Religion Expectations and Internalized Shame Plus Childhood Trauma
My anger and hurt at my ex in laws and ex husband was eating me up inside. I felt disgraced, and had to push back. My ego was threatened- the same way I was never allowed my feelings in childhood. I was fighting for survival, because I felt threatened. They don’t understand me and then I feel like I’m nothing if people don’t understand me. It’s triggering. They called me worthless and and bad, something I was toxically shamed to feel all my life. I’m trying to stop letting myself feel this way. To not let others get me down, over my will again and again. Maybe it’s because it was never developed at all...
John Bradshaw says in Healing the Shame That Binds You that the interpersonal bridge “Trust is fostered by the fact that we can come to expect and rely on the mortality of response” between parent and child... “emotional bond is formed” which “allows the child to risk venturing out to explore the world. ... we allow ourselves to be vulnerable in that we allow ourselves to need the other person” (Page 9-10).
I never had those needs met, as I did not trust my adoptive mother to respond to my needs. She did not take the time to listen to me as she did not know that adoption was a trauma, as she told me later in my life. So I know she did not understand me and allow me to develop trust in her to care for me. This is why I am now stuck in the codependency stage of needing others to see me, and it is so difficult to take initiative to explore my world on my own without depending on others. Ultimately, people do not understand that because they are unaware of my adoption trauma, or are unwilling to see it because of their own codependency and need for the other to see them. As Nancy Verrier says in Coming Home To Self, adoptees have to take responsibility for the way they accepted poor behavior from others because they were expecting it as they felt like “the rejected baby” that was going to be left (Page 159).
John Bradshaw says in the Introduction to Healing the Shame That Binds You, “Shame is a natural feeling that, when allowed to function well, monitors a person’s sense of excitement or pleasure. But when the feeling of shame is violated by a coercive and perfectionistic religion and culture- especially when shame-based source figures who mediate religion and culture- it becomes an all embracing identity. A person with internalized shame believes he is inherently flawed, inferior, and defective” (Page 4).
This is what I went through, in my childhood of being adopted and carrying my parents toxic shame at their inferiority from their religion. They thought since they could not measure up to being perfect, they had to fake it and act like they were, yet I could see that they judged me for my needs as a child. I lost my healthy shame.
As well, Nancy Verrier speaks about adoption causes the adoptee to not have a sense of cause and affect in his life: “one can no longer trust the natural order because the event which normal follows birth is that the infant is locked in sublime symbiosis with the mother. They are one, the mother/baby about which Winnicott speaks. The mother’s disappearance is like falling through the universe, floating, floating through space with no grounding” (Page 19). He has also been betrayed by God, “there can be no more trust in the transcendent order of the divine. ... many adoptees feel as if they do not really exist, or, at the very least, as if they have no right to exist. For many, the risk of connection is synonymous with the risk of annihilation” (Page 19). I relate very much to these feelings, and many have told me that I do not want to connect with others, because I do not trust. This is not my fault, as it is part of my brain wiring not to trust others. It takes a lot of effort for me to invest in someone, and when I do, it is very important that they understand my feelings and do not diminish my trauma. This is what prevented me from going further with some people, because I sensed they did not understand and were unable to care for me in the way I needed. I feel unreal a lot in my life, and do not trust that I can depend on anyone, including being unsure of G-d truly being there for me. I feel that I need to control everything, or else I will have nothing. It is very hard for me to relax and trust the world. When I do put my hopes in G-d, and try to see that He is there for me, I want to cry because I feel so grateful for being seen and accepted. It is hard to let go of feeling like no one is there, because that is my basic foundation from my infant-hood.
Deep down I always felt like a fraud, not good enough for God. I knew my self-doubt and toxic shame was not what God wanted, and I did not know a way out of it. I was worried about my future, because I knew that my false self I portrayed myself to be was wrong. As Bradshaw says, even worse than hiding from others who he is, the shame-based person hides “himself from himself” (Page 30).
Bradshaw explains, identification with shame-based models causes the child to internalize shame. “The need to identify with someone, to feel a part of something, and belong somewhere. Is one of our most basic needs” (Page 31). Being that I carried my parents’ internalized shame and did not accept myself, as they could not accept me, I felt that who I was was out of place and did not belong in the world.
Bradshaw says, “Without the healthy signal of shame, we would not be in touch with our core dependency needs” (Page 15). I was not able to depend on my parents who were so stuck in their own core shame at depending on others. When a child is in the stage of learning autonomy as a toddler, he “needs to know that the interpersonal bridge will not be destroyed by his new urge for doing things his way- towards autonomy” (Page 12). I remember being beaten when I tried to show my pain, so from then on I learned to shut down because who I was was not accepted by my mother. I remember laying in my bed when I got home from school, knowing I had no one to rely on and that I was all alone in my pain. I could not go to anyone with it except by little blanket that I was attached to.
