I guarantee that at some time in your life you have experienced shame. Brené Brown describes shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging”. When shame endures, we slip into a sense of not being good enough and it can quickly permeate into all aspects of our lives.
So why is shame a thing? At a biological and evolutionary level we are social bonding animals, we have learned over millennia that being part of a bonded group maximises our survival, so we actively seek to bond with others. Bonding also releases our happy hormones which encourages us to seek out bonding and to work hard at maintaining these bonds. It’s the possibility of losing those bonds, the fear that we might be rejected or abandoned by “our herd”, that triggers our survival response.
Psychotherapist Joseph Burgo has identified 4 types of shame; unrequited love, exclusion, unwanted exposure and disappointed expectation and when we experience these our tendency is to want to hide (hence the term “hide in embarrassment’). There may be more types of shame but I’m sure we can each relate to at least one of these. Hiding is also part of our survival response – it’s part of the immobilising behaviours of freeze and faint – we are hoping that we will not be noticed and that we are invisible.
Once the shame response becomes prolonged, we shift into problem territory. Like any survival response that is sustained, it starts to take an ever-increasing toll on our physical, mental and emotional wellbeing. It changes the lens through which we look at and experience our life. Like buying a new car and then seeing that everywhere, once we put on the shame lens, we will see the possibility for it everywhere. We become both hyper focused on situations that we know cause shame and hypervigilant to the threat of possibility of more shame because it’s important that we stay safe in our herd.
So what can you do about it? Of course I am going to say to talk to your Resolve Practitioner about it so you can work through the negative meaning you have ascribed to your experience/s of shame. There are also some self-help strategies you can use that can help you understand where your shame comes from, and awareness is the start of any journey towards change. Strategies such as developing self-compassion – Kristin Neff has some great information and guided meditations on her website – and self-care such as giving yourself time and space to heal.If you are a practitioner, understanding the impact of trauma and unresolved experiences on your client is critical to effecting change and the more you understand how we use our meaning-making ability to understand experiences the more effective your work will be.
