What Good Does Talking About It Do?

When we talk, we have to access the word-based “thinking” part of our brain. That in itself helps down regulate (reduce) our distressing feelings. Shame is one of those painful feelings.  So it follows that to talk about our experiences of shame reduces its power. And when we do it consistently, our overall self esteem will be raised.

Counter-intuitive, right? People who don’t know this principal naturally want to try to hide their shame experiences, often afraid that if they feel shame, that another person will also see them as defective.

Au contraire. A way to defuse shame is to  simply express it, instead of further hiding or disguising it.

In “The Courage to Heal,” authors Laura Davis and Ellen Bass write that “one of the most powerful ways to overcome shame. . .   is to talk” about it.  “Shame exists in an environment of secrecy. When you begin to freely speak the truth about your life, your sense of shame will diminish.”

You just have to be mindful of which people are shaming people, and which aren’t. Then chose the safe ones to share the things you feel inferior about.

First Flip Video

done

This is fun!

Believe It Or Not: Feeling Sorry for Your Self is a Good Thing

“I don’t want to feel sorry for myself.” I so often hear clients tell me, when they are sad, discouraged or hurt. If they have sorrow for themselves, they will often next feel guilt or shame. Sometimes they will go on to have absolute contempt for themselves and call their sorrow for themselves having a “pity-party.”

When I ask them how they would feel if the same thing happened to a friend or a child who was hurt, sad, discouraged or distressed, there are two general responses.  Some people would feel compassion for the friend or child, but would feel guilty for feeling compassion for themselves. Anything ’selfish’ is bad for themselves. They apply kinder rules to others.

Other people would condemn the friend or child for feeling sorry. They judge the friend as selfish and negative. They also believe that acknowledging feelings “doesn’t do any good.” These people apply the same harsh rule to others that they apply to themselves.

So many limiting beliefs are embedded in the desire not to feel sorrow for oneself. Some of the beliefs may be:
1. It is “weak” to accept or have kind feelings towards a person not in a “powerful” state or feeling. “Vulnerability” is bad.
2. If one doesn’t condemn the vulnerable feelings, they will grow and grow. (The “Spare the rod, spoil the child” mentality.)
3. One may get “stuck” in the shameful feelings.
4. One will not be able to feel powerful again.
5. One is being “negative” and therefore “bad.”

But the irony is that anytime we condemn ourselves for how we are feeling, that is when we are weakening ourselves. The way to ’strength’ is to validate ourselves for how we are feeling. The root of the word ‘validate’ means to strengthen. To in-validate is to weaken.

To validate ourselves, we need to let ourselves know that it makes sense to feel however we feel. We need to let ourselves know that we can understand ourselves. This may take as little as a few seconds.

THEN, and only then, can we work at shifting and improving our state of mind.

There are so many ways we can work at regulating and adjusting our feelings. But shaming ourselves for how we feel only makes it take longer. So I say, have compassion for yourself. By all means work towards joy and zest.

I believe that in the words of the song, “There’s A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.” So when you are feeling sad, first feel sorry for yourself.

Shame Activators

What  triggers our feelings of shame? For  all of us, any time we feel blocked from continuing to express positive feelings. For example: Let’s say we’re exuberant and twirl around the room and we perceive a scornful glance from a loved one that seems to say, “What’s the matter with you?” or a parent says, “Calm down.”

Another activator of shame is anytime we have a basic positive expectation that is thwarted. You walk into a room and see a friend and smile hello and there is no smile returned. Or you give a gift and there is no “thank you.”

Disappointment activates shame.

Any thing that breaks an interpersonal bond will activate shame. Breakups, divorces, and being stood up for a date, are dramatic examples. But in tiny ways, if we feel more excited to see someone than they seem to be a seeing us, we will probably experience shame.

When we have learned over time that our needs are ‘wrong” we will feel shame when we experience need.

Another Great Text About Shame

Kaufman is one of the ‘Kings” of modern shame theory. This text focuses on the treatment of shame issues.

Kaufman, G., and Raphael, L. (1991). Dynamics of Power: Fighting Shame and Building Self-Esteem. Second Edition. Rochester, VT: Schenkman Books.

“How could you do that to me?!”

“How could you do that to me!?” I heard that phrase, I mean really heard it, when I called my mother to tell her that I had decided to get a divorce from my doctor husband of 10 years.

I had received enough empathic responsiveness from therapy by then to know that her response was ever so self-centered (in the ‘bad’ sense). No concern for what I was going through, or how it would impact my children, or even my later-to-be my ex-husband for that matter.

I had known in my guts, thought not yet in my head, that any ‘problem’ that her offspring had would be experienced by her as a betrayal- as treason, even. I knew not to expect any compassion. She needed the status of having a doctor son-in-law to help her with her own shame and disappointment at not becoming an MD herself.

Now, of course, it’s very funny to me; it’s so outrageous. But what about the other people who still have to live with the daily disconnect of being seen as an extensions of another.Being seen as not existing as a separate self with individual preferences, individual feelings, opinions, needs.

W ell, maybe I can help some. I know what it’s like.

Getting Clear: Recognizing Confused Submission & Loss of Identity

It often occurs in family shame patterns, that the child is required to adapt the views of the parent. In this unfortunate dynamic, the parent feels attacked if the child disagrees with the parental viewpoint, and either attacks the child, or withdraws. Either caretaker behavior is intolerable to the child who needs to feel safely connected. So the child submits to the parental viewpoint to keep the sense of connection.

