Healing the Shame that Binds You
A toxic phenomenon that became self-perpetuating over generations is now surfacing into the consciousness of a people who were once its chief perpetrators, most often unknowingly.
I have come to see how internalized toxic shame (a phrase coined, I believe, by therapist and author, John Bradshaw) comprises the psychological and emotional substrate for a wide array of interpersonal and, most importantly, intrapersonal dysfunction.
Not only is this type of trauma often inbred as an institutional fixture within our society, it harkens back many generations amongst various cultural backgrounds as a consequence, I believe, of the direct intent to colonize the hearts and minds of otherwise free people who would prefer to simply be left alone to live their lives.
Emerging from deep within the psyche from the in utero period, birthing, infancy, and into and throughout childhood, these traumatic imprints serve to shape the minds of people sensitive enough to internalize the dysfunctional narrative down to their core.
In light of our great proclivity to “solve problems” within this society, let’s take a deeper look into what it is before we begin to fathom how to change it.
John Bradshaw wrote the book, Healing the Shame that Binds You in 1988. As a counselor with decades of experience working with addicts and other areas of psychological dysfunction, John’s work was to help people become aware of how shame influenced their behavior, or kept them in a repeat pattern of self-destructive behavior.
This is a profoundly powerful concept for those who have been affected in this way. Although I recognize that this phenomenon is widespread, I don’t necessarily hold the view that it is universal. However, I feel that it is quite difficult to evade the overarching impacts of toxic shame as its implementations and effects are evident across the spectrum of our society.
Healthy Shame vs Toxic Shame
One thing to clarify up front is the differentiation Bradshaw makes between healthy shame and toxic shame. The healthy version, he claims, serves to shape our character providing feedback from our environment that causes us to self-reflect, especially when our behavior has been injurious to those around us.
Toxic shame, however, involves a much deeper phenomenon in which our sense of self is replaced by a conditional demand. For example, a primary caregiver shows disregard for an authentic self-expression, but makes it clear that another particular behavior is acceptable, and thus worthy of some conditional love. As the infant, or child, becomes aware of this conditional opportunity, their sense of self may begin to fade into the background, less relevant to obtaining the conditional love they seek from their immediate surroundings, their primary caregivers, their family.
I may go so far as to say that healthy shame is rarely experienced by those encumbered by toxic shame due to its all-encompassing effects and one’s inability to truly feel empathy when experiencing toxic shame. But this discrepancy may vary amongst different interpretations of these terms.
This toxic shame becomes internalized over time and serves as an identity of self replacing what was disregarded as unacceptable (one’s authentic expression of self). However, this true self never goes away (truth never does). It simply festers, suppressed, awaiting its moment of truth to be expressed. The longer and more insidiously repressed this true expression of self is, the greater grows the sense of internalized toxic shame. This may very well grow to the point where an individual can no longer discern it from their own authentic self (this most often happens early on in childhood, as a coping mechanism). Herein lies the true dysfunction.
The power of this transformation resides within the consensual relinquishing of oneself in favor of the conditional response (hooked into the primary need to be loved). As universal law dictates, one must consent to such self-imprisonment should the oppressor wish to be absolved of their guilt (so to speak). But even more deeply disturbing is that the “perpetrator” in most cases, is an otherwise caring parent or caregiver who is simply repeating an unconscious inherited pattern of neurosis.
How does this happen? Or more importantly now, how did it start?
I think that’s a much larger topic to be explored from a variety of open-minded angles, but suffice to say for now it is embedded throughout all of our inherited institutions; birthing/hospitals, religious, educational, government, corporate, etc. What’s interesting to note is that all of these institutions predominantly operate within the confines of commercial law (the law of the sea), otherwise known as maritime admiralty law, to which we have the British crown to thank for its modern application and its being embedded in every facet of our commercialized lives.
Regardless, the emergence and persistence of this form of psychological dysfunction stems in large part from the disconnection experienced within the individual from the authentic self. This is the core pattern of disease, or illness, I believe, and is reflected in the philosophy of ancient wisdom teachings as well. In essence, our intellect is “tricked” into believing we are separate from ourselves (ie. true authentic self, somatic intelligence), and thus no longer responsible for many of our actions as the doings of the world are too often done unto us and we are relegated to a position of reaction to, as either satisfactory or unsatisfactory - the luck of the draw.
To clarify, this is the distorted reality perceived as a consequence of the internal disconnect.
But the key point is the disintegration of the self. This is what begins the process of infiltration of destructive forces (into the spiritual, mental/emotional, and physical bodies). To maintain the self as whole, is to be connected to the authentic self within, the God Self - at-oneness with Creator.
Atonement
I don’t want to come across here like I’ve figured out exactly how to heal from this severe condition of disassociation that is internalized toxic shame. To be clear: it is a process. I was first introduced to Bradshaw’s book nearly 25 years ago. It took me over a decade just to open up the book. It has taken me another decade to get into the deeper levels of the feeling state of disconnection within myself, and THAT feels like a huge difference in and of itself.
