09 Aug Shame is a developmental wound
Below is an excerpt from my book coming out in January, 2017 from Norton Publishing. To attend a day long workshop @Brattleboro Retreat September 23 click here
”Those god-awful moments of shame take over in a nanosecond. Anyone who has had the experience of shame can recall the acute experience, the physiological horror of wanting to die, hide, numb, disappear, or as one of my clients says, “zeroing out.” Definitions of shame miss the felt experience that comes instantly: the whole body submerging into molten lava burning every living cell inside, wanting to do anything to get away from the inner plunge into physiological chaos and horror. The body knows the experience first. Within a moment defensive responses come roaring online with the demand to hide, disappear, shut down. In the tightly packaged aftermath, the frontal lobe shuts down, information processing gets cut off. People often describe themselves at this point as blank, numb, or confused (Corrigan, Wilson, Fay, 2014; Gilbert, 1998). The tsunami of shame sets off every alarm in the body igniting a cauldron of intensity, filling the person with seething self-criticism, self-hatred, and every other dastardly self-attack. In the midst of reducing the self to smoldering shards it’s easy to miss the immense protest the heart is expressing: It shouldn’t be like this! This shouldn’t be happening! NOOOO!
None of us arrive into adulthood without being scarred, some deeply. Being alive is to want all kinds of things while not always getting what we want. Despite that, the longing for more continues, it is a motivational force. To be in a body, to have a heart, is to explore beyond, reaching for life, wanting contact, to engage with life (Holmes, 1996). That native arising of need, matched with being chronically not-attended to, withheld from, or denied, fosters an inevitable belief: “There must be something wrong with me.” This belief is what distinguishes shame from guilt (Tangney & Dearing, 2002). Physiologically, this torrent of shame pours forth teaching us to not reach, not to engage. The extraordinary pain of wanting something and not getting it grinds deeply into our psyche, shaping our hearts and bodies in gruesome ways. People with trauma and attachment issues fall into deep wells of shame. The crushing experiences of shame collapse the psychological heart, and soul as the person is sucked under by the powerful undertow. Barely able to breathe they are swept into the utter cacophony of pain. Scrambling to escape any vestige of shame, people narrow their attention, pull into their viscera, and recoil from connecting with any possible shame triggers.
When we take a step back from the physiological anguish of shame we uncover underpinings of attachment: the need for safety and the longing to be seen, known, to fit in, to be heard and understood. Unprovided for, these longings launch shame attacks spiraling people into shutting down, acting out, and self-destructive behaviors. Without a secure base of connection, or a network of support to rely on when triggered, people are catapulted into shame spirals that last days, weeks, for some stretching into long term self-destructive patterns.
Every permutation of shame holds the schema of the outside world turning against the self. Combined with an inner dialogue of self-criticism, hostility toward oneself can verge on self-persecution. Whether criticism comes externally or internally (or both) the force field of shame is overwhelmingly setting up the self to fragment with a need to shut down (IMMEDIATELY!) Consequently, people feel there is no safe place inside their own skin, or outside with anyone else. In the moments that shame erupts there appears to be no way to soothe or calm the torrential distress except to compartmentalize the shame (Fisher, 2015). In the aftermath of “shame attacks” metacognitive beliefs are formed of not deserving love, compassion, goodness, (Gilbert, 2010) or being “a loser for needing” those very things.
Over time, protective strategies are erected to guard wounded parts exiled (using the language of Internal Family Systems) from consciousness yet carved deeply into the psyche. With the entrenched beliefs embedded in non-narrative schemas it can be hard to deal with shame head on. As therapists we know how threatening it is for our clients to ease the schemas that keep them feeling small, worthless, and underserving of love, attention, kindness, and care. For many, the thought of being positive or feeling good raises fears they recoil from, horrified of becoming narcissistic or self-aggrandizing (“I’ll be too big, too important, too seen…”) On the other side of the nihilistic pole can be fears of “It’s not worth it anyway.” “It’s hopeless.” “Nothing good ever happens anyway.” Across this continuum, the client believes that they don’t deserve the simple forms of compassion, kindness, and goodness.
Teaching skills to increase self-reassurance/warmth and self-soothing to antidote the intensity of threat that arises poses its own set of complications as painful, neglected childhoods make it difficult to access soothing internal processes (Brewin, Gregory, Lipton & Burgess, 2010; Brewin, Lanius, Novac, Schmyder, Galea, 2009). Gilbert (2009c) has repeatedly found that self-criticism exacerbates the evolutionary, physiologically based threat system making it hard to diffuse the enflamed nervous system. Those who haven’t had a secure attachment while growing up lack the implicit navigational beliefs and tendencies to turn toward support or connection during turbulent moments. Given that lack of support they are in dire need of developing new internal templates for those times when life goes awry and to mitigate their faulty evaluations of what is happening. Without that Jeremy Holmes writes, “Then minor setbacks may come to look like disasters; the world becomes threatening; the mental pain associated with loss of status, rather than acting as a spur to the formation of new bonds, may gain a life of its own and feel overwhelming. “ (2001, p. 2).
Those with any kind of trauma need to walk gently into the practice of positive psychology or training in compassion. As Paul Gilbert’s research tells us (2014) sometimes cultivating compassion exacerbates the negative self-criticism or hatred. Anyone who has been on long term retreats will know the experience of offering metta (loving kindness) or karuna (compassion) to themselves and being caught in what Chris Germer calls “backdraft” (2009) describing the explosion firefighters experience when fresh air arrives into a fire deprived of oxygen. As he writes, “A similar effect can occur when we practice loving-kindness. If our hearts are hot with suffering – self-hatred, self-doubt – when we begin to practice, sympathetic words can open the door of our hearts, causing an explosion of difficult feelings.” (2009, p. 150).
What our clients, what we long for is often just what we are terrified of. Our clients come to us wanting to be guided back to their own internal secure base or what the IFS model calls “Self-Energy” (Schwartz, 1994). Complicating this is our client’s histories of fear or neglect producing approach-avoidance conflicts (Liotti & Gumley, 2008).
Using Yoga and Attachment to Buffer and Cool the Intensity of Shame
Reminding our clients that being cared for, respectfully, and compassionately is a natural, normal need that all human beings have is a gift we offer them over and over again. It’s exactly here that the contribution of yoga and attachment theory provides ground for healing. The common ground of our human suffering is one of the tenets of self-compassion (Neff, 2011). And shame, certainly, is a painful form of suffering. It’s in that cauldron of suffering yogic philosophy teaches us, that our longing arises to return to our true nature. It comes disguised as protest, anger, and resistance vocalized and/or buried in the body.”
(excerpt from Attachment-Based Yoga & Meditation for Safe Trauma Recovery, Norton Publishing, January, 2017)
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