Toxic Shame. What To Do?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Shame is one of the seven basic feelings, therefore, like all other feelings, it is inherent in every person. But the frequency and intensity of the experience is different for each person.

There are people for whom shame really interferes with their lives. They constantly feel their inappropriateness, a sense of their own inappropriateness to a place, society, time. They are constantly afraid of condemnation and ridicule, negative assessments, they are afraid to look bad in the eyes of other people, funny, like losers. They consider themselves to be losers in their hearts, devaluing themselves, and, even having not done anything yet, they stigmatize themselves: “It will not work, I will fail everything, all the others are brilliant, and I am so mediocre. And even if I succeed in doing something, it is an accident and not at all my merit, I am still not smart enough, competent, perfect. All people think in vain that I can do something, the moment will come and they will know, reveal me, what a mediocrity and dullness I am. I don't deserve recognition and respect like others."

They constantly compare themselves with others not in their favor, they always lose the competition in this comparison and multiply themselves, their achievements and talents by zero. And they envy now black, then white envy.

They are constantly dissatisfied with themselves, even if everyone around them praises and admires them, they do not accept this praise and recognition, they shyly avert their eyes and in response to the cute: "You look great today!" they will answer: "Yes, I just washed my hair and put on makeup!" Why are they doing this to themselves? Where does such cruelty towards yourself come from? Why are they so much ashamed of themselves, rejecting themselves? They almost hate themselves. This is a total shame for the very existence, for the fact that "I am as I am."

You probably already understood the principle by which the past forms the present and future of a person. Nothing goes without a trace for us, and the only way to somehow deal with this is to raise our awareness. Be aware of your feelings, the actions that you perform from these feelings, but more on that later.

We live the way we can, the way we were taught to live in childhood. Due to the fact that in childhood, parents did not disdain manipulation in shame when they tried to educate, subjugate the child's will, make him comfortable for themselves, the child formed a false "I" that helped the child "stay afloat" and meet parental expectations, to be comfortable, but with shameful parents, roughly speaking, to live “without shining”, in fact to become invisible, so that the parent does not notice mistakes and does not begin to criticize, shame, ridicule, condemn, mock, humiliate and insult.

It is these techniques of "black pedagogy" that many parents apply to their children, and so toxic shame for themselves, their actions, their thoughts and feelings is formed in children, and such a child forms a false "I", which helps him not to completely break contact with the parent, because breaking contact in a situation of complete dependence means "Death" for a small child and even a teenager. Therefore, the false “I” displaces the true “I”, replaces it, and the child makes an internal decision not to be who he is, but to be someone else, who he is not, but who the parent would like to see him.

Such children are called in psychoanalysis "used children" or the narcissistic continuation of the parent. The parent sets the bar for his child and, as it were, says: "anu-ka, reach out." But as soon as the target is close, the bar is pushed higher and higher. It is never possible to satisfy such a parent, since he will always be dissatisfied with the result and the child forms this most false “I”, which says: “I will never reach, I cannot, I will not succeed, so why try to do anything at all”,because his experience consists of sheer failures in the eyes of the parent. But when a child becomes an adult, he begins to look at himself through the eyes of his parent.

A classic example of such a parent. The child brings a "4" in math home. Instead of rejoicing in the child's success, the parent says: "Why not" 5 "?"

Or here's an example that a client of mine told me about. When her father taught to swim, he threw her into the water next to him and held out his arms: "Swim." She rowed as hard as she could to grab onto her father's hand, and he backed away and backed away from her.

This inaccessibility characterizes all narcissistic parents who yearn for the child's achievements, especially those achievements that the parent himself once “dreamed of” but failed, and now such a parent uses his child to cover up the failure in the life of the parent himself. does not give rest to the parental Ego. "I have not achieved this, so I will do everything so that instead of me you will achieve it." And it does not matter to such a parent that the child may not have the talent of an artist, but a mathematician, not a writer, but an athlete: all this does not matter for a narcissistic parent: "Be better than me, but I will not let you be better than me." This is the ambivalent message every narcissist parent gives to their child.

This forms a trauma for the whole life of the child, which prevents him from realizing in all spheres of life: both in personal and in career, work, creativity. In a career, such a person, before starting a business, will chop off everything in the bud, devalue, question and stop, will not start anything. In personal relationships, he will constantly think that either he is not worthy of a partner and will endure humiliation, or he himself will believe that the partner is not worthy of him and will himself criticize and devalue others. In sex, he will not be able to relax, because he will think about what he looks like, and he will feel insecure about whether he is technical enough and beautiful, instead of relaxing and surrendering to another.

He is insecurity itself, not life itself. Because while others fly into space, sing from the stage, create interesting creative projects, he sits in the bunker of his insecurity, his devaluation of himself and his life, he is now forced to overcome those blocks that were set for him, his "Greats" emotionally immature parents. Because he is afraid to experience shame, shame for his failure, for a negative result, and he chooses procrastination and inaction, often falls into apathy, depression, experiences emptiness and becomes dependent on something or someone. He is always focused on external, alien values, since he failed to form internal, his own.

One of the manifestations of such a trauma will be a reference point to the opinion of other people: "How do I look in their eyes, am I not funny?" This is how people with toxic shame try to be someone but not themselves.

