Shame: The Master Emotion and Culture

Shame — The Master Emotion
Shame has been called the master emotion because as it is internalized all the other emotions are bound by shame. Emotionally shame-bound parents cannot allow their children to have emotions because the child's emotion triggers the parents' emotions. Repressed emotions often feel too big, like they would completely overwhelm us if we expressed them. There is also the fear of the shame that would be triggered if we expressed our emotions.

The shaming and binding of emotions were core parts of Max's internalized shame. Max had never been physically abused. But he was certainly sexually abused. As the third child he carried his mother's and father's sexual issues. Both were unresolved incest victims. Jerome was a womanizer, although this was always a family secret. 

As children, we had needs that depended on others for fulfillment. Children are dependent and needy. They need their parents for 15 years. Their dependency needs can only be satisfied by a caretaker. Figure 2.5 outlines these needs. Children need someone to hold them and touch them. They need a face to minor and affirm their feelings, needs and drives. Children need a structure with limits; they need predictability. They need a mutually trusting relationship; they need to know there is someone they can count on. Children need to have space and be different. They need security; they need to have enough nutritional food, clothing, shelter and adequate medical care. Children need their parents' time and attention. Children need direction in the form of problem-solving techniques and strategies.

Need Shame Binds
When these needs are neglected, children are given the message that their needs are not important, and they lose a sense of their own personal value. They are not worth someone being there for them. They get the feeling that they do not matter. As their needs are chronically rejected, children stops believing that they have the right to depend on anyone. These dependency needs depend on the interpersonal bridge and the bond of mutuality for their fulfillment. It is the interpersonal bridge that is broken when one is abandoned through neglect. Since we have no one to depend on, we come to believe that we have no right to depend on anyone. We feel shame when we feel needy. Since these needs are basic needs, i.e., needs we cannot be fully human without, we have to get them met in abortive ways.

A neglected child may learn to get attention by getting into trouble or by annoying his parents. One will drink muddy water when he is dying of thirst. I know of children who get their touch and stimulation needs met by getting spanked. Much has been written about abortive adaptation. Suffice it to say, when one's basic dependency needs are not met at the proper time and in the proper sequence, the personality is arrested at those developmental stages. The child learns adaptive ways to get his needs met. Over the course of time, as one experiences need-deprivation, one loses awareness of these needs. Ultimately one does not even know what one needs.

Being abandoned through the neglect of our developmental dependency needs is the major factor in becoming an adult child. We grow up; we look like adults. We walk and talk like adults, but beneath the surface is a little child who feels empty and needy, a child whose needs are insatiable because he has a child's needs in an adult body. This insatiable child is the core of all compulsive/addictive behavior.

Another dynamic aspect of the sexual conversion of basic needs is the pleasure of sexual orgasm itself. When one is shamed through abandonment, the pain is deep and profound. One feels worthless; one feels painfully diminished and exposed. When one experiences sexual stimulation and climax, one has available an all-encompassing and powerful pleasure. This pleasure can take the place of any other need. In a poignant passage, Kaufman sums up the process of converting all needs into sexuality.

He writes, "A young boy who learns never to need anything emotionally from his parents is faced with a dilemma whenever he feels young, needy or otherwise insecure. If masturbating has been his principle source of good feeling, he may resort to masturbation in order to restore good feelings about self at times when he is experiencing needs quite unrelated to sexuality."

The ego defense of conversion transforms any of the developmental needs into the need for something else. This could be food, money or excessive attention. In Max's case it was sex. Over the course of his childhood, the experience of his developmental needs became associate with his sex drive. This eventually resulted in the conversion of emotional needing into sexuality.  

The Family System
We have already described the family as a social system — its components, rules, roles and its law of dynamic homeostasis. You have seen how a dysfunctional family uses the members to maintain its balance. The more dysfunctional the system, the more closed and rigid are the roles it assigns. ! In families which are chemically, sexually or violently dysfunctional, the needs of the system are overt. The system dispenses its roles for the members to play in order to keep balance.

