The Neurobiology of Toxic Shame {EP 119}

Hello, Hello, it's me, Robyn Gobbel and you are listening to the Parenting After Trauma podcast. Welcome, or welcome back. Y'all. I'm recording this just days before this episode is going to go live, which is pretty unusual for me. I try not to work under such tight deadlines. It's not good for my own nervous system. And is it good for all of the helpers that I have. Because if I'm delayed, then they're working close to deadlines as well, the people who helped me with my podcast. And so I try not to work this way. But life has been [laughs] such a whirlwind lately, like maybe in some ways, even more than normal. Culminating and a couple of really big things happening. I mean, truly, just in the last couple days. So on the day that I'm recording this, it has only been a few days since I learned that my book is officially on Amazon, BarnesAndNoble.com, and it's available for preorder. Now, the book actually has unfortunately been- been delayed. We were hoping that it would publish in late April, and the current publication date is September 21st, 2023. And I actually did not know [laughter] that the listing was up on Amazon that it was available for preorder. In fact, somebody in The Club told me, Hey, I pre ordered your book. And obviously, my initial reaction was like, No, you didn’t, you must have made some kind of mistake and ordered a different book. But before I actually said that back to them, I paused, and I just googled myself. And sure enough, there's my book, amazon.com, available for pre order. It's at BarnesAndNoble.com as well. And I am working with a local independent bookstore to have it available to pre-order through them as well for those of us who like to have options for where we order our books. 

In more ways than one publishing a book has been quite an adventure. I did not know that we were in a position of having the book available for pre-order. So that was very exciting! And means then I've essentially made a whole lot of announcements about the book all at one time. The title, the cover, the publication dates, and I also haven't really talked a ton about who I was so honored to write my forward. So all of these pieces were announced on the same day. The book is called Raising Kids with Big, Baffling Behaviors: Brain-Body-Sensory Strategies That Really Work. The cover is official. If you find the book at RobynGobbel.com/BafflingBook, you will see the cover. And I'm also just so thrilled, humbled, honored, gobsmacked. I mean, so many feelings to announce that my dear mentor, colleague, and friend, Bonnie Badenoch, graciously wrote the foreword to the book. These were all huge announcements that I made actually, the day I'm recording this, I started making that announcement today. 

Something else unexpected and also very exciting happened in the last couple of days. And I found out that I was nominated for an award here in my local community. The West Michigan Women's Brilliance Award in the category of entrepreneur. Y'all, seriously, I don't even know- I don't even know what to think of this. I'll be, I'm sure processing this, talking about this. It's like y'all, I'm a social worker. And the work that I do helps people- helps people all over the world. So to think that that gets to be true and somebody else is seeing this work and- and recognizing it in the category of entrepreneurship. Like I said it- this has all just happened, I really don't even know what to make of it. 

Interestingly enough, I think these two really big experiences for me lend themselves beautifully for what I would like to talk about today. And I'm going to do a follow up episode next week about toxic shame and the neurobiology of toxic shame, how toxic shame shows up, what it looks like, and ultimately, how can we help folks and ourselves when we come into contact with toxic shame. And the reason that all of these things happening in my life, and the book being up on Amazon, and this award that I've been nominated for. The reason why this makes really great backdrop for talking about toxic shame is it is very common for experiences that most folks would label positive- good, right? Like, for example, have- having your book up on Amazon, and being nominated for an award. Those things most people would think would bring about lots of really great feelings. But the truth is, for so many folks, including myself, these kinds of experiences can touch into really, really old neural nets of toxic shame. 

I've also been speaking a lot about toxic shame lately. I just presented at the Michigan Association for Play Therapy conference and we talked about working with kids with toxic shame in play therapy. That concept, the ideas of toxic shame have just been kind of on the tip of my tongue lately. And all of these things kind of came together at one time. And I realized I was obviously being asked by the universe to do a couple episodes all about toxic shame. So we're going to start today with the neurobiology of toxic shame. Like what is toxic shame? Why is it important that we understand what toxic shame is? And then next week, we'll talk about okay, so now what? What do we do with toxic shame? How do we help it? 

