Shame dumping is another coping mechanism. What this means is that the shame message is reversed. For example, if someone comes to you and says, “Hey, why didn't you take care of this chore like you said you would?” The person dealing with unhealthy shame may respond with, “Are you serious?
Shame has a central social component, and involves fears of being judged, criticized or rejected by others rather than just judging oneself. The origins of shame can almost always be tied back to past experiences of feeling judged, criticized, or rejected by someone else.
Toxic shame is a debilitating feeling of worthlessness and self-loathing, according to Taylor Draughn, licensed professional counselor in Louisiana. “People who feel toxic shame often feel like they're not good enough and are ashamed of themselves.
There are many potential causes of toxic shame, most of which are rooted in childhood experiences, such as different forms of abuse, neglect, trauma, or an unstable living environment. Here is a comprehensive list of causes of toxic shame: Verbal, physical, and emotional abuse or neglect.
The posterior insula is the part of the brain that engages visceral sensations in the body. According to Ruth Lanius, MD, PhD, this is likely related to the “pit in your stomach” feeling many people associate with shame. Feelings of shame can also cause the brain to react as though it were in physical danger.
Many people with BPD experience pervasive and chronic shame, regardless of their behavior. 2 This has lead researchers to believe that shame may distinguish BPD from other mental health disorders.
Be aware of the physical signs of shame
Slumped shoulders, lowering our head, looking down, avoiding eye contact, hesitant speech patterns – these are clues that we feel unworthy and want to avoid letting anyone else see into us.
Hence, shame has recently come to be identified in the trauma literature as part of a constellation of negative emotions (along with fear, horror, anger, guilt) that are common for trauma survivors in post-trauma states.
Shame is connected to processes that occur within the limbic system, the emotion center of the brain. When something shameful happens, your brain reacts to this stimulus by sending signals to the rest of your body that lead you to feel frozen in place.
Shame is one of the more painful emotions because it arises when those most foundational of human needs, the need to feel safe and the need to belong, remain unmet. Because it is so painful, we are compelled to find ways to avoid it if possible, to manage it when we must, and, if necessary, to neutralise it.
This theory conceptualizes shame proneness as the tendency to appraise the self (rather than behavior) negatively in response to one's perceived transgression, whether real or imagined (Tangney, 1990; Tangney & Dearing, 2002).
Narcissist's issues with shame is a major reason narcissists struggle to maintain friendships, experience true intimacy, and struggle with self-esteem. Narcissists fear and despise facing their shame so much so, that their way to survive is to project their own shame on to those around them.
Narcissistic shame is an intense pain related to social failure, failure to be a true human being. It is a sense of being an inferior human being, exposed to social judgment in the midst of severe disintegration of the self.
Stress responses and shame
The two main processes include the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and the HPA axis, the latter resulting in the secretion of cortisol (Sapolsky et al., 2000).
Shame causes people to hide from the sanctions of cultural norms, which leads to perceptions of brokenness or being bad (Arnsten, 2015). Empathy has the opposite effect. It creates a space where people can process their circumstances without shame's debilitating effects.
A child who has experienced this type of trauma and holds much shame may show us behaviours such as: envy, anger, and anxiety, effects of sadness, depression, depletion, loneliness, isolation and avoidance. They will highlight to us their inadequacy, their powerlessness and at times their own self-disgust.
Certain types of trauma have been associated with greater feelings of shame, including sexual violence, childhood abuse or neglect, and intimate partner violence. These are types of ongoing trauma that do not fully heal and leave people with a persistent sense of powerlessness.
If you have grown up in a shame-based family, your thoughts, feelings, wants, and needs are constantly discounted, minimized, rejected, and disqualified. You don't really ever have the opportunity to develop an internal sense of what actually feels “okay” and “not okay” to you.