How to overcome feelings of Shame, Embarrassment and Humiliation. Shaming and Shame resilience.

1. Introduction: Everyone is familiar with the experience of shame. You notice a friend on the street, start to wave, and discover that it is another person. You quickly avert your eyes and hope your error went unnoticed. Shame is how we see ourselves through other people's eyes. We put so much value on what other people think that we lose ourselves in the process of trying to meet everyone else's expectations. Shame is the reason we hate our bodies, fear rejection, feel too stupid to voice our opinions, stop taking risks or hide the experiences that we fear others might judge. Shame prone person looks to the outside for happiness and for validation, since the inside is flawed and defective. The opposite is also true. If we feel excluded and unimportant, our shame emerges. We don't use the word shame very often. We speak about feeling too proud to do this or that, whereas doing this or that would actually cause us too much shame. Shame is the painful awareness when you fail to gain acceptance from someone. Having your application turned down stirs up shame. Those who cannot help being different and who are rejected by society feel shame. Shame creates a sense that you must run and hide. You feel all eyes upon you. You feel hot in the face and aware of your every motion. You turn bright red and hope that you can quickly disappear. But there is no place to hide. The emotion of shame is about trying to prove that you have worth, constantly worrying about what other people think of you, judging others and being judged. 2. What is the emotion of shame?: Shame is a painful feeling from becoming aware of something you have done that is wrong, dishonorable or inappropriate. We feel ashamed when saying something stupid or silly. Then think, Oh, why did I say that? We fear being ridiculed, diminished or seen as flawed. Shame is induced when we don't want to appear too interested in the new woman or man in our life. When we ask our boss for a raise and are met with a disapproving glance, it is the air being taken out of our sales when we seek approval from a professor, boss, or other respected person and instead are met with indifference or disdain. Shame can be mild in the form of embarrassment, shyness, or discouragement. In the midst of shame, our attention turns inward. We feel self conscious. We feel unexpectedly exposed and under scrutiny. It's like all eyes are upon you. Shame often leads to a desire to escape and hide to sink into the floor and disappear. And when we feel shame, we question not only what we have done, our behavior, but also our being, our personality. We feel that we don't live up to the expectations of others. We are stuck, paralyzed, unable to do anything until the feeling of shame gradually fades away or is interrupted by some other feeling. Whenever we come into contact with other people, we attempt to control the impressions they form of us by modifying our appearance and manner without conscious awareness that we are doing so. All social interaction involves performance anxiety, motivated by the desire to avoid shame. Shame keeps us from showing our real personality to other people. We can't be authentic. We tell them what we think they want to hear. How can we be genuine when we are desperately trying to control how others perceive us? We don't speak out because we are trying to make everyone around us feel comfortable, so they won't put us down. It's impossible to be real and authentic with others when you are ashamed of who you are, flawed and unworthy. Shame is related to feelings of not being good enough, not having enough and not belonging. Shame keeps us from telling our stories. We keep our secrets out of the fear of disconnection. When we hear others talk about their shame, we often blame them as a way to protect ourselves from feeling uncomfortable. People in every culture experience shame in exactly the same way, a longing to disappear, blushing of the face or neck, hanging the head, lowering or averting the eyes, lowered voice or silenced speech, frozen facial expressions, slouched posture. We try to hide our experience of shame from others. That's why we are each left with the shameful sense that I am the only person who has such experiences. M 3. When are you ashamed of yourself?: Mmm. Whenever we seek contact with other people, speak up in group settings, set goals or express feelings, we risk an experience of shame. Even successful public speakers may feel anxious before they address an audience. What if the audience dislikes my performance? What if I forget my lines or make mistakes? What if I appear foolish or incompetent? Appearing inadequate or unqualified in front of an audience would make most of us embarrassed and humiliated. Giving a presentation in class or at a meeting of coworkers will usually stir up some anxiety. We naturally want to make a good impression. We hope to win the esteem of our teachers, colleagues, bosses, or classmates. Fearing that we might fall short or embarrass ourselves, we sometimes avoid situations in which shame might arise. At work, we might keep a low profile and refrain from voicing our opinions. We may decline high profile assignments or sit in the background. None of this is wrong or bad per se. Only when performance anxiety or fear of shame prevents you from achieving cherished goals, does it become a problem? If you avoid taking risks to such a degree that you disrupt those goals, you may eventually feel even worse about yourself. Performance anxiety makes you want to avoid potentially shameful situations. We need connection and emotional involvement with others. Shame causes us to feel isolated and lonely. Anyone who lives a life of isolation without human connection will probably struggle with shame. Being a unique individual with idiosyncratic opinions and taste might be a source of pride, but sometimes it can feel lonely if it makes you feel disconnected from other people. Some people fear missing out. They are afraid of being excluded by their friends. For example, you fear your friends have more rewarding experiences than you. You get worried when you find out your friends are having fun without you. It is important that you understand your friends in jokes. 4. We feel shame when...: Whenever we set a goal, we open the door to potential shame. You decide to quit smoking or lose weight, fail to keep it. Then you feel guilty or bad about yourself. If you apply for an open position at your place of work, hoping for a promotion, but someone else gets the job, you might feel the shame of disappointed expectation. Running for office and losing the election could also stir up feelings of shame. Whenever we compare ourselves unfavorably with other people, a painful disappointment leads to feelings of shame and envy. Competition of all kinds involves shame. When someone is the winner, others must fall short of their own goals. We feel shame at our imperfections. We put on our face in the morning or hide behind our makeup. If we examine the meaning of making up, it means that I am not acceptable as I am and need to be fixed in order to be out in the world. We also feel shame when we cannot stop the process of aging. Some celebrities went into hiding when they became old, too ashamed for the world to see them age. Society has historically stigmatized those who are deaf, blind, physically disabled or deformed, missing limbs, extraordinarily tall or short, or who vary from typical in any other way. Many cultures subtly hold a set of expectations for how people ought to behave and what they should look like. People who greatly deviate from those norms will feel shame. Whenever their difference draws attention, they will feel shame. To feel damaged in this way is a profoundly isolating and painful experience. But shame dissipates when you find yourself accepted by a group of people who resemble you. Clustering within a group of similar individuals prevents the shame. People are supposed to compete for success, to be independent and self sufficient and to be socially popular. Failure is to be expected on the road to success. And the only real shame is not learning and growing from it. Avoidance of shame and our inability to tolerate it stand in the way of personal growth. 5. Shame and Embarrassment – What is the Difference?: Mm. The feeling of shame includes a range of emotions like embarrassment, humiliation, shyness, self consciousness. Shame causes us to avoid contact with other people because we protect ourselves against rejection. Most people are not aware that they are struggling with shame. They say that they have low self esteem or feel anxiety in social situations. They don't realize that their core problem is profound feeling of shame. From time to time, most of us avoid situations that make us feel overly self conscious. We may decline an invitation to a party where we don't know anyone. We will pick up fast food rather than dine alone in a restaurant. Self consciousness is our self exposed in shame. For example, overdressing or underdressing for a party. We tend to be concerned with the impression that we make on others. We become suddenly aware of being seen, unexpectedly aware of our face as if we are under a magnifying glass. Embarrassment is another form of shame, but it is less intense. Embarrassment is shame before any type of audience. We feel deflated or embarrassed when we exuberantly recounted a personal victory or achievement to someone, and that person did not understand or recognize its importance to us. What might have caused mild embarrassment for someone else can be a source of shame for you, for example, tripping over in full view of others, behaving clumsily, appearing foolish before your peers or being ill mannered at a social gathering produce embarrassment. While some may shrug them off with a laugh, these scenes can replay inside us. We dread their recurrence. Feeling socially ill at ease, self conscious, or exposed is simply another form of shame. Embarrassment is a less agonizing shame. We experience embarrassment in a social context where there are few observers of us in weakness or failure. In an embarrassing situation, we are caught off guard. We're exposed when we are not ready. It may be an unexpected physical clumsiness or a breach of etiquette Embarrassment is something that is fleeting, often eventually funny and very normal. For example, misspeaking. Regardless of how embarrassing a situation might be, we know or at least have heard that it happens to other people, and we know it will go away. 6. Shame and Low Self-esteem: Discouragement is actually shame about temporary defeat, like job refusal. Shyness is shame in the presence of a stranger. The presence of the stranger activates the feeling of exposure. Shyness is a natural boundary which guards us from being exposed or wounded. The stranger poses the threat of the unknown. To be shy or overly self conscious means to be on constant guard against the risk of being humiliated. If a teacher announces a child's failing grade in front of the class and calls him stupid, the child is likely to experience shame or humiliation. If the child believes the teacher's announcement and name calling is unfair and undeserved, the child will most likely feel humiliated rather than ashamed. If, on the other hand, the child buys into the message that he is stupid and deserves to be called out in front of his peers, that leads to shame. Shame is often more destructive than humiliation. It's far more destructive if the child actually believes she is stupid. Self esteem is a stable trait. It is general evaluation of you, largely independent of specific situations. Shame on the other hand, is an emotion. Shame involves a negative evaluation of yourself, but in response to a specific failure or transgression. Healthy self esteem does not mean the absence of shame. It means the ability to recover from shame, which is inevitable in life, to learn from it when necessary and to continue working toward goals. Shame prone people are inclined to have low self esteem, and low self esteem is likely to increase people's vulnerability to shaming. For example, John is a low self esteem shame prone person. In general, he doesn't think particularly well of himself. On any given day, he is likely to compare himself unfavorably to others. When he makes a mistake, forgets an appointment or hurt someone's feelings, John very often feels that painful wash of shame. In contrast, Jane is a high self esteem shame prone person. In general, she has a positive view of herself. She sees herself as a competent, likable, and worthy person. Jane is prone to experience shame when she fails. She's inclined to dramatic drops in self regard that come with the acute pain of shame. Fortunately, life moves on. As Jane recovers from such shame episodes, so does her self regard. 7. Shameful situations: Imagine walking into a party dressed in an elaborate costume. You thought because it is Halloween, that the party you've been invited to was a costume party. When you arrive dressed in the ape costume you spent weeks working on, you discover that everyone else is wearing evening gowns and tuxedos. You feel all eyes upon you. You feel hot in the face and aware of your every motion. You turn bright red and hope that you can quickly disappear, but your legs won't move. You could begin to laugh and everyone could laugh with you. This would repair the interpersonal bridge between yourself and others. Or perhaps two people who are also wearing costumes come from across the room to stand with you. Now you belong. Or perhaps your host comes over to you and apologizes for the misunderstanding, explaining that he wasn't clear in his invitation. You are no longer isolated. If you laugh and no one laughs with you, if your host gives you a look of disgust, if everyone stars and says nothing, shame increases to sense of isolation. 