We live with the perceived image of a perfect social self (me), which must be admired for complying with external social criteria. We are often admired not for who we are, but for our status, titles and ‘image’ of success. Our capitalist culture ensures that consumption conveys an external image of success. So, if we have titles and money, the right house and car, we have value. Yet, paradoxically, we know, at a deep level, that this fails to eradicate our shame. It only compensates for it without rewarding it.
- The process of socialisation leads us to idealisation. We are dazzled by an external, overvalued image and devalue the Inner Person, our Inner Authority.
Shame has been cited as the most powerful motivator for human progress. Shame becomes the ‘engine’ that drives many to seek perfection, status, and prosperity.
It is probably not surprising that 38% of US executives grow up in alcoholic families (EAP Digest, 1987). (Vices → Shame).
Trigger for addictions and gossip / What: Attracts – Distracts – Contracts
Shame is often at the heart of control.
In an attempt to distance ourselves from the pain of shame, the ‘master emotion’ (Goleman, 1987), we are often drawn to addictive behaviours that offer us moments of release, making us feel better or numb.
For example: a woman who compulsively committed petty theft did not want her husband to discover her painful secret. Once discovered, the couple waited almost a year of therapy before revealing the secret to the therapist. After some time, the wife came to understand that she was running away from the pain and shame of her incestuous relationship with her father. (Homeostasis – Shame trapped to cancel out the source of reference).
It is not always the secret itself – suicide in the family, pregnancy before marriage, addictions or sexual abuse – that determines whether the secret will inhibit growth. Instead, it is the family process surrounding the event or experience that is responsible for this.
If a family has a relatively open system, meaning its members are free to comment on what happened and pass it on as family history, it is less likely to unite in shame. Families that are more closed and faithful to the rules of ‘don’t talk, don’t confide, don’t feel’ often create family myths or dishonest stories to hide secrets. (Denying conflicts – Relational dilemmas. “What will others think, what will they say…”).
Experience of: Curse – Interdiction – Scourge – Misfortune.
For those who grew up in families with shameful secrets, these invisible interfamily bonds carry deeply ingrained messages that leave indelible marks on our adult relationship patterns. Not even the death of our parents and siblings can sever these ties; we still carry that relationship within us.
This means that we must explore how we carry our loyalty to our families throughout our lives. (Pacts – complicity: rigid beliefs rooted in keeping everything in its place and structured, the secret of the pains of shame).
Part of the process of maturing involves betraying
our childhood loyalty to our families, breaking the rules and then creating an adult loyalty.
(Regular distance: what is mine ↔ what is ours).
Family rules, which isolate family pain and discomfort, are taught and learned in an undeclared way with implicit injunctions about what we can see, hear, feel and comment on.
“Nothing is happening – and don’t tell anyone” is the injunction many of us live by in our families. This rule preserves the shame-laden reservoir of family secrets. (When you ask, you offend…)
When I told Joe about this injunction, I shared with him my “intuition” that there were probably many secrets in his family history. Joe had “normalised” the fact that neither his mother nor his father ever talked about his childhood. No one had ever brought up the subject. Joe then said, “I should have asked.” I reminded him that this absence of questions was fundamental to preserving the secret through his “not talking” and that, unconsciously, he was protecting his mother. (Complicity with the idealisation of the mother: overvalued image X disqualified person).
As he took time to focus on his family history, Joe began interviewing relatives and piecing together his life story. He learned that his paternal grandfather was a depressed man (just like his father) and that his grandparents had always slept in separate rooms. When he asked his father, aunts and uncles for information about his mother, Joe was shocked to learn several family secrets.
First, he discovered that his maternal grandfather was the village drunk and physically abused his son (Joe’s uncle). He also found out that his mother’s family was fleeing from creditors and had to move every three months. (Shameful debts).
