Healing Toxic Shame--Part 1

Healing shame, as I understand it today has to do with reprogramming the soul.  It starts with unpacking the lies, and filling them with truth.  This is "walking by faith, not feelings" and it is hard!  Support is needed.  The "Higher Power" aspect is essential.  I offer solution as a Christian in the Cross of Christ, which might be the most misunderstood part of "Christianity."  We need a new identity!  We need to be saved from ourselves.  We need to walk in freedom.  This is deep.  So whatever "Higher Power" you submit to, does it allow for a total world and life transformation?  Does it allow for unconditional love?  Does it offer solution for guilt AND shame?  

Below are some practical ways to deal with shame.  If you observe, so many of them are about rebuilding the broken image of self and developing a new identity.  This is the hard part, when we put off that which we have relied upon for so long we go through a period of adjustment that feels like we are losing control.  This is where most fall back to their old ways, their old patterns, their old ways to feel in control.  That is why support is needed.

All of the following are strong tools, but unless we rebuild our broken image and develop a new identiy that goes deep within, we will be constantly in need of "tools" and "exercises" rather than receiving a new identity which will reduce over time the impulses that shame drives and feeds on.  It is all about releasing the power of shame that binds us, so if any of the below helps, may it be a blessing.  In essence, it is finding a healthy balance of love for God, others, and self.  It really is all about love, understanding our value and dignity that frees us to not look for external things to make us "feel" better.  It is recovering the "I AM" in us all.

The following comes from the blog of Meg K McKenna.  She does a great job of offering solutions.  There is a lot here to choose from in both parts 1 and 2.  Like anything else, apply as needed.

To heal our toxic shame we must come out of hiding. As long as our shame is hidden, there is nothing we can do about it. In order to change our toxic shame we must embrace it. There is an old therapeutic adage that states, “The only way out is through.

Embracing our shame involves pain. Pain is what we try to avoid. In fact, most of our neurotic behavior is due to the avoidance of legitimate pain. We try to find an easier way. This is perfectly reasonable. In the case of shame, the more we avoid it, the worse it gets. We cannot change our “internalized” shame until we “externalize” it.

She offers the following advice;
Before any attempt at healing can begin, there must be a support system in place. Toxic shame is the result of having shame-based parents who lied to us about ourselves, and who were not dependable. To do toxic shame work is to face those needs and finally get them met. A support system outside the self is necessary for this. What you must do to be able to proceed with healing is transfer your dependency needs to people who can actually meet them. Though eventually, you will be an independent and healthy adult, capable of meeting all her own needs, that’s not where you are now. To get there, you must open up to others, and ask for help. You must put your trust in a non-shaming friend, spouse, support group or therapist capable of listening, giving you honest and non-shaming feedback, and unwavering support.

“Externalization” is the big word to use when talking about healing toxic shame. Toxic shame is shame that has been “internalized”—aka, become a part of you and been buried deep in the subconscious. A major part of healing is to bring it back into the conscious—to become aware of the thinking patterns that rule your behavior and induce your painful feelings. To “externalize” your shame is to give it physical form with which you can do battle.

To do this is emotionally painful, because you are bringing latent pain (buried in the subconscious) to the surface. You are choosing to finally face feelings you’ve been trying to avoid for years and years. You must feel these feelings of pain, shame, anger and despair if we want to ever be rid of them. The only way out is through.
When you do these exercises to begin to externalize the shame processes of your subconscious, your feelings of shame will come to the surface. In the first few days of my own healing, I felt as if I was experiencing a life’s worth of negative emotion at once. I was pretty unstable for a few days as it all washed over me. But I didn’t rebury the feelings; I waited them out. They weren’t overwhelming for long. Though anger, sadness, pain and shame stayed with me on and off for months (and still sometimes surface), their intensity was manageable. If you ask me, there are really only two things necessary to succeed in healing toxic shame: knowledge, and the courage to face these feelings. Let them come to the surface and finally give them their voice; let the memories of your most shaming experiences come out as well, and finally cry over them.

This takes an incredible amount of courage, since the primary drive of shame-based people is the desire to avoid feeling their shame. Half the battle is overcoming this drive, and getting to a point where you’re open and willing to do the work to heal. But if you’re ready to feel that shame and finally get it out of you, then this post, and its sequel, will help you do that. These exercises all come from Bradshaw’s Healing the Shame that Binds You or from my own experiences during my healing journey. They all aim to bring the voice of shame into the conscious mind, confront its lies, rob it of its power, and replace the beliefs that power it with positive, healthy ones.

