What Toxic Shame Looks Like {EP 120}

Hey, friends, hello, welcome back. You've pressed play on another episode of the Parenting After Trauma podcast. I'm your host, Robyn Gobbel. If you are tuning in for the first time ever, let's talk about the name of the show parenting after trauma. That might not feel like it relates to you or your situation at all. And that would make perfect sense to me. Because the podcast has started reaching folks who are parenting kids that maybe haven't experienced trauma or not anything that you would identify as trauma. But it is still feeling really supportive. And I've even had folks reach out and say, like, I don't know what to make of that. Like, I don't think my kid is ever experienced trauma, but it's still feels like everything you talk about relates and yes, absolutely. That, essentially, what we talked about here on the podcast is parenting kids with vulnerable nervous systems and big, baffling behaviors. Which is something I've started saying much more frequently. Now, parenting kids with vulnerable nervous systems and big, baffling behaviors is a terrible name for a podcast, [laughter] though we are considering the possibility of changing the name of the podcast. I haven't decided yet. But it's a consideration and something we might do in the upcoming months. Because we do want folks who don't necessarily resonate with the word trauma to tune into the show, because we think it can be so helpful for them, and for those families, and for those kids. The drawback is, I am really grateful to create a resource that speaks so clearly to an often overlooked, unseen, marginalized area of the population, which is families of kids who have been impacted by trauma. And so for those families to have a resource as so clearly and specifically for them is something I'm a little bit reluctant to shift away from. All that to say I really haven't decided yet. And if you want to tell me your two thoughts, your- your two- if you want to give me your two cents. oh, y'all I am so good at like, quoting metaphors incorrectly wrong by one word. If you want to give me your two cents, is that the right metaphor? Is that a metaphor? I don't know, y'all. Anyway, if you want to tell me what you think [laughter] about the possibility of me shifting away the name of the podcast, from Parenting After Trauma to something that isn't parenting kids with vulnerable nervous systems and big baffling behaviors, because that's too long. But something that sort of captures that, let me know. I'd love to hear from you. 

So, this is episode two in a podcast series on toxic shame. Last week was an episode on like what is toxic shame and specifically the neurobiology of toxic shame because I believe in all of my cells, that understanding the neurobiological physiological process of toxic shame is a crucial step in us untangling from toxic shame, whether it be our own, or helping our child with theirs. Toxic shame is a very physiological experience that essentially we mislabel and we label this physiological sensation as there's something wrong with me, but that's actually not true at all. So seeing that and- and- and uncoupling the sensation that is often labeled, there's something terribly wrong with me, is really important. So check out last week's episode The Neurobiology of Toxic Shame, if you haven't yet. 

Why am I doing a toxic shame series? Well, it's very common for folks with histories of trauma, especially early complex developmental trauma or trauma they experienced in the attachment relationship, to experience the physiological sensation of toxic shame. And the reason for that I think it's really clear if you listen to the neurobiology of toxic shame episode from last week. It is also, unfortunately, very common for folks with vulnerab- vulnerability in their nervous systems, maybe some sensory differences, neurodivergent, folks who embody marginalized and oppressed identities. Because the neurobiology of toxic shame is about being unseen, or not met, or not co-regulated. And it makes sense that folks who hold marginalized and oppressed identities or who have nervous systems or neuro types that work a little bit differently from, you know, the cultural norm or the expectation. It would make sense, then, that that also can contribute to the experience of toxic shame. So there are lots of experiences, there are lots of ways of being in the world that can contribute to developing this sense of toxic shame. Trauma is absolutely one of them. The vast majority of the humans that I have the great pleasure of coming into contact with in my work, have some pockets of shame in their nervous systems, and then many of them experience or identify with what I would call toxic shame. So that's why we are tackling this topic here on the podcast. 

Today's episode, we're going to talk about what does toxic shame look like? Like what behaviors might I see in my child or maybe in myself, that could tell me that this person has that felt sense of toxic shame? Because it's not always obvious, it doesn't necessarily look like what we would call or, you know, very clearly identify as shame. And then next week, next week's episode will be all about okay, so now what? Like what do we do about this? So when you get to the end of today's episode, if you're feeling any sense of hopelessness or helplessness. Number one, know that those are two common experiences inside the neurobiological experience of shame. So it actually makes sense to learn about shame, and to feel some hopelessness and helplessness emerge in the nervous system. But also, because of the focus of today's episode, which isn't how do we heal from it, it is what does it look like? It can feel really heavy, and have this suggestion that perhaps there's no hope. Now, that's absolutely not true. There's so much hope. I mean, I do my job because there is hope. And because there is the potential for shift to happen in the nervous system of folks who really experience a lot of the sensation of shame. 

