How Shame Shows Up in The Body
I’m wrong …
I’m bad…
I’m unworthy …
These are common beliefs that show up as by-products of relational trauma.
The memories where we may have been made to feel incompetent, bad, wrong and in other words of no value or worthless can be largely unconscious.
Our core need is to feel that we belong. To be loveable, ‘good’ and worthy of attention and sensitive care. A newborn expects to be cherished and met with sympathetic affection. As we grow, we have hearts full of love, excitement and joy and this might have been met with anger, hostility or abandonment by our caregiver(s). “Shame (or fear) without solution” is when these experiences are not repaired.
When our expectations aren’t met by others, a loss of personal agency takes place. We might begin to believe that we have no impact, that our needs are not important or even that we aren’t important. Over time, we unconsciously give up our sense of control over our body and our choices.
For all the parents reading this (me included!), it’s important to remember that we can be ‘good enough’ parents and that no close or intimate relationship is free of hurt. When my 3 year old approaches me excitedly to share a drawing and I’m busy or tired, her excitement is not always met with interest. We can be ‘good enough’ which means, most of the time meeting our children’s needs for care and love and attempting to repair moments of rupture.
These experiences of “shame without solution” happen in the body. Shame is a primitive, biological aspect of being human, and our entire being participates in the experience. Our nervous system shifts from increased sympathetic arousal (excitement, distress) to immobilisation via a primitive dorsal vagal pathway. The body of shame or the visceral experience of shame is one of collapse. The head and shoulders drop, there’s a sinking feeling in the chest and you might even feel like running, hiding or isolating yourself. It might feel like “going blank”. Shame has been described as “a dense fog that distorts vision – feels like a heaviness, a burden, frequently pressing down at the top of the back” (Wille, 2013). When shamed, we want to hide to avoid further exposure and restore the self to a safe, private, hidden place where it can be reconstituted (Wille, 2013).
The most painful varieties of shame are unconscious and can result in a shame-rage pattern where shame leads to anger or lashing out verbally or physically. This occurs when there is a perceived break in connectedness to others compounded by feeling exposed or vulnerable.
How Yoga Heals
Experiences of shame live in the body as body sensations and can be re-activated if they remain unconscious and unprocessed. No amount of talking about shame in therapy can touch the core of shame. It’s an experience that is felt.
If shame is a disconnection from the sense of self, a judgement or hatred towards the self, yoga is a reconnection, a restoration and a love towards the self.
Trauma-Informed Yoga is one way of gradually re-connecting with your body, feeling your body and making choices with your body as an approach to healing from shame-based relational trauma. Practices such as grounding, noticing your breath and scanning your body (when given agency and control) can gradually re-establish connection and a sense of being and belonging. Agency can be restored by making choices with your body based on how you feel.
By meeting your body where it is, re-connecting with all the parts of yourself and making choices with your body you are saying “I am worthy of being / care / love” (no matter what). In contrast to the blankness of shame, you have a willingness to be alive and feeling; you are here. You might practice noticing both, the sinking collapse or blankness of shame and the felt sense of the body.
A regulated, smooth and coordinated nervous system is the foundation of the sense of self. Yoga provides an opportunity to gradually feel your body and to build agency or ability to regulate your nervous system when and if you want to.
Yoga also provides opportunities to move in forms or shapes that are in contrast to the collapse of shame. Perhaps not possible in a moment of shame, but you might experiment with what it feels like to take a ‘warrior’ shape or a spinal extension where your upper body, heart and chest is open and your head is lifted. In contrast to the small, sunken collapse of shame, what might it feel like to be in an open shape.