Breaking the Chains of Shame

For the past two weeks I have been on vacation. My plan was to write a lot. And I didn’t write a single word. Some perfectly valid reasons for this were the need to rest and enjoy the lovely Finnish summer, combined with my current living conditions (the house I live in has been turned into a construction site) – but I easily could have found a way to make time and peace for writing, if I really had chosen to. These reasons are perfectly acceptable and everybody would agree that yes, of course, you need some rest and yes, go to the beach and have a swim, the winter is going to be a long and dark one, enjoy the light and warmth as long as it’s here. We would nod and agree and nobody would feel awkward in any way. It would have been so easy to fool myself and others into believing that it was out of choice that I didn’t write.

But there was something much more vicious going on beneath these socially acceptable reasons. It is the same reason that keeps some of us from losing weight, getting healthy, kicking the addiction, becoming self-employed, starting a blog, learning a new language, or moving abroad – in general, from doing the things we dream of. Myself included. No, it’s not the fear of failure. Nor is it the fear of success. It is the fear of exposure. Also known as shame.

Shame is a perfectly natural feeling that tells us when we’ve made a mistake. It regulates our self-expression in unfamiliar or uncertain situations and thus protects us from potentially harmful exposure. We feel bad, small, and wish we could hide, hide from other people’s scrutiny and opinions. Shame is not a problem if it is allowed to come and go as it naturally would, but it becomes a huge problem when it is internalized, i.e. made a part of one’s personality. Then that person feels not that they’ve made a mistake, but that they are a mistake, that there is something seriously wrong with them. And that kind of shame is murder for the soul.

People with internalized shame experience disappointment and failure much deeper than those lucky buggers equipped with a more healthy sense of shame. They don’t know the difference between making a mistake and being a mistake; for them every feeling of shame means they are defective as humans. Any exposure, any act of reaching out and becoming visible to others is a question of life and death.

Shame is learned during childhood. Our parents teach us the difference between right and wrong, and if they themselves have internalized shame, they will pass it on to their children. Kids have no way to protect themselves and they internalize shame if they are exposed too early, too strongly, or too often. Perfectionist parents who constantly focus on the child’s mistakes are perhaps the most vicious of all; from the outside they seem to be loving, well-meaning parents, but underneath this saintly facade they teach their children that they are a mistake. By their constant scrutiny they kill their children’s enthusiasm, creativity, self-worth and innocence. They kill their children’s souls. And their crime is nearly impossible to detect, since it is disguised as goodness. But a crime it is, and if you recognize yourself as one of these shamed kids and want to heal, you need to get angry. Your natural feeling of shame has been distorted and your right to be human has been violated. Yes, your parents didn’t know what they were doing and they have been victims of the same crime, but you still have the right to be angry at the crime that has been passed down through generations.

Internalized shame can be very difficult to detect because of its tendency to hide from view. Just like we feel the need to hide when we feel shame, we need to hide from our shame as well. It can mask itself as depression, addictions, self-sabotage, rage, violence, abuse – or shamelessness. Trying to heal any of these is useless if the underlying shame is not exposed (yes!) and addressed. The circle of shame is particularly vicious and breaking it is scary, as it involves coming out of hiding and confronting the very situation that created it: letting others see us. But now we’re adults and can protect ourselves, and the little child inside us that once was nearly crushed by shame is not alone any more. Our souls can finally heal and remember how to fly.