The growing person learns to dismiss his/her own point of view and feels out of contact with him/herself, foggy, and confused, never knowing what is happening or why. This mental paralysis may then be used by the caretaker to expand his or her control.

For some people, submitting to another’s viewpoint occurs only in the presence of the parent. For others the submission is more comprehensive and continues both in relation to the pressures of the real parent and to the negative inner parent.

Waking up to this dynamic is the first step to clearing the fog.

The Birth of A ‘People Pleaser’

Some very vulnerable people, people who have an intolerably low self opinion, inflate their importance. They need to think they are always right, always better than others, always grand and glorious. Perfect. And seen that way by everyone else.

They are so filled with self doubt and fear of external criticism, that they need people to applaud them to dispel the fears. Their life is organized to deny negative feelings about themselves and keep a view of themselves as superior. While I hate using labels, ‘narcissist’ is the name attached to the Perfect Ones.

Others have no other option than to fill a supporting role- if, that is, they want to get along with them.

So imagine another person in relationship with them. If there is a difference of opinion, the other person is wrong, because the narcissist is right. This person can only be accepted when they agree.

The children of the narcissists usually become compliant ‘people-pleasers’ in order to maintain a connection with the parent. They have lost touch with their Real Selves. They may feel less than nothing, since they have to “be” certain ways to earn the parent’s love. This process of having to earn the love is Conditional love. The lack of unconditional love fosters people with shame- the sense of being not good enough, of having no real substance or worth.

Mis-information About Shame

I ‘d like to talk with you about the possibility of Freedom from Shame. Although every body experiences shame, until the last 20 years or so, we have been culturally ignorant about shame. And I see both rampant misinformation and lack of information about shame.

Misinformation about shame: First of all I need to clear up a common misconception about shame.  Often when people think of shame, they think it means that they have actually done some thing “shameful.” A parent’s scornful, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself,.” May ring in one’s ears. I’m not talking about that.  When I talk about shame,  I’m not talking about the persons’ actually DOING anything wrong. I’m talking about the feeling that we have of being somehow wrong, defective, inadequate, unlovable and unworthy. 

Lack of information about shame: We didn’t know it until fairly recently, but even infants are born with the ability to experience shame. Imagine a scene: baby is sitting on the kitchen counter in his infant seat. Mom is out of the room for a minute. She starts walking back into the room, and as baby hears her steps, he anticipates making eye contact with her when she comes back. Mom is preoccupied, so when she comes back in the room, she does not meet his eyes. The muscles in his neck get loose & his head drops down, he turns his face away from her, and he may even drool. This is shame/humiliation. Mom did not meet his interest, she did not make the connection, and shame is the result. Everybody feels shame but most of us don’t realize it.

Now you’ve probably heard the phrase, “What you feel, you can heal.” And it follows that if you can’t feel it,  you can’t heal it. So even though everybody experiences shame/humiliation, we are not skilled in recognizing and dealing with it.

Cure for Shame: Validation

Written February 15, 2008 

I lay on the purple velvet couch in the euthanasia room. Soft new age music wafted out of the tiny boom box on the floor. A water fountain burbled on the altar before me, next to clusters of aromatic oil bottles nestled on a tray. And on my stomach I held my beloved cat of 18 years, “Punky” (short for Pumpkin). He was suffering from the end stages of kitty diabetes. His right front leg was taped, holding in the needles for the fluids which would follow.

I had gone in earlier to be able to spend time with Punky before our 5 pm “appointment” with the veterinarian. My eyes were filled with tears, making it hard to see into his eyes as I pet him. But I did not want to move my hands away from stroking his now boney body which was shutting down, cooling right before me.

At five, Doctor Schwartz entered gravely and started talking. Blah, blah, blah…(medical stuff about Punky’s compromised  liver), blah, blah, blah (that I could have given him appetite stimulants, but they had bad side effects), blah, blah, blah (that he was 18 years already, a good  life time for a cat). At this, I can begin to listen. “If you asked me what I’d do if he were my own cat, I’d say that this is a good option. I know you’ve been devoted to him. You are not killing him; you’re preserving the end quality of his life.” At such a time, his kindness was a great gift. He was validating me and my choice to have Punky put to sleep.

That validation has helped me through the few days since then. It reminds me of how important it can be when we are in pain to know that another person thinks that we and our actions make sense.

Recieving validation is the opposite of recieving another’s contempt. A loved one’s contempt often provokes either straight out feelings of inadequacy -shame. Or we can jump to the anger which can feel like a more powerful choice in response to the other’s contempt.

Validation of another is a gift to them. And I am appreciating my gift.

New Research About Fighting

Written February 12, 2008 

“A good fight with your spouse could be good for the health”, a newly published study of 192 US couples who were observed over a period of 17 years has found says The Associated Foreign Press (Jan 23, 2008).

When at least one partner stands up for themselves, the death rate decreases to half the rate of couples in which no one stands up for themselves.

So freeing one’s self from the inhibiting/hiding/and sometimes paralyzing effects of shame can save your very life – not just the quality of your life.

Welcome

Welcome! I hope you will add posts and comments about what you have experienced with shame and what you have learned about how to recognize it, talk to yourself about it, soothe yourself through it…and anything else about it.