CeeJay1981
Banned
Many people, to some extent or another, have a CORE BELIEF that something is wrong with them, that they are broken in some way and it's very important that nobody else ever find out what that is.
To compensate for this feeling of shame we could use any number of coping strategies. We might use humour, or intelligence, or an ability to perform well at something. We might hide behind being too fat, skinny, tall or short, or by being an alcoholic or drug addict. We might create a fantasy reality where we imagine ourselves to be better than others or to try and control others.
Perhaps we imagine that people don't like us (or do like us), when they may not be paying much attention to us either way. We may try to cope by being macho, or by being pitiful. There are scores of ways a person suffering from shame could attempt to cope. All the emotional dysfunctions (anger, sadness, anxiety, substance abuse, fear, depression, powerlessness, relationship problems, and many others) can be shame-based.
A person suffering from shame may function well in the world, or their shame may keep them from being functional in many situations. We might feel comfortable when performing a role, like our job, but when in social situations feel painfully inadequate.
Sometimes shame is layered beneath many defense mechanisms, and the outer appearance is one of "I'm fine. Nothing bothers me." Other times, it is so close to the surface the slightest thing can send the person into tears, anger, depression, or some other reaction.
So where does shame come from? It comes from abuse, from trauma suffered when we were too small to have any filters to tell us why it is happening and what it really means. If the people who are supposed to love and care for us hurt us, neglect us, criticize us, or worse, then the obvious conclusion, from a child's point of view, is that there must be something wrong with us. Otherwise, why would these big, powerful, God-like people who have every reason to care about us treat us with so much anger, contempt, or neglect?
Sometimes this trauma is inadvertent, coming from the death of a loved one, or situations the parents could not cope with themselves. Sometimes it comes from the fact that the parents were treated the same way when they were young, and it's all they know. But finding someone to blame isn't the point, and it isn't productive. If trauma happened, the resourceful thing to do is to deal with it now, get rid of it, and move on.
From this trauma, the child draws two conclusions. One is that the world is dangerous, and as a result they have to be on the alert for danger. Second, the child concludes that there must be something deeply wrong with them, at the very core, and that to survive, they must NEVER let anyone know that this defect exists. To accomplish this, elaborate armoring, physically, emotionally, and spiritually - an elaborate facade - is created.
A person living with shame generally exists in one of two ways: they create so much self- armoring that they don't feel much of anything, no one can get through to them on an emotional level, and life becomes a process of toughing it out. Or, they fail to create effective armoring, and go through life easily triggered by people and events around them (what is sometimes termed a low threshold) or emotionally collapsing whenever the going gets the slightest bit tough. Most social anxiety sufferers fall into this latter category. Dealing with shame becomes the central point of such a person's life.
What makes it difficult to deal with shame is that we want so much to hide it. It is nearly impossible to ask for help, since this means revealing to someone else that we are totally broken. This is why therapy can be so difficult.
Here's an interesting fact about shame. 99% of people are carrying around a sense of shame on some level. Each person has developed their own act designed, in part, to dance through life without revealing this awful secret. They don't realize that the people they're trying to fake out are doing the same to them too. No wonder that the relationships they create seem so unfulfilling - they are relationships between two facades. At the same time, the real, hurting individual is trapped underneath, crying for intimacy and understanding.
So what can we actually DO about all this. Well, the solution is to discover, and then heal, our own personal CORE BELIEFS about ourselves. Once we discover HOW we are creating our own facades we have a shot at seeing through the illusion and moving past them. We then reclaim our personal power and can start creating the lives we want, instead of avoiding the kind of lives we don't want.
To compensate for this feeling of shame we could use any number of coping strategies. We might use humour, or intelligence, or an ability to perform well at something. We might hide behind being too fat, skinny, tall or short, or by being an alcoholic or drug addict. We might create a fantasy reality where we imagine ourselves to be better than others or to try and control others.
Perhaps we imagine that people don't like us (or do like us), when they may not be paying much attention to us either way. We may try to cope by being macho, or by being pitiful. There are scores of ways a person suffering from shame could attempt to cope. All the emotional dysfunctions (anger, sadness, anxiety, substance abuse, fear, depression, powerlessness, relationship problems, and many others) can be shame-based.
A person suffering from shame may function well in the world, or their shame may keep them from being functional in many situations. We might feel comfortable when performing a role, like our job, but when in social situations feel painfully inadequate.
Sometimes shame is layered beneath many defense mechanisms, and the outer appearance is one of "I'm fine. Nothing bothers me." Other times, it is so close to the surface the slightest thing can send the person into tears, anger, depression, or some other reaction.
So where does shame come from? It comes from abuse, from trauma suffered when we were too small to have any filters to tell us why it is happening and what it really means. If the people who are supposed to love and care for us hurt us, neglect us, criticize us, or worse, then the obvious conclusion, from a child's point of view, is that there must be something wrong with us. Otherwise, why would these big, powerful, God-like people who have every reason to care about us treat us with so much anger, contempt, or neglect?
Sometimes this trauma is inadvertent, coming from the death of a loved one, or situations the parents could not cope with themselves. Sometimes it comes from the fact that the parents were treated the same way when they were young, and it's all they know. But finding someone to blame isn't the point, and it isn't productive. If trauma happened, the resourceful thing to do is to deal with it now, get rid of it, and move on.
From this trauma, the child draws two conclusions. One is that the world is dangerous, and as a result they have to be on the alert for danger. Second, the child concludes that there must be something deeply wrong with them, at the very core, and that to survive, they must NEVER let anyone know that this defect exists. To accomplish this, elaborate armoring, physically, emotionally, and spiritually - an elaborate facade - is created.
A person living with shame generally exists in one of two ways: they create so much self- armoring that they don't feel much of anything, no one can get through to them on an emotional level, and life becomes a process of toughing it out. Or, they fail to create effective armoring, and go through life easily triggered by people and events around them (what is sometimes termed a low threshold) or emotionally collapsing whenever the going gets the slightest bit tough. Most social anxiety sufferers fall into this latter category. Dealing with shame becomes the central point of such a person's life.
What makes it difficult to deal with shame is that we want so much to hide it. It is nearly impossible to ask for help, since this means revealing to someone else that we are totally broken. This is why therapy can be so difficult.
Here's an interesting fact about shame. 99% of people are carrying around a sense of shame on some level. Each person has developed their own act designed, in part, to dance through life without revealing this awful secret. They don't realize that the people they're trying to fake out are doing the same to them too. No wonder that the relationships they create seem so unfulfilling - they are relationships between two facades. At the same time, the real, hurting individual is trapped underneath, crying for intimacy and understanding.
So what can we actually DO about all this. Well, the solution is to discover, and then heal, our own personal CORE BELIEFS about ourselves. Once we discover HOW we are creating our own facades we have a shot at seeing through the illusion and moving past them. We then reclaim our personal power and can start creating the lives we want, instead of avoiding the kind of lives we don't want.
