INTRODUCTION
“Shame is a soul eating emotion” said Carl Jung. But isn’t it time for you to allow your self to stop reacting and start creating, for your sake? In this epic article I give you the definitive guide on shame, how to heal from it, and how you can harness that inner nuclear reactor for limitless creativity. You know, the dark power that got you to where you are that you are perhaps a little afraid of? It’s time to doubt your doubts and believe you are limitless. I will tell you how…
Shame
“Soul, if you want to learn secrets, your heart must forget about shame and dignity. You are God’s lover, yet you worry what people are saying.” ― Rumi
Rumi nails it yet again: Shame drives us to seek external validation and a state of emotional insobriety, the true source of our unhappiness, where our happiness is dependent on people, events, and things. Not the PET you always wanted, if you pardon the acronym. As Aristotle wrote “Happiness depends upon ourselves.”
The key is to find our true self and to love our selves (why the plural? — more on that later when we come to our adult self, our inner child, and inner critic who all reside within), and then from this place of serenity to help others. The Dalai Lama XIV said “Only the development of compassion and understanding for others can bring us the tranquility and happiness we all seek.”
Shame is the birthplace of fear and pain; Trauma is the infancy of shame; Egocentric fear is the childhood of anxiety, depression and addiction; Shame is the adolescence of seeking external validation; External validation is the adulthood of unhappiness; Yet it is your birthright to love your self; Your birthright is wellbeing.
The scene for your life is set from a preverbal age. Shame is a response to trauma. More on this to follow. For two brilliant overviews on childhood trauma read 'Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving' by Pete Walker, and 'The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma' by Bessel van der Kolk.
It is in your hands to be happy, you just don’t know it yet. Ralph Waldo Emerson said “Most of the shadows in life are caused by standing in our own sunshine.” The default, innate, nature of all human beings is wellbeing. We are all born fundamentally connected to each other and to something supremely benevolent that powers all of life, a universal force. We arrive in this world perfectly healthy, full of the clarity and peace of mind we so often chase as adults, who were raised without unconditional love. So how did we stray off the path, and how can we return to it? Even as we grow up and feel like the connection has faded, it hasn’t. Because, essentially, it’s who we are, it can’t fade. Taking our own idle thinking at face value is the primary cause of all suffering. It’s so simple. We are all well. All is well. Always. There are no exceptions, caveats, conditions, or logical rules to remember, but we sometimes need a little reminding. That’s what this article is for. That’s my purpose. That’s why I had to break down, to break through, for you, to remind you of this. The way out is through. Follow me, I will be your guide, side by side, every step of the way.
I have studied philosophy, positive psychology, medicine, spirituality, timeless truths, transformation, and spent the last two and a half years living all this, combined with my lived experience, in order unite all the concepts I have learned and provide clarity, so that I can guide you to find your purpose, lose your shame, ditch your inner critic, free your mind from your negative inner voice and thoughts, and ultimately to find bliss in this life. This will enthuse you to do the same for others. Touch one soul at a time.
Confucius encapsulates it perfectly “We have two lives, and the second begins when we realise we only have one.” Perhaps together we can save the world, one day at a time, and bring it back from the crisis that we appear to be in right now. I am not saying anything new that hasn’t been said since around 500BC when Siddhartha became enlightened as the Buddha and “The Bhagavad Gita” was written, at around the same time, via the Stoics, right through to modern day philosophers, psychologists, coaches, spiritual leaders, and those devoted to personal growth and transformation. What I have realised is that they all have the same message, and that the boundaries between the different disciplines are simply different ways of viewing the same concepts. For example Carl Jung was a philosopher, a psychologist, and a spiritual leader. They are all the same thing when they get close to the truth. So let’s get clarity on these timeless truths. You can’t argue with natural law: Scientists can bend the laws of physics, but no-one can break the natural laws, such as karma. We are all just voices, echoing these same truths for the current generation. For example Buddha said “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” Eckhart Tolle echoed “Realise deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.” There is nothing new to discover. Just clarity and simplicity. All is well, right now, in the present moment, as you read this, and just breathe. What’s so wonderful is that you are beginning to listen. You have stepped onto the right path. The possibilities are limitless…
Are you sceptical? I am not surprised. I would have been too. If you are noticing that in this very moment you are most certainly not in touch with your innate wellbeing, I hear you. I really hear you. I see you. You are so forgivable. You are so worthy. Let me bring you home. Let me guide you to find your way home. If stress and mental chaos were home they would feel like home, right? Struggle and mental business go against your nature and that’s why you struggle to fix them. That’s why you strive to return home, to the wellness into which you were born. That is home. Home is inside you. You just need a little light to find your way back. Thats why I am here, and why I wrote this article for you.
