Exploring Shame Series #3

Beginning to Understand the Compass of Shame

Often as adults, you think that you should be all grown up now.  You might even believe that somehow you should know what to do, to say, and how to be in any situation you encounter.  In our culture, we are often led to believe that feelings are wrong or bad and need to be eliminated from our adult state of being.  If that were the case, you would act very robotic.  Maybe you can look at some of the ways we have acted in the past and wish you had been robotic, that you had not blown up, walked out, or cried in a situation that became uncomfortable or too distressful to you..  In reality, most of you have scenes like that that have embarrassed you and made you wish you had shriveled up and disappeared into the floor. 

This introduction leads to several questions and observations.  Think back over the past few months and recall a situation that you wish you could erase from your history, your memory, and the memory of others.  Now, that you have brought that memory to the foreground, what happens when I say to you, “Are you aware that most adults have situations like that in their lives?”  More often than not, you probably go toward a defensive state that says, “Maybe so, but Joey, Jerry, Jean, and Jessica did not ever do what I did.”  It is true that perhaps you have never observed those people doing those things, but just because you did not observe them does not mean that they did not happen. 

The example, just listed, is an example of comparison making, or comparison scripts. It is natural in your inner self to compare yourself to those around you. However, if that is your only reference point (others) then you need to discover your inner reference point.  Think for a moment.  What happened in that recalled memory just before you got angry?   Who said what? Who did what?  What did you do right before you exploded?  What did you do after you exploded? Now,  back up one more time and recall what you were feeling.  When someone said to you, “What makes you believe that is true?”  What did you feel?   Did you feel self-doubt?  Did you think, “Oh no, I am wrong.”  Did you want to run or hide or perhaps that statement inflamed you and you were ready for battle?  Regardless of your reactions, thoughts, feelings in any of the above situations, your reaction will fall somewhere on the compass of shame.
When we experience shame we do one of four things: Withdraw, Avoid, Attack Other, Attack Self.  We often are not aware of what we are doing, but withdrawal leads to depression while avoidance leads to addiction.  If we find that we have to blame someone else for how we are then we attack using judgement, anger, intimidation, or criticism.  If we attack our self that can be anything from self-abuse to constant self degrading chatter in our head.  What is it that you do? 

 

Shame and How it Can Effect Your Faith Negatively

Faith, spirituality, God, religion, church, dogma, and belief systems affect your life in many ways on a daily basis. Faith and religion can be unifying forces and they can also be the most divisive forces on the planet. Perhaps your family had a rule dictated that you never to talk about your religious beliefs because sometimes religious discussions can lead to many family misgivings. Do you have any of those stories in your family? On the other hand, perhaps your family was very committed to their religious system and felt a need and responsibility to share it with others, in order that they too could find the peace and solace your family enjoyed in their particular brand of faith. Perhaps, you had no particular belief system and wondered through-out your life why other people spent half of their weekends in church? Most people have stories about faith and growing up in your family of origin. It might be eye opening as you sit with your journal and list some of the memories and events that you experienced in your family about faith and religion.

Faith is a complex subject but can really assist you with shame reduction once you clear out some old scenes and scripts from your childhood belief system. However, in order to clear out the old faith scripts you really have to do some work on our own faith system.

James Fowler (1996) in his book Faithful Change: The Personal and Public Challenges of Postmodern Life echoes for us some of Erik Erickson’s work on developmental stages, but focuses on the stages of faith development. Fowler identifies seven stages of faith development as well as describes significant differences between faith and religion. He distinguishes between the two by recognizing religion as a cumulative collection of beliefs and actions practiced by groups of people who believe the same things. Faith is personal, inclusive of unconscious dynamics of formation of our individual values, morals, and beliefs. Fowler (pg.56) identifies personal faith as that which gives coherence and direction to individual lives, linking them to shared trusts and loyalties with others, and enabling the individual and/or the group to face and deal with the struggles of the daily difficulties of life.