8. Are you a shame prone person?: If you are shame prone, you probably have the following characteristics. Mind reading, overgeneralization, should thinking, all or nothing thinking, always being right and blaming others. When you mind read, you imagine that people feel as bad about you as you do about yourself. You are critical and judgmental of yourself. You assume others feel the same way about you. Shame based people relate everything to themselves. A recently married woman thinks that every time her husband talks about being tired, he is tired of her. A man whose wife complains about the accelerating price of food hears this as an attack on his ability to be a breadwinner. A shame prone person compares herself to other people. He's a much better organizer than I am. She earns more than I do. He feels things so deeply. I'm really shallow. The list of comparisons never ends. The underlying assumption is that your worth is questionable. And Overgeneralization happens when you often use words all, every, never, always. Nobody, everybody. If you are shame prone, there is no middle ground for you. People and things are either good or bad, wonderful or terrible. If you're not brilliant or perfect, then you must be a failure. There is no room for mistakes. You also may have very strong negative feelings towards authority figures, such as police officers or work managers and bosses. They provoke your rage and anger. If you are shame prone, you must continually prove that your viewpoint and actions are correct. You live in a completely defensive posture. Since you cannot make a mistake, you aren't interested in the truth of other opinions, only in defending your own. In relationships, you tend to lose yourself in love. When you argue, you fight for your life. You are attracted to the qualities in another person that you have rejected in yourself. You often create triangles in relationships. You seek the unconditional love from your partner that you didn't receive adequately in childhood. 9. Characteristics of Adults Shamed In Childhood: Adults shamed as children are afraid of vulnerability and fear exposure. They suffer from extreme shyness, embarrassment, and feelings of being inferior to others. Shamed person may appear either grandiose and self centered or seem selfless. He feels that, no matter what I do, it won't make a difference. I am and always will be worthless and unlovable. They feel defensive when they receive even minor negative feedback. They suffer feelings of severe humiliation if forced to look at mistakes or imperfections. They are hypersensitive to the possibility of criticism from other people. Shamed people apologize constantly. They assume responsibility for the behavior of others. They feel like outsiders. They feel a pervasive sense of loneliness throughout their lives, even when surrounded with those who love and care for them. They feel alone in their secrets and unique in their shame. No one is as bad as I am. No one is as worthless. No one is as deformed and defective. Everyone else belongs somewhere. It is me alone who is unworthy of love. Shamed people feel like they are being judged by others. They also feel angry and judgmental towards the qualities in others that they feel ashamed of in themselves. That's why they shame others. Shame based individuals feel ugly, flawed, and imperfect. They may focus on clothing and makeup in an attempt to hide flaws. This focus on image may cause some women to spend thousands on makeup, hair, and clothes. They fear intimacy and tend to avoid real commitment in relationships. They frequently express the feeling that 1 ft is out of the door, prepared to run. Shamed people can't express their feelings spontaneously. They feel ashamed to express joy, fear, anger, sexuality, playfulness, or creativity. They think that they're making a fool of themselves, and everyone is watching them. But, in fact, nobody is aware of their struggle. They feel they must do things perfectly or not at all. This leads to performance anxiety, perfectionism, and procrastination. Shamed individuals block their feelings of shame through workaholism, eating disorders, shopping, and substance abuse, list making or gambling. Adults shamed as children often have caseloads rather than friendships. 10. The origins of your shame: childhood : For roughly the first year of their lives, babies need to feel that it is all about them. Such an experience lays the foundation for healthy self esteem. During their second year of life, parents must gradually and gently challenge toddler's grandiosity and omnipotence. They must now communicate to the toddler that, although she is indeed special, she is no more so than anyone else. Children need limits, predictability, a mutually trusting relationship. Children need to know there is someone they can count on. They need to have space and be different. When these needs are neglected, children feel that their needs are not important and they lose a sense of their own personal value. They are not worth someone being there for them. They think that they do not matter. As their needs are chronically rejected, children believe that they can't depend on anyone. The job of parents is to model. Modeling includes how to be a man or woman, how to relate intimately to another person, how to acknowledge and express emotions, how to fight fairly, how to communicate, how to cope and survive problems, how to love yourself and other people. Parents who suffer from chronic shame cannot do any of these. They simply don't know how. The impact of not having your parents' time creates the feeling of being worthless. The child is worth less than his parents' time or attention. If Mom and Dad are not present, it's because of me. There must be something wrong with me, or they would want to be with me. A very young child cannot understand that his dad is a sick alcoholic. Children are limited in logical ability. An egocentric child will take everything personally. If a child is not wanted, he will try to balance the family by not being any trouble, by being helpful, perfect, super responsible, or invisible. A neglected child may learn to get attention by getting into trouble or by annoying his parents. He may get his touch needs met by getting spanked. When our basic dependency needs are not met properly, we learn adaptive ways to get our needs met. Later, the needs in childhood are transformed into the need for something else. This could be food, money, excessive attention, work, sex, alcohol, drugs, et cetera. For example, whenever a person feels insecure, anxious or needy, he believes he is experiencing sexual desire. He turns to sex to meet needs that sex cannot provide. Shame prone families have certain rules like adults are the masters of the dependent child. They determine in godlike fashion what is right and what is wrong. The child is held responsible for the parents anger. The parents must always be shielded. The child's life affirming feelings pose a threat to the adult. The child's will must be broken as soon as possible. All this must happen at a very early age so that the child won't notice. The child is also invited to internalize a set of false beliefs. Like a feeling of duty produces love. Hatred can be dispensed with by forbidding it. Parents deserve respect because they are parents, while children do not deserve respect because they are children. Obedience makes a child strong while a high degree of self esteem or pride is harmful. Tenderness is indulgent and harmful. Responding to children's needs is wrong and does not fit them for adult life. The way you behave is more important than the way you really are. The body is dirty and disgusting. Parents are always right. 11. How did we get psychological trauma?: Trauma in our lives can be something small like witnessing your parents fight when you were a child or something with a life changing impact, like witnessing a violent act. When trauma occurs, an upset emotion will act like a little electrical jolt to our system. Some explain trauma as a memory or emotion that gets stuck or trapped in our nervous system and in our minds, like a stamp making an imprint of a memory. If the victim of any abuse has no time or support to grieve the pain, her emotions are repressed and the grief is unresolved. The verbal imprints remain in the memory, as do the visual images of the shaming scenes. Consider a girl who returns home excited and joyful over an accomplishment at school. She is greeted by her mother with, Well, don't get a swelled head over it. The girl's head immediately hangs in shame. Future experiences of enjoyment over accomplishments will activate shame spontaneously. Receiving a compliment will activate shame. You'll feel unworthy or undeserving. Instead of experiencing true pride in your success, you will experience your work as not good enough. When parents abuse children, the abuse is about the parents own issues, not the child's. Parents who physically abuse their children are simultaneously reliving scenes in which they were also beaten. In each act of abuse, the child is shamed. Children, because of their egocentrism, think that they are responsible for the abuse. This is what the child says to himself. My parents can't be crazy or emotionally ill. It must be me. I am crazy. There's something wrong with me, or they wouldn't treat me this way. Abused people may enter new relationships that repeat the original pattern of abuse. For example, many women who were abused as children create an analogous relationship with a man who is abusive toward them. Rather than abusing themselves directly, they re enact it by recreating similar relationship in which they are treated almost identically to the way they were treated in the past. Abused women seek out such a relationship because they feel compelled to re enact their original abuse. It compels them to return again and again to the abusive relationship. 12. How were we shamed as children?: A child may experience shame when parents indicate through their words or behaviors that a child is not wanted. Shaming occurs when a child is humiliated in public. When a child must hide a part of his being, like a mistake, illness, tears, in order to be accepted, he is shamed. When parents treat indifferently events or gifts that are important to the child, the child feels intense shame. When parents consistently do not attend functions that are important to the child, like ball games or plays, the child develops a sense that he is just not important enough. When a child's emotional or physical boundaries are violated, the child is shamed. She cannot develop her identity unless clear boundaries exist between her parent and herself. When children feel that they have no privacy, no place to hide, they grow up with a sense of inadequacy and think, I must really be a bad person. Children feel shame when a family member is alcoholic or a drug abuser, and their behavior is embarrassing. The child thinks if only I were smarter, stronger, more lovable, then my parents would drink less, be happier or less depressed. They may also feel shame if a family member has a physical or mental disability, and that difference is never discussed, or the child can't express feelings of embarrassment. Children feel ashamed when they come to school inappropriately dressed or with poor hygiene because of neglect at home. They are isolated, made fun of or looked at with disgust. When parents use silent disgust as a way of disciplining a child's behavior, the child feels that his entire being is bad. 13. What type of family do you come from?: Children go to any lengths to gratify their parents' spoken or unspoken needs. In some families, love and affection are rarely expressed. And when spoken, they are conditional. Children seem forgotten and spend their lives roaming the neighborhood, looking to strangers to meet their needs. The family messages in the chaotic family is Don't ask questions. Don't trust anyone. Every person for themselves. You're too much for us. I hit you because I love you. You're asking for it if you upset us. Some parents rigidly protect the children from their own pain and shame experiences. In the overprotective family, the world is seen as a hostile, dangerous place. The child is bound by invisible ropes to the parent. The child sets off to take her first steps away and hears, Don't. You'll hurt yourself. She becomes ashamed of her own independent desires and terrified of the world. Decisions are constantly being made for the child. Sometimes homework is done for him. He is usually not allowed to contribute to his world because adults can do it better. The child's friends are constantly suspected. The child grows up to feel personally incompetent. Sometimes parents behave like victims to their pasts. The children in these families experience their parents as too soft. The children have little to push up against. They grow up feeling enormous shame and guilt for experiencing normal emotions. Their parent overreact to almost everything and cling to their children for support. Children in victim families experience unhealthy shame for needs and emotions. They also suffer shame and survival guilt when they are successful or happy in their lives. Many destroy their own successes, unconsciously feeling that they have no right to pleasure because their parents are so miserable. They tend to be hypersensitive to the needs of others and feel tremendous guilt when people around them are not happy. The perfect family gives messages like, Don't make waves. Make us proud. Correct our life. You are what you do. Don't let us down. You don't want to cause us problems, do you? You are the perfect child, and you better stay that way for all our sakes. No one is really good enough for you or us. Always think of us first. What would the neighbors say? Don't get upset. Put on a happy face. A child learns in the perfect family that emotions other than happiness must never be expressed. They learn not to speak of things that might be distasteful like sexuality, sadness or abuse. Children are shamed for their emotions, their mistakes, their less than perfect body, dress, grades. Shaming is often delivered subtly in gestures, facial expressions, silence, turns of the head or tone of voice. Um, in some families, there is extreme emphasis on good behavior, which will keep everybody out of everybody's way. People grown up in such families think that they don't know their parents at all. They often felt that they were merely pieces of furniture in the house when they were growing up. The major link between the children and their parents is a financial one. These children feel ashamed of their very existence and in future, focus on work and finances because the major way love was shown in their family was through money. People raised in a chaotic family may promise themselves that their family is going to be happy. But without recovery from chronic shame, they have difficulty feeling intimacy. They may devote all their time to their children, but don't set limits and follow through, because of the pain they experience every time their child cries. The child's tears tug at their own uncried tears, and they will do anything to make the child happy again. The child needs external limits to feel safe. But if his acting out creates chaos in the family, the child ends up feeling too powerful and acts out the parents unresolved anger and tears. 