Depth Psychology Perspectives on Guilt and Shame Part 3

PART – THREE

• To understand shame that is destructive and toxic.
• To understand the difference between sex offender shame and sex abuse survivor shame and inner workings of survivor guilt.

What exactly is toxic shame?

TOXIC SHAME

Toxic Shame is a powerful feeling of humiliation and despair that occurs when you irrationally perceive that you are worthless and irreparably stained with a mark of unrighteousness that fixes you in a position of out-cast with no hope of redemption. This intense personal conviction that you are hopelessly unworthy leads to overwhelming feelings of self-blame and self-loathing and may lead to acts of self-punishment, self-harm, self-mutilation, and self-destruction.

Toxic shame is frequently confused with healthy shame. While healthy shame surrounds the protection of the inherent worth of the soul, toxic shame surrounds self-blame, self-deprecating value judgments, self-loathing and self-destruction. Where healthy shame is a guardian of worth and a spirit guide through the shadow valley of worth in-absentia on the journey to re-claim worth, toxic shame surrounds the notion of the control found in the concept of the word deserve. The creed that you get what you deserve suggests that some foundational flaw at the core of ones being creates an unworthiness that must be atoned for in this life. This atonement takes the form of suffering, misfortune, and hardship. This creed suggests that the one who is born blind or with a debilitating illness must have done something bad to cause this misfortune. The creed also gives voice to the first thought that frequently greets sexual violation survivors suggesting to the survivor that I must have done something to deserve this. Something in me somehow made this happen and I am for some reason being made to atone for my inherent unworthiness. This is toxic shame in its finest hour pulling focus away from healthy shame that might lead the survivor towards a healing path.

Toxic shame bully’s and browbeats the soul of our being. In order to free the mind from this oppressor we must yoke both the wisdom of our inner Shaman and the resolve of our inner warrior. When called out by this inner knowing and courageous strength toxic shame will fall just as all bullies do in the face of authenticity.

Toxic shame is destructive in that it suggests that there is nothing that can be done to be released from the shame. Toxic shame facilitates the notion that shame is a prison from which there is no escape. This particular shame makes persistent and conclusive value judgments on the individual’s soul that convict that individual to a sentence of perpetual self-hatred. Toxic shame’s irrational estimation of the soul’s value suggests not only that the individual is not a good person it authoritatively concludes that the individual is a bad person beyond the hope of redemption. Healthy shame in contrast maps a healing path down which one might learn how to heal and secure the restoration of worth.

We can see the presence of toxic shame in the notion of what is often called conditional acceptance. The idea that we all begin our journey in this life at an estimated value that is less than worthy seems to be a universal experience. So many souls report that the worth platform from which they launched their life journey was marked by the sign that read YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH… YET. This suggests that worthiness as a sense within the heart and soul of the sentient being is the driving force behind what is more commonly known as self-improvement. There seems to be a universal belief that the sentient being at the core is somehow not good enough. It is as if worthiness must be earned. We tend to compensate by employing different earning devices one of which is called self-improvement. The idea of self-improvement is that if we reach a place of worthiness we might stop our efforting and lay back in the cradle of our worthiness. Thus, the code of self-improvement surrounds the notion of conditional acceptance which adheres to the principle that acceptance/worthiness must never be achieved. If worthiness were to be achieved there seems to be a belief that we will stop or efforts and become unproductive and lazy. This means that we are yoking the notion of unworthiness to push our bodies and souls towards higher achievements, building improvement monuments that might one day reach up to touch the sun of worthiness. In the end it turns out that all of this efforting is not so much about achieving the pinnacle of worthiness. All this super-productivity is more accurately focused on a devotion to self-improvement as a means of control over our sense of unworthiness.

While our productivity and creativity may reach super-human proportions we may have lost sight of what it is that is pushing us from brink to brink. This force to our great surprise turns out to be, shame. Shame is the absence of worth. This suggests that we cope with the absence of worth by employing the illusion of control. The self-improvement illusion while conjuring the sense of linear progress towards worth is more accurately the rigged carousel that never allows you to reach the brass ring. This postulates that the idea of control tends to be worth more to us than worthiness itself. It is control that we worship far more than we do the hope of worth.

What is the difference between the shame of the sexually violated/survivor vs the shame of the sex offender?

SEXUAL VIOLATION SURVIVOR – SHAME – VS – SEX OFFENDER – SHAME

The difference between healthy survivor shame and healthy offender shame surrounding sexual violations on the surface seems rather obvious in that one individual survived a violation that the other individual committed. While the survivor is overwhelmed with a sense that one has been stained with grievous humiliation that cannot be removed, the offender who has some semblance of a conscience (as there are many sex offenders who are not capable of experiencing shame) will experience an overwhelming sense of worthlessness at having created a wound that was so deeply injurious that it could not be repaired. The primary difference between the healthy survivor shame experience and the healthy offender shame experience is that the survivor’s shame is about the restoration of worth and the offender’s shame is about the discovery of worth. This means that the survivor shame is designed to enable the survivor to reclaim the worth that has been relocated and the offender same is about discovering the very existence of worth. Healthy survivor shame then leads the survivor on a healing journey designed to purge the violation and restore worth to her rightful place. Healthy offender shame then leads the offender on a remorse journey designed to teach the offender the 4- lessons of genuine remorse including responsibility-empathy-regret-restitution. Ideally these remorse lessons then lead to the development of a sense of worth which the offender had not yet previously discovered nor possessed.

It should be noted that both survivor’s and offenders are susceptible to the guise of toxic survivor shame and toxic offender shame. This means that both survivors and offenders may engage in the self-blame and self-loathing cycles of toxic shame rather than the linear healing and growth pathways of healthy shame. Survivors may exact self-blame and self-loathing surrounding the irrational belief that they did something to cause the violation or somehow, in someway deserved the grievous humiliation that was forced upon them. The social stigma surrounding the survivors of sexual violation events serves to stoke the fire of toxic guilt facilitating the survivor’s daily development of self-blame and self-hatred cycling. Offenders may also engage in self-blame and self-loathing missing the primary message of healthy shame surrounding the self-growth journey of genuine remorse. The offender self-blame and self-loathing are also facilitated by sex-offender social stigmas.