Monday, October 23, 2017
WHEN SHAME BECOMES RAGE
When Shame Becomes Rage
Author: Lynne Namka, Ed. D.
In an article in the Psychotherapy Networker, therapist Ronald Potter-Efron describes the different types of shame. Like guilt, shame is one of those emotions that feels so terrible that some people try to avoid it at all costs. It’s driven by a flooding of adrenalin. Here is how it works.
We have a conscience and know our values and what ways of acting in which we believe. When we do something different than what we believe in, our conscience nags us to tell us we have done wrong. That is the feeling of guilt. Guilt is situation specific. It has a message to try to get you to stop doing something you find distasteful. It nags, “You did something wrong. Stop doing it.” Guilt can be productive in helping you change your behavior. If you deny what you did wrong and deny the guilty feelings, you cement it in further. You may even use anger to make guilt go away and get the person who is confronting you to back off. Owning your mistakes and inappropriate behavior, apologizing for them and stopping the behavior is the best way to reduce guilt.
Shame is a message about the self esteem that hits in the pit of the stomach. It is global in nature and says, “You are bad. You are different.” It happens when you feel threatened to the very core of who you are. Shame rears its ugly head when there is a threat and you feel helpless, humiliated and dehumanized. If you lose control when you are angry, you have learned to substitute the emotion of rage to take yourself out of the bad feelings of being a victim.
Rage is a much stronger emotion than anger. When you rage, you lose self control and adrenalin and cortisol prepare you to fight. You heat up and go from zero to one hundred twenty miles an hour in ten seconds in a run-away giant semi. And you are not in control of the wheel. Someone very nasty has the pedal to the metal and ugly things are coming out of the mouth which you will feel bad about later. You have been hijacked! You have lost yourself because rage has taken you over when you felt a threat to your self esteem.
The threat is to your sense of who you are and comes out of frustration and shame. According to Potter-Efron four different threats produce four different kinds of hormonal-driven rage that come from different types of shame.
Survival Rage – when you are physically attacked and might be hurt.
Impotent Rage – when you feel threatened and feel utterly helpless and not able to deal with the situation so you rage instead.
Attachment Rage – when you feel threatened because you might be abandoned or rejected by someone you care about. This type may have developed if you had a rejecting type parent who used withdrawal and threats to discipline you.
Shame Rage – when you feel humiliated, embarrassed, or ridiculed and your self esteem takes a drop and you rage to cut off these bad feelings. This type typically develops if you’ve had a critical, abusing parent or partner or were bullied as a child.
Other kinds of shame specific to certain situations where you feel like you are less than others.
I’m Not Trash Shame Rage – if your family was poor or lived in a run down place or your parents were dysfunctional alcoholics or different in some undesirable way, you probably were embarrassed by them as a child. As an adult, you get angry when you are reminded of how you are different from others.
Loss of Function Shame Rage – loss of your identity as a person because you are less than the person you used to be. You may have lost stamina, memory or are disabled and can’t work.
Guilt Piling Up Shame Rage – secretly you feel downright ashamed of yourself because you have not lived up to your values and principles and have become a person you don’t respect. When criticized about your behavior, you resort to rage to get the other person to leave you alone.
Break the Threat-Hormonal Arousal-Shame-Rage Cycle
Potter-Efron says to challenge the five core messages that you get from shame which send you into self-loathing and feeling worthless. 1.) You’re no good. 2.) You aren’t good enough. 3.) You’re unlovable. 4.) You don’t belong. 5.) You shouldn’t be. These are lies that were thrown on you by someone else and your own feelings of helplessness.
Cutting off shame instead of allowing the feeling to come up and be worked through and turning it to rage only keeps the cycle going. As long as you disrupt the feelings of shame, they will stay with you. The best idea is to bring them out into the light and learn to work them through. Understand the dynamics that send you from feeing threatened to rage so that you don’t feel the shame. Read about shame, bullying and scapegoating. Make a personal challenge to break destructive patterns in your life. Figure out what types of shame you have.
What triggers your impotent, helpless feelings and what sets you off? Become aware of what’s happening within to become the master of your feelings instead of letting them master you. Learn to observe the process of feeling a threat (a trigger that threatens self esteem) and the quick shift to rage. Step back and watch how you lose your control and give away your power to do something productive when you feel threatened.
