Many clients have begun their sessions with a heated, highly accusatory account of a recent marital spat; by blaming their spouse, they avoid taking any responsibility for what happened — their own insensitivity or hurtful behavior, for example. Described by psychologist John Bradshaw , author of the classic Healing the Shame that Binds You , toxic shame is the pervasive sense that one is essentially unworthy and unlovable, usually the result of childhood trauma or sexual abuse.
By contrast, productive shame focuses on discrete traits or behaviors rather than the entire person. Instead of making global statements about someone as completely worthless and irredeemable, productive shame leaves room for her to feel good about herself as a whole while also suggesting changes that might help her feel even better. Our evolutionary ancestors used shaming and shunning to encourage change, to help tribal members reform their transgressive behavior and then reintegrate.
Helpful shame always leaves room for improvement rather than making someone feel fundamentally worthless, with no hope for growth. For my clients, and for human beings everywhere, shame often has an important lesson to teach and can be a guide to personal growth. Shame sometimes tells us we need to pay attention and work harder. Rather than the divisive weapon it has become in partisan politics, shame continues to be an instructive tool on the personal level, helping us to grow and feel better about ourselves — provided we can listen to it.
Joseph Burgo has been practicing psychotherapy for more than 35 years. Do you have a story to share? Read our submission guidelines , and pitch us at firstperson vox. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding. Financial contributions from our readers are a critical part of supporting our resource-intensive work and help us keep our journalism free for all. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today to help us keep our work free for all.
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By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Why shame is good. Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. When shame is a force for good Shame plays a vital and constructive role in governing interpersonal relationships. How to tell if shame is productive or toxic In my work as a psychotherapist, I often encounter people who are grappling with shame in some form. People living with toxic shame often end up in toxic or troubled relationships. Patterns that resemble childhood circumstances can seem attractive, in part, because they seem to offer the opportunity to redo those early relationships and heal the pain they caused.
Allowing yourself to pursue fulfilling relationships with people who care about your well-being generally has more of a positive impact on your efforts to break free of toxic shame, however. It may take plenty of support and compassion from loved ones to rewrite deep-seated shame , but patience and self-compassion can make this possible. Sharing feelings of shame can also have benefit, though it requires vulnerability.
Shame is common, and learning people you admire and care for experience similar feelings can help you feel less alone. It may even prompt you to reconsider some of those long-held negative beliefs about yourself. A trained, compassionate therapist can offer guidance and support as you begin to explore its origins, identify its impact on your life, and practice confronting it when it creeps into self-talk. A therapist can also provide treatment for mental health concerns related to toxic shame, including:.
Psychodynamic approaches , on the other hand, can help you unpack and heal distress at its source. Inner child work can have particular benefit for addressing shame that began in childhood. This approach provides the opportunity to get in touch with your inner child and replace early shame and disgust with healing kindness and love. Toxic shame often cuts deep, but self-compassion and self-love can be helpful tools for smoothing away the scars it leaves behind.
Crystal Raypole has previously worked as a writer and editor for GoodTherapy. Her fields of interest include Asian languages and literature, Japanese translation, cooking, natural sciences, sex positivity, and mental health.
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Psychologists and psychiatrists have a lot in common, but they also have some key differences. Nothing is. Health Conditions Discover Plan Connect. Mental Health. Notably, the person must be aware of having transgressed a norm. He or she must also view the norm as desirable and binding because only then can the transgression make one feel truly uncomfortable. June Tangney of George Mason University has studied shame for decades. In numerous collaborations with Ronda L.
Dearing of the University of Houston and others, she has found that people who have a propensity for feeling shame—a trait termed shame-proneness—often have low self-esteem which means, conversely, that a certain degree of self-esteem may protect us from excessive feelings of shame. The link with depression is particularly strong; for instance, one large-scale meta-analysis in which researchers examined studies involving more than 22, subjects showed a clear connection.
The project included roughly volunteers between the ages of 11 and 16 and found that teenagers who exhibited greater shame-proneness were also more likely to have symptoms of depression. There also seems to be a connection between shame-proneness and anxiety disorders, such as social anxiety disorder and generalized anxiety disorder, as Thomas A.
Fergus, now at Baylor University, and his colleagues reported in In a team of psychologists led by Ulrich Orth of the University of Bern studied shame in more than 2, volunteers between the ages of 13 and 89, most of whom lived in the U. They found not only that men and women manifest shame differently but also that age seems to affect how readily people experience it: adolescents are most prone to this sensation; the propensity for shame decreases in middle age until about the age of 50; and later in life people again become more easily embarrassed.
The authors see this pattern as a function of personality development. The identities of teenagers and young adults are not completely formed; in addition, people in this age group are expected to conform to all manner of norms that define their place in society. Uncertainty as to how to deal with these external expectations may make them quicker to feel shame. By middle age, in contrast, our character is more or less set, and norms have less impact.
But as we enter old age and worry about declines in our body and our appearance, we begin to feel self-conscious again. It has been speculated that humans feel shame because it conferred some kind of evolutionary advantage on our early ancestors.
People often speak of shame and guilt as if they were the same, but they are not. Like shame, guilt occurs when we transgress moral, ethical or religious norms and criticize ourselves for it. We feel guilty because our actions affected someone else, and we feel responsible. I inconvenienced my co-workers. In comparison, feelings of guilt, though painful, are less disabling than shame and are likely to motivate the individual in a positive direction toward reparation or change.
As is generally true of young children, people who are unable to empathize cannot feel guilt. Guilt holds us back from harming others and encourages us to form relationships for the common good. When we feel guilty, we turn our gaze outward and seek strategies to reverse the harm we have done.
When we feel ashamed, we turn our attention inward, focusing mainly on the emotions roiling within us and attending less to what is going on around us. One study that clearly associates guilt and empathy was published in
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