Toxic Shame and Who's to Blame

Manifestations of shame and five ideas on how we can heal

“It’s harder to write this because this time, I’m the one who fucked up. It’s harder to be vulnerable when I’m the villain of the story I’m telling.”

Shame, shame, that’s the name of the game. It’s not just a catchy rhyme. It’s been my reality since the beginning.

To a certain extent, that’s totally fine! It’s completely normal to be sitting there and have a memory come up that makes us cringe. It’s an uncomfortable feeling but if we live our lives with intention, we can pause, realize that we’re experiencing a growing pain, and honor the moment. We can’t look back on a behavior and have a shameful reaction if we haven’t grown beyond the person we were in the memory.

Toxic shame, on the other hand, brings with it no guiding light. There are times where I’ve been at the gym and, in the middle of a workout, what’s known as a ‘shame attack’ would come on. Shame attacks make us want to crouch and shrink into the tiniest ball possible. That isn’t even a dramatized view of it. When a shame attack comes on, our bodies instinctively want to pull us down into a ball. Our body instinctively puts us in a position where we are less likely to be seen, theoretically, and most protected. This photo from ‘Mind Journal’ is the best depiction I can find.

Toxic shame wants to remind us that we’re garbage. We ‘fucked up’ in that moment, therefore we deserve to suffer for it for the rest of our lives. Toxic shame wants to destroy our sense of worth and our self-esteem. It wants to corrode our mental health until the health part flees the equation.

“Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change - Brene Brown”

The TS monster (toxic shame, TS monster occasionally moving forward) wants us to be in survival mode and on the defensive 24/7. It turns us into people who:

• Blame everyone else for our issues

• Lash out at criticism

• Deflect

• Self-Sabotage

• Become overwhelmingly perfectionistic

We don’t blame and lash out because we actually think someone else is responsible. We don’t blame, lash out, and deflect because we believe we’re perfect little angels. On the contrary. We know better than anyone else what we did wrong. There’s a constant tape playing in our head that reminds us of what we did every single day, don’t you worry now.

We’re already beating ourselves up daily for the sins of our past. Having someone say it out loud triggers an anger response. Anger and anxiety are cousins, after all. So, when we’ve already been experiencing so much self-inflicted shame, when we’ve already been walking around in a state of anxiety all day, hearing it just overwhelms us and the anxiety bursts into anger (it’s called fight or flight for a reason).

When I blame, what I’m really saying is: I FUCKING KNOW. When I lash out, what I’m really saying is: I cannot handle the extra pressure of hearing it from someone else right now. When I deflect, what I’m really saying is: Don’t worry, the TS monster doesn’t let me forget for a moment. If I can convince that person that it isn’t all on me, then I can at least get them off my back. That’s the thinking, anyways. It’s purely a defensive response.

I used to live with a roommate, we’ll call him Bob, who would practically follow me around to fault find and poke at every little thing I did. He was clever, that Bob, because he did it all in the guise of ‘trying to help me’. ‘Do this, don’t do that, girls wouldn’t like that' and yadda yadda yadda. Unsolicited advice, toxic shame or no, is just criticism in a cute little costume. If I want advice, I will gladly ask. If I want your feedback, I will ask you.

I was a 31 one year old man with a room in the heart of the city and I chose to spend more time at my parents’ house so I wouldn’t have to deal with that.

To really get into the heart of what the TS monster is all about, let’s travel back to one of those moments I call 'an original sin’. Putting this on paper is perhaps the most challenging writing experience I’ve ever had but here goes:

When I was 25 and living in San Antonio, Texas, I really did have it all. Worked at one of the best tech companies in the world, had a beautiful girlfriend I was crazy about, and more friends than I could manage. I cannot for the life of me explain why this happened or what the exact cause was, but I got to a point where drinking was an absolute necessity. I had started feeling uneasy about everything and the only friend I felt comfortable sharing any of this with was a handsome fellow from Kentucky named Jim Beam.

When I was drunk, my behavior was erratic and self-destructive. When I was sober, I was beginning to feel anxiety like I’d never felt before. It later turned out that I just didn’t recognize the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal, so I assumed it was just general anxiety. I became both a terrible boyfriend and a burdensome friend. I remember one of my best friends at the time, Marcus, sitting me down and asking ‘Dude, what is wrong with you? Something is going on. You’re like a zombie ALL THE TIME’. I ignored him. I knew what I was doing. He just didn’t understand, hah.