When Joe asked his father why his mother had never revealed her past to him and his siblings, his father replied that they had both decided it was best to protect the children from this painful history. (Protection from torture)
He had never really known his mother as a person. I reminded him that family rules of shame create powerful and invisible bonds. (Superficial involvement without respectful depth)
The rules of shame:
Specific identifiable rules apply to the family bound by shame. These hidden rules govern interactions within the family and perpetuate shame. The following eight rules illustrate the pattern that ensures the inheritance of shame:
①-Control: being in control of all behaviours and interactions – (Rigid/Impulsive)
②-Perfection: always being ‘right’. Doing the ‘right’ thing – (Manipulation of appearances)
③-Blame: if something does not go as planned, blame someone, yourself or others – (Megalomania)
- Maintaining structured connections: Homeostasis→Adaptation and stability of idealised images→Every effort to maintain the structure by repeating: Model.
④-Denial: Deny feelings, especially negative or vulnerable ones such as anxiety, fear, loneliness, sadness, rejection, and need.
⑤-Unreliability: Do not expect reliability or consistency in relationships. Expect the unexpected.
⑥-Indecisiveness: Do not complete your transactions until resolution or conclusion, because you may have to face the feelings or honest revelations you are protecting.
⑦-Do not speak: Do not speak openly and directly about shameful, abusive, or compulsive behaviour. (Speak about delusions of grandeur)
⑧-Disqualification: when disrespectful, shameful, abusive, or compulsive behaviour occurs, disqualify, deny, or hide it. (Fossum & Mason, 1986, pp. 86-7).
- →Self-demand / →Self-torture and condescension to the rigid family model and the social power of external authority.
These rules determine what is allowed and what is not. More importantly, they let us know who decides, who is the authority. Secrets innervate the rules of shame, rules that perpetuate shame and unite family members in confusion, chaos, and relationships that inhibit growth (and organised sensitivity).
We see these rules in action when we notice who gets irritated with whom/who manages to be intimate with whom/who can respond/who can sit where—and all of this is decided at an unspoken level. We automatically enact the programming deeply ingrained in our roles, relationship patterns, and life decisions.
- Family staging: – The actor proposes: he acts out the scene of self-deception and the co-stars play the complementary – rigid – parts.
These rules not only instil shame, but perpetuate it. The family process linked to shame is severely galvanised against honest human revelations. Family members unconsciously obey these rules and learn not to ask questions or make comments. Thus, information ‘owed’ to the family becomes a shameful secret. These rules organise (?) the dynamics of a family, which becomes bound by shame, while children absorb unexpressed feelings and stories. (Structuring mythical mandates of: Shame / Ridicule).
Getting to the heart of a particular issue means going beyond and betraying loyalty to the rules of the system: ‘I will never see or know, I will never tell or comment, and I promise to hate (or love) forever’.
Our task is to make active choices about how we seek to understand ourselves and our relationships, so that we can create our own order of events based on our system, not that of our parents.
As one father said to his adult son in my office one day: “I know my fingerprints are imprinted on your problems, but the solution is up to you.” (Taboo – Secret / Self-imposed limitation).
Joe was able to recognise his loyalty to the rules of shame in his family. He had been faithful to the rule of never asking about his parents’ pain. In one of his family sessions, he turned to his impassive father and said, “As a child, I saw your outer side, felt my inner side, and felt shame.” He began to recognise that he had become his mother’s emotional companion, that he had taken on the role of his father. (Married – mother’s companion → Invalidated as a son)
He took a piece of paper and wrote down the family rules. As he retraced his history and re-examined the photos in the family album, he began to connect with his hidden feelings. Joe began to realise that he had become a suppressor of his mother’s unresolved pain and secret past. (Complicity).
- Reconstruction of personal history.
He understood the need to visit his mother’s grave, talk to her about the loss of family history, and regret not knowing her as a person.
He also realised the superficiality of his relationship with his father, how much paternal affection he had lost, and how much resentment he felt towards his father for not encouraging his mother to reveal the family secrets. Father and son began to talk about their losses, spending long periods in sincere conversations. (without trying to hide the cracks).
- Lies displayed and truths hidden by the myth of idealisation!
During therapy, two more secrets were revealed. Joe learned that his mother had told Marsha most of her story and that she had married his father because of the affection and sincerity shown by her mother-in-law. In fact, she regarded her mother-in-law as the mother she had always wanted.
- Complementary fit – Rigid. Maintaining the idealised image and compensating for the shame of social ridicule.