They envy and compare themselves with others, trying to understand through this comparison who they really are. But comparison with another is a complete nonsense, since it will still not be possible to be someone else, comparison with another is the choice of someone for a standard and a reference point for this standard. But in real life there are no standards, there are no ideals, there are no perfect people, therefore comparing oneself is a path to nowhere, a path of destruction of oneself and relations with others.

I tried to analyze what queries are most often found on Google and what videos on YouTube are most popular and found that the queries: “How to increase self-esteem?”, “How to become more confident?”, “How to look confident?”, “How to appear more attractive? are many times more common than others. And this speaks of the scale of the problem of violation of the perception of oneself as it is, non-acceptance of oneself and rejection of oneself as it is. Hence this race for perfection, which will never be achieved, more than ever to satisfy the narcissistic parent.

Toxic shame is a serious blocker of any life-affirming act. Why do people say when they describe the experience of shame: “I want to fall through the earth”? This means: I want to disappear, run away, not be, not live. Because when a parent scolds and shames the child, the shame is experienced as a desire to disappear. And the worst thing is that at this moment the child is left alone with his misfortune, in complete isolation, since the parent rejects him and leaves because of his "badness".

Therefore, in adulthood, shame is experienced as a rejection of oneself, as "I am an outcast", "I am not like everyone else," "I am alone," "they do not accept me, which means I do not accept myself, I must change myself." This is how a person decides never to be himself.

Your most important task and most important change is not to change and become someone, but to accept yourself as you are. Do it for your parents, complete the developmental task.

Once upon a time your parents were supposed to “mirror” you, reflect you in their eyes like the sun, like a flower, like joy, like a wonderful life, but they did not cope with it. Now you live, continuing to look for a kind mother's gaze in the crowd in order to be reflected in it like a sun and a flower. But people reflect you in very different ways, in accordance with their traumas and projections: they criticize, label you because they are not conscious, so being reflected in their opinions means falling apart into small pieces of the mirror, which, alas, are reflected, not you, but only projections of different people. Who you are and what you are - only you know and the rest is not important. But toxic shame pushes us to create false images of ourselves and deprives us of life energy.

To cope with the feeling of worthlessness, many take to compensate for their inner pain and self-doubt at the expense of other people. This is where the unsolicited advice and criticism, remarks and moralizing, arrogance and teachings come from, this is where the heroes-rescuers, whom no one asked to save, come from, this is where the victims who were not asked to sacrifice come from. All these are attempts by the wounded ego to somehow compensate. But, alas, instead of love and recognition, you get irritation in return for your "sincere" desire to help and solve someone else's problem. But you cannot sincerely help until you have solved your problem and helped yourself accept yourself as you are.

We are all accustomed to surviving in the field of narcissistic modern society and almost everyone has a fear of public speaking - it’s the shame of looking stupid, funny, awkward, which is overcome only by passing and repeatedly experiencing these feelings during performances. But for many, this fear of shame is so toxic that it comes to paralysis: the legs give way, the voice trembles, the throat is dry and the words are stuck in the mouth like a fishbone, and paint has poured to the face. Do you still think that someone, like a parent once, is now hanging painful tongues and derisive assessments on you? You are not in reality, not in the "here and now"! You are there in the past! What to do?

I recommend taking a few steps to overcome toxic shame:

1. Awareness of shame. You track this unpleasant feeling and tell yourself, “This is toxic shame again. I am aware that I am experiencing toxic shame."

2. Awareness of the moment of self-devaluation. You watch how the carousel of depreciation of yourself spun in your head and say to yourself: “STOP! I'm killing myself now. I stop and will not do this to myself anymore."

3. If you are afraid of public speaking, do more. In working with shame and fear of shame, it is important to follow the well-known proverb: "They knock out a wedge with a wedge." Afraid of shame? Disgrace yourself as often as possible! Social networks are also suitable for this. Stop creating a glamorous picture of yourself, come out with an honest post about how you live in public, share some of your revelations and do not be afraid of criticism. Remove and block or ignore trolls. Remember that Trolls are just like you, living people who have a feeling of lack of self-confidence and a wounded Ego that “cries”.

4. Awareness of envy. Convince yourself that you are unique and that you will never become someone. Stop jealousy with an effort of will and say to yourself: "I will have my own path and my own unique path of discovering my talents." Start doing something every day to realize your dream, channel the energy of envy into a constructive, creative channel.

5. Tell yourself every day that you are who you are and by your birthright you are worthy of praise and recognition. Every day, find at least three things you can praise yourself for.

6. And finally, an ambulance, if suddenly shame has seized your whole being and the paint has poured to your face or you just feel that you will blush now, do the exercise: "Plane-Volume".

Exercise "Plane-Volume". The paint rushes to the face, all the blood rushed to the front plane of the body, as you are ashamed that you are seen at the moment of your shame. People see you in the plane where your face is turned. You became flat at this moment and lost the sense of the volume of your body. That is why the blood tends to the frontal plane of the body. At this point, when you feel shame and a rush to your face, shift your focus to the back and sensation in the back to regain the lost volume. Shifting the focus of attention from the front to the back will help you become alive and real again, and you will be surprised that the blood will drain from your face at that moment. It really works! Try it!