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.
 

This article examines the importance of being recognized to how we express ourselves and whether we experience ourselves as valid or not.  We know that when we focus on some aspect of our experience it comes alive with details and nuances we didn’t know were there. Similarly for others to show us recognition communicates we are indeed here, that we exist and allows us to see our experience more fully. For example how many times has someone noticed a gesture or expression that we made just outside our awareness that when it was brought to our attention allowed us to experience ourself in a new way.

Alternatively, when we are not recognized or validated we become at odds with ourselves; there is no feedback that confirms the truth of it. This article will identify how the basic splitting of our experience into good and bad starts with recognition.  This is an important process in one’s development for an infant and child to learn who they are in the world.

It is important to distinguish between attention and recognition.  Attention can respond  to certain aspects that a child needs and neglect others.  A mother can attend to physical care but neglect the need for comfort or soothing that helps the infant to return to a calm state. I am proposing that recognition is an empathic interaction between parent and child (and any two people) that sees the child’s experience with an understanding of them as they are in that moment, without judgement. Attention can be negative whereas recognition supports the others experience as it is.

It is through the infants needs that they first experience being known. The infant’s needs are basic: hunger, heat, soothing, comfort and these needs are necessary for a child’s survival.  When the infant is hungry they cry out and when the need is satisfied they return to a sense of wellbeing  and calm.  If the infants nervous system remains in an activated state more often than not this creates discomfort and crisis in the system.  This discomfort, which we could call dissatisfaction, forms neural pathways that associate the discomfort with particular needs and experiences. These pathways form patterns of response to the world around us and begin to create our sense of self.

As our cognitive and language abilities develop we build on these patterns of satisfaction and dissatisfaction by beginning to label our experience as we learn the words to express a pleasant vs unpleasant experience. Commonly these experiences develop into what is seen as good and bad, right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable. So our expression and sense of self relates to this basic split between what has been recognized and what has not through being satisfied or not. So our sense of self begins with a validation of our needs and then as we develop becomes associated with language, behaviour, implicit sensory experiences, visual and auditory cues and the development of a cognitive script.

The unrecognized needs are intertwined with feelings such as fear, anger and shame; the emotional distress that is left from being unsatisfied. These emotions, behaviours and scripts that believe we don't deserve to be satisfied form a different set of patterns around those aspects of ourself that are experienced as bad or unacceptable. We can perhaps see how it would be difficult to bring these aspects of ourself forward in relationships. The accumulation of being unrecognized is traumatic when our system becomes emotionally overwhelmed, and the younger we are the easier it is to reach a crisis level. If as an infant or child our nervous system becomes overloaded we have a mechanism called dissociation, that will kick in to protect us from the intensity of our disappointment or fear.

We can not underestimate the power of being recognized and  validated as the basis of learning who we are in the world and experiencing what is acceptable or not. This split in our sense of self between what is acceptable and what is not will happen for everyone to some degree; life is not perfect and families always have norms of behaviour past down that affect what is recognized and validated. In addition, the more shame and trauma a person deals with growing up will create more aspects of our experience that are unacceptable.

The consequence of this split is that there are parts of our lives that remain unfulfilled and unsatisfied.  We will hold back on our desires for fear of reprisal and react to the world and others with unrecognized pain.  There remains an unfulfilled ache within us to be recognized, and we find ourselves having to: perform, entertain, be nice, be bad, funny, studious, quiet and obedient, or any number of ways that we have come to believe we should be, to just be noticed. We can end up living with much of our experience hidden from others and also from ourselves.

However, there is hope in coming full circle by first saying ‘I want to know’.  To begin to see within ourselves the voice that has not spoken or the action unrealized.  To reclaim the unrecognized parts of the self, we need to feel that it is valid.  It starts with a curiosity about our own truth and with shaking bones to take the risk to put that forward.  The relationships we form in our lives are important in working to heal the unrecognized self; to find others who are on this same journey of recognition, who will support and validate our experience, without judgement, but accept us for who we are or wish to be.

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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”

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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.

Moving on from your family dynamics is a lifelong task and the result of family of origin work. The concept of differentiation is central to the ability to live your own life and form healthy adult relationships. In this article I provide a couple of definitions and identify ways you can develop  differentiation.

Differentiation is the active, ongoing process of defining self, revealing self, clarifying boundaries, and managing the anxiety that comes from risking either greater intimacy or potential separation.

Murray Bowen defined differentiation as the degree of resilience to the interpersonal contagion of anxiety.

It is important to distinguish between individuality, which these definitions may sound like, and differentiation. Individuality is how we develop as a person and connected to self esteem; what is it that makes us who we are?  Differentiation occurs in relation to others, how are we different from them? Differentiation is not about being separate from our family but about being able to tolerate who they are while maintaining our sense of self. People make the mistake of believing that they have left their family dynamics behind by being many miles away and having little to do with them.

