If you’re here, reading this blog, I’m going to assume you’ve had thoughts like: “There’s something wrong with me;” “There’s no way someone would ever love me;” “I’m too much;” or “I’m not enough.” My heart goes out to you across space and time. These narratives, and the emotional vortexes that can come with them, are devastating. I’ve heard these vortexes called “shame spirals,” which is what they can feel like. Those moments where you’re spinning into a dark pit of despair and self-hatred. So yeah, this is heavy stuff and it’s important that you know you’re not alone. While shame and shame spirals are not something people widely acknowledge or talk about, many people experience them. Given shame’s underground nature, I want to bring more awareness to it and its impact on mental health, as well as how to heal shame spirals when you’re in them. 

No doubt healing shame could be an entire book and there are books out there (I’ll provide a list of resources at the end of this blog), but you don’t always have time to read an entire book. Or sometimes you just need to get started on your healing journey and need a name for what you’re going through. Additionally, shame can be heavy and you may need to titrate your work with it. In this spirit, I want to provide a quick overview of what shame is and its function for many humans. Next, I’ll go into some of the mental health implications. It’s worth noting right away that just because you experience shame that doesn’t mean you have a mental health condition, although shame is certainly an underlying factor within many mental health conditions. Finally, I’ll provide a few suggestions for working with shame spirals. 

So what is shame and why do we feel it? Obviously shame is an emotion but why focus on shame, as there are many emotions that impact humans day-to-day? First, my interest in shame is personal. I’ve had my fair share of shame spirals and they fueled many of my own mental health struggles. Second, so many of my clients experience shame. In witnessing their suffering, I’ve realized it may be an essential emotion to the human experience and addressing it may be even more important to wellbeing than addressing sadness or anger, anxiety or fear. According to sociologist Thomas J. Scheff (2003), shame is the premier social emotion despite being mostly invisible because acknowledging it is often taboo. Given how important relationships are to people’s psychological wellbeing, I’d like to suggest that shame is also a premier psychological emotion. It underwrites how we see ourselves interpersonally and intrapersonally, making shame and its opposite state, self-worth, essential neuroaffective patterns within our lives.  

Shame, like all emotions, has an evolutionary place in mammalian survival. Most animals experience emotions on some level because they provide information about the environment (internal and external). In other words, emotions are signposts for survival, and for mammals, that survival is often linked to relationships with other mammals. The more a mammalian species is social, the more emotions it experiences (heads up, this is a personal observation from watching a lot of Animal Planet growing up). Humans are a very socially connected species. We have emotions like shame and guilt to navigate social interactions. To be shameless is to behave in ways that run counter to social norms. Historically and evolutionarily, being shunned from a social group would mean dire consequences and even death, making shameful behaviors something to avoid at all costs. In this sense, we need shame to guide many social behaviors and interactions, but of course shame can be internalized. Rather than it being about our behaviors, it can wiggle its way into how we see ourselves and our place within social structures. When shame is directed at who we are versus what we do, our sense of self worth deteriorates and shame spirals can begin to take root, destroying our sense of love-ability and even our right to exist. 

Internalized and self-directed shame has nasty effects on self concept. That’s where those above narratives start to play out in our minds and we begin to experience a lot of emotional dysregulation. The emotions feed the narratives and the narratives feed the emotions and suddenly you’re in a shame spiral, unable to see your own goodness, abilities, and worth. Obviously this happens to many people within specific circumstances. I suspect it happens way more often than what most of us let on. That said, some people can recover, talk themselves down and emotionally regulate. That becomes much harder if you have underlying mental health issues. While shame spirals do not cause mental health issues, they certainly contribute to frequency and intensity of symptoms, making them way worse. When symptoms become a way of being, they also become part of our identity and here too is where shame spirals exacerbate mental health issues. With the exception of certain personality disorders, shame spirals can add fuel to the flame of almost all mental health conditions. Fucking hell, right?!

Okay, so shame is a major player when it comes to psychological and social wellbeing. Now what? Let’s talk about some ways to heal shame. 

As mentioned before, the opposite of shame is self-worth. To heal shame, you’ll need to connect with your sense of self-worth and self-love. This is easier said than done and that’s where trained mental health professionals can help, but in the meantime I want to share a few practices you might consider trying on your own: 

• Recall Resilience: Shame has a way of undermining our virtues. We all have qualities that make us amazing. Bring to mind a satisfying memory, however trivial, and remember how you were resilient through one of your virtues. Build out the memory using your senses. Consider the sights, sounds, smells, sensations and tastes within the memory. Focus on what you did and how you felt about yourself in that memory. This process can neutralize a shame spiral by recalling your self-worth. 
• Gratitude: Perhaps an antidote to many challenging emotions, gratitude has a way of pulling you out of current suffering and reminding you that splendor can be found just around the corner. Using your fingers, countdown five things – small things are great – that you’re grateful for and why. This practice can reverse the impacts of shame.
• Normalize: Consider the fact that many other people have shame spirals. Maybe you don’t believe me but please do! I have. My family members have. My friends have. My clients have. Shame may be invisible most of the time but that does not mean that other people don’t experience it. You are not alone and chances are other people have experienced shame spirals around similar situations. Try doing some supportive research to find others who have gone through similar things and felt similar feelings.  
• Impermanence: All things will pass, even this shame spiral! Sometimes you need a reminder that everything changes, including your emotional states. Repeat after me: “I can ride this shame wave. I can ride this shame wave. There’s another side. There’s another side.” Just keep reminding yourself that you don’t always feel this way. Emotions are impermanent and this shall pass. 
• Humor: If all else fails, leverage your sense of humor and find something that is amusing about your current state. Maybe it’s how creative your inner critic is with its jabs or perhaps it was funny when you said that thing in the meeting. Humor can pull you out of the nosedive that is a shame spiral. 

To wrap up, I want to say that shame might be one of the most difficult emotions that humans experience. It isolates. It belittles. It torments. Because it tends to be taboo, it often goes underground, making it all the easier to incorporate into your sense of self. Remember you are not alone. Remember you have worth. Remember you can engage your shame and turn it into love. That might seem a dream but it can be done. I’ve done it. Many of my clients have done it and so can you! Okay, putting my pom poms down for now. Sending you some love! 

Additionally Resources 

• The ShameBooth podcast and art project 
• Brene Brown’s TEDTalk about shame 
• The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are by Brene Brown
• Healing the Shame that Binds You by John Bradshaw
• No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model by Richard C. Schwartz

References 

Scheff, T. (2003). Shame in Self and Society. University of California Press.