Shame is an intensely uncomfortable feeling that arises as a result of failure.  If our failure is met by others with comfort and understanding we can transcend our shame and learn from mistakes and limitations.  Otherwise shame gets under our skin and starts to infect our sense of self and our relationship to others.  This article discusses the relationship between shame and disconnection as important to our understanding of how shame develops and how we can heal from it.

The importance of connection

The importance of connection to others is evident.  Connection provides us with comfort, validation, support, belonging and is necessary to our survival.  Through the sharing and collaboration of ideas and knowledge we create new technologies.  Our lives thrive through the connection of others because we can do far more together than by ourselves.  Our development of self comes through the reflection of those close to us as we grow and experience being loved.  We heal from life’s struggles and trauma by the loving support of others.

Of course connection (or more accurately, disconnection) with others can bring pain, loss and abuse. When we are hurt at the hands of others shame results. Shame withers our sense of self and disconnection from others will occur in all sorts of ways. We withhold and shrink back from putting ourselves out in the world.  It is important to distinguish here that disconnection refers to the experience of connection, or attempts to connect, being deliberately or accidentally severed.  The connection is broken.  The experience of being alone is not shameful unless it is associated with rejection and failure.  Failure comes about by trying something and being unsuccessful.

Humiliation is a common experience where aspects of our self are belittled. Not only do we have a sense that something about our self is useless but our inability to stand up to the barrage of humiliation also leaves us with a sense of failure. When we are able to defend and fight back in the face of humiliation we carry less toxic shame because we have a sense of our ability to stand up for ourselves.  We are expressing a pride in ourselves through this act.

Traumatic events and interpersonal trauma has at it’s core a feeling of shame, related to our awareness that we had no control to stop the tragedy.  Feeling helpless is almost as painful as shame.  That is because they are very much related.  Inaction is shameful to us as human beings because we feel a weakness of our body, voice, and mind that then puts us at the mercy of others. Trauma happens when we experience an inability to deal with something and our system is overloaded.  Our fight or flight system is activated but we are unable to fight or flee.  The awareness that we could not deal with something leaves us feeling helpless and ashamed.  

Disconnection

Disconnection is a key component of shame.  When we are humiliated by others there is a sense of being cast out. Failure could be described as the inability to make an impact. Think for a moment about the intensely shameful feeling that arises from saying something into a group of people followed by a deathly silence.  A silence that you wish could swallow you up and make you disappear.  Disconnection creates shame because we are left with a feeling of failure to impact the other person. If our failure is seen by others or we believe it is, our shame causes us to want to cut off – therefore disconnecting further.  Shame makes us lie, hide, cut off, withdraw and isolate in order for something shameful to be hidden.  A vicious cycle of spiraling down into shame. 

Experiencing someone withdrawing from us can activate our shame leaving us with feelings of alienation, rejection, self hatred, helplessness and non-existence.  These feelings are ghosts from the past that took hold as we reached out and nothing was there.  Disconnected responses include misunderstanding, confusion, denial, rejection and criticism.  The younger we are the less ability we have to make sense of these responses to our attempts to connect, and tend to experience it as our failure.

Development of shyness

To illustrate the development of shame to disconnection let’s examine how shyness develops. This first occurs when we are an infant.  The mother and infant’s interactions are all intended to create attachment and bonding.  In this dynamic the infant uses various means to try and connect; using their voice, hands, feet and eye contact.  All these methods are designed to create a response in the mother.  If the mother fails consistently to respond accurately to these cues the infant experiences failure and shame around reaching out for contact and their needs being met.  They will implicitly experience failure related to their body and voice.  Reaching out becomes associated with failure and shame so the infant will increasingly hold back from making contact with others.  Shyness is characterized by a lack of expression, self consciousness and holding oneself back. Children show these characteristics early on. Ironically adults often make it worse by shaming children further for being ‘shy’ or trying to push them into coming forward and inadvertently create further failure and shame.