When a vulnerable feelings of disappointment and frustration comes up say, “This is a feeling. It’s only a feeling. Feelings are meant to be felt. That’s why they are called feelings. I choose to breathe through this feeling rather than act it out.”
Allow yourself to feel the emotion of guilt and own up to what you did wrong. Taking responsibility for your own actions can become a way to gain self esteem. Allow yourself to feel the emotion of shame. Leave the upsetting situation and hang out with the feelings of shame. To defuse its power, call it by name. “So this is shame. I’m being flooded with adrenalin. I can handle this. Even though it feels excruciating, I breathe it through.”
Find a therapist to help you look at the pattern of violence that you learned in your family, the neighborhood or at school when you were young or when you were in an abusive relationship. Living with an aggressive person may have affected you so deeply that you took on the energies of the aggressor. Redefine your masculinity or your sense of self as a strong woman as being able to take things as they come up. Real strength is learning to allow feelings of hurt, disappointment and vulnerability instead of losing your cool.
Listen to your body. Catch yourself when you start to trigger, heat up and lose control. Observe how your body reacts when you are about to trigger. Does your stomach knot up or your jaw clench? Do you stop breathing? Do you feel the adrenalin rush as your first clue? Does your heart beat faster? Find your body changes that signal you are about to lose it. Learn body cues to break into the cycle before it goes into nasty behavior.
Show your strength by being the one who chooses not to escalate the fight. Let the other person know that you must leave the situation at once to calm yourself down in order to not hurt yourself or the other person. Give up the need to have the last word or make one more point. Tell yourself that you can be a bigger person by stopping the argument.
Use self talk to keep yourself from blowing up. Talk yourself down. Use several phrases that calm you down such as “This isn’t worth it. I refuse to lose it. I don’t have to go down the rage road. I can leave instead of blowing up and ruining things.” Cool yourself down with deep breathing. Tell yourself, “I will learn to deal with frustrating events.”
Shame is released by processing feelings of entitlement. Challenge your belief that you have the right to vent and scream because you are frustrated. Find a therapist to help you use The Emotional Freedom Technique, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing and The Tapas Technique to release old victim feelings and entitlement.
Be gentle with yourself as you are learning these new skills. You are breaking habits of a lifetime. If you mess up and revert back to the mean behavior you dislike, analyze what went wrong. Don’t beat yourself up-that only makes things worse. Tell yourself that you made a slip and you will be more careful next time. Keep at this process of chipping away the shame-rage cycle. You will get better over time if you keep at this task of becoming the best person you can be. Give yourself a break; this process takes time.
You are not a bad person because you rage when you feel helpless or bad about yourself. You are just a good person behaving badly. Forgive yourself for doing what you have learned and vow to be different. Change the destructive reactive pattern of shame/rage and develop into the person you really want to be. Use your power to understand your emotions, own them and work with them instead of acting them out. Learn to behave better even when you feel bad inside. Deeply desire to change and you will. You deserve to have a peaceful, happy life.
SHAME THE DISOWNED PART OF SELF
Shame the Disowned Part of the Self
Author: Lynne Namka, Ed. D.
Quick! Think of the most embarrassing experience of your life. Or a time when you were drastically humiliated and ridiculed by someone. How do you feel remembering these events? Could you call forth the feelings or did you numb out quickly? Did you feel anguish looking back or could you toss the event off with laughter? The amount of emotional pain that you felt is related to stuck energy around old feelings of shame. Talk about an unsolved mystery! How does this emotion of shame get such a hold on you?
Shame is a fear-based internal state being, accompanied by beliefs of being unworthy and basically unlovable. Shame is a primary emotion that conjures up brief, intense painful feelings and a fundamental sense of inadequacy. Shame experiences bring forth beliefs of “I am a failure” and “I am bad” which are a threat to the integrity of the self. This perceived deficit of being bad is so humiliating and disgraceful that there is a need to protect and hide the flawed self from others. Fears of being vulnerable, found out, exposed and further humiliated are paramount. Feelings of shame shut people down so that they can distance from the internal painful state of hopelessness.