So how might toxic shame show up? What might it look like in our kids? I am actually going to turn to Internal Family Systems to help me with today's episode, as I was prepping for the episode, I was noticing, I wanted to use IFS, Internal Family Systems, language as I was talking about how toxic shame can show up. So I decided to just embrace that and we're just going to use the language of Internal Family Systems or IFS. Now, quick little disclaimer, I am not officially trained in Internal Family Systems. I've done some online training with them. I've done what's called the IFS circle. I have not been in depth or officially trained in Internal Family Systems. And in fact, although parts work which is what IFS is although parts work is at the core of the work that I do. I tend to draw more from Bonnie Badenoch’s model of parts work. Which is- she calls her model of the inner community. That said, I do find there to be so much goodness in Internal Family Systems and find that the way Internal Family Systems describes or conceptualizes some things really make so much sense to folks. So I'm gonna use some of that language here. 

I also want to remind you that last fall I interviewed a friend and colleague from Austin, Ilyse Kennedy. And Ilyse is an IFS therapist. She wrote a book that came out last fall called The Tender Parts. And it is not a book for therapists. It's just a book for regular humans. And it's simple and easy to read. And if after today's episode, some of this language that I'm using about our protector parts is sparking any curiosity in you, that's the first resource that I would send you to. The Tender Parts by Ilyse Kennedy. 

So Internal Family Systems talks about having parts inside us that fall into one of two categories. Protector parts: parts that are protecting something. And protected parts. Actually, to be honest with you, I have no idea if IFS would use that specific language. That's how I'm conceptualizing it. Protector parts: parts that are protecting something. And protected parts: parts are being protected. And IFS calls the protector parts, manager parts, or firefighter parts. And these parts of us are helping us invo- avoid the intensity of pain that is held by what IFS calls, exiled parts. The parts that are being protected. So in its briefest simplicity, and again, please remember, I'm not even actually IFS trained. I'm totally possibly getting some of this wrong. But IFS talks about exiled parts, as the parts of ourselves that are like our deepest, most buried parts of self. The parts of us that are really holding the most enormous parts of our pain, and they're typically formed due to trauma. These unbearable experiences where we were left really all alone. Trauma that's experienced in the earliest and most vulnerable days and months and years of our lives involves not being co-regulated, being all, all alone, feeling abandoned. And it is those experiences then that often get held, in what IFS would call these exiled parts. Parts that then the rest of the system, the whole point of the rest of our system of ourselves becomes protecting against we- reawakening the pain that's held in those parts. Okay, so the exile parts are holding all of this pain that feels unbearable. And then the protector parts, the manager parts, or the firefighter parts are working really hard to protect against the pain that the exiles hold from being like touched into or reawakened. Right? So if exhale parts are holding the parts that experienced the trauma of not being seen not being co-regulated, well, that sounds a lot like toxic shame. Right? From last week's episode, we talked about the neurobiology of toxic shame, and how it is a manifestation of being all alone. Having a need, and having the need to go unmet or unresponded to and chronically. We're not talking about like once or twice or even occasionally, but like chronically. IFS also suggests that exiled parts, especially for folks with significant histories of trauma and disorganization, exiled parts don't feel like parts. Exile parts just kind of feel like all of us. They feel like a truth, a painful truth about the badness of us. That then, like the rest of our parts, are just working really hard to try to get us to like, avoid or not notice. So again, I think you can see how this sounds a lot like toxic shame and using the conceptualization from IFS of protectors and protected parts makes a lot of sense here. And in thinking about toxic shame that toxic shame then it is this exhale part and it doesn't feel like a part of feels like all of us. And then we develop these other ways of being in the world whose entire goal is to prevent us from feeling the toxic shame. And sometimes those other parts are doing a great job and we don't touch into the toxic shame. And sometimes those other parts are really tired. And we do have the sensation of toxic shame awoken. 