Finding A Group
[I have to add to this list: finding a support group is essential!  Groups run correctly (those which are non-judgmental and allow for vulnerability) make a huge impact of giving us the "family" we did not have.  Much of our inner life is chaotic and messy.  We need a place to NOT make sense, to unpack our twisted thinking, and get out the secrets.  This is hard for many at first, but just showing up will allow you to slowly unpack your story and restore dignity.  The group (many people) causes for more risk and feeling vulnerable.  Many of us are emotional vampires, seeking anyone that will listen to us.  This can allow us to stay in our heads and will cause people to run from us.  We exhaust people.  The group gives us the boundary and structure we desperately need, and that which we also rebel against.  We must have a sense of something greater than ourselves in order to bring the balance of "we before I" back into place.  One of the reasons we isolate so much is because of this imbalance.]

Overreaction Diary
The first step to regaining your power is to bring the Shaming Voice into the conscious mind, where you can hold it responsible. One way to do this is to keep an overreaction diary—recording times when you blame, get angry or militant, project, get defensive, or otherwise overreact. Whenever your behavior is inappropriate to the event that triggered it, it’s likely that ego defenses are in play. These defensive reactions mark times when your shame was particularly active or close to the surface—thus helping you learn what triggers it.

Bradshaw suggests recording these overreactions in a diary at the end of each day. What experience triggered the reaction? Who was there? What was said? How did you react? When we overreact, it’s because whatever was said hit a nerve, making us feel our shame and lack of self-worth more intensely. In an example Bradshaw shares, his wife says, “I’m going to need some help from you in painting this room.” He gets defensive and launches into a tirade; something like, “I’m so busy with work; don’t count on me for help! With all the other things I do around here…” Though she didn’t say it (or even mean it), her comment gave Bradshaw’s shame an excuse to exploit his fears that he wasn’t a good husband and that he didn’t take care of his home the way he should. When his wife asked for his help, he heard it as a suggestion of his deficiency. Recording this kind of incident can help you uncover what shame-based beliefs cause you the most problems.

While I never kept a daily journal, I did write journal each time I felt particularly upset or anxious—I still do. As your shame is externalized, you will become more and more conscious of it each time it is activated—more conscious of the anxiety, sadness and anger you feel when it’s activated. Writing is a way to give these emotions recognition and voice, find out where they come from and why they were activated now, and purge them. Writing makes overwhelming feelings manageable and accessible, and ensures that your defense mechanisms will not be able to push them back down again without leaving a record.

Conversation with Yourself
Another way to begin to be aware of the Shaming Voice’s unconscious tirades is through a meditation that helps you learn to access both parts of yourself at the same time: the shaming part, and the part that’s tired of being shamed.

Picture yourself sitting in front of you. Think about details like how you’re sitting, what you’re wearing, and what your face is expressing. Now, out loud, criticize the person you see in front of you. This will likely be painful, but remember, you’re already doing it. This is a process to make the negative thoughts you already have conscious. Criticize the image of yourself sitting before you. Tell him what he should or shouldn’t do. Don’t hold back—be extensive in your critique. Really throw it all out there, and listen to the tone in your voice as you spit out these criticisms.

When I did this, I found it easier to write my thoughts down while holding the image of myself in my mind. As a writer, I found the thoughts flowed out of me more spontaneously that way. After I’d dried up (and written several pages), I read it out loud to my imaginary self. Either way is fine—just try to keep the thoughts flowing without censorship. Let it all pour out.

Now, switch places with your alter ego—and answer these criticisms. How does it make you feel, to hear these things? Pay attention to details still—like, how does your voice sound now, answering the cruel judgments of the Shaming Voice? Though you can continue imagining your image, you can also move to a mirror and answer the voice while looking at yourself in real life. This is an act of bravery, and will be incredibly hard to do at this stage in the healing process, but I recommend trying it. Saying just a few positive things about yourself while holding eye contact can do wonders to combat even pages of criticisms.

Switch back and forth between your two selves as many times as you need to, creating a dialogue. Do you begin to notice certain issues or criticisms coming up over and over? Can you pick out where any of them come from—like something you may have heard before from a parent? This exercise serves several purposes. First, it develops your ability to separate the voice of Shame from your own true feelings about yourself. And second, it makes you aware of what that shame has been saying to you all these years. Remember, these criticisms are not new. They are merely becoming externalized, and conscious, for the first time.