Shame is the source of spirituality, says John Bradshaw in Healing the Shame That Binds You. It is about wholeness and complete maturity, and grounds us in the “ultimate sense of reality.” “Our healthy shame is the foundation of our spirituality. By reminding us of our essential limitations, our healthy shame lets us know that we are not God. ...points us in the direction of some larger meaning. ... is the psychological ground of our humility” (Page 19). He goes on to explain how toxic shame gets manifested when our normal developmental needs are not met.
When shame becomes internalized, it becomes the identity of the person. This happens with the reinforcement of three factors: the person identified with their shame-based parent through attachment bounding and “carried their shame,” through the trauma of abandonment or severing of the interpersonal bridge, and the “interconnection of memory imprints, which forms collages of shame” (Page 30). “Toxic shame, with its more-than-human, less-than-human polarization, is either inhuman or dehumanizing.” There needs to be a false self to cover the authentic self. Life is all about achievement, life depends on “doing” rather than being. Toxic shame looks to the outside for happiness and validation, since the inside is flawed and defective” (Page 42).
The person can become so entrenched in their shame, that it has a function of its own, without the person choosing to feel that way. One cannot change if they feel so flawed (Page 43).
Bradshaw says that when from age zero to six months there is toxic shame, there was “failure or traumatic attachment... failure to form interpersonal bridge...’Being’ shame binds” (Page 23). This means that they feel that their very being is shamed. This is exactly what I mean when I feel that no one is there for me, deep down in my core, because I was so deeply stuck in that shame as a baby when I was abandoned. I did not form a bond with my adoptive parents because they were not aware of adoption trauma, as she told me later on, I seemed like I was happy. This was because I learned to shut down my feelings, as they were not mirrored back to me by people around me, and I formed the belief that I was not cared for and lost a chance of being emotionally bonded with others. Aletha J. Solter says in her book Tears and Tantrums, John Bowlby says that for healthy attachment the parent needs to accept “the entire range of their children’s emotions,” and it is essential for normal development (Page 21). This includes their stress, which they release through crying and receiving empathy during those times. Bowlby warms of consequences of not letting them cry, saying “any attempts to distract a child away from his crying will be felt by him as a form of emotional abandonment” (Page 22). She says that crying is a healing tool to overcome stress, and when a child cries “while feeling safe,” it “helps undo the conditioning of the stress response,” and convince the brain that the “threat has been overcome and resolved” (Page 20).
Therefore, since I was unable to cry, it shows that my stress of being adopted was reinforced throughout my life and I did not have the help to overcome it. I can attest to this, because I feel extreme pain that is out of proportion to the stresses I go through in my life currently. Nancy Verrier explains in Coming Home to Self, “Truama which occurs during the period of normal childhood amnesia, which includes immediate postnatal separation from mother, will be processed as implicit memory, affecting behavior and emotional responses, although remaining in an unresolved, in consolidated form. The danger here, as Siegel says, ‘These implicit recollections are not usually subject to the process of self-reflection, as in ‘Why am I doing this or feeling this way?’ individuals may sense these experiences as just defining who they are.’” (Page 33). I struggle with this, as ever since I can remember, I felt everything that was wrong in my life was my fault and struggled with a deep sense of self-loathing that I had to cover myself up from others. Meanwhile, it was not that I was bad, it was what had happened to me, but I did not know how to differentiate it as I had no help in my emotional turmoil over what had happened.
Bradshaw says that the eighteen months to three and a half years stage, “Erik Erikson says that the psychosocial task at this stage of development is to strike a balance between autonomy and shame and doubt. ... Two year olds are in a counter dependent stage...” where there’s a “need to separated. ... What a child needs most is a firm but understanding caregiver” (Page 11). The child needs to know that the interpersonal bridge will not be destroyed by his new urge...towards autonomy” (Page 12). I can imagine that my mother did not encourage my independence, because my adoptive mother kept me under control and I was beaten violently when I behaved badly. She could not stand a child saying no to her.
This is why I have a hard time developing or seeing my autonomy as real, and feel like I am no good in the eyes of others. It does cause me to feel stagnant and awful about life. I feel that if I only knew how to develop my skills, people would care about me. It is the wrong way, though because I need to know I am loved first before I can develop my autonomy. I need to develop healthy shame, which comes in stages. Until then I cannot get to know who I am, and Bradshaw says, “Without total self-love and acceptance, we are doomed to the enervating task of creating false selves. ... it takes lots of energy and hard work to live a false self” (Xix).