So yeah, let's think about toxic shame as what IFS calls an exile. It's- it's a part of us, it isn't who we are. And it isn't who our kids are. But it doesn't feel like a part. Like it just feels like a truth, like a totality, like we talked about last week. Now because of my area of expertise, and because I have worked almost exclusively with folks, grownups, and little children, who have experienced attachment trauma, complex trauma, developmental trauma, have vulnerability in their nervous system. I've met a lot of folks who describe in some ways, sometimes the grownups use words, kids use play or metaphor, or just their behavior, right? They describe the all encompassing experience of toxic shame. Oh, and just so we don't forget, or do you have significant clinical experience here for sure, but also drawing from my own personal experience with this as well. So I get to take my own personal experience, and what it means to live in a body that's holding toxic shame as well as what it means to have somebody offer me healing opportunities. Right? I'm coming from that perspective, as well as the perspective of being the person who offers the healing opportunities and significantly studies the neurobiological processes. Okay? So I'm coming from all of those places. So what I have seen in myself, and also what I've seen in the folks who have privileged me in my office and knowing all the parts of themselves, is that toxic shame can feel both like an absolute nothingness, like a absence of everything which can feel far, far, far down the possum pathway. It also can feel like or be experienced by almost like the opposite of that, like an intensity of absolute chaos. So complete disorganization, complete chaos, complete confusion, and that tends to be far, far, far down the watchdog pathway. And in some ways, they're kind of like opposite sides of the same coin. Without question, this experience of toxic shame can look and feel like the collapse of the possum pathway. It can look like absolute utter despair. It can look like what we maybe expect shame to look like, right? Like a hanging head, low energy, and almost the sense of this person that they feel like they could disappear or they're wanting to disappear. Or it feels impossible to be them in the world. Right? So our kids might be refusing to go to school, refusing to come out of their rooms, refusing to, like connect with anyone. And being with them can feel like a whole lot of nothingness. This- this withdrawal from like society and even withdrawal from like existence. Now, toxic shame can also look like raging out of control, out of control, chaos. And what also can feel extremely, extremely confusing. So we're talking about like, again, almost like the exact opposite on the energy pathways. Folks have described this and I have felt this myself like either a complete disconnect from reality in a way that we think of when we think of dissociation like a- like a shut down withdrawal, as well as a complete disconnection from reality in a way that's like this intense explosion of energy and chaos. 

Now, most folks do not live in constant connection with their exiled parts, especially the folks that I am in contact with. Will- which I was always an outpatient therapist or for the most part. Early, early in my career, I worked in more intensive settings, but I did a vast majority of my work in outpatient setting. So these are folks who are, you know, doing life and receiving outpatient treatment. And so very few of them are living continuously in the state of these exiledparts. Because it's pretty hard to be in the world that way continuously. Those folks often need a higher level of care. Right? So if we figure out ways- if folks who are experiencing toxic shame in the neurobiology can figure out ways to be in the world, it is because they do this through what IFS calls, protector parts. And IFS has both manager parts and firefighter parts. Now, the entire job of a protector is to keep the person from like touching into the pain that the exile holds. So manager parts are protectors that do a pretty good job of just kind of like keeping everything in line. Manager parts, Ilyse writes this in her book, manager parts take their jobs very seriously. And really love being in control. Managers work really hard to keep trauma or bad things from happening again, so that's a really important thing to think about, as well as to keep the exiles from being touched into. Okay? So if we're going to think about toxic shame, a manager part might be a part that is a people pleaser. A part that's trying to make sure that they never upset anybody or abandoned ever again, right? That- that everybody around them is always happy. I tend to think of people pleasing behavior as coming from the possum pathway, specifically from the trickster part of the possum pathway. Now if this information, this idea, this watchdog and possum pathways is new to you, you can go to two different places. You can go to RobynGobbel.com/ChangeBehavior. That is a podcast episode I did about these different parts of the nervous system, the watchdog and the possum pathway. And if you're looking for something a little bit more in depth than a podcast episode, head to RobynGobbel.com/webinar. Which is where you can find my full webinar called Focus On The Nervous System to Change Behavior. And I introduced the full model of the owls, watchdogs, and possums, which then you are going to be able to di into- dive into completely in September when my book comes out or before then if you come and join us in The Club. So again, if the watchdog and possum language is new to you, those are some places where you can go and discover a little bit more about that. 

But people pleasing behavior from the way I'm conceptualizing it, I think about it coming from the possum pathway and the trickster part of the possum pathway, specifically. Sometimes that confuses people because this people pleaser part can feel like it has a lot of energy. And it can and sometimes it is definitely driven by some anxiety energy. But I think about people pleasing on the possum pathway because it's a dissociation from self. And it's a way of like putting on a mask or in a way like a costume that keeps everybody else happening. Now think about this as a manager protector, right? If my trauma was all aloneness, not being met, not being seen, not being co-regulated. Then being a people pleaser is a great way to try to, one, keep that trauma from happening again or, two, touch into the pain that that exile holds from that past trauma. 