My girlfriend ended up leaving me and that’s when something in my brain just snapped. I had been using her excessively for comfort and it became too much for her, understandably so. This is when things became exceedingly bad.

I could not leave her alone for months after that. I was drinking every day from sunrise to sunset and just texting and sending ridiculous emails. In my drunken 25-year-old head, if I just said the right things, I would get her back. This behavior made more and more people distance themselves from me. Her and I worked together and co-workers I didn’t even know were staring me down like I was sewer trash. I was destroying the reputation I had built, the friendships I had built, and the job I was so proud to have.

Drink, fuck up, drink even more to numb the shame of the fuck up, repeat.

As a complete shock to absolutely no one, I was inevitably fired. I didn’t have any reason or prospects to stay in San Antonio, so I made my way back home to Boston. It’s harder to write this because this time, I’m the one who fucked up. It’s harder to be vulnerable when I’m the villain of the story I’m telling.

I felt like I was exiled. I had always read about how people who were bad for the tribe would be exiled to die alone in the woods. Dramatic as it may be, that’s exactly how I felt. I knew I did it to myself. I knew that it wasn’t about getting the girl back. Not at all. It was me trying to be a hero to myself. It was me trying to cure the original sin, and she was the first step. If I got her back, everything would go back to normal. If I got her back, the respect, friends, and esteem would all return with her. It was a fool’s errand and I shot myself in the foot, every individual toe, my eyeballs, and then some.

Any guesses on how long it took me to move forward and stop having shame attacks over the memories of what I did and how I acted? One year? Two? Three? Nah, try six. My brain truly needed to understand that the original sin did not have to be redeemed. My brain needed to realize that everything is still okay.

I’ve become a far better person and made amends in my own way. I had been living in a perfectionistic nightmare. It wasn’t real and I had to understand that I did not have to fix the past to move forward.

It took hundreds of books, years of therapy, hundreds of hours of meditation, four years of sobriety, support groups, obsession with physical fitness, etc. to finally be able to move on. It was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever had to overcome. The TS monster makes us feel so, so inadequate. Constant guilt, shame and anxiety was my existence for years. I did, however, kick the TS monster’s ugly ass and I want to share how you can do the same; but first: let’s talk about where the monster even comes from.

When I was a kid, I was very clearly told when I did something my parents did not like. I wasn’t always told in the way one might expect, though. If I did something that particularly bothered my mom, she would stonewall me until either A, she got over it, or B, I would redeem myself. See any similarities with the story above?

I was also an obese child and an eleven-year-old Arab kid during 9/11. Suffice it to say, people have been telling me that either there is something wrong with me, or that I wasn’t good enough, since as long as I can remember.

Being raised conservatively Muslim in America also led to intense feelings of shame and guilt because the things I naturally wanted to do were considered ‘haram’ (a sin).

Based on my personal experiences, I’d have to say that these three are what instills toxic shame in us as children more than anything else:

• Abuse - Emotional and physical

• Neglect

• Cultural/Societal/Religious expectations

So, what can we do about it? Do we really have to do the six year personal growth insanity that Nur did? No. Would it hurt? No, but my journey was different. I didn’t know what I specifically needed to work on so I hit the catch all approach. Surely there’s a more targeted approach, then? Of course, and don’t call me Shirley.

1. Feel your feelings

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I’m sorry in advanced for this one. It’s not easy and I’m not going to sugar coat it. When we experience a toxic shame response, our first instinct is to IMMEDIATELY DO SOMETHING ELSE. Pick up our phone, blurt out random words, turn on the tv, and so on. Our instinct actually becomes avoidance. Anything to not feel the immense pain we’d feel if we leaned into it.

You’re going to hate me for this one, but it is what it is. The only way out is through. Next time you experience a shame attack, fight the instinct to shrink your posture by any means and sit as you would normally. Do not reach for anything. Just sit there, close your eyes, and let the feelings flow through you. It sucks and it hurts but it’ll eventually stop. The more we do this, the less it’ll suck, the less it’ll hurt, and we’ll start noticing that it has a far weaker grip on us than we could have thought possible.

