JIM O'SHEA
Counselling Service

In my last post I have shown that toxic shame means being shamed to the core, so that it permeates and pollutes all other feelings, except rage. Now I would like to explore how we can become toxically shamed. Generally such shame is sown in us in our early childhood, and is reinforced as we grow through childhood, so that by the time we are adults it is ingrained in our core.

 As tiny babies we are totally dependent, and rely upon the love and affection of our parents, and particularly upon our mothers, who are our primary carers. I must emphasise that these contributionson on  shame are not exercises to blame parents. But, it is a fact that we learn from our parents, we imbibe their feelings, and if they are shame based we automatically absorb and internalise their shame. We can be shamed, in what psychologists call our family systems, in many ways.

 Enmeshment is one source of toxic shame, and sufferers of toxic shame from this source have no idea of why they are so unhappy at the core. They are unaware of an enmeshed relationship, and thus unaware that they have been shamed to the core by such a relationship. Interestingly the Dictionary of Psychology makes no reference to it. I only came to understand it as I was undergoing therapy for my counselling training, when my therapist used the imagery of the river being swallowed up as it enters the sea.

Shamed  children come from  families that are closed; families that are not emotionally lubricated, but remain stuck in an unloving and shaming atmosphere. Very often as the pain of toxic shame becomes intolerable, the family may turn on an individual member to vent their shame and relieve their pain.

When the child’s emotional needs are not met, and when the child becomes an adult, the child within the adult carries these same unmet needs. This needy child within the adult can never be emotionally satisfied, and can never satisfy his own children. As the child grows and leaves the home all the other systems (social, church, work etc.) only add to the shame that is at that unfortunate person’s core. In other words, we are formed by our childhood, our brain is programmed by the type of attachment to our primary caregiver. If that caregiver does not give us emotional warmth we feel unloved, and eventually unloveable.

It is important to recall that in the early stages of our lives, we learn from our parents. We are like sponges. Dr Margaret Paul explains that the feeling of shame comes from the feeling that there is something  wrong with us, that we are basically flawed, inadequate, wrong, bad, unimportant, undeserving, or not good enough. As a result of not feeling seen, loved, valued, and understood, we came to believe that we were not loved because there was something wrong with us. Lynne Namka says that shame gives us a ‘fundamental sense of inadequacy’.

 We learn our feelings, our behaviours, our boundaries (physical, emotional, intellectual), how to relate, our moral foundations, coping skills, and so on. But, shamed parents cannot do these, and thus cannot model them for their children. They are unable to give their children the emotional time that is required for the child’s needs, and for the child’s emotional development. They simply don’t know how. They are too focussed and preoccupied with their own mysterious pain. The child, therefore, is abandoned, and never learns the emotional comfort, and, indeed, the right to feel happy; and, in the future, cannot pass it on to their own children. It’s so sad.

toxic shame over  generations can be fuelled by family secrets. These may include suicides, addictions, incest, abortions, and other disasters. The closed family tries to keep them secret, and they create havoc in the family through the impact of the shame generated. Families automatically and subconsciously create defences to cope with this. Such defences may include the freezing or repression of feelings, denial, and even idealization of parents. The real difficulty arises because they are subconscious or unconscious, and so cannot be dealt with without the help of counselling and therapy.

For some reason ‘like often attracts like’, and it frequently happens that shame based people are attracted to each other, and form relationships. Thus toxic shame is at the core of their relationship, they tend to shame each other and are unable to show real intimacy. Their children are exposed (from the moment they open their eyes) to this shame-based environment. This will become clearer in a later post when I deal with the characteristics and behaviours of shame based people.

Fundamentally being enmeshed means losing one’s identity. The child’s identity becomes entangled with that of the parent. The child cannot learn proper boundaries, and suffers a loss of self-esteem. Self-esteem comes from a strong sense of identity and separateness. The child who has been enmeshed may suffer from toxic shame and may have a rage (people may refer to it as a temper) until the roots of the shame have been explored. Such rage will also spring from the subconscious feeling that an abuse has occurred. Nothing kindles rage as much as abuse.

 Lynn Namka examines other sources of shame caused by adults to children. She looks at parental withdrawal, favouring a sibling, having very high standards of behavior, and reacting with anger when the child fails to reach them. Shame is also sown in the child by punishing them for crying or for showing other forms of vulnerability, such as being in pain or distress. Sexual abuse is one of the greatest causes of shame, making the child feel dirty and bad, and the child can absorb the shame of the abuser.

These are easier to trace as sources of shame. They are self-evident. Enmeshment, however, is more difficult because it is more subtle. The child as an adult may remember being very much loved by the primary carer, and cannot understand why over-love breeds rage and shame.

I am an only child, and I don’t wish to generalise, but I am convinced that only children are more susceptible to enmeshment than children from larger families. Maggie Mamen, who has written on the ‘Spoilt Child Syndrome’ might disagree with this.  We often hear of such children being ‘spoiled’. The only child has the full focus of parental love. On the surface they can be over-loved, and this, of course, is very understandable. In reality, however, such over-love can be a parent having their needs met from their child. In this sense it is a form of abuse, albeit the parent or parents are totally unaware of the harm they are doing in terms of forming their child’s personality.

Now, the important thing to understand is that early separation from their parents, especially from the primary caregiver, is vital for a child. Children’s behaviour clearly illustrates this, and such separation should be in process by the time the child is 6 months old. The child will physically begin to move away from the parents at that age. He or she will begin to explore their own house, crawling into a room to investigate this new world, while at the same time crawling back to check if ‘mammy’ is still around. And so it goes, until the child eventually ventures into the big world, and someday moves away. if there are any only children out there, including older ones like myself (we are always children to our parents, even when middleaged ourselves!!!), perhaps you would like to comment. Have you been spoiled as a child? Over-indulged? Got everything you asked for? How has this affected you in your behaviour as an adult?

  I have shown that toxic shame means being shamed to the core, so that it permeates and pollutes all other feelings, except rage. Now I would like to explore how we can become toxically shamed. Generally such shame is sown in us in our early childhood, and is reinforced as we grow through childhood, so that by the time we are adults it is ingrained in our core. sometimes toxic shame is called core shame.

As tiny babies we are totally dependent, and rely upon the love and affection of our parents, and particularly upon our mothers, who are our primary carertakers. In that context, I must emphasise that i am not writing this  to blame parents. But, it is a fact that we learn from our parents, we imbibe their feelings, and if they are shame based we automatically absorb and internalise their shame. We can be shamed, in what psychologists call our family systems, in many ways.

Enmeshment is one source of toxic shame, and sufferers of toxic shame from this source have no idea of why they are so unhappy at the core. They are unaware of an enmeshed relationship, and thus unaware that they have been shamed to the core by such a relationship. Interestingly the Dictionary of Psychology makes no reference to it. I only came to understand it as I was undergoing therapy for my counselling training, when my therapist used the imagery of the river being swallowed up as it enters the sea. I will explain this further in my contribution next monday.