Shame's Silent Impact: Unveiling Common Reactions and Their Influence on Relationships
Shame is a really difficult emotion to feel and can have lasting effects on your mental health, well being, your view of yourself and your relationships with others. We are a shame-averse society, which can perpetuate stigma around shame and what it means to feel it. Shame is something that goes deeper than feeling guilt, because it is often the result of feeling disconnected from ourselves or someone else. Shame is pervasive and overtime, can lead us to believe that we are somehow inadequate, unworthy and even unlovable.
Because shame is so pervasive, many of us know when we are feeling it, even if we aren’t always able to label it as shame. Shame can feel like embarrassment, humiliation, self-consciousness, inferiority, and inadequacy. How we cope with these difficult feelings can sometimes be an invisible process. It may show up in our actions or reactions that can make us feel like it's coming out of nowhere.
Have you ever reacted abruptly in a way that surprises, or even shocks, you? Maybe you ended a relationship for good following what seemed like a simple argument. Maybe you shut down emotionally during a conversation seemingly out of nowhere. For many, there also tends to be an internal monologue reminding you that there is something wrong with you, and here’s the proof.
For many, these reactions are often a way of coping with shame.
Getting to know more about common shame reactions can help you get in touch with how you process, cope with and attempt to reduce shame and help you gain knowledge in how to respond to the shame you experience more mindfully. This can help to decrease harmful reactions, such as avoidance and denial, isolation, defensiveness, people pleasing and self sabotage. Here are some common shame reactions:
Attacking Self
Have you ever made a mistake and asked “What the **** is wrong with me?”, leading to an internal spiral of self criticism, self doubt and blame, and embarrassment? Maybe you hope that by working hard to be perfect you won’t have to deal with the discomfort and pain that can come with making a mistake or failing. This is shame talking. It’s not uncommon to react to shame by turning inwards and attacking ourselves.
Negative self-talk, being overly judgmental of ourselves, and perfectionism are just some of the ways that we react with shame by turning inwards and attacking ourselves.
From my work, I have learned that people who attack themselves when reacting to feelings of shame, embarrassment and regret, have a deep, underlying hope that negative self-talk and condemnation will help them learn how to always be the best version of themselves in order to avoid the discomfort that comes with shame! Despite their best intentions, this often leads to even more shame and thus, shame spirals because as you continue attacking yourself, the shame feels like it has more evidence to throw at you as to why you’re not good enough, why you don’t deserve better, and on and on we go.
Attacking Others
On the flip side, we can also react to shame by attacking another person. Have you ever been called out for something you said or did that hurt someone and your first reaction was to get defensive, blame or deny any wrong doing? Maybe you jump to criticize others anytime you’re confronted with criticism.
These are all some ways we may react to shame by attacking others. This tends to be an attempt to turn the attention, the discomfort and the pain, from ourselves to someone else - regardless of who that person is to us. We tend to think that reacting in this way will keep the “bad” within us from being noticed. By sharing the shame, we hope it will dissipate within us.
Attacking, both ourselves and others, instead keeps us from connecting with how we are feeling in the moment. and overtime, can keep us disconnected from others, including and maybe especially, those we want to be connected to the most.
Withdrawal
Sometimes, feeling shame can lead us to withdrawing. Maybe someone made a comment about something that we are insecure about, leading to isolation, avoidance or social anxiety. This can sometimes cause us to lose faith in the security we felt in this connection, which can create a sense of unease and lack of emotional safety.
Withdrawing can also lead to us turning inwards, which can pair well with attacking ourselves. If something someone says leaves us feeling embarrassed, self conscious and vulnerable, we may reassess the reality by asking ourselves some version of shame’s favorite question - “What is wrong with me?”. This can leave us feeling worse, which can perpetuate the spiral of shame and further disconnection in our relationships. This can be a difficult place to find ourselves, as withdrawal and isolation are of course antitheses to building connection.
Still, reacting to shame by withdrawing can sometimes feel like the safest thing for us ,which can feel like a solid reason for continuing this behavior. However, it’s helpful to remember that there are many reactions that feel helpful in the moment, but aren’t in our best interests when meeting our needs (like a need for connection with others!).
