Toxic Shame: The Fuel for All Disorders

The Issue of Responsibility: Too Much or Not Enough
Scott Peck describes both neuroses and character disorders as disorders of responsibility. Peck writes,
"The neurotic assumes too much responsibility; the person with a character disorder not enough. When neurotics are in conflict with the world, they automatically assume that they are at fault. When those with character disorders are in conflict with the world, they automatically assume the world is at fault."

This statement is very powerful to understanding our family.  If we had a parent that blamed the world, one child might take on this view and the other go in the opposite direction, blaming self or just the opposite. The sibling order also plays a role here which is discussed later.

All of us have a smattering of neurotic and character disordered personality traits. The major problem in all of our lives is to decide and clarify our responsibilities. To truly be committed to a life of honesty, love and discipline, we must be willing to commit ourselves to reality. In order to face reality, we must face ourselves! If we cannot face ourselves because of shame, we either deflect or absorb.

To look within freely, requires a good relationship with oneself. This is precisely what no shame-based person has. In fact a toxically shamed person has an adversarial relationship with himself. Toxic shame — the shame that binds us — is the basis for both neurotic and character disordered syndromes of behavior.

These behaviors run wild! The new DSM-V is full of disorders usually associated with fear or phobias. I have come to believe that the fuel for all fear is toxic shame.

Toxic Shame: The Fuel for All Disorders and Chaos
Toxic shame, the shame that binds you, is experienced as the all-pervasive sense that I am flawed and defective as a human being. Toxic shame is no longer an emotion that signals our limits, it is a state of being, a core identity. Toxic shame gives you a sense of worthlessness, a sense of failing and falling short as a human being. Toxic shame is a rupture of the self with the self.

It is like internal bleeding. Exposure to oneself lies at the heart of toxic shame. A shame-based person will guard against exposing his inner self to others, but more significantly, he will guard against exposing himself to himself.
Toxic shame is so excruciating because it is the painful exposure of the believed failure of self to the self. In toxic shame the self becomes an object of its own contempt, an object that can't be trusted. As an object that can't be trusted, one experiences oneself as untrustworthy. Toxic shame is experienced as an inner torment, a sickness of the soul. If I'm an object that can't be trusted, then I'm not in me. Toxic shame is paradoxical and self-generating.

There is shame about shame. People will readily admit guilt, hurt or fear before they will admit shame. Toxic shame is the feeling of being isolated and alone in a complete sense. A shame-based person is haunted by a sense of absence and emptiness. Toxic shame has been studied very little. It is easily confused with guilt. Toxic shames is almost always missed in diagnosis, usually focusing on the more surface problems like depression, anxiety, panic, rage, addictions, personality disorders, bipolar, and the list goes on and on.

When Shame Becomes Our Identity
Any human emotion can become internalized. When internalized, an emotion stops functioning in the manner of an emotion and becomes part of our identity and character identification. You probably know someone who could be labeled "an angry person" or someone you'd call a "depressive". In both cases the emotion has become the core of the person's character, their identity. The person doesn't have anger or depression, they are angry and depressive. In the case of shame, internalization involves at least three processes:

1. Identification with unreliable and shame-based models
2. The trauma of abandonment, and the binding of feelings, needs and drives with shame
3. The interconnection of memory imprints which forms collages of shame

Internalization is a gradual process and happens over a period of time. I call this, death by a thousand paper cuts. Every human being has to contend with certain aspects of this process. Internalization takes place when all three processes are consistently reinforced.

Identification with Shame Based Models 
Identification is one of our normal human processes. We always have the need to identify. Identification gives one a sense of security. By belonging to something larger than ourselves, we feel the security and protection of the larger reality.

The need to identify with someone, to feel a part of something, to belong somewhere, is one of our most basic needs. With the exception of self-preservation, no other striving is as compelling as this need, which begins with our caregivers or significant others and extends to family, peer group, culture, nation and world. It is seen in lesser forms in our allegiance to a political party or our rooting for a sports team. Our team provides a way to experience the powerful emotions of winning or losing.

This need to belong explains the loyal and often fanatic adherence people display to a group. When children have shame-based parents, they identify with them. This is the first step in the child's internalizing shame. The opposite is to detach and be a loner. This can be dangerous for the teen, especially if they "attach" to the small group mixed with addiction (drugs/alcohol/sex) and violence. Fantasy can play a significant role during this time to feel connected and the adolescent lives in their head.

Abandonment: The Legacy of Broken Mutuality  
Shame is internalized when one is abandoned. Abandonment is the precise term to describe how one loses one's authentic self and ceases to exist psychologically. Children cannot know who they are without reflective mirrors. Mirroring is done by one's primary caretakers and is crucial in the first years of life. Abandonment includes the loss of mirroring. Parents who are shut down emotionally (all shame-based parents) cannot mirror and affirm their children's emotions.

