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Healthy and loving relationships begin within ourselves, and a crucial part of developing this foundation involves learning to manage and work effectively with our authentic emotional responses. And yet many of us face enormous challenges when it comes to understanding, communicating, and finding healthy outlets for our emotions. This struggle often stems from a lack of awareness and available resources to manage our emotions effectively.

Those of us who have experienced significant trauma often find ourselves more susceptible to feeling overwhelmed and may struggle to navigate our emotional responses. However, it's important to note that having an extensive history of trauma is not a prerequisite for facing challenges in recognizing and expressing our emotions.

Many of us were raised by parents or caregivers who, due to their own emotional illiteracy, impressed upon us from a very young age that certain emotions were not acceptable. In many instances, our emotions were not acknowledged, and we were not given permission to feel or express our true feelings. In some cases, we might have been shamed, scolded and even punished for displaying these emotions, leading to a situation where our feelings were either denied or our attempts to express them were disregarded.

Emotions serve as a channel through which an innate intelligence within our bodies and minds communicates with us. When this internal process is denied or shamed, it disrupts our ability to experience our emotions directly. This often leads to a chronic struggle with our emotions, making it significantly more difficult for us to manage and express them effectively.

In our upcoming discussion, we'll explore the damaging consequences that arise when we internalize destructive messages from our past. These messages often inhibit our ability to feel, understand, and find healthy ways to express our emotions. Consequently, the emotions that remain bottled up inside of us leave us feeling overwhelmed.

We'll also examine the external consequences of this emotional turmoil, which can manifest as a limited capacity or even an inability to function effectively in various aspects of our lives, including our personal relationships, professional environments, and social interactions. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for beginning the journey towards healing and emotional well-being.

Parental Guidance: Healthy Shame and Behavioral Boundaries

Parents and caregivers play a crucial role in helping us navigate the new world we find ourselves in as children. They set limits and correct us, teaching us to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable behavior. This guidance serves an essential purpose. Through their reprimands and instructions – like telling us not to steal our playmate's toys or wack them upside the head – they are setting healthy boundaries. These actions provide us with models of appropriate and inappropriate behaviors, essentially forming a code of conduct.

As we internalize these lessons, they become integral to our ability to self-monitor and regulate our behavior. This process is essential in shaping us into functioning members of society. It's through these early interactions that we learn the societal norms and values that guide our interactions and decisions throughout life.

In this context, experiencing shame can actually serve a healthy function. It acts as a signal, letting us know when our behaviors are inappropriate or unacceptable according to the societal norms we've learned. As we internalize these feelings of shame in response to certain actions, they become a part of our internal guidance system. This system helps us monitor and regulate our own behaviors, providing an internal check that inhibits us from repeating actions that are deemed harmful or otherwise inappropriate. Essentially, shame, when experienced in a balanced and constructive way, contributes to our development as socially responsible individuals who understand the impact of our actions on others and on ourselves.

Understanding Toxic Shame: Its Roots and Impacts

Conversely, toxic shame arises when shame is no longer about setting or reinforcing healthy limits but instead, becomes a tool to criticize or attack. Rather than being used to guide behavior, it is weaponized to invalidate our authentic emotional responses, insinuating that we are inherently bad, or defective. This is especially damaging when it comes to emotions like anger, sadness, or upset – emotions that are a normal and necessary part of our human experience. These feelings help us to process and make sense of our world and are crucial for healthy psychological functioning.

Emotions such as anger, sadness, excitement, and joy are all natural and often uncontrollable responses to our experiences. These emotions will surface regardless of our attempts to suppress them. In a healthy environment, we learn to feel and process these emotions, which is vital for understanding our internal experiences and for personal growth.

However, when toxic shame interferes, it short-circuits this natural process. It prevents us from fully experiencing and understanding our emotions, thus hindering our ability to learn and grow from our experiences. This form of shame can severely impact how we respond to people and situations around us. Instead of learning to navigate our emotional landscape in a healthy and constructive manner, toxic shame traps us in a cycle of self-criticism and hindered emotional development.