All the rigid roles set up by family dysfunction are forms of abandonment. To be a family Hero, I had to be strong — never showing the scared vulnerable part of me. Heroes are not supposed to be scared. The roles are like scripts given out for a play. They proscribe what feelings you can or cannot have. After playing my Hero role for years, I no longer really knew who I was. In recovery I had to learn how to give up that role. To do so I had to learn to be vulnerable. I had to learn how to be a member of a group rather than the leader, to follow rather than lead. Because the roles maintain the balance of the system, they exist for the system. The children give up their own reality to take care of the family system — to keep it whole and balanced . . .Each form of abandonment breaks the interpersonal bridge and the mutual-intimacy bond. A child is precious and incomparable. Unless treated with value and love, this sense of preciousness and "uniqueness" diminishes. In toxic internalized shame, it disappears completely.

Interconnection Of Imagery
The third way that internalization occurs is by internalizing images. These internal images can be of a shaming person, of a place or of an actual experience. They can also be word images, i.e., sound imprints. Hearing someone say certain words may trigger old experiences of shame. Individual shame experiences are fused together by means of language and imagery. Kaufman says, "Scenes of shame become interconnected and magnified." As the language, imagery and scenes associated with shame are fused together, the meaning of shame is transformed. "I feel shame" comes to mean "I am shameful, deficient in some vital way as a human being." Shame is no longer one feeling among many, but comes to constitute the core of oneself. Internalized shame creates a frozen state of being. Shame is no longer an emotional signal that comes and goes. It is a deep abiding, all-pervasive sense of being defective as a person. This core of defectiveness forms the foundation around which other feelings about the self will be experienced. Gradually over a period of time, this frozen feeling of belief recedes from consciousness. In this way shame becomes basic to one's sense of identity. One becomes a shame-based person.

Functional Autonomy
Once internalized, shame can be activated without any external stimuli. There is no longer any need for an interpersonal shame-inducing event. I can remember experiencing painful shame as I went to pay for a speeding ticket. As I walked up to the police station clerk, the occasion forced me to expose my mistake. The clerk was warm, pleasant and smiling. The shame feeling occupied respective of the clerk.

Internal Shame Spirals
A last consequence of internalized shame is what Kaufman terms, the internal shame spiral. He describes it as follows:"A triggering event occurs. Perhaps it is trying to get close to someone and feeling rebuffed. Or a critical remark by a friend ... a person suddenly is enmeshed in shame, the eyes turn inward and the experience becomes totally internal, frequently with visual imagery present. The shame feelings flow in a circle, endlessly triggering each other. The precipitating event is relived internally over and over, causing the sense of shame to deepen, to absorb other neutral experiences . . . until finally the self is engulfed. In this way shame becomes paralyzing."The spiral is one of the most devastating aspects of dysfunctional shame. Once in motion, it can cause the reliving of other shameful experiences and thereby solidifies shame further within the personality.After shame is internalized, the fear of exposure is magnified intensely. Exposure now means having one's essential defectiveness as a human being seen. To be exposed, now means to be seen as irreparably and unspeakably bad. One must find a way to defend against such exposure. As the defenses and strategies of transference are developed, internalized shame becomes less and less conscious.

To sum up, shame internalization has four major consequences. A shame-based identity is formed; the depth of shame is magnified and frozen; autonomous shame activation or functional autonomy results; and finally internal shame spirals are made operative.

The School System 
Even though most modem forms of education no longer use dunce caps, there are powerful sources of toxic shame still operating in the school system.: I taught in three high schools and four universities. I found the educational system to be a major force in solidifying the internalization process of shame-based people.

Perfectionism
Perfectionism is a family system rule and is a core culprit in creating toxic shame. We will see it also in both the religious and cultural systems. Perfectionism denies healthy shame. It does so by assuming we can be perfect. Such an assumption denies our human finiteness because it denies the fact that we are essentially limited. Perfectionism denies that we will make mistakes often and that it's natural to make mistakes.Perfectionism is involved whenever we take a negative norm or standard and make it absolute. Once the standard is absolute, the norm becomes the measure of everything else. We compare and judge according to that standard.

When a child becomes a failure in school, it's not long before there is an association with being a failure as a person. Children get this association very quickly in school. They also associate "bad" grades with being a bad or defective person. And most often the children who are failing, are already shame-based when they come to school. In fact, their shame base often causes their school failure. As they fail in school, their internalized shame deepens. Toxic shame begets toxic shame.