14. Why do we get addicted to things?: And One way of avoiding shame is an attempt to forget. Shamed individuals block their feelings of shame through compulsive behaviors like workaholism, eating disorders, shopping, substance abuse, list making, or gambling. Consider Jane, who could not change the fact that she was not acceptable to her mother as she was. She wasn't perfect and couldn't change that fact. She could, however, attempt to give her mother the external image that she found acceptable. She focused on dieting and achievement. Her striving for perfection was a defense against feeling helpless, shame, rage, and potential abandonment by her mother. She doesn't feel good enough, pretty enough, perfect enough for her parents. The only solution for her is to feel accepted faults and all. Be seen as she really is. Addiction becomes our highest priority because it takes away pain. It takes time and energy from the other aspects of our life. Chronic shame never goes away. You feel there's no hope for a cure because you are defective. This is the way you are. You have no relationship with yourself or with anyone else. You need relief from this intolerable pain. You need something outside of you to take away your terrible feelings about yourself, to take away your loneliness. Just as with excruciating physical pain, you will do anything to stop it. You need an experience which will change your mood. Any way of alleviating pain is potentially addictive. If it takes away your persistent discomfort, it will be your highest priority and your most important relationship. For example, when you have a throbbing toothache, you can't think of anything or anyone else. You become tooth centered. If the doctor gives you a prescription for medicine to take away the pain, it will take precedence over your spouse, work, and family. Whatever mood alters our chronic pain will take precedence over everything else. You will deny that it has any harmful consequences. You will believe it is good for you in spite of the fact that it is life damaging. Alcohol and drugs momentarily override the pain, provide the sense of power for the powerless. The bottle, the pills or other object may serve as a brief substitution for a relationship with others that seems hopelessly unattainable. Alcohol and recreational drugs often reduce social inhibition. They make the prospect of shame more bearable. We easily come to rely upon those drugs for ongoing continuous relief. The content of the addiction, food, drug, alcohol, or an activity addiction, like work, buying or gambling is an attempt at an intimate relationship. Each one alters mood to avoid the feeling of loneliness, hurt, and shame. Addicts believe that no one could want them or love them as they are. In fact, Addicts can't love themselves. The addict believes that he'll be okay if he drinks, eats, gets more money, works harder, et cetera. Addiction cycle starts with the belief that I am a flawed and defective human being. I am a mistake. No one could love me as I am. I need something to be whole and okay. This leads people to seek mood alteration, using things from outside themselves. Thus, people fall into a cycle of ritual acting out, such as binge eating or drinking. What follows is the feeling of shame over your behavior and the life damaging consequences, the hangover, the infidelity, the demeaning sex, or the empty pockets. 15. Addiction to Food, Drugs, Alcohol: Some of us will occasionally rely on food, drugs, or alcohol to escape from shame if we've suffered a setback, like losing a job or experienced rejection. We sometimes refer to this as drowning our sorrows or eating our feelings. Such behavior is not a major problem if it's a temporary measure to avoid shame, and we eventually go on to face it. Only when avoiding shame through substance abuse becomes chronic, is it a source of concern? Most of us have comfort foods we enjoy as an occasional form of solace, a normal response to pain and disappointment. When relying on food for relief becomes chronic, it means you are probably avoiding shame. The mental obsession is a kind of mood alteration. It is really a mental distraction. By constantly thinking about eating or not eating, you can distract yourself from your feelings. The anorexic person takes control of the family with her starving and weight loss. She is rigidly controlled, denies all feelings, is super achieving and is encrusted in a wall of pretense. Mom and dad become more intimate as their fears for her life intensify. When a person feels empty inside, hungry to feel a part of someone, desperate to be held close, craving to be wanted and admired, but she can't get what she wants, she turns instead to food. In all compulsive addictive behavior, there is no balance. It's all or nothing. You become grandiose, either the best or the best worst. With toxic shame, you are either more than human, super achieving, or less than human, underachieving. You are either extraordinary or you are nobody. You either have total control or you have no control. Any individual feels humiliated when controlled by an addiction to anything. They also feel humiliated when attempts to renounce it and regain power over it fail. The addict then feels defeated by the addiction. He grows to hate himself, becomes increasingly disgusted at his helplessness, his lack of resolve and inner strength. 16. Workaholism, Game Addiction, Gambling: The addiction is an escape from intense negative feelings such as anger, distress, or shame. By obsessing on our thoughts, we can avoid painful feelings and hide our shame. You can also avoid feelings by ruminating, turning thoughts over and over in your head. Obsessing on your alcoholic spouse or children or parents is a way to stay in your head and out of your feelings. You can be addicted to abstract thinking, generalizing, intellectualizing. For some people, reading is a way out of their feelings. People who are addicted to detail usually give you more information than you need during a conversation. If you are involved in conversation with a detail addict, you will most likely start to tune them out or become bored halfway through their minutely detailed story. Although listening to a detail addict can be annoying, it's important to remember that these people are hurting inside. Detail addicts stay in their head to avoid painful feelings. Relationships can be tremendously addictive. People go from one bad relationship to another or stay in one that is destructive. The feeling and experience of love is a powerful mood alterer and can be an addiction. A person who feels he can never achieve the success or acceptability his parents required of him may gamble compulsively in an attempt to win the big one and finally be powerful enough. For many compulsive spenders, having accumulated possessions is proof of their lovability. With enough layers of makeup or expensive clothing, their defects will finally be hidden. The work addict who spends thousands of hours at work can avoid painful feelings of loneliness and depression. Perhaps, if workaholics get that one last you did a good job or applause, they can be fit to join others on the planet Earth. Activity addicts must behave in certain ways to distract themselves. Activities which shut down your fears are reading, gambling, exercising, watching sports, watching TV series and soap operas, having and taking care of pets. Of course, none of these activities is an addiction if it has no life damaging consequences. But you can get so involved in an activity that by doing it, you alter your mood. Not everyone uses substances, thought processes, activities addictively because not everyone is chronically shamed. And activity becomes an addiction when we make choices based only on what we want without reason, perception, and judgment. 17. Reenactment. Acting out our Traumas : H. Wh our emotions are shamed, they are repressed. One of the ways that our frozen emotion is recycled is through reenactment. In reenactment, the emotional energy is replayed over and over. We repeat the behavior which sets up the shaming event this time with other people. Reenactment means repeating our earlier trauma or abuse. Perhaps we do this because we are drawn to what we know. If we were abused as a child, we will unconsciously seek out others who will continue to abuse us because that is what we know. We are comfortable with what we are used to, even when it's bad for us. A child who was shamed for her anger might choose an abusive partner. Likewise, the partner might have been shamed for his helplessness and choose a wife who acts out the helplessness. Each will try to control in the other that which has been disowned in themselves. This is how toxic shame influences your partner selection. You will avoid facing the pain of a lost childhood. At the same time, you will attempt to resolve your painful past by living it 1,000 times over. You may become angry at your mate's dependency, shaming him for his needs, as you shame yourself. But unconsciously, you sabotage any attempts of your partner to become autonomous. Incest victims often continue to re enact their earlier sexual abuse in one relationship after the other. They are often drawn to abusive sex partners like a moth to a flame. In being violated, such a person is used and then abandoned. Incest survivors often confuse sex with love and often tie up their self worth with being desirable, sexy and sexual. There is the message that sex is the only way I'm desirable or worthwhile. I have to be sexy and sexual, or else I'm nothing. This revictimization can lead to promiscuous sex and sex industry. Often, panic attacks occur when a memory from our past abuse is triggered by a sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, or feeling. If we have not retrieved the original memory and worked to release the buried emotions associated with it and heal the shame, we will either act out the unresolved pain or it will cause anxiety in the form of panic attacks. All parents who have not worked through their own childhood trauma will re enact it on their own children. You either pass it back or you pass it on. M. 18. Crime, Criminals and Shame: Much criminal behavior is acting out behavior. A criminal offender was once victimized in much the same way as he commits crime. Children from violently abusing families, children from families where there is abandonment, suffer terrible victimization. They generally either take on a victim role and re enact it over and over again, or they identify with their offender and replay the offense on helpless victims as they once were. This acting out is called repetition compulsion, the urge to repeat. The physical offender was once a victim who was powerless and who was humiliated. Parents who physically humiliate and abuse their own children were typically abused when they were young. When children are physically hurt and in psychological pain, they want out of it as quickly as possible. Random and unpredictable beatings create a state of passivity in which the victim feels that there is nothing she can do. A negative belief system is formed. The person no longer believes he has a choice. When a child is being violated, his normal reaction is to cry out in anger and pain. The anger is forbidden because it would bring more punishment. The expression of pain is also forbidden. When feelings of understandable, justified, but unallowed anger and pain are repressed, an abused child can identify with their abuser. The memories of the trauma can be completely repressed, but the original feelings remain just beneath the surface. Later, without possibly knowing why, these powerful feelings may be acted out against others in the form of abuse or crime. 19. How does society shame us?: Shame comes from outside of us from the messages and expectations of our culture. Our culture teaches us what is acceptable and what is not. We weren't born craving perfect bodies. We weren't born with a fear of getting too old to feel valuable. Most cultures teach us to compare ourselves to one another. You learn to compare your differences and find yourself lacking because culture neither recognizes nor values individual differences. From an early age, we are stimulated to seek advantage over others through competition. Achievement becomes the measure of self esteem. All must strive to be successful, and success is measured by accomplishments. Failure to attain success activates shame. Simply being average must seem a curse. Competitors cannot afford to care about each other. Our culture requires us to be independent and self sufficient. Never ding anything, never depending on anyone. Kading becomes a sign of inadequacy. Some would prefer to remain lost for hours rather than ask anyone for directions. Are also required to be popular. Individuality is neither recognized nor valued. Being different from others becomes shameful. Thus, introverts are traditionally shamed in some cultures for being quieter, less social, less outgoing. The world is filled with judgment. Many of those who become unemployed feel it like a humiliating event. Failure in relationships will also activate shame. Divorce is stigmatized in some cultures. Decline of appearance, bodily function, and vitality becomes a source of shame. When culture overvalues youth, aging becomes a source of shame. Bodily decline is experienced as a loss. 20. Traits of shame prone people: And Shame based people are afraid of vulnerability and fear exposure. Some develop a pattern of pleasing others in order to remain invisible. They fear intimacy and tend to avoid real commitment in relationships. People with chronic shame often develop a relationship pattern in which they leave before they can be left. They are attracted only to those who are unavailable. In intimate relationships, it is easier to be the one who leaves the first rather than live with the dread and anxiety of the inevitable rejection. Some people will even set up the rejection in order to feel in control of it. Chronically shamed people often wear a mask during communication. This is the mask that allowed them the greatest sense of connection with their parents in childhood. Wearing this false self disguise offers defense and protection for the vulnerable real self and decreases the threat of isolation. The person who appears grandiose and power oriented was shamed for his dependency and helplessness. The person who appears the most selfless and self demeaning experienced the greatest shaming in the area of personal power. The self demeaning person repressed her power. The power oriented person had to disown his shame. More women appear to be selfless, and more men appear to be grandiose, since the family and the culture have tended to shame power in women and dependency in men. Let's say you can't stand people who grovel or whine. Their behavior irritates you like the sound of a nail scratching a chalkboard. You may not realize that you are responding to a part of yourself that has been shamed and that you had disowned. People who hate dependency in others often get involved in relationships with dependent individuals. Then they try to change those individuals and control their dependent behavior. This kind of interaction is called co dependency. When a person puts forth a false self to the world and hides the real self, she doesn't believe that she can be accepted. If I spend my life pleasing others, I believe that only my pleasing personality can be loved. In reality, however, others in my world may love me when I disagree with them and am assertive. We can feel lovable only through opening our real selves. If you are suffering from chronic shame, you are afraid to let yourself go. Creativity and spontaneity are exchanged for extreme over developed inner controls. Many adults have problems in sexual area because they cannot allow themselves to let go internally, particularly in the presence of another person. We all have the basic need to feel accepted and to believe that we belong and are valued for who we are. As an adult free from toxic shame, we can trust ourselves enough to feel the pain of being emotionally kicked. Tell the other to stop or remove ourselves from that situation. 