Regular changes in connection and disconnection occur in close relationships which can activate a tendency to shame each other.  This is because the easiest way to deal with an experience of shame is to project it onto others in the form of blame. In close relationships the connections and disconnections happen with a greater frequency and are experienced more deeply.  When we defend against shame that get’s activated at these times of disconnection (with, projection, withdrawing, attacking, gossiping,?defensiveness) we get stuck in shame based interactions with others.

Letting go of shame

Dealing with our shame is at the core of what we work on in therapy in order to truly live the life we wish and become empowered.  Society is a shame based system because it is much easier to project this terrible feeling of oneself onto others than feel it. It is also difficult to recover from toxic shame when reconnecting requires exposing the very aspects of ourself that holds shame. Blame, sarcasm, contempt, condescension are common place and spread shame based interactions.  Large organizational systems reflect experiences of disconnection because they operate in generalized terms not through developing individual relationships. Rules are developed that capture what is common and efficient, not what is needed by the individual.

Disconnection will happen; it is inevitable.  However, we can learn to release our shame so that we do not pass it on. Here are some ways that we can change the shame we carry.

Therapy provides a place to explore, and work through shame and find empowerment in your life. Anxiety, depression, difficulties in relating to others and trauma are all indicators of deep shame that would benefit form ongoing therapy.

Notice how you shame yourself, others and how they shame you.  Develop observation.  Healing Humanity. Life Without Shame by Anne Hastings gives many pointers to identifying shame in our lives.

Develop connections with others who you can talk about ways to change these interactions.  Develop loving, non-judgmental relationships.  Notice the ways in which you are connected. 

Remember we are always healing, and having relationships that support us to be who we are and more, are needed to release the shame we carry.
 

How are we suppose to feel safe in a world full of danger and impermanence?  Why is it that some people can breeze through life with confidence and calm, while others are  consumed by thoughts of danger and betrayal?  Believe it or not, our health, and the quality of our lives, are affected by the degree to which we feel safe.  In this article we will explore what is important about feeling safe and how we create that in our lives.

Lets start with our nervous system which is designed to react to danger in order to survive, to connect and form intimate bonds, and to shut down the heat when it all gets too much.  Some of the answers to creating our sense of safety lie here.  Three main parts of our nervous system work together to help us deal with and make sense of the world around us.  When we are in danger and threatened all three parts of our nervous system will come into play. 

Nervous System’s Response

Most of the danger and threat that we experience in the world is at the hands of others. Sometimes that can be single events such as a physical attack, bullying, verbal abuse or witnessing violence. It also occurs from the accumulation of interactions with others in our lives such as :

• The continuous mis-attunement  of a mother to her infants distress,
• Lliving in an atmosphere of criticism and judgement or
• The unpredictability and neglect caused by a father’s alcoholism.
  

It is easy to see how our safety is threatened in the world by a single event; the fear, shame, anger and powerlessness that we feel is sharp and palpable. However, the ongoing experiences that threaten our safety are like a thousand paper cuts, one cut is no big deal, but becomes excruciating when one of many.  Using this analogy our feeling safe in the world is no less compromised by thousands of razor sharp cuts than a single blow to the head.

How does our nervous system respond?  

The connecting part of our nervous system (called social engagement) comes into play first.  We know we are in this when we are regulated and calm and not threatened.  When things are uncomfortable or we experience the first signs of threat will still attempt to keep a connection. We use our eyes, ears and voice to engage others. Whether we are an infant in distress, or a child that questions the adults around them and tries to speak about their concerns, or an adult who tries to calm an angry spouse; they are all attempting to communicate a desire to connect in order to create safety. The nerves in our head area are connected to our gut and heart that give us signals in assessing threat or opening up to an intimate connection.  If the uncomfortable signals from our gut continue they will reach levels that trigger our fight or flight area of the nervous system which takes over and the connecting part goes off line. 