Those moments of supreme peace that you sometimes experience (maybe in nature, maybe when deeply connecting with those that you love, or when your life and purpose momentarily align) are who you naturally are. When you’re experiencing anything else, you’re simply in a fog of thought. Nothing can change your basic nature. Not age, culture, conditioning, abuse, a horrific childhood, unfit parents, anxiety, depression, fear, worry, obsession, or shame. Your innate wellbeing and serenity is always right there, only sometimes masked by mental chit-chat. So, quiet the mind, open the heart, and read on.
Shame is universal. Everyone battles with shame, which is extremely beneficial since we isolate ourselves so much when we believe it’s only us. Carl Rogers famously said: “The things that we feel most separate us from one another are actually the ones that we have most in common.”
Dr. Gabor Maté says “Shame is the deepest of the negative emotions, a feeling we will do anything to avoid. Unfortunately, our abiding fear of shame impairs our ability to see reality.” We feel shame because we are human, not because we are bad: Among the millions of animal species on the globe, our ability for shame is unique. Chimpanzees and bonobos, do sense some minor forms of guilt, embarrassment, and a desire to make amends, but nothing like humans. Shame pretends to serve as a cautionary signal: Shame is a warning from the brain that we might be rejected or cut off from the social group. Dale Carnegie said “The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.” Shame is the brain’s way of dealing with the threat of disconnection. The solution, then, is first of all to reconnect with our self, to remove the threat of the ‘Invisible Lion’ (we have an appropriate response to threat, but it is to a threat that no longer exists — hence the invisible lion), and from that place to reconnect with others with compassion. Its time to doubt your doubts and trust your intuition, with a little help from what has been written about shame. There are many elements and solutions to recovering from shame, not just compassion, which is oft-touted as the sole antidote. How can all these concepts be connected? Well, as Dr. Gabor Maté says, “Trauma is what you suffer alone.” Food for thought. Are you ready for clarity on shame? Let’s dive in and elucidate then….
What is shame?
Shame haunts our soul and whispers in our ear at night saying “What if you are not enough?” Every day your shame voices are trying to convince you that you are less than human. Shame is the negative bias in our head that is meant to keep us alive by encouraging connection — be better and you will be loved. It relentlessly drives us to seek success to prove the inner voice, that forever present inner critic, wrong: But no-one told shame about the tall poppy syndrome.
Brené Brown wrote in The Gifts of Imperfection “Shame works like the zoom lens on a camera. When we are feeling shame, the camera is zoomed in tight and all we see is our flawed selves, alone and struggling.” It is human nature to see our strengths minimised as if we were gazing the wrong way through a telescope, and our weaknesses magnified with the telescope the other way round.
Leigh Bardugo wrote “We can endure all kinds of pain. It’s shame that eats men whole.” I am not being dramatic: I know. Brené Brown says “Shame is the deep and abiding belief or experience that I am flawed and defective and therefore unworthy of love or belonging… Shame is an epidemic in our culture.” You are not alone. Troy Love adds “Shame is anger turned inwards.” But anger against whom — your self? Yes, and the terrible consequence of this is that “Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change” (Brené Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me: Women Reclaiming Power and Courage in a Culture of Shame). It’s no surprise that with all this self-hatred that self-compassion has been widely described as the antidote to shame. Responding with compassion to our mistakes is a good place to start countering shame. Brené Brown says “If you put shame in a Petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in a Petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive.” Empathy and compassion are very different. They are represented in different areas of the brain. With empathy, we share in the pain of others, but we don’t go so far as to genuinely help them. Compassion allows us to step back from the emotion of empathy and ask, “How can we help?” True compassion for others begins with genuine compassion for oneself. It’s impossible to aide people achieve their equilibrium if you’re overwhelmed and out of balance yourself. Getting enough sleep and taking pauses during the day are examples of self-compassion. So are mindfulness, meditation, yoga, eating healthily, all forms of self care, and keeping our life in balance, without overemphasis on any one part such as work. Self-compassion requires letting go of excessive self-criticism. We need to berating ourselves for what we could have done better or differently. Instead, we need to cultivate positive self-talk. After that, we need to reframe failures as a learning opportunity. FAIL means First Attempt In Learning (please pardon the acronyms — being a medical doctor I am rather fond of them!). Compassion is not the only antidote to shame — love and connection, amongst other approaches and concepts, are also important in recovery. Craig Thompson said “Shame is always easier to handle if you have someone to share it with.” This is why 12 step recovery groups have the aphorism ”The Fellowship loves you until you love your self.” Then you can love the people who matter deeply to you in your life. There are many more factors that may also help, and I will delineate these in this article, from personal experience and from a thorough literature review. I don’t think I have missed anything and please forgive me for the length of this article — its such an important topics in our mental wellbeing! I will publish much more bitesized, hopefully tasty, morsels soon. Let’s be inspired by philosophers, psychologists, and speakers on timeless truths. You will find that the message is pretty unified: Uniquely by those thinkers who have recovered from trauma and shame, and have lived to tell their story and to create.
