Today, I’m very inspired to talk to you about how to heal toxic shame. This is crucial after narcissistic abuse.
I have found it very interesting that many of my clients and even friends have been reporting that they are experiencing deep feelings of shame and guilt. It seems to be coming up at this time – and so it’s a great time to share this article!
The Devastation of Shame
Shame is sooo insidious. When it strikes it’s very painful. It can make us believe terrible things about ourselves – that we are damaged, broken, somehow “wrong”, incapable of getting our life right and worst of all, undeserving of love.
When I think of the times that I have felt the most ashamed, absolutely it was during narcissistic abuse, as well as in the aftermath of it.
I hated who I had become. How needy and broken I was. How I continued to forgive unforgiveable behaviour. How I continually let myself down … and most of all how I felt like a spiritual fraud, a love disaster, and a total life-failure.
I promise you I know what this feels like. I understand those deep and powerful feelings of shame. I also know that for a very long time I didn’t want to deal with my shame. I wanted to bury it. After all aren’t the disgusting feelings of shame the most shameful things about ourselves to accept?
Healing your toxic shame is one of the greatest hurdles to cross, and yet is one of the most powerful passages towards your healing success, and today I want to not just help you understand why, I also want to help you powerfully get free from shame.
How Narcissists Use Shame Against Us
All of our traumas are accentuated in narcissistic abuse, because narcissists are very skilled at working out and then smashing the parts of ourselves that are not yet solid and fully healed. The narcissist may accuse you of being selfish, of not caring about others and of doing things purely to manipulate and get what you want.
The narcissist knows that you can’t express your needs and wants confidently; that you explain and justify and feel guilty about “your rights”. The narcissist has identified that you often apologise and feel guilty if others don’t like it when you are trying to assert your own truths and desires.
This is a “shame pattern” that was established long ago. It came about usually because you had a parent or caretaker who accused you of being selfish or ungrateful when you didn’t do what they wanted you to do, rather than allowing you to establish and grow up into you own rights, values, and boundaries.
What happens in our shame patterns when they are ignited by people who trigger them? We regress back to that young inner person who felt mortified that this parent / caretaker (who we were dependent on for love and approval) is telling us that we are “bad”.
When being narcissistically abused, something inside knows that we are not bad, despite the narcissist purporting how bad we are. Logically we may know that the narcissist is indeed projecting on to us exactly what he or she is, and scapegoating us – yet WHY do we explain, justify, and lecture and prescribe ad nauseam trying to get the narcissist to agree with the version of ourselves that we want them to believe?
Why can’t we just KNOW who we are, not be triggered, and simply say, “I know who I am, and I am not accepting your version of me whatsoever. End of conversation.” And then get on with our own happy, healthy life without this person?
It’s because deep down, on the subconscious level, we are still carrying the original traumas. They are unresolved. We may feel intensely triggered and even like we are emotionally fighting for our life trying to change this person’s mind about us. It’s as if only then can we be healthy, happy, and safe.
Really, without knowing it, we are trying to rewrite the past – trying to make the original person (who we WERE completely reliant on for love, approval, security, and survival) “do it differently this time.”
Of course, with narcissists, fighting back only grants them total permission to do their ghastly dance with us. Gaslight, project, threaten, condemn, stonewall, ridicule, abandon, punish and literally drive us to a breakdown with the insane and cruel mental and emotional twists and turns.
It’s their finest work!
Of course you pop! Now, you react in ways that you become TOTALLY ashamed about! You are irate, devastated, traumatised, irrational and even manic … whilst the narcissist stands back and enjoys the victory of you becoming the “abusive crazy one”, and them staying cool and collected and having the upper hand.
The Pattern of Shame
I wanted to step you through this to help you understand the Pattern of Shame.
We have buried the deepest, darkest feelings about ourselves from our past, and narcissists use them against us. Then they get reignited, and we do more things to be ashamed about.
Shame is not just a pattern. it’s a self-perpetuating cycle.
