Letting Go of Shame

Understanding How Shame Affects Your Life

Ronald Potter-Efron, Patricia Potter-Efron

• Publisher: Hazelden Publishing
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780894866357
• eBook ISBN: 9781592858460
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Success

Letting Go of Shame: Understanding How Shame Affects Your Life helps to explain the emotion of shame and its impact on our self-image and relationships. As we identify shame and use recovery skills to work through it, the authors offer us a way that we can personalize a plan of action to help build our self-esteem, and they suggest exercises to help us identify our feelings of shame.

SECTION THREE

HEALING SHAME’S WOUNDS

Introduction

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In this section, we will learn how healing the wounds of shame begins with understanding and is followed by action. We will see what actions we can take in healing the wounds caused by the shame from our family of origin, our current relationships, and ourselves.

Finally, we will discuss the help available for the person who is shame-deficient.

CHAPTER TEN

Healing the Wounds of Shame: The Understanding Phase

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All her life she has struggled with shame. Now she just wants it to leave her alone. Shame has become her enemy — an unwelcome but frequent visitor that she cannot persuade to leave. Her goal is to eradicate her shame even if that means going numb emotionally.

* * * * * * * * * *

“I’m finally learning to appreciate my shame. I used to be terrified of it. Now I can sit quietly with my shame some of the time. I try to listen to what my shame tells me about myself, about how I want to live my life. The most important thing I’ve recognized is that shame is part of me. If I hate my shame, I’m hating myself.”

* * * * * * * * * *

This time, he caught himself before much damage was done. He usually makes up an excuse and runs away as soon as he feels any shame. Sometimes he leaves without knowing what is bothering him and only later connects it with shame. But today he noticed right away that he was overreacting to one small put-down. Then he could remind himself not to flee. He didn’t let one small criticism become a total humiliation in his mind.

* * * * * * * * * *

If you are in pain from your shame, you can do things that will eventually relieve that discomfort. You can and will, over time, learn how to live in a way that will help you feel competent, worthy, and lovable.

Shame drives down a person’s head and eyes. Shame steals energy, optimism, and excitement. Nevertheless, the person whose face flushes with shame is also someone who wants and needs to learn how to hold her head up once again in calm dignity and realistic pride. That is the message of hope that lies hidden in every moment of shame.

The following is meant for everyone, not just shame-based people. Still, we recognize that the most deeply shamed people, those who most desperately long to heal their pain, will read these pages with a great sense of urgency. They may also have been paralyzed so long by their shame that they feel almost hopeless. The powerful despair and pessimism are both part of the shame process and a response to a seemingly impossible situation. We ask that you try to put aside both your pessimism and your desperation for a while. Although we can offer no quick and easy solutions to dissolving your shame in a few days, we do believe there are things you can do to gradually replace excessive shame with positive self-worth.

We have divided this process into two basic stages: understanding (to be covered in this chapter) and action (to be covered in the next chapter). Both are essential to healing shame. Without understanding, action becomes scattered and useless. Without action, understanding fails to help change a person’s life. If your goal is to resolve painful shame issues, please allow yourself enough time to both understand and act.

GUIDELINES FOR HEALING
THE WOUNDS OF SHAME

Understanding Phase (to be discussed in this chapter)

1. Be patient — shame heals slowly.
2. Become fully aware of your shame.
3. Notice your defenses against shame.
4. Investigate the five sources of your shame (to be discussed shortly).
5. Accept your shame as part of the human condition.

Action Phase (to be discussed in the next chapter)

1. Get some help — you don’t have to do this alone.
2. Challenge the shame.
3. Set positive goals based on humanity, humility, autonomy, and competence.
4. Take mental and physical action to move toward those goals.
5. Review your progress regularly.

THE UNDERSTANDING PHASE OF SHAME
RESOLUTION

1. Be Patient — Shame Heals Slowly

Shame is about a person’s identity as a human being. Since the wounds from shame are frequently deep and long lasting, it will take a while to feel better.

