reframing shame

If you’re a human being, there’s a good chance you know what shame feels like. I sure do. My chest clenches, my breath catches, words get jumbled or leave me all together. My gut feels like a void. I curl in, hiding. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes it feels like I’m stuck on the inside and everything on the outside just keeps speeding by, out of my control.

So when I learned that shame is a survival response that’s trying to help me… I was like…????? Excuse me???

Our nervous systems are designed to find creative ways to help us not die— and that includes not losing connection with our people. Nervous systems learn strategies to protect us from intolerable emotions and experiences. If a strategy saves our life once, our nervous system is gonna be like, “hell ya, I’m using that forever.” That’s how we develop patterns of protection.

Shame is one of those protective strategies that inhibits an intolerable feeling. I like to call it an inhibition response because it’s attempting to help us contain, manage, or inhibit a feeling that we perceive as intolerable. That doesn’t necessarily mean we actually can’t tolerate it or slowly learn to — but at some point it felt like too much, too fast, with too little support. That’s where shame comes in to buffer the blow.

Shame expert and psychotherapist Patricia De Young explains shame in relational terms as an experience triggered by misattunement. In her book Understanding and Treating Chronic Shame, she writes, “shame is the experience of one’s felt sense of self disintegrating in relation to a disregulating other” (18).

In other words, if our we lose connection our caregiver, it can be so disregulating that it can feel like we’re dying, especially if sense of attachment is already shaky. Losing connection can be intentional or unintentional; abuse or neglect; a caregiver’s inability to repair after conflict or communicate; their lack of presence physically or emotionally; intergenerational trauma, etc. It can also come in the form of societal oppression.

We experience shame to find some sense of meaning and control. It’s less life-threatening to tell the story that we are bad and that’s why we are losing connection, instead the overwhelming reality of feeling helpless and alone. If your body has the choice between “self disintegrating” or feeling really bad about yourself, it’s going to choose feeling bad about yourself.

Here’s the thing: even though the experience of intense shame can originate from developmental trauma and systemic oppression, we still need to feel a degree of healthy shame, like guilt and embarrassment, to build and enjoy intimate relationships. The key is to create more relational safety around the experience of shame.

In a recent post by Aleah Black on their instagram @gendersauce, they write:

Relationships don’t grow without embarrassment. Embarrassment evolved to show us our soft underbelly— where we are most vulnerable… The reason embarrassment sometimes feels like death is because it is a death— once you finally reveal something, you sometimes realize it’s time for a transformation to happen and to leave that piece behind: the part that’s afraid, the part that is self hating, or the part that can do a behavior that no longer aligns with your values. Oof oof oof.

So how do we do that??? Shame feels like you’re fucking disintegrating!!!

Creating safety often starts with simply understanding and noticing. Rewriting a safer story of shame can begin with the practicing of noticing when it first shows up (maybe a sensation, thought, emotion, image, or behavior) and remembering it’s an inhibition response. It’s just a pattern. It might also be possible to notice what’s similar and different about your present compared to past experiences of shame. (Hint: it’s usually harder for your nervous system to notice what’s different).

If you’re my client, you’ve probably heard me say, “I don’t care if the difference you notice is the thought that ‘Katie is so annoying for making me notice this as an inhibition response.’” That’s a different story!! You’re doing it!! I know it may not seem like much sometimes. I know it can actually feel even scarier when you bring a pattern into the light and begin the work of reshaping it.

But then there comes an inconspicuous moment where you realize you just got through a misunderstanding with your friend without completely shame spiraling or freaking out they’re never going to be your friend anymore. You hug it out and realize, holy shit. I just fucking did it. And honestly that’s worth all the riches in the world in my totally biased therapist-y opinion.

All of our shame stories are so complex and unique. I can’t possibly find the nuance in this little blog to delve into all of their intricacies. But maybe this is a start. Maybe this can encourage the question “what is my inhibition response trying to protect me from?” a little more and “what’s wrong with me?” a little less. We need more people willing to grow and change and be embarrassed out there. We need you!

Yours truly,

Katie