Sometimes manager parts that are protecting us from toxic shame can look like anxiety, right? So that might look more like watchdog energy. The hyper vigilance part of like the what's up watchdog, right? Manager parts can be controlling, or overly rigid, they can be kind of checked out, they can look like la la land, right? When I think about the watchdog possum continuum and the different levels, which I have been inspired by Dr. Perry's state dependent functioning model and his levels of arousal: alert, alarm, fear and terror. I tend to kind of think about how manager parts are mostly on a level of arousal that feel like alert, maybe alarm. And so the watchdog passive model that's the what's up or ready for action watchdog or the la la land or the trickster possum. Now in Ilyse’s book, The Tender Parts, which is not about toxic shame, it's about healing from trauma through Internal Family Systems. She lists some behaviors that we often see in managers. And because managers are often protecting against the parts that hold the toxic shame, these are some behaviors that you might see that actually are, in fact, the result of toxic shame. So I'm going to read some of them. But again, if you want to check out Ilyse’s book, it's called The Tender Parts. And this is coming from page 38. She says “manager behaviors can look like depression, tuning out, toxic positivity, self criticism, controlling behavior, overachieving behavior, overworking, being kind of like a workhorse, being the quote unquote, good kid, technology, dependence, perfectionism, giving a lot of advice, anxiety, people pleasing, helping, over helping, and over functioning, approval seeking, some self doubt, intellectualizing, being judgey, invalidating others and self, self sacrificing, lots of pessimism, some self blame, and over focused on others”. So you can see how those behaviors like run the full gamut, right? In some ways, they almost seem like opposite. And so just like in what we're always doing here, which is putting on our x-ray vision goggles and seeing beneath the behavior, we're looking at, what's the purpose of the behavior? What is it protecting the person from and what is the level of energy and arousal it's coming from? 

So now let's look at firefighters. Firefighter parts are also protectors, like manager parts, but they have- this is how I conceptualize it, they have more intensity than manager parts. And they kind of do like exactly what real firefighters do. Like, they show up. They like to burst onto the scene with all this like fury and frenzy, when like manager parts haven't been able to do their job. They burst onto the scene and are really intent on being protective. And they do this often with behaviors that they don't really care about, like what is the destruction that the- the behaviors leave behind. So again, I think about like real firefighters, right? Like, you know, they're gonna burst onto our scene, when, like, something really bad is about to happen. And they don't really care if they leave your home with water damage, or they bust down the front door, right? They're gonna do whatever they feel like they need to do to keep everyone safe. Because the manager parts were no longer able to keep the self protected. Or, so meaning like, the manager parts are no longer able to kind of prevent the possibility of experiencing the trauma again, and or protect the possibility of that exiled part feeling that old trauma again. Okay? So firefighters have intensity. They're still intended to keep the exiled parts, the toxic shame, from being activated. But they do this with a little less savvy than manager parts. So firefighter parts might be like verbally or physically aggressive. These are parts that can ke- keep people out of relationship with them. And the reason they do this is so that there's the potential to avoid triggering the toxic shame, right? They want to stay out of relationship. They think that if I can stay out of relationship, I will avoid triggering the shame. Now, because of the way parts work and protector parts work. That's not the only possibilities, some parts are going to do the exact opposite. Stay in relationship as a way to prevent the trauma from happening again, or from the exile parts from being you know, touched into. All of this, I'm not gonna get into any more than I already am the model of IFS specifically or the idea of protector parts. It all, you know, our parts learn how to do jobs based on the behaviors that they have being successful. So some of us have parts and some of us have kids who have parts that learned that the best way to stay safe was to be overly enmeshed in relationship and overly people pleasing and that kind of stuff. And then some of us have parts or have kids who have parts who learned that the best way to stay safe is to stay out of relationship. It really just depends on a lot of different things. Okay? 

But these firefighter parts are really wanting to avoid what they believe is this inevitable aloneness, this inevitable rejection of others, and one way they might do that is by rejecting others first and having behaviors that definitely push people away. Firefighter parts could also look like substance abuse, or self injury, self injury behavior. Firefighter parts could look like sudden dissociation or collapse. And firefighters can overeat in or numb out in front of the TV. Firefighter parts don't always look protective, like on the outside looking in, we're like, well, that doesn't seem protective at all. In fact, there's a whole lot of damage that comes from that part. So what we have to do is remember what's being protected against and what's being protected against is the toxic shame. And so if my system is doing anything in its power, to avoid touching into the horror of toxic shame, then maybe it makes more sense why I would turn to binge drinking, or cutting myself, or whatever behavior seems like it has grave consequences, but it's still seems protective against the possibility of reigniting that toxic shame, right? The toxic shame that's holding the- what the person believes is the truth. That they're damaged, or broken, or worthless, dest- destined to be all alone, or- or even face annihilation. 