Denial
The human brain’s primary goal, in any situation, is to keep us safe and alive. Sometimes shame can be so painful, uncomfortable and overwhelming that our brain feels it has no choice but to shut down. This can look like dissociation, chronic feelings of numbness or emptiness, attempts at avoidance, and substance misuse. We may try to cope with the source of our shame by denying how bad it really was or feels.
Reacting to shame with denial can make the feeling more tolerable, as we deny its existence within us, which can help us feel more in control. We know, of course, that this is a false sense of control because avoiding our feelings, no matter how painful they are, can lead to the feelings becoming exacerbated overtime. This can also lead to a further need to deny, thus leading to a cycle of shame and denial.
Another form of a denial reaction to shame can be what’s known as the Fawn response. Overtime, dissociation and other forms of denial can cause us to lose access to a wide range of our emotions, even the good feeling ones! When we lose access to an emotion like anger, which can be a cue that we have been wronged or hurt, it can become really hard to respond in a way that is beneficial for us in the long term. Especially when we feel shame around something that happened to us in our own families and especially when there are familial and cultural beliefs around what it means to stay connected with others, even at your own expense. It’s important to remember that chronic shame and responding with denial can be a result of intergenerational trauma, as shame beliefs and reactions are often passed down generationally.
In turn, we may work to maintain connection with those who have hurt us, even when we know that what they have done is wrong. This can look like chronic people pleasing and self abandonment. This can lead to us feeling confused about what happened to us and how we feel about it, and can further Shame because while we may be denying the impact or even existence of the shame we feel, the shame persists within us and can feel like a really difficult cycle to get out of.
How to practice changing our reactions to shame
So how do we begin to change how we are reacting with shame? As always, acknowledging can be the first step towards change. The next time you notice yourself reacting by attacking yourself or others, withdrawing, or denying, practice nonjudgmentally asking yourself - “What was happening for me right before I reacted this way?”. This can help to change the narrative and any stigma we may hold about what it means to feel shame.
Once we start paying closer attention to some of the physical, nonverbal cues of shame, we can begin to notice and accept where shame exists in our bodies. By noticing this, we can then practice responding differently to the shame we are feeling. Some common nonverbal, physical markers of shame include:
A feeling of being vaguely or profoundly uncomfortable in your body
Blushing/flushed face
Muscle tension
Sweating
Feeling shy and pulling away
Freezing up
Tight throat
Finding it hard to breathe
Looking away, having trouble keeping eye contact
Feeling like the bottom is falling out from underneath you
A pit in your stomach
Once we start to notice our markers for shame, we can start to practice tapping into our resilience. You can use shame as a marker for discomfort and vulnerability, so that rather than putting yourself or others down, rather than continuing to withdraw or feel the need to deny, you can step into a place where you can comfort yourself and move through the feeling.
This can look like acknowledging where the Shame is in your body (i.e. “I’m noticing my throat is tightening up right now”), reminding yourself what you have learned about shame (“This is shame coming up for me, I’m used to feeling this way after I make a mistake”), and then offering some words of encouragement (“It’s okay to feel this way sometimes. This mistake doesn’t say anything about who I am as a person. I’m capable of handling this feeling”). You may also find it helpful to practice physically softening the places in your body that you are feeling shame.
Through this process, you can practice responding to shame in a way that allows the feeling to be felt and then released. Doing so can help to build resilience, which is a great antidote to shame and can also help you build emotion regulation. Overtime, this can help you communicate your feelings and experiences with yourself and others with whom you feel safe, decreasing the need to react by attacking, withdrawing or denying. Practicing a mindful response to shame, rather than reacting to it in a way that can keep you disconnected from yourself and others, can help to heal chronic shame, and better your relationships!
At Stephanie Martinez Therapy, I can help you learn more about the role that chronic shame has played in your life, how you may be reacting with shame, and examine how shame has impacted your relationship with yourself and those closest to you. Together, we can help you heal from chronic shame and learn to process difficult feelings and emotions more mindfully and wisely!