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.
Tags: shame, toxic shame, unhealthy shame