As a trauma therapist, anxiety and shame have surfaced in my clients more than most other feelings. Anxiety feels flight-y while shame feels like ickyness that you can’t escape- no matter how hard you try, no matter how far you push away from emotions, no matter how much you disconnect from yourself, others, and the world.
But what is shame? How do anxiety and shame interact? and most importantly, where do they come from? In her book, Understanding and Treating Chronic Shame, Pat DeYoung writes that shame is ‘the disintegration of the self in relation to a dysregulating other’. Shame is undoubtably the most uncomfortable feeling, and we, as humans, do what humans do. We push it down. Shame is beyond humiliation, a feeling we struggle to contain: blushing, shrinking, averting the eyes, sweating, hoping to become invisible. Shame is excruciating. And because chronic shame is so agonizing, we employ strategies to avoid at all costs. This avoidance can lead to further mental health struggles including depression, anxiety, interpersonal issues, eating disorders, and addiction. As research persists, we are learning more about shame and its origins. Shame has been found to be key in developmental trauma, a disconnect from caregivers and parents, needs consistently going unmet.
Let’s go back, way back, to when we were kids. As a kiddo, we had needs and emotions that we needed help with. We needed acceptance, understanding, and regulation. We learn to regulate by our caregivers meeting our needs. If we did not feel heard, validated, and attuned to, our feelings became overwhelming, too much, and we fell, and will continue to fall apart. Shame develops into us believing that we are bad, that there is something wrong or defective about us, and that we are responsible for hurting others. Sounds miserable, right?
So how do we treat this? How do we heal? Therapy is a great start. Because shame is so rooted in relational trauma, it is crucial that we develop regulating relationships with others. Trauma therapists are trained in how to cultivate these types of relationships. Healthy relationships help us to regulate ourselves, experience emotional connection, acceptance and attunement, and hold space for our emotional ruptures while navigating how to deal with them rather than falling apart and disintegrating. Healthy relationships with others help us to develop more grounded and compassionate relationships with ourselves. We need to reparent ourselves and be reparented by others who can and will hold space for our shame.