Dr. Christopher Germer, psychologist, says “People come into therapy. They often feel defective. Shame is the glue or the stickiness that makes difficult emotions persist. Shame is an attack on the self, a core belief that I am not good enough in some way. That’s shame.” Shame has been referred to as “The swampland of the soul” by certain Jungian analysts. They’re alluding to the way we can get caught into and entrenched in our shame stories, which are often painful and untrue. We can begin to embrace our authentic selves and halt the shame spiral by digging into the mud and casting light on toxic shame and its origins. More on this below, but suffice it to say that shame is secondary to childhood trauma and abuse. This may be due to an unvalidated childhood, where there is an absence of unconditional love, or emotional deprivation, as well as other forms of abuse. Laura Davis wrote “Abuse manipulates and twists a child’s natural sense of trust and love. Her innocent feelings are belittled or mocked and she learns to ignore her feelings. She can’t afford to feel the full range of feelings in her body while she’s being abused — pain, outrage, hate, vengeance, confusion, arousal. So she short-circuits them and goes numb. For many children, any expression of feelings, even a single tear, is cause for more severe abuse. Again, the only recourse is to shut down. Feelings go underground.” Such children create a false self in an attempt to be accepted, so there is a rupture of the self. Imagine the younger version of you being literally fractured into different parts. That resonated with me. John Bradshaw, counsellor and personal growth author, wrote in his brilliant book Healing The Shame That Binds You “The agony of this chronic stage of being cannot be endured for long. At the deepest level, toxic shame triggers our basic automatic defensive cover-ups. Freud called these automatic cover-ups our primary ego defences. Once these defences are in place they function automatically and unconsciously, sending our true and authentic selves into hiding. We develop a false identity out of this basic core. We become master impersonators. We avoid our core agony and pain and over a period of years, we avoid our avoidance.” He continued “Children are natural Zen masters; their world is brand new in each and every moment.” John Bradshaw, like all best authors, writes from the heart, personal lived experience, vast expertise, and is a modern day philosopher. It takes a lot to overcome these Zen masters with a totally unvalidated childhood, but it is truly an epidemic of our disconnected times. Toxic shame is a fundamental belief that “I am bad. I am broken. I need to hide my authentic self from the world.” You may have heard about the negative effects of toxic shame from speakers like Brené Brown in her numerous Ted Talks and YouTube videos on the subject, but recognising when toxic shame enters our lives today and undermines our relationships, particularly with ourselves, can be difficult: Shame hides from the light. Our task is to shine a light on it.
Listening to Shame, with Brené Brown at her TED talk.
Shame is such a hot topic, with educators and mental health specialists warning us about the dangers of toxic shame to our health and well-being. However, recognising toxic shame and how it affects our lives and relationships, especially our relationship with ourselves, can be challenging. Let’s try to overcome this by defining the different types of shame.
What is toxic shame?
How does toxic shame happen?
What are the benefits of losing our toxic shame?
Shame and society
What can you do if you think you suffer from toxic shame?
Key tasks for overcoming toxic shame
Opening ourselves to compassion and breaking through the paralysis of shame
Compassion is the antidote to shame
How to lose shame
How to find your superpower through Transformative Life Coaching (TLC)
Sending you love, light, and blessings.
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Olly Alexander Branford MD, MBBS, MA(Cantab), PhD
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I am very pleased to meet you. Thank you for reading this far. I very much look forward to connecting with the highest version of you, to seeing your highest possibility, and to our conversations. Please do contact me via my website for a free connection call and a free experience of coaching. I am here to serve you.
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Olly Alexander Branford MD, MBBS, MA(Cantab), PhD
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I have a Bachelor's degree in Natural Sciences from Trinity College, Cambridge; a Master's Degree in Philosophy from Trinity College, Cambridge; a PhD Doctorate in Scientific Research from University College London (UCL); a Medical Degree (MD/MBBS) from The Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, London and have been a doctor and reconstructive trauma and cancer surgeon in London for 20 years. I have published over 50 peer reviewed scientific journal articles, have been an associate editor and frequent scientific faculty member, and am the author of several scientific books. I have been awarded my Diploma in Transformative Life Coaching in London, which has International Coaching Federation (ICF) Accreditation, as well as the UK Association for Coaching (AC), and the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC). I have been on my own transformative journey full time for four years and I am ready to be your guide to you finding out who you really are and how the world works.