21. Ashamed of emotions and feelings?: Emotions are a form of energy in motion. They signal us of a loss, a threat or a satiation. Sadness is about losing something we cherish. It is an energy we discharge in order to heal. Feelings of sadness over the losses help us to adapt to reality. Sadness is painful, but grieving is the healing. On occasion, people treat us unfairly. They insult us. They irritate and annoy us. They even sometimes threaten and attack us. Anger is a normal human emotional response that is experienced with some regularity by people of all ages. We generally think of anger as a bad emotion. Many people think they shouldn't feel anger, but anger is the self protecting energy. Without this energy, you become a doormat and a people pleaser. Anger needs to be expressed. The more it is repressed, the more it grows. And finally, one day the anger energy erupts. The person who has been repressing it can be out of control. In most cultures, children are shamed and ridiculed for crying, or the crying is stopped with bribes and rewards. Sometimes they are hit or spanked for crying. Children are shamed for being hyperactive, for wanting things, and for laughing too loud. Even joy is shamed. When we are happy and excited, we are told things like don't get too puffed up. Pride comes before a fall. This comes out later in feeling shame every time you feel really happy, or you feel shame when you're very successful. Parents who have had their own sexuality shamed cannot handle their children's natural sexuality. When their child explores his sexuality, the parent reacts with disapproval or disgust. They say, That's bad or don't ever touch yourself there. These statements link sexuality to something bad, dirty and disgusting. Sexuality is linked with shame. 22. People pleasing, Patronizing, and Helping Others: Why Can It Be Bad?: Perfectionism, striving for power and control, arrogance, judgmentalness and moralizing, contempt, patronization, caretaking and helping, people pleasing and being nice. All these behaviors serve to alter the feeling of shame and to transfer it to another person. Each behavior focuses on another person and takes the heat off yourself. To avoid shame, you turn the tables and shift the blame outward. Blaming others instead of yourself can serve an ego protective function. The problem is with you, not me. You're the lout, not me. By blaming another person, we attempt to defend and preserve our self esteem. If I feel put down and humiliated, I can reduce this feeling by criticizing and blaming someone else. As I go into detail about how that person has failed, I get out of my shameful feeling. I alter my mood. We want to blame others when things go wrong for us and we feel powerless. If we accuse others of our shortcomings, then we can feel relieved of responsibility and blame. We have done nothing wrong because someone else is to blame. Blaming neutralizes shame by transferring shame away from us. The transfer of blame is actually a transfer of shame. While criticizing and blaming, we are free from our shame. To patronize is to support, protect, or help someone who does not have the same knowledge, benefits, or power as you. Problem is that the other person has not asked for your support or protection. It's a way of feeling one up on someone else. When you are patronizing, the other person feels ashamed. This experience is very subtle. On the surface, you seem to be helping the other person through support and encouragement. Yet, in reality, it doesn't really help. Patronizing is a cover up for shame and usually hides contempt and passive aggressive anger. Some shamed people deal with their sense of inner emptiness by caring for others. They gain a sense of worth by being altruistic, while at the same time, soothing painful self awareness. Such people often cannot admit that their noble service greatly increases their sense of self worth. Helpers are dependent on those they help, without whom they would feel worthless and meaningless. These people adopted caring roles early in their lives to meet their own needs by meeting the needs of others. They are uninterested in other people's real needs. Taking care of and helping someone often intensifies that person's shame. It is not the same as a spirit of helpfulness and giving. Caretaker is a common family system role. The helper actually doesn't help the other person. He is almost always helping himself. Caretaking and helping lead to rescuing. A caretaking spouse of an alcoholic actually enables the alcoholic's disease. Parents often rescue their children, doing for them what they could do for themselves. The children wind up feeling inadequate and defective. Rescuing or enabling is robbery. It robs the other person of a sense of achievement and power. The goal of the caretaker is to feel good about herself, not to take care of someone else. People pleasers, nice guys, good girls and sweethearts, hide their shame based true nature behind a facade of being friendly and well liked. Being nice is the official cultural cover up for chronic shame. The nice person hides behind an appearance of being a friendly, well liked person. Their image is what's important, not the other person. Being nice is a way of manipulating people and situations. By doing so, they avoid any real emotional contact and intimacy. By avoiding intimacy, they can ensure that no one will see them as they truly are shame prone, flawed and defective. People pleasing is self destructive and indirectly shaming to others because it is hostile. The nice guy tends to create an atmosphere where no one can give any honest feedback. This blocks his emotional growth. He also stifles the growth of others, since he never gives any honest feedback. Others feel guilt and shame for feeling angry at the nice guy. Nice behavior is unreal. It puts severe limitations on any relationship. 23. Procrastination is related to shame: Adults suffering from toxic shame feel they must do things perfectly or not at all. This blind belief leads to performance anxiety and procrastination. Procrastination is an attempt to defend us from further shame. The dread of shame drives people to procrastinate. They often start work at the latest hour once sufficient pressure has mounted and then dash off a paper or cram for an exam. After they receive an average grade, they alleviate their shame by telling themselves they would have done much better if only they had tried. For instance, I may have a paper due on Monday. If I wait until Sunday night to start the paper, I will have unconsciously protected myself from seeing myself as a failure. If I get an A, I will have fooled everyone or allowed myself the pride of being better than those who spent all week on the paper. If I get a C or D, it is because I started the paper late. Even if I don't turn the paper in, the F is in my control, not someone else's. The F will not carry the same feeling of shame because I was in control of it. I may feel guilty for my procrastination, but I can avoid viewing myself as a failure. Many parents and teachers inadvertently teach children that they are helpless failures, rather than people who sometimes make mistakes. By only focusing on one acceptable outcome, the good grade, they set up an all or nothing thinking process. Usually, a child would rather become a behavior problem or avoid school than be faced with the shame of seeing himself as a failure. This child, when grown up, might leave a job rather than accept a mistake or ask for help. Performance anxiety could be called shame anxiety. If a particular outcome on a project shows your self worth, it will make you extremely anxious. In such cases, it is not performance that is at stake. It is your personality, your self esteem. 24. Perfectionism and Shame : Mm. Some people can't make up for the fact that they aren't perfect in the mirror of their parents' eye. Those who felt unlovable and defective as children try to avoid or hide a sense of shame by seeking perfection. The perfect self obviously cannot be defective. Some people display their achievements to deflect attention from a defective self. The attempt to be perfect is always failed because perfection is unattainable. Nothing you can do would ever be good enough. Toxic shame creates human doings, people who must do to be okay. Only by accomplishment can they feel good about themselves. Unfortunately, accomplishments do not reduce shame. Chronic shame is about being. No amount of doing will ever change it. Perfectionists never know how much is good enough. People are valued only for doing. Perfectionism is created when parental acceptance and love is dependent upon performance. The performance is always related to what is outside us. The child is taught to strive onward. There is never a place to rest and have inner joy and satisfaction. Perfectionists feel defensive when they get minor negative feedback. They feel humiliation if forced to look at mistakes or imperfections. To them, there is no such thing as a minor mistake. It's all or nothing. Perfectionism is about a superhuman measure by which you are compared. And no matter how hard you try or how well you do, you never measure up. Comparison making devalues us by translating differences into deficiencies. You may enjoy your work, but comparison makes you feel that you fail to measure up to peers in terms of income and prestige. Competition aims at outdoing others and feeling superior, rather than simply being the best you can be. Judgmentalness and moralizing are offshoots of perfectionism. Moralizing and judgmental behavior are ways to win the spiritual competition. Condemning others as bad or sinful is a way to feel righteous and better than others. Oh 25. Do you often show contempt and indifference?: But If you never aspire to achieve anything, then you can never feel shame if you fall short. People who lack motivation, who are unable to plan for the future, or who appear to be lazy may be driven by a dread of shame that might arise from disappointed expectation. If you expect nothing, if you have no goals, you can't be disappointed. Lack of interest in dating or forming friendships may also be fueled by a fear of shame. Many people become socially isolated because they find it impossible to express interest in other people. Rather than expose themselves to the possibility of rejection, they become looners or workaholics. They take refuge in indifference when longing for human contact feels too threatening. Shy people, like everyone else, long for human connection and to be part of a community. When the pain of not belonging becomes unbearable, they may take refuge in arrogance and contempt for the world that excludes them. Unconventional teens rejected by their peers, sometimes take refuge in superiority and contempt, viewing the popular kids as ******. People who feel themselves to be outsiders will sometimes express contempt for those who exclude them. Many people find ways to belittle others who make them feel inferior with scornful remarks like pointy headed intellectuals and yuppie scum. When you feel contempt, you experience someone else as utterly disgusting. You reject other individuals personality. Contemptuous people become perpetual critics, always finding something wrong, some fault with other people or things. Expressing joy over your accomplishments or because of who you are, is the essence of pride. But feeling better than or superior to others is the essence of contempt. Contempt demands that someone be rendered lesser. Pride, in contrast, does not require anyone else to be diminished. Mm. 26. Do you envy other people?: Envy is discomfort at the excellence or good fortune of another. Such discomfort is accompanied by some verbal expression of belittlement. When you compare yourself with others or with an ideal, you fuel your shame, and then the envy is born. You see others as having more than you and longing for what they have. Envy distracts you from the reality of inner depletion. It is better and safer to be angry with some enviable person than to have to face shame against yourself. Sometimes envy appears in the form of disparagement or nitpicking. When we say to someone, that was a great lecture, didn't you get your main ideas from such and such a place? This praise is really an assertion of your knowledge. Such self assertiveness is also an attempt at provoking envy in the envied person. Envy may disguise itself in admiration. Admiration in the form of careless praise can be more shaming than criticism. True admiration is free of conscious will. It always has the option of silence. When admiration is envious, it requires public acknowledgment. The more stinging the envy, the more ardently you dramatize yourself as an admirer. Envy as greed is based on the belief that you can only be okay by means of something outside of you. When you envy someone, you resent her for some thing or quality she possesses, her wisdom, courage, charisma, et cetera. You believe that if you magically had that quality, you would be okay. The sense of another person's superiority forces a critical evaluation of yourself. Her excellence intensifies your pain and shame. To avoid the pain, envy takes the form of self assertive scorn. Envious and competitive feelings are part of human nature, an unavoidable fact of social life. This doesn't mean we must downplay our achievements or express them in a self deprecating manner. Humility will prevent us from overstating them or going on too long about them. Sometimes that means keeping our achievements to ourselves. Feeling pride and joy in achievement can sometimes be a lonely experience. Each of us is unique and unrepeatable. There is no way to compare us or measure us. 27. People who want power and control: Striving for power is a way to control other people. Those who must control everything fear being vulnerable because to be vulnerable opens you up to being shamed. The need for power is actually a need for inner control over your own life. It is a need to be able to influence your environment, to feel consulted, to have an impact, to feel heard. Power is given to people through offering a choice. Having a choice in any situation gives us a sense of inner control. Having a choice diminishes helplessness. When you feel powerless, you feel that nothing can be done, that something vital has been wrenched away and that you can't stop it. When a loved one dies, your home is threatened by disaster or you lose your job. Your sense of control of power is being taken away. You feel powerless and helpless. Control is a way to ensure that no one can ever shame us again. It involves controlling our own thoughts, expressions, feelings and actions. And it involves controlling other people's thoughts, feelings and actions. Control destroys intimacy. We cannot share freely unless we are equal. When one person controls another, there is no equality. Mm. Achieving power is a direct attempt to compensate for the sense of being defective. When you have power over others, you become less vulnerable to being shamed. Power seeking becomes a total dedication and life task. People spend all their energies planning, scheming and gaming for position in order to climb the ladder of success. Power is inherent in certain roles or positions. Such roles are often sought as jobs to cover up shame. Parents, teachers, doctors, lawyers, preachers, rabbis, politicians are roles which carry inherent power. People often try to gain power over others. They strive for power jobs and hold their position by finding people who are less secure and weaker to work for them. Such people are unable to share power. Sharing power would mean equality. Only by being over others can they feel adequate and superior. Having power over others is a way to reverse the helplessness they once felt in childhood. 