An Example of Perfectionism and School
John Bradshaw tells of his own story;
I was a straight A student. I was also the president of my class from the 7th grade on. In my senior year of high school, I was the editor of the school paper and number six academically. These were parts of my Hero role. How many high school principals would take a student who is senior class president, editor of the school paper, and number six academically, and tell him he needs help for his internalized shame problems? I was also a card-carrying alcoholic by my senior year in high school.

I had started drinking at age 14, and had had several blackouts by my senior year. High achievement is often the result of being driven by toxic shame. Feeling flawed and defective on the inside, I had to prove I was okay by being exceptional on the outside. Everything I did was based on getting authenticated on the outside. My good feelings depended upon achievement.

Toxic shame creates "human doings", people who must do to be okay. Only by accomplishment can they feel okay about themselves. Bradshaw recalls, "I had a shame-based client bragging to me that he was worth one million, two hundred thousand dollars. This guy was obnoxious. He was brutally abusing his wife by flaunting affairs in front of her. His self-worth was his worth. This was the only way he had to gauge it. Since he felt flawed on the inside, he had to have verification on the outside."

The school system can contribute a shame-based measure of grading people's intelligence. One measure of intelligence is not what you know or can regurgitate from memory on an exam. It's not what you know how to do, but "what you do when you don't know what to do."

Perfectionism also spawns destructive competition. Certainly there is a nurturing form of competitiveness. Such competition moves us to do better and to expand and grow. But a perfectionistic system like the current school system encourages cheating and creates high levels of distress. Grades are often posted publicly for all eyes to see. And there is shaming exposure when one gets "bad" grades. Even the adjective "bad" lends itself to characterological shame. Each person is pitted against the next in a warfare of endeavor. The communal sense of joint venture and cooperation are lost.

Rationalism
Our schools display an enormous bias in educating the mind rather than the whole person. We place major emphasis on reasoning, logic and math, with almost no concern for emotions, intuition and creativity. Our students become memorizing mimics and dull conformists, rather than exciting and feeling creators. It is worth noting Howard Gardner's work on Multiple Intelligences to get a more full view of our worth and dignity as learners. 

The point is not to bash the educational system but to bring into awareness how shame can be a motivational tool unconsciously. Students that have healthy foundation can bounce from this and most other "systems" because as discussed earlier, it is our primary caretakers who hold the most influence over us. When another autholrity figure takes the role of parent or primary caretaker who is shame based, then the negative impact increases dramatically.

Peer Group Shaming
John Bradshaw tells the story of Arnold;
I remember Arnold. He was a brilliant accountant. He had been viciously shamed in high school. His presenting problem was being critical of women. No woman was ever good enough. As his relationship with a woman would intensify, Arnold would start finding fault. He was a nit-picker of great expertise. The outcome of all this was that he was 40 years old, fairly successful financially, but painfully alone.

Arnold had had some shaming in early childhood from an authoritarian and military-type father. But this was tempered with enough love from his mother to save him from being terribly shame-based during early and middle childhood. Later on his family moved to a small town and Arnold had to start the second semester of his sophomore year in a new high school. The town and the high school were cliquish and monied. Arnold was from a rather poor family. He rode the bus to a school where 95% of the kids had new cars. Arnold was scapegoated from the moment he set foot in the school. He was laughed at, made fun of, and ridiculed by one group of girls. Some days he was hit with water bombs and sacks of horseshit as he waited for the bus. This treatment continued until the middle of his senior year. For two years Arnold suffered almost chronic shaming. This was an excruciating experience.

High school is the time of puberty. And puberty is a time of feeling intense exposure and vulnerability. Whatever toxic shame a person carries from childhood will be tested in high school. Often teenage groups look for a scapegoat. Someone everyone can dump and project their shame onto. This was Arnold's fate. He was viciously shamed by his female peer group. This accounted for his problem with women.The peer group becomes like a new parent. Only this parent is much more rigid, and has several sets of eyes to look you over. Physical appearance is crucial. Acne and poor sexual development can be excruciating. Conforming to the peer group dress standards is a must if one wants to avoid being shamed. All in all, it can be disastrous if one is not physically or financially endowed.

