Toxic shame is one of the most common debilitating feelings that people struggle with.
Toxic shame is a term that refers to a chronic feeling or emotional state of feeling bad, worthless, inferior, and fundamentally flawed. It is called toxic because it is unjust, whereas healthy shame is when we do something morally wrong, such as aggressing against others.
The origins of toxic shame
Toxic shame has its roots in trauma. Trauma is a word that people either dont think much about or they associate it with something extreme, like broken bones or severe sexual abuse. While these things are indeed very traumatic, there are a lot of traumatic experiences that people dont recognize as trauma. Thats why many people struggle to understand how things like childhood neglect can be a form of abuse and trauma.
In most cases, it is trauma a person experienced in their childhood and adolescence. Moreover, this trauma was experienced in a repeated fashion and wasnt processed as such nor healed. So the person was conditioned into routinely feeling ashamed when there was nothing or very little to be ashamed of.
Regarding toxic shame specifically, it develops because an individuals primary caregivers or other important figures routinely shamed, or punished them either passively or actively. Such a person internalized those hurtful and untrue words and behaviors, and it became their understanding of who they are as a person.
Toxic shame beliefs and emotional states
Some common beliefs a person suffering from toxic shame may have include:
I am unlovable; I dont matter; everything is my fault; I cant do anything right; I dont deserve good things; I was a bad child; I deserve to be treated the way others treat me; Im a bad person; my needs and wants are not important; nobody likes me; I cant be myself around others; I have to hide my true emotions and thoughts; I’m never good enough.
We explored the topic more in a previous article titled 5 Beliefs People with Adverse Upbringing Have about Themselves.
It is common for a shame-ridden person to also suffer from chronic anxiety and low self-esteem. Some people cope by hurting or not taking care of themselves, while some hurt other people and become highly antisocial and narcissistic.
Toxic shame is often accompanied by toxic guilt, where the person feels unjust responsibility and guilt. So the person not only feels ashamed, but also guilty for things they are not actually responsible for. They also feel responsible for other peoples emotions, and feel ashamed and guilty when other people are unhappy, especially if its in some way related to them.
Its common that shame-ridden people lack a sense of self and are dominated by their false-self, which is a combination of adaptation techniques and coping mechanisms that they developed to deal with their unresolved trauma. As I write in the book Human Development and Trauma:
This early erasure of self often develops into an internalized practice of self-erasure in later life, or various other emotional problems like the inability to name emotions, the presence of guilt or shame about feeling emotion, or a general numbness surrounding emotion.
Toxic shame behaviors
Lack of healthy self-love. Because such a person usually suffers from low self-esteem and overt or covert self-loathing, these things manifest themselves in poor self-care, self-harm, lack of empathy, inadequate social skills, and more.
Emptiness. The person also feels chronic emptiness, loneliness, and a lack of motivation. They dont want to do anything, dont have any active goals, and do things only to distract themselves from how they feel.
Perfectionism. A lot of people who struggle with toxic shame are also highly perfectionistic because as children they were held to unrealistic standards and punished and shamed for failing to meet them.
Narcissism. On the other side of the spectrum, there are those who develop grandiose fantasies about how they will become rich, famous, powerful, and conquer the world, believing it will make those painful feelings go away, which is not what happens even if they succeed.
Unhealthy relationships. Many people suffering from toxic shame have unhealthy relationships because they dont know what a healthy relationship looks like. Or they are incapable of building and maintaining one.
Usually they settle for a good enough relationship, where both parties are highly unhappy but are too weak, in their own way, to pursue true happiness. Sometimes, again, its because they believe they dont deserve anything better. Also, the relationship is a decent way to cope with all the unbearable painful feelings that come up when the person is alone.
Susceptibility to manipulation. Since they are ridden with toxic shame, guilt, loneliness, and inadequacy, manipulators can push those exact buttons to make them feel those exact emotions and then they will do what the manipulators want to get rid of that painful emotion.
Why are you hurting me? Dont you want to be a part of us instead of being a lonely loser? This product will finally make you look beautiful. Its all your fault. There are many examples of things abusers and manipulators say.
Summary and final words
Children who experience trauma often feel shame. Since this shame is usually unidentified and unaddressed, the child grows into an adult who suffers from a chronic shame.
Toxic shame is closely related to other emotional states and beliefs, including low self-esteem, self-loathing, chronic guilt, unresolved anger, and never feeling good enough.
Consequently, these mental states result in unhealthy behavior, including acting out, hurting others, feeling responsible for others, self-erasing, having toxic relationships, poor self-care, poor boundaries, being overly sensitive to other peoples perception of them, being susceptible to manipulation and exploitation, and many others.
All these painful, unprocessed emotions actually belong in the context of their childhood environment where they were initially hurt and violated, but they are currently unable to make that connection and resolve it, so they deal with them in the ways they learned: actively or passively hurting themselves or others, or both.