We will then try to fight or flee a situation to survive.  We know we are in this part of the system when we are angry and protesting, refusing to be coerced, and of course, engaged in physical defense.  In addition to running we take flight when we withdraw or make ourselves invisible.  Staying very quiet all the while our heart is beating loudly is an example of when we would be in the fight or flight, or when we actively avoid uncomfortable situations or interactions with others.   Our system becomes activated to help us do this by;

• adrenaline that is pumped into our blood stream,
• muscles tensing and
• breathing shallower. 

This will happen in varying degrees depending on the situation. If we use the analogy of many cuts our system’s activation may be in a very tolerable range at the first cut but each one increases the pain and hurt to the point where another cut is intolerable and we feel in crisis.

The more overwhelmed we become  another part of our system cuts off from the bodily sensations.  From a nervous system perspective our body is feeling that the threat is so high that it thinks we are going to die, and pulls back our energy towards the vital organs to conserve strength in a last attempt to survive.  We can recognize this part of our nervous system when we are numb or spacey, and it is hard to access how we feel. We associate consciously or unconsciously feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness in having an impact.  Examples may be when we give up on expressing something because we believe we will not be heard or taken seriously, when we have thoughts that we can’t do something or there is no point.  It is a place of collapse.  Our fight or flight has not been able to change the situation and the more we feel trapped, dependent or lacking in control this will kick in.

Our patterns of relating are shaped by our nervous system

We are not designed to remain in the fight or flight or the shut down part of our system for very long. If we do then our body and sense of self will begin to pattern future responses to the world from either this sense of emergency or what we might call being frozen.  If we remain in a heightened state of emergency our body is revved up most of the time which puts stress on our systems.  When we remain shut down not enough energy is getting to parts of our body that over time causes deterioration.  Our muscles, circulation, lymphatic system, posture and flexibility will all be activated differently depending on which of these parts of our system we are in, and the types of experiences we are having.  Our nervous system’s response corresponds to feelings, sensations, physical movements, images and eventually beliefs that all develop into what we call patterned responses to the world. 

Both positions create feelings of being unsafe; in a nutshell we either feel that we have to fight off danger or that we are at the mercy of a cruel world.  Both, as we see from above, are necessary when trying to survive, and those feelings match that situation.  However, when we are unable to release this energy we develop fixed patterns of beliefs and behaviour that keep us stuck in feeling unsafe.  There is less room in our system where we feel regulated and calm and connected to the world, so it takes less stress to move us into the emergency or frozen state.  Ironically for people who find themselves in these two states often, they have come to believe that mistrust keeps them safe from harm.  In other words, their emergency system and being frozen is viewed as keeping them safe  not actually being safe.   They are responding to the world assuming they are in danger when they are not.  The tension that once enabled them to fight back when they were being harmed has become armor in the body and the mind.

Experiencing and creating safety

Feeling safe simply occurs when we can relax. As we relax we sink down into the moment and experience.  That we are open and aware to what is going on around us and how that connects to our inner world.  We are not aware in a watchful defense but a welcome embrace to all that is around us.  There is an openness to the moment not a self absorbed bubble around us that shuts others out.  The sense that we can tolerate what comes our way and not be overly concerned with trying to prevent things from happening.  When we feel safe we can connect with the world and others with ease.  Feeling safe allows us to be flexible and adapt to change.

It is important in our ability to experience safety that we release the traumatic energy bound up in our system.  This is because it creates more space to be in our connecting part of the nervous system which is when we feel regulated and connected to the world around us. In other words, we experience a sense of well being and safety.  Ironically it is through feeling safe that we are able to release the energy bound up in our emergency and frozen states.  What this means is that we have to develop safety within our self and with others before we can tolerate the relaxation of our mistrust. 