The elementary school years can also be a source of shame. Children can be terribly cruel. Any child with deformities is especially vulnerable to ridicule. Children will shame other children the way they've been shamed. And if a child is being shamed at home, he will want to pass the hot potato by shaming others. Children like to tease. And teasing is a major source of shaming. Teasing is often done by shame-based parents, who interpersonally transfer their shame by teasing their children. Older siblings can deliver some of the crudest teasing of all. I have been horrified listening to clients' accounts of being teased by older siblings.School was perhaps the only place in Max's life where he was not shamed. His toxic shame motivated him to be an achiever. He put himself through graduate school by working at night. He endured tremendous hardships in order to get his degree. It was a place in his life that he felt like he accomplished something. Unfortunately, accomplishments do not reduce internalized shame. In tact, the more one achieves, the more one has to achieve. Toxic shame is about being; no amount of doing will ever change it.

The Religious System
John Bradshaw tells the story of Max;
A system that is rigid and authoritarian. Max was taught at any early age that he was born with the stain of sin on his soul, and that he was a miserable sinner. He was also taught that God knew his innermost thoughts and was watching everything he did.

An early traumatic experience of shaming occurred when Max was nine years old. A young religious fanatic in his congregation caught Max touching himself in the church bathroom, and made an awful scene. He dragged Max into the church and asked him to prostrate himself before the altar and beg God's forgiveness.Many religious denominations teach a concept of man as wretched and stained with original sin. Original sin as taught by some religious bodies means you are bad from the moment you are born. The teaching of original sin accounts for a lot of the child-rearing practices which are geared toward breaking a child's unruly will and natural propensity toward evil.

Max often told me he hoped God would forgive him for the evils he had done. And although he had a rather brilliant intellect, he still clung to some rather childish religious beliefs. God somehow kept score, and Max could never catch up. With original sin you're beat before you start.I often ask myself how anyone could really believe in the fires of hell. Here was Max, whose life was a continuous torment, whose inner voices never stopped their incessant shame spirals, so what more could hell possibly be? Why would a just and loving God want to burn someone like Max for all eternity? Well, Max believed it, and that's what a therapist has to work with. His shame was greatly intensified by his belief that God knew all his inner thoughts and would punish him for his sins.

Much more could be said on this topic of religion and theology. It is a highly controversial issue. Whatever your belief system holds, if it uses unhealthy shame as a means to motivate or those within the "body" of believers have a relational style that is largely shame based, the impact of shame will be the same. Shame is not biased to any religious system.

The other end of this is to reject all religious systems. This can have serious consequences as well. Many react to their childhood church experience and "throw the baby out with the bathwater." Again, this really is another subject to cover in and of itself but can have significant applications to deeply held shame within.

John Bradshaw shares what follows:
For myself, I read the following and applied what was pertinent to my story. It also helped me understand what someone else might have experienced in their personal story.

One of the most insidious and toxically shaming distortions of many religions is the denial of secondary causality. What this means is that according to some church doctrines, the human will is inept. There is nothing man can do that is of any value. Of himself, man is a worm. Only when God works through him does man become restored to dignity. But it's never anything that man does of himself.

The theology here is abortive of any true doctrine of Judeo/Christianity. Most mainline interpretations see man as having true secondary causality. Thomas Aquinas, in the prologue to the second part of his Summa Theologia writes, "After our treatise on God, we turn to man, who is God's Image, insofar as man, too, like God, has the power over his works" (italics mine).

This is a strong statement of human causality. Man's will is effective. In order to receive grace, man must be willing to accept the gift of faith. After acceptance, man's will plays a major role in the sanctification process.
The abortive interpretation sees man as totally flawed and defective. Of himself, he can only sin. Man is shame-based to the core.

DENIAL OF EMOTIONS
The religious system in general has not given human emotions much press. There are denominations and sects that are highly emotional. And from time to time charismatic renewal groups spontaneously arise to bring vitality and new vigor into the life of a church group. But in general, there's not a lot of permission to show emotions.
I see two basic types of religious structures — one I call the Apollonian and the other the Dionysian. Neither really permits a true and healthy expression of emotion.

The Apollonian type religion is very rigid, stoic and severe. It can also be very intellectual. In either case, outpouring of emotions are not acceptable.

The Dionysian is the charismatic or cultic type of enthusiastic worship. These types of worship seem to favor free emotional expression, but, in reality, only certain types of emotions can be shown. There are emotional outbursts, but they have no true connection with feelings. The outburst type of religiosity is often a way to get the emotions over with. They are poured out, but the subject does not experience them for long. Honest emotions,
especially anger, are not permitted anywhere. The same is true of sexual feelings. Religion has added its voice to sexual shame. Some interpretations of the Protestant Reformers actually imply that Original Sin was concupiscence or sexual desire. Some religious interpretations equate desire and sexuality with the result that any kind of strong desire is prohibited.

