Toxic shame destroys personal boundaries, as these can only be formed when healthy autonomy and self awareness are modelled and instilled. Without personal boundaries, interpersonal and life difficulties can't be managed or regulated, so escape is the only means of survival. Maddog adds that withdrawal and isolation are damagingly rewarding and reinforcing, as they feel like the only boundary and protection I can find from interpersonal or life difficulties. This explains, in part, why I feel just as compelled to withdraw and isolate from positive relationships as I do from negative ones, as both threaten my personal boundaries/defences in different ways. The more I need help or contact, the less likely I am to ask for it…
Markers of toxic shame in interpersonal settings include breaking eye contact, blushing, extreme self consciousness, occasional directly challenging behaviour and dialogue about achievements, delusional assessments of self. Bradshaw writes about how the shame-based person can often analyse others and the world with uncanny accuracy, compassion and fairness, but tumbles into "delusional" assessments of self which are often fiercely defended when challenged, even where the person is otherwise not aggressive or defensive. Maddog notes this with irony - T has often referred to my assessments of myself as "delusional". To challenge my toxic shame feels like a challenge to the only fragile emotional and psychological teritory that is mine. Tragically, in this way, his challenge to my self-hate can feel threatening and cruel and like a personal attack. The harder he pushes me about it, the tighter I hold onto my beliefs and the more afraid I am of losing them.
Bradshaw describes the family system as being greater than the sum of its parts. The system is defined by the relationship between its parts, not by the sum total of the parts. Much like a mobile, when one part moves, the other parts move in response.
Dysfunctional families have no secrets - only denial. "You can't heal what you can't feel".
The key factor in the functionality of the family is the marriage. If the marriage is healthy, the family will be healthy. Maddog adds that I'm not sure it's quite that simple overall, but probably true from the perspective of shame factors.
Bradshaw describes the process of "dynamic homeostasis", whereby when the family unit is out of balance, children will adopt rigid defined roles in an attempt to balance the unit again. In keeping with the shame-based parents having unmet needs, the children often adopt these roles in an attempt to meet those needs for the parents. Children may become pseudo spouses or "little parents", whereby they are required to take care of siblings, meet the parents' emotional/sexual needs etc. All of these roles are designed to mask toxic shame and to keep the family unit in balance. Maddog adds that I was partly a "little mother" to my siblings, as our lack of mothering unbalanced the family unit.
Another commonly defined child role is that of "lost child". The lost child will attempt to balance the unit/compensate for his/her internalised shame by being invisible, perfect, compliant, no trouble, overly helpful etc. Maddog adds that as a "lost child", I tried to be nobody and everybody all at once.
One member of the family, usually the most sensitive, often becomes the scapegoat. This allows the other members to "dump" their own shame externally onto the scapegoat and to lessen their own pain. All of the hurt and hate are redirected onto the scapegoat who may be left carrying generations of displaced shame. The scapegoat will often be overachieving and perfectionistic and will have multiple, sometimes changing, functional and responsible roles within the family. The scapegoat can be sacrificed at any time and will be owned or disowned by the family according to the functional impact of doing so. Maddog adds that this applies in my family. I was blamed for everyone's mistakes and for events which occurred when I was not even present. I was nominated to take the fall whenever needed, both publically and in private. My success was family success, but my failures were due to my flaws. Even now, my father invents details of my professional success to bolster his own image, yet denounces my mental state and "trouble-maker" nature whenever there is potential for my actions to reflect negatively on him. Even my siblings blame me for everything wrong within our family. My sister refers to the day I was born as "the end of the world". My brother blames me for why he struggles with his own children. It was always my fault for "making him mad". If I would only be better at doing the right thing, smarter, quicker, quieter, more assertive, more resilient, less defiant, more successful, less perfect, more normal, less blind, more competent, more independent, less independent, more intelligent, less stupid, stronger, more obedient, more positive, less unrealistic… then everything would be perfect.
Bradshaw notes that there are an infinite number of designated child roles within the family. Some are functional and practical, some are nurturing and preserving, some are public and status/reputation-enhancing, some are sacrificial and self-defeating. Maddog adds that I was the tragic hero, public achiever, punching bag, scapegoat/sacrificial lamb, conquest, strategist/problem solver, pseudo parent (including to my father), peacemaker, spokesman and lost child. There is contradiction in some of these roles, which is typical apparently.
These rigid roles ensure that the family unit remains frozen in place. The roles remain fixed and unchanging even as the children become adults. A challenge to any individual's role(s) is a challenge to the entire family unit. Maddog adds that this is partly why my detaching from my parents caused such disruption to the entire family system. With me went my roles and their contribution to "balancing" the family.