So I'm going to go back to Ilyse’s book here about the tender parts and- and read what she talks about as- as some behaviors that we see from firefighters. Now, Ilyse is writing about adults. And so this is a list of of behaviors we will more commonly see in adults than in kids. But she includes binge eating, and other disordered eating, drug use, suicidality, criminal behavior like shoplifting or even worse, rage, self harm, dissociative behavior like constantly being on video games, mindless scrolling, manipulation, lying, sexually compulsive behavior, constant sleeping. So you also notice there's some overlaps here. So again, this just takes me back to our x-ray vision goggles. That we use behaviors here as just cues and clues. And then we take that behavior as information to help us get a little bit deeper. What's the purpose of the behavior? What level of activation or arousal is the behavior emerging from? What is the behavior protecting against? Is it a watchdog behavior or possum behavior, right? So we use the behavior just as a cue and a clue to stay really curious. Now, I'm definitely not saying that all managers and all firefighter parts are protecting against the exile of toxic shame, right? Not every single one of the behaviors that I've listed off, and not every single one of the behaviors your kids have, is rooted in toxic shame. But honestly, I actually think way more are than we normally give credit to. Because these aren't behaviors that scream shame to us, right? Like, again, we think of shame when we think of, of collapse, and we think withdrawn, and we think somebody who is saying what a terrible person they are. And so many of our kids' behaviors are actually designed to protect them against falling into that terrible place of being, like, really close and in contact with their felt sense, with their physiology of toxic shame. So what I'm really saying here is that toxic shame can look like almost anything. So what I would invite you to do is to consider what happens if you think about your child's behaviors or yours as a way that they're protecting themselves from re-experiencing toxic shame. 

Alright, one last thing I want to talk about here in this episode, is that we actually can look at the toxic shame, the exile, as also being protective. And what toxic shame is protecting against so often is grief. The grief of what happened that created the toxic shame in the first place. Now why would somebody use toxic shame to protect against grief, which sort of implies that the toxic shame feels better than the grief. To grieve something means to really come into contact with the truth that this something can never be changed. To grieve means accepting something terrible happened, and it will never be changed. To grieve means to come into contact with the reality that I'll never get to be the teeny tiny baby who didn't get what they needed. And for many folks who are holding toxic shame, the grief of that, whether- for kids and for adults, is just simply too much. Remember that toxic shame was created out of what we could call like toxic aloneness. A person with a history of toxic shame believes there is no option except to suffer all alone. They- they don't believe it's possible to grieve, you know, to feel that level of intensity and not be all alone. It feels like the two things are tied together. Grief, that intensity of an emotion, and all alone. All those things are all tied together is what it feels like in the nervous system of somebody with toxic shame. Meaning that this person doesn't believe it's possible for them to feel something that intense and not come completely undone. And in many ways, the grownups and the kids that I've worked with, and even myself, can articulate in some way, sometimes it's through play, sometimes it's through words, sometimes it's through behavior, articulating this fear that to touch into toxic shame will cause them to almost like, combust. To come completely undone to have this sense of annihilation, like they will cease to exist. Toxic shame has a sensation that feels like it could kill them. Which I realize, y'all, is irrational, right? Sensations like toxic shame won't kill us. And in fact, the sensation is actually the memory of a sensation that felt like could kill us but indeed didn't. Right? This is the tragedy of toxic shame. This is the tragedy of disorganized attachment. There's, in this person's body, no felt sense that anything is possible except all aloneness and annihilation. And so their protective system again, these these managers and firefighters from IFS language, but if we think about it through the lens of watchdogs and possums, we've got people pleasers, we've got controlling behavior, we've got manipulation, we've got lying, right? Like we've got all these behaviors our kids have that fall somewhere on the watchdog or possum pathway, right? Their protective system stays solidly in place. 

Now, I said this at the beginning, there is a way out. There is healing possible for the experience of toxic shame. I promise. I've been on both sides of it. I've- I've been the healer. And I've been the person bringing the toxic shame to the healer. I've been on both sides of it. And it is possible to bring healing to toxic shame. And I've seen this in both adults and kids. And that's what we're going to talk about next week. 

All right, y’all. This has been a lot. This is an intense series. This is an intense episode. So I want you to take a breath. [audible breath] Hear my voice, hear me with you connected to you right now. Notice being connected to yourself, and really tune into me saying there is hope. And we will do that next week. Thank you again, thank you so, so much for braving the intensity of these topics. Whether you're here thinking about yourself, or you're here thinking about your child, or you're here thinking about your clients. It's so much and you're doing it and you're being brave, and we're doing it together. And this work that we're doing matters for ourselves, and it matters for our kids, and it matters for everyone else. So thank you, thank you, thank you for showing up one more time. I will see you here again next week. Bye bye!