Creating safety

Connecting with others who are calm and centered is therefore really important in recovering from traumatic events and releasing this energy.  We need to build an awareness and experience of being in the connecting part of our system first, in whatever way we can, and then move into the stuck emergency and frozen states slowly.  Working with a therapist who is trained and skilled in creating a relationship with you that is safe, non-judgmental and accepting is one important way to go. Other relationships such as with a spouse, close friends and family can provide the safety needed to release this energy.  However, this can be difficult because those in our life have a way through their own humanness of behaving in ways that easily trigger our emergency and frozen states.  If you are someone who has a lot of mistrust you may find that you never really get to a place with the people in your life where you can relax to let go of this energy.  Having said that, people and community are a powerful force in our life to create safe connections if we look for them.  Over the course of our life these relationships are crucial in healing us from those that have betrayed us.

Developing our awareness of being regulated and grounded, and hanging out in that place as long as we can, is important in promoting our sense of safety.  Examples of such activities might be sitting on the beach listening to the waves, thinking about images that promote calm, listening to music or doing yoga.  It is important to develop a mindfulness in relation to these activities. That is, to pay attention to your experience through noticing the sensations in your body and learning to become aware of when you are regulated.  Anything that we pay attention to becomes bigger.  I will leave you with a quote that I came across many years ago that helped me in understanding safety and trust.   “Fear says I will keep you safe.  Love says you are safe”

Contact Delyse to set up an appointment

A number of clients express how they often experience themselves acting in ways that don't feel real or emotions that take over.  They describe how they become  ‘a crazy person’, angry and destructive, clinging and needy or insecure, when they don’t feel this way most of the time in their lives.  They can’t understand how they could behave in these ways and feel terribly ashamed of themselves and the problems it causes in their relationships. They have come to see these reactions as ‘not them’ and the ‘normal’ calmer in control self as who they really are. They may come into therapy looking for a way of getting rid of this part of them, that somehow there may be tools that they can learn to control themselves. The split between these two parts of a person and how that develops in our family of origin, is the focus of this article.

A split occurs to deal with the psychological pain we experience from relational trauma when those who we are dependent on, betray us.  Pain, whether that is physical such as touching something that is hot or emotional when we feel hurt by someone’s reaction to us, can inform us about how to proceed in life. We learn not to go near things that are hot, or not to walk on a broken leg. Pain can give us information about how to survive. When we are hurt emotionally by someone we are dependent on our survival is attached to a continued relationship with them.  The pain we feel may be telling us to avoid that person or get angry about what has happened, but our survival (especially as a child) relies on us getting along with this person. The emotional pain we feel is therefore not useful to our survival in this case. The limited choices we have is the basis for the split that occurs to remove the pain from our consciousness in order to carry on in this relationship.

From research into early developmental trauma it is well documented that dissociation is the psychological defense mechanism that creates splits. Dissociation is defined as ‘ a lack of normal integration of  thoughts, feelings, and experiences into the stream of consciousness and memory’.  It is this ability to dissociate that makes it possible for a child to split off the painful experiences and feelings  and carry on with life as ‘normal’. The two sides of the split have been identified rather aptly as between the ‘apparently normal personality’ (ANP) and the ‘emotional personality’ (EP).  Very simply, the ANP is how the child continues to interact with the world and the EP holds the unresolved traumatic response.  As a result of  trauma shame is attached to those emotions,  bodily actions and reactions, behaviour and desires that have been dissociated.  These feelings of shame bury the EP's experiences even further which result in a lack of consciousness of the psychological process involved in unwanted and painful experiences.

The EP emerges every now and again in a person's life especially in relationships because the experiences are rooted in developmental experiences, ie relational.  Let’s take an example to illustrate how this happens. A mother is suffering from depression, she has a hard time responding to her daughter’s need for attention. Her daughter feels rejected and hurt because she can not get the comfort or attention that she needs. She feels that she is alone most of the time which builds up fear that no-one is there when things get difficult. She learns that if she complains her mother gets angry and more rejecting. In order to be as connected to her mother as she can she has to dissociate from these needs for attention; she comes to believe that she is someone who doesn’t need attention.  The need for attention and feelings of insecurity become part of the EP and associated with feelings of shame. They don’t disappear they just lay dormant and hidden.  She may feel angry with her mother but never expresses it and may even begin to feel that her anger is not ok.