Bradshaw notes that youngest children often act out the dynamic of their parents' marriage. Maddog notes that he didn't elaborate on this point and I am a little unclear on what he meant…
Shame-based families are governed by survival rules. Important family rules are about interpersonal communication, feelings and parenting. The rules are designed to shame all of the members and to preserve the various roles. Power is used to shame. "Dad can yell at anyone. Mum can yell at anyone except Dad. The eldest can yell at anyone except Mum and Dad. The youngest tortures the cat…"
Unspoken rules, which are also Defences used to cover up shame, are about control, blame, perfectionism, denial of the five basic freedoms (the freedoms to perceive, think, feel, desire and imagine), the "no listen" rule, the "make nno mistakes" rule, unreliability, and the "don't trust" rule.
The process by which toxic shame becomes an identity is known as the absolutising or internalisation of shame.
It involves the three phases of identifying with shame-based models, the trauma of abandonment, and the interconnection and magnification of memories and scenes of shame.
First, abandonment can occur when the caregiver is either present or absent. Abandonment includes emotional abandonment, all forms of abuse and narcissistic deprivation.
Bradshaw states that a healthy parent meets the child's needs for "narcissistic supplies" by providing a constant and reliable source of validation, attention and mirrorring, which allows the child to form an identity, learn to experience and tolerate the full range of emotions and their consequences, assert and experience needs and autonomy etc. Where this narcissistic supply is denied to the child, the child has no sense of authentic self, cannot identify, trust or rely on their own emotions and projects/displays only those parts of the self that are sought and acknowledged by the parent. The self becomes a concocted "act" of acceptable qualities and behaviours. The child becomes a "human doing" instead of a human being.
But the narcissistically deprived child rarely feels anger towards the parents, and often reflects on their childhood without empathy for their child self, as the healthy parts of self that relate to self respect and met needs, have not been developed and cannot be accessed. Maddog relates to this. I rarely feel the anger I ought to towards my parents, as hard as I try. I lapse quickly into vicious condemnation of my child self. It is difficult for me to relate my undefined feeling of loss and deprivation with any sense of what my unmet needs actually were/are.
The "fantasy bond" exists where the child perceives that a love relationship exists with the parent as long as the desired qualities are displayed. The more this pattern continues, the more the child will achieve and be successful/admired, but the more inauthentic and empty he/she will feel. Many highly achieving people are deeply depressed for this reason. Maddog adds that this applied in my case. The only qualities/behaviours that were ever, even slightly, acceptable were to achieve highly at things valued by my parents (such as academically), to be and appear "normal" and not blind, to take care of the needs of my siblings, to silently withstand abuse, to display no emotions, and to minimise and ignore my own needs and to never seek to have them met. These behaviours were desirable by my parents, as they lessened the burden of my existence and the shame I was to the family, brought accollades to the family and ensured the secrecy of its dysfunctionality. Each of these patterns of behaviour became ingrained and persisted into adulthood, though none ever gave me any sense of wholeness or pleasure. I also partly acted out fantasy bonds regarding work and my colleagues, believing that if I worked very hard, people would respect and accept me.
The 2nd aspect of abandonment is abuse. Abuse is about the parent and not the child, and it equals abandonment because nobody is there for the child. Egocentrism causes the child to blame him/herself and to internalise shame as a result.
Bradshaw states that sexual abuse is the most shaming form of abuse. Maddog suggests that it isn't quite that straightforward and that the most damaging abuse can only be measured by its impacts and not by its type or form. The most damaging abuse is never just one type of abuse, because the abuse must destroy the child in every way from the inside out in order to be most damaging.