Impatience is a problem as we deal with shame. We naturally want relief from that feeling as quickly as possible. Furthermore, just reading and thinking about shame can temporarily seem to intensify the problem. For example, a woman, when told we were writing a book about shame, said to us: “I hope it’s not another one of those dreadful books that only makes you feel worse about yourself!”

Above all, we want our shame to go away so that we can feel our right to exist in this world. This is perfectly normal.

A real danger is shaming ourselves even more by rushing off too quickly to “fix” our shame. Remember, we cannot force liking or respecting ourselves. Self-caring has to build gradually. Shame can be replaced with dignity and pride, but only slowly. Someone who tries to heal his shame too rapidly may only add another “failure” to his list.

Recovery from shame is a gradual process that can be unpredictable. We might feel terrible one day, better the next, and maybe awful again on the third.

At first, there may be more bad days than good. But after a few months or perhaps a year or longer, you may discover that you respect and appreciate yourself much more than when you first began to heal your shame. The gift of love for yourself is the payoff for dealing with shame and self-hatred.

2. Become Fully Aware of Your Shame

Shame is not easy to face. After all, who wants to study exactly how one holds oneself in contempt? Many people dread the terrible feelings of self-hatred that lie deep inside them and are embarrassed to admit that they have such thoughts. Healing our shame will take courage. We will have to examine our shame even though our natural impulse is to hide from it.

How does someone improve his awareness of shame? One way is by reading books like this and by doing the exercises at the end of each chapter. Another way is to notice the messages our body gives us. Clues that shame is around include blushing, looking down, and a sudden loss of energy — a rapid deflation of the self. We should also listen carefully to our thoughts, especially the automatic insults we give ourselves. We can also detect shame in our actions. If we isolate ourselves from others or withdraw verbally or emotionally, we may be feeling shame. Perhaps we feel paralyzed (the inability to either approach or retreat from a situation because of overwhelming self-consciousness), perfectionistic, or especially critical of people around us.

Still another way to improve our awareness of shame is to investigate our spiritual connections and disconnections. How do we find meaning in our lives? When do we feel empty or meaningless? When do we feel less than fully human?

Shame episodes can be small or great. If we have committed ourselves to becoming fully aware of our shame, we will need to notice the smaller shame events, especially those repeated regularly. Shame can become a habit when smaller shame events go unchallenged.

We may be amazed and discouraged when we realize how often we shame ourselves or how often we are shamed by others. Still, it is far better to learn that we have been living with shame.

3. Notice Your Defenses Against Shame

Earlier, we learned that shamed people often develop survival strategies that lessen their awareness of shame. These defenses minimize immediate pain at the cost of ignoring reality. Think about the common defenses against shame that you may be using.

• Denial — denying the parts of life that bring us shame, forcing our real problems out of our consciousness.
• Withdrawal — temporarily pulling away from others with loss of interest and energy.
• Rage — driving others away so that they cannot see our defects. This is most likely to occur if we believe others are deliberately trying to humiliate us.
• Perfectionism — trying to hold off shame by striving to never make a mistake or to do everything perfectly.
• Arrogance — acting superior to everybody or insisting that others are full of defects. (Arrogance has two parts: grandiosity and contempt.)
• Exhibitionism — making a public display of a behavior we would prefer to hide. For example, if we cannot read well, we might call special attention to this handicap in a flamboyant way, perhaps to convince ourselves and others that it does not bother us.

We must take time to notice and understand the defenses we use to conceal our shame from ourselves and others. Perhaps one of the six defenses in the list is very familiar. Or we may have developed other strategies that are not on the list.

The goal here is to understand how we protect ourselves from painful shame feelings and thoughts, not just to get rid of our defenses. Eventually, we will be able to make choices about how to live. For example, if we habitually withdraw from others when we start to feel shame (or when we fear that we could start to feel shame), we should not feel obligated to stick around and work through shame issues in public. We have the right to stay or leave, depending on what we can handle at the time. But before we can make any meaningful choices, we must know what survival strategies we are using.