As her life continues these feelings are kept at bay most of the time, until she comes into a situation where the feeling of someone not being there for her is triggered. It is these situations in adult life that many clients are referring to when they feel like a ‘crazy person’ and not themselves. It can be difficult for people to see these feelings as legitimate as they are associated with being rejected or shamed.  When EP is activated emotions are conflicted, which leads to behaviour that often ends with the opposite of what the person desires.  For example,  someone may need support but has shame attached to those needs and so they go unexpressed.  They may feel angry and frustrated that the people around them are not supporting them.  This leads to behaviours such as, attacking and blaming – much more likely to lead to rejection ! 

The first task in counselling is often to work at reducing the emotional overwhelm when these feelings come up so that they can be tolerated. When we can tolerate the feelings it is easier to validate needs for attention, or comfort, or support. When we can tolerate emotions they can be expressed in a calmer and less reactive way .  Then we work to release the emotional pain in a manageable way that begins to put current relationship difficulties into perspective and heal the shame we carry. It is important to realize that even though you may want to ‘get rid of’ this part of you, it is a vital part of who you are that needs attention rather than rejection.

So many times people come into therapy wanting to know what happens, how does it work? What are we doing in therapy?;

I think one of the important things we are doing is encouraging people to have a more intimate relationship with themselves. Without that relationship it is very difficult to:

• make decisions,
• create the life we want,
• share ourselves and to love others.

This relationship involves our whole body. We experience life by what flows through our body. It is not just an intellectual knowing, thinking about I am this or that, but taking in the whole of who we are. We self-reveal when we are aware of a flow of emotions, and sensation without being overwhelmed. We can then feel alive with the richness and complexity of our life. We can notice the nuances of our experience and discover the meaning

When people come in to see me it is  often a result of a crisis where their life is not working in some way and they are in pain, and they want some way of stopping the pain. Understandable, who wants to feel pain? Ironically it is often pain that prevents us from focusing on our experience because we are trying to get away from it. The more we try to distract from emotional pain the less we know about ourselves. A vicious cycle – the less we know about ourselves, the less we can tolerate, the more we distract, the less we know.;

So in therapy we are building that relationship to ourselves and we begin to discover we can recover from anything that life throws at us whether that is rejection, betrayal, loss, humiliation etc. We learn that we have the strength and resilience within us.  If we remain constricted and try to defend against pain we will remain powerless and fearful of life, given that life is painful at times.  So our relationship with ourselves is really crucial to embracing life and becoming more alive. Constriction or expansion, that is the difference between developing a more intimate relationship with ourselves or not.

How is the relationship with the therapist important in this process?  After all you could just meditate and develop this relationship to yourself.  There are two aspects to it.  One is that therapy is about revealing oneself to another.  We can't do that in meditation, it is a private affair.  Therapy is about trusting others and dealing with the shame that arises as we become known by another.  Facing the shame and vulnerability is what is truly transformative.  We can learn through meditation to observe our process and not get caught up in it and this aids our self awareness.  Shame, and powerlessness are in particular relational experiences that we experience when relating to others.  We can not transform this energy without a transformative relational experience.

The second aspect which relates to this is  that our deepest hurts and emotional pain has come from those relationships with significant others, and their  failure to recognize who we are. In other words our feelings, desires, perspective etc  was not important to those around us and we have had to adapt ourselves to deal with this. This adaptation has developed into ‘symptoms’ such as depression, anxiety, relationship difficulties, low self esteem.  So in the relationship with the therapist you will examine these processes as they come up in the therapeutic relationship. 

One of the biggest differences in therapy vs other relationships is that the therapist’s focus and attention is on the client. My personal struggles are taken care of elsewhere and do not intrude on or distract me from being present to my clients. This is the basic contract. What this does is give the message that your experience matters and I am going to take that seriously. When this is mirrored back a space is created where the person can relax into their experience and take themselves seriously. In this way the person is encouraged to develop their relationship with themselves and transform the adaptation they have made that keeps them afraid of life. Most struggles people have are a result of not being taken seriously.

