Healing Shame

Shame is one of the most powerful and negatively impactful experiences a human can have.  Shame is traumatic.  It evokes aversive feelings of powerlessness, painful body sensations (cringing, nausea, muscle tensions), and a strong impulse to run away and hide.  We tend to remember experiences that gave rise to shame:  humiliations, exposure of desires deemed socially unacceptable, trauma.  The experience of shame can resonate over a lifetime.  Shame can shape our perceptions of ourselves and others, and it can shape the decisions we make over the course of our lives.  Shame exposes vulnerabilities that we want to protect. 

In my view, shame’s most significant impact centers on its ability to shape identity.  Shame is reflected in negative core beliefs we hold about ourselves.  In therapy, I hear shame when clients say “I am flawed, I am worthless, I am unlovable.” These beliefs are often at the heart of depressive and anxiety disorders.

Shame is not the same thing as guilt.  Guilt is specific to a situation and arises when you engage a behavior that violates a rule or a standard you hold for yourself.  Shame, on the other hand, is more global:  shame centers on identity (“I do bad things because I am a bad person” or “I feel bad because I am defective person.”)  As such, shame can create self-punishing cognitive loops where you ruminate on your perceived flaws.

Shame often leads us to believe that our condition is permanent and unchanging.  While we can atone and move on when we feel guilty, we find it difficult to move out of shame.  Indeed, moving out of shame is much harder because it involves modifying beliefs about who we are.

Tough as it is, shame can be healed, and taking action is key to healing it.  Here are a few steps you can take toward healing shame:

1.       Take a deep breath and face whatever it is that makes you uncomfortable.  The discomfort will not be permanent. Trying to run away or deny your feelings may serve to shield you from discomfort in the short-term but will haunt you over the long-term. Feelings are not permanent and indeed come and go on their own.  Remember:  you are bigger than your feelings and therefore have the power to manage them.

2.       Practice “radical acceptance.”  Radical acceptance is not the same as passive resignation.  Rather, radical acceptance says “this is how it I feel now, and I aspire to change.”  Radical acceptance is an active first step toward reclaiming your power. 

3.       Be mindful about living in the present.  Ask yourself:  “what is really happening RIGHT NOW?  Am I adding a story about being shamed to what is happening right now?  Am I behaving this way because I was shamed in the past“? Whatever happened that shamed you is over—it’s in the past.  Your past need not dictate the decisions you make for the present.  And know that past-present mindfulness will be a life-long practice that can inoculate you against being paralyzed by shame.

4.       Focus your attention away from preoccupations about yourself.  Engage in an activity that is playful or that gives you pleasure.  Reach out to others who can give you emotional support.

5.       Honor your feelings, especially anger.  The experience of humiliation, of being disempowered, of unwanted exposure can also evoke anger.  Well-understood and well-channeled anger can be a course of healthy power and activism. 

6.       Be tender and compassionate with yourself.  Since shame tends to make us alert to our vulnerabilities, it is important to be aware of those vulnerabilities and respond to them with gentleness and love.

7.       Seek help.  Healing traumatic shame—working through the intense emotions that characterize shame and modifying beliefs about your self--is not easy because its impact is far-reaching.  The practice of mindful awareness, evaluating and challenging those beliefs, and de-coupling past from the present is hard work, but work that can be facilitated by a competent therapist. 

You need not be dominated by shame.  It need not define who you are.  Take control and heal.

Why Be Perfect When You Can Be Good Enough?

I recently read a fascinating book on creativity:  Imagination in Action, by Shaun McNiff (Shambhala Publications, 2015).  While the book has much to offer in the way of developing one’s creativity and therapeutic value of making art, McNiff noted that perfectionism is often one of the blocks to fulfilling creative potential.  He then went on to offer an insight that resonated with me:  pessimism is "a close cousin" to perfectionism (p.191).  Although it’s not a new idea, the relationship between perfectionism and pessimism is a fascinating and important one. 

