Releasing Toxic Shame

People who are abused experience relentless humiliation, neglect, terror and oppression. Over time, these ‘shame’ experiences coalesce into a form of complex trauma that John Bradshaw termed toxic shame. In other words, the abused person develops a chronic sense of being irredeemably flawed to the bone.

If you suffer from toxic shame, the dominant neural pathways in your brain lead to a build-up of repressed shame. As a result, you become prone to toxic shame attacks, wherein you experience immense shame in response to a minor trigger. When a present-day situation resonates with interconnected shame experiences from the past, toxic shame activates and takes over you. Such a shame ‘episode’ or ‘flashback’ can last for hours, if not days. Even when the episode passes, the ‘hangover’ can remain in your system for much longer.

Symptoms of a toxic shame attack include:

• An immense sense of heaviness, sadness or sudden depression.
• Blushing and sweating.
• Uncharacteristic unease, clumsiness or uncertainty.
• Feeling incompetent and impotent.
• Not knowing how to cond...