If we internalize the message that our natural emotional responses are wrong, we may start to feel inherently flawed. This is especially problematic because we cannot control the mere experience of these feelings. As young children, we often lack the language to express what we're feeling. Therefore, it falls upon our parents or caregivers to provide us with the words to describe our emotions and guide us towards understanding and expressing these feelings in a healthy manner.

This guidance from caregivers is a critical part of our emotional development. They offer feedback that helps us make sense of our internal responses, an essential step in navigating our emotional world. For example, when we feel sad, angry, or upset, a caregiver’s role is to acknowledge these feelings – saying, ‘You're feeling sad/angry/upset' – and then engage in a conversation about these emotions. They can encourage us by suggesting workable solutions or actions we can take. This process not only instills in us the ability to manage our emotions, but also orients us towards finding solutions.

When we're guided through processing our emotions in this manner, the intensity of these feelings often dissipates, restoring our sense of well-being. We learn how to navigate emotional challenges effectively, developing both emotional resilience and problem-solving skills. This nurturing environment is fundamental to our ability to handle emotions and face life's many challenges.

As toddlers and children, we are inherently vulnerable, with our internal experiences being unfiltered. For this reason, we rely heavily on feedback from our parents or caregivers as they interpret our emotional states. This is especially crucial when we are young and still learning to comprehend the sensations and feelings within our bodies. The way our parents interpret and represent these feelings to us shapes our own understanding of them.

When a parent identifies and names a feeling – ‘That's fear,' ‘You're feeling sad' – and then offers reassurance and comfort, it provides us with a sense of assurance. It communicates that what we're feeling is normal and okay. Following this acknowledgment, the caregiver might offer encouragement and suggest real-world actions that can help diffuse the emotions. This approach teaches the child not only to manage their internal state but also to take constructive actions to bring about meaningful change.

Through this process, children learn to navigate their emotions effectively. They develop the confidence to manage their internal state and the ability to take action in the world around them. This early guidance is foundational, equipping children with the tools they need to confidently navigate life and its various challenges. As they grow into adulthood, this early emotional education forms the bedrock of their ability to handle complex feelings and situations. This becomes the way we, as adults, continue to process and respond to our emotions, shaping our interactions and decisions in every aspect of life.

There are effective strategies that enable us to fully experience our emotions, process them, and subsequently regain a sense of calm and wellbeing. This process is akin to how, during childhood, we learned to regulate our emotions with adult guidance. As adults, even those well-versed in understanding their emotions can experience upset like anyone else. The key difference lies in their ability to quickly recognize their emotional states and employ strategies to soothe themselves or improve their mood effectively.

The problem of toxic shame starts when this process of learning to manage emotions doesn’t go well in our early years. When, as children, we were not provided with the right guidance to understand and deal with our feelings, it can lead to lasting problems.

The reason many of us didn't learn to manage our emotions well during our childhood and adolescence are not necessarily because our parents were mean or abusive. It's usually because they didn't know how to handle certain feelings themselves. Since they struggled with their own emotions, they were unable to teach us how to effectively work with ours.

Parents model the behaviors and emotions they consider to be acceptable or unacceptable. When children experience emotions that are deemed unacceptable by their parents, such as anger, frustration, and sadness, they are often taught that they shouldn't be experiencing these emotions. This can lead to the children feeling shame. If parents or caregivers react negatively to a child's expression of these emotions, by mocking, showing disgust, punishing, or ignoring them, it can further instill feelings of shame and fear in the child. Such reactions can result in the child fearing punishment, ostracization, neglect, or rejection. These experiences can have long-term impacts on how the child manages and expresses emotions in the future, shaping their emotional responses and coping mechanisms.

When, as children, our feelings are demeaned, denied, rejected, or attacked instead of being understood, our core emotions become infused with shame. This happens especially when our caregivers impose their interpretations or judgments onto our emotions, dismissing feelings like anger or upset as overreactions or unjustified. As a result, we struggle to truly understand, gain access to, and feel our emotions because the shame we have internalized conceals and convolutes them.