28. How we defend ourselves against shaming : Sometimes the ability to provoke shame is a way to control it. To know in advance what will instigate an assault on your character, to skillfully engineer it holds a kind of comfort. It is better than the sudden and unexpected exposure to shame. Shame you can predict and control feels less awful than the shame you don't see coming. For example, you say, I know this stress makes me look fat. Few people, especially friends, are going to respond by saying, You're right. It really does. Go put on something else. Self deprecation often invites contradiction from others. It has a disarming effect. Some people use humor as a defense mechanism against shame. By forcing people to laugh at you, you prevent them from mocking or shaming you in a way you cannot control. Comedians can hold themselves up to ridicule. By attacking themselves, they control the amount of shame that is directed at them, retaining a measure of power over others. From time to time, most of us diffuse embarrassment by laughing at ourselves and our mistakes. By laughing first or along with others, we take control of the shame experience and thereby make it less agonizing. One of the defense mechanisms from shame is in your face expression, hoping to shock the other person. For example, I'm a stripper, and I'm really good at it. It comes across as a challenge. I dare you to judge me. However, shame defiance does not involve the achievement of actual goals. It does not embody true pride. Exaggerated pride, boastfulness, cultivated vulgarity, and exhibitionistic behavior replace denied shame. In your face expressions of your deviation from the norm that are intended to shock or offend the values of other people is a kind of shame defiance. It is defensive in nature. You intend to make people feel bad about the intolerant attitudes they supposedly or really harbor. It is like saying, You are a small minded bigot, and you ought to feel ashamed of yourself. Often, when we are shaming to another person, it is a sign that we are experiencing shame. When we try to inspire shame in other people like xenophobes, doctors who fat shame their patients, greedy industrialists, shameless tax evaders, uncaring politicians, criminals without remorse, neglectful parents, and so on, we are saying, I feel good about myself because I'm nothing like you. This way, you offload your shame and instead force a carrier to feel it. People who use this strategy too much may grow increasingly self righteous and judgmental because they can't bear to feel shame. When someone is shaming you, the temptation is to respond in an equally shaming manner or to withdraw. It is likely that the other person is already experiencing shame. If you respond in the same manner, it will only escalate the situation and leave everyone feeling more shamed and alone. 29. Narcissists and their shame: If as children, we were loved for our achievements and our performance rather than for ourselves, our true and authentic selves were abandoned. Narcissists deprived people, people who did not receive the kind of validation, mirroring, and unconditional acceptance they needed as a child, do well in every undertaking and are admired for their gifts and talents. But behind all this, there is depression, the feeling of emptiness, and a sense that life has no meaning. The narcissist is endlessly motivated to seek perfection in everything she does. Such person is driven to the acquisition of wealth, power, and beauty and to find others who will admire her. Underneath this external facade, there is an emptiness filled with envy, rage, and shame. Narcissists typically develop unrealistic expectations for themselves and others. With each failure to achieve ambitions, ambitions that are often grandiose, the narcissists individual feels shame. Grandiosity is a disorder of the will. It can appear as arrogance or helplessness. Each extreme refuses to be human. Each exaggerates. One is more than human. The other is less than human. The less than human, the hopeless one is also grandiose. Hopelessness says that nothing and no one could help me. I'm the sickest of the sick. I'm the best worst there ever was. Grandiosity results from the disabled human will. The will is disabled because of the shaming of the emotions. When an emotional event happens, emotions must be discharged. As emotions get bound by shame, their energy is frozen. Narcissists have a fixed pie view of self esteem. There's a limited amount available, and I can feel good about myself only if I make you feel bad about yourself. If the narcissists talents fail him, it is catastrophic. He must be perfect. Otherwise, he is depressed. We are free from depression when our self esteem is based on the authenticity of our own feelings and not on the possession of certain qualities. 30. Shame and sexual abuse: Children have the capacity to be sexual in a way appropriate to their developmental level. But when an adult is being sexual with a child, sexual abuse is going on. Adults who have been physically or sexually abused as children have little sense of emotional and physical boundaries. They constantly confuse nurturing and sexuality. This results in compulsive sexual interaction or no interaction. Sexual abuse is an act of power and revenge born of powerlessness. The rapist is haunted by scenes of torment and is driven to re enact them. This time in the role of tormentor, the victim, the target of revenge, is confused with the source of the perpetrator's shame. By defeating and humiliating the victim, the abuser momentarily becomes freed of shame. Sexual abusers are most often sex addicts. Sometimes they are replaying their own sexual or physical violation. Incest victims often continue to reenact their earlier sexual abuse in relationships. They are often drawn to abusive sex partners. They are being used and then abandoned. Children who have been sexually abused have learned that there is no difference between nurturing and sexuality. They often confuse sex with love and often tie up their self worth with being desirable and sexy. They feel tremendous anxiety if not meeting the sexual needs of others. They might say, I have no right to receive nurturing unless I'm sexual or I'll lose you if I don't have sex with you. There is the message that I have to be sexual or else I'm nothing. An individual suffering from sexual abuse feels that to share the abuse history with a partner means certain rejection. To hear yourself say the words out loud is terrifying. Acknowledging to another person means self acknowledgment. Self acknowledgment requires us to feel the pain of shameful experience. It removes the mask that we have hidden behind for a lifetime. Incest survivors build walls of distraction or dissociation or constant pleasing. An incest victim simply goes away during the experience of violation, like a long daydream. The same is true of physical violence. The pain and humiliating shame are unbearable. The victim leaves his body. This is the reason that these forms of victimization are so difficult to treat. The memories are screened while the feelings remain. The victim often feels crazy like she is living in unreality. She often has a split or multiple personality. She thinks the craziness and shame are about her rather than about what has happened to her. 31. Building healthy relationships: To love and feel unloved in return is a shaming experience. Typically, we use other words to describe our experience of shame, such as rejected, unworthy of love, unattractive, humiliated, unwanted, ignored or forgotten. These feelings indicate the painful awareness when you fail to gain acceptance from someone. Some men and women often prefer one night stands or casual sex because they minimize the risks of shame. Such impersonal connections deprive them of emotional experience. Because anonymous sex partners never get to know you, they can't pass judgment about your shortcomings. They will never form expectations that you might disappoint. There are degrees of rejection, ranging from the store clerk not smiling to being rejected and left by someone you loved. The pain of such a rejection is physical as well as emotional. It feels like a knife in our chest. Extramartal affairs usually inflict feelings of shame. All couples go through similar stages and struggles in the journey to intimacy. When the couple is in love, this is the romantic stage. That stage is characterized by a fusion of boundaries. It feels powerful. The couple feels they can conquer anything. When they marry, a new stage soon begins. Boundaries bounce back. Each person's family rules come into play. This is a stage of really coming to know each other's differences. Rules about money, sex, sickness, socializing, celebrating, household maintenance and parenting have to be negotiated. This takes ten years for most couples. It is followed by a stable period of settling down. All is quiet and routine for a while. But soon the empty nest and aging process begin. This stage is characterized by a soul searching journey of personal responsibility and a quest for ultimate meaning. If you are complete within yourself, you can come to your partner out of desire rather than neediness. There is no patching up of each other's deficits. The bond is based on choice and decision. You give because you really want to. You are fascinated with your partner's uniqueness and differences. The journey towards intimacy is marked by healthy conflict. Learning to negotiate and fight fair, patience and hard work. Everything you have ever done has ended. Life is a prolonged farewell. Grief is the process that finishes things. The end of grief is to be born again. So to live well is to grieve well. You need time to go through the stages of grief. The worst thing you can do is rush into a new quick fix relationship. The new relationship covers up the grief core. Grieving a rejection takes time. Your worst fear, rejection has already happened, and you survived it. You can and will survive again. You need to learn to distinguish the faces that call to you, that compel you. You must learn how to detach from infatuation spirals in order to distinguish between falling in love with an actual person and falling in love with your own internal images of that person. Conscious observation of your partner is a useful tool. When you communicate with someone, for example, a potential future spouse, try to observe the other person. How does he or she actually function? Ask yourself, do I like, respect this person? Do I want to get to know her? What is this individual's predominant feeling? Is he capable of sharing the power, of admitting mistakes, of vulnerability? Is she dependable and trustworthy? How well has this person been able to provide what you needed or expected? Did your expectations match with reality? When your attention is focused directly on observing the other person, you keep power in balance. When people treat you poorly, tell them to stop it. If they keep it up, don't tell them over and over. Hold yourself responsible for how much time you spend with them, how you respond to their mistreatment, and whether you take their opinions seriously. It's important to allow yourself to feel the pain of shame. It is only through facing it that the generational cycle of shame can end. 32. Is shaming necessary in society?: When someone says, You should be ashamed of yourself, what they're trying to say is that you should control through shame, the desire that led you to harm another being. Most people have a capacity for shame in some circumstances. And this is normal. Shame plays a vital role in the development of conscience. It motivates necessary self correction. It helps to mark and maintain the boundaries of respect for ourselves and others. This kind of shame often does not require alleviation because it helps to maintain social order and relationships. Healthy shame keeps our behavior in line, for example, not breaking wind in public or holding your anger in check with your coworkers. The shameless individual can express thoughts and opinions, use language, and behave in ways that would send shivers of embarrassment over the spines of civilized folk. He can belch, fart, and pick his nose and use foul language with impunity. She may ask for favor after favor without the slightest trepidation. He can give voice to his innermost fantasies, including those of grandiosity and perverse sexuality. The shameless person seems to know no limits or at least not to care about any. Shame helps to define social boundaries, norms and behaviors. It provides a powerful tool of social conformity and control. This does not prevent it from being a painful, difficult and isolating experience for people. Some people use shame as a tool for power and control. Shame can actually be harmful. When people feel ashamed of themselves, they are not particularly motivated to apologize and attempt to repair the