Now that doesn’t mean it is easy for people, for a lot of people have great difficulty focusing on their experience and for good reason. The experiences that have caused this constriction are painful and contain fear, as we said before, so as they begin to focus on their internal, physical, emotional self – these experiences are going to get stirred up.  Another aspect of the relationship with the therapist is creating safety to explore your experience in a way that is manageable.  If we are overwhelmed we will just constrict further, and that is not going to be helpful.

We need safety to develop this relationship to ourselves. A way to think about safety is through the experience of an infant as they begin to crawl and walk. This is how we begin our exploration into self by exploring the world and how it feels to us. What is the mother doing ? – well (hopefully) she is paying attention to make sure the child doesn’t go too far and hurt themselves. And she is also not intruding on the child’s experience to prevent the child exploring, because of her own fear. So the creation of safety in therapy is similar by creating a space where you are not going too fast that you become overwhelmed, and not going too slow that nothing happens. Both of which reinforce a fear of life and living. Overprotective mothers are not helping their children. They prevent the child from developing an experience of themselves, and give the message that the child’s desires are not ok and that the world is a very dangerous place.

One of the most important skills a therapist has in this process is the ability to be really tuned in to what is needed at any given time – and this is more than empathy or listening. It is about sensing into, and being with the other that facilitates a two way communication where the client feels the therapist’s presence and experiences their attention to what is needed.  As the therapist is attuned to her clients then adjustments are made to create this container. Perhaps there is a need for more space around an experience, or a little push to move out of too much comfort and protection.  If there is a sense of being overwhelmed then it is important to take a moment slow it down and put our feet on the ground so we can feel supported before proceeding.  So as this is communicated and processed the person can relax one step at a time into their experience at that moment. Through this they gain confidence to experience life, and deal with what comes their way. We don’t have to restrict our experience in order to survive. 

We are hard wired to feel safe by our connection to others. Relationships are crucial to our ability to feel safe and recover from trauma. When our ability to form relationships and trust others has been compromised, it is difficult to create an experience of feeling safe in the world. The relationship with the therapist is a unique and profound experience that can transform our emotional pain.

Written by Delyse Ledgard

Shame is an intensely uncomfortable feeling that arises as a result of failure.  If our failure is met by others with comfort and understanding we can transcend our shame and learn from mistakes and limitations.  Otherwise shame gets under our skin and starts to infect our sense of self and our relationship to others.  This article discusses the relationship between shame and disconnection as important to our understanding of how shame develops and how we can heal from it.

The importance of connection

The importance of connection to others is evident.  Connection provides us with comfort, validation, support, belonging and is necessary to our survival.  Through the sharing and collaboration of ideas and knowledge we create new technologies.  Our lives thrive through the connection of others because we can do far more together than by ourselves.  Our development of self comes through the reflection of those close to us as we grow and experience being loved.  We heal from life’s struggles and trauma by the loving support of others.

Of course connection (or more accurately, disconnection) with others can bring pain, loss and abuse. When we are hurt at the hands of others shame results. Shame withers our sense of self and disconnection from others will occur in all sorts of ways. We withhold and shrink back from putting ourselves out in the world.  It is important to distinguish here that disconnection refers to the experience of connection, or attempts to connect, being deliberately or accidentally severed.  The connection is broken.  The experience of being alone is not shameful unless it is associated with rejection and failure.  Failure comes about by trying something and being unsuccessful.

Humiliation is a common experience where aspects of our self are belittled. Not only do we have a sense that something about our self is useless but our inability to stand up to the barrage of humiliation also leaves us with a sense of failure. When we are able to defend and fight back in the face of humiliation we carry less toxic shame because we have a sense of our ability to stand up for ourselves.  We are expressing a pride in ourselves through this act.