So let's start with just talking about shame. And for me, I think it's easiest to reference Brené Brown’s statement about shame versus guilt. And she talks about guilt being the experience, or the sensation of I did something bad or wrong. Whereas shame is the felt sense of I am something bad or wrong. So for me, it's the difference between being versus doing. And a really important developmental stage is when we realize we are not our behaviors. We can do something wrong or bad, and not be a wrong or bad person. The really important developmental experience that happens, except for some folks, it doesn't happen. The distinction between our behaviors and ourselves doesn't happen. And those folks can almost live on this, like rollercoaster ride of I do something good, I am good. I do something bad, I am bad. Okay? 

Dr. Dan Siegel in his Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology defines shame as a state of mind filled with a sense of the self as being defective. Okay, so we can think about the difference between shame and toxic shame, I think, as the difference between a shame state, meaning like this kind of moment or moments in time where we have this felt sense of shame, right? It's a shame state, and we can shift out of that state. Versus toxic shame being more of a shame trait. It doesn't shift and change. It feels like it's true all the time. Toxic shame feels like this statement, this sense of describing, like, all of me as a person. Not a part of me, or describes me at a certain time, or when I've done a certain thing. But a chronic, like, all of me sense. Toxic shame can be so consuming, that many folks that I've met who are experiencing toxic shame, both in the therapy room and outside the therapy room I've met these folks, many folks often have no idea that what they're experiencing is toxic shame. It just feels like a truth about them. I kind of think about how a fish is not aware of being wet, right? It's just a truth about them. It's not even something they notice or have curiosity about because it is just so completely true. And many of the folks that I've known, who I've worked with who have toxic shame, and I relate to this in many ways myself, we don't even know that it's a thing. It just feels like how we exist in the world. There's no noticing it, because it's just a truth.

Here's what is really sticky about this, then, is that when we believe something is all of us- and again, it's hard to articulate this piece, but it's not a belief. It's just a truth. So when something is just true, when something is all of us, there's no possibility that it could change. There's no option. There's no sense that change is possible. There's- there's no room for there to be any space for change, right? Like if- if we aren't aware of something, it just feels completely true. A universal truth kind of maybe like gravity. 

Here's what's really interesting about toxic shame is that toxic shame actually has absolutely nothing to do with that person, or who they are, or even what they did. Toxic shame doesn't develop in the neurobiology as a result of what that person did. It is actually a mislabel of a chronic physiological state. So let me explain this and we got to go and look just briefly at the attachment cycle. Okay? So in its, just- most oversimplified way the attachment cycle is about an infant having a need, expressing that need, the caregiver noticing, and at first matching the infant’s physiological state of arousal and how they're expressing the need, and then soothing the infant. Mo- inviting the infant to move into a nervous system state of rest and calm. Right? So the infant, you know, gets activated. The caregiver notices the activation, moves into soothe the infant so the infant moves into this physiological state of safe, and calm, and rest. Okay, so what- another way to look at what's happening is, in the attachment cycle, the infant is making a bid for connection, right? There's this- this distress in their nervous system that the infant isn't physiological capable of soothing themselves yet. So they make a bid for connection. And, yeah, it's usually something like crying, right? There's some activation in the nervous system. There's some way that infant communicates “I need help”. And this is a bid for connection. Dan Siegel talks about how when bids for connection are not met, the nervous system responds by slamming on like the metaphorical brakes of the nervous system. 

I'm actually going to read a passage from chapter 10 in Dr. Siegel's Mindsight. And this is probably one of the best explorations of both disorganized attachment and chronic shame in the nervous system. And Dan Siegel writes this, “imagine a car with the accelerator smoothly functioning. When we need to be seen and understood by others, our attachment circuits are revved up. We're in a state of seeking connection. And when our need is met, we move forward, happily through our lives. But if we are not seen, if our caregivers do not attune to us, and we are met with the experience of feeling invisible or misunderstood, our nervous system responds with a sudden activation of the brake portion of the regulatory circuits. Slamming on the brakes creates a distinctive physiological response. Heaviness in the chest, nausea in the belly, and downcast our turned away eyes. We literally shrink into ourselves from a pain that is often beneath our awareness. This a nauseating and jolting shift occurs whenever we are ignored, or given confusing signals by others. And it is experienced as a state of shame. Shame states are common in children whose parents are repeatedly unavailable, or who habitually fail to attune to them”. 

