Most human beings have probably experienced shame. It might be a feeling of hot lava that slowly explodes from the center of your body. Or a sudden internal clenching and an urgent need to shut down all feeling senses. It might look like a need to isolate and tend our internal wounds. Maybe there is the more intellectualized response to shame, the endless circling around a topic and never being able to land in an emotionally resolved place. Everyone’s response is individually felt and different, but shame is a universal occurrence. The intense dread that accompanies shame can be all-consuming and can deter one from truly engaging in the process of self-discovery. Babette Rothschild, author, therapist, and traumatic stress expert, in her book 8 Keys to Safe Trauma Recovery, pointed out that shame has a necessary role in the evolution of any culture or society. She wrote “Shame is necessary to help the tribe survive . . . and an indicator that a behavior or a state of affairs is just plain wrong” (p. 91). As with all things, dealing with your shame requires a balanced approach. We should not go black and white and completely demonize our feelings of shame, but we also need to balance overwhelming feelings of shame that paralyze us and keep us from self-discovery and self-forgiveness. Unacknowledged or overwhelming feelings of shame can be one of the major roadblocks to pursuing therapy.
It is an almost universal reaction to personal shame to withdraw physically and emotionally and find a place to isolate. Shame tells us that something is wrong. Even more confusing, sometimes we can take on shame for others who have committed acts shamelessly. Rothschild wrote about shame needing contact to resolve. She meant that shame is something that needs and benefits from human contact, understanding, and compassion. When we can air out our shameful feelings under safe circumstances and see it outside of ourselves, we might be able to take a different perspective and understanding of what it is that we are dealing with. Bringing up topics that are intertwined with shame requires a lot of bravery.
One way to explore shame is to approach it as unexpressed grief. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler wrote prolifically on grief in their book On Greif and Grieving. They wrote about the five stages of grieving: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. Once the shame is made conscious and aired out with the compassionate help of another person, you may realize that you are in one of these phases of grief. Perhaps it is grief around not showing up in exactly the way that other people want us to. Historically we are a species that needs each other. Our optimal survival was based on group living and being able to function in relation to group needs. Even now in our evolved world, there are ways in which we still need our tribes. This applies most directly in a social way. We need togetherness and affirmation from our peers.
Psychodynamic depth-oriented therapy promotes individuation as one of the main goals. Individuation involves exploring the idea of radical self-acceptance. In this process we start to explore aspects of ourselves that have been abandoned to the shadow. The shadow is part of our unconscious mind where we store things that we would rather not deal with or look at. These feelings and thoughts are the ones that typically bring on shame when they enter consciousness. Radical individuation requires that we not only try to acknowledge these shadowy aspects of ourselves but that we invite them into the conversation of who we are in the process of self-acceptance. As we do this, we might begin to place a priority on our individual needs. This is a complicated and often painful process that takes time. Because of this, therapy might feel worse before it feels better. There is fear when we prioritize showing up for ourselves in just the way we need. Fear that we will be left behind, not wanted, not affirmed by the people around us, abandoned. The sacrifices that we make when we concern ourselves with the expression and acceptance of the whole Self, is that we leave other’s opinions of us to take a much smaller role of importance in our lives. And even though we may choose this direction and emphasis, we still feel the loss of all the things that we did not choose. And losses require grieving.
Perhaps the next time you find yourself engaged in the circular intellectualizing of shame, the hot sweaty, or clenched bodily response to it, contemplate grief. Contemplate the loss that might have just occurred in not being able to show up as we have been socially programmed to do. Explore your feelings, allow yourself to feel loss, and engage in your personal expression of grief in this loss. It might help you to move forward.