Having experienced the tone and feeling of this voice and realized its content bestows the ability to hear it speak in everyday life. This means that you can externalize the shaming thoughts that occur to you throughout the day; it means you can recognize a shame spiral and record it as we recorded our imaginary conversation with the self. The more of the voice you “catch on tape” like this, the less power it holds. Shame is only as powerful as your unawareness of it. In this exercise, the moment you realized what your inner critic was saying, you were able to answer; the same is true in life.

Address Shaming Beliefs
You can now recognize the criticisms of the Shaming Voice when it speaks. But to answer, you must know what to say back—which means you must know what makes you believe shame’s criticism in the first place. To know how to answer, you must understand the beliefs you hold that cause you to interpret “I’m going to need your help with this room” as “You’re a bad husband.”

Bradshaw’s toxic shame made him feel, “I’m a bad husband.” But how? Because he held beliefs about how good husbands should act, and feared he was not living up to these expectations. So when his wife asked for his help, the Shaming Voice said “ah-ha!” and used these beliefs to make Bradshaw feel ashamed. But the thing is, shame-based people never live up to their own expectations, because their expectations are unreasonable and impossible. The way to take away toxic shame’s power is to change these beliefs about how you “should” be or the world “should” be to more positive, healthy ones. In Bradshaw’s case, the shaming belief he held was likely, “Good husbands take care of their homes.” Perhaps that statement is true, or not—but if thinking that makes you feel ashamed, like you don’t measure up, then it’s a belief you need to get rid of.

The first step is to use the methods you’ve learned (like the Overreaction Diary) to make yourself aware of the thoughts and exchanges that trigger your shame. Then, ask yourself “why?” What belief do I hold that makes me feel like I’m not measuring up, or like I’ve done something wrong? In many cases, these will sound like reasonable beliefs and values—perhaps ones that many people hold. But all black and white judgments that don’t allow for individual variation or exceptional circumstances have the potential to be shaming. They require perfection, and create an impossible standard. These include beliefs like “Good husbands take care of their homes,” and “good wives should cook dinner.” Can you guarantee a husband who hires a painter or landscaper, or who isn’t all that on top of his lawn mowing, is a worse husband than one with perfect shrubbery? These beliefs demand perfection and a lack of individuality. They say that if you fail, just one night, to make dinner, then you’re a bad wife. They say that if you’re otherwise the best wife in the world, but can’t cook, then you’re not good enough.

There are other ways that shame distorts your thinking besides making you buy into black and white values. Shame makes you imagine that you know what others think of you based on shotty evidence and mind reading. Shame makes you take everything personally, thinking a tired husband is really tired of you. Shame makes you catastrophize, imagining that every chest pain is a heart attack. Are you picking up on the word “imagining” here? In other words, the pain and paranoia of shame clouds your ability to see the world as it really is; instead, you see everything through shame-colored lenses and believe your perceptions (perceptions projected out of shaming beliefs) to be as absolute as truths. When you meet someone new and are sure he thinks you’re boring, that’s because you believe, “I’m not an interesting person.” When your husband is tired and distant after a long day, you imagine, “He doesn’t love me anymore—because I’m not lovable.” When you think indigestion is a heart attack, it’s because you believe, “Of course I’d have a heart attack, because nothing good ever happens to me. Life won’t let me be happy.”

These are the kinds of beliefs that power the Shaming Voice. In other words, if you didn’t believe them, a tired husband or yawning friend would not make you feel ashamed. If you didn’t believe that all good wives make dinner, you wouldn’t feel guilt and shame when you order take-out. So, the first step is to learn to listen to your own shaming thoughts, and the next step is to figure out what beliefs power these thoughts—and break them down.

The best way to do this is to subject your distorted beliefs to the harsh light of logic, for shame-based thinking will not hold up under the light of logical consideration. So when you feel yourself “imagining” the worst or becoming aware of a black and white judgment, consider the facts. If you’re imagining a catastrophe, ask yourself, “What is most likely?” When you find yourself assigning the reason behind another person’s facial expression or comment, counter your bias by trying to come up with other reasons she may have acted as she did.

