![]() ![]() Also, the relationship is a decent way to cope with all the unbearable painful feelings that come up when the person is alone. Sometimes, again, its because they believe they dont deserve anything better. Usually they settle for a good enough relationship, where both parties are highly unhappy but are too weak, in their own way, to pursue true happiness. Or they are incapable of building and maintaining one. Many people suffering from toxic shame have unhealthy relationships because they dont know what a healthy relationship looks like. On the other side of the spectrum, there are those who develop grandiose fantasies about how they will become rich, famous, powerful, and conquer the world, believing it will make those painful feelings go away, which is not what happens even if they succeed. This early erasure of self often develops into an internalized practice of self-erasure in later life, or various other emotional problems like the inability to name emotions, the presence of guilt or shame about feeling emotion, or a general numbness surrounding emotion. As I write in the book Human Development and Trauma: Its common that shame-ridden people lack a sense of self and are dominated by their false-self, which is a combination of adaptation techniques and coping mechanisms that they developed to deal with their unresolved trauma. ![]() They also feel responsible for other peoples emotions, and feel ashamed and guilty when other people are unhappy, especially if its in some way related to them. So the person not only feels ashamed, but also guilty for things they are not actually responsible for. Toxic shame is often accompanied by toxic guilt, where the person feels unjust responsibility and guilt. Some people cope by hurting or not taking care of themselves, while some hurt other people and become highly antisocial and narcissistic. It is common for a shame-ridden person to also suffer from chronic anxiety and low self-esteem. We explored the topic more in a previous article titled 5 Beliefs People with Adverse Upbringing Have about Themselves. Such a person internalized those hurtful and untrue words and behaviors, and it became their understanding of who they are as a person. Regarding toxic shame specifically, it develops because an individuals primary caregivers or other important figures routinely shamed, or punished them either passively or actively. So the person was conditioned into routinely feeling ashamed when there was nothing or very little to be ashamed of. Moreover, this trauma was experienced in a repeated fashion and wasnt processed as such nor healed. ![]() In most cases, it is trauma a person experienced in their childhood and adolescence. Thats why many people struggle to understand how things like childhood neglect can be a form of abuse and trauma. While these things are indeed very traumatic, there are a lot of traumatic experiences that people dont recognize as trauma. Trauma is a word that people either dont think much about or they associate it with something extreme, like broken bones or severe sexual abuse. ![]()
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