Quotes About Shame

Toxic shame feels irremediable: If I am flawed, defective and a mistake, then there is nothing that can be done about me. Such a belief leads to impotence. How can I change who I am? Toxic shame also has the quality of circularity. Shame begets shame.

But when the feeling of shame is violated by a coercive and perfectionistic religion and culture—especially by shame-based source figures who mediate religion and culture—it becomes an all-embracing identity. A person with internalized shame believes he is inherently flawed, inferior and defective.Such a feeling is so painful that defending scripts (or strategies) are developed to cover it up. These scripts are the roots of violence, criminality, war and all forms of addiction.

Being requires no measurement; it is its own justification. Being is grounded in an inner life that grows in richness. "The kingdom of heaven is within," says the Scripture. Toxic shame looks to the outside for happiness and validation, since the inside is flawed and defective. Toxic shame is spiritual bankruptcy.

Once an emotion is toxically shame bound, one feels numb. The emotional avoidance is sealed by learning to avoid the avoidance.

our emotions are innate and that "they are only good or evil as the end to which they are used." There is an innate and a learned component to all emotion. "Therefore," Pocaterra writes, "there must be two shames, one natural and free from awareness and the other acquired.

IDENTIFICATION When victimization takes place the victim often identifies with the persecutor. By so doing the victim no longer feels the helplessness and the shame of humiliation of the victimization. Persecuting offenders were often previously victims who identified with their offenders. In identifying they no longer have to feel the shame.

Because the exposure of self to self lies at the heart of neurotic shame, escape from the self is necessary. The escape from self is accomplished by creating a false self. The false self is always more or less than human. The false self may be a perfectionist or a slob, a family Hero or a family Scapegoat. As the false self is formed, the authentic self goes into hiding. Years later the layers of defense and pretense are so intense that one loses all conscious awareness of who one really is.

Addiction is the central organizing principle of the family system—maintaining the system as well as the shame. When we address addiction in families, we open the door to the families' shame.

In fact, the most paradoxical aspect of neurotic shame is that it is the core motivator of the superachieved and the underachieved, the star and the scapegoat, the righteous and the wretched, the powerful and the pathetic.

CONVERSION I spoke of affect and need conversion when I described how Max compensated for his abusive and neglectful abandonment by converting most of his feelings and needs into sexual thoughts, feelings and behaviors. There are other ways that conversion defends us against toxic shame.

It's difficult to let someone get close to you if you feel defective and flawed as a human being. Shame-based couples maintain nonintimacy through poor communication, nonproductive circular fighting, games, manipulation, vying for control, withdrawal, blaming and confluence. Confluence is the agreement never to disagree. Conflulence creates pseudointimacy.

One of the significant lessons in my life was given me by Abraham Low, the founder of Recovery, Inc. He said that "intellectualizing about our problems is complex but easy, while doing something about them is simple but difficult." Shame-based intellectuals love to analyze.

When we are shame-based, we can only focus on our own ache.

In order to be healed we must come out of isolation and hiding. This means finding a person, or ideally a group of significant others, whom we are willing to trust. This is tough for shame-based people.

Shame becomes toxic because of premature exposure. We are exposed either unexpectedly or before we are ready to be exposed. We feel helpless and powerless. No wonder then that we fear the scrutinizing eyes of others. However, the only way out of toxic shame is to embrace the shame—we must come out of hiding.

Superachievement and perfectionism are two of the leading cover-ups for toxic shame. As paradoxical as it may seem, the straight-A student and the F student may both be driven by toxic shame.

A racket is a family-authorized feeling used to replace an unacceptable and shameful feeling.

When shame underlies the control and release it seems to intensify both sides of the tension. . . . Shame makes the control dynamic more rigidly demanding and unforgiving and the release more dynamic and self-destructive. The more intensely one controls, the more one requires the balance of release and the more abusingly or self destructively one releases, the more intensely one requires control.

The best way to come out of hiding is to find a nonshaming intimate person or social network. The operative word here is "intimate." We have to get on a core, gut level because shame is core, gut level stuff. Toxic shame masks our deepest secrets about ourselves; it embodies our belief that we are essentially defective.

High achievement is often the result of being driven by toxic shame. Feeling flawed and defective on the inside, I had to prove I was okay by being exceptional on the outside. Everything I did was based on getting authenticated on the outside. My good feelings depended upon achievement.

True love is unconditional positive regard. Unconditional positive regard allows us to be whole and accept all the parts of ourselves. To be whole we must reunite all the shamed and split-off aspects of ourselves.

This transformation involves three dynamics: 1. The identification with shame-based models and the carrying of their unexpressed shame. 2. The trauma of abandonment and the shame binding all one's feelings, needs and drives. 3. The interconnection and magnification of visual memories or scenes, and the retaining of shaming auditory and kinesthetic imprints.

We must risk reaching out and looking for nonshaming relationships if we are to heal our shame. There is no other way.

Remember that toxic shame is the root of all addiction. Twelve Step groups literally were born out of the courage of two people risking coming out of hiding. One alcoholic person (Bill W.) turned to another alcoholic person (Dr. Bob) and they told each other how bad they really felt about themselves.