Healthy vs. Unhealthy Shame
Since childhood, growing up in a working class home, with an alcoholic father and hoarding mother, I’ve known shame. I knew to be embarrassed for the state of our house, the behavior of my father, etc.
In adulthood, I have developed more layers of shame through failed relationships, mistakes of mine and also the trauma.
But the biggest grip of shame comes from my PTSD and cPTSD, because I had taken on shame as an identity.
I understood this type of shame as toxic and feeling godforesaken which is usually how those who know trauma describe the feeling.
That’s why it’s been interesting to consider healthy shame.
I’m reading The Shame that Binds You and in it, the author, John Bradhsaw, discusses how different languages, such as Greek, Latin, French and German, have different words for healthy versus unhealthy shame.
English is limited in that it only uses one word.
But healthy shame can humble us and make us realize our mistakes and limitations, Bradshaw explains.
It helps us center the point that we are fallible, not omnipotent or omnipresent—essentially the humbling, sobering (pun intended) reminder that we are not God.
What a great message for an alcoholic as well. And the child of an alcoholic, to have to learn and absorb.
Sometimes we need to come to terms with our own limitations and what we can and cannot do—ways that God—I believe—uses our experiences to teach us what/how/who we are as well as what/how/who we are not.
I appreciate the nuances in the discussion of shame.
It is not all bad.
Like many emotions in life, they are complicated and layered, and they can be used for development and they can also be used to keep us stagnant.
AS someone who has known shame for a long time, I’m thankful that it is a lesson for growth and development, self-reflection, transformation and evolution as well.
May it be so for all of you as well.
<3