Shame is a result of early developmental loss either real or perceived. It may begin in parent-infant conflict where there is possible significant loss or threat of loss of the child’s basic security. The child longs for closeness with the mother and father. If there is rejection or love withdrawal from the parent, the child is left with intense, painful emotions. On some level, the beliefs of “I am unlovable” develops and a core of shame starts to build. Anna Freud described these experiences as happening before the child develops language and therefore are not remembered. These feelings of not being loved cause the child to rage and/or go into silent withdrawal. Experiences that cause shame alter the child’s basic trust of others and are at the heart of dysfunctional behavior.
Shame and Guilt
Children often feel guilty as well as ashamed. Guilt is an emotion that rises after a transgression of one’s own or cultural values. Guilt is about actions; shame is about the self. The purpose of guilt is to stop behavior that violates a self, family or societal standard. Guilt keeps score on excesses or deficits of behavior deemed undesirable and is expressed in regret and remorse. Guilt can be tied to perfectionism and setting goals either too high or too low. Engaging in behavior that causes one to feel guilty can lead to deep shame.
The typical shame response is a heightened degree of arousal and self consciousness. The person in emotional pain averts his eyes and his head goes down. New information is blocked. There is intense discomfort and muscular tension. The body collapses inward to protect the self and there is a shrinking of body energy. The skin may become flushed with embarrassment. There are feelings of inadequacy and the fear of self exposure. The person wants to shrink, hide or even die to get away from the painful feelings of mortification. These feelings are so excruciating that the child wants to avoid them at all costs.
Causes of Shame
Adult-induced causes of shame involve betrayal by others and a broken trust through disapproval or humiliation. Parental withdrawal and rejection shown by looks of contempt cause instantaneous shame reactions in children. A child who believes that his parents favor a sibling often believe that there is something basically wrong with him or he would be the chosen child. Shame also occurs when the parents have high standards of behavior and react with anger or embarrassment when the child does not live up to expectations. Punishment for failure and humiliation over the child’s expression of vulnerability, distress, crying or pain typically create shame. Criticism, cruel teasing and ridicule further reinforce the child’s beliefs of unworthiness. Harsh parental discipline of a coercive nature create fears of abandonment in the child. The trauma of physical abuse imprints feelings of being devalued in the child. Empathetic shame happens when the child internalizes humiliation and shame reactions of other people. Sexual abuse typically causes the child to feel dirty and bad and he often absorbs the shame of the adult who committed the offense.
Other types of shame are self induced around events of morally inappropriate behavior and public exposure. It is not what happened to the person but how it is interpreted by the self and others that makes the difference. Excesses of worry about what others may think of him add to the discomfort and the wish to hide. This category of fear of self exposure includes:
- Sexual feelings and actions.
- Impulsive aggressive behavior that is against public standards.
- Issues around bathroom functions, body odors and cleanliness.
- Failure of a task or doing poorly when performing before an audience.
- Humiliation and ridicule by peers.
- Class, social status or racial inequality–being looked down upon by others.
- Being different or one’s parents being different from others–clothes, body size, or physical differences.
- Doing something or saying something that might hurt another person’s feelings.
Shame Equals the Global Inner Belief of “I Am Bad.”
Energy has to go somewhere. Negative feelings and thoughts are energy. If the powerful feelings are not discharged, they are stored in the body. They may be denied and forgotten, but they remain as a negative force and the person goes through life with a nagging belief of not measuring up. When there are many unresolved experiences of shame in a child’s life, the self evaluation becomes global. The child has a core belief of “All of me is bad.” The child with a large amount of shame who makes a mistake does not make a specific attribution regarding an event such as “I did this. It was wrong and I can correct it” but goes automatically to feelings of unworthiness. The child then substitutes another emotion or numbs himself to avoid feeling the shame further stamping in the belief of being inadequate and helpless.
Scheff’s theory is that shame causes a breakdown of the integrated self. The bypassed, unacknowledged pain is not available to be looked at due to the mechanism of denial. Dissociation and repression of the bad feelings allow distance from the shame with a cover up of “I am not this needy. This is not me. I cannot feel this vulnerable.” Tension is discharged partially through substitute emotions but the core of shame grows even bigger as the individual engages in unhealthy behavior.
