Shame

I wonder how many people struggle with shame, how, and for what reasons. I am feeling it really painfully and it almost seems like I feel shame in my very existence. I can trace the roots of that to an almost complete absence of care in early life. And then compounded by trauma, which seems to involve shame, though when I really try to figure that out, it doesn't really make sense.

I looked up shame because it feels like a state rather than an emotion. I found this:

Gershen Kaufman summed up many of the consequences of shame in one paragraph of his book on the psychology of shame:[19]

...shame is important because no other affect is more disturbing to the self, none more central for the sense of identity. In the context of normal development, shame is the source of low self-esteem, diminished self image, poor self concept, and deficient body-image. Shame itself produces self-doubt and disrupts both security and confidence. It can become an impediment to the experience of belonging and to shared intimacy....It is the experiential ground from which conscience and identity inevitably evolve. In the context of pathological development, shame is central to the emergence of alienation, loneliness, inferiority and perfectionism. It plays a central role in many psychological disorders as well, including depression, paranoia, addiction, and borderline conditions. Sexual disorders and many eating disorders are largely disorders of shame. Both physical abuse and sexual abuse also significantly involve shame.

Also, "...shame has been found to be a very strong predictor of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder...".[20]

Archipelago, have you ever looked into affect theory? My T first introduced me to that, partly because shame is the most powerful emotion I deal with on a daily basis. I recommend this article, "Shame and Personality" by Richard Ostrofsky.

Shame is definitely a huge factor for me. I actually did hw for T this week and I am not sure how to take it to her because fo the shame surrounding it.
It's a powerful emotion. It can prompt us to do or not do a whole bunch of things...

The therapist mentioned shame to me a couple of times. I am not really certain what she is talking about or what it has to do with me.

How do you deal with shame? Is it an all encompassing sort of thing or about very specific things?

The article was interesting. I have come across this theory without recognizing it as that. One thing that resonated is that shame can be found in infants who do not have self-esteem problems because they do not yet have a sense of self.

The way I experience shame is not really connected to self-esteem because my self-esteem is reasonable intact. It is more in this sense of being exposed and feeling vulnerable. I feel like hiding, which the article describes as withdrawal or renunciation. But the article gives another reason for its origin when most of what I have encountered is that it is connected to trauma.

While that connection used to make sense to me, it is not currently making sense so maybe someone who gets it can say something.

I don't have sufficient coffee in my system to read the article, but I downloaded it for later.

My shame is mostly around some very specific things, but those things impact a lot of other things, so it ends up being more all-encompasing... I have yet to deal with it successfully in therapy, though in life I try to hide the shameful parts/things.

I really need to read the article, because I wonder how an infant without trauma and without learning of shame from a caregiver can have a sense of shame.

Right now there is a block in my therapy too because I ended up triggering a shame countertransference response in my therapist. That has made it even more difficult to process shame. It has also put me in greater touch with it, which I assume will end up becoming beneficial but for right now it feels like I'm mired in yuck.

Shame in my own existence - yes, definitely, that is how it feels. I have started to get away from this to some extent, but when I started therapy this is what it was like: I would feel the need to apologise constantly, except that I was ashamed to draw attention to myself by doing that. I had (still have) a powerful self-censorship mechanism which tells me that the only way to stay safe from shame is to be silent, unobtrusive, and preferrably invisible. I would cringe a lot, prevaricate, and try to avoid a lot of shameful topics.

My therapist has responded to this by being patient, calm, and very empathetic (without being overtly emotional towards me). It took me a long time to recognise that he genuinely cares about my wellbeing, not only because it is his job to do so. And he has never flinched from topics that are shameful for me - if he deals with any form of countertransference in his reactions to me he is very good indeed at not allowing me to notice that. And that is also important. At the same time he doesn't push things when the pain of shame becomes too strong for me.

One way the shame response manifests for me is in a form of dissociation. It took me more than two years to dare to bring that up with T, because it was so shameful in itself to talk about.

