MAKING SENSE OF SHAME
The Experience of Shame
Understanding shame can be an important step in addressing many voice and communication challenges. So what is shame? People experience it in different ways, but the core of shame is a profoundly uncomfortable experience that goes something like this:
I’m not acceptable (to others/to myself) as I am—there’s something wrong with me.
For some people, this experience is more or less constant. For others, it’s occasional and context dependent. For some people, the shame experience is vivid. For others, it’s vague yet somehow familiar.
Regardless of how it shows up in the present, shame is often rooted in early experiences.
The early shame experiences that most significantly shaped people’s sense of themselves—and their sense of how the world sees them—are so uncomfortable that recalling them in the present can be difficult. People often use a lot of energy trying to hide their sense of shame from themselves and the world. As a result, even though shame is such a powerful experience that affects most of us at least some of the time, many of us don’t know much about it.
Since shame, and how it shows up in the present, can be so unfamiliar and confusing, it might help to consider some of the specific dynamics involved. Here are some of the common experiences people have when experiencing shame:
Mind: thoughts can be jumbled, fragmented, fast, or disappear entirely. Focus can be difficult, narrow, or spacey. Self-judgment can be very strong.
Emotions: emotions can disappear, be felt with no clear association to anything, or seem overwhelming. A general sense of dread can emerge.
Body: movement can stop or become challenging. The spine can collapse or becomes rigid. The eyes can become tight or unreceptive. It can be hard to breathe.
Physical Sensations: the flow of physical sensations can cease, or sensations can be uncomfortably heightened in specific areas of the body.
Social engagement: speaking and other forms of expressivity, as well as receptivity to the world, can be highly constrained. Instead, there can be a strong sense of wanting to hide or disappear, or a strong sense of needing to push through.
People most commonly react to shame by trying to be small or invisible in the presence of others, or they avoid the contexts altogether in which they could feel shame.
There are variations in which people react to shame by getting aggressive: I will not feel this way; I will not allow others to make me feel this way. I will fight to be heard and to win. This kind of reaction is often accompanied by a need to dominate, to be superior, or to be right.
There’s another variation of shame that isn’t so much focused on becoming small or large, but is about becoming acceptable, correct, excellent, perfect… I will become the thing that works, and I will not allow other parts of me to be seen.
Shame Is Not Guilt
Shame can be truly destructive in various ways. But often it was the only available response for someone to deal with a truly overwhelming situation. In such a situation, in a blunt force kind of way, shame offered something positive. For example, if I am very young and unthinkingly stab my friend with a fork, and I am shamed for it, shame can stop me in my tracks and discourage me from ever doing that again. Going forward, this shame can help me avoid future punishment and social rejection. (On a larger scale, shame can enable groups to function in similar ways.)
But there’s a ceiling to how helpful shame can be in the moment, and a very, very large long-term cost. So it may be worth thinking of shame as a self-protective response that is trying to be helpful—that can potentially be helpful in the moment without actually being helpful over the course of time. Differentiating shame and guilt at this point will make it clearer why:
Guilt is connected to someone’s actions.
Shame is connected to someone’s core identity or being.
I could feel guilt, for instance, about stabbing my friend with a fork. And while extremely uncomfortable, this would almost certainly be a helpful connection to make: stabbing my friend harms him; so I won’t do it.
Shame, on the other hand, cuts more deeply: if I even feel an impulse to be aggressive, let alone feel an impulse to stab my friend, I am unacceptably bad. There is something fundamentally wrong with me.
One of the main reasons shame can be so problematic is that our thoughts, feelings, and impulses to act are most often involuntary, and out of our control. To feel shame about them is to feel terrible about parts of ourselves that are out of our control. On the other hand, some aspects of our behavior are, at least to some extent, within our control. To feel guilt is to feel terrible about actions that may be within our power to change.
Potentially Helpful Shame vs Unhelpful Shame
Here are some examples of how shame can be potentially helpful in the moment, and how it can be unhelpful over time:
• Aggression:
Potentially helpful shame might stop me from stabbing my friend, harming him, and being shunned.
Unhelpful shame might make me believe that the aggressive impulses I feel, whether or not I follow them, are inherently bad.
• Desire:
Potentially helpful shame might stop me from stealing and being shunned for it.
Unhelpful shame might make me believe that any desire I feel, whether or not I follow it, is inherently bad.
• Body:
Potentially helpful shame might encourage me to exercise.
Unhelpful shame might make me feel I am inherently ugly or undesirable.
• Speech
Potentially helpful shame might encourage me to finally speak up.
Unhelpful shame might make me assume, regardless of what’s true, that people are judging me negatively when I’m speaking.
• Achievement (1)
Potentially helpful shame might make me prepare intensely for a talk that I’ll be giving to a group (so I’ll do a good job and won’t embarrass myself).
Unhelpful shame might make me unable to be present with the group, or some of my key ideas, when I’m actually giving the talk.