Denying and rejecting our feelings unfortunately just never works and as Carl Jung has very famously put it:

What we resist not only persists, but will grow in size - Carl Jung

If this feels like too overwhelming of a step, then it’s very important to consider #2 on this list instead.

2. Seek professional help

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It’s honestly incredible how many options we have for specialized treatment these days. Starting with more traditional options, a clinical psychologist or a therapist can help you through the process of feeling your feelings. It can be scary to do alone and even dangerous if you don’t feel prepared. Having a professional right there with you makes the process more bearable. Another benefit of a therapist here is that just admitting to someone else what happened can be extremely therapeutic when it comes to shame. Getting it out there loosens its internalized grip on us.

Another form of specialized treatment that works wonders for toxic shame is known as ‘EMDR’: Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy. It’s commonly used for those who suffer with PTSD flashbacks. Toxic shame attacks and PTSD flashbacks might as well be the same thing as far as I’m concerned but people seem to think there’s a difference.

Anyways, EMDR involves a professional guiding you through your Toxic Shame memories while you move your eyes in certain directions. When your brain stores normal memories, it connects them to your other memories. When your brain stores a more traumatic memory, it doesn’t store it properly in a way where it’s connected to the rest of your memories. Your brain is storing it in a way that doesn’t convey that the danger or threat from the memory is over. EMDR helps rewire that.

3. Learn to set healthy boundaries

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Listen, the TS monster makes us feel like absolute shit about ourselves. As a consequence of that, we tend to let people overstep way too often. We let the people who abused us too close, we let people say awful things and just laugh it off or pretend like we didn’t hear it, we never say no. Consequently, what usually happens is that we let ourselves internalize all these feelings and set ourselves up for the blame, deflection and lashing out cycle.

We need to learn to stick up for ourselves and reclaim our autonomy. Here are some of my personal favorite lines that just naturally come out of my mouth when the wrong person oversteps the boundaries:

• I won’t be spoken to like that.

• You’re not allowed to speak to me that way.

• You’ll just try that one again with a little more respect this time, yeah?

Victims of the TS monster need to feel strong. Our strength was stripped away from us and it’s time to reclaim it.

If you’ve tried setting boundaries and it’s just not working, then it’s time to seriously consider removing these people from your life. Their need for you isn’t more important than your need for peace.

4. Practice Self-Care

It’s extremely easy to stop taking care of our minds, bodies and spirits when we’re constantly receiving shame filled messages from our brain telling us that we’re not good enough. When in a shame spiral, there’s something very appropriate feeling about looking in the mirror and seeing a very unkempt and out of shape version of ourselves. It feels like that’s what we deserve to look like.

It’s so very vital that we flip the script on that one. Just the simple act of engaging in a self-care activity is a step in the right direction because we’re telling our brains ‘See, I care about myself’. Whether it is exercising, grooming and dressing nicely, or relaxing in a nice warm bath with a good book. Our focus is to remind ourselves that we matter and deserve to look and feel good.

“Feelin good, lookin good, oughta be in Hollywood!” - Mark Divine

5. Mindfulness, Journaling, and Accountability

When it comes to shame, it’s so very important to be able to observe our thoughts and try to not react when the shameful ones show up. If we can pause and gently notice the thoughts that are occurring during a shame attack, we can slowly become more aware of our triggers and work on not reacting as harshly each time the TS monster shows his face.

Journaling is very similarly beneficial in that it can be easier to know what thoughts, patterns, and triggers to look for if we have them written down before us. Also, since shame is something we, almost by definition, bury deep inside us, writing out the event and just getting it outside of our head for once can be tremendously helpful. It’s also easier to view the situation objectively when reading it off of a piece of paper.

Earlier, I explained why we can so quickly jump to blame while experiencing shame. While it’s important to understand why we do that, it’s equally important to move forward from that and take accountability for our own part in the situation. Listen, no matter what anyone says, it takes two to tango. It’s very rarely only one side’s doing in any of these situations. It’s important for our recovery, though, to identify exactly what our role was in all of it and admit that to ourselves. It’s both empowering and healing beyond belief to learn to say, ‘I messed up, here’s what I did and I’m really sorry about that’.

Do you ever find yourself up against the TS monster? How about even just minor shame cringes? How do you find yourself feeling and how do you usually react when those memories pop up? Let me know in the comments below!