How to Manage Toxic Shame

Am I ashamed of drinking wine on camera?

No way!

It's just that being a Jewish professor of clinical psychology, I discovered that milk is much cheaper.

Today we are going to discuss shame. I'm going to look at it from a few very new, very thrilling points of view.

My name is Sam Vaknin and I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited, the wine and milk-guzzling professor of clinical psychology in CIAPS, SIAS-CIAPS, Cambridge United Kingdom, and previously in Southern Federal University in Russia.

Okay, enough bragging. Get to the point, Vaknin.

Shame. We're going to discuss what is shame and then we're going to discuss how to manage shame, how to cope with it, how to handle it, because shame is a very pernicious, insidious and corrosive emotion.

Actually, we are not quite sure it's an emotion. It may be a state of mind. It is so multifaceted, so complex.

And the etiology, the causation of shame goes so far back in one's life that perhaps it's not an emotion. Or at the very least, it's a compounded emotion, the equivalent, for example, of love.

Okay, so what is shame?

I'm going to read to you the definition and then we're going to break it into pieces, into fragments.

Shame is self-directed, self-negating anger at helplessness in the face of overwhelming external circumstances or uncontrollable internal impulses.

That's quite a mouthful.

But I'm not ashamed of it. I think it's a great definition of shame, mainly because I'm the one who came up with it.

So, shame is self-directed. All emotions are directional. We love someone. We hate someone.

When we feel shame, it is self-directed. We are ashamed of ourselves.

But it is a self-negating emotion. It's an emotion that says, you're bad, you're unworthy, you're inadequate, you're wrong, you're immoral.

And in the background, there is this derivative promulgation and you should be punished you're bad and you should be punished you are evil and you should be punished you're unworthy and you should be punished.

So shame is self-punitive to the point of being self-negating. Shame can even drive to suicidal ideation.

And then I say that shame is anger. That is actually a form of aggression.

But this aggression is not directed outwards, it's directed inwards.

Now there's a variety of reasons. Why would we self-direct aggression? Why would we internalize aggression rather than externalize aggression?

For example, there are cultural reasons and societal reasons. Norms or normative behavior says that you should not be angry at people. It's not seemly. It's not okay.

And then you have to swallow your anger, redirected at yourself.

So this is one reason.

Another reason you've been brought up to please people, to cater to their needs and whims, to suppress your own needs and emotions.

And so this causes a lot of cumulative anger, anger that keeps accumulating and finally erupts, but the eruption is never directed outside, externally, it's directed inside, internally.

So until now what do we have?

Shame is self-directed, shame is self-negating, self-hating in a way. And shame is anger. Shame is a form of aggression.

But what are we angry about? We're angry at our helplessness.

Shame is intimately connected with helplessness and hopelessness. Shame is a pessimistic emotion.

And it's helplessness that is the core of shame when we feel impotent, unable to affect change in ourselves or in others, unable to modify or transform the environment to cater to our needs, our requirements, to fulfill our dreams and wishes and so on so forth.

There's a sense of I am not good enough. I'm inadequate. I'm a loser.

In other words, shame is the opposite of self-efficacy.

When you are not self-efficacious, when you're not able to extract beneficial outcomes from the environment, when you fail to act in the environment and on the environment, then you are not self-efficacious, you're helpless, and you feel shame.

So when you are faced with overwhelming external circumstances, which are out of your control and not within your power.

External circumstances could be dramatic, such as war or natural disaster or an accident. And external circumstances could be subtle, pernicious, insidious, under the surface, under the radar. Covert, and these external circumstances, the environment you're embedded in, people around you who may be, for example, passive aggressive, this kind of external circumstances wear you down, they corrode you, they are kind of attrition. And gradually, you fall apart. Gradually you flake, you disintegrate. And this causes a lot of shame owing to your inability to reverse course and somehow remedy what is happening to you. Similarly, when you cannot control your impulses, when you're impulsive, when you're reckless, when you are defined to the point of stupidity, when you're consummations, you fly in the face of authority and then get punished. When your life spins out of control, when you feel that you're no longer the master of your autobiography, when your actions and deeds seem to be alien to you, when you feel estranged, then you also feel shame. So now let's reread the definition. Shame is self-directed, self-negating, anger or aggression, at helplessness, at your helplessness, in the face of overwhelming external circumstances or uncontrollable internal impulses and behaviors.

Okay, I said that shame is a form of aggression.

But as I said, shame is also connected to what we call an internalized bed object. This used to be called the primitive super ego in the 1930s. An internalized bed object is a set of voices that work hand in hand in coalition to pull you down, to take you down, to pull you down, to depress you, to disable you, to deactivate you, to render you, to render your life constricted.