situation. This is not an emotion that leads people to own up to their failures, mistakes or transgressions and make things right. Instead, they are inclined to engage in all sorts of defensive behavior. They may avoid the people around them. They may deny responsibility and blame others for what happened. They may become hostile and angry at a world that has made them feel so small. Shamed people assume a defensive posture, instead of being constructive and making reparations. Shame is one of the greatest barriers to learning. The social community pressure to appear learned has become more important than actually learning. We spend our time and energy building and protecting our image of knowing. We don't risk admitting that we don't understand or asking questions, both of which are essential to real knowledge building. Shame prevents people from returning to school, going to psychotherapy, going to the doctor, even asking for directions. Shamed people may also derive a sense of moral superiority from strict adherence to a set of rules. They may be very unsympathetic to the weaknesses and eccentricities of others, because they need to reinforce their own sense of goodness and value. They may resort to heroic helping relationships to establish their own significance and worth. They fail to recognize and respect the autonomy and needs of others. Sometimes healthy shame helps discourage anti social behavior, like criminal activity. From society's perspective, it may be helpful under very rare and extreme circumstances to have a mechanism that encourages shameful people like rapists, child molesters, serial killers to remove themselves from the social environment. For normal healthy human beings, shame is not useful. For the average person, shame is a harsh penalty for the inevitable failures of daily life. You don't have to and probably won't be able to give up shame altogether if you are a normal human being. Healthy self esteem means the ability to recover and learn from shame. Society probably needs a greater sense of guilt, which comes with responsibility and efficacy. People with a greater ability to empathize may experience more guilt than shame. Shame should be seen as a more primitive, hostile condition than guilt. Society needs more guilt and less shame in order to be more moral, respectful, and other regarding. Chronic self preoccupying shame needs to be minimized so that other regarding guilt can have more space. Toxic shame is socially and morally destructive, as well as personally painful and limiting. We shouldn't force people to make positive changes by shaming them. You can actually shame or humiliate another person to change their behavior, but that change will not last. Instead, it will hurt, damage, and scar. How can people who feel defective and unworthy of love simultaneously feel good about themselves? 33. Sharing a shameful experience: When you hide your shame, it is given more life. However, when you share your shame and reach out to others, you take the life and momentum out of the shame. If we reveal our shameful secrets to others, we fear being abandoned. If we don't, our shame increases, and we can never feel fully accepted or loved. When a person who has been forced to hide behind a mask of being perfect and good tells someone about shoplifting, it's terrifying. They might wonder if they can ever be seen or see themselves as good again. When you share your feelings, it feels momentarily devastating. If the other person supports you and recognizes your pain, you feel a real connection. The shame is released and alleviated. Once you feel and share your imperfections, it will be difficult to wear the perfect mask again. You won't feel the need to cover yourself as you once did. You can uncover your shame a little bit at a time. If the other person laughs at you, judges you or turns away, you probably won't be able to gradually share more. You need someone who listens, is empathetic and doesn't turn away from your pain. The defensiveness, coldness, or judgment we receive from those who have not recovered from their shame may increase our shame. But you need to give yourself the right to test others before sharing your shame. You need to be aware of any shaming from other people. Developing a sense of belonging in the world is important in resolving shame. To heal our toxic shame, we must come out of hiding. As long as our shame is hidden, there is nothing we can do about it. In order to change our shame, we must embrace it. Embracing it involves pain. Pain is what we try to avoid. In fact, most of our neurotic behavior is due to the avoidance of emotional pain. We try to find an easier way. The more we avoid shame, the worse it gets. We cannot change our shame until we externalize it. This means coming out of hiding by honestly sharing your feelings with significant others. You can reduce shame by legitimizing your abuse or trauma. This can be achieved by writing and talking about it. Writing helps to externalize the past shaming experiences. You can then give external form to your feelings about the abuse. You can express them, clarify them, and connect with them. The important thing is to make hidden and unconscious experiences open and conscious. In order to be healed, we must come out of isolation and hiding. This means finding a group of people that we are willing to trust. The only way to find out that we were wrong about ourselves is to risk being exposed to someone else's scrutiny. When we trust someone and experience their love and acceptance, we begin to change our beliefs about ourselves. We learn that we are not bad, that we are lovable and acceptable. We must risk reaching out and looking for non shaming relationships if we are to heal our shame. People who've been deeply shamed need to be fully loved, accepted, and valued. Most people need a therapist along the way who shows them their value. Some people find a group of friends or a lover who deeply accepts them. The group must be non judgmental and non shaming. And you can leave it if you feel unduly exposed or shamed. The group should be democratic and non controlling. Each person can be real in such a group. Each person can be different. The leader of the group needs to model healthy shame. This means they will not be controlling, perfectionistic and rigid. Most deeply shamed people need a group that touches and hugs in a respectful way. What this means is that no one just comes up and hugs you. Boundaries need to be respected. If it's too threatening to be physical, you can abstain without any explanation. You will be taught to ask if you want to hug, and you will be asked before someone hugs you. The group must allow for the full expression of all emotions. Freely expressing our feelings is like thawing out. Sometimes we feel worse before we feel better. The important thing is to feel. Our feelings are who we are at any given moment. When we are numb, we lose contact with who we are. Sharing emotions with another is to be vulnerable. The only way out of the pain is to come out of hiding. You have to surrender. Embrace your shame and pain. Self acceptance overcomes shame. Self acceptance is personal power. It means we are unified. All our energy is centered and flows outward. Without self acceptance, we create an inner rupture and inner warfare. When we hide from ourselves, we have less energy left for directly coping with the world. Self acceptance makes us fully functional. But this process takes place slowly and gradually. 34. How to give up your defenses?: Becoming shameless means hiding mistakes. Perfectionism, control, plane, criticism, and contempt. To be shameless, to be grandiose. Team-based people do not believe that they have derived to depend on anyone, to trust other people, to risk, depending, again, healthy shame is the permission to be human. To be human is to be essentially limited. It is to be needed and prone to mistakes. Surrender the controlling and grandiose will own responsibility for your life and give up control. Come out of hiding. Talk about your xin. Tell another human being about your shame. That is the exact nature of your wrongs. It helps you focus on your mistakes and awful acts. By telling another person, we embrace of our shame and expose ourselves. Let another person sea bed, really feel about ourselves. There is no pretense or cover up. We know we have field who are human and we have made mistakes. But we'll also can be helped. We can change and grow. We can learn from our P. And misfortune. To be shameless is to have no conscience. Our conscience tells us that we'll have field, will have transgressed our own values to be a false self. Always hiding and filled with secrets prevents any possibility of honesty in relationships. Were unable to be intimate. And we tend to find those who play by the same rules. Else ashamed tells us that we can and will make mistakes. By continually being in touch with our humanness and limitations. We can accept ourselves to acknowledge our mistakes, is to embrace and express our vulnerability. Since our parents are imperfect, they couldn't have accepted us, was perfect, unconditional love. They put conditions on birth on us and measured us according to their map of the world. Parents naturally rejected the parts of us that did not measure up to their way of viewing things. The more aware you are of these processes inside us, the more real choices we can make. We know that the protector, the controller, the critic, the protectionist, noise guy, and good goal are the mosques or the false self. We needed these parts or mosques to survive machine. These parts are not, well, we essentially are. They are not bad parts. They are simply parts, not the whole of us. We need to enhance our awareness so that we can see all that is going on in a non-judgmental way. Awareness is the still point where everything is noted and accepted. In awareness, you clearly observe what is going on with you. And within you. If you strongly dislike or feel averse towards somebody, ask yourself, how is this person, your teacher? What can you learn by listening to this person? This person can help you look at the parts of you that you have rejected. If you put on a mask of a helper without wanting anything in return, such helping is inhuman. You are trying to be more than human. Being strong is a way to try to be more than human. You refuse to accept normal human weakness. By bringing a part of your out of hiding, you are turning your shadow into light. You do not have to become the disarmed cell that would be accepting one part of yourself to the exclusion of another. You need to listen to a shamed and disarmed part of you. Those who have the courage to suffer, to completely relief, they are painful. Childhood scenes also experienced the deepest healing and growth. 35. What does “love yourself” mean?: Asking the person if he could love himself, no matter what he did means that our love needs to be for who we are, not for what we do. If you decide to love yourself, you will give yourself time and attention. How much time do you spend it with yourself? You take time, horace, and relaxation, or do you drive yourself unmercifully? If you are a human doing, to drive yourself, you need more and more achievement in order to feel okay about yourself. If you're willing to love and accept yourself unconditionally, you will allow yourself time to just be. You will set aside times when there is nothing you have to do and know where to go. You will allow yourself solitude, nourishing time of aloneness. You will take time for hygiene and exercise. You will take time for fun and entertainment. You will take vacations. It will take time to work at your sex life. You will be willing to give yourself pleasure and enjoyment. If you love yourself, you are willing to delay gratification so that something goes more favorable to your growth. Much take place. When you are assertive. You say no and ask for what you want. You built new physical, emotional, and intellectual. The people who have grown up in shaming environments focused on the needs of others in order to survive. They can't develop their own needs. Likes or dislikes. They can not hold onto their own emotions when in the presence of others. If they come home and their partner is absurd, they set out to take care of him. Rather than retaining the joy they felt upon coming home from work. Perhaps they received a raise at work and wanted to celebrate. Instead, they pick up the partner's feelings. When they walk into a crowded room. They can identify the needs and feelings of others, but have little idea of the role. If a conflict exists, it will be their responsibility to solve it. So for Social means, you have derived to offer no reasons or excuses for justifying your behavior. You have the right to change your mind. You have the right to make mistakes and be responsible for them. You have the right to say, I don't know. You have the right to be illogical making decisions. You have the right to say, I don't understand or I don't care to know you can and will make mistakes, allows you to live your life. And spontaneity. Knowing you will make mistakes keeps you from believing that you know it all. The fear of mistakes kills your creativity. Ufo connects. Always afraid to say what you think or feel. Responsibility means, accepting the consequences for your actions. It is a consequence for every action. Becoming more responsible means being more aware of the consequences of your choices. To love yourself means regarding yourself as neither more nor less than an imperfect, horrible human being. 