Empaths and Shame: 3 Powerful Defenses

In this article we want talk about empaths and shame.

Doug Noll:

So I’m going start out because, of course, I come from a more scientific psychological perspective. .I’ll give you my ideas around empaths and shame and what I learned. Then we will get Aleya’s perspectives.

Shame Is A Forbidden Topic

So the first think that I want say about shame is that it’s taboo. It’s probably the most powerful emotion that we have, and yet it’s the one emotion that we don’t talk about. In fact, we are ashamed to talk about shame and that seems to be implicit in American culture. When we become shamed because its taboo to feel shame, we then have other emotions like anger and resentment and annoyance. 5 Signs You Are A Damaged Empath and 8 Liberating Ways to Heal

If you are an empath, then as Aleya will talk about in a moment, you want to know about empaths and shame.

Shame Arose During Evolution

Shame is biologically derived. It evolved in humans, many many many millions of years ago as a means of social control. Millions of years ago, humans didn’t live very long. The only way they survived was by cooperating in very small groups.

People who took or stole or engaged in bad conduct died because nobody would support them when they got hurt or injured. People who were able to regulate themselves to resist an impulse to do something against the interests of the group survived because they were able to get the support of the group.

Shame became a powerful evolutionary adaptation as it became very painful. Shame  highly adaptive and very useful as a means of reinforcing cooperation and inhibiting self-centered choices at the expense of the group. Today we’re all born with shame.. We have mechanisms in our brain neural circuits that actually produces the painful experience that we call shame. When we talk about empaths and shame, part of the conversation has to be an understanding of the purpose and origins of shame in humans. Super Empaths-13 Practices To Hone Your Awesome Gifts

Shame Is A Signal That A Bond Is Threatened

The other way to look at shame is as a signal that a bond is threatened. For example, infants are born with the affect shame. The affect turns into an emotion, and parents use shame  abusively to control children.

The child, when shamed, feels the threat of a loss of attachment or loss of the bond with mom or dad. Shame becomes even more intense than fear. That’s why shame is used by parents unconsciously as a form of social control in young children. Intuitively, parents pick up that shaming a child is more powerful than scaring a child.

Parental Shaming of Children Is Emotionally Abusive

Parental shaming turns out to be incredibly abusive.. We didn’t know that up until about 10 or 15 years ago, but we know it now. And of course this is all new knowledge that will take, unfortunately, generations to get out into the public.

We can teach children about shame, what it is, and how to manage it. The problem is, of course, is that when shame becomes too intense, it becomes dysfunctional and can become clinical.The Awakened Empath: 6 Paths to Powerful Enlightenment

So you can have people suffering from depression or borderline personality disorders or other kinds of personality disorders where they are coming up with coping and defensive mechanisms in order to ameliorate the pain of the shame that they feel within them.

We see shame all around us. Part of the dynamic of political polarization is shame.

What’s also very interesting is that people who think that they are high value in a group don’t feel shame. We can think of people who are like that- narcissists and certain political figures that feel no shame.

Modesty Is Shame Inflicted On Young Girls To Control Them

There is also the idea of modesty. The history of shame, etiquette, and manners in the so-called civilized world all wraps around shame. Modesty is nothing more than a description of imposing feelings of shame, embarrassment, fear and guilt on young children, especially young girls, to socially control them and to make them obedient to patriarchal authority.

Off course, that has been going on for thousands and thousands of years.

When we do feel shame, we are culturally forbidden from talking about it, so we have to cover it up with anger or resentment or some other surface emotion.

Empaths and Shame

Aleya:

I’m, going to approach shame from stance of empaths and shame. Take a moment to think about something that happened last week month year, two years, five years, 10 years, a moment when you felt shamed by another. Somebody shamed you.

The person that shamed you has not cultivated a lot of self love. They are not deeply and profoundly in love with the light that flows within them.

They have issues of self-worth. self-hatred, and self-critic. They project the self-hatred onto others by shaming. And so, if you are an empath shamed by another, you literally just got their bundle of self-hatred, ack of self-worth, self-critic when they shamed you.

Now you’re, stuck holding their bundle that has all of their feelings of shame. You interpret it as your own.When you are not a conscious or empowered empath, you’ll feel responsible for all of it. You might even apologize or give your power away to the person that just shamed you. You want to shift it, heal them, make them feel better thinking that, if you make them feel better, the empathic sensations will go away.

When you do this, you give your power away. You abdicate your responsibility to yourself. You change your behavior. You step out of alignment with your own truth, consciously believing that you will somehow clear all these empathic sensations of this person’s shame of themselves. This is the source of empaths and shame.

However, it doesn’t work that way. You’re left churning around in all of their stuff. You become exhausted and feeling angry that you were shamed. This anger is good. This anger is  trying to help you return their shame back to them.

Your anger is also there trying to retrieve any power you might have given away to them. Whenever we get shamed – and we do that dance with another person. we become reactive. That’s opportunity for you to practice more self-love.

What typically happens as we walk around with everybody’s shame and  all of their self-hatred, thinking that its ours. We think that we have to be fixing and changing it. As you feel their self-hatred and you start beating yourself up. Because you are beating yourself up with the other person’s self-critic, you look to unhealthy behaviors to soothe yourself.

So whenever you are in unhealthy behavior, you want to explore the question, wow do we quiet that self-critic?

There are energetic steps and processes to help you return  the shame, but the very first step is to have discernment and awareness that you may be empathically feeling another person’s self-hatred. Your best defense is to have compassion with the discernment  holding space  and recognizing it’s their shame. Return it back to them, send them information, and model how you love you. Model qualities in you like kindness, integrity, discernment, joy, and the freedom that flows within you.

Empaths and Shame: Power

Doug:

Emaths and shame can oftentimes be related to power. Let’s take the typical example of a narcissist trying to shame an empath. What’s happening is the narcissist is trying to exert power over you by taking away your self esteem. You can resist that.

The only way that power-over works is when there’s somebody to exercise power over. If you make what the narcissist is to you irrelevant, then that narcissist no longer has power over you and things change.

That’s true in any relationship. Anytime, one person seems to have power overyou, if you’re in the lower power position, all you have to do is remove the power lever.

Somebody can either reward you or take something away from you. If, whatever that something isno longer becomes important, then the person no longer has power over you.

So think about shaming as an abusive form of power over. Think about what is the power that this person is trying to assert over you? How can you make that thing unimportant. When you are able to do that, the power goes away.

Empaths and Shame: Abuse From Loved Ones

Aleya:

The other piece that I kept reflecting on prior to this conversation is that the people that we are closest to — mothers, lovers, friends, people that seem safe, may shame you. When that happens, you feel a deep, profound sense of betrayal, confusion, upset and grief because they just did something that was abusive.

They just projected their fears, judgment, their self-critic upon you.That is not loving at all. That is not kind. That is deeply abusive.

It erodes the sense of safety in relationships. If you’re, a parent, if you are a child, if you are a lover, if you’re a friend, start holding more awareness of when you feel shamed by that person.

Be aware when you shame another and cultivate safety and more love inside yourself, so that you break the cycle of the shame.