Though most of what I’m teaching in these posts is done only in your own head, “should” beliefs (based on black and white judgments of worth) create an opportunity to affect your thoughts using action: whatever your head tells you you “should” do, don’t. Don’t do what the Shaming Voice wants. Deliberately act against whatever you’re told you “should” do—even if you genuinely should do it. Perhaps it’s telling you you should pay bills, or that you should get some work done. For now, while you do this shame work, don’t. Do something else deliberately, telling your mind, “Just because you said that, I’m not doing it.” You can come back to it later—when your action is not prompted by shame and “should.” For now, do something you want to do, rewarding yourself for shame work well done. In doing so, you teach your mind that these manipulations are no longer effective—and you take a step towards trusting yourself. As you practice this, you’ll learn that you will, in fact, pay the bills without being prompted by shame. Trust me, if whatever you “should” do is important to you, you will get back to it—when you want to, and when you are ready to. You don’t need shame acting on you all the time like a parent telling you when to do your homework. You will do it when you’re ready. In discovering this, the self begins to trust in itself again.

Mistakes
Before we move on, I want to talk specifically about how to address a belief I think is really pernicious and deep-seated in shame-based people. A lot of my own early healing work dealt with it, for I found it a hard message to hammer through my brain. The belief I couldn’t shake was, “It’s not okay to make mistakes.” At the time, I journaled:

I am unforgiving, even and especially of myself. The way I live life is designed specifically to make sure that I never make a mistake. Because if I were to make a mistake, I could never forgive myself. In fact, I have made a few small mistakes in my life, and I have not forgiven myself for them.

Fear of making mistakes is fear based in perfectionism, based in the need to always be right, and based in catastrophic thinking that imagines each wrong choice will bring on the worst-case scenario. This fear is based in a need to over-control, and a desire to avoid giving the Shaming Voice more to criticize. But to make mistakes is human, and paralyzing yourself with indecision and cautiousness is not the way to avoid shame or disaster. Instead, open yourself up to learning, and increasing your awareness of reality beyond your shame-distorted perspective. Bradshaw says:

A mistake is a label you apply in retrospect. At the time you always choose the action that seems most likely to meet your needs. At the time, the benefits seem to outweigh the disadvantages…If you label your choice “bad” because it was a mistake in the light of later awareness, you end up punishing yourself for actions you couldn’t help performing. Better labels for your past mistakes would be “unwise,” “not useful,” or “ineffective.” These terms are a more accurate assessment of your judgment.

Mistakes help you learn and show you you’re human; to refuse to risk making them is to refuse to learn and refuse to forgive yourself for your essentially limited nature. Becoming “okay” with making mistakes is a big step towards healing for this reason—so much of what shame makes us believe is summed up in that simple phrase, “Making mistakes is unforgivable.”

But still, overall, mistakes aren’t something to strive for. What is the healthy way to make as few of them as possible? Increase your awareness. Bradshaw says you choose what seems like the best option at the time based on your awareness at the time, and defines awareness with McKay and Fanning’s definition: “Awareness is the degree of clarity with which you perceive and understand, consciously or unconsciously, all the factors relating to the need at hand.”

So, the thinking distortions and shaming beliefs we talked about cause mistakes by infecting your logic center with emotional bias and leading you to act on assumptions as if they were the truth. Thus, the work to break down these faulty beliefs and assumptions can do a lot to help you avoid unnecessary mistakes in the future.
The next time you encounter an important choice, ask yourself if you’ve experienced a similar situation before. Consider all the negative consequences you might expect to occur as a result of your decision, and whether what you hope to gain is worth them. What are your other options? Are there any with less negative consequences? The more logic you use to address the issue and the more questions you ask, the more aware and less biased you will be. The more you are willing to accept responsibility for past mistakes (without blaming), the more you are able to learn from them.

Forming Affirmations and “Okay” Statements
The techniques I’ve talked about so far have all helped to make your Shaming Voice, and the beliefs that power it, conscious. We’ve seen the fire that burns you, and the wood crackling under it, and now it’s time to snuff it out. It’s time to replace shaming beliefs like “I’m not interesting” and “Good husbands should take care of their homes” with positive, accurate ones—and the best way to make that mental change is by using affirmations. Affirmations are simple, positive statements of truth that counter the critical statements and limiting beliefs of toxic shame. They are, in my opinion, the single most effective tool available for its elimination.

We’ve already talked about logical consideration and the value of facts when questioning thought distortions. Affirmations are a way to verbalize this process and hammer the facts into your head. Shame says, “You’re stupid,” and you answer, “I don’t understand algebra.” This is a pure statement of fact, implying nothing about character or overarching deficiencies. Even your shame will have trouble arguing with it, because it is simply true. The generalization is broken down, and your mind begins to see that you are not flawed and defective at your core—but you do have a few flaws. The black and white thinking that tells you that you are either perfect or horrible is being broken down. You can be smart, and still not understand algebra; you can even be good at algebra, and struggle to grasp a specific concept! Labeling your actions accurately, using the words we talked about when we learned about mistakes, can help you form these statements. Saying, “spending the evening watching TV was not productive/effective/useful,” is miles away from telling yourself, “I’m lazy.”