Shame-Driven Behavior
“Shame is the shaper of symptoms,” said Donald Nathanson. The unacknowledged thoughts and feelings become repressed and surface later through substitute emotions and dysfunctional behavior. Other emotions are substituted to hide the shame and maintain self esteem. Anger, depression, exaggerated pride, anxiety and helplessness are substituted to keep from feeling the total blackness of being bad. The buried shame is expressed through defense mechanisms that shield negative unconscious material from surfacing.
Anger responses are modeled and learned in some families. The anger response is more comfortable than feeling the shame for some individuals. Families where coercive and humiliating methods of discipline are used develop children who are shame prone. Behavior become driven by defenses that function to keep from feeling bad. Reality becomes distorted to further protect the self from poor self esteem. The transfer of blame to someone else is an indicator of internal shame.
Children who live with constant hostility and criticism learn to defend against the bad feelings inside and externalize blame on others. External assignment of blame is a defense against shame. People who are super critical have a heavy shame core inside. The focus is on finding fault outside yourself but the mistake is never corrected. If the responsibility for blame can be fixed on someone else, the person may feel pride in getting off scot-free. The rigid thinking is I’ll be pure if I can make him wrong. It is not my problem. It is beyond my control. I just can’t allow myself to feel bad inside, so I’ll blame him.”
The child who has been raised with criticism and parental anger may develop the shame/rage spiral. The shame/rage spiral consists of getting angry and raging when upset, then being ashamed and going into rage to avoid the shameful feelings, etc. The shame/rage spiral keeps others away and helps the person avoid intimacy where more pain and shame might be experienced.
Shame and the Fear of Being Found Out
The shame-prone individual’s biggest fear is for others to find out how bad he really feels inside. There is denial of vulnerability, avoidance of negative feelings that are perceived as weak and an inability to be real. Macho behavior in men has a deep shame core at its base. Men who are frightened of feelings learn to wall others away through withdrawing, numbing their feelings and intellectualizing. Other shame-driven behaviors are acting out, depression, anxiety and compulsive behavior. Some people are self deprecating and use submissive behavior to avoid the shaming behaviors of others. Others turn to addictive substances and activities to numb the emotional pain inside. The dissociation disorders are based in shame with distortion of reality and developing separate parts of the personality to hide from the shame.
Exaggerated pride allows the person to build up feelings of superiority again for the purpose of denying the global negative internal beliefs of “I am bad.” The narcissistic individual reduces his own shame by feeling better than others; he elevates his status by putting others down. Prejudice, bigotry, revenge and grudges towards others are mechanisms that keep the self from knowing and experiencing the shame. Individuals who engage in antisocial behavior have a great capacity for shame and denial. Young people who resort to violence and membership in gangs use feeling superior to avoid feeling bad about themselves. Sadly, gang members describe feeling respected by their peers for the first time in their life.
Shame Busting – Acknowledging and Releasing the Belief of I Am Bad
The denial of shame and dysfunctional behavior acts to prevent shame from surfacing by separating the self from the negative feelings. Shame removal can be accomplished by reconnecting with the original feeling of shame and learning to accept one’s self, warts and all. The affect must be expressed and internal awareness gained. The child must feel very secure with an adult for him to let his guard down and become less defended and rigid. This can best be done with a loving, caring individual who accepts the child as he is so that the broken trust can be regained.
In this process the person becomes an observer of his own shame, accepts it and takes mastery over it.
- Bring the shame to a conscious level by recognizing where it is located in the body.
- Feel the feelings. Describe the hurt, sadness, revenge and embarrassment to break into numbed feelings. Own the previously hidden feelings.
- Give the feelings verbal labels.
- Describe the original experience that caused the shame.
- Discuss the negative energy of the person who caused the humiliation or rejection, etc. Explore this person’s reasons for cruelty as related to his own shame.
- Determine if any of the other person’s shame was internalized. Help the child to understand that it is not their shame but someone else. Ask him to release it by visualizing throwing away the other person’s shame.
- Ask for the global belief (I am unworthy/bad/ unlovable.) that defines the secret self.
- Make specific attributions (I did something wrong based on my limited understanding at the time.)
- Find which negative emotions are substituted to keep from feeling bad.
- Find the poor coping behaviors used to keep the global belief away.