So this kind of introjects, this kind of internal voices and internal objects that collude in your downfall, that conspire against you from the inside, they are known as an internalized bed object. And of course, when you have something like this inside you grieve this prolonged grief there is mourning about your inability to transcend your own limitations the enemy the enemy inside the Trojan horse your incapacity to become you can't realize or actualize your potential, you can't flourish, you can thrive, and you grieve.

Usually such grieving starts in childhood when you're not allowed to set boundaries, to become an individual, to separate from parental figures, to interact with peers. And this prolonged grief is with you throughout life. And it is a major component in shame. Shame, therefore, is a combination of three elements. Aggression which is not legitimized, aggression which is not validated. Aggression which is therefore never externalized but always internalize, directed inwards at yourself. So this is element number one in shame. Element number two, prolonged grief. The realization that you are your worst enemy and that you will never become what you could have been and could be, this causes mourning and grief and it's prolonged and it's all pervasive and it's all permeating and it's ubiquitous. It's as if you've been mourning yourself since day one. And this is a strong element in shame. And the third element in shame is the interjection of the bad object adopting for example an abuser's point of view of you or society's point of view when you adopt external messaging external signaling external voices external judgments of you external opinions about you when you internalize them and make them yours when you appropriate them when they become an integral part of your psychological makeup of who you are, that causes shame. If you see yourself through the abuser's eyes, then of course you see yourself as worthless, blameworthy, stupid, ugly, inadequate, a failure, a loser, and so on, that causes shame.

If you regard yourself through society's injunctions and edicts and norms and mores, and you fall short, if you set yourself up for failure because you can never conform fully to societal expectations for whatever reason, then of course this causes shame.

And so these are the three elements in shame.

Aggression, which is internalized, prolonged grief over what you could have become and will never be.

And the third element, interjection or internalization of someone else's point of view, your abuser's point of view, society's point of view, the point of view of parental figures, never you, never your authentic voice, never your point of view, always someone else's.

And that causes shame, this distancing between you and yourself, this essential distrust of who you are and of your views and opinions and judgments, this tendency to prefer input from the outside to your own psychological processes is very shameful.

Indeed, at the core of pathological narcissism, for example, we have this unrequited, life-threatening shame.

Every introject, every internal voice, every internal object, and memories are internal objects. Every internal object is associated with an emotion or a set of emotions. Everything is steeped in emotions. Everything is drowned in emotions. Everything floats in emotions. Emotions are the sea. Emotions are the sea within which our internal objects swim or float or drift.

So internal objects cannot be isolated from an emotion, as Sigmund Freud had observed with his concept of abreaction.

When you dredge up memories, when you dredge up voices from the past when you access all kinds of internal voices which communicate with you including communicate their point of view about you or your actions and so on there's an emotion involved. Shame is the emotion that is connected to your conscience.

Shame is the affective correlate of conscience.

Conscience is a group of voices, a group of internal objects, that keep informing you what is right and what is wrong, what is moral and what is immoral, what is ethical and what is not.

Conscience contains a library of injunctions. Should, shoud injunctions, ought to injunctions.

So you should do that, you should not do that, you ought to do that, you ought not to do that.

And these injunctions are very active, the conscience, this set of introjects, your conscience, keeps constantly informing you. It keeps monitoring, surveying, surveying you, keeps following you, supervising you, and so on so forth.

Freud believed that these are the parental voices. They're actually not only the parental voices. There are more society's voices, but conscience, the conscience is there all the time.

And conscience weaponizes shame. Your conscience weaponizes shame. Shame is the affect, is the emotion at the disposal of your conscience.

And when you stray or when you resist or when you doubt or when you question or when you misbehave, your conscience, this group of voices, this group of introjets, makes use, they make use of your shame. Shame is associated with this particular coalition of introjects.

Now, shame is a form of self-audiencing.

To remind you, self-audiencing is when you have inside you an imaginary audience, an imaginary observer or group of observers, and they're very vociferous and very vocal about their views, their opinions, their judgments, their reactions with regards to your choices, decisions and actions. So you have an audience in place.

Now in narcissism, when the narcissist fails to secure narcissistic supply from the outside, the narcissists starts to self supply. The narcissist supplies himself.

And when the narcissist supplies himself or herself, the narcissist is self-audiencing. It's as if the narcissist becomes his or her own audience.

But of course a narcissist's internal audience is always positive, always grandiose, always fantastic, never critical.

So when the narcissist self-audiences in the self-supply stage, the reactions are invariably laudatory, adulating, admiring, adoring and fawning and so.

The narcissist self-audiencing is a positive process.

Now, the narcissist of course also has a bad object. We put that aside. I deal with it in other videos.