I have worked with many clients who are struggling with wanting to change their relationship with a parent/s. Often they are feeling angry, hurt and disappointed when the same dynamics in the family continue. The need to change family members is based on wanting to get something they have never received: recognition, attention, comfort, support. The other side of this can involve trying to change themselves to get needs met. Both of these positions keep the person stuck in the family dynamics.

Some examples of low differentiation:

Jane is living with her parents and her father continually disregards her requests to respect her space and things. She gets angry and withdraws treating him as if he doesn’t exist. Her attempts to speak to him about her feelings end in yelling matches.

Josh lived his life taking care of himself and being independent and rational. He grew up with an alcoholic father. His father has been sober for the last 6 years and their relationship is ‘fine now’.  However, they have not discussed what it was like for him growing up and their interactions are superficial.

Peter’s mother constantly calls him asking for advice, wanting to talk when she is upset or lonely. Whenever Peter tries to limit the interactions she gets angry and manipulates with guilt. This ends up with Peter being there for his mother and resenting her.

Changing your interactions with your family can be complex. How do you maintain contact but not get drawn into the dynamics? This is a question many of my clients ask. It is easy to see why many people distance themselves to give the illusion that they have overcome their family dysfunction. However, in adult relationships these same dynamics show up and the way you deal with communication and conflict reflect your degree of differentiation.

Ways to improve differentiation

Dealing with anxiety

Anxiety causes us to acquiesce, shut down, cut off, withhold important feelings and desires, attack others and defend ourselves. Anxiety arises because risking self expression identifies difference. We feel anxious because being different and allowing others to know us, threatens our security in the relationship. We need to learn to regulate the swell of anxiety that arises as we risk being seen for who we are.  Grounding, relaxation and learning to be present are all important skills in helping to regulate your nervous system.

Boundaries
Undifferentiated boundary systems in families occur when family members don’t express differences and acquiesce to pressure to conform. Or they will fight to hold onto their identity with self righteousness and protection. Developing healthy boundaries increases differentiation and real connectedness. Even when your family members continue with unhealthy boundaries you can remain strong and clear in their presence by improving your boundaries.

Self awareness
Becoming self-aware increases your choices in relation to your family. As you become aware of how you get drawn into the dysfunction and lack of differentiation you can make different choices.  As we become aware of our reactions we can become observing of these dynamics instead of reactive.

Mourning losses
In order to move beyond wanting your family to change requires mourning the loss of your needs not being met. Keeping stuck in anger and hurt prevents you from mourning.  We have to acknowledge these tragedies in our life to let them go. Often clients have difficulty letting go of anger because it feels like they are letting their family ‘off the hook’.  It is important to realize that your family members are either going to take responsibility or not, and there is nothing that you can do about it. By mourning that your family is not the way you needed them to be, you are acknowledging what happened and allowing yourself to heal.

This article examines the main consequences of relationship betrayal that we experience growing up. I will define what we mean by relationship betrayal and then talk about five consequences that can happen.

Relationship betrayal happens when our needs, feelings and desires are betrayed by the people we are dependent on or have a significant attachment to. These relationships include those with family and those we rely on through institutions such as school or health. Extensive betrayal is traumatic because we become overwhelmed by the emotional pain and our safety and trust is threatened.

The kinds of experiences we encounter that betray us, lie along a continuum.  At one end of this continuum is what we call intrusive behaviours. Examples of this involve violent behaviour, physical, sexual and verbal abuse, but there are a lot of experiences that can be difficult to identify.  One example is overprotective parents. This is where the parent is invading the child with their fears about the world and preventing the child from experiencing their own desires. Another example is a parent who provokes debate about everything in order to win and feel superior.  A child in this position doesn’t have the experience or power to ever be right but is expected to try, only to be proved wrong over and over again.  

At the other end of the continuum is neglect. This is where you are treated as if you don’t exist, which may mean that you are quite literally ignored, or you do not remember being hugged, receiving affection or touch. Your physical needs for food or clothing may not be attended to. Another common example is when parents separate and the parent whom the child doesn’t live with, disappears, or has inconsistent contact. These are all examples of neglect.

Build up of emotional pain
All parents at times intrude upon or neglect their children. What prevents these times from becoming traumatic is the ability of parents to provide the space to repair these incidents, and hear the hurt or angry feelings of their children without shaming them. So often there are continuous incidents of betrayal that form patterns of relating in families with no opportunity for repair, or the awareness of repair as necessary.  The build up of emotional pain is one of the consequences of an unsafe and inattentive family environment. The emotional pain builds up because there is nowhere for it to go; there is no comfort. We need human caring in order to process this pain. In this situation children have to do something with their emotions in order to carry on and function in the family. So what happens is they have to stop experiencing the pain and detach in some way from their body.  It is the nervous system that becomes overwhelmed as the fight or flight response (sympathetic nervous system) is activated.