- Discuss the public exposure of failure. Admitting one’s faults reduces anxiety. Confession of “one’s discretions” in an atmosphere of safety reduces shame.
- Use laughter and pleasant emotions to reduce the tension. The research shows that individuals have less hostility if an irrelevant, pleasant experience happens at the same time when recalling a traumatic event. Terrifying situations may be defused more easily with humor. Laughter is an indicator of good self esteem–that you feel good enough to laugh about the unpleasant situation.
- Make a metaphor of the shame giving it color, form, shape or an image.
- Using visualization of the metaphor, ask the client to start to move the shame energy around. Have the child imagine dissipating and releasing the shame.
- Ask for a new global belief to replace the “I am bad.”
- Ask the child how he will be different in the future with this new belief. Ask him to imagine seeing himself acting differently in a situation of threat.
The cleaning out of the global “I am bad” belief takes time and much exploration. This exercise may need to be repeated many times depending upon the number of incidences in the person’s life.
Kids are resilient. Don’t give up on them. Help them learn to break the cycle of shame prevalent in their lives. Decision making is where it’s at. Help children gain a sense of self competency by learning new skills to make good decisions. This approach when combined with learning to speak out for one’s self and say no when appropriate along with sharing feelings and stating boundaries gives children tools to avoid further incidents that might be shame provoking.
Help your children learn positive self esteem and responsibility with the help of our kits and books, see our PDF Talk, Trust and Feel Catalog and order form where professionals can order in bulk quantities and discounted shipping costs.
SHAME THE GREAT BLOCKER OF BEING LOVED
Shame – The Shaper of Symptoms
Author: Lynne Namka, Ed. D.
Shame is a fear-based internal state accompanied by feelings of being unworthy and unlovable.
Shame conjures up brief, intense painful feelings of mortification due to being seen as inadequate. Shame feelings are a threat to the integrity of the self. It keeps us caught in fear of being found out by others. The perceived deficit is so humiliating that the person goes to great lengths to hide the flawed self.
Induced causes of shame by others include a betrayal by them in some way. Trust in often broken through parental disapproval and judgment. Harsh, critical parental behavior produces shame-prone, perfectionistic children who then pass the family bad habit down to their children. The energy of shame of others is contagious and can be passed from one individual to another. In this manner, family dysfunction is handed down from one generation to the other.
Parental withdrawal, rejection or favoritism of a sibling cause deep fears of abandonment and shame. The child feels that he must be really bad or his parents do not love him. Parents who have too high expectations of behavior, criticism and disapproval for failure create shame as the child cannot realistically live up to the high expectations. Parental humiliation and punishment for distress, crying or making a mistake creates the need in the child to try to hide his vulnerability. He worries incessantly about what others think, fears public failure and stops taking risks due to fear of social disapproval. He is becomes afraid of rejection and abandonment.
When parents point the “bony finger of blame” at a child and say “Shame on you. Shame. Shame. You are a __________. ” the child learns to believe that he is unworthy. He may then act out inappropriately and become what the parent has labeled him. Doing what the parent has accused him up is the self-fulfilling prophesy.
The trauma of being bullied or physical and sexual abuse imprints major feelings of being devalued and unworthy in the victim. Shame can pass from the perpetrator to the victim. People who live in abusive relationships where they feel helpless learn the shame-rage cycle. Shame and rage are passed from one person to another through learning to act like the aggressor.
Some churches use shame to control their members by preaching rigid rules which are inconsistent with human nature. The more that “hell and damnation” are emphasized, the more guilt and shame the members will have.
Guilt is a feeling that we did something wrong. Guilt is usually tied to a specific behavior. Guilt says, “I did something bad. I must pay.” Common causes of guilt are violation of society’s’ values around sexual and aggressive behavior, issues around bathroom functions care and being different and being looked down upon by others. We create guilt and shame in ourselves when we engage in morally-inappropriate behavior and get caught and there is public humiliation.
Guilt is about actions, shame is about the self. Shame says “I am bad. I am different.” The shame core can build up after engaging in behaviors you know are wrong. Accumulated guilt by continuing to act in ways that you know are wrong can turn into shame.
Guilt and shame can build up with repeated incidents of humiliation and lead to internal global beliefs of “I am unworthy. I don’t deserve good things. I am unlovable. ” The feelings around these deep core beliefs are so bad that they must be avoided at all costs. Other more acceptable feelings such as sadness, anger or rage get substituted instead.