This is all the result of lifelong, internalized shame from religion, trauma, and trauma bonding. I am working hard on releasing all the pent up shame and triggered feelings of never being good enough, that I get from the environment and people around me, and from situations in my personal life that bring them up. I want to be free, to know I am worthy of love and life. This is the only way I will heal, as people want me to keep blaming myself and subconsciously project their own feelings of not being good enough on me, I can listen to my feelings and be happy, wether others believe it or not. Studying my trauma and validating myself is the start.
John Bradshaw says in Healing the Shame That Binds You that the interpersonal bridge “Trust is fostered by the fact that we can come to expect and rely on the mortality of response” between parent and child... “emotional bond is formed” which “allows the child to risk venturing out to explore the world. ... we allow ourselves to be vulnerable in that we allow ourselves to need the other person” (Page 9-10).
I never had those needs met, as I did not trust my adoptive mother to respond to my needs. She did not take the time to listen to me as she did not know that adoption was a trauma, as she told me later in my life. So I know she did not understand me and allow me to develop trust in her to care for me. This is why I am now stuck in the codependency stage of needing others to see me, and it is so difficult to take initiative to explore my world on my own without depending on others. Ultimately, people do not understand that because they are unaware of my adoption trauma, or are unwilling to see it because of their own codependency and need for the other to see them. As Nancy Verrier says in Coming Home To Self, adoptees have to take responsibility for the way they accepted poor behavior from others because they were expecting it as they felt like “the rejected baby” that was going to be left (Page 159).
John Bradshaw says in the Introduction to Healing the Shame That Binds You, “Shame is a natural feeling that, when allowed to function well, monitors a person’s sense of excitement or pleasure. But when the feeling of shame is violated by a coercive and perfectionistic religion and culture- especially when shame-based source figures who mediate religion and culture- it becomes an all embracing identity. A person with internalized shame believes he is inherently flawed, inferior, and defective” (Page 4).
Since I was raised believing the love that I got was what to expect, I do not have trust in the world and in G-d that I am worthy of being myself and being loved. I expect subconsciously to be treated as if my emotions do not exist and are not taken account by others and by G-d. I have to work on changing that belief system, and allowing myself to live as I am.
This is what I went through, in my childhood of being adopted and carrying my parents toxic shame at their inferiority from their religion. They thought since they could not measure up to being perfect, they had to fake it and act like they were, yet I could see that they judged me for my needs as a child. I lost my healthy shame.
As well, Nancy Verrier speaks about adoption causes the adoptee to not have a sense of cause and affect in his life: “one can no longer trust the natural order because the event which normal follows birth is that the infant is locked in sublime symbiosis with the mother. They are one, the mother/baby about which Winnicott speaks. The mother’s disappearance is like falling through the universe, floating, floating through space with no grounding” (Page 19). He has also been betrayed by God, “there can be no more trust in the transcendent order of the divine. ... many adoptees feel as if they do not really exist, or, at the very least, as if they have no right to exist. For many, the risk of connection is synonymous with the risk of annihilation” (Page 19). I relate very much to these feelings, and many have told me that I do not want to connect with others, because I do not trust. This is not my fault, as it is part of my brain wiring not to trust others. It takes a lot of effort for me to invest in someone, and when I do, it is very important that they understand my feelings and do not diminish my trauma. This is what prevented me from going further with some people, because I sensed they did not understand and were unable to care for me in the way I needed. I feel unreal a lot in my life, and do not trust that I can depend on anyone, including being unsure of G-d truly being there for me. I feel that I need to control everything, or else I will have nothing. It is very hard for me to relax and trust the world. When I do put my hopes in G-d, and try to see that He is there for me, I want to cry because I feel so grateful for being seen and accepted. It is hard to let go of feeling like no one is there, because that is my basic foundation from my infant-hood.
Deep down I always felt like a fraud, not good enough for God. I knew my self-doubt and toxic shame was not what God wanted, and I did not know a way out of it. I was worried about my future, because I knew that my false self I portrayed myself to be was wrong. As Bradshaw says, even worse than hiding from others who he is, the shame-based person hides “himself from himself” (Page 30).
Bradshaw explains, identification with shame-based models causes the child to internalize shame. “The need to identify with someone, to feel a part of something, and belong somewhere. Is one of our most basic needs” (Page 31). Being that I carried my parents’ internalized shame and did not accept myself, as they could not accept me, I felt that who I was was out of place and did not belong in the world.