36. How to let go: . Children will treat themselves and others with the same ridicule, sarcasm and derision that their parents fostered onto them what was once external, the parents screaming, scolding and punishing voice now becomes internal. The process of confronting and changing the inner voice creates a great deal of anxiety. But there is no therapeutic change without this anxiety. Really let yourself listen to what you are saying to yourself. Write it down and then say it out loud. What do you say in response to these critical comments? Thought-stopping requires a real commitment to be constantly alert. You can't wish a shame thought away, You have to drive it out. It involves concentrating on your shaming thought and then shutting off and emptying your mind. You need to consciously stop focusing attention inwardly upon yourself until you forcefully refocus attention back outside. The key to releasing shame is to literally force the attention outward. By consciously refocusing attention back outside yourself. through sheer effort of will, shame is immediately released. By focusing on the environment surrounding you, You interrupt shame feelings. This way you can enjoy activities from public speaking, dancing and sports to sexual activities. Refocusing attention needs Practice. For some individuals, public speaking activates shame. You can use refocusing attention outward by counting the people present, looking to see who is actually there or focusing on who might be interesting enough to get to know. As long as the focus of attention remains directed outward, you remain free of shame. Reaching serenity is acting without analyzing everything and without ruminating. You quit trying to figure it out. You stop overreacting and being hyper vigilant. You enjoy each and every moment as it comes along. You give up your impulsiveness and instant gratification. Fear of exposure lies at the heart of shame when you embrace your shame. you begin to discover who you really are. We have to move from our misery and embrace our pain, we have to feel as bad as we really feel, what you're feeling is revolutionary. It moves us to change ourselves. Once you have courage to be imperfect and accept that mistakes are natural, you stop walking on eggs. you take more risks and feel free to explore and be creative. We need to develop the capacity to tolerate shame and begin to experience ourselves as good despite flaws and imperfections. We need to find love for our flawed and imperfect self. If we can tolerate feelings of shame, we will be able to make more realistic choices. 37. Being equal with your parents: . The only way to cure our compulsivity is to go back and re-experience the blocked emotions as they first occurred. Our lost childhood must be grieved. Our compulsivities are the result of those old blocked feelings being acted out over and over again. We either work these feelings out by re-experiencing them, or we act them out in our compulsivities. We need to uncover the sources of our shame. We must uncover our frozen grief. And we cannot grieve alone. We need support of other people. Accepting your separation and aloneness means giving up an illusion that you will always be protected by your parents, you come to believe that your ego is strong enough to take care of you. Your ego is strong enough for you to survive alone. You need to develop equal power with your parents. If you can now call the shots just as well as your parent, you can truly let go of the past and live in the present. It is this letting go that makes a different future possible. As long as you remain stuck in the old relationship pattern with parents, the original model of behavior is reenacted in the present. No amount of insight or internal change will be entirely effective, until real action change occurs in those actual relationships. Changing relationships with parents is having power over your half of the relationship. This includes setting effective limits on the behavior of others in relation to you. Adulthood means attaining equal power in relation to other adults. and your family of origin. Consciously consider this question: What do you feel you owe your parents considering what they gave you? Relationships between the parents and children inevitably carry elements of obligation. It is important to distinguish between what you feel is owed to parents and what the parents believe is owed to them. What do you actually want to share freely? You also must examine the emotional costs of any interaction. You have human right to terminate relationships if they require sacrificing your own emotional well-being. . Hopefully, you will grow to accept your parents for who they are, and for what they were able to give. But that can only happen after attaining equal power. For some people, acceptance may grow into actual forgiveness of their parents. Some of us may come to accept our parents' limitations, but will never forgive them. That is your right. You should not be pressured or shamed into forgiving your parents. Some acts may be unforgivable. Whether or not you actually forgive your parents cannot be imposed. Forgiveness must happen of itself. To forgive your parents is an act of reunion, just as to forgive yourself is an act of reunion with yourself. . 38. Other ways of dealing with shame: . Extreme narcissists are unable to laugh at themselves. They feel compelled to defend an idealized self image on constant guard against any challenge to their inflated self image, they cannot bear criticism of any kind. If someone makes a joke at their expense or humorously tries to deflate them. They will experience it as an attack and retaliate in kind. They never make jokes at their own expense. But the ability to laugh at ourselves (without self-deprecating humor) may free us from the prison of shame, by connecting us with other people. Whenever we laugh at ourselves along with people we trust, Shame becomes less scary, less isolating. We connect through humor, “Knowing laughter,” is not defensive, It results from recognizing universality of our shared experiences. We are saying “You see—you’re not alone.” Rather than feeling isolated in our shame, we laugh together in relief. the ability to learn from experience contributes to personal growth. Perfectionism prevents us from learning from experience. Admitting that you have room to grow means accepting that you are not perfect. The expectation that you should never make mistakes, makes personal growth impossible The best we can do is acknowledge our mistakes without harshness, learn from that experience, and try to choose better the next time. Perfection is unattainable. Improvement is a far more realistic goal than perfection. Rather than striving to be perfect, to excel at everything, you should adjust expectations for changing circumstances. You must determine, from within, how much is good enough. Without that knowledge, you remain forever caught between the demands of others and the pressure of deadlines. Only an inner source of that knowledge will free you from the hopeless treadmill of perfectionism. It is not possible to heal shame if you don't recognize that you are feeling it, we often avoid or defend ourselves against the experience of shame because it is so painful. We use distractions to escape melancholy, self-consciousness and shame Such distractions include entertainment, addiction, work or hobbies. Distraction provides only temporary escape from painful shame. Feeling shame does not mean that you’re defective and unworthy. It means you’re human. Recognizing shame is an important tool for regaining our power. You need to learn to recognize when you are experiencing shame quickly enough to prevent yourself from lashing out at others. If, you have already lashed out at someone, learn to immediately stop, Calm down, take a breath and make amends . Shame resilience doesn’t mean you are no longer vulnerable to feeling shame. There is no antidote. You have much more awareness about what you’re feeling when it happens. You step back and think about what happened and why it happened. Then you can start to work your way out of it. When shame is activated in a specific situation, that situation has to be faced. It is important to endure the scene while overcoming shame. Instead of being defensive and attacking, try inducing your curiosity about why that person is shaming you Remember that "There Are No Absolutes". Challenge words like all, every, never, always, nobody, everybody. Learn to use words like maybe, sometimes, often. Place attention dealing with the problem, rather than obsessing on the problem itself. The world is gray, not black and white, if you are always right, you stop listening and learning. The key to overcoming being right is to become an active listener. Ask yourself what you can learn from the other person's opinion. Neuroses and character disorders are disorders of responsibility. Learning to be responsible and to allow others that privilege, is to live in reality. Also remember that respect for others means letting them live their own lives, suffer their own pains and solve their own problems. By blaming and judging others, you are covering up your own unresolved ego issues and unresolved shame Accepts responsibility for your own behavior and choices. Focus on your own problems. When you start labeling, ask yourself, "What am I trying to avoid?" 39. How to deal with Shame in Relationships?: . Intimacy requires the ability to be vulnerable. To be intimate is to risk exposing our inner selves to each other; to bare our deepest feelings, desires and thoughts. To be intimate is to be the person you really are and to love and accept each other unconditionally. This requires self-confidence and courage. Co-dependent relationships are dominated by attachment and the fear of abandonment. Control is the great enemy of intimacy by definition, intimacy excludes one person controlling the other. Control is the product of your disabled will. It is an attempt to will, what cannot be willed. We cannot change another person. You cannot fix your parents or children. You cannot control their life or their pain. Sometimes if you get out of the way and quit trying to control things, they work out. Each time we re-enact our childhood experience, we are trying to do the grief work. We choose the same kind of person in order to have another chance at resolution. Each new partner represents aspects of our parents. We try to make our partner into our parent so that we can resolve the conflict and move on. Since we are no longer children, it never works. The only way out is to do the legitimate suffering that the grief demands. To do this we have to give up the false self and outgrow our parents. That is the only way we can gain our true self. So expecting your partner to provide what your parents failed to provide is a delusion. It is an unrealistic expectation and ends in disappointment and anger. Healthy relationships are responsible. If I've hurt you, I want to own my part in it. I also know that some of it is about you and your history. People in destructive relationships, usually are relating through their rejected feelings. Generous men often marry selfish women; perfectionistic women marry sloppy men; nurturing women Fall in love is emotionally unavailable men. Instead of learning from each other by incorporating their disowned selves, they live with these selves expressed in their partners. Since they reject the trait expressed by the partner, they are judgmental and angry about that character character in their partner. The integration of all personality traits is a process of self-acceptance. Wholeness and completeness result from total self acceptance. We may bear the scars of a traumatic childhood for life, but that doesn’t mean we can’t experience profound joy. 40. How to deal with criticism?: No one likes to be criticized or rejected. In a secure person, however, criticism or rejection does not mean loss of face, but people suffering from inappropriate shame believe that they are unworthy, deffective and unlovable. They expect to be criticized and rejected. They are hypersensitive to any sign of judgment from others. as children, these adults felt rejected by parents. The normal response to criticism and rejection is anger. But you can't be angry at the person you are dependent upon otherwise who can't survive. These children, therefore, felt guilt for their anger and quickly turned anger back on themselves in the form of depression. In this way, they protected the relationship with their parents. Reacting defensively to criticism is a universal human reaction, criticism itself is useless because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes us strive to justify herself . Criticism wounds a person’s precious pride hurts her sense of importance and arouses resentment. She may feel as if you deliberately intended to humiliate her and then she’ll try to hurt you in retaliation. Many people respond to criticism with denial, insisting that it is unfounded. They often turn the tables and blame you. People will try to ward off such a painful experience by denying that they have any reason to feel shame Blame and indignation Come to the rescue. Feedback is an observation without interpretation, feedback can be enormously helpful, but criticism is always a subjective interpretation based on your experience and grounded in your personal history, and it is not very useful. The main principle in handling criticism is never defend yourself if you defend yourself, you are taking on the shame. You can use several techniques to handle criticism, but remember that they don't always work first, you can acknowledge the truth, the possibility of the truth you do not defend. You simply let the critic's statement go through you. For example, your mother says your children are undisciplined, they are going to get in trouble at school, you answer, you're right, they may get in trouble at school. You acknowledge the possibility of the truth of this statement. Then she might say, well, when are you going to give them more discipline? You say, I'll give them more discipline when they need it. This is vague enough. And it acknowledges the truth of the statement Another strategy is to ask for clarification. For example, someone says to you, you are not going to wear this shirt, are you? You answer: "What is it about this shirt you don't like?" If the critic says, "It looks cheap." You say, "What is it that you don't like about cheap shirts?" or "Why do cheap shirts bother you?" These questions force your critic into an adult part of her personality. The adult is not contaminated by repressed feelings. The adult is oriented toward logic and objectivity. The usual outcome of this technique is a weakening of the critics energy. One question after another will smoke out the real issue that lies behind the criticism. The real issue is either purely subjective or an attempt by the critic to cover up his own shame and pass it on to you. Again, this technique may not always work. If you decide to confront directly the person who criticizes you, stay under your own skin, say what you perceive, see and hear, what you interpret, what you feel and want Use "I" messages. Be responsible for what you feel and want. Look the person right in the eyes. This has to be practiced. Or stare at a spot between the person’s eyes. For example, you bought a new expensive cell phone and your friend is being negative. You say when you make comments like that, I hear that you feel bad about my good fortune. Somehow my good fortune triggered your shame. I'm sorry you feel that way. Maybe you can do something about it. Confrontation may trigger rage in your critic. In that case, you simply say, "I'll be happy to talk to you when you stop raging," and leave. Withdrawal is an assertive behavior in the face of bully or offender type of criticism. Another way of dealing with criticism is playing dumb. You ask a lot of questions, you say. Now let me see if I'm getting this straight. You think I should stop wearing my hair this way? What is it about my hairstyle that you don't like? They answer