Shame is the shaper of symptoms. It creates a false self where you cannot be real. It can create nasty behaviors that you regret later. Repressed shame leads to substituting more acceptable emotions (to you) such as anger, rage, depression and anxiety to reduce the internal tension that is so hard to bear. Other defenses of shame include macho behavior, intellectualization and shutting down feelings. Controlling, blaming, criticizing or feeling superior to others are other common defenses to avoid feelings of shame. Engaging in excessive use of alcohol, substances and addictive behavior may be an indicator of shame. Drunken behavior may then cause more shame. Engaging in behaviors that society frowns upon creates more guilt and shame.
In the shame/rage cycle, there is an instant flooding of adrenalin and cortisol to prepare the person to fight back. You come under the control of fight or flight hormones and attack the other person going for their jugular vein. Your common sense goes out the window as you lose your personal sense of responsibility and then lose control.
Patterns of dysfunctional behavior in a person’s life usually indicate a strong internal shame core. Lack of intimacy and connection to others indicates a lack of trust which was brought about by early feelings of helplessness and humiliation. Repressed shame and guilt cause a lack of trust of others and a deep breach or separation from others and the real self.
Rage is always about entitlement and feeling insecure inside. The person believes he has the right to vent and yell to get the other person to back off. He uses anger to intimidate others to get them to leave you alone. Bad behavior works to reduce the threat, but it damages relationships.
At some point in your, the old defenses of anger, rage and running away from pain no longer work. Shame comes up big time. Your life crashes and you hit an emotional bottom. An important relationship is threatened or ends which may prompt you to seek psychological help.
Shame is the Shaper of Symptoms but It is Also the Way Home
One purpose of the negative emotion is to help us look at those aspects of ourself that is not congruent with our deepest values and understanding of what it means to be human from a soul level. You can use your shameful feelings as a signal that something needs examining. The anxiety around the painful past must be entered into and moved through.
Understanding how shame works helps release it. Shame can be released through owning it, talking about it and processing the original painful experiences. Uncomfortable feeling can be accessed and worked through with the help of a skillful therapist. The shame reduction work must be experiential; it usually cannot be released on an intellectual level. Laughter about one’s predicament sometimes helps shift shame energies.
You can learn to become a detective on your own emotions and behavior so you can break into the hormonal hijackings that spiral you into bad behavior. You can learn to detach and become an observer of your own internal state of shame choosing not to shut down the painful feelings but to stay present and learn from them. When you get upset, step back and watch how the ugly adrenalin-driven behavior takes away from being the person you really want to be. The shame-rage link was learned. The association between hormones and bad behavior can be unlearned.
You can learn to break into beliefs of being entitled to scream and yell to shut the others down. You can break the belief of “I get to hurt others by my ugly words because I feel an uncomfortable feeling.” You can stop the attitude of “I earn the money here so I get to do what I want and violence is justified. You can learn better communication skills. You can stop focusing on blaming your partner and take responsibility for your part of the problem. You can try to see the issue through your partner’s eyes. This is about finally becoming a grown up!
The cleaning out of the global beliefs of “I am bad. I am a bad person. I am not safe. I will be rejected because I am unworthy. I will be abandoned.” takes time and exploration but it can be done with a therapist who understands the process of shame release and can stay present with unconditional love. The other side of shame is “I am worthy even though I make mistakes. I am a good person even if I get angry. I am lovable.” The truth is that you are a beautiful person who was shamed as a child and you now need to claim yourself as being worthy of being loved.
Bring the integrity of who you are forward and work your early painful issues through to create a different understanding of the early painful experiences that caused shame. Turning the shame over to something greater than oneself can negate those global beliefs of unworthiness.
Feelings of guilt and shame can be worked out with a competent, compassionate therapist. When shame release work is combined in therapy with assertiveness training and learning to speak up and say no, to state boundaries and to share feelings, self esteem zooms upward.
No easy task, but there it is. By careful monitoring and studying your shame and rage and breaking into them you can become the master of your feelings. If this is the work that you came to do, then the higher part of who you are says, “Let’s be about the work!”
Monday, October 16, 2017
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