No one gets through childhood unscathed, some more than others. Read this book if you:
- are plagued by frequent thoughts that you are not good enough, unworthy, or broken.
- have emotional storms and sometimes feel out of control.
- are suspicious of the good and expect the worst.
- felt misunderstood by a parent or caretaker who attributed motives, feelings, and thoughts to you that were not true.
- fear getting close to people, worrying they will see how broken you are.
- keep parts of yourself hidden and feel like a fraud.
- feel ashamed of feeling ashamed.
- are tired of feeling so miserable and want to understand and heal your suffering.
- would like to know what shame is in order to understand or help someone you know.
A perspective about childhood shame
The origins of shame, whether from the thoughtless neglect of a self-absorbed mother, a blatantly abusive father, an absent or intoxicated caregiver, all have one thing in common: the child experiences an invalidation of their feelings and are ignored, scolded, or punished, for their natural needs for comfort, love, and a sense of safely belonging to someone who treasures them.
Why is this important? Because to heal those wounds, it is essential to understand where it started, what caused it and how it shows up in adults. Depression, anxiety, poor self-esteem, self-contempt, and other mental health issues like narcissistic personality disorder and borderline personality disorder share a common core: shame.
But my childhood wasn’t that bad
You may not think of your childhood as unhappy or traumatic. You may have no memories of abuse; you were fed, clothed, and sent to school. But what is traumatic to a child is not just what happened to them. It can also be what was missing.
You may also have no memories of being comforted or hardly remember being played with. You may have been raised by siblings, childcare workers who came and went, or a harried, overwhelmed mother. Reliable, consistent emotional connection and emotional nurturing were missing. This is traumatic for a baby or child. Whether it is trauma with a little t or trauma with a big T, when there is repeated emotional invalidation or emotional neglect, it is harmful to a child’s development of the sense of self—self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-resilience. This kind of trauma is the breeding ground for shame.
My childhood was miserable
Wounds of abuse can be healed. Shame can be healed. Despite what you may have feared, you don’t need to have a lifetime of suffering. Based on the current trauma treatment research, the experiences of many women and men I have worked with throughout my career as a psychotherapist, and my personal journey healing my own shame, the following pages outline a practical path you too can take. It is not an easy path, but it is a possible path. I provide exercises and straightforward steps that, if you pursue them with focus and intention, adding other aids that work for you, can enable you to heal your wounds and change the false beliefs you have about yourself and others. As you use the strategies I discuss, you can gain the power to meet this destructive venom called shame and gradually spit it out of your life. I know you can be one who can know what life feels like beyond the shame of a troubled childhood.