Children have the capacity to dissociate from the pain and will pattern their behaviour around ways to distract. So what ends up happening is a struggle around their emotional life because the emotional pain doesn’t go away, it is just bound up in the body and defended against. Because those hurts and betrayals lie unattended to, it is easy to activate them. So there will be times when you are overwhelmed by emotion and then cutting off again and not feeling. 

Relationships become unsafe
It stands to reason that one of the consequences of relationship betrayal would be that we would experience relationships as unsafe. The more extensive our experience of relationship trauma, the more we will feel that relationships in general are a dangerous place. It is important for all of us to be able to rely on people when we need help, to know that others have our best interests at heart and to generally know that we matter to those around us. Without this safety and trust in relationships it makes it very difficult to deal with stress and traumatic events that happen in our life. Relationships are the way we feel safe in the world, and are important in the way we discharge emotional pain.

Sense of responsibility is distorted
Responsibility simply is the ability to respond to ourself and others. If we have experienced a lot of intrusion or neglect then we learn other people’s experience is more important than ours. Our ability to respond is distorted by putting more emphasis on what is happening for others and needing them to determine our experience. We will also not expect anyone to respond to what our needs might be, and so we have a distorted sense of responsibility for our own needs. This distortion affects how we feel connected to others.

Not taken seriously
Growing up in a family that disregards ones needs and feelings, whether that is from intrusion or neglect, gives the message that you do not matter. The feeling of insignificance sets up a lot of difficulties in ones life: in relationships, in figuring out how we want to live our life, making decisions and expressing our experience to others. It is difficult to take ourself seriously if we were not taken seriously by those growing up.

Shame
Even though this is at the last consequence mentioned it is the most important. Shame is what we carry as a result of needing to hide aspects of ourself. It results from being immobilized with fear. Any action or expression we were unable to take because of fear will result in shame. The preceding points all have aspects that involve feelings of inadequacy to change what is happening. As a child we perceive the world differently to when we are an adult. We see everything that happens to us as something to do with us. When we are being hurt it is easier to blame ourself than the person we are dependent on.  We have to somehow maintain a picture of them as the good parent. This is how we blame ourself and end up feeling shame.
 

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.

Trauma is held in our nervous system and bound together in symptoms.

Focusing on sensations/movement/energy/feelings in the body begins to tease apart that bound up energy.  Sensations lead us to the wisdom of the body and to releasing the trauma.  The story of the body allows us to access the ways in which the trauma is held in the nervous system.

The verbal/cognitive story has less impact on the body but can be an indirect way into the trauma. We do less analyzing and more experiencing. We work with what is happening in the present moment

Focusing on body sensations and awareness has to be done in a manageable and tolerable way. Experiencing sensation needs to be accompanied with the support of the relationship with the therapist, and building resources and regulation of the nervous system.

Regulation is the way in which we stay in our window of tolerance. Through regulating our nervous system we can come out of being too activated or immobilized, and release the energy of the trauma. We stay regulated by the resources we have built up.

Resources are anything that helps us stay regulated. Some examples may be; relationship with your therapist/others, soothing gestures, anything that grounds us, music, images, pleasant feelings in the body, movement. Building resources that are particular to you is one of the focuses in therapy.

The window of tolerance is the place where you can stay with your experience even if it is painful without being overwhelmed and need to cut off from it in some way. When we do this ‘energy’ (often experienced as emotion) can flow through us and transform.

Being activated means that our fight/flight response in our nervous system has become energized.  Heart beats faster, feel heat through our body, breathing becomes shallow, body tenses, feelings of anxiety – these are the common signs. Feeling overwhelmed by these sensation and emotions is when our nervous system is over-activated. Often therapy is focused on regulation to bring down this over-activation into the window of tolerance.

When we are immobilized with fear we have little response to the world around us, we have retreated, and there is a sense of giving up as things have been too overwhelming. In this state it is difficult to access feelings/sensations, feel ‘here’, connect with others, take action in our lives. We can feel spacey or unfeeling and cold. Here therapy is focused on regulation that brings up the under-activation into the window of tolerance.

I want to share an experience recently of some personal work I was doing that completed and let go of an early trauma. I want to share how powerful working from a mind-body approach can be. I have always been fairly inflexible especially around my hip area. As years have gone by my thigh muscles have become chronically tight. I would stretch them out and it was like an elastic band, they would stretch and then snap back in. This has caused me a lot of pain and discomfort for many years. I had the opportunity to do some work with someone who works from a somatic based psychotherapy approach to working with trauma. It was on a training I am doing in working this way. The legs and arms are important for our survival. Legs carry us and move us away from danger, and these movements are part of our ’survival instincts’. If we are not able to leave then that instinct becomes thwarted and tension will develop. This is one way that trauma will be held in the body.

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.