Since the earliest period of our life was preverbal, everything depended on emotional interaction. Without someone to reflect our emotions, we had no way of knowing who we were. Mirroring remains important all our lives. Think of the frustrating experience which most of us have had, of talking to someone who is not looking at us. While you are speaking, they are fidgeting around or reading something. Our identity demands a "significant other" whose eyes see us pretty much as we see ourselves.

Besides lack of mirroring, abandonment includes the following: Neglect of developmental dependency needs, abuse of any kind and enmeshment into the covert or overt needs of the parents or the family system needs.

Feeling Need and Drive Shame Binds
The shame binding of feelings, needs and natural instinctual drives, is a key factor in changing healthy shame into toxic shame. To be shame-bound means that whenever you feel any feeling, any need or any drive, you immediately feel ashamed. The dynamic core of your human life is grounded in your feelings, your needs and your drives. When these are bound by shame, you are shamed to the core. This is the heart of the addict.  It is the logic behind the insanity. Most sit in the "Anonymous" groups very unaware of "why they are they way they are".  Understanding toxic shame restores dignity. Like the school child, we realize it is not all our fault, that we were victims. This can fuel tremendous rage and anger when we connect the dots which is why forgiveness is crucial to healing.

Memory Imprints Form A Collage of Shame 
As shaming experiences grow and are defended against, the images created by those experiences are recorded in a person's memory bank. Because the victim has no time or support to grieve the pain of the broken mutuality, his emotions are repressed and the grief is unresolved. The verbal (auditory) imprints remain in the memory as do the visual images of the shaming scenes. As each new shaming experience takes place, a new verbal imprint and visual image attach to the already existing ones forming collages of shaming memories. 

Children also record their parent's actions at their worst. When Mom and Dad, stepparent or whomever the caretaker was, at the state of being most out of control, they are the most threatening to the child's survival. The child's survival alarm registers these behaviors the most deeply. Any subsequent shame experience which even vaguely resembles that past trauma can easily trigger the words and scenes of said trauma. What are then recorded are the new experience and the old. Over time an accumulation of shame scenes are attached together. Each new scene  ignites the old gaining momentum like a snowball rolling down a hill, getting larger and larger as it picks up snow.
 
As the years go on, very little is needed to trigger these collages of shame memories. A word, a similar facial expression or scene, can set it off. Sometimes an external stimulus is not even necessary. Just going back to an old memory can trigger an enormously painful experience. Shame as an emotion has now become frozen and embedded into the core of the person's identity. Shame is deeply internalized.

To illustrate, I was watching a TV show with someone in recovery. It was a show on cars and he loves automobiles. He said he didn't like the show. I asked why. His response was the guys on the show are arrogant. What he saw as arrogant, I saw as enthusiastic. As he opened up, his story unfolded about a shame based memory of a time back in school with a bunch of guys he hung out with. He felt they were arrogant and the guys on this TV show seemed to have the same energy.  That's all it took for him.  His shame is still so raw the guys on the show triggered this memory collage.  My friend is 52 years old!  As I listened, I asked, "What is the shadow behind those 'guys' at school?" Knowing more of his story, I felt the shadow was his father. This is how the collage of shame works and binds us making our world smaller. It sucks the life out of freedom. Rather than hang out and connect over a TV show as two friends, the TV was turned off, and he shut down.  I left and went home.  

When my friend went "into himself" and shut down, it was because he is still ruled by shame.  He does not see his actions and attitude as selfish.  For him, this behavior is self-preserving.  This is why shame must lose its power by going into the past to free the present.  His real issue lies with his anger and resentment towards his father.  The guys in high school might have shamed him, but if his primary caretakers were more healthy, the wound would not have developed such a deep memory.  This is how shame works--it attaches itself like a leech which triggers those sensitive wounds within.  This is why I saw the TV guys as enthusiastic and he saw them as arrogant then reacted so dramatically.   

Truth be told, you and I have the same memory collages.  It might be a co-worker or a neighbor or someone at the market who has a tone of voice that cuts like a knife inside.  It is not that person, but the shadow of someone else, usually someone who had a position of authority and power in your life--a primary caretaker, teacher, siblling, or someone in the clergy.  We need to release the power of shame to be free by honestly facing the root cause.  Most of us need support in doing this which is why I am such a big fan of support groups that are lead correctly by someone who has dealt with their issues and can create a safe circle for others to unpack, allowing for vulnerability without judgements.