Let's take a look at some of the potential causes of shame: Childhood trauma or neglect. Any mental health disorder that involves self-criticism or judgment (e.g., social anxiety disorder) Not living up to overly high standards that you set for yourself.
The origins of shame can almost always be tied back to past experiences of feeling judged, criticized, or rejected by someone else. People often respond to shame by pushing away others, withdrawing, and working to preserve their reputation by hiding the aspects of themselves they feel will lead to rejection.
Shame is an unpleasant self-conscious emotion often associated with negative self-evaluation; motivation to quit; and feelings of pain, exposure, distrust, powerlessness, and worthlessness.
Shame is connected to processes that occur within the limbic system, the emotion center of the brain. When something shameful happens, your brain reacts to this stimulus by sending signals to the rest of your body that lead you to feel frozen in place.
Shame causes people to hide from the sanctions of cultural norms, which leads to perceptions of brokenness or being bad (Arnsten, 2015). Empathy has the opposite effect. It creates a space where people can process their circumstances without shame's debilitating effects.
Most psychologists consider shame a “secondary” emotion, one that forms in reaction to another emotion. Some classify it as a secondary emotion of sadness, while others consider it a tertiary emotion that combines fear and disgust.
Let's take a look at some of the potential causes of shame: Childhood trauma or neglect. Any mental health disorder that involves self-criticism or judgment (e.g., social anxiety disorder) Not living up to overly high standards that you set for yourself.
"If you put shame in a Petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in a Petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can't survive," says Dr. Brene Brown.
When we experience a traumatic event, shame and guilt are common survival skills we rely on. Like the flight, fight, freeze and appease response, these coping skills that are often meant for our survival, can leave us paralyzed.
When faced with shame, the brain reacts as if it were facing physical danger, and activates the sympathetic nervous system generating the flight/fight/freeze response. The flight response triggers the feeling of needing to disappear, and children who have this response will try to become invisible.
Shame is one of the more painful emotions because it arises when those most foundational of human needs, the need to feel safe and the need to belong, remain unmet. Because it is so painful, we are compelled to find ways to avoid it if possible, to manage it when we must, and, if necessary, to neutralise it.
Many people find themselves stuck in a cycle of shame and self-destructive behavior — you do something harmful, you feel terrible about it, and out of self-loathing, you do it again. Shame can be a painful and overwhelming feeling. You might feel the urge to hurt or punish yourself when you feel ashamed.
Be aware of the physical signs of shame
Slumped shoulders, lowering our head, looking down, avoiding eye contact, hesitant speech patterns – these are clues that we feel unworthy and want to avoid letting anyone else see into us.
In some cases, shame from childhood leads to narcissistic personality disorder. Narcissistic behavior is often a coping mechanism for intense shame or low self-esteem. You may compensate for your internal sense of shame by displaying an inflated ego or by fantasizing about success, power, and perfection.
Show self-compassion.
Compassion is the antidote to shame. It acts to neutralize the poison of shame, to remove the toxins created by shame. The goal is to treat yourself in a loving, kind and supportive way.
Hence, shame has recently come to be identified in the trauma literature as part of a constellation of negative emotions (along with fear, horror, anger, guilt) that are common for trauma survivors in post-trauma states.
Shame is a physiological shut down of the nervous system, which is why it can share so many similarities to depression.
We feel shame when we violate the social norms we believe in. At such moments we feel humiliated, exposed and small and are unable to look another person straight in the eye. We want to sink into the ground and disappear. Shame makes us direct our focus inward and view our entire self in a negative light.
Shame can be a major anger trigger because when we harbor shame, we tend to react defensively when we're criticized or given even mild feedback. We may then use anger to divert attention away from our painful, hidden feelings the way a magician uses misdirection when performing a card trick.