Don’t be held captive by toxic shame

Jun 30, 2023

By Carmel Dominic
Do you suffer from shame? Or a constant sense of anxiety about how people perceive you? Or maybe a complete and utter sense of unworthiness no matter how well you do in life? And you wonder if something is wrong with you since you have been struggling with this feeling for as long as you can remember. You’re never truly satisfied or happy and deep down, you wonder what it would be like to be contented with life. If I just described you, or someone you know or love, take courage. By the love and grace of God, this mental trap can be broken. Just keep reading.

The condition is called toxic shame. It is a little-known mental condition that affects everyone to varying degrees. Toxic shame is a deeply felt belief that there is something wrong with the person that originates from conception. Psychology has proven that a developing foetus can recognise sounds that they hear while still in the womb once they are born. The concept applies to the emotions of a foetus too.

A developing foetus can feel a mother’s emotions and assume it’s own. So, if the mother has feelings of unworthiness or insecurity, the foetus will feel it too. While the mother can understand why she feels the way she is, the foetus does not. Therefore, in its simple and primitive attempt to understand why it’s feeling the way it is, it too will think of itself as unworthy and inherit the mother’s insecurity. This is called introjection, as the baby is projecting its mother’s feelings and not its own.

Furthermore, if at birth, the baby is surrounded and raised in constant negativity, like being subjected to corporal punishment with no explanation, the distinct lack of verbal and physical affection, being compared to peers, and the absence of debriefing (to ask what’s bothering the child) will simply reinforce its initial primitive feeling of unworthiness.

Truth be told, this writer had no clue toxic shame was a mental condition and I have a degree in Psychology. It was through a webinar by the Archdiocesan Mental Health Ministry, Archdiocese of Kuala Lumpur (AMHM) that I became aware of it. The webinar was by Gerard Koe, a senior family counsellor with 22 years of experience under his belt, specialised in counselling on various addictions.

He is a Malaysian currently based in CatholicCare, Victoria, Australia. Gerard holds that, because we are not mindful of ourselves and are so preoccupied with satisfying our egos, we do not examine our hearts, mind, and behaviour as often as we should. This, in turn, creates mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual traps. Gerard also firmly believes that if one were to walk hand in hand with the Lord and do the work that is needed, healing and breakthrough is possible. According to Gerard, there are two kinds of shame - toxic and healthy. Healthy shame is good because we know we have done wrong and it provides us the motivation needed to change and make amends. Toxic shame, as explained above, can subtly or overtly affect our relationships throughout our lives. It is also directly related to addictive behaviour as addiction provides an avenue for one to escape all the negative feelings that one feels so strongly. Toxic shame can occur in any social stature and culture.

There were two webinar sessions on this topic and I realised that there were many phases in my life that I experienced or suffered from toxic shame. And the sad realisation is that some of my relationships with the people around me were affected.

There is still some degree of toxic shame in my life, but it is manageable. I didn’t realise that it was due to toxic shame, I just acknowledged that the way I reacted and responded to certain situations in my life was due to my negative thoughts and emotions. I learned to look inwards (self-reflection) because I wanted to understand myself better and grow as a person. By doing this, I became aware of myself and learnt how to internalise and regulate my emotions before responding. This also taught me to check myself before checking others (Matt 7: 3-5) if found in a sticky situation.

Also, as I came of age, I began observing my environment and the people in it, how they react, handle situations, and come to conclusions. As a millennial (1982-1994), I was raised by parents and grandparents who were born between the 1920s to the 1960s. I believe I can speak for most millennials and safely say that gentle parenting was certainly not an option. We got our behinds whopped and were yelled at whenever our elders were upset with us. Our feelings were secondary. The only thing that mattered to those who raised us was that we become valuable and useful members of society, come what may. This is because our elders were raised in that same manner and either didn’t want to be the ones to break the cycle or saw nothing wrong in that manner of upbringing.

While their intentions and hearts were in the right place, more often than not, it resulted in us having some strong, negative feelings about ourselves, in addition to the negative feelings we developed as thefoetus. For example, as a child, I was always compared to my friends and my cousins. It just seemed that nothing I did or achieved was ever good enough to win my parent's approval. They were always more polite, more intelligent, more well-behaved than I was. I used to feel very inadequate. But in reality, I was just being me. I was able to hold conversations with people and have a hearty laugh. I didn’t get straight A’s like them and I was sociable. Later in life, I learnt that I am an extrovert, thus providing clarity on why I was the way I was. I had nothing to be ashamed about. I was, in fact, normal.