We start to believe that our normal emotional responses are somehow bad or wrong, leading us to question and doubt our emotions. For example, if our parents tell us we shouldn't be feeling angry or that our reasons for being angry are invalid or unimportant, it compels us to deny or suppress our feelings. This leads to feelings of shame and confusion, particularly as we internalize the meanings our caregivers assign to our emotions. Such experiences can short-circuit our ability to understand and trust our own emotional experiences, leaving us feeling broken or defective in ways that seem unfixable, and hindering our emotional development and self-awareness. This ‘toxic shame' profoundly affects how we perceive and react to our emotions.

It's essential for us to recognize and process our authentic emotional responses. We need to understand what we're feeling, dissipate the emotional charge, and, when necessary, follow through with constructive action. Parents imposing their judgments and assigning meanings to our feelings can create disruptions that severely interfere with our natural emotional development. Their interpretations then become the cognitive frame that defines our own emotional responses, disrupting the innate healing intelligence of our body and mind. This entanglement with external judgments challenges our ability to effectively manage and work through these emotions.

When we internalize toxic shame, we begin to feel wrong, bad, or defective simply for experiencing certain emotions, often due to our inability to process the underlying emotions, such as anger or hurt. In our attempts to cope, we might conceal our anger and upset, trying to mask our true feelings. This behavior of hiding and masking our feelings not only prevents us from taking appropriate action but also significantly hinders our ability to address and heal the core wound.

Misguided Attempts to Manage Our Emotions

When we misunderstand our emotions, we often engage in actions that we believe will make us feel better, yet these misguided attempts to manage our emotions do not effectively address our emotional needs. This can involve indulging in activities like binging on Netflix, excessive social media scrolling, shopping, overeating, oversleeping, seeking attention and approval, engaging in impulsive and risky behaviors, immersing ourselves in work, or using substances to escape or numb our emotional pain. While these actions might provide temporary relief, they don’t address our underlying emotional wounding. This leads to a cycle of unmet emotional needs and ongoing distress, ultimately hindering our progress towards genuine emotional healing and understanding.

The issue becomes more complicated when we fail to address our emotional needs. When we hide our true feelings, such as sadness or upset, and attempt to toughen up, ignore, or conceal these emotions, they invariably intensify within us. This not only magnifies these feelings, but also compounds the issues at hand. Rather than resolving our emotional challenges, this approach leads to an accumulation of unprocessed emotions. This exacerbates and prolongs our emotional distress, making us more prone to emotional outbursts.

For example, when I feel angry, I might believe that I should apologize to others, walk on eggshells or be overly accommodating. However, my anger and distress is actually a signal that I need to set appropriate boundaries. By choosing to apologize or acquiesce instead of establishing these boundaries, I’m inadvertently exacerbating the problem by allowing the words, actions and relational dynamics that trigger my anger to recur. This occurs because I'm denying or stuffing my anger and failing to assert my basic needs. As a result, I find myself feeling constantly upset and confused, unable to make sense of it all.

Not only do these attempts fail to alleviate our distressing emotions, but they can also make us feel worse, perpetuating the cycle of distress. This is particularly true when we either don't realize or allow ourselves to acknowledge and experience emotions like sadness or anger, and when we fail to take appropriate action to address the underlying needs related to these emotions. This contributes to a sense of helplessness and overwhelm.

The emotions that we fail to process remain trapped inside us, growing in intensity, becoming increasingly difficult to understand or make sense of. That's why it's crucial for us to be able to access and acknowledge our true feelings, to give ourselves permission to experience them fully, and to learn how to take appropriate actions in response.

When we fail to understand our emotions, we're more likely to turn to short-term coping strategies to feel better. For instance, if eating chocolate or ice cream or following a strict regimen offers temporary comfort, we might rely heavily on these strategies. This happens because they provide a brief respite from ongoing negative feelings and confusion. However, managing our emotions in a healthy way involves acknowledging and appropriately dealing with our emotional responses as they occur. If we aren't aware of our emotions because they're concealed by shame, we may attempt to feel better in ways that don't address the real issues. When we find ourselves caught up in these destructive cycles, our coping methods, such as overeating or self-medicating with alcohol and other recreational drugs, actually create more shame. Not only do they fail to resolve the underlying problems, but they also further complicate our struggle to cope with our emotions.