It is the daily dealing with the difficulties of life where shame can wreak havoc with your emotional and intellectual self. If you have discovered, through my writings about shame that you suffer from large amounts of shame about whom and how you are in the world, you might view God as angry, hostile, and out to get you. Alternatively, you may believe that God has no interest in you because you are just bad to the core. Even if you grew up in a particular faith based religious group that taught you about a benevolent God who is trustworthy and on your side, it still might be a struggle for you to be able to make the emotional connection to a benevolent God because of your shame scripts. As a shame based individual that has internalized that there is something incredibly wrong with you, it may be difficult for you to tolerate positive affect in sufficient doses to believe that God could possibly love you and be on your side. Remembering that one of the positive affects is that of interest and the other of joy, a shame based individual often gives up on interest in God, faith, religion because even the idea of God being benevolent is too difficult to even entertain.



Writing exercises:

What is your first memory/thought about God?

Was there a time that God became more that just a word to you?

Was that time positive or negative?

How are your believes the same or different to those messages now?

If you were “nakedly” honest with yourself, does shame, shameful feeling, memories, or events in the past interfere with your faith in God?

Shame and How it Immobilizes You

Shame, what is it? How does it immobilize you?


Shame is an interesting creature that moves into our souls unannounced at a very young age. Shame begins early in our lives creating feelings that hurt, ache and scream messages like, “Something is incredibly wrong with me.”

Do you remember the first time that you accidently broke something?

Do remember when you spilled your milk on the floor or soiled your pants when you were supposed to be potty trained?

Do you remember how sad you felt when kids made fun of you at school or on the playground?

Do you remember how red your face turned when a teacher attacked you for answering a question wrong?

All of us have experienced situations like these plus many more. In addition, all of those experiences have one thing in common. Each of those experiences was events that interrupted our positive joy or interest. These experiences are the beginning of shame, toxic shame. None of the above experiences is enough in and of itself, severe enough to create toxic shame, but all of that depends on what type of environment we had consistently at home or at school.

If our home environment was safe, then we learned we could survive just about anything that happens to us, because we know what to expect. One of the definitions of a safe environment is knowing what to expect, a consistent environment. An environment where we can depend on our parents or caregivers to be there for us when the chips are down, even when it is our fault. We knew we could count on mom or dad to get over their anger with us and be okay with us again. Alternatively, we could tell our safe caregiver how awful it was at school when the other kids made fun of us or that we didn't have someone to sit with at lunchtime. In addition, we could depend on our parents to stick up for us when a teacher or other adult treated us unfairly. Those are healthy experiences and we learn to develop inner confidence when we have a dependable and safe environment.

However, if our environment was not dependable or if it was consistently chaotic or abusive then what we learn from the above situations, is that there really is something incredibly wrong with us. We learn that when accidents happen it is our fault and that something bad is going to happen to us because of the accident. We learn we to hide our feelings and never tell anyone at home how it felt at school today. We learn that people don't like us or love us and we believe that is because we are bad and unlovable. As those things happen and pile on, one after another, we develop an open wound in our soul, a place where it aches all of the time and where hateful messages are stored. Those messages turn into scripts and then we act them out in "bad" ways in our daily adult lives.

When we have internalized our shame, it becomes toxic to us, just like living in a house full of mold, or sewage seeping into our drinking water. It effects us all of the time and we don't even know it until the symptoms become severe. We act our internalized shame in one of four ways. We attack our self (self-hatred); we attack others (hurt someone else); we avoid (addictions) or we withdraw (atypical depression). By adapting to our shame by doing any of the above, we become immobilized into our little quadrant of the world all by ourselves. Our resources rot around us and we develop a lifestyle that in every way is keeping us bound by scripts, messages, and behavior that keep us repeating old destructive patterns.

So what do we do? That answer of course, is too long for this article, but here are some starting points. First, write down your childhood story in journal form. Look for the times that you cut-off from yourself because it became too painful to by you. We call those cut-offs, parts, disowned parts. Sometimes those cut-off parts are complete developmental stages that we just by-pass and then end up in our adult lives wondering why everyone else seems so confident, and we feel so insecure. Thus, the first step is to identify our cut-off parts.

