Trauma can make you feel broken, weak, or unrepairable. During an event or experience your body might react in certain ways, or go into a freeze state and that may lead you to misunderstand, judge or shame yourself.
Added to that the negative reactions from those around you or society can reinforce feelings of guilt and shame.
Trauma and shame are deeply linked. Shame is a very painful self-conscious emotion where you believe that you are inherently flawed, not enough, or unworthy of love and belonging.
It’s tied to a perceived personal failure or flaw and turns the focus inward, creating the belief: “There is something wrong with me. I am bad.”
It often develops from your childhood experiences of abuse or neglect (physical, emotional, psychological, etc.) that have left you believing that there is something fundamentally wrong with you.
It happens when your caregivers do not meet your needs for connection – whether this is due to their own struggles, their absence, or their own lack of emotional awareness.
When you were upset as a child, who helped to comfort and calm you?
Who helped you to put your scary experiences into words and make sense of bad things that happened?
As children, we learn about ourselves through our relationships with the people around us. We need our parents and caregivers to notice us, respond to us and help us to make sense of what we are feeling.
Shame develops through an accumulation of repeated moments when your feelings, needs, or attempts to connect are ignored, dismissed or rejected.
How does this happen?
Imagine a child is upset and trying to tell someone about something that matters to them and they are interrupted and told: “Stop crying.” “It’s nothing to get upset about.” “Don’t be so dramatic.” “You’re too sensitive.”
Or a little child running excitedly towards a parent because they have just learned something new and receiving very little response – the parent isn’t interested, barely looks up and says: “That’s nice. I’m busy.”
Now imagine that happening repeatedly in small ways.
Children have not developed the emotional intelligence centres of their brain and they don’t have the emotional maturity to understand what is happening. Children need adults to help them understand and regulate big emotions.
A scared child needs reassurance and a cuddle. An angry child needs help understanding what has happened and to be taught how to release anger safely. A sad child needs to be soothed and comforted.
When children don’t receive consistent forms of regulation, they tend to turn the experience inwards and come to the conclusion that: “I’m too much.” “I shouldn’t be upset.” “Something must be wrong with me.”
This is exactly how shame can develop.
You might not consciously think “I feel ashamed.” But you may find yourself thinking: “Don’t make a fuss.” “I’m being silly.” “I’ll just deal with it on my own.”
And in terms of behaviours, you might notice yourself:
- going quiet when you want to speak/express an opinion
- apologising for yourself unnecessarily
- feeling uncomfortable when someone compliments/praises you
- feeling embarrassed about having needs/ avoiding asking for help
- hiding your joy/excitement
- worrying that you’re annoying people/assuming people don’t want you around
- feeling responsible for other people’s feelings
- being very self-critical when you make a mistake
- withdrawing when you feel rejected
- feeling like you need to make yourself smaller
- finding it difficult to trust that someone genuinely wants to connect with you.
These can all be signs that you have learned to dismiss or disconnect from your own emotional needs. Shame carries the leftover pain of your unmet needs and longing for connection. When your attributes and skills are not recognised or accepted, or when you take a risk and experience failure.
And shame can also develop when your positive emotions like joy or excitement aren’t welcomed or matched.
For example if a child is excited because they won a race, performed in a school play or achieved something they’re proud of, and instead of seeing the parent’s face light up too, they downplay it or simply don’t respond at all. Perhaps they say things like: “Don’t get a big head.” “That was a lucky one-off.”
Over time, the child learns that expressing joy or happiness doesn’t lead to connection.
They learn that their feelings are problematic or dangerous and that nobody is coming to help them. So they disconnect, keep everything inside and try to deal with it on their own.
If reaching out for comfort repeatedly results in rejection, disappointment or shame, it makes sense that eventually you might stop asking for help, stop sharing your excitement, stop talking about what hurts, stop showing vulnerability, and stop expressing your needs.
This can lead to disconnection from your body and emotions as a survival strategy.
Your nervous system has learned connection isn’t safe and that withdrawing can protect you from experiencing rejection again.
But it can also leave you feeling lonely, disconnected and unsure of what you actually need.
The way that your childhood experiences of shame show up later in your life are:
- receiving a compliment and immediately dismissing it
- if someone doesn’t reply to your message, you assume you’ve done something wrong
- becoming very uncomfortable when someone sees you crying
- feeling needy if you need to ask your partner for reassurance
- toning it down when you are excited about something
- finding yourself saying yes when you really want to say no
- working really hard at being useful, helpful and easy to be around, because somewhere inside you’ve learned: “If I am good enough, useful enough and don’t cause problems, people will love me.”
These aren’t flaws in your character, they are survival adaptations and they’ve become deeply embedded patterns within your nervous system.
Why can’t you just think yourself out of these habits? Because your nervous system has learned to predict rejection before your conscious mind has even worked out what is happening. Your body reacts as though you are back in an old familiar situation.
Someone may seem disappointed and you immediately assume that you’ve done something wrong. Someone may become quiet and you feel an overwhelming need to fix the situation.
That is why healing shame isn’t simply about thinking more positively. It is about creating new experiences of safety, connection, and choice. Healing from trauma doesn’t mean you’ll never feel shame again, but repeated experiences of safety help to rewrite and update those old predictions.
Please know that it is possible to heal and to feel more connected to yourself. When you notice familiar old patterns, instead of automatically judging yourself, you can begin to respond with understanding and compassion. “Of course this feels difficult. My body learned that expressing myself wasn’t always safe.” That is very different from: “What’s wrong with me?”
You can learn how to repair your unmet needs and your body learns to update those old predictions. Body-centred trauma recovery works with the body and nervous system, rather than relying solely on talking and thinking.
Through nervous system regulation, increased awareness of bodily sensations and carefully paced experiences of safety and connection alongside co-regulation, you can begin to recognise what your body is doing and why.
You can learn to notice when you are shutting down, becoming overwhelmed, people-pleasing, disconnecting or going into self-protection mode. Healing is about helping your body to learn that you have more choices now.
You can begin to reconnect with the parts of yourself that had to be hidden, quietened or disconnected in order to cope. Gradually, your nervous system can begin to experience something different: “I can have feelings and still be safe.” “Where else can I find connection now?”
Healing can happen gently, through small experiences of noticing, regulating, reconnecting and learning that your emotions and needs are allowed to exist. Your nervous system learned how to protect you and it can also learn that you are safe enough to be yourself.
If reading this has helped you to gain a better understanding of shame, and you feel ready to let your trauma healing begin, I would be honoured to support you to go from disconnection to connection. To be safely guided with expert care and skill, please feel free to contact me to arrange a call back: https://caroline-king.co.uk/get-in-touch/