So a couple months ago, my son and I, we find ourselves at this flea market thing and you know, a whole bunch of bins and stalls and furniture and records and we like, we love that kind of stuff. And my son is 10 and we didn't really find anything that we wanted, but my son wanted this walking stick, like this polyurethane thing.
He likes to hike. He likes to like. You know, like chop down step with a stick in the woods, just like, you know, a kid. Um, so I get it for him and I'm chatting with the lady and my son rested the stick against something and then we hear a, a crash behind us and the stick had fallen into a bin with a whole bunch of like saucers and vintage teacups, and it broke like a saucer in a cup.
And I noticed my son had this big reaction. He was like, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. And the woman who was running the place was so chill and cool about it. She's like, buddy, don't worry about it. It happens. And I was cool with him about it. It happens, it's a mistake. And the woman didn't actually want any money from me, even about the teacups.
Even though I, I thought that they were like, they were kind of expensive, but she was so cool about it. So I bought something else. I think I, I was, she was actually selling farm fresh eggs, so I got like an extra dozen couple of eggs and just, you know what I mean? It was just kind of a nice exchange 'cause she was so cool with my son about it.
And me being a therapist is sort of like, I wanted him to sort of feel that making a mistake was okay. So we leave and as we get into the car in the parking lot, I said something like, you know, you know that feeling when you felt bad out there? That feeling was shame. And it happens to us when we make a mistake, but too much of it isn't good for us 'cause you just made a mistake and you apologized.
And, um, I really wanted to make sure that he felt secure and okay with me. And I just said he did great in there. It was just a mistake and gave him a hug and it didn't stay with him. It was just like a really just nice, kind of beautiful sort of exchange, even if, you know, like even if I didn't have the money.
To, to compensate. It still would've been okay, even if the lady was like not good with him about it and was just kinda like copped an attitude about it, that still would've been okay because my son had me in it to kind of walk him through that emotion and that emotion is shame and that's what this whole video is gonna be about.
And just take a second and run yourself through that very scenario. You're in a shop with your parents, um, and you break something by accident. How would that have gone down? Um, chances are it's not good, and if you're drawn to these videos. Um, you probably can relate to how that would've would've gone.
So we're gonna come back to that scenario later in the video. So this, this video is one of my, um, adult and inner child episodes and we're gonna be working with Toxic Shame. Somebody requested this video, and this video is also on my mind, so here it goes. So, shame is a basic human emotion that when it's healthy, ideally we have a good self-monitoring system.
It's like a helpful. You know, it's a helpful emotion to us. It's one of the, one of the basic emotions that we have. I think, I forget the guy's name, but he came up with these seven emotions and then he augmented it to include shame and John Bradshaw talks about these basic emotions as well. So ideally when it's healthy, it's something like we think about like, oh, was I too harsh on my partner in that fight?
Let me check it out with him. Was I a bit extra with my friend at lunch? You know what I mean? I'll maybe I'll keep in mind next time to. To maybe talk less and listen more, that kind of a thing. It's a self monitoring. It's part of our ego and shame is the feeling like we kind of go like, Ugh, was that, was that too much?
That's when it's healthy. And you could look at those questions that I'm asking. Was I too hard of my partner? Was I too extra at lunch? You could look at those as the viewpoint of guilt, which is like the the next door neighbor to shame and. Guilt because the person is thinking about what they did. But shame is the stuff behind it.
Shame is what is operating underneath the healthy belief that notice those questions. You know? Was I too much on my partner? Let me go check it out with them. I'm trying to, I'm trying to spell out the vibe there that. The person still knows that they're a good person, even though that they may have done some things that they might be guilty of when we don't know that when we're a good person, when we make mistakes and guilt and shame runs, right?
That is shame. It's kind of a really tricky emotion. To nail down. It would look different than triggering ourselves with thought like thoughts like, I'm a garbage human and I was awful to my partner, and he's definitely gonna leave, or she's definitely gonna leave over something that isn't that alarming, that shame, that's not healthy.
Shame, that's an over the top. Probably rooted in childhood abuse and childhood emotional stuff that that's where that comes from. So when we grow up in abuse, shame gets amplified. Like if our amps, if our guitar amps go up to 10, shame turns it up to 19, and it can start to become a coping strategy that kids have to make s.
Kids have to like, you know, embrace to make sense of their abuse. Um, by that I mean it becomes a way for abuse kids to make sense of the insanity around them. Mom raged at me for 40 minutes because I asked for that permission slip. That's why that happened. I asked at the wrong time because I'm a dumb kid.
Those are all shame-based things. And why is that a coping strategy is the child. It's too painful to recognize that like mom is horrifically abusive and really, really unfair. So kids it's, and I know it's not really a good term, but we sort of turn the gun on ourselves. To cope and deal with the situation.