Maintaining shame:
– (social accreditation)
We maintain our shame by adhering to the interpersonal process we learned in our families (structured, but not yet organised or organisers of family and personal sensitivity).
Shame can be well disguised and maintained through our fidelity to family rules, when we continue to maintain the cycle of shame and secrets. Shame generates shame (and triggers the structuring but disorganising compensation mechanism).
- Shame generates shame of ridicule and is compensated for with vices – gossip – perversions – follies… → Giving without limits / → Pleasure without limits full of excesses, exaggerations, extremes, abuses… etc…
Typically, we see that an individual’s sense of shame is linked to the behaviour of some other family member – in other words, to violations of the social code. Shame can be consciously known or stored in the unconscious, in secret family histories and family myths. Family loyalty keeps secrets and shame intact, regardless of their debilitating power on the family (on the intimate person, on intimacy, on invalidated internal authority!
We have learned that women score very high on shame scales, especially those related to inferiority and alienation, compared to men (Cook, 1989).
The socialisation of women as inferior to men and their responsibility or hyper-responsibility in relationships clearly underlie their higher scores on the alienation scale.
When a relationship ends or dissolves, women often feel alienated because they consider themselves responsible for the functioning of relationships. (Delusions of grandeur).
- “Sluts → Silly girls / → Nannies” – Being too perfect to fit in with men.
Shame is an intimate sense of being completely diminished or insufficient as a person. It is the Self judging the Self. A moment of shame can be such a painful humiliation or such a profound indignity that the individual feels stripped of their dignity or exposed as fundamentally inadequate, bad, or worthy of rejection. A pervasive sense of shame is the ongoing premise that the individual is fundamentally bad, inadequate, defective, unworthy, or not fully valid as a human being (Fossum & Mason, 1986, p.5) – (No personal power / No intimate authority – Hexagram No. 61 – 3rd line) (Invalidated – Disqualified).
- The Ghost of Ridicule experienced or about to be experienced.
Shame is often confused with guilt. However, shame and guilt are at opposite ends of the continuum. Guilt stems from a conscience and integrated values. Guilt is an activator that tells us we are facing the possibility of violating a value.
- Various nicknames: → Taboo / → Modesty / → Disappointment / → Discomfort / → Shyness-Inhibition /→ Fear –
Guilt is about behaviour; shame is about the self. In other words, guilt is related to what we do; shame is about who we are. “With guilt, I make a mistake; with shame, I am a mistake.” With shame, we cannot say, “I was wrong, I’m sorry, I made a mistake.” With guilt, there is a way back, a way to make amends. We are able to look beneath the guilt and know the values we hold. Our conscience supports our values.
Because shame is about the Self and is deeply internalised within us, the possibility of repair is avoided. Shame is hidden in the false Self, the highly developed actor-Self that replaces personal boundaries. As we break with family rules and discover the person behind the actor, we see the healing process.
The secret is not about behaviour in current relationships, but what is hidden in past family history. Shame is masked, but it can become visible in a lack of intimacy or fear of it, perfectionism, self-harming behaviours, unbalanced relationships where one partner is hyper-responsible and the other is infantilised, and pseudo-reciprocal or pseudo-hostile relationships.
- Family drama → Couple’s insertion: • no memory / • vague memories / • discredited.
Once we settle for remaining within the confines of memories, recollections, and conclusions about our family, formed by our childhood experiences, we are destined to continue playing our role as reactors without choice in relation to the forces—conscious and unconscious—at work in our families (Schwartz, 1985).
Our literal dependence as children requires strict adherence to the implicit rules of our family system regarding what should and should not be expressed. Because of our affection, our dependence, and our extreme need for the benevolence of those responsible for our upbringing, we learn not to cross the boundaries of what causes anxiety to those we love and depend on. In this way, we have the potential to keep secrets. (Myth: – Shameful debts / – Gifts)
- Potential to keep secrets – Social credential
– Intimate invalidation
Children can ‘read’ their parents very clearly. Feeling our parents’ hidden pain, we try to protect them by hiding our feelings or acting to take their pain away. Most of this happens on an unconscious level
. Clearly, Joe had recognised his parents’ pain and unconsciously strived to avoid causing further pain.