Struggling to cope with our internal experience, we turn to food, drink, sex, or other avenues of escape. However, these invariably lead to more shame, such as feeling bad about our bodies because of overeating or excessive drinking, which compounds our preexisting shame. We might also feel embarrassed because we don't want others to see this side of us. This cycle of trying to escape shame by engaging in behaviors that cause more shame is hard to break without understanding the underlying issues. Others might wonder why we can't just stop these behaviors, but the reality is, we're not sure how to effectively manage our emotions because they're buried under so many layers of shame. And that often leaves us feeling that there must be something inherently wrong with us.

When we're dealing with shame, we often start to pull away from others. We do this because we think our emotions don't make sense and we're afraid of being judged or shamed even more. At this point, shame is incredibly damaging because it stops us from being genuine with others. Instead, we might pretend to be okay and hide our true feelings. But when we're upset and can't manage our emotions, we often retreat and use coping methods that don't really help. This is because we don't understand our emotions well enough to describe them.

There are two big issues here. First, we're emotionally unbalanced because we don't recognize some of our feelings and don't deal with them. Second, we find life confusing and overwhelming and making decisions hard because we're ignoring or suppressing the emotions that are actually there to guide us. Not understanding these feelings makes it hard to make good choices.

For instance, if you always suppress your anger and feel guilty or fear that you're going to be rejected or abandoned, it might cause problems in your relationships. You might end up with people who treat you badly because you push your anger down and try to please them instead. This can make it hard for you to recognize when you're being mistreated or stuck in a bad situation. You might feel confused about why you keep ending up in unhealthy relationships and think there's something wrong with you for letting people mistreat you. But the real problem is that you're not in touch with your anger and other distressing emotions, which are supposed to tell you when someone is violating your boundaries. Understanding the full range of your emotional responses is key to making better choices in relationships.

Similarly, if you suppress joy or excitement because you feel other people don’t share your enthusiasm, you might start feeling flat or a sense of numbness all the time. You might not understand why you're devoid of passion and find it so difficult to pursue your dreams. This is because your natural feelings of excitement have been muted by shame.

You might also find it hard to understand what your body is telling you about what motivates and inspires you, or what direction to take. This can lead you to think negatively about yourself and avoid others. You might believe that if others saw the real you, they would think the solutions to your problems are obvious. While we might see our unhealthy patterns, understanding what caused them or how to change them can be challenging.

When we're confused about our emotions, we might start to think that we are deeply flawed. This can make us pull away from others, but the more we isolate ourselves, the more we need comfort and connection. Without support from others, we often go back to using unhelpful ways of coping in an attempt to feel better because we're missing the understanding and comfort that come from relationships.

Breaking Out of the Cycle of Toxic Shame

We often find ourselves trapped in a self-destructive cycle, unable to change because we're disconnected from our core emotions. Breaking free from this cycle requires reconnecting with these deep feelings. This process usually involves seeking assistance from someone who truly understands emotional challenges, such as a therapist or a friend who has experienced similar issues. The ideal support is someone who goes beyond just treating the symptoms, offering help that enables us to understand and address the underlying emotions causing our difficulties.

The first step to overcome toxic shame is to calm the critical internal voices and start viewing yourself as someone who makes sense. It's common to feel that our emotions don't make sense due to toxic shame, but that's not true. Everyone experiences the same basic emotions. The problem is that your emotions may have been misinterpreted or you suppress them because of how you were raised.

It's important for you to understand that you are not inherently defective. You've just developed maladaptive ways to cope with your emotions because you weren't provided with good modeling that would have helped you to learn to manage them effectively. These methods were your attempt to deal with your feelings. The objective now is to learn to understand and properly manage your emotions.