The problem is that stays with us way into adulthood. We need to re rewrite that whole experience as like my mother was abusive and dysregulated over normal parenting task. That is to do some work around the shame is to start to embrace what happened there, what would've been normal. So this is why we tend to overthink things.
This is, you know, toxic shame. We tend to overthink those. It must be me, I must have done something wrong. That is both, again, is a coping strategy and a defense. Just like in childhood, when we're trying to make sense of the, of things we can't make sense about. So when I start with clients, they may have a good enough idea about what shame is that I, I'm assu, I'm, I'm assuming you guys do too.
But they, what they don't quite get is subconsciously shame is really running us in the background. Our inner child can be riddled with shame and we are sort of run by that inner child until we get our adult in place or we're trying to, and that's a waxing and waning process. So if you're new to me, welcome, welcome to the channel.
If you like these videos, hit a button you can't miss with any of the buttons on your screen. You can hit the like buttons of subscribe button, the share button. If you want to get in touch with me, you can do so through my website. You can support the work that goes into this channel of this video.
And you can also check out my Instagram and check out the e-course that I have available on my website. So let's get that outta the way that's out of the way. So in the present and in our adult lives. Here is what shame might look like or when we get triggered to shame. So this is like a list of some examples for you guys to get a sense about what I'm talking about with the shame business.
You tell a joke in class or at work or at a party and it bombs and you have a huge body reaction, what I call a shame attack, not unlike a panic attack, it's just this, excuse me, it's this wanting to sort of crawl into the woodwork and die. And you start to berate yourself and dissociate a little bit about why did I think I could tell a joke like that?
I'm so dumb. Notice how that shame. Another example is bouts of extreme self disgust over small things that others would see as no big deal in intense self-criticism that gets in the way of completing things, kind of like perfectionism. Um, consistent negative comparisons. Of yourself to your peers. They have the job, they have the partner, they have the right attitude.
And I don't also shame-based thinking a constant low grade unconscious feeling that people are disapproving of you or disappointed in you. Like how do you guys feel when you walk into work? How do you guys feel when you walk into a social gathering? Is your inner child wondering about, are people gonna know how bad I am or something like that?
Shame. Another good example, this is a common one, is big regrets about minor things that happened like decades ago. Like you joke, um, like the joke you said in freshman year biology where you, where you created something awkward in the class that nobody remembers, but you now it's those, it's almost like a regret attack.
Like it's 1:00 AM you're trying to go to sleep and your, your mind is like, remember that thing you said to your friend in the fourth grade? Um, that is also shame. A reserve of shame. And those experiences that we have, these little sort of like attacks of. Here's another good one is when you're unable to pay for something because you lost your card or you know, and somebody has to, like, a friend has to pay for your lunch or something like that.
Total shame attack afterward or during where it doesn't feel good enough or comfortable to be in want of something or in need of something where your friend is like, dude, chill. Like, don't worry about it. Um, another example is constantly trying to make it seem like you have it more together than you do.
Maybe that's, and it's, that's related to being inauthentic, which makes sense. 'cause we we're coming from these family systems that are highly inauthentic and not to beat yourself up over that is we, I, I haven't met a client yet that came up with a really good strategy to seem like they have it together or to seem like they were okay in life, either through career or something like that.
Or by charm or being easy or being sort of, you know, like a nice person as a way. To make up for how they feel about themselves on the on the inside. Lastly, this one's super specific, is like changing outfits from a place of perfectionism, like, like making yourself late because you changed outfits a million times and then now you're late, and now you're in what I call a shame spiral, where that shame is there about really being terrified about how you're gonna look, what people think about you.
Also I think, rooted in childhood shame or can be so now, so those are some examples of, of a childhood shame. But now let's look at the opposite of what that would look like, which is still shame. Here's what I mean. What often isn't talked about is the other side of toxic shame. And you'll know what I mean when you think about your parents in this one is being shameless.
Or not having enough of a healthy sense of shame. Here are some examples. Being unable to own anything, being unwilling to be faulted. Extreme defensiveness around mistakes or going into what I call lawyer mode, which is also rooted in anger, but can also be rooted in shame, grandiose. It, um, having extreme reactions to being teased or being lightly made fun of.
Um, could be related to, also related to anger, but definitely related to shame. So let's put those two examples, those two types of examples about being too much shame and then being shameless. Let's look at that. I like to look at things on a spectrum so we don't just call things. What they are in a black and white place because we can identify with the extremes or we can be combinations of these things depending on the situation and the time.
So in this graphic I came up with like shame, right in the middle is sort of the balance point. Let's just call the middle healthy shame and going towards more extremes on the outside. So on the left side we have, I'm always wrong. Too much shame on the opposite side. We have, I'm never wrong too little shame.
