I’ve been thinking a lot about shame.

[Luma1123]

I've been thinking a lot about shame, as a symptom of PTSD. Especially since deciding to read David Baldrick's The Unshaming Way.

I think part of what makes shame so subtly seductive, and such an underlying part of many people's experiences with PTSD, is that shame confers a sense of agency. When trauma is so often born out of situations where we lack the ability to control our own devastating circumstances, shame offers the control we seek—it tells us we were fully capable of transforming the situation, somehow. We just didn't, or wouldn't. Notice I'm not saying "couldn't". Shame isn't so understanding as that. Shame merely points out that it's possible to be in control, and still screw it up anyways. You could have gotten away, gotten out. But you didn't. It must be because you didn't influence the situation, but I know you could have, Shame whispers. And that's how it gets us. It lets us cling to the idea of control, so we don't have to face our own helplessness in the face of circumstances.

I remember, when I was younger, trying to explain to someone why I was so harsh to myself. "If I don't keep myself accountable, who will?" was my defense (made through copious tears and with a shaking, weakened voice, which might have been a clue). But Baldrick says, early on in his book, that shame has been scientifically shown to be an extremely poor motivator and driver of change compared to other emotions. I think shame paralyzes you, keeps you where you're at. There are times where a lack of movement is the only thing you can control, on a subconscious level. I never wanted to feel shame, or deep emotional pain. But I think it satisfied some wounded corner of my brain to think that I had control, that the outcome was truly up to me, and any fault or disappointment experienced was due to my own exercised actions.

I don't know. I feel like I'm close to something here. I like metaphors: surfers don't punch the waves into submission. They manage to balance and ride them instead, with some board-assisted action. The ocean is still fully doing its thing—sometimes calm, sometimes mysterious, sometimes in the middle of a category 5 hurricane. But like... what if we could all learn to surf?

[HannahOne]

Luma1123 I was interested in your post. I'm also reading Unshaming Way in small doses. ""I think shame paralyzes you, keeps you where you're at."  That's been my understanding too, shame is protective in that it develops when we're toddlers, just when we become mobile and able to get ourselves into harm's way, we develop shame at the same time so that when a caregiver says "no!" as we start to run into a bear, or a road, we are frozen in shame. It's a survival mechanism at that stage. It's as if we need shame at that developmental stage to balance out our new power.

Toxic shame is when shame is weaponized by our caregivers, and we don't learn how to accept and manage it, we don't have good enough parenting to know that we can feel shame and still be lovable, we can be limited and lovable. Then shame becomes an identity, a response reinforced too many times. I feel like that's what was missing, in my shame no one scooped me up and let me know I was still lovable. So all I had was frozen shame.

[NarcKiddo]

When I started therapy my T used to ask me a lot about shame and whether I felt it about this or that. I denied it. I genuinely thought I did not feel any shame at all. I try to avoid feeling guilt because I don't think it's a helpful emotion except as a quick stab to point out I have done wrong. Then I am supposed to make amends or be contrite or do something to make it better if I can. That was my thinking. I used to get exercised by reading that psychopaths don't feel guilt because I am not a psychopath and I do feel guilt, I just try to set it aside fast in favour of something more constructive. Shame was a different beast and, like I said, I thought I didn't feel it. Actually, I do. I just stuff it down with all the other emotions I don't want to address and I think there is the most enormous repository of it somewhere inside me. So many of my most vivid memories involve shame. I don't know why I have not really identified it until recently.

[Kizzie]

I don't know if this little example will help but it's an example to me of why I feel shame.

I had to return an item from Amazon and took it in to Staples where I always take any returns. Amazon states quite clearly that you don't need any of the original packaging, just take it in. The woman dealing with the returns said, "What, you don't have any of the packaging?" in quite a snarky way, sighing heavily as she put it in one of the return bags Amazon supplies them with.

I could feel a bit of shame bubbling up, like I was in the wrong, had been inconsiderate, etc. I put the brakes on that and said to her as she was sucking her tongue and jamming the item in the shipping bag, "I don't need any of the packaging, Amazon is clear that I don't need it to return items."  She huffed and crankily said, "I know but it drives me crazy." In my head I said, well that sounds like a you problem. I would never have said that even to myself before, I would likely have apologized.

She meant for me to feel ashamed of myself for causing her work. "Poor me that you have caused me to have to put this item in a shipping bag, slap a label on it and put it in the pile of returns" (as she is meant to do as part of her job). If I had shown that I felt guilty and apologized or fawned in some way it would have made her feel better and somewhat superior I'm sure. Again in my head I said "Nope, not playing this game."

And that's what our abusers used shame for IMO, to diminish us and break our spirit so they could control and abuse us further. When you feel ashamed of yourself you don't stand up to perpetrators or for yourself, you give way. I guess that can be seen as a way of controlling things. 

I know now happily that real control though comes from not accepting the shame others try to make you feel (or that you make yourself feel). I remember a day in my life some years back when I asked myself if there was really anything I should be ashamed of, especially given the predatory behaviour of abusers and all manner of people who behave in truly awful ways and the answer was a resounding "No!"

When I was a child, youth and young adult I accepted the shaming because it did help me in a twisted kind of way but it also took a bite out of my soul every time. It was how I knew (was taught) to behave/respond, but now I know I can respond differently.

   

[HannahOne]

Kizzie I was inspired by your post! I love how you dealt with the lady at the store, you were assertive. "And that's what our abusers used shame for IMO, to diminish us and break our spirit so they could control and abuse us further." This is the crux of it for me. Shame protected me from worse abuse by inhibiting my "fight" response. I think of shame as the "submit" response. I needed that response at the time. But, as you say, Not anymore!!! Hooray!

[Aurora1931]

Joining in on this one too as it's a huge core issue for me.  Something that has always stuck with me is reading a book on trauma that said feeling 'guilt is when you have done something wrong' whereas 'shame makes you feel that YOU are wrong'.