Perfectionism manifests in many ways:  reaching for the perfect body, the perfect relationship, having the perfect career, completing job tasks perfectly, acing the test, creating the "perfect life".  The fantasy of perfection includes notions about a carefree life of ease which will last forever.  Of course, such ease is fleeting, and when life intervenes and things change, you're back to pursuing a new goal that will be more perfect than the last.  Reaching for perfection usually creates stress, especially when success is equated with perfection and you cannot be satisfied with any other outcome.  It can be exhausting--just ask any perfectionist.  

However, perfectionism doesn’t have to be bad.  Some psychologists differentiate between adaptive perfectionists—those people who can accept small flaws or mistakes while continuing to see their overall efforts as successful—and maladaptive perfectionists—those people who are overly critical when they make mistakes, are excessively concerned with the expectations and achievements of others, and are critical of the overall quality of their efforts.  As you might expect, the line between adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism is usually blurry.

Significantly, perfectionism is a often strategy of avoidance:  the perfectionist constantly strives for what ‘could be’ while often dismissing what is.  Ironically, perfectionists demands total commitment, total engagement in order to achieve a very specific, but usually elusive, ill-defined and sometimes irrational goal.  Moreover, the standards of “perfection” are ever-evolving, which, on another level, underscores the truth that perfection is socially constructed and doesn’t exist outside the human mind.  

Perfectionism is ultimately driven by fear:  fear of making a mistake; fear of failure; fear of being humiliated.

Many clients I see talk about their struggles with perfectionism, the belief that “I must be perfect in order to feel good about myself, to be accepted, to belong, to be loved.”  And often at the core of perfectionism is the painful belief that “I am inadequate; I am flawed.”  Striving to be perfect, then, protects you from that negative belief:  “if I’m perfect, no one will see how flawed I really am.”  The trouble is this: failure to achieve that elusive standard of perfection—and being seen as flawed—is catastrophic in the mind of the perfectionist, leading to self-denigrating thoughts,  withdrawal and hopelessness—a sure recipe for depression.

So, the very heart of perfectionism is pessimistic:  “Reality is not good enough, I’m not good enough.”  And because perfection is impossible and accepted notions of perfection change, pursuing perfection cab eventually lead to becomes to another pessimistic thought: “why bother? I’ll just fail again.”  

Having aspirations to grow and achieve is healthy.  Striving to achieve perfection—holding yourself to impossibly high expectations while being highly self-critical and unforgiving—is not. 

As a recovering perfectionist myself, I’ve learned to embrace being ‘good enough’:  you do your best, acknowledge when your efforts miss the mark, and try to improve the next time.  It’s also helpful to let go of trying to control for a very specific outcome.  Similarly, it’s helpful to distinguish between having aspirations and striving for perfection.  In short, be gentle with yourself. 

When you’re good enough, you give your best effort and are mindful of several thoughts:

·       Perfect according to who?  Whose voice speaks when you tell yourself you MUST be perfect?  Chances are you’ve learned about being perfect from someone.  No one is born with ideas about being perfect. 

·       Perfect does not exist.  Perfection is an idea, not a reality. 

·       Everyone makes mistakes.  It is part of being human.  When you accept your mistakes, you accept your humanity.  Learn to forgive your mistakes and move on.

·       When you make a mistake, look at it as an opportunity to learn and improve. In 12-step meetings, you often hear the slogan “progress, not perfection.”  Wise people remember and practice this.

·       What would you say to a friend who berates herself about her failures?  Practice using the same language on yourself.

·       Keep the bigger picture in mind.  Perfection tends to narrow your focus.  Broadening your perspective can help you discern the line between having aspirations and being perfect.

·       When you meet a high standard of achievement, celebrate it. And then move on.

Be patient with yourself.  It took time to develop the maladaptive perfectionist mindset, and it will take time to learn a more adaptive one.  Therapy can help.