Let me explain a simple shame pattern to you.
You may be on a diet and there is a chocolate cake in the fridge. You have a single slice. Then you berate yourself for doing this. You are now suffering the trauma of your own self-disgust, and then you find yourself craving more and more cake. Before you know it, half is gone and then you are in self-loathing.
What follows is a week of eating junk food.
Why does this happen?
Because shame is a powerful e-motion – energy in motion. Whatever you feel about yourself is what generates you to make choices and show up in ways that will create “more of that”. It’s simple and absolute Quantum Law – so within, so without.
To put this another way, whatever the composition of your inner being is, emotionally, on any given topic, is exactly what you will choose. And this is how you will participate in life to create more of what you are “choosing” as your beingness.
When we are stuck in shame, then we unconsciously co-collude to create more shameful feelings and behaviours to get ashamed about.
This is why we get locked into shame patterns that can powerfully sabotage our inner and outer lives.
People Arriving In Our Lives Who Match The Shame
This is the tricky bit with shame. We don’t want to look at it. We want it to go away but it doesn’t.
It doesn’t go away because not only are we internally regurgitating these unhealed aspects of ourselves, but the exact people and situations that represent the unhealed shame keep showing up in our lives as well.
Hanging on to shame doesn’t allow you to be free to have a great and healthy life. Rather you will feel guilty and unworthy of having your own rights and truths. Then (as the absolute truth of Quantum Law – so within, so without) you will have people come into your life who will AGREE that you are unworthy and undeserving of having your own personal rights.
If you are carrying the shame of feeling like a bad person, because you have been told that, or because you haven’t forgiven yourself for something you did – then you will have close relationships with people who will tell you that you are a bad or evil person.
And – here is the HUGE bucket of ice cold water being tipped over your head, just as I had to do to myself – these people will “be” people who match what you subconsciously, painfully believe about yourself.
They will NOT be nice people!
They are bad, they will tell you that YOU are bad, and they will try as hard as they can to convince you that every bad situation, including their own bad behaviour, is YOUR fault!
Now please know, if you didn’t have this internal shame, it wouldn’t mean that a narcissist would stop being abusive. A narcissist is a narcissist. What it means is that you wouldn’t accept their version of you and wouldn’t have them in your life. You would not be a match and their garbage would not be your reality.
How The Light Dissolves Shame
I hope you have been able to follow this dialogue so far. If you have, I hope that you are starting to see the truth – that the impact of our internalised shame, if it remains in the dark, is powerful, insidious and creates so much pain, disappointment, and abuse in our lives.
Yet, the great news is that we don’t have to continue experiencing internal shame and the external matching consequences.
Shame can only operate in the unconscious shadows. It dissolves when we bring it to light.
Shame is in truth an internalised trauma. It was someone else’s personal attack on your “self” (usually at an early age) that hit and wedged within your Inner Identity. Rather than being told you were loveable, worthy, and “enough”, but were possibly behaving in a way that required attention and correction – you were told that you were “wrong”, “not enough”, “unworthy of good things” and the list goes on and on.
It wasn’t our caretakers’ fault, because they were not taught the emotional damage that this causes. They suffered the exact same emotional damage at the hands of their unconscious role models.
When you understand that you are a beautiful fractal of Source (a child of God) and that other people’s wounds have infiltrated you and wounded you, but this is NOT who you really are – then you can start looking at what has really happened here with fascination, rather than the crippling self-judgement that has sentenced us to more shameful things.
We all have been shame attacked. We are all in this together, and what I adore about this incredible community is the joy of this journey. Myself and fellow NARPers (as well as the gorgeous, conscious supportive commenters in our community and on this blog) are all about bringing the light into the dark places where we used to be trapped.
I used to struggle with toxic shame endlessly. I used to be so distressed if anyone thought badly of me. At a deep level I felt like I was defective, wrong, and not acceptable. I even, like many of us, believed during my shame attacks that I wasn’t even worthy of being here, let alone receiving God / Source / Creation’s Love.
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