Shame is a complex emotion that often plagues adult children of alcoholics (ACOAs) and people who grew up in dysfunctional homes. This powerful feeling of inherent flaw and self-punishment can have profound impacts on their lives. In this blog post, we will delve into the concept of shame, its detrimental effects, and explore the role of self-compassion as a transformative tool to overcome shame.
I want to point out that guilt and shame are oftentimes confused, ACOAs usually experience both – overwhelming guilt and shame. Guilt comes situationally or is experienced as a result of an action – for example – persistent feelings of guilt for leaving behind a co – dependent parent – or leaving your households – shame however has to do with feeling that you to the core are faulty for doing such a thing and is usually accompanied by a harsh self critical voice and kind of shades of feelings of disgust towards yourself. I will make another video about guilt – this one will focus on shame.
Experiencing shame means feeling that you have breached some norm. As if a norm exists and you in comparison are below or above the threshold of that norm. You don’t necessarily need to be shamed by another person or group – you can shame yourself through your critical voice. Feelings of shame can come in relation to your physical body, experienced towards your behavior, to the way you speak, to your actions, towards certain habits, towards your family and friends towards some experience or incident from the past. If you judge those things and feel a negative feeling towards yourself – ask yourself – are you judging yourself to fall above or below some perceived norm? And if the answer is yes – then that feeling is most likely shameful.
People who are prone to shame tend to also be at more risk for depression, social anxiety and general anxiety.
Shame has been used by communities to get others to behave a certain way- in fact it often gets people to conform to society. People inhibit themselves from behaving in an unapproved way in order to avoid being shamed. So, shame has its place in society and is a normal emotion with an evolutionary purpose that can sometimes be used positively to guide the individual to pro social behavior, however, too often, particularly for people who grew up in a dysfunctional home – shame only leads to isolation, depression, and inadequate behavior with others.
Shame gives this illusion that it is protective and is a voice of reason and guidance, however studies show that the self shaming voice leads the individual to behave in ways that are more destructive to self and relationships. This is where I introduce the topic of self compassion as an antidote to shame. Now, most people who come from trauma backgrounds squirm at the idea of self compassion – even listening to words – “self compassion” can feel uncomfortable. If you are in the camp – it’s because you have this illusion that it is the self critical voice that will protect you and guide you to become better. And the voice of self compassion sounds like too much to bear and feels useless, indulgent and impossible and is for other people perhaps but certainly not for you.
Growing up in an alcoholic family can leave deep emotional scars, ACOAs may internalize the belief that we are somehow different than other people, the shame we experience for our parents and also about ourselves as the consequence of the product of our home can leave us feeling immensely flawed and there is a sense that we must somehow be punished by our own voice, the voice of others and that we may not deserve the good things that other people have. That is obviously not true – however the feeling that it is so is overwhelmingly difficult to shake.
Now shame usually comes with a voice of the self critic attached to it – it is also observed in the physical body through posture – and internal sensation. Let’s talk about how to tackle the self critic voice with the voice of self compassion as the starting point of overcoming shame.