And try not to think of the right side as just things like narcissism, people being sort of shameless. It can be that, but there are plenty of other things such as shame that is caused by someone who has substance abuse issues. Complex post-traumatic stress disorder being self-consumed, being immature.
It's not just rooted in sort of narcissism or personality disorders. This is part of the human sort of experience I think. But, um, let's keep it to the concept of shame rather than thinking about it in terms of just narcissism. So where would you guys lie on this spectrum, and does it bounce around depending on the situation?
You know, most people are pretty chill and accommodating, accommodating until they feel that they are backed into a corner, and then the knives come out and then they refuse to own things. So shame takes away our ability to be both right and wrong. At times. I know that that's a little bit of a head trip, but that's what I mean about that spectrum stuff.
So now think about where your parents lie on the spectrum. 'cause that's interesting. I grew up with two parents who were extremely on the right side of that infographic, either due to their childhoods or alcoholism or narcissism or all of it. And there I was as their kid on the extreme left. I'm like marinated in shame and they don't have enough of it.
It. Um, I think that that is a common cause and effect when it comes to this stuff. I find the majority of childhood trauma survivor that I work with are on the left with their family systems or parents being sort of on the right of that spectrum and try not to confuse the left and the right. It's political ideas.
I'm just saying in that infographic. There'll be more videos that I have planned on that issue about sort of, um, I think we become merited in shame because we're trying to not be like our parents who are shameless. That's another sort of theory that I have, for example, about parents not owning anything is you can check out two of these videos that I've done, these role play videos.
I did one on a, on a. Ownership with a, with a, with a codependent mother. Well, they're both with codependent mother, but this is more of a narcissistic, codependent mother. And the other is about a codependent mother who is refusing to be real or refusing to be having any ownership. Check out those videos and think about like, why are the, why are these people so defensive about being wrong?
No one's gonna die if we're wrong. No one's gonna die about making mistakes. No one's gonna die about being faulted. But how many of our parents defend that tooth and nail? So my, my parents' refusal to own anything in my family had a vibe to it. And I find that those who can't own anything go off an air, like you're give off an air.
Like you're not gonna get me. You're not gonna get me again. Not today, Satan. I'm not gonna admit to this stuff. Not that they're saying that verbally, but it's like their energy about their defensiveness about it. They're highly defended against shame to the point that it's exiled from their emotional self.
What I mean by that, and it's a tricky concept, is say, say someone with narcissistic personality disorder, they are so removed from the idea of shame that it's broken and it's gone from their own psychology. It's exiled and unattainable. Yet I find what, what I find interesting in that is that they're still run by the shame because they have to tell you how great they are.
They have to get you to be like, have accolades toward them. They have to sort of be the authority on things. Um, or even if it's covert, they have to be seen as the one who suffers the most. So good luck trying to get them to have any authentic insight about it. My point in talking about this exile piece is I get questions in these videos is like.
I think my dad has NPD. Um, can therapy help him? Can, you know, sometimes that's true, but it's rare. I don't want to put the total kibosh on it, but I want people to be real about the level of difficulty and brokenness. When we're thinking about a parent who has exiled shame, they're, if it's exiled, they're not gonna get it back.
It's like, it's a desert island that is totally unreachable. That's what I mean about that word, exi Exiled. So here are three ways in my mind that our own shame, the three ways that they can come from three different avenues from our childhood trauma, how shame can manifest, and we can be combinations of these things.
It's not just sort of maybe one or the other, but I want you guys to be thinking about the origins, the root and the cause, the ETI ideology of where our shame comes from. At the heart of it, childhood trauma. Shame is about not growing up with a safe home base. To grow up with the foundation of knowing that you're a lovable, good person, even if there is upset and mistakes or problems.
When we are born, we are born with a human emotional spectrum and shame is built in there. If the four, if you're four years old and your 10-year-old brother is amazing, a drawing, you might have a big reaction when you compare your drawings. To his or her drawings and that 4-year-old is going to need help with healthy comparison or fair comparison with those things.
Shame is built in. They may feel humiliated that they're not able to draw like their older sibling and humans are wired to kind of want to keep. I think especially with children and siblings, it's like um, that's a huge motivator for the 3-year-old to catch up with the 6-year-old, and I think humans are wired that way to sort of.
To be, you know, to be at the same level of everybody else and when we're not, that's where the human emotion of shame can manifest. In a toddler who trips, I've actually seen this in, in like little kid parties, a toddler who trips and falls or breaks something at a party and there's like a record scratch in the room and in everyone sort of looks that child will probably cry from a place of being on the spot, being overly seen or overwhelmed.
That's what I think is sort of shame as well. So my point is, is that it's built in, um, and it's up to healthy parents to really understand that it's built in and try not to let that get outta control. Like the example with my son at the flea market, so.
