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Healing the Shame that Binds You

Book by John Bradshaw · 5 quotes · Shame, Toxic Shame, Feelings

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Healing the Shame that Binds You Quotes

“Playing roles and acting are forms of lying. If a person acts like they really feel and it rocks the boat, they are ostracized. We promote pretense and lying as a cultural way of life. Living this way causes an inner split. It teaches us to hide and cover up our toxic shame. This sends us deeper into isolation and loneliness.”

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“Belonging to the peer group is paramount. One's whole sense of identity is coming together in adolescence. If one has a good foundation prior to adolescence, the sense of self can be preliminarily defined. Identity is always social―one's sense of self needs to be matched by others: one's friends, teachers and parents. Adolescence is the time the brain (frontal lobes) is reaching full maturity. It is a time of ideals, of questioning and projecting into the future. An adolescent needs to have the discipline of mind the philosopher Thomas Aquinas called studiasitas. Studiasitas is a disciplined focus on studies and thinking, a kind of temperance of the mind. Its opposite is curiositas, a kind of mental wandering all over the place without limits. Healthy shame at this stage is the source of good identity, a disciplined focus on the future and on studious limits in pursuing intellectual interests.”

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“From what you have seen so far it should be obvious that a major source of toxic shame is the family system and its multigenerational patterns of unresolved secrets. More specifically these families are created by the shame-based people who find and marry each other. Each looks to and expects the other to take care of and parent the child within him or her. Each is incomplete and insatiable. The insatiability is rooted in each person's unmet childhood needs. When two adult children meet and fall in love, the child in each looks to the other to fill his or her needs. Since "in love" is a natural state of fusion, the incomplete children fuse together as they had done in the symbiotic stage of infancy. Each feels a sense of oneness and completeness. Since “in-love” is always erotic, each feels "oceanic" in the sexual embrace. “Oceanic” love is without boundaries. Being in love is as powerful as any narcotic. One feels whole and ecstatic. Unfortunately this state cannot last. The ecstatic consciousness is highly selective. Lovers focus on sameness and are intrigued by the newness of each other. Soon, however, real differences in socialization begin to emerge. The two families of origin rear their shame-based heads. Now the battle begins! Who will take care of whom? Whose family rules will win out? The more shame-based each person is, the more each other's differences will be intolerable. “If you loved me, you'd do it my way,” each cajoles the other. The Hatfields and the Mccoys go at it again.”

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“Some emotional abuse is nearly universal. I believe that everyone has been shamed to some degree by emotional abuse. The poisonous pedagogy is quite clear about the fact that emotions are weak. We are to be rational and logical and not allow ourselves to be marred by emotions. All emotions must be controlled, but anger and sexual feelings are especially to be repressed. I can't imagine many people in modern American life who were affirmed and nurtured in expressing their sexual and/or angry feelings.”

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