10 signs you have toxic shame and how it developed
Children need healthy modelling of shame in their emotions. Caregivers give their attention to the child and model boundaries in a non-shaming way. Without withholding love.
Healthy shame is necessary for balance and for the limits of the child's newfound autonomy.
However, any form of traumatic attachment sets a person up for toxic shame.
1. Emotional repression
Parents who hide their feelings including shame and anger, thoughts and fantasies, pass on their disowned or unexpressed feelings.
This leads to children repressing emotions which then surface as anger or resentment. There are healthy ways to express emotions and regulate emotions to prevent harming relationships.
2. Antisocial
When parents crush a toddler's will with spanking for conformity, the child might end up with total conformity or rebellion against authority.
These people end up without a sense of self or autonomy, or they become rebellious, violent and anti-social unless they learn to manage their anger.
3. Emotional dysregulation
Once willpower is crushed, anger and purpose are bound in shame. Selfhood and personal power are severely wounded. The drive for separateness is bound in shame.
Such people may mask their anger and then it comes in unhealthy and crippling ways. This then damages relationships.
4. The discouraged adult with learned helplessness
These children develop a sense of discouragement as part of their personality.
They stop trying and may end up with learned helplessness. They remain in victim mode unless they accept support.
5. Seek belonging
The conforming child believes he can do nothing right. This inner war may lead some children to join a delinquent gang, athletic club, the good-looking popular squad, or the nerds at school.
If they do not feel that they fit anywhere these people have the potential to become serious criminals.
In relationships, they experience shame as aloneness and isolation, disconnected from their partner. With no connecting skills.
6. Bullies
The rebellious child believes whatever she does is right and everyone else is to blame. These kids can sometimes become bullies and shame others the same way they were shamed.
Bullying isn't confined to school children. Adults bully other adults in communities, households, online and groups settings, friendships and work.
7. Sexual deviation
A child growing up with shame, experiences their needs as bad and their sexuality as shameful and bad. Some might also have gone through sexual shame or age inappropriate experiences.
They may have sexual confusion as they grow older.
As young adults, they might develop dysfunctional love or sex addictions.
Or mistake sex for love.
8. Perfectionism
Because this person feels defective, they become perfectionists to be more than human, try too hard and live as if emotions are beneath them.
They do not feel their best is good enough, so they keep trying hard
They have unrealistic expectations for themselves and others. They feel pressured to live up to their standards. They are critical and find fault easily.
Fear of failure and rejection and can procrastinate to avoid mistakes and failure. These people might want a certain kind of unrealistic relationship or struggle and fight for reconnection following a break up.
9. Minimise their needs
Or they try to be less human, with no human emotion. So they minimise their needs. This manifests as,
People pleasing.
The good guy persona.
Overfunctioning caregiver.
In marriage, they might meet someone like them and create a codependent dynamic, filling up the holes in each other's psyche.
10. Mental health issues
Toxic shame progresses to stagnation despair and spiritual bankruptcy in older adulthood.
Toxic shame can lead to neurosis and mental health disorders.
Self-reparenting
Look into the shame in your families passed on by parents.
Assess the type of parents who raised you and their parenting styles.
Or your hidden shame that you might pass on to your children.
Recover, discover and uncover your true self and your power.
Come out of hiding and embrace your shame.
Admit the powerlessness and unmanageability of your life to find the inner strength you have been covering up due to feeling flawed and defective.
You are more powerful than you admit.
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