Okay, that's a mouthful. So let's take a breath. And think about what that actually is saying. So Dan Siegel is saying that there's these bids for connection that are made and- and essentially what's happening is the accelerator of the nervous system is going, right? Saying, hey, hey, here! See me, see me, help me! Right? And that accelerator is expecting to be seen, and met, and resonated with, and co-regulated by someone else. And this is not just the expectation of the developing infant. This is the expectation of being human. So we're expecting our state, the sympathetic activation to be mirrored, and seen, and then co-regulated. When that happens, when we're mirrored, and seen, and co-regulated, imagine that we gently press on the brakes of our nervous system. And just like slowly and nicely ease the engine, you know, slower, and slower, and slower until we come, like, up to a stop sign, right? Like if we stay in that metaphor of an engine. In shame, what happens is in the gentle pressing of the brakes that happens in co-regulation. In shame, what happens is we go from this heightened physiological state accelerator, accelerator, accelerator, to all the sudden a- kind of like the pressing of the emergency brakes. There's a slamming on the brakes, and it is this slamming on the brakes that creates the physiological experience that later the developing mind labels as shame. So it starts as a physiological experience. It's that slamming of the brakes, that creates this- this C shape this- this down- this downward tilting head, the downshift in the eyes, right? That's a physiological experience that has nothing to do with the distressed infant having done anything wrong, right? They didn't do anything wrong or bad. But there was a physiological sensation in the nervous system when their, kind of, accelerator part of their nervous system wasn't met and co-regulated. 

Okay, so now, if this happened repeatedly, not just sometimes. I mean, all of us who have parents had little babies know that sometimes we don't get our baby to soothe them in time, or we've got something going on ourselves and we're not offering the soothing that our baby needs or- or something. Babies don't need perfect attunement and perfect co-regulation. And in fact, they need imperfect attunement and co-regulation to develop their own sense of self. What babies need is a good amount of repair so when we notice that we haven't co-regulated or soothed our baby, we notice it. And then we move in to offer presence, and safety, and security, and co-regulation. So what happens in the development of chronic or toxic shame is that the noticing the repair doesn't happen anywhere close to enough. And so the infant is left in this chronic experience of shame without ever any co-regulation out of that shame experience. 

Okay, then what happens next is the infant continues to grow and develop. And their cognitive parts of their brain starts to come online, right? Their cortical functioning comes online, like, teeny tiny babies aren't experiencing this, like, fall in their nervous system. It feels like this, like, rug being ripped out from underneath, or like the drop of a roller coaster, right? Teeny, teeny tiny babies don't have the cognitive capacity to label that sensation. Something like, oh, I guess I'm just a very bad baby, right? They're not having those cognitions. But eventually, babies become toddlers and become preschoolers who do have cognitions. And they are starting to make cognitive sense of what's happening in the world, and what's happening for them, and what's happening for their caregiver. And they'll have an experience that causes this a physiological sensation of shame. So imagine a toddler or preschooler having tons of eager anticipation in their body, and excitement, and running out into the middle of the road, right? And the caregiver, of course, is not matching or attuning to this toddler’s or preschooler’s, eager anticipation of whatever prompted them to bolt into the road with curiosity, right? This open curiosity like “oh, look, my ball”, or “look, there's this thing”, right? The caregiver responds with “no! Danger, danger, danger, danger. No, no, no!”. Right? So there's this huge mismatch and misattunement. Nobody's done anything wrong. The caregiver has done nothing wrong. That mismatch, though, that misattunement also causes that physiological drop. And now it's in a child who has some emerging cortical functioning, and they can label that physiological sensation in their body now, as ‘I'm bad’. 

Now, all of us have responded to children this way, and so I want you to take a deep breath, and not fall into shame yourself at having caused shame in children. All of us have responded to kids this way. All of us have done something that has created the physiological sensation of shame and children. What happens next, in an ideal situation, is that that sensation gets noticed and co-regulated. So they're this preschool who's run out into the road and then the caregiver is “no, no, no”! And then the preschooler is like “oh, no!”. Crying and crying, right? And then that, now that the caregiver starts to soothe themselves, now they can start to soothe the preschooler. And so the preschooler has this moment of, kind of, that falling sensation physiologically, like in their own nervous system. It has this momentary label of ‘I'm bad’. But then it moves pretty quickly into I'm okay. 