4. Investigate the Five Sources of Your Shame

Shame has many sources: (1) our genetic and biological composition, (2) our families of origin, (3) society’s expectations and demands, (4) current relationships, and (5) ourselves. It is valuable to sort through these because each leads to different healing strategies. Certainly, someone whose main problems with shame come from living with an arrogant and demeaning partner is very different from someone whose main concerns are feelings of shame left over from childhood. But many persons will discover that their shame is related to several sources.

Here is an example of how understanding the sources of our shame can be helpful. A man might feel embarrassed and attacked when his wife tells friends he is financially irresponsible. After he has had the time to think about what happened, he might realize her remarks triggered old feelings of shame. These started when his parents repeatedly told him he was irresponsible and would always fail at what he did. The shame that he must address first is from his family of origin. Later, he can deal with the shame from his current relationship.

5. Accept Your Shame as Fart of the Human Condition

The understanding phase of resolving shame ends when we accept ourselves as human beings who occasionally feel ashamed. Our shame won’t go away by our fearing, hating, and fighting it. In fact, it could even grow stronger if we fight it. A person who despises her shame forgets that she is detesting herself in the process.

We must accept our shame before we can change it. That is reality. Shame cannot simply be wished away because it is painful. Nor can it be willed away through being tough.

This period of growing self-awareness and acceptance may be short or long; it may take minutes or months. It may apply to your whole life or to a specific event. If, for example, we are suddenly embarrassed or ashamed because of another person’s criticism, we can take a few moments to notice and study that feeling before rushing into action. Of course, it will take much longer to fully appreciate the deepest and oldest aspects of our shamed selves. It isn’t easy to accept the self-hatred that our shame may have produced.

It is far better to befriend our shame than it is to treat it with dread or hatred. All of us feel ashamed of ourselves occasionally. Try to make peace with that shame if at all possible, because it is really another part of you. We must respect every part of ourselves, including our shame, to discover our love of ourselves.

Summary

The person who is shame-based may have gradually lost interest in himself since he believes he is weak and bad. A person who wants to heal the wounds of shame will have to rekindle his wonder about himself so that he can seek out his lost dignity and competence.

Patience must be blended with renewed interest in oneself. Shame seldom heals quickly; attempting to push it along too rapidly increases the danger of adding to shame instead of lessening it. We can become students of the shame process by carefully noticing how and when we feel shame, recognizing our defenses against shame, and investigating all five sources of that shame.

The final aspect of understanding shame occurs when we accept that shame is an important part of ourselves and that it can contribute to a better life. We can learn to sit quietly with our shame instead of wanting to wrestle it into submission. Curiously, we must treat our shame with respect. Only then will its power over our lives diminish.

One purpose of understanding shame is to prepare us for action. In the next chapter, we will look at healing the wounds of shame through appropriate action.

EXERCISES

Exercise One

Shame heals slowly. What’s more, when a person begins to work with shame, the shameful feelings often temporarily intensify, leading her to think she is not getting anywhere. Imagine a person working on shame calling herself a dummy. Then, internally, she says, Boy, am I stupid for shaming myself when I’m trying not to. I’ll never learn. She has just shamed herself for having shame, and her impatience makes the situation worse. How long does it take to learn to tie a shoe, play the piano, or build a house? It takes a while to regain a sense of wholeness for the self too.

When you find yourself getting impatient, breathe deeply two or three times. Then, while continuing to breathe normally, repeat I am human to yourself several times. Remind yourself that — just like tying a shoe — you will learn to deal with your shame, and that you do not need to shame yourself as a motivation. You are okay.

Exercise Two

To become fully aware of our shame, we must examine our defenses. Look carefully now at how you use defenses. Review the defenses you identified in Chapter Three, Exercise Four, and think once again about how you defend yourself against shame.

Here are some examples of shame problems listed by people who courageously confronted their defenses against shame. Use these examples to help you if they are relevant, but do your own thinking here too. Read through these examples and, on a separate sheet of paper, make your own list for each of the defenses.

Denial:

I deny my mother has a drinking; problem, because I would be ashamed to have a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• About The Author
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgment
• Introduction - A Definition of Shame
• Section One
• Section Two
• Section Three
• Epilogue
• Select Bibliography
• Publisher Information
• Other Title