Another way to form affirmations great at combating thought distortions is to use the word “okay.” “It’s okay to make mistakes,” “It’s okay to be flawed,” “It’s okay if that person doesn’t like me,” and “It’s okay to be messy,” are some examples. I love the word “okay” because it is so imperfect. To truly banish shame, you must accept that, as a human, sometimes you’re only “okay”—not perfect. Sometimes the world is only “okay.” But just because a quality, choice or reality isn’t perfect doesn’t mean that you should be ashamed of it. Coming to terms with this middle ground is necessary for eventual self-acceptance.

But if you ask me, the most effective affirmations are the ones that address the degrading untruths shame-based people believe about themselves by declaring the exact opposite. These are statements like:

• I have something to offer the world.
• I deserve the respect of others.
• I deserve love.
• I deserve to be happy.
• I have value.

At the roots of toxic shame lie the beliefs that these affirmations oppose. All others spring from these. Shame-based people believe they do not deserve to be loved or happy. They are not valuable. But to believe these things about yourself is to deny yourself basic human rights. Everybody is worthy of love. Change that belief, and a root is torn out. Change the beliefs at your core, and all else will shift.

Affirmations are the single most useful thing I’ve ever learned in my life. They can be any positive statement of truth, and so they can be weaponized to combat anything the Shaming Voice throws at you. They can defy shame-based beliefs about the self: “I have value,” or they can defy shame-based distortions of reality: “It’s okay if that person doesn’t like me.” They can meet in the middle of logic and emotion: “Most of the time, I’m unselfish,” or they can be statements that you hope will soon be reality: “I love myself. I will accept myself unconditionally.”

Internalizing Positive Affirmations
Learning to form affirmations is only step one in their use. Step two is getting these positive affirmations internalized in the unconscious as securely as your shaming beliefs already are. Only by internalizing these new truths will the old ones be truly banished; your mind cannot believe two opposing truths at once.
Though there are several effective methods for internalizing these positive affirmations (which I delve into in more detail in my post, Conquer Limiting Beliefs), here, I’m just going to go over the most effective way. When it comes to beliefs as ingrained as those powered by toxic shame, I don’t think it’s useful to tippy-toe around trying less intensive strategies. This method is, as Bradshaw puts it, a “positive brainwashing technique.”

Choose an affirmation. I recommend combing through a confrontation with your Shaming Voice to pick out a criticism that comes up over and over, and form an affirmation to combat it. Start with something basic, like, “I deserve love,” “I have value,” or “I deserve happiness.” These are the ones I worked most heavily with when I first started healing; you can address the smaller things like “I deserve success,” and “I have a beautiful singing voice” later. You don’t need to use my suggestions, certainly. Just try to pick something that really lies at the core of your most painful feelings and insecurities—your deepest damage.

Once you’ve chosen an affirmation, or a few, to work with, get out a pen and paper (you can use a computer too, but I like it better by hand). Write your affirmation down, including your name in there: “I, Megan, have value.” Pay attention to how you feel as you write it. The first time, you’ll likely feel very uncomfortable and anxious (if not, probably the affirmation you chose wasn’t quite right). I could almost feel my Shame fidgeting inside me, panicking. Pay attention to this feeling, and take your time. When it dissipates slightly, write the affirmation again. Take the time to feel the feeling again, and then write it again. Write it until it is not so uncomfortable to write. Write it until it gets easy and starts to flow, and you don’t have to wait to write the next one because the negative emotional reaction is no longer coming. Write it nine to twenty times in a row.

At first, it’s likely that the affirmation will prompt shaming thoughts as your shame tries to fight back. “That’s not true,” it’ll say as you write “I have value.” Do not listen. Do not even allow it to talk. Blank out your mind if you have to; just shut this voice up. When I did these, I imagined Shame as a being of darkness filling me up. At first write, this darkness was huge and imposing. But with each repetition, its critical voice got quieter and I could feel the darkness shrinking. I didn’t stop until I felt flooded with light, with Shame’s darkness cornered in my little finger, and all I could hear after another repetition was my own voice shouting “Yeah!”