Maddog suggests therefore that the most damaging form of abuse is whatever most directly attacks the child's self concept. It will be that which most deeply erodes the child's sense of self worth, and his/her sense of right/ability to exist. It will take away the child's belief that he/she has any degree of functional and psychological/emotional control over the world. The most damaging form of abuse is that which makes the child feel most inhuman, most powerless and most defined by his/her internal flaws and defects. The child's sense of self becomes distorted into a belief that he/she is the sum of all of his/her external features and internal qualities, and when those features and qualities are all negative and defective, the sum total is of a flawed and defective entity. The most damaging abuse will turn basic elements of the child's existence and reality into tools of torture, methods of manipulation and bargaining items that can be given and taken away. The most damaging abuse is any abuse that itemises the child's subjective reality and turns it into the objective possessions of someone else. This allows the abuser to truly "own" the victim, to possess his/her identity and to cast ultimate judgment on his/her worth and right to exist. The victim comes to believe that his/her very existence can be given or taken away in ways that do not involve actual life or death. The only part of existence that is not torturous is the prospect of death, and so death becomes the unattainable and undeserved fantasy. Even death becomes a tool of taunting manipulation by the clever abuser - the reprieve that is repeatedly offered and then snatched away again as punishment for wishing for it. It is the chronic, whole-of-life equivalent of being repeatedly choked into unconsciousness and then resuscitated, wounded and repaired, dropped and picked up again. The restorative act is more intolerable than the harm that preceded it. The victim comes to hate and fear his/her existence more than the abuser ever could, because existence is viewed as the mechanism of suffering. The victim feels like a timebomb or the embodiment of a deadly toxin. In that way, it is the self that is perceived as the cause of the suffering.
The most damaging abuse turns the victim into the living dead and the dead living.
Physical abuse occurs where parents seek to have their emotional needs for nurturance and support met by the child. When this does not/cannot occur, the parent interprets this as rejection by the child and seeks to punish the child. Physical abuse is often impulsive and random and unpredictable and often leads to a state of learned helplessness in the child.
The third type of abuse is emotional abuse. Bradshaw describes emotions as E-Motions - energy in motion. Emotions give us the energy to seek to have our needs met. Anger gives us strength to act, sadness drives us to dispel the pain of loss and to therefore heal. Emotional abuse freezes the child's emotions and the energy they generate, and therefore freezes a child's personality development at the stage at which it most predominently occurs. Parents will suppress and punish their child's emotions, because emotion in the child triggers emotion in the parent, and shame-based parents have no ability to tolerate emotion in themselves.
Emotions are the language and currency of early life. The child learns about the world based on what he/she learns from emotional interaction. The child whose basic emotional needs are not met therefore comes to believe that none of their needs can ever be met. Thanks to egocentrism, the child learns they have no right to have any form of needs. The greater the failure to meet the child's emotional needs, the stronger the child will believe that he/she has no right to need anything. The interpersonal bridge is broken and having needs becomes a source of shame itself. Maddog adds that as the child grows and develops insight into the fact that she has unmet needs of a very basic nature, the more the shame deepens. The shame is not only for having needs, but for knowing that needs were not met and that there are failings and defects in the character as a result. As a blind child, I had even greater needs for parental guidance and support than most children and less alternate means through which to have those needs met. I had even more needs that were never met and less ability to seek to have those needs met through other means, as I could not interact with and learn from the wider world to the extent that other children could. I was even more reliant on my parents and more vulnerable to their shaming messages.
The third phase of the absolutising of toxic shame is when images and memories, including audible and visual memories, of shaming experiences, become internal triggers of further shame. The internalised shame spiral occurs when shame is triggered and is then both projected outwardly and re-experienced internally. Maddog ads that this is the element of toxic shame most apparent in typical patterns of post traumatic symptoms of re-experiencing and avoidance.
Bradshaw discusses how the education system in the Western world is set up to shame children, particularly those who are under-achieving and/or already shame-based. The education system ranks and rates children in comparison to one another, values only certain types of achievement while devaluing others, rewards and encourages perfectionistic and overachieving behaviour and values quantity over quality in terms of the learning process, eg, a child who takes 3 months to learn algebra will do well, but a child who learns just as well but takes 6 months to do so will fail algebra. He suggests that intelligence should not be measured by what we know or what we can do, but rather by what we do when we don't know what to do… Maddog interprets this as meaning that intelligence is a measure of our problem solving and adaptive abilities, psychological flexibility, creativity and curiosity about the world.
The book discusses the numerous primary and secondary ego defences designed to cover up toxic shame. These include dissociation, denial, depersonalisation, displacement, feeling or somatoform conversion, rejection of the self (including self mutilation and suicide), inhibition and projection.
Feeling conversion occurs where the child learns to replace unacceptable emotions with more acceptable ones. Maddog adds that I often exchange anger for grief/sadness, while sometimes also exchanging grief for self-criticism, guilt for grief etc.
The shame-based person may also adopt behavioural styles which directly contradict the hidden impulses for which they feel shame. Someone with the impulse to be cruel may behave with exaggerated kindness. Maddog adds that I believe I do this - sometimes behaving with compassion towards those for whom I feel resentment, minimising my needs when I am most acutely aware of them, displaying fierce independence in relation to those upon whom I feel most dependent.
