The biology of shame

The biology of trauma and shame

I rarely hear clients telling me that they actively feel shame, often they have a strong sense of an emotion but struggle to articulate it, but what is shame was really trying to protect you from anger?

Shame is an emotion that says ‘I am wrong, there is something wrong with me’ and the first you might know of it is if you have the desire to withdraw and hide from others. Chronic shame most often stems from childhood, if a child is angry and cannot express this because the adult isn’t a safe person to express anger to i.e. the adult could punish the child or reject them which is experienced as a threat to survival by the child. The safest way to cope is for the child to blame themselves and take all responsibility.

When shame is elicited energy levels are likely to reduce and there could be a spiral of emotions which is indicative of hypoarousal. Shame and hypoarousal share the same biological process. This biological process that starts inhibits ones ability to mobalise (energise) themselves, the body releases corticosteroids which reduces the ability to feel anything other than the shame. An experience of hypoarousal when someone experiences shame can often lead the person to wish the floor would just swallow them up and simply disappear, akin to a freeze response or possibly worse a death like response.

Where an individual experiences persistent and chronic trauma which leads to shame – remembering that children are more prone to experience shame as they haven’t learnt the ability to rationalize their experiences, they generally blame themselves and resort to a solution that somehow they need to do better or work harder. Children lack the internal capacity and resources to cope, an automatic way to cope would be to split their experiences off from themselves and this risks dissociation – this isn’t something the child consciously does, it is the brains automatic way of coping when the limbic system is activated.

Hypoarousal makes sense as an evolutionary defense, it leads to immobilization and historically predators wont pursue an immobilized animal unless desperate, predators rely on movement to detect presence, collapsing could distract a predator, when immobilized the body will release natural pain killers which prepares for death so to ease pain.

This is why some people who have experienced trauma cannot simply ‘get over it’. Its not as simple as moving on or thinking differently. There is an entire psychological and biological process that keeps someone trapped in trauma. Therefore the ‘treatment’ is a holistic approach and working with someones body, moving away from the old school medical model which sees distress as dysfunction and says ‘what is wrong with you?’ instead to ‘what happened?’.