The only issue was that my parents lacked understanding that girls aren’t always quiet and soft-spoken. I didn’t fit into their template of what society dictated how a girl should be, so I was shamed, because they believed they were doing the right thing as parents. It took me a long time to understand my parent’s point of view and love myself because I thought something was wrong with me. The day I did, I felt liberated.

According to Gerard, some other symptoms of toxic shame are anxiety about public speaking, anxiety about meeting people, particularly new people, looking people in the eye, aggression, and dominating behaviour and people-pleasing. Some are also always comparing their circumstances in a degrading manner, always competing, have a largely pessimistic outlook on life, constantly worrying/ imagining worst-case scenarios, with a constant need for reassurance.

Then, some are constantly doubting people, are oversensitive to people’s remarks, are secretive, needy, have a high need to control people and situations, allow themselves to be dominated/exploited/taken advantage of, are excessively self-centred, have excessive emotional reactions, possess a distinct lack or overt sense of entitlement, and have the need to cover one’s poor sense of worth with a cloak of extreme ideology in politics and/or religion, (false sense of self) and suffer from imposter syndrome. I can say for certain I have experienced at least three of the symptoms besides the one I already mentioned.

In the webinar, Gerard quoting Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, who is known for his work in child development, said that children under 12 are not able to comprehend things as adults do. They are simplistic and literal. Children only develop sufficient neuron activity between the ages of 11 to 12. Before this, children will interject and incorporate primitive thoughts and beliefs into their developing sense of self. Due to this, they have simplistic conclusions - that they are the ones in the wrong and are unworthy and they are the reason bad things are happening in their lives. These negative thoughts get more and more concrete in their minds as they age because they are not told otherwise. This process is called the Myelin thought process.

Every negative thought forms a layer in their mind and as time passes, the layers grow, further grounding the belief that they are unworthy and useless. This consolidates toxic shame in a person. Gerard also said that unmanaged toxic shame could lead to chronic stress, contribute to declining physical health, and disturbs our sleep pattern.

Undoing the damage
Now not all is lost, dear readers. We worship a God that is Almighty, All-Knowing and All-Healing. He is good, loving and merciful. First, we must acknowledge that we have experienced toxic shame and must want to change and undo the emotional and mental damage and live the life Christ intended for us as stated in John 10:10 - The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. But the work is hard and you need to enlist the help of a professional, like a therapist and maybe consider a spiritual director like a priest, to journey with you through this healing process. Gerard has some helpful suggestions on how to undo the damage based on his years of experience as a counsellor.

You can start by being mindful of your thoughts and behaviour, because when you’re mindful, you can nip the thought in the bud. Understand that your thoughts fuel your emotions. Secondly, train yourself to think and observe - the thinking self and the observing self. The thinking self-deals with the reality of life but if subjected to trauma, it can be obsessed with negative thoughts that could eventually lead to bad habits.

It will take time, but learn to manage your thinking mind. The observing self on the other hand, notices things as they happen. It seeks to know and understand and sees a bigger picture. When it dominates, good things happen because there is some sense of clarity.

Be aware of how you react and respond to situations. Fortify yourself with self-observation and its power because all negative thoughts and emotions can be arrested at this stage. Be honest with yourself. The healing process will not happen overnight, so be patient with yourself and trust the process. Above all else, pray and ask for the Holy Spirit to help you with this process.

Thirdly, regulate your breathing. As you breathe, observe with all your five senses, but don’t analyse anything, just observe without reacting. Don’t judge and be compassionate with whatever you observe. This brings about calmness. Learning how to observe allows a person to discover in the deepest manner how the inner child was hurt and you will instinctively know how to comfort yourself. Acknowledge the pain you are feeling and comfort yourself in a healthy way, like eating an ice-cream. When there is no reaction and judgment, there will be less anxiety and insecurity. Self-love heals the wounds of the inner child.

Once you have started the healing process and you get triggered, you will have good control of yourself and be able to assess if it’s a real danger or just trauma. Acknowledge that the feeling is real but that the threat is not. Consciously slow down your breathing and repeat the statement - the feeling is real but the threat is not. As you ‘rewire’ yourself, feed yourself with positive and self-affirming thoughts. Write them down and read and repeat them every day.

Toxic shame dies and true self love shines. Jesus loves us and desires to have a relationship with us, therefore you can be assured that if you seek Him, you will find Him. When we find/experience Jesus, then we have a shift in ourselves and see ourselves in a different light. (Matt 11:28-30) When Jesus touches the soul, the scales fall off and you see yourself as He sees you. And everything else that is not of Him dies and you will be made whole.