Welcome to the universe is your therapist. We are your hosts, Dr. Amy Hoyt, and Lena Hoyt, we are sisters. Take a seat and let's dive into this week's episode.
Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the universities, your therapist podcast, I am doing an episode today on the cycle of shame and anger. When we experience shame, one of the things that happens is that we see ourselves as the problem, or the mistake, or the poor choice. We think of ourselves as at not having engaged in a behavior that's problematic, but as if there's something wrong with us. And separating our behavior from our worthiness, or our good Ness, is a helpful way to address shame. When we judge our whole self, instead of evaluating our choices or behavior, we experience shame. There's something wrong with me, I'm bad, I'm not this type of person, shame makes us feel vulnerable. So never another part of us gets angry. Anger does not feel vulnerable for most of us. And it can temporarily cover up the shame. When we have a part that gets really angry, the shame kind of recedes. And this anger can come out toward ourselves and or towards others, Bill's shame and anger are very emotionally dysregulated and can carry with them a lot of pain. So when we're talking about the shame and anger cycle, we're talking about a cycle where I might have a sense of shame or feel shame about something. And then another part of me gets angry to try to protect me, that part also will do a lot of justification and rationalization. And then, when I am back in a better place with my emotional regulation, I might have shame because of how I reacted to my shame with anger, and it can become a perpetuating cycle. When we are really dysregulated. Because of shame and anger, we tend to act in ways that we wouldn't when we are experiencing better self regulation. We talk a lot in this podcast about window of tolerance. And it's the ability to think and feel at the same time, instead of being merely overwhelmed by emotions. And when we are in shame or anger, it's really easy to just be completely overwhelmed, and to not have access to our prefrontal cortex, our wise mind our logic, our reason, one thing you can do when you recognize this cycle in you is you can take steps to help your body calm down. When our body is activated like that, and our nervous system has activated, we become our own worst enemies. And we act in a way that will later bring us a lot of additional emotions and thoughts about ourselves. But generally, shame can come from going beyond the bounds of acceptable behavior within our culture. And I'd like to point out that there is culture everywhere around us. We have a national culture we have, perhaps a state or community culture, we have the culture in our friend group, we have a culture maybe in our worship group, we have a culture in our families. And some families inadvertently heaped shame upon the children of the families, any family that has struggled in the past, with the chaos of raging or mental illness, or alcoholism or addiction is a family that probably is going to leave the children in the family even as grownups with a tremendous amount of shame. And when we grow up in a family that is marked by this type of chaos, then what our subconscious learns is that there's no such thing as a mistake. There's no such thing as an accident, that somehow we should have known. And this is often set in in families with this kind of chaos, that we should have known something was going to happen. We should have been able to control something. I can remember a kid of mine that I worked with probably 10 or 11 years ago and he was 11 at the time. And I remember being so struck by this during this session with him he came in and he talked about how the dog that he and his family had had for three years, had bitten one of the neighborhood kids. And when he went home, his stepfather was so angry, and just kept saying to this kid I was working with, you should have known you should have known better. And so as we sat there, we explored how he would have known that this dog that they had in their family for three years, was somehow going to bite someone that day when he took it on a walk. And we were able to establish that there's no way that he could have known and what the stepfather was doing inadvertently was making the dog's behavior the fault of this kid, and was treating the kid as if he had deliberately gone out and planned on having the dog bite someone. When we have a family that is hallmarked by unspoken rules or rigid thinking, then we can feel shame about all sorts of things. Sometimes we can feel shame because we spilled something. Most of us did not grow up in a house where when we spilled milk, or juice or water, we were responded to with understanding and reassurance. And when we have an accident or make a mistake, sometimes the unspoken rule in our family is that there's something wrong with you. Because if you were all right, you would not have had that happen, or you wouldn't have done that behavior. And that's why it's so important to be able to distinguish between our behavior being problematic and ourselves being unworthy or unlovable. Sometimes shame can be handed down multi generationally. So in some families, there is a real tendency towards what we call the silent treatment. And when you are a child, especially a younger child, and your parent isn't speaking to you, the only conclusion you can reach because of the way the brain is developing, is that there's something wrong with you. And when we start to have that subconscious sense that something's wrong with us, or our parent would love us or attend to us or pay attention to us, or would be kind to us, then that it starts a legacy of shame in our own lives. It's important to realize that everyone makes poor choices. Sometimes I like to say that it's state specific. And what I mean by that is that our emotional state will oftentimes dictate our behavior. If we can understand that this has nothing to do with the type of person we are, but instead is related to our emotional state, which causes us to choose behaviors we otherwise wouldn't, then we can see ourselves as separate from the behavior. And know that this is not because I'm some type of person, but because this is something that I experienced emotionally, and then reacted out of emotion. And that's a really important thing to consider when you're thinking about shame. The anger that comes from shame usually is two types. One is when we turn it internally, and when we have a sense that we're worthless, that there's something gravely wrong with us because we've made a mistake or had an accident. Or because we've made a choice that turned out badly. When we have that sense of anger, we can either turn it internally, or we can turn it externally. And the internal sense of anger is about regime and ourselves internally in in some situations, we might even say that we've internalized the voice of the abuser, not because we're trying consciously to do that. But because that voice is deep inside of our subconscious brain, and is trying to make sure that we don't do anything that will cause rejection or abandonment or judgment. The other way that we can express that anger is externally, we either can take it out on somebody or on a group. And when we turn our anger outward, we can then feel a lot of shame about our angry behavior afterwards.