But when we come to self-supply and self-audiencing, the audience inside the narcissist's mind, this imaginary group of observers or spectators, or viewers, or listeners, this imaginary group is always 100,000% positive about the narcissist, renders, this group renders a narcissist godlike, immaculate, impeccable, perfect, brilliant, amazing, unprecedented, incredible, godlike, I said, and it is a divinity.

So this is positive self-audiency.

Shame.

And we just said that shame is the affective complement of your conscience.

So your conscience leverages shame in order to modify your behavior and manipulate your choices and decisions from the inside.

And this is also a form of self-audiency.

It's as if you have an audience in your mind, a group of observers, a group of spectators, a group of moral philosophers, representatives of society, your teachers, your role models, your parents, you have this imaginary audience in your mind and they exert judgment over your actions, choices, decisions, predilections, proclivities, and so on.

In essence, they exert judgment over your essence, over who you are.

And so this is also self-audiency.

Shame involves appalling operation, like a poll, you know, opinion poll. A polling operation of the internal audience.

But while the narcissist's internal audience is always positive in the process of self-supply, the audience associated with your shame is always negative.

In effect, self-audiencing in shame taps into an internalized bad object.

What the narcissist does, the narcissist isolates the internalized bad object from the imaginary internal audience that participates in the self-audiencing within the self-supply process.

So it's like inside the narcissist's mind, there are two populations.

One population that is totally negative, and this population is the repository of the narcissist's shame. It's a container, a sealed container, like a lead container with nuclear waste underground.

So this is the internalized bad object but the narcissist has no contact with the internalized bad object.

Narcissism is a compensatory defense against the internalized bad object.

Narcissism is a compensatory defense against the internalized bad object.

Instead, what the narcissist has, the narcissist has an imaginary crowd, an imaginary public, an imaginary audience in his mind, which is always laudatory, always complimenting the narcissist, always telling the narcissist how great is, how amazing is, or perfect is, how Godlike is, etc.

So in the narcissist, there's a split, there's a cousin between the bad object, this coalition of introjection voices which hate the narcissist and want to destroy the narcissist, and the self-audiencing public or self-audiencing crowd, which is always positive, these voices, they're always positive, and they help the narcissist to self-supply.

It's as if these voices inside the narcissist's mind, inform him how great he is.

And then the narcissist says, you see, I'm great.

With someone who is prone to shame, the bad object is the only audience.

So shame is associated with an audience or a crowd or a public, imaginary of course, within the mind that is in essence the internalized bed object.

What happens is shame is triggered by the internalized bad object.

And the internalized bad object, in the case of shame-prone personalities, the internalized bad object also incorporates and contains the conscience.

So in this environment it's all negative, it's all self punitive, it's all self-rejecting, the self-audiencing is negative.

It informs the person that he is, or she is, inferior in some way, that she has transgressed, that he has misbehaved. So it's constant harsh criticism, the harsh inner critic.

On the other hand, with the narcissist, narcissism is a defense against shame. It's a defense against this.

The narcissist shuts up these voices, isolates them, buries them deep, represses them. And instead, he supplants them with voices that utterly buttress and uphold the narcissist, grandiose, inflated, fantastic view of himself.

Now, conscience and the bad object that is associated with conscience in some cases, and shame, which is an effective instrument, an effective tool, at the service of the conscience, or at the service of the bad object which incorporates the conscience in some cases.

All these have to do with society. Society, the norms of society, the morals of society, the morals of society, the rules of society, sexual scripts, behavioral scripts.

In other words, all this has to do with what is known as socialization or acculturation the two processes by which we become members of a society, specific society, and members of a specific culture.

They are agents of socialization, agents of acculturation that bring to us during the early developmental phase of our lives, these agents bring to us information about society, its structure, its expectations, acceptable norms of behavior, what is right and what is wrong, etc.

And we internalize it, and we appropriate it, and it becomes our conscience.

And so conscience is the long arm of society inside our minds and the effective instruments at its disposal, a shame and to some extent guilt.

But today's video is about shame.

So it's not only an internal process. Shame is not only an internal process.

Shame is a bridge between the individual and society. Shame is a tool of social control. Shame generates conformity.

So shame is very important not only in psychology but also for example in sociology and anthropology.

Now I promised you that the second part of this video would deal with the issue, how do you tackle shame?

Now, shame is a good thing. It's good to be a shame. Shame informs you that you're about to do something wrong.

There would be consequences to your actions, and many of these consequences would be adverse.

So shame keeps you safe via the agency of your conscience. Shame keeps you safe.

Shame tells you, don't do this, it's wrong. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.

And then you don't do it. And then you're a good person. And then you don't get punished. That's at least the theory.

So shame is good but there is toxic shame.

Toxic shame is as I said when the shame becomes weaponized by the internalized bad object when voices inside your head, when internal objects inside your head, abuse shame in order to manipulate you, in a Machiavellian, psychopathic way, manipulate you, use you, abuse you.

