Embarassed easily? There’s a cure!

Are you easily embarrassed? Here's why.

I've never had a client come in to see me for counseling saying that they have difficulties with "managing their shame". But shame actually represents one of the underlying reasons many people enter counseling for--they just call it by another name.

You see shame makes it hard to connect with others and to assert ourselves.

If there is one aspect of our lives that holds us back from feeling the wonder of life, from exercising our power and from connecting with others, it's shame.

Try to recall the last time you felt embarrassed...

Remember in that split second you felt it flash across your face? It was crushing. You probably wanted to dig yourself a big hole and crawl in. Well, you're not alone. This is a common human experience. No one escapes feeling shame in their life.

Have you noticed that when someone is feeling shame and you notice it, you feel shame also? How you react to their shame can reveal how you typically react to your own shame.

For example, did you laugh? Did you recoil? Were you able to stay connected with the person?

As an aside, the flushing we experience is the discharge. It is believed to arise from the sudden drop in the activation.

Shame is actually extremely useful. Evolutionary-speaking shame has helped the human species survive. It makes us curtail certain behaviours so we will be accepted within the social group. We have more chances of staying alive this way. If we stay within the group we have more protection from enemies and harsh environmental conditions.

So you see we're wired for shame. (It keeps most of us toilet trained.) But seriously, shame has important implications for our health.

Shame Causes Stress

What many people are unaware of is that shame is a "microstressor"1 that triggers the stress response in our body. Cortisol, the stress hormone, is released in the same way as if you just faced a stressful event like finding out the deadline for a work project is sooner than anticipated.

Overdeveloped shame pathways can potentially keep you triggered into the stress response all day long. Furthermore, if you have a lot of shame in your emotional makeup it will compound any external stressors you are feeling.

Too many shame pathways lead to one's face turning red at the slightest provocation. You can easily imagine how this sensitivity would inhibit risk taking and showing up in one's life.

Fortunately, the brain is very plastic. We can train our nervous system to manage shame activation. And with practice it will do so more efficiently and therefore will less likely trigger the stress response.

Shame and Counseling

It is important to be aware of the feelings of shame that arise in your counseling. In the clinical work that I do, I encourage clients to feel shame as it arises. In order to develop new pathways and for the activation associated with the shame to move through the body, we actually need to feel it in the moment.

By staying with the sensation of shame you are creating a new way for your brain to process it, to manage the energy associated with it. Your nervous system is learning. In the presence of a regulated individual you provide the means for your brain to find a new pathway to channel the energy through.

In a safe relationship with your therapist, you will find yourself speaking of your life and it is natural that shame will arise. It's just human that it would be so. The therapist that encourages you to stay in the sensation allows the shame to be metabolized. More... (Click open the question, "What's the hardest thing about being a therapist.")

My Personal Musings

How do we get too many shame pathways?

Freezing in the face of trauma is one source. However I believe most theorists would agree that it usually develops through our attachment relationships with our parents.

It's pretty hard for parents who have a lot of shame to avoid passing it on to their kids. Shame is experienced automatically. It is controlled by a part of the brain we have little conscious control over.

The less shame in your nervous system the less likely you will model it in front of your children. So I encourage you to keep up your counseling--one of the best ways of reducing shame--and avoid passing this heartache on to your kids!

Shame is probably the biggest deterrent to counseling.

Sadly the very reason one might want to enter counseling is often the very thing that keeps people away. I suspect they feel the shame underneath and don't feel quite prepared to face it.

Furthermore, if they are caught up in all the myths around counseling (i.e. I will be pushed into saying something or doing something I don’t want) then they likely will never give it a try. (See My Psychic Therapist and other Myths for more on this subject.) The irony is that the very thing that holds them back is the very thing that could make counseling so worthwhile.

It's my hunch that many of my failures--clients who came to see me for only one session--were because I did not provide the right interventions for the shame they felt. Finding the right therapist is understandably very important when someone is filled with shame.

related reading

references

Schore, Allan (2003). Affect Regulation and Repair of the Self. "Early Superego Development: The Emergence of Shame and Narcissistic Affect Regulation in the Practicing Period." New York: W.W. Norton & Company, pp. 151 - 186.

On p. 155. Schore draws on developmental research, clinical observations and neurobiology to illustrate how shame first develops in what is known as the practicing stage (10-12 to 16-18 months).

Notes

1 As quoted pg. 180 in Schore above: "microstressor" from Panksepp, J., S iviy S. M., & Normansell, L. A. (1985) Brain opiods and social emotions. In M. Reite & T. Field (Eds), The psychobiology of attachment and sparation (pp. 3-49). Orlando, FL: Academic Press.

I have kept my shame from him all this time

Ironically, I don't want to be cured

Should I go back to this therapist?