An important step in healing is to be kind and understanding towards yourself regarding the coping strategies you've developed. These came about because you came to believe that some of your natural emotional responses were wrong, and you felt bad for having them. Realizing that your problems stem from this misunderstanding allows you to be more forgiving towards yourself. You can start seeing the behaviors you're ashamed of not as defects but as your best attempts to cope in confusing and overwhelming situations.

An understanding friend or therapist can be invaluable in helping you navigate strong emotions in healthier ways. They can assist you in understanding and working through complex feelings like sadness and anger, a process that may take time, as these emotions are often deeply hidden.

Therapists, in particular, are adept at calling your attention to incongruencies, such as when your body language conveys a different emotion than what you're articulating. By encouraging you to explore these feelings more deeply, they provide a safe space for you to navigate and accurately understand your emotions. This supportive environment allows you to learn and grow from your experiences, fostering emotional resilience and self-awareness.

In my mid-twenties, I was consumed with overwhelmingly painful emotions, and my relationships at that time seemed to be a reenactment of my early life traumas. Accompanied by critical inner voices, this period was incredibly challenging. During this time, I discovered the work of L. Michael Hall and Bobby Bodenhamer, which proved to be especially helpful. Their book, “Mind-lines, Lines for Changing Minds: The Magic of Conversational Reframing : Neuro-semantics and the Transformation of Meaning,” along with another book, “Frame Games” — now out of print — were both instrumental in my journey. They highlighted the ubiquitous nature of internal chatter, while helping me understand that I had a choice regarding the messaging in my mind. If I continued to adhere to the shameful thought processes, it would invariably tear me down. Recognizing this, I chose to adopt a more accepting and compassionate cognitive frame. I began to understand that the painful emotions surfacing were an essential part of the healing process, necessary for addressing and healing my deep emotional wounds.

Somehow, I had an instinctive sense that I needed to dive into the depths of all those painful emotions. Although excruciatingly painful at times, as I kept breathing softly and deeply, sometimes for hours at a time, from the depths of these emotions, at a certain point, I would feel the pain breaking open and coming out of my body in waves. I then felt warmth and comforting emanations flowing from within, along with a growing sense of compassion and acceptance for myself on an emotional level.

It was during the sessions I did with gifted healers and during the vision quests that I felt the deeply wounded parts of myself being transformed. In many instances, during the vision quests, I could feel a powerful presence descending into my body. As this happened, I found myself reliving past traumatic events, along with the powerful emotions and sensory impressions, many of which I had no previous recollection. The old, distorted configurations consisting of the traumas, the highly charged emotions, and the shameful thought processes attached to them, which had been held within my body for so long, were all dissolving and being transformed into fuel for my continued growth.

As I came out the other side of the vision quest, I could feel a growing sense of lightness and freedom. I could feel entirely new models being constructed within, along with access to entirely new resources. It's not a quick fix, but an ongoing process for me that has occurred over the past few decades.

The vision quest is a traditional Native American healing practice that involves fasting alone in the mountains for four days and nights without food or water. Few people work up to the vision quest, yet those who work with me individually often experience similar kinds of transformations within their own bodies as a result of the individual healing sessions.

Effectively managing our emotions doesn't mean we'll never experience feelings like anger, sadness, or upset, along with a whole range of other emotions that are a normal part of our human experience. By constructively working with our emotional responses and dismantling the shameful messaging that has perpetuated our suffering, we begin the process of healing and transforming the deeply wounded parts of ourselves. These parts then become catalysts for growth. As a result, we become more grounded and stable, and develop greater understanding, awareness, and compassion, while tapping into greater resources and capacities.

Feeling heartbroken? Overwhelmed with sadness and grief? If you're ready to heal, let go, move on, and attract love into your life, schedule your free twenty-minute heart mending strategy session now. This initial session is not the actual healing process, but a valuable opportunity for you to share your individual concerns and challenges. Together, we'll devise a path forward, exploring workable solutions for you to implement on your healing journey. Click here to schedule your free challenge resolution – heart healing session.

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