To be clear, there is tremendous complexity within the human psyche, or mental/emotional body. This is why dysfunction can be seen as a very limited exploration of who one is, in fact, an eddy in which we get stuck re-manifesting cloned experiences of who we believe ourselves to be, so much so that we excel at matching up our outer world to look like what we expect to see from within. But our conscious, rational mind best takes in small bite-sized pieces of conceptual material about who we are until we can feel it, in truth, more fully, within ourselves.
This perhaps gets right at the core of atonement (it’s not just about resolve, or the will to change). It’s a major step towards rectifying the disassociation from one’s authentic self - a true healing, or cure, of bringing back together what has been split. Once the dissected parts of ourselves can be restored and recognized as one, false ideologies become more apparent. Thus, the excess baggage of toxic shame becomes more evidently useless, whereas one may have attached oneself to the sensations associated with its presence as a dire need for one’s soul survival - this is the insidiousness of its falseness and self-destructive nature.
To feel the shame as a freeloading, maniacal, control freak (all judgement aside, of course) is to begin to more deeply discern the split that allowed for the attachment in the first place, and more importantly, give one the clarity with which to say, I let you go. This is the process of becoming whole, of reuniting with self, of restoring our true bonds with creation as Mother Nature. This is a process which undoubtedly takes great courage, or over repeated attempts to rectify, may take our greatest courage and turn it upon ourselves in the blink of an eye. Shame is crafty and knows us like no other; well, no other than our true self, which is yet suffocated beneath the encompassing presence of the shame we once invited in.
Getting to see the pervasive insidiousness of this yet?
A Matter of Awareness
Shame requires justification to persist. This, in a sense, is the renewal of consent. Thus, our consciousness must be regularly re-born into a state of shameful awareness. This co-opting of our higher faculties of creative power is what makes shame so powerful. It is thus within us to rearrange this dynamic from destructive back to creative. It is simply a matter of awareness. Easily stated, not so easily done.
As stated above, it is a process. I have come to see how timing matters. We may pass golden opportunities, or magically step into the flow of benevolence allowing us to shift planes of awareness and thus states of being. Shifting out of shame seems to be like that.
Open-minded, open-hearted time in nature is an essential part of reclaiming our authentic selves as it calls to the fore that which is true for it is ultimately the lack of awareness of what lingers on the periphery, in truth, that allows for false ideologies to take the fore in its absence. It is that consensual admission to the co-opting powers of toxic shame (encouraged all too often by our caregivers in their perpetuating lack of awareness, “leading” by example), that renewal of consent, that provides the fuel for toxic shame to dominate our mindscape, shut down our heart-mind connection, and disrupt our relationships with the life around us. It also enables some of the classic conflict-based mindsets of control or be controlled, or escape lest one be controlled or dominated in one’s vulnerability (this one in particular secures toxic shame’s leadership within the mind of the individual as true vulnerability often leads us to a place of authentic awareness of self).
Sitting in nature, sitting with plants, can awaken us to renew our relationship with our authentic self. This is often a painful path and it takes courage, accountability, and a degree of gentleness if not forgiveness for self. However, once toxic shame’s presence and true motives are truly felt, it is difficult to see it as anything but destructive imposter.
An additional step to becoming aware of toxic shame’s presence, may be to differentiate from its otherwise negative impacts, physiologically (eg. pain in chest), and our false dependency on feeling these feelings as a continued surrogate to true connection with self (or deep-seeded need to feel in control), which in itself breeds a repeat pattern as the seeking continues, unabated, unsatisfied. This is the hijacking of the ego by a false sense of self predicated upon the conditional love once received for choosing this route. Sit with that thought for a moment.
In conclusion, I’d like to recognize that I opened some big topics here that I did not have the space to sufficiently address.
How toxic shame has been bred into our cultural landscape is a very large topic.
When or why could also be explored, but these, I feel, are ultimately of less importance than the “how”, but nevertheless, each can be an integral part of the unfolding process of self-discovery.
Exploring the how, in depth, can be a rewarding and eye-opening exercise and may inevitably be something I return to in future posts.
Additionally, the subject of how individuals receive these imprints as a consequence of their internal environment (“wiring”) is a very important piece that was mentioned briefly. In essence, there is no one-size-fits-all perspective other than that those who are deeply affected are deeply affected.
All of my work revolves around coming back to these points of origin in which the self became disassociated from the higher self, or whole self, whether in private consultation or conducting plant meditations in the field with my apprentices. It is the untangling of these “loose ends” which bring us back to the core of who we truly are. Do we have the courage to suffer this process or to sit with the reality of what we really feel?
I want to comment, but I think it would be better to just read it again. This is thought provoking on a lot of levels