Traumatic events and interpersonal trauma has at it’s core a feeling of shame, related to our awareness that we had no control to stop the tragedy.  Feeling helpless is almost as painful as shame.  That is because they are very much related.  Inaction is shameful to us as human beings because we feel a weakness of our body, voice, and mind that then puts us at the mercy of others. Trauma happens when we experience an inability to deal with something and our system is overloaded.  Our fight or flight system is activated but we are unable to fight or flee.  The awareness that we could not deal with something leaves us feeling helpless and ashamed.  

Disconnection

Disconnection is a key component of shame.  When we are humiliated by others there is a sense of being cast out. Failure could be described as the inability to make an impact. Think for a moment about the intensely shameful feeling that arises from saying something into a group of people followed by a deathly silence.  A silence that you wish could swallow you up and make you disappear.  Disconnection creates shame because we are left with a feeling of failure to impact the other person. If our failure is seen by others or we believe it is, our shame causes us to want to cut off – therefore disconnecting further.  Shame makes us lie, hide, cut off, withdraw and isolate in order for something shameful to be hidden.  A vicious cycle of spiraling down into shame. 

Experiencing someone withdrawing from us can activate our shame leaving us with feelings of alienation, rejection, self hatred, helplessness and non-existence.  These feelings are ghosts from the past that took hold as we reached out and nothing was there.  Disconnected responses include misunderstanding, confusion, denial, rejection and criticism.  The younger we are the less ability we have to make sense of these responses to our attempts to connect, and tend to experience it as our failure.

Development of shyness

To illustrate the development of shame to disconnection let’s examine how shyness develops. This first occurs when we are an infant.  The mother and infant’s interactions are all intended to create attachment and bonding.  In this dynamic the infant uses various means to try and connect; using their voice, hands, feet and eye contact.  All these methods are designed to create a response in the mother.  If the mother fails consistently to respond accurately to these cues the infant experiences failure and shame around reaching out for contact and their needs being met.  They will implicitly experience failure related to their body and voice.  Reaching out becomes associated with failure and shame so the infant will increasingly hold back from making contact with others.  Shyness is characterized by a lack of expression, self consciousness and holding oneself back. Children show these characteristics early on. Ironically adults often make it worse by shaming children further for being ‘shy’ or trying to push them into coming forward and inadvertently create further failure and shame.

Regular changes in connection and disconnection occur in close relationships which can activate a tendency to shame each other.  This is because the easiest way to deal with an experience of shame is to project it onto others in the form of blame. In close relationships the connections and disconnections happen with a greater frequency and are experienced more deeply.  When we defend against shame that get’s activated at these times of disconnection (with, projection, withdrawing, attacking, gossiping,?defensiveness) we get stuck in shame based interactions with others.

Letting go of shame

Dealing with our shame is at the core of what we work on in therapy in order to truly live the life we wish and become empowered.  Society is a shame based system because it is much easier to project this terrible feeling of oneself onto others than feel it. It is also difficult to recover from toxic shame when reconnecting requires exposing the very aspects of ourself that holds shame. Blame, sarcasm, contempt, condescension are common place and spread shame based interactions.  Large organizational systems reflect experiences of disconnection because they operate in generalized terms not through developing individual relationships. Rules are developed that capture what is common and efficient, not what is needed by the individual.

Disconnection will happen; it is inevitable.  However, we can learn to release our shame so that we do not pass it on. Here are some ways that we can change the shame we carry.

Therapy provides a place to explore, and work through shame and find empowerment in your life. Anxiety, depression, difficulties in relating to others and trauma are all indicators of deep shame that would benefit form ongoing therapy.

Notice how you shame yourself, others and how they shame you.  Develop observation.  Healing Humanity. Life Without Shame by Anne Hastings gives many pointers to identifying shame in our lives.

Develop connections with others who you can talk about ways to change these interactions.  Develop loving, non-judgmental relationships.  Notice the ways in which you are connected. 

Remember we are always healing, and having relationships that support us to be who we are and more, are needed to release the shame we carry.