PERFECTIONISM — THE RELIGIOUS SCRIPT
Religion has been a major source of shaming through perfectionism. Moral shoulds, oughts and musts have been sanctioned by subjective interpretations of religious revelation. The Bible has been used to justify all sorts of blaming judgment. Religious perfectionism teaches a kind of behavioral righteousness. There is a religious script, which contains the standards of holiness and righteous behavior. These standards dictate how to talk (there is a proper God voice), how to dress, walk and behave in almost every situation. Departure from this standard is deemed sinful.

What a perfectionistic system creates is a 'how to get it right' behavioral script. In such a script one is taught how to act loving and righteous. It's actually more important to act loving and righteous than to be loving and righteous. The feeling of righteousness and acting sanctimoniously are wonderful ways to mood alter toxic shame. They are often ways to interpersonally transfer one's shame to others.

RELIGIOUS ADDICTION
Mood alteration is an ingredient of compulsive/addictive behavior. Addiction has been described as "a pathological relationship to any mood-altering experience that has life-damaging consequences." Toxic shame has been suggested as the core and fuel of all addiction. Religious addiction is rooted in toxic shame, which can be readily mood-altered through various religious behaviors. One can get feelings of righteousness through any form of worship. One can fast, pray, meditate, serve others, go through sacramental rituals, speak-in-tongues, be slain by the Holy Spirit, quote the Bible, read Bible passages, say the name ofJahweh or Jesus. Any of these can be a mood-altering experience. If one is toxically shamed, such an experience can be immensely rewarding.
The disciples of any religious system can say we are good and the others, those not like us, the sinners, they are bad. This can be exhilarating to the souls of toxically shamed persons.

Righteousness is also a form of shameless behavior. Since healthy shame says we can and will inevitably make mistakes (the Bible says the just man will fall 70 times seven), then righteousness becomes a kind of shameless behavior.

All in all the religious system has been a major source of toxic shame for many people.

Society As Compulsive And Addicted
Our society is highly addictive. We have 60 million sexual abuse victims. Possibly 75 million lives are seriously affected by alcoholism, with no telling how many more through other drugs. We have no idea of the actual impact on our economy resulting from the billions of tax free dollars that come from the illegal drug traders. Over 15 million families are violent. Some 60% of women and 50% of men have eating disorders. We have no actual data on work addiction or sexual addictions. I saw a recent quotation that cited 13 million gambling addicts. If toxic shame is the fuel of addiction — we have a massive problem of shame in our society.Another indicator of the hopelessness that is rooted in and results from our shame is our feverish overactivism and compulsive lifestyle. 

Erich Fromm made an extensive diagnosis of this in his book The Revolution Of Hope. He saw our overactivism as a sign of the restlessness and lack of inner peace that flows from the core of our shame. We are human doings because we have no inner life. Our toxic shame won't let us go inward. It is too painful for us in there. It is too hopeless in there. As Sheldon Kopp says, "We can change what we are doing, but we can't change who we are." If I am flawed and defective as a human person, then there's something wrong with me. I am a mistake. I am hopeless.

Someone once said, "Success is different at different stages of development — from not wetting your pants in infancy, to being well liked in childhood and adolescence, to getting laid in young adulthood, to making money and having prestige in later adulthood, to getting laid in middle age, to being well-liked in old age, to not wetting your pants in senility." What's right about that description is the emphasis on making money, having prestige and being well-liked.

Perhaps the greatest modem American literary tragedy was the play, The Death Of A Salesman by Arthur Miller. Miller was able to create a great Aristotelian tragic hero out of an ordinary common man. Willy Loman is a symbol of the American success myth. He lives his life based on the belief that success is being well-liked and making money. Willy dies lonely and destitute, taking his own life in order to get the insurance money which would prove he was successful. In his Poetics Aristotle states that the power of a great tragic hero results from the combination of his nobleness coupled with some tragic flaw. Willy is noble. He is willing to die for his faith. It is his faith that is the tragic flaw. He truly believes that if a man makes money and is well-liked, he will be a success. This is what it means to make it.

