Healing Toxic Shame
Toxic shame is defined as a chronic feeling of wrongness and worthlessness that lives deep within the unconscious mind. Its like a chronic, pervasive feeling of shame that dulls and dampens our experience and causes us to hide and be small in a myriad of ways. Its different from regular shame which is a temporary emotion that is a response to a particular situation and goes away after a short period of time. In my coaching practice I have come to see toxic shame as one of the main things that prevents people from living in their full soul expression and sharing their gifts with the world.
Toxic shame is a horrible thing to suffer from. If you know, you know. It feels like straight shit. It zaps your energy. It makes you want to hide and just kind of crawl into a ball for long periods of time. Many suffer from it for decades without realizing that it is plaguing them so Ive found even the awareness and naming of toxic shame can be liberating in its own way.
Beyond its naming, I believe theres an insight about toxic shame that contains the key to freedom from it:
Toxic shame is an internalization of a wrongness that was done to you.
Lets first look at the falsity present in the story of toxic shame before we get into the liberating nature of the truth on the other side. Toxic shame tells a very damaging lie and that lie is that the wrongness lies in you. This lie says that the feeling of wrongness or badness is something about who you fundamentally are. But the truth is that it has nothing to do with who you are. It has everything to do with what was done to you. The act of shaming a child repeatedly to the point that the child develops a chronic feeling of worthless and wrongness is what is wrong. The conditions that lead to toxic shame is what is bad. Not you.
Healing from toxic shame requires that you own, feel and express your anger towards the people (and possibly institutions or groups) who created the conditions that led you to develop toxic shame. We suffer from toxic shame when that anger is internalized and turned towards the self. You must redirect that anger towards those who committed the wrong act of shaming you and hurting you. How dare those adults psychologically harm the child that you once were time and time again? How dare that institution, church, or cult make you feel like you were the wrong one?
If you suffer from toxic shame you can visualize yourself taking that anger and negative energy that is directed inward and turning it outward to those who abused and wronged you. Take it out of your body. You are un-internalizing the wrongness that was done to you. Internalization is what causes the suffering so a reversal of this internalization is what frees you.
I hope it goes without saying that this is not permission to unload years of pain onto people and hurt those who wronged you. There are healthy and constructive ways to express and release anger such as journaling, punching pillows, screaming into pillows, punching a punching bag or shaking. (I dont have a thing against pillows I promise, they just provide a soft space to move energy!). Healthy expressions of anger that allow you to fully feel and move the energy while not taking your pain out on anyone and causing more hurt are the expressions of anger that will liberate you from the constriction of toxic shame.
Despite what the voice of fear that desires to keep you small might say, you are not continuing the cycle of hurt when you healthily express anger. You are actually doing the necessary and sacred work to end the cycle. Anger is a result of a boundary being violated and being hurt to the point of developing toxic shame is a violation of our right to a full and vibrant existence.
Some are resistant to expressing this kind of anger but I’ve observed that those who are the most scared of owning this anger are usually the ones who struggle with toxic shame the most. The shame stays lodged in their system because the anger that should be directed at those who treated them unfairly stays internalized towards themselves. Feeling fear about expressing the emotions we have buried is normal. Bravery is feeling fear and doing the thing anyway. Healing requires a lot of moments of bravery.
Some resist un-internalizing this anger as they fear that it would prevent forgiveness of the those who hurt them. But true forgiveness of those who wronged you is only possible once you have fully felt and expressed this righteous anger. Premature forgiveness is often used as a defense mechanism to not feel the anger that needs to be felt and moved.
A helpful activity for this is to picture a young child being aggressively shamed and emotionally abused by the adults around them. How do you feel as you watch this? You probably feel a compassionate sadness for the child and a fiery anger towards the adults who are shaming this young innocent child.
Feeling that compassionate sadness and fiery, protective anger on behalf of your inner child is the road to healing.
Sending you so much Love,
Trace