So, toxic shame is when shame colludes or collaborates with elements inside you which are self-defeating, self-destructive, self-hating, and self-rejective.

So how to manage toxic shame?

First of all, we mentioned that shame is anger. It's a form of anger. It's a form of aggression, which is self-direct.

Number one, learn to manage your anger. Learn to manage your external anger.

Because if you're angry inside they have a surprise for you you're also angry outside. Angry people are angry, I call it generalized anger disorder.

Anger can go inside anger, anger can go outside anger. Anger is multifarious and shape shifting. It's a very intractable emotion.

So learn to manage your anger on the outside. The consequence would be that you will also have learned to manage your anger on the inside.

Manage your anger, don't let it manage you. The less angry you are, the less ashamed you will be.

Anger and shame are flip sides of the same coin. Get rid of the coinshame are flip sides of the same coin. Get rid of the coin.

So there are anger management courses, including online. Subscribe. Learn. Try it. Adopt techniques.

You will discover that your interactions with people become a lot more benevolent and benign and that you feel a lot more comfortable in your environment and this of course these are the prerequisites for not feeling ashamed.

Number two, I mentioned that shame could be toxic, shame definitely is self-negating. It exerts a negative judgment on you and sometimes it is self-punity.

Learn to love yourself. Start by watching the video on this channel the four pillars of self-love and learn to love yourself. Go to therapy if you need to.

Number three, shame has to do with helplessness.

Helplessness is learned. Learned.

Even as a newborn on day one, you're able to manipulate your environment. Definitely you manipulate your mother.

We are not born helpless, we are born with all the tools needed to master creation as the bible says.

So helplessness is not natural, it's learned, it's acquired.

Unlearn it. Unlearn it. Get rid of it. Don't be helpless.

Tell yourself, there must be a solution and I'm gonna find it. There must be a way out or a way in and I'm gonna discover it. There must be something I can do and I will do it.

Fight yourself. Fight your helplessness.

Next, don't face e-face.

In other words, when you're confronted with external circumstances that you cannot conceivably manage, that you can make no difference to, just walk away.

When you face your internal impulses and they threaten to overwhelm you, shut yourself off, walk away. Walk away, evade, avoid, withdraw.

Do not force yourself to endure the perfect storm of external adverse external circumstances or the no less perfect storm of impulses and urges and drives that threaten to dissipate you and render you reckless and defiant.

So don't face things, don't face things, e-face, move away from.

Identify the situations which are beyond you, situations where you are too small, too insignificant to cope with.

Don't dwell on your narcissistic defenses, just walk away.

You feel you're about to do something, you feel an impulse rising, just walk away, distract yourself, create a set of activities that you can engage in automatically when you identify the marks and the harbingers of a gathering storm.

Next, get underwhelmed, never overwhelmed.

Minimize, mock, ridicule, restate, reframe, lie to yourself if need be.

Whenever you're confronted with emotions, with moods, with impulses, they threaten to put you under, to overwhelm you, to subsume you, to drown you.

Gain perspective. Stand back. Stand back and mock yourself. Stand back and ignore these internal processes. Stand back and reframe them as something positive.

Don't let them take over you. You take charge and if necessary, take charge by walking away.

Don't get overwhelmed. Get underwhelmed.

Put everything in context and perspective and you will see how reasonable and insignificant these things are.

They appear to be looming and gigantic and ginormous and uncontrollable but they're actually happening inside you. You're in charge. They're happening inside you. You can control everything. There's nothing you cannot control. It's a myth. It's a narrative you've told yourself. It's an alibi. It's an excuse for abuse or excuse for self-abuse.

Don't let it happen. Fight. Fight.

Disregulation with regulation.

Now, if necessary, collaborate with someone to regulate you for a while. If necessary, go to therapy, for example, dialectical behavior therapy.

Just fight it. Realize this is the enemy from within.

Control your impulses. Control your thoughts. Control your emotions. Control your moods. Become obsessed with self-control.

If you are the victim of toxic shame, this is life-threatening. The alternative is self-control.

Now, self-control taken toextreme is a pathology in itself, but it is not life-threateningat least. It's a more benign pathology than toxic shame.

So, if worse comes to worse, and you're out of options, become a control freak. And make yourself the first target, the first subject of this control freakery.

Become rigid in your control, disciplined. Imagine that you're a one-man army.

Exercise your body. It is through the body that we regain control over the mind.

So exercise your body. It is through the body that we regain control over the mind.

So exercise your body in a rigorous regime.

Emphasize control over your routines, over everything in your life.

And gradually, control will become a second nature and you will become a lot less dysregulated and you'll become a lot less angry and you will not feel helpless anymore and the toxic shame will go away.

Good luck.