Second, we find creative ways to work with those cut off parts. We can journal to those young parts of ourselves; we can have those parts journal back to us. Sometimes it is a good exercise to write with our non-dominant hand. It is not important that we are able to read it later, it is important to write with our non-dominant hand because feelings come up that won’t come up otherwise. If journaling is not your gig, you can use guided imagery and internal dialogue to talk to those parts that are cut-off.

Third it is important to find someone to tell your story too, so that you don’t have to keep hiding. It is imperative that the person you tell your story to is safe or you risk re-traumatizing yourself. It is usually best that the person has training, like a psychotherapist, social worker, or a clergy trained in psychotherapy.

The Cognitive Interweave of Shame

THE COGNITIVE PHASE OF SHAME:



Search of memory from previous similar experiences.


In shame theory, eight specific areas are interwoven into our stories, associations, and memories. Our bodies carry all of these interwoven stories inside of us producing tightness and tension. Every time I think about the body-mind connection, I am reminded of Peter Levine’s important work that he labels, “Somatic Experiencing. In SE, Dr. Levine empowers clients to focus on the internal experience of the body. By turning our awareness to our body, we learn to let go of those old story lines and create new ones. As you review the list below, allow yourself to ponder and write about an experience in each of the eight categories. As you recall the specific experience, journal the experience in as much detail as possible, and as the details return to your memory, notice what happens inside of your body. Notice what part of your body tightens or feels nauseated. Notice your breathing and your heart rate. Notice your fearful or shameful thoughts. Once those thoughts come to your awareness, use your gentle breath to allow the shameful and fearful thoughts float out of your body and into never – never land. Begin to observe what you need, and gently breath it in from never-never land allowing the peace, comfort, gentleness to begin to fill your body. Notice the difference now as compared to twenty minutes ago when you started with the shameful –fearful feelings. Just keep experimenting with your breath until your body feels different in a better sort of way.


Layered associations of shame:


1. Matters of size, shape, ability, skill. (I am weak, incompetent, stupid.)


2. Dependence/Independence. (Sense of helplessness.)


3. Competition. (I am a loser.)


4. Sense of self. (I am unique only to the extent that I am defective.)


5. Personal attractiveness. (I am ugly or deformed. The blush stains my features and makes me even more a target of contempt.)


6. Sexuality. (There is something wrong with me sexually.)


7. Issues of seeing and being seen. (The urge to escape from the eyes before which we have been exposed. The wish for a hole to open up and swallow me.)


8. Wishes and fears about closeness. (The sense of being shorn from all humanity. A feeling that one is unlovable. The wish to be left alone forever.)

The Compass of Shame

The Compass of Shame


The compass of shame was created by Donald Nathanson to help clinicians and clients understand what happens when shame is encountered. Dr. Nathanson defines shame as the interruption of positive affect. That simplistic view makes it easy for me to help clients understand that when they are going about the business of their daily life, enjoying the day, and anything that interrupts that enjoyment or interest, causes shame. I am putting the compass of shame on the blog today because almost every article I have written on shame refers to this compass in one way or another. As, a result I can keep referring people to the blog on June 23rd, 2011 and not have to recreate this simple formula for each article.

According to the Compass of Shame, what do we do when we experience shame? We react in one of four ways, usually a blend of the four reactions. They are:

ATTACK SELF--- ( SELF-DISGUST AND SELF-DISMELL AFFECT)
Demonstrated by:
Shyness

Deference

Masochistic Behaviors

AVOID----(EXCITEMENT-FEAR AFFECT)

The sense of a defective self - that often leads of addictive behavior

Compares and competes

Creates false self

WITHDRAWAL---(DISTRESS -FEAR AFFECT)

Atypical depression (self-hatred root)

Becomes overwhelmed by excessive worry or flooding of memories

Avoids eye contact and isolates socially

ATTACK OTHERS--- (ANGER-RAGE AFFECT)

Blocks any attempt to look at self

Estranges others

Refines the “power over” theme