Joe began to realise that perhaps part of the pain he was releasing now was his mother’s shame. Joe had been loyal, following the rules of shame to keep his mother’s secret. He also stated that the belief in his story was invalid.
How do therapists view retained shame?
In our clinical work, we see patterns that clearly indicate that family members are involved in the dynamics of shame. We hear obvious stories that make the dynamics of shame presumable: physical and/or sexual abuse, addictions, eating disorders, problems with personal boundaries, depression, running away, and stealing. These issues violate social norms and can be predictable sources of shame.
However, many sources of shame may be kept secret: compulsive behaviour, extramarital affairs, physical disabilities, health concerns, financial disasters. (→Megalomania /→Personal power and blocked inner authority).
Our loyalty to our families is an important unconscious force that binds us to the process of inherited shame.
There are two types of family loyalty: →The first is the natural affection we feel for our family members. We understand and appreciate the family group into which we were born. We are loyal to it because it creates, maintains, and sustains our lives, regardless of who is in the family or what it was like. →The second type is ‘invisible loyalty’, which is not transparent, is not known and therefore is not understood (Boszormenyi-Nagy, 1973). This loyalty is a powerful invisible thread that keeps us emotionally tied to our families. (Dependents/Gossips).
Do we have a right to our secrets?
With what we know about secrets and the transmission of shame, how can we afford to keep some of our secrets without transmitting shame?
When I was working as a sexuality counsellor for a family programme at an alcohol treatment centre, one of the therapists proudly announced, “We are a programme without secrets; we tell absolutely everything
in our family groups. What do you think about that?
I hastened to explain that there can be no fixed formula for revealing secrets, that honesty without sensitivity can be brutality. Not all secrets need to be shared with children, but it is important to share our secrets with someone. In doing so, we allow others to know us and we allow others to reveal themselves to us. (Family Paradigm Shift – Taking the ‘Last Train from Berlin’)
Shameful secrets can lead to isolation and pain; when we reveal secrets, we can externalise shame. In this way, we begin to separate our Self
from our shame.
Shame inhibits or hinders the development of authentic intimate relationships, encourages secrets and vague personal boundaries, unconsciously instils shame in family members, as well as chaos in their lives, and unites them to perpetuate shame in themselves and their descendants. This occurs regardless of the good intentions, desires, and love that may also be part of the system (Fossum & Mason, 1986, p.8).
We all encounter experiences in life that offer an opportunity for personal growth. Even if we can never become what we might be, when we can experience therapy in a supportive and empathetic environment, we can use shameful secrets as catalysts for healing and growth.
- Organising our sensitivity to: Experience-Listen-Conflicts-Dilemmas.
As we return to the truth that is ‘owed’ to a family member or other loved ones by revealing our secrets, we simultaneously begin to rebuild broken interpersonal bridges and heal our shame.
- Validating our sensitivity / Nurturing self-referentiality / Participatory self-validity.
What exactly is the relationship between secrets and shame? Some secrets are consciously private; some are shrouded in conscious shame. Still others are buried in the unconscious or in repressed memories. To understand the relationship between shame and secrets, we must first understand how privacy, secrecy, and shame differ from one another.
It is difficult to discern exactly what to attribute to the private sphere or to secrecy. Some argue that there is no privacy without shame; many of us argue that a sense of shame can protect us from degrading exposure, that it protects our intimacy, our spirit. The bridge between privacy and shame is secrecy.
In a recent seminar on shame in the family, I asked the 125 participants to write down a family secret on a piece of paper. All but one were able to name at least one secret without too much hesitation. They revealed secrets about rape, physical abuse, manic-depressive disorders, extramarital affairs, abortions, alcoholism, gambling, children born out of wedlock, cross-dressing, promiscuity, finances, adoptions, incest, religious practices, suicide, lesbianism and male homosexuality, hunger and smuggling… Clearly, not all of these emotional secrets were necessarily shameful; however, most participants remembered them as a source of shame.
Livro: Os Segredos na Família e na Terapia Familiar Evan Imber-Black – Editora ArtMed.