As for affect theory and shame... if I remember correctly, their definition of "shame" includes what I would perhaps rather label "frustration". The claim is that the adult shame grows out of the child's frustration at not having their needs met. I'm a little ambivalent about that. In one way it makes sense, but shame can come from a different place than that, too - if I make a fool of myself and feel shame, then that's not to do with unmet needs. (Incidentally, some of my own shame stems from being a constant object of ridicule to much older siblings whom I pretty much worshipped as a kid. I was an ungainly, unattractive, and rather stupid child, and they were naturally rather ashamed of me. It would perhaps have been better for me if they hadn't been, but it wasn't exactly their fault.)

I see shame as being like the boggerts in Harry Potter. The only power it has over you is what you give it, but it's hard not to give it power because it preys on your worst fears.

We can't have a shame thread without mentioning Brene Brown! I think she articulates a very accessible way into thinking of shame and vulnerability in her Ted talk.

Shame in my existence used to be a huge, huge part of my everyday and it almost throttled me. Now it isn't there very much at all - only at peak points of stress in relationship conflict, and even then not in such an aggressive way as before. It is still there though.

I want to think before I make comments on the comments. In the meantime I recalled an important essay written by Firenzsci, an early follower of Freud, who broke with him because he had more realistic and radical views, including believing that children were in fact abused and it wasn't all in their heads as Freud thought. About this topic, he shows how the tenderness of a child is manipulated and the child takes on contradictory stances that end up causing problems later. This is something about that:

These children feel physically and morally helpless, their personalities are not sufficiently consolidated in order to be able to protest, even if only in thought, for the overpowering force and authority of the adult makes them dumb and can rob them of their senses.

shame is an emotion i feel far too often.

it stems from being abused. ridiculous how the shame is placed on the victim not the perpetrator.

Shame and blame belong to an abuser....Knowing the difference between OUR stuff and THEIR stuff is a big key in life.

Yes, many people seem to find her a good speaker on the subject. I can't stand watching her - I get very strong shame reactions. I've never managed more than a minute before I have to close the browser lest I start punching the screen. That doesn't mean there is anything wrong with her, but her message and her way of delivering it is not for everybody.

I think it is important to realise that shame is not only a negative thing - in society, shame is what keeps people from treating strangers badly. It is a survival trait, since most of us are dependent on a functioning society in order to get food, shelter, education, medical attention etc etc. The positive side of the shame coin is, quite simply, our conscience. [edited to add: I don't equate a conscience with the pathological, overwhelming, life-destroying, dissasociation-inducing kind of shame, as I hope you'll understand. I don't think there is any societal or personal gain in feeling like that.]

Yeah. It carries through to adulthood... I remember many situations like this, where I knew something was wrong, and I felt absolutely powerless to speak out or do anything... Learned helplessness my T says. And then the shame of being so helpless. And you can't tell anyone, because you know you should be able to help yourself, and the shame if anyone found out, and what would happen, and they would take my kids away because I'm not good enough to take care of them etc. etc...

Ugh.

For me, it's all-encompassing. But its origin is no mystery, having been shamed and humiliated through words and actions. I haven't felt relief from any of it until this current therapist. Each time I share something and she responds, some of the sting eases. It's very much a core issue, though.

When you've spent a lifetime being a container for other people's shame it's hard to believe you can be anything else.

I think it is that helplessness and then the sense that you have to hide that that is the most salient for me. I don't have fight or flight responses. I freeze. This immobilization is considered by most, including those who study the brain, a last resort survival mechanism that was thought to be only present in animals but now is associated with dissociation.

When you essentially try not to be seen, are afraid to exist, then being exposed or having that needing to be not seen as well could do nothing but induce shame, and not a mild social form but a painful, traumatic form.

I was reading something about how certain kinds of trauma cause a collapse in the sense of self (and this stuff can be traced in the brain) and there is a flood of shame and disgust. That's how I'm feeling. It is very close to hyperarousal and therefore I assume that dissociation will kick in to stop it if I can't find relief.

^
This.

I'm curious, what types of trauma cause this collapse in the sense of self?