Now what that develops into is an individual who can distinguish between ‘I did something bad’, versus ‘I am bad’, right? Like I did something bad and I'm still a good person. But shame is super powerful, and does often produce success in getting little kids not to do that bad thing anymore. That is like the evolutionary purpose of shame. Okay? That it is super powerful, and it does help kids not do things that are extremely dangerous. Or, actually, what shame is really helpful at is- is help kids not do things that would get them, like, cast out or rejected by the very people who are supposed to care for them. Now, I'm not suggesting that we use shame intentionally as a teaching tool. In fact, what I will often say is, shame is never ever, ever an effective teaching tool, but actually the truth is is that shame is an exceptionally effective teaching tool. And that's why we don't want to purposefully use it. It happens sometimes like just in our existence as being humans. And so when shame states arise, we can notice and co-regulate them, and that physiological sensation doesn't become a shame trait of ‘I am bad’. 

Now, let's go back to what we had talked about when infants are repeatedly not met in their distress and they're regularly experiencing this physiological sensation of the slamming on the brakes, right? That heaviness in the chest, the nausea in the belly, the downcast or turned away eyes. Now this infant who's experiencing this physiological sensation quite regularly grows into a toddler and preschooler who does sometimes have behaviors that are met with an adult communicating in some way shape or form something like no, don't do that, that's bad, right? And so then they have this shame experience as a preschooler, or a toddler when they now have the cognitive capacity to label that physiological experience as ‘shoot, I did something bad’ or ‘I am something bad’. And then there's this way that it's like, ‘wait, I have this physiological sensation all the time. So I must be just bad. This isn't about doing something bad. This is about just being very, very bad’. 

Now, let's look at this also through another lens really quickly, which is that Dr. Siegel, he writes that “from the point of view of survival, I am bad is a safer perspective than my parents are unreliable, and may abandon me at any time”. And what I have observed clinically, in working with kids and adults is that actually there is hope in the shame state or shame trait of ‘I am bad’. There is some hope there of, if it's me that's bad, maybe I can change. Where as if an infant comes to the conclusion, or a toddler, or preschooler comes to the conclusion that it's their caregiver who's bad, that is actually very hopeless. And the developing mind will do almost anything to stay out or protect against hopelessness. Dan Siegel writes that “it's better for the child to feel defective than to realize that their attachment figure is dangerous, unpredictable, or untrustworthy. The mental mechanism of shame, at least preserves for them the illusion of safety and security that is at the core of their sanity”. So this brings me back to the core belief here of this podcast, of my work, of what we do in The Club, of what I teach my students in Being With, right? Which is that all behavior makes sense. Even shame makes sense and is protective. And yes, has devastating, devastating consequences. 

So we will talk next time, a little bit more about what this can look like, and then we will talk about how we can help support folks who have such a level of chronic shame that it becomes a shame trait instead of a shame state. Now, I want to add one more thing. And for probably most of you listening, this is extra information that’s really not necessary for how you are understanding or coming into connection with chronic shame and toxic shame. But I also know a lot of therapists and professionals listen to the podcast and I want to just add one more layer here. There's a book by Patricia de Jong called Understanding and Treating Chronic Shame: Healing Right Brain Relational Trauma. And at the very beginning of the book, Patricia de Jong writes, “shame is the experience of one's felt sense of self disintegrating in relation to a dysregulating other. Chronic shame, then, is a separate phenomenon that develops when this disintegration happens continually and is unrepaired”. So I want to deconstruct that just the littlest bit. Self integration is developed in relationship with the regulated other, right? The infant dysregulates, this is normal, and needs the co-regulation of a regulated adult to come back into not just regulation but- but to come back into connection with themselves, a self integration. So, when an infant is dysregulated and is met by a caregiver who is mean, or weak, or gone, and that's language that I learned from circle of security. Mean, weak, or gone dysregulated. This creates that sensation of the sudden slamming on the brakes. Now, again, this is a shame state. It's when this happens continuously, and is not repaired. Meaning the infant doesn't get the mirroring and the presence of an integrated regulated caregiver, that this develops into chronic shame. 

