Understanding Shame: A Path to Healing from Trauma

Woman holding her face in shame

The Complex Nature of Shame

Shame. That horrid, sticky feeling. It is incredibly deep-rooted and has the potential to shape our lives profoundly. Often, shame comes hand in hand with sexual trauma. In fact, they function in much the same way. Shame brings those “gremlins” to your head, and they never have anything nice to say. They whisper, “You’re not good enough for justice,” “You should’ve just listened. This is all your fault,” or “I can’t believe you are STILL bothered by this; it happened so long ago!” Shame can follow you everywhere. But what if the reality is that shame isn’t entirely a bad thing?

Bear with me on this. Shame serves a purpose. It encourages survival within a group by acting as a brake on behaviours that may lead to harm or rejection. This is a neurobiological mechanism integrated into our brains to keep us safe from relational threats.

When we feel shame, we disconnect from others. This disconnection feels like a relational threat on a physiological level. As cavemen, we relied on our social groups for survival and safety. Evolutionarily, a state of disconnection feels as dangerous as being attacked by a tiger. Shame pushes us out of a neurobiological state of social connection and into a stress response, such as fight, flight, freeze, fawn, or flop. These responses are designed to keep us safe.

Granted, shame hurts, and it might not feel safe. However, the nervous system isn’t built to make you happy; it is built to keep you alive.

How Does Shame Keep You Alive?

You might ask, how does shame keep you alive? Shame, as an evolutionary adaptation, wants us to mitigate social disconnection by creating emotional pain that we feel compelled to avoid. We do this in three ways:

• Moving Away (Flight Response): For example, “I can’t think about X because it hurts too much,” or “I cannot believe I tripped over at the gym; I can’t ever go back.” We want to hide from things or people, leading to isolation.

• Moving Towards (Freeze/Fawn): This might look like, “I will be whoever I need to be to be accepted again,” or “It was all my fault.” This is common for survivors of childhood sexual harm. It often manifests as “being the goodie two shoes” and accepting that the abuse is their fault or that “it was done with love and care.” As adults, this can lead to self-sacrifice, where we swallow our real feelings and take responsibility for everything.

  
  

• Moving Against (Fight): We may enter a state of shame-rage and take it out on others, perhaps our partner or even our pets. Alternatively, we might self-sabotage or self-harm. Sometimes, it feels safer to beat ourselves up because confronting an abuser might risk further harm.

  
  

The Impact of Shame on Our Lives

Shame engineers smallness into our lives. Consider this: a child heavily criticised by a parent for being too loud might isolate themselves, believing, “You are too much for people to like you.” This is a flight response, where the child flees from the pain of shame.

From a sexual harm standpoint, a survivor might learn that pleasing their abuser by unenthusiastically saying yes to their advances reduces the likelihood of further harm in that moment. This aligns with a fawn response, which can be considered “moving towards” the stimulus causing the shame.

In both scenarios, shame acts as a brake, creating smallness to prevent further harm. This is the brain functioning neurobiologically to keep us safe, even if shame restricts us in the process. It is a normal response to abnormal events.

Embracing Self-Compassion

To conclude, shame is painful, but it tries to protect us. This doesn’t lessen the hurt, but by reminding yourself that your shame gremlins are trying to be your friend in the only way they know how, you can take your first steps toward self-compassion.

Trauma-informed therapy is an excellent way to work with your shame. Through compassionate communication and a safe environment to explore your pain, you can develop “shame-resilience.”

If you want to master your shame gremlins and loosen the chains that keep you feeling stuck in your trauma, feel free to enquire through my website by clicking the contact button on the homepage!

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Thanks for reading,

Alan

RegrowCounselling