To begin I want to share an exmaple of why the voice of self compassion is necessary and how it works. Let’s say you lost your favorite watch – now the shaming voice would tell you – I’m such an idiot, I always lose stuff, I am such a clutz and so on and so on – what happens next? Now you’re in a bad mood – you have your head down – your’re upset about the watch and additionally – you’re blaming yourself and thinking of all the ways that you are flawed – your posture changes and if you engage in destructve self soothing behaviors – you are more likely to engage in those as well – such as like drinking or disordered eating, or so on, maybe cancelling social plans. Now if you were working on developing a voice of self compassion – the scenario might be – you lost your watch – and then you feel sad obviously – because sure it’s your favorite watch – you allow yourself to feel that sadness at the loss – and instead of naming yourself in all the flawed way – you self soothe yourself by telling yourself that everyone looses something sometimes and you acknowledge your sadness and offer yourslef kindness – and maybe if you really are prone to loosing things and you loose things all the time – you ask yourself with kindness why that happens? – and, well maybe the answer is that you have untreated ADHD or maybe your current life situation is stressful and you’re juggling a lot or maybe – yeah – you can use to build some organizational skills that can help you tidy up your day to day life – so you accept that – and build a constructive plan to change the fact that you lose things frequently if that is the case – but with this voice over the previous shaming one – your mood is not as bad although you feel sad at the loss and you can spend the rest of the day engaging in constructive behaviors rather than destructive ones. And you can use the same template no matter what – maybe losing a watch is trivial, but even if you destruct a relationship, lose your job, relapse on some unhealthy behavior – using the voice of self forgiveness and compassion will offer you a road to constructing what you want to change because you’re placing yourself as kind of a positive protagonist that experiences a hardship or even stumbles upon a personal trait that can use work. Beong a positive protagonist in the story of your life – alters your mood to a more positive stance with which it is easier to achieve constructive change – over a negative awful undeserving protagonist which wallows in shame and ultimately engages in further destruction because the negative emotional burden makes it more difficult to rise to constructive behavior.
So to recap – putting yourself in a positive mood by offering yourself compassion rather than berating your whole being and placing yourself in a negative mood gives you the springboard to facilitate positive change and actually construct a better you over shaming yourself and thus placing yourself in a negative felt experience in which you are more likely to engage in destructive behaviors and actually facilitate a worst version of you. I hope this example makes sense an allows you to just consider the concept of developing compassion towards yourself. Will you always feel shame? Absolutely, shame is a normal feeling and if you’ve been experiencing it for quite some time – it is unlikely to magically leave you – however if you build awareness that you shame yourself and understand how it leads you to negative traps you can work to build an antidote to shame through the voice of self compassion.
So, let’s move on and talk about how to build the voice of self compassion – this is done in 3 steps – awareness of the critical voice – acceptance – and creating a basic script for self compassion as a start.
The best way to develop the voice of self compassion is in therapy – when you work with a person who offers you unconditional positive regard – you will be able to internalize that voice and then use it within yourself. Outside of that – here are some tools. The first thing you want to develop is awareness of your thoughts – when you are having negative self talk – developing awareness and labeling the voice of your self critic will help you gain a buffer between your self critic and your emotions. So the next time – your mind is running scripts that are mean and negative towards yourself – label that voice – tell yourself – ok here goes that self critical voice again – you can even give it a name – like Kruger for example – so that you can recognize – oh – here goes Kruger! You are labeling the critic’s voice with keeping in mind that this voice is a string of thoughts and your thoughts are not necessarily true or real. The next thing that you want to do is practice self acceptance – remember that being flawed is part of being human – so even if you made a mistake – this is all part of the experience – this mistake is not your first or your last – so remind yourself of that – and turn it into a positive – is there learning that can be derived from the experience? And finally – try developing the voice of compassion – it could be in the form of a standard kind thing that you say to yourself that applies to any situation such as – I am human, and I did this thing – but I can choose to forgive myself no matter what. Or you could tell yourself – Ok, well so and so happened – but I will be kind to myself no matter what”. And keep in mind – that you can still take responsibility for your actions – you can make amends, changes, learn lessons – and still be kind to yourself – you progress by putting yourself in a positive situation and mood through self kindness.
So there – you have it – shame is a difficult emotion to carry, that many people from dysfunctional families carry undeservingly – self compassion can offer an antidote to shame and can lead you to more constructive behaviors – self compassion is not easy to build, but it’s doable – let me know what you thought about this video and if you have any questions. I am here for you if you are interested in one on one caching and also – sign up for my online workshop for adult children of alcoholics – where I go into detail about shame and guilt and give you lots of exercise to work on independently.
Happy Healing,
Sofya Vass
Check out my 8 week online course for adult children of alcoholics https://acoa.me/
Or my book on Amazon
Resources for adult children of alcoholics 
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