Belong the Shadow: Shame
Shame. Everyone has it. No-one wants to talk about it.
But the less we talk about it, the more we have of it.
Brené Brown
Although shame is an adaptive emotion that prevents people from acting out of pure self-interest, shame can become maladaptive when there are repeated breaches in trust and safety in interpersonal relationships over time.
For example, repeated loss of connection with a primary caregiver during early childhood due to abuse or neglect can negatively impact brain development and lead to the internalization of what is known as core shame.
When people think of shame, they often think of events or situations that are clearly associated with feelings of humiliation, guilt, or remorse, such as sexual abuse or addiction.
Even though these circumstances are certainly characterized by shame, core shame is a deeper underlying sense of being unworthy of love and belonging that may or may not have an external situation in view.
When we don’t have “good enough” experiences of unconditional love and acceptance as children, then our compass for trust and connection becomes impaired.
This can lead to prolonged shame states that impact the development of neural networks related to emotion regulation and safety in the social brain (Schore, 2019).
In particular, the neural networks associated with distrust become activated, whereas those associated with internal feelings of safety and trust become weaker and are then pruned off.
As a child’s language begins to develop, the left brain then constructs a narrative, or story, of what is happening in the nonverbal right brain.
This story forms a sense of self, weaving together the child’s internal and external experiences. For example, if a child is told that they will never amount to anything, then they may develop a story that they are worthless or a disappointment.
In turn, they may repeatedly fail at tasks set before them or, conversely, overachieve in an attempt to never make a mistake.
Similarly, if a client grows up in a household in which their feelings are never acknowledged, or they are explicitly shamed for showing emotion, then they may develop the narrative that expressing their feelings is bad.
Shame eventually becomes internalized within their personality, and the narrative shifts from “I did something bad” to “I am bad” (Brown, 2007).
The bond between parent and child forms an interpersonal bridge between them, and when there are repeated ruptures in these interpersonal bridges— a core shame identity develops in which there is an overarching fear of being exposed as fundamentally deficient and tragically flawed (Kaufman, 1974).
This results in a chronic sense of unworthiness, unlovability, and disconnection. The ability to have empathy for the self is lost in an environment that isn’t empathetic.
When the primary caregiver repeatedly lacks attunement and there is repeated, unrepaired disconnection between the caregiver and child, this creates a disintegration in self-awareness.
This disintegration makes it difficult for clients to access a coherent self. The disintegrated self may manifest in therapy as depression, anxiety, depletion, or fragmentation (DeYoung, 2015).
We store early experiences of core shame in the implicit memory system, which is unconscious, emotional, sensory, body-oriented, automatic, and nonverbal.
This is in contrast to explicit memories, which are conscious, cognitive, verbal, linear, and factual.
As a result, shame can be difficult to find and name because we may not have any explicit memories of the specific events that lead to the ruptures in the interpersonal bridges, especially in the first three years of their life when the nonverbal right brain is primarily developing.
Instead, shame lurks underground in the nonverbal, unconscious mind…
Self-compassion has three main qualities:
(1) self-kindness (being kind to ourselves when we are suffering),
(2) a sense of connection to humanity (recognizing that everyone is imperfect and that everyone suffers),
(3) mindfulness (nonjudgmentally accepting our experiences, even those that are painful) (Neff, 2003).
Self-compassion is not easily accessed in shame. Most of us who carry core, underlying shame report that we do not know how to love ourselves.
For us, self-compassion feels like an impossible task because it makes us feel too vulnerable and subject to others’ judgment (Campion & Glover, 2017).
Additionally, because the influence of outdated child-rearing practices still permeates Western culture, many individuals have also internalized the belief that they shouldn’t honor their feelings or think too highly of themselves (Miller, 1983).
Trying to talk ourselves out of the belief that we are unlovable is virtually impossible because the memory of being not good enough lives in the implicit sensory memory.
Working with core shame requires activating right-brain memories with the understanding that it takes time to adequately change unconscious beliefs.”
Ashley Patti
Join us in the naming, witnessing, and compassionate belonging of our shame…
undertaking.
And, overtime, we find more freedom from the programming and conditioning lodged in our bodies that does not belong to us.
It’s not as if we ‘get rid’ of these conditioned patterns and shapes.
Instead, we rewire how we related to it – to the point that it is an integrated part and no longer controls us from the dark.
As we repattern our soma to move towards ourselves at these deeper level, we cultivate a capacity for more intimacy – with our bodies, our internal selves and others.
There is also more room for emergent alignment with who desire to be and a wholeness within.
Which leads to greater access to our vitality. Keeping all of this energy and parts of ourselves hidden takes a lot of our life force. As we move closer and name, see, love and belong these parts, we find that we have more of ourselves inside of us…
We also begin to take a different view of our internal pain. It becomes less of a problem because we have a sense of where it is coming from and a capacity to move towards it.
As we cultivate our ability to belong our shadow, we grow our self-love and love of others.
Come and join us for Belong the Shadow on November 5th 11am-1pm.
We will be in ritual together, breathing and taking a somatic descent – down and into our body.
- about an hour of introductions, teaching and co-regulation in the community.
- light movement
- an hour or so of breathing together
- community digestion and integration
- $55 is the suggested donation
- Open to different creative exchange arrangements
- Scholarships available
- Lifetime access