• Achievement (2)
Potentially helpful shame might make me feel that some or all of the work I do isn’t good enough—or that I’m not as accomplished as my peers—so that I work very hard and achieve a significant amount of success in my work.
Unhelpful shame might make me unable to enjoy my success and instead focus on the need for greater success—or make me unable to speak confidently with groups of other successful people because I don’t feel good enough about who I am.
• Achievement (3)
Potentially helpful shame might motivate me to imagine the great things I could do (that I sense, consciously or unconsciously, could stop me from feeling bad about myself).
Unhelpful shame might prevent me from taking the initiative to do anything meaningful—or make me give up part way through—because of my sense that my accomplishments won’t be good enough.
• Achievement (4)
So far, all of the examples are of something directed toward me. Now let’s look at one in which I shame someone else: With the best of intentions, to help my children be successful, I may try to motivate them to present well to the world by telling them that they are flawed, that they are not good enough. And this potentially helpful shame might motivate them to act.
However, the unhelpful shame they experience might make them feel bad about themselves and place a very low ceiling on how well they can present/communicate with others.
Shame is Relational and Becomes Internalized
Shame originates between people. More specifically, people initially feel shame in relation to others' expressed or implicit negative sense about them.
When children experience shame, they can’t take themselves out of it. If adults don’t know how to take children out of a shame experience, children internalize it. Then in future situations, this internalized shame can arise again.
Experiences in the present—that evoke old internalized shame—may involve shaming that is happening in the present. That said, there doesn’t need to be any shaming happening in the present to evoke internalized shame. Instead, internalized shame arises when something in the present is perceived, often unconsciously, as somehow reminiscent of the original shaming.
Once shame is internalized, it’s unconsciously projected onto others: so people with internalized shame begin to sense—regardless of what might be true for others—that others’ feelings toward them are negative, unwelcoming, or could become so at any time or could become so in certain contexts.
People can unconsciously project their internalized shame onto others who are close to them and onto total strangers—onto groups they are speaking in, onto authority figures, onto colleagues, onto family members, etc.
At some point, people learn to shame themselves. In other words, no one else need be present for shame to reemerge and have an impact.
Once people have internalized shame—regardless of whether their reaction is to try to become small or incredibly large, or to become “correct,” “acceptable,” “perfect,” etc.—it’s easy to keep re-shaming themselves. And as past shame experiences play out in the present, the difficultly experienced in the present reinforces the internalized shame.
Chronic Versus Occasional Shame
By the time people become young adults, they often have internalized a lot of shame—usually without realizing it—at a cost to their sense of well being, and to their expressivity, receptivity, and ability to communicate.
Internalized shame can be chronic for people—becoming a part of their sense of reality, their sense of identity, their sense of how the world views them—and show up in many or all contexts they find themselves in.
Internalized shame can also depend on context and arise only occasionally. Specific stressful situations in people’s work, or in their personal lives, can evoke internalized shame and generate anxiety, sometimes to the point of panic and disassociation.
To understand this more fully, it may help to understand just a few basics about the nervous system.
The Nervous System
The nervous system receives and interprets stimuli, and based on those interpretations, regulates our internal functioning (including all manner of basic and higher level functions) and our behavior (such as movement of the body and speech).
You can think of your nervous system as having accelerators and brakes that help you deal with different circumstances. When you’re with people and you’re feeling truly safe, for example, the parts of your nervous system responsible for social engagement will come online—you’ll have the ability to be both expressive (made possible by the accelerator) and relaxed (made possible by the brake).
If you perceive a threat, and attempts at social engagement don’t help, your fight or flight threat response comes online as an accelerator that helps you engage with the threat.
If fight or flight doesn’t work to deal with the threat, the intensity of the threat response increases, and as a last resort your nervous system applies a different kind of threat response: freeze. Freeze is a brake that helps you deal with the threat by shutting parts of your system down.
Imagine, for instance, that someone is attacked by a bear. Freeze in such a situation is highly functional. Not only does it diminish the intensity of the person's experience, but it may also fool the bear into thinking the person is dead. (The bear may then leave long enough for the person to return to fight or flight and make an escape…)
Shame is a type of freeze response: a brake that helps people shut down under certain highly charged, threatening circumstances. This response is genuinely useful at times. At the same time, if it becomes internalized, it can severely limit freedom and effectiveness of expression over time.
The Effect of Shame on Voice and Communication
Shame can affect so many areas of voice and communication, sometimes chronically, sometimes just in specific contexts. For example:
• Social Engagement / Presence
People may become overly aware of mistakes and struggle to be “correct.” This can reinforce self-consciousness, behaviors such as stuttering, or experiences such as blanking out or becoming tight.
People’s desire to engage with others can be constrained, which may lead them to avoid some social situations, or to avoid communicating in some contexts
People may communicate without being receptive to others; in some cases, they may literally not perceive others (or not perceive some others) as they communicate. This can limit their ability, for instance, to deeply engage a group.