Now, what I want you to hear more than anything, is that the experience of chronic or toxic shame in our nervous system has literally nothing to do with who we are as people or what we've done. It is a protective physiological response to having a need and to having a bid for connection and having that go repeatedly, and please hear me say repeatedly, unmet. That can mean the caregiver could respond in a wide variety of ways. And circle of security says mean, weak, or gone. So mean is like kind of what we think of as abusive. Weak is a caregiver who is overwhelmed by the infant's need for connection and they disintegrate themselves. They like lose their own regulation, and don't have any capacity to offer co-regulation because they have disintegrated so much themselves. And then gone is a caregiver who is either ener- energetically or physically gone. So not all of these experiences are about an infant who experiences abuse, right? There's many ways that how the caregiver does or doesn't respond, can lead to that physiological sensation of like the rug being pulled out from underneath you. And then eventually, that infant develops these cortical capacities, and starts to label that physiology as ‘I am bad’. And then this just feels like all of them. It doesn't feel like it's in response to something they did. It feels like just who they are. 

Now, what we haven't talked about at all is how does this shame trait, this sense of chronic ‘I'm just bad’, how does that contribute to behaviors? And we'll talk about that next week, because shame doesn't come- only come out in ways that are obviously shame, right? Like it's- it's easier to see statements of ‘I'm terrible’ or folks who kind of move through the world holding their bodies in a way that makes sense with shame, right? Like with their downcast eyes, or lack of energy in their body. We can more easily see those kinds of observable behaviors as shame, but that is, without question, not even close to the only way that shame comes out. So we'll talk about that next week. And then we will talk about, okay, so what do we do? How do we help folks who carry this sense of chronic or toxic shame in their nervous system? 

And to bring us full circle, quickly, back to the beginning of the episode when I talked about how it is very common for folks to have good things happen to them or for them to be told by other people that they are good or doing good things out in the world. It's so common for that to then be accompanied by what can feel like a whiplash, a tsunami of shame. And the reason is- is because this information is coming in from the outside world that's essentially like ‘you're good’ or ‘you're doing good’. And it feels like a complete lie. So the person is left to kind of grapple with either ‘you're lying to me now’ or I was lied to. I mean, we can put that in air quotes, like “lied to”. I learned something untrue about myself when I was very small, and I have lived my whole life believing this untruth about me. And if I were to risk believing that that isn't true, everything about what I know to be true about me will have to come into question. And I will also have to grieve what I learned and how that has impacted my whole life. Like what I learned that I will- am a very terrible person. I'll have to grieve how I came into learning that about myself, and that it's not true, and the impact that it has had on my life, right? And many, many, many folks just find that to be way too overwhelming of a prospect. 

So yes, getting feedback from the world like ‘you are good’, or even ‘you've done something good’, can actually light up those neural nets that are holding the toxic shame. And we can see that toxic shame come to the forefront in a really, really powerful way. And those of us who are caregivers, who love people with histories of chronic or toxic shame, can find this very confusing, right? Like, how can this great, amazing thing have happened? How can that light up all of your sensation of being bad?  So hopefully, this is starting to make just a little bit more sense. And in upcoming episodes, it will start to make even more and more sense. And then we'll get to okay, so what do we do about this? 

All right, so I'm gonna take a big breath [audible breath] because this was a lot. Thank you for your guts and your bravery, to be curious about the topic of toxic shame. And whether you're curious, because it feels like you hold some of this in your own neurobiology. Or if it's because you know people who hold this in their neurobiology, Maybe the people you work with, or the kids that you care for, or your spouse, or your partner, or people in your life that you love. Thank you for your guts and your bravery to learn about the neurobiology of toxic shame. If you wanted to think really quickly about shame through the lens of owls, watchdogs, and possums. Which those owls, watchdogs, and possums are the absolute star of my book Raising Kids with Big, Baffling Behaviors, we would think about toxic shame as being on the possum pathway. The book is available for preorder at RobynGobbel.com/BafflingBook. 

And we also learn about this, and talk about this, and- and try to make sense of all of this in the context of our kids' baffling behaviors, and ours, inside The Club. In fact, there is a training about the neurobiology of toxic shame in The Club's On Demand Learning Library. But just by the nature of how The Club exists, and the way that we are in community, and the way that we are committed to our manifesto, these are ways that we work together as a community to dismantle the neurobiology of toxic shame while also having gratitude and reverence for the way that toxic shame believes that it's being protective. Alright y'all, it has been so wonderful to be with you again today and I look very much forward to continuing with this series next week. I will see you then!