There’s a complex dynamic between speaking and silence when it comes to the feelings of shame. On the one hand, silence is a key factor in perpetuating and deepening the feelings of shame. On the other hand, it is sometimes speaking that can make shame worse.
So how DO we exit the feelings of shame if we’re faced with a damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario?
Let’s look at each scenario…
First, silence IS the jail keeper of shame
It breaks my heart when I think of how many people are imprisoned by the feelings of shame because of things they’ve done, or worse, because of things that were done to them. The most important thing to begin to understand is that maintaining silence is precisely what keeps the shame in place, making it impossible to heal or move out of its confinement. In silence, we remain the hostages of shame.
Shame holds an intense fear that we will be completely shunned and outcast by our community. We therefore stay silent for the fear of being judged, rejected, and ridiculed.
But the danger is that sometimes speaking can make matters worse.
When Speaking Brings on More Harm
Far too many people have discovered that sometimes when they have attempted to speak about the painful things that happened to them, the discomfort of those who were listening made the shame feel even worse. For instance, I have a client whose family told her she was just trying to get attention any time she talked about the difficult feelings she was having as a result of being molested. She learned early in her life to silence her feelings and not talk about what happened so as to not upset her family.
She experienced ridiculing, invalidation, and minimizing.
Another client frequently heard her family talk about “trashy” people and how “trashy girls were just asking for it”. She had good reason to believe that if she spoke about what happened to her, she would be made to feel “like one of those girls”.
She knew the judgment that could be there.
Sometimes, speaking is met with deep immaturity and even cruelty, further traumatizing a person in pain. One client teen client shared with a friend that she had been assaulted. Her teen “friends” proceeded to shame her publicly and label her a “whore”. Sadly, I’ve had a number of clients experienced similar situations as teenagers.
They experienced being shunned and publicly ridiculed.
When a person speaking of their trauma is not met with deep emotional maturity and compassion, it will typically lead to the deepening of shame.
When Speaking Accomplishes Nothing
Sometimes people get used to telling the stories of what happened to them. The story rolls off their tongue and they can seem as though they’re “healed”. However, some of us can detect a pang of discomfort in their voice; an uncanny weirdness in our guts that tells us, “oh no… this person is talking about it but they’re not totally whole around this trauma.” When I see and hear these people, I can tell there’s a disconnect between the story they’re telling and their heart.
What often is overlooked or ignored by people who openly talk about their traumatic experiences is that shame can run far deeper than the experience itself.
I’ll use my own story as an illustration. For ten years, I thought I had healed from the sexual assault I experienced in college. I could openly talk about it and name it without feeling pangs of discomfort about the assault itself. However, one day I discovered the DEEP shame I was still carrying about my own decisions and actions before and after the assault. THOSE I had never talked about.
Speaking accomplishes nothing when we have found a tidy way to skirt around the thing that still deeply hurts and lingers.
Furthermore, even in therapy, speaking itself accomplishes nothing because it isn’t the telling of the story itself that heals. What heals is when we are able to tap into deep personal compassion for ourselves AND experience compassionate witnessing from those who are listening.
Photo by Vonecia Carswell on Unsplash
When Speaking Opens Up Healing
As I just mentioned, speaking moves us into a transformative space of healing when we have come to touch a deep compassion for ourselves and can speak about the events from that compassion. And then, when we have self-compassion, we tend to find the people who will have the capacity to witness us and hold us in that light.
Speaking is Healing When Compassion Is Present
My client who was told by her family that she was seeking attention was not met with compassion. The teenagers who shamed my teen client were not capable of compassion. I hadn’t yet arrived a full compassion for myself during the years that I was telling my tidy story of my assault.
Whereas shame holds the intense fear that we will be completely shunned by our community, achieving self-compassion and being witnessed by compassionate community will bring about the healing of shame. It is a transformative experience to feel completely held, and to be reassured that we are loved and that we belong, even as we have shared our deepest shame.
An invitation to join compassionate community…
If you have had an experience like the ones I’ve written about here (or know someone who has), you are welcome to consider joining my upcoming Reclaiming Wholeness virtual group. Compassionate community is precisely what this group will offer, and so much more.
The more we develop a deep compassion for ourselves, the greater compassion we can hold for others and for humanity as a whole.