People may feel they need to hide even as they’re communicating. They may protect themselves by trying to become invisible or by taking up less space or time (cf Patsy Rodenburg’s first circle). Alternatively, they may try to protect themselves with a kind of bluster (cf Rodenburg’s third circle).
People may feel they almost always need to defend themselves or their point of view, or that others almost always disrespect or don’t care about them.
People’s confidence, authenticity, and presence can all be constrained. This then gets communicated to others with verbal and non-verbal cues.
• Emotions
Shame can shut down access to pleasurable feelings, and to feelings of all kinds that may seem wrong. This can disconnect feeling from speech.
People may seem to be flat or disinterested as they communicate.
• Body / Breathing
People often slump when experiencing shame. Alternatively, they may search for "perfect" posture (or exercise in ways that make their bodies more rigid and armored). These can all be communicated as non-verbal cues.
Shame causes people to constrict their breathing, or to control their breathing in other ways. It can also cause parts of the body to numb out. This also can be expressed in non-verbal cues.
• Vocal Quality / Resonance
People may sound monotone or weak. Alternatively, they may sound bombastic.
They may hold their voice back. Or try to make it very big.
People may chronically tighten and/ or slacken muscles in ways that hinder their speaking.
• Articulation
People may sometimes mumble so as not to be heard—or mumble because they don’t perceive others when they speak—or overemphasize correctness of pronunciation.
• Dialects / Accents
People are more likely to want to eradicate their own native accents/dialects, or to view others’ as superior (or inferior) to their own.
• Power Dynamics
Shame plays a role in influencing status relationships between individuals, and among individuals in groups.
When people have a lot of internalized shame, it’s also much easier for them to shame others consciously and (more often) unconsciously.
• Communication
People may be reluctant to speak, to sing, or to make any sound at all.
Shame specifically shuts down vagus nerve pathways to the viscera, the throat, and the face. This can make it much harder to speak or sing with a strong sense of presence.
People are more likely to believe that others are not interested in what they have to communicate, or worse. This then affects how they communicate (and how they are received).
In this state, any kind of feedback—negative, neutral, or even positive—can reinforce shame.
Helpful and Unhelpful Goals that Arise from Shame
• Some activities that have obvious value can at times also be rife with shame. Take, for example, exercise. Exercise can support health, pleasure, engagement, looking good, etc. At the same time, at almost every gym, there are people who are working out to armor themselves against the experience of shame.
• The fields of voice, public speaking, and communication are similar: coaching can support people in having greater connection with themselves and with others, less stress, greater facility with communication, and greater vibrancy, ease, and aliveness in expression. At the same time, if we don’t take care, the goals we aspire to can sometimes unconsciously reinforce shame and negatively affect our experience and communication. Because of this, it’s important to stay curious about what we’re doing and why.
Working with Shame
I hope it’s clear that some challenges with voice and communication can be related to internalized shame. Even though it’s so prevalent, most people don’t understand what shame is, how it functions, or how to recognize it in their own experience.
It’s really hard to address something if you don’t know that it exists.
If after reading through this, you sense that shame may be affecting you, remember that shame is a self-protective response. Even if it’s not helping you in the present, the shame response is trying to be helpful. Understanding this, and relating with it from this perspective, is a really useful foundation for future work. And fortunately, as you get to know shame, it’s possible to work with it in ways that are truly transformative.*
Materials for Further Exploration
Pocket Guide to Polyvagal Theory, by Stephen Porges
https://www.amazon.com/Pocket-Guide-Polyvagal-Theory-Transformative/dp/0393707873
Porges is a scientist who wrote a book that sparked a whole field of inquiry into the relationship between the nervous system and trauma. This version of that book is simplified and intended for lay people.
In an Unspoken Voice, by Peter Levine.
https://www.amazon.com/Unspoken-Voice-Releases-Restores-Goodness/dp/B075ZBF3S9/
Book about the effects of various kinds of trauma and ways trauma can be digested and healed. Makes use of Polyvagal theory.
The Second Circle, by Patsy Rodenburg
https://www.amazon.com/Second-Circle-Positive-Success-Situation-dp-0393345904/dp/0393345904
Book about presence by a voice and acting coach.
Video of Stephen Porges
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kntgKn54jX4
A 2-minute video of Porges talking about the vagus nerve and facial and vocal enervation:
Video about Polyvagal theory and healing
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wmm-Sl5U3lY
A 12-minute video about the foundations and significance of polyvagal theory for healing.
TED Talk by Brene Brown — Listening to Shame
https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame?language=en
Article
https://healthypsych.com/branching-out-toward-a-new-model-of-trauma-recovery-with-polyvagal-theory/
A brief article that touches on the broader subject
* There are a lot of different contexts in which you can learn to work well with shame, depending on why you’re wanting to do so. Therapy, coaching, the expressive arts, developing good and intimate connections with people—all these and more are possible. If shame feels relevant to you, I encourage you to find the contexts in which (and the people with whom) you want to learn.
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