And then we start the cycle of I'm ashamed. I'm going to be angry at myself or someone else. When I finally Calm down, then I'm going to be shame feel shameful again, because of what I did when I was in a specific emotional state. And it can cycle on and on and on. The important thing is is to find a way to disrupt that cycle. And there are some great ways to do it. If we think about that our shame is a overwhelming emotion, and that we want to be able to think and experience emotions at the same time, what we want to do is we want to be able to calm our body down physiologically. And in our program, we really emphasize a couple of great tools for helping you calm your body down physiologically. We all we talk a lot about the double breath side or the physiological side. And we've illustrated it before in a podcast. And this is what it looks like you take a deep breath in as if you're going to say heavily. And instead of signing right after that deep breath, you pause for a second, and then you inhale again as much as you can. And then you forcefully exhale. And when you do this, two or three times your nervous system, and your body actually comes into better regulation. And so you have access to your prefrontal cortex, where you can access your wise mind, your logic, your reason, and not be so overwhelmed with emotion. Once your system is less distressed, see if you can separate who you are, from what you feel ashamed about. Practice the same understanding and compassion that you would show a friend over this. Most of us when confronted by a friend who made a mistake or had an accident or did something that they later evaluated as foolish, would not heap shame upon them, we would not say to our dearest friends, oh, my gosh, you should have known better, why did you do that? What we would do is say, oh, my gosh, I remember when that happened, that is so hard. I can remember an experience like that. I'm so sorry that you got so upset about it, I'm so sorry that you're feeling so much shame about it. And when we're able to talk to ourselves in a compassionate way, that also increases our ability to have emotional regulation. And it reduces the distress. There's one other tool that I have found immensely helpful in my own life. And that is the concept of radical acceptance. What radical acceptance does is it says, Whatever happened in the past, no matter how upset or angry I get about it, it does not change that it happened. And that now I have to deal with it. And instead of creating more emotional distress for myself, if I can accept that it happened, it's in the past, it wasn't intentional. And recognize that if I spend a lot of time thinking about it, when I ruminate over it, when I have a series of thoughts that is very abusive or mean to myself, then I have not only the event that occurred, but now I have the additional shame that I'm heaping on myself. And I have the additional criticism that I'm heaping on myself, it'd be really interesting to try this out. And when you find yourself really overwhelmed with inappropriate or shame, it'd be really interesting to try this out. And we'd love to hear the results. When you feel really overwhelmed by shame or anger. Take a minute and try to get your body more regulated. And it's, it's okay, if you can't do it right away. One thing that happens when we're really distressed is we can't access our tools that are in our prefrontal cortex, because the blood flow is reduced to our prefrontal cortex. And I always suggest that when you are calm enough to access your tools, try using the tools then it's not too late. And the more you use them, as soon as you recognize that you want to calm down your body and your nervous system, the easier it will be to have that come to you more automatically. And am instead of it being a long process where I feel distressed, I have a lot of emotions. I'm very upset and disturbed. And then I come down and reach mark for my tools, what we can do is we can set up new neural pathways, new wiring, to have those tools operate more automatically. So there's not as much conscious thought involved. But that does take practice, and it takes self compassion when we don't remember our tools instead of beating ourselves up. We can say, all right, it might make sense that as upset as I was, I didn't have access to my tools. And then you use the tool that you can use in that moment. I hope you've enjoyed today's podcast. We would love to have you check out more about shame and anger and other topics really It's trauma at our peace after trauma community. We hope that you will join us there and we thank you for your continued support in this podcast. Take care everybody.
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