Now, switch persons. “I” becomes “you”: “You, Megan, have value.” Repeat the process above. Though it might seem odd, it’s likely your shaming thoughts and feelings will return with this simple change. Write another nine to twenty repeats—whatever it takes to squish that darkness into your little finger. Then, switch to “she/he”: “She, Megan, has value.” Writing the affirmations from all these points of view is very important because the shaming things you’ve been told throughout your life have come to you in all these forms: from what you’ve told yourself, from what you’ve been told about yourself, and from what you’ve overheard, or imagined is being said behind your back. To truly banish your shaming beliefs, you must replace every variation, so there is nowhere for them to hide.

Write these affirmations twice daily (and when you feel upset/ashamed), for at least twenty-one days. This is the time Bradshaw says it takes for these new beliefs to integrate into your unconscious. I’m not going to lie; though I wrote affirmations for months, and still do, there isn’t a single phrase that took twenty-one days to sink in for me. But I wrote them until I believed them, consciously and unconsciously, emotionally and logically, and if that had taken months, I would have done it. I know this is tedious, but do not undervalue this tool. Doing this exercise healed me of my toxic shame. Period. Now, a year later, when I whisper one of these phrases to myself, I am flooded with positive energy and I can’t help smiling. That is the effect when the work is put in and these affirmations are allowed to do their work: shame becomes self-love, and darkness becomes light.
You now know how to externalize the Shaming Voice, uncover the beliefs powering it, and answer them—even expel them from your mind. But still, this voice will speak. Like an alcoholic, you’ll always be recovering, and the risk of that darkness being activated again will always be there. So what tools can you use to make sure that a single shaming thought doesn’t lead to a shame spiral that will compromise your healing?

“Shame Siren”
Imagine a siren sounds when you pull on your ear. The siren shrieks out, “Shame, shame, shame, shame, shame, shame…” Whenever you realize you’re feeling shame, pull on your ear and set off your mental siren. What’s the value in this (besides being funny enough to stop your thoughts in their tracks)? It reminds you that shame is a feeling—one that you can control. You have now realized you were feeling shame, and acknowledged those feelings by pulling your ear. If you want, you can open your journal or your brain and figure out where these feelings come from, what prompted them, and how to respond. The siren subsides the panic that will inevitably arise with your shame by reminding you that shame is just a feeling. As Bradshaw says, “Feelings rise and fall.” There’s no need to panic; feeling feelings is part of healing, and of life. This shame feeling, like all others, will pass.

Learn to Say “Stop”
Choose a shaming thought—perhaps one that’s come up more than once near the beginning of a shame spiral. Imagine a situation in which that thought is likely to occur to you, and immerse yourself in it. Hear your shame speak, and let it have free reign. Let a shame spiral begin, and really feel it. Bradshaw says, “If you start feeling shame, that’s a good sign, because if you can voluntarily intensity the shameful feeling, you can voluntarily reduce it.”

Give yourself at least two or three minutes to let these feelings and thoughts develop. Then, startle yourself out of the shame spiral with an egg timer, recording of the word “stop,” or alarm clock you set before you began. The second this alarm sounds, wipe your mind blank—banishing the voice and all its shaming thoughts. Of course, they’ll soon reappear, and that’s okay. Keeping the mind blank takes practice. If you try this and can’t get a blank mind for even a second, try again, but this time, clear everything but a single image: I always imagine a solitary lamp floating in purple fog. Pick something that works for you—something that is as close to nothing as possible.
Repeat this exercise (prompting the shaming thought, then stopping it with a timer) until you can keep your mind blank for thirty seconds after the alarm sounds. Now, you’re going to change it up a bit: do the same exercise with an alarm or timer (not a recording), but this time, shout “stop” out loud when it goes off. Once you can blank your mind for thirty seconds after you shout, do it all again, this time saying “stop” at normal volume; once you can do that, whisper. Finally, shout it inside your head.

Now it’s time to get rid of the alarm clock. What you’ve effectively done is trained your mind to respond to a silent “stop” command. You now have the power to stop a shame spiral the moment you become aware of it.
The final step is to fill the blank thirty seconds with a positive affirmation. Anything works that makes you feel powerful and calm. This can be a statement affirming your own value and combating feelings of shame (if so, make it a “you” statement), or something that helps you see the reality of a stressful situation and keep you calm. That would be something like, “It will soon be over; nothing lasts forever. Let it flow over,” or “This is distressing, but not dangerous.” Pick whatever is most powerful for you in the moment, and use this blanking-replacement process each time you feel a shame spiral begin.