The success myth also preaches a kind of rugged individuality. One is to make it on his own. One is to be self-made and to be one's own man. In this myth money and its symbols become the measure of how well you make it. A man in his 50s with a low income, has to feel the shaming pinch of this belief system. And as much as one might protest all this, money and the fame that goes with it, still have enormous power in our lives.

RIGID SEX ROLES
The rigid sex roles still espoused by our society are measuring symbols of perfection. There are real men and real women. Before we were born, there was a blueprint of how to be a man and how to be a woman.Real men are rugged individuals. They act rather than talk. They are silent and decisive. A real man never shows weakness, emotion or vulnerability. Real men win. They never give their opponent an advantage.Real women are the helpmates of real men. They are the caretakers of the domestic scene. They are emotional, vulnerable and fragile. They are the peacemakers. In return they look for everlasting "romantic love". They look for a prince who will come and reward them for all they have given up, the reward being that they will be taken care of for the rest of their lives.

Many believe these roles are a thing of the past. But I suggest that you watch the way parents take care of little boys and little girls. Notice the way we dress the sexes and above all notice children's toys. Child's play is the precursor of the adult world of work. Children's toys are still highly sexist. Watch the way a liberated mother and father handle their girlchild, and then Nvatch the way they handle their boychild. They won't even touch them the same way.

Our sex role scripts are rigid and divisive. They are also shaming in that they are caricatures of maleness and femaleness. They are overidentifications with parts of us, but fail to allow for completion and wholeness. Each of us is the offspring of a male and a female. Each of us has both male and female hormones. Each sex is determined by the majority hormones it possesses. And each sex needs to integrate its contrasexual opposite side in order to be complete and be whole. The rigid sex roles set standards which disallow wholeness and completion. Such standards shame our contrasexual opposite parts. A man is shamed for seeking to embrace his vulnerability. A woman is designated a bitch for becoming assertive and actualizing her maleness.

THE MYTH OF THE PERFECT
 "10"Our culture presents a physical perfectionistic system which is cruelly shaming to the physically unendowed. The perfect woman or man is a "10". The movie "10" with Bo Derek gave great impetus to this mythology.The perfect "10" has very definite attributes that enhance the sexual shaming which occurs in our society. The perfect "10" woman has perfectly round breasts, size 38D, with matching hips and buttocks. The perfect "10" man has a muscular, tanned and proportionately perfect physical body. His penis is eight inches plus.These physical ideals have caused untold suffering and shame to an incredible number of people. I have file after file of men and women who have suffered intense shame over the size of their genitals. Small to flat chested women with histories of high school pain and isolation have peopled my counseling office over the last 20 years. Males wonied about the size of their penises are commonplace in counseling annals. Sex is either secretive or banal. As banal, the bantering about genital sizes is orchestrated on the late night talk shows and in the comic routines of club comedians.

DENIAL OF EMOTIONS
Our culture does not handle emotions well. We like folks to be happy and fine. We learn rituals of acting happy and fine at an early age. I can remember many times telling people "I'm fine" when I felt like the world was caving in on me. I often think of Senator Muskie who cried on the campaign trail when running for president. From that moment on he was history. We don't want a president who has emotions. We would rather have one that can act! Emotions are certainly not acceptable in the workplace. True expression of any emotions that are not "positive" are met with disdain.

THE MYTH OF THE GOOD OL BOY AND THE NICE GAL
The good of boy myth and the nice gal are a kind of social conformity myth. They create a real paradox when put together with the "rugged individual" part of the Success Myth. How can I be a rugged individual, be my own man and conform at the same time? Conforming means "Don't make a wave", "Don't rock the boat". Be a nice gal or a good ol' boy. This means that we have to pretend a lot.

"We are taught to be nice and polite. We are taught that these behaviors (most often lies) are better than telling the truth. Our churches, schools, and politics are rampant with teaching dishonesty (saying things we don't mean and pretending to feel ways we don't feel). We smile when we feel sad; laugh nervously when dealing with grief; laugh at jokes we don't think are funny; tell people things to be polite that we surely don't mean." Playing roles and acting are forms of lying. If a person acts like they really feel and it rocks the boat, they are ostracized. We promote pretense and lying as a cultural way of life. Living this way causes an inner split. It teaches us to hide and cover up our toxic shame. This sends us deeper into isolation and loneliness.