The Paralyzing Emotion That Only Gets Worse If You Ignore It
Five ways to break a cycle that keeps people low-key miserable.
Lipik Stock Media | Canva Nearly all of us experience internal debates about our worth. It's easy to believe we have value when things are going well. But when something goes wrong, shame can make us feel worthless. Often, we respond by trying to ignore the shame and that only makes it worse.
Shame is one of our primary affect, or feeling, states. We first blush at age 10-12 months. These patterns underlie our emerging social feelings of embarrassment during the same time frame as our language structures develop.
From a psychological perspective, our self-talk is tied to our preverbal experience of shame. Because emotional pain is interwoven with cognition, we can learn to speak and write about it — and that is the key to healing and moving past it.
How to deal with shame that only gets worse when you ignore it
1. Write it down
When feeling hopeless, helpless, or overwhelmed, write down any thoughts about yourself you can. This process gets easier the more you do it. Writing may cut your distress in half all by itself, as suggested by a study in Health Psychology Journal.
Even the most rapid firing and subliminal thoughts can eventually be uncovered because they tend to repeat themselves.
Write a story of your earliest memory of feeling embarrassed in public. Some of my patients' earliest memories were in their teens. Some can remember early childhood, at church or the grocery store.
Most remember something from grade school. Each of us has a unique pattern for feeling embarrassment. It will be related to proverbially developed shame processes.
Note any bodily distress; tight shoulders, stomach distress, headache, blushing or hot face, shaky, lethargic or numb. (The FINAL FIX is to relax which you will be able to do, with ever increasing effectiveness, with these steps.)
In Step 1, it's enough to have these feelings and thoughts available for Step 2.
2. Make it a goal to 'unlearn' your shame reactions
Shame dynamics have kept your innermost fears about yourself away from the probing minds of others. The pattern of your thinking needs a fresh set of eyes. Every patient I have treated in my 30 years as a therapist needed a more inclusive, accurate self-story.
Tell someone you trust, who will not use the information to hurt you. You need to meet with them several times after your disclosures. After you have talked through an embarrassing childhood event, both of you need to be sensitive to changes in your mood.
Even tiny new glimmers of hope may be highly important for your emerging a new attitude.
3. Recognize where shame and stress connect
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If there is a connection to the type of thinking you do when feeling distress to your history, make note of it. You and your counselor, spiritual advisor, or friend keep track of any thinking which gets more and more related to your shame structures.
Clinical social worker Brock Hansen recommended to, "Recognize shame when it strikes. What feelings can you notice in your body when you're in the throes of shame? Maybe it's a hot face, burning neck, tight throat or chest. Maybe it's anger at someone who didn't actually cause the problem, anger that ultimately might make you feel like crying. Everyone is different, so you'll need to notice it in your own body and name it."
4. Clarify and correct negative self-talk
This is not the time for positive self-talk. You will not trick your preverbal beliefs about yourself. If you are with a mental health worker, ask them to do the exercises of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with you.
You and your confidant need to develop new self-appraising language by slightly adjusting any exaggerations,
"CBT works well for people who do not want to focus on the past but concentrate on both the current and the future. Success has also been shown when treating dysfunctional families, as a change in one part of the family can create change within the entire family," explained psychotherapist Tarra Bates-Duford, "Rather than dwelling on issues of the past which cannot be changed, those receiving a CBT approach to treatment can focus on changing their thought pattern and behavior to shape their future."
5. Substitute realistic thoughts for your illogical shame-based thoughts
You will need to set up self-check mechanisms to track your ability to improve your awareness of ever deeper layers of destructive thinking. This lifetime process will allow your identity to emerge in new ways.
We are the architects of our attitudes and beliefs. We can modify the architecture of our inner states. The strength of our inner states' effect on us depends on how important these processes were in our childhood.
If your inner pain is intense, and it seems impossible to share with another, seek out a psychoanalytically trained therapist. They will sensitively be a "hand for you to hold in the darkness." This is the preliminary data you need to begin to emerge a more authentic self-story.
Bill Maier is a psychotherapist, specializing in treating depression, PTSD, trauma, and addiction. He has helped thousands find their way to freedom from damaging habits.