difficult big emotions and you don’t have to do it alone, you can reach out to your mental health support team, to a trusted friend or if you prefer to process it yourself, you can journal and sit in meditation to understand the underlying reasons for feeling shame.
““If you put shame in a petri dish, it needs three ingredients to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in the petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive.”
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