your question, you go through the same routine. The goal is to get to the bottom of it, to expose their subjectivity. The criticism is usually about their shame, and not about you or your hairstyle. You avoid defending yourself and get the other person out of his critical parent cover-up. You can also try CONFESSING. If you spilled the milk, you say, 'Yes, I did spill the milk." Simply make an acknowledging statement. DO NOT add things like, "How stupid of me!" When you are wrong, just admit it. We can and will make mistakes. We need not apologize for them. They are part of the human condition. If you unintentionally violated another person's boundary, allow him to express his feelings. Do not blame or defend yourself. Use phrases like “I hear that you're upset and angry" or "I hear your frustration," or "I know how upsetting that is." You take the responsibility. It allows you to acknowledge another person’s feeling about your wrongdoing and to make reasonable amends. You don’t put yourself down by shame. Unintentional hurts are inescapable. If all these techniques don’t work, try CONFUSING In confusing, You use either a big word or a made up word out of context. For example, your colleague scolds you for taking too much time on your lunch hour. You do not want a confrontation. You've been through this situation before with this person and it ended in an aggressive lecture So you look at him and say, boy, the traffic was, oh, show us today. The use of an unfamiliar word or a word out of context is often a real stopper. You can see the perplexing look on her face. Her mind is now involved in a search for the meaning of what you just said. You can just smile and walk away. 41. How to be a non shaming parent: Just as the shame based parents cannot accept their own weakness wants, feelings vulnerability and dependency. They cannot accept their children's neediness feelings and dependency. If a parent were to let the child express those feelings it would strengthen his own defenses. The parent must stop the child's feelings of neediness and pain so that he doesn't have to feel his own feelings of neediness and pain on a regular basis. Loving responsible parents can actually induce their children to feel bad but to feel bad about bad behaviors. not bad about themselves. In this way parents guide their children to be moral, responsible, happy, and well adjusted. They can use negative consequences like punishments to make children notice that they have transgressed to reflect on their behavior and its consequences and to make positive changes for the future children need to know what to do as well as what not to do. It is necessary to guide children toward desired behavior, rather than away from undesirable actions. Guilt-inducing discipline is likely to be more effective than shaming tactics. Accentuate the behavior, not the person. When disciplining children it's easy to make the mistake of focusing on who they are, as people, rather than what they have done. wrong. Behavior-focused here-and-now statement is ", you did a bad thing there when you...", as opposed to you are a bad boy you are mean clumsy or you are so stupid careless lazy etc.. instead of saying "You are a very bad boy," say, "I don't like it when you hit your sister. I can understand your frustration with her, but I don't want you to hit her again." In respectful families violation of values leads to guilt not shame. People have a better sense of their own individuality. communication is more open, and people are accepted as they are, not as they ‘should be’. It’s important to help children recognize the effect of their behavior on others. Children tend to be self-centered and don’t notice their impact on others. This is normal. So it is helpful to shift the child's attention with statements such as ", it's not OK to hit her like that. Look at how that hurts her. She's crying." In this way, parents simultaneously focus the child's attention on the bad behavior (not his bad self) and on the consequences for others. Help the Child recognize shame as the root of his anger. Discuss how best to handle the anger eliciting situation avoid public humiliation. Shamed children are not likely to own up to their faults and "make amends." Parents need to adopt a respectful manner and be sensitive to the social setting. Avoid teasing derisive and sarcastic humor. There's a fine line between laughing at a child and laughing with her. Little children don’t have sense of humor. They can easily feel mocked or ridiculed. And remember, there is no such thing as the "perfect parent” or the shame free parent A good parent neutralizes the child's aggressive impulses. A good parent does not see the child's striving for autonomy as a threat. The child is allowed to experience and express jealousy, rage, sexuality, defiance, because the parents have not rejected these feelings in themselves. The child does not have to please the parent and can develop her own needs The parents independence and good boundaries. allow the child to separate himself. The child is allowed to display ambivalent feelings, she can learn to regard herself and her mother as "both good and bad", Parents can use their facial expressions to induce healthy shame, or stressful states of mismatch, to encourage a change in behavior. It’s the facial equivalent of saying “No, don’t do that.” • Urinating and defecating in clothing is no longer acceptable. the child must use the potty. • Interrupting a parent when she’s having a conversation with someone else rude. • Snatching toys away from other children is “not nice,” especially when the toys don’t belong to the snatcher. When parental anger intensifies into contempt or rage, it will traumatize the child. But in little amounts it induces a mild shame experience in the children that helps them develop. To avoid the stressful experience of shame. toddlers will eventually modify their behaviour to conform with parental expectations. They will internalize the NO expressed on a mother’s face and eventually learn to tell themselves no. In other words they will learn to control their bowel movements. They will learn how to wait for their mother to finish her conversation before asking to be picked up. They will learn to resist the impulse to snatch that toy, although they would dearly love to hold it. They learn the rules of socialization unconditional love is crucial. I love you for who you are but not everything you do is acceptable. To win my approval, you must learn the rules that help human beings to coexist; you must respect the feelings of members of your family, as well as those of other children and adults You will come to know. 42. Judging other and being judged. Empathy: We are all vulnerable to being judged and feeling shame about our experiences. And we're all vulnerable to judging and shaming others about their experiences. Sharing our shame with someone is painful. Sitting with someone who is sharing his story with us can be equally painful. We start to judge because of the natural tendency to avoid this pain. Will basically blamed people or they experience will unconsciously divide people into two camps. Worthy of our support and unworthy. Were turned away from people because their experiences are so stigmatized, socially unacceptable, and too scary for us. We don't want to relate to them because that would mean it could happen to us to. Empathy is antidote or shame. We need other people's empathy and also show empathy to others. Judgment, silence, and secrecy. Mcshane, Dr. Empathy is not simply knowing the right thing to say to someone who is experiencing shame. It is the ability to perceive a situation on the other person's perspective, to feel what the other person felt in that shameful situation. But there is more to empathy and sensitivity. Empathy is a kind of perspective taking. Will all see the world through multiple lenses. These lenses represent who we are and the perspectives from which you devote. Some of the lenses are constantly changing and some have been with us from the dei Verbum, will push other people's lives and stories in front of our own lenses. Rather than honoring what the thirty-years perspective taking requires, believing that what we see is one view of the world, not the only view which you lens down for awhile to pick up other person's lens. Most of us judge others all the time. We judge others as a way to make ourselves feel better. It takes a great deal of conscious thinking or mindfulness to even RNC. The habit of judging into our awareness must work very hard to see other people's stories through our perspective. And empathy is like saying, I am over here and you are over there. I'm sorry for your and unsat for you. And while I'm sorted that it happens to you. Let's be clear. I am over here. This is not compassion. When we give sympathy, we do not reach across to understand the world as other seed will look at others from our world and feel sorry or sad for them. It's like saying, I don't understand your world. But from this view, things look pretty bad. It is clear that you don't see the world as other person sees it. You see her experience from your world. And that's not empathy. You don't communicate your understanding of her experience. When your need for empathy is met with sympathy. It consent you deeper into shame. You feel even more alone and separated. Empathy is about connection. Sympathy is about separation. And of course, there are people who seek sympathy, empathy. They are searching for confirmation of their uniqueness as if seeing it will sorry for me, because I am the only one. Is this happening too? My situation is worse than everyone else's. They are telling us that no one can understand. Sometimes the best we can do with someone who is sympathetic is to feed. Yeah, that's really hard. Or wow, Sounds rough. But on the inside, while probably thinking, please get over it. Enough of the pity party. These exchange do not produce feel connection and understanding. Often just hearing about someone's shaming experience and cause us to want to shoot ourselves who don't want to hear it. It is too painful just to listen. We'll also avoid showing empathy by convincing ourselves that we can't really understand experiences that we haven't actually had. 43. How to be resilient to shaming?: There is no way to permanently rid ourselves of sheep. But we're all capable of developing shame resilience. You need to gradually learn to be those situations that store up anxiety. Shame. Setting realistic and attainable goals may enable you to feel pride in achievement. Renouncing your goals in order to avoid for the sheen will prevent any chance of success. Team is an inevitable part of daily life. When we avoid, deny or control of experience of shame to an excessive degree, would remain defensive, resilient in the face of lives, emotional challenges. Coping it was shamed, helps us to develop confidence. Resilience means pruning to beer, inevitable experiences of sheep without defending heavily against them. We tolerate those emotions rather than simply refusing to feel them. We don't narrow our lives to avoid encounters was shame. Shame resilience begins by identifying a support network of people who will respond with empathy. When you describe your experience, will understand what you have been through. Because they know what it feels like. Reaching out is finding someone supportive to tell your shame story. Instead of holding it in. You can build shame resilience by learning how to normalize. By saying, I am not the only one. And by sharing what you know with the others, many child abuse victims are found personal healing and discovering that day experience is not unique condition of abomination that cannot be named or verbalized. When we feel to make the connections will increase our shame by individualizing. Thinking. I am the only one. And by pathologizing, thinking something is wrong with me. Shame is inevitable. You want when other people do not intend for us to feel bad about ourselves. At some point in our life, will probably will encounter the shame of unrequited love. Whenever we feel left out or forgotten, we will feel the shame of exclusion. If we feel to achieve our goals or violate our own system of values, we will feel shame. We need to learn to tolerate such experiences as painful as they might be without forcefully defending against them. If you repeatedly justify yourself in imaginary arguments with the other person, stop and ask yourself what you might have said or done to feel ashamed about. In most arguments, both parties bear some responsibility for what happened. If you insist on your own innocence and to blame another person, may be denying your own shame because you find it intolerable. Instead, tried to face the truth, acknowledge fault, and try to do better. Next time. Shame happens between people, and it heals between people. 44. Conclusion: You have to become fully conscious of your shame, able to recognize when you are actually experiencing shame and able to identify its sources. We can't consciously make the decision to change our behavior until we are aware of what we are thinking and why we are thinking it. We need to understand the source of our shame so that we can deal with it. If we recognize and understand our triggers, practice awareness, and reach out to others, we can increase our resilience. We need to be able to identify and communicate what we are feeling and why we are feeling it. Telling someone how we feel takes more courage and is often more powerful than verbally attacking them. When we don't know our vulnerabilities, we rely on ineffective methods to protect ourselves from the pain of shame. Most of us judge others for having the traits we dislike in ourselves. It takes a lot of work to stay out of judgment about others. Shamed people often experience negative inner voice that makes unrelenting critical comments about them. This inner voice represents the inner parent. Externalize the inner voice by writing down what it says and replying to it. There is power in writing down your thoughts, reading them, and reflecting on them. When someone uses hurtful and demeaning words, we need to find the courage to explain why we are not comfortable with the conversation. When someone shares her shaming experience with us, we can choose to be compassionate. We work to hear what she's saying and to connect to what she is feeling. No one completely heals from core shame. Some will always bear the scars. In moments of deep pain or profound emotional stress, we tend to fall back on our old defenses, especially when we feel shamed or humiliated. Understanding the nature of shame and its function is the first step towards shame resilience. Overcoming shame takes a long time, but it is well worth it. First, you need to learn that it's okay to be who you are and you are okay the way you are. B