Bradshaw says, “Without the healthy signal of shame, we would not be in touch with our core dependency needs” (Page 15). I was not able to depend on my parents who were so stuck in their own core shame at depending on others. When a child is in the stage of learning autonomy as a toddler, he “needs to know that the interpersonal bridge will not be destroyed by his new urge for doing things his way- towards autonomy” (Page 12). I remember being beaten when I tried to show my pain, so from then on I learned to shut down because who I was was not accepted by my mother. I remember laying in my bed when I got home from school, knowing I had no one to rely on and that I was all alone in my pain. I could not go to anyone with it except by little blanket that I was attached to.
Shame is the source of spirituality, says John Bradshaw in Healing the Shame That Binds You. It is about wholeness and complete maturity, and grounds us in the “ultimate sense of reality.” “Our healthy shame is the foundation of our spirituality. By reminding us of our essential limitations, our healthy shame lets us know that we are not God. ...points us in the direction of some larger meaning. ... is the psychological ground of our humility” (Page 19). He goes on to explain how toxic shame gets manifested when our normal developmental needs are not met.
When shame becomes internalized, it becomes the identity of the person. This happens with the reinforcement of three factors: the person identified with their shame-based parent through attachment bounding and “carried their shame,” through the trauma of abandonment or severing of the interpersonal bridge, and the “interconnection of memory imprints, which forms collages of shame” (Page 30). “Toxic shame, with its more-than-human, less-than-human polarization, is either inhuman or dehumanizing.” There needs to be a false self to cover the authentic self. Life is all about achievement, life depends on “doing” rather than being. Toxic shame looks to the outside for happiness and validation, since the inside is flawed and defective” (Page 42).
The person can become so entrenched in their shame, that it has a function of its own, without the person choosing to feel that way. One cannot change if they feel so flawed (Page 43).
Bradshaw says that when from age zero to six months there is toxic shame, there was “failure or traumatic attachment... failure to form interpersonal bridge...’Being’ shame binds” (Page 23). This means that they feel that their very being is shamed. This is exactly what I mean when I feel that no one is there for me, deep down in my core, because I was so deeply stuck in that shame as a baby when I was abandoned. I did not form a bond with my adoptive parents because they were not aware of adoption trauma, as she told me later on, I seemed like I was happy. This was because I learned to shut down my feelings, as they were not mirrored back to me by people around me, and I formed the belief that I was not cared for and lost a chance of being emotionally bonded with others. Aletha J. Solter says in her book Tears and Tantrums, John Bowlby says that for healthy attachment the parent needs to accept “the entire range of their children’s emotions,” and it is essential for normal development (Page 21). This includes their stress, which they release through crying and receiving empathy during those times. Bowlby warms of consequences of not letting them cry, saying “any attempts to distract a child away from his crying will be felt by him as a form of emotional abandonment” (Page 22). She says that crying is a healing tool to overcome stress, and when a child cries “while feeling safe,” it “helps undo the conditioning of the stress response,” and convince the brain that the “threat has been overcome and resolved” (Page 20).
Therefore, since I was unable to cry, it shows that my stress of being adopted was reinforced throughout my life and I did not have the help to overcome it. I can attest to this, because I feel extreme pain that is out of proportion to the stresses I go through in my life currently. Nancy Verrier explains in Coming Home to Self, “Truama which occurs during the period of normal childhood amnesia, which includes immediate postnatal separation from mother, will be processed as implicit memory, affecting behavior and emotional responses, although remaining in an unresolved, in consolidated form. The danger here, as Siegel says, ‘These implicit recollections are not usually subject to the process of self-reflection, as in ‘Why am I doing this or feeling this way?’ individuals may sense these experiences as just defining who they are.’” (Page 33). I struggle with this, as ever since I can remember, I felt everything that was wrong in my life was my fault and struggled with a deep sense of self-loathing that I had to cover myself up from others. Meanwhile, it was not that I was bad, it was what had happened to me, but I did not know how to differentiate it as I had no help in my emotional turmoil over what had happened.
Bradshaw says that the eighteen months to three and a half years stage, “Erik Erikson says that the psychosocial task at this stage of development is to strike a balance between autonomy and shame and doubt. ... Two year olds are in a counter dependent stage...” where there’s a “need to separated. ... What a child needs most is a firm but understanding caregiver” (Page 11). The child needs to know that the interpersonal bridge will not be destroyed by his new urge...towards autonomy” (Page 12). I can imagine that my mother did not encourage my independence, because my adoptive mother kept me under control and I was beaten violently when I behaved badly. She could not stand a child saying no to her.
This is why I have a hard time developing or seeing my autonomy as real, and feel like I am no good in the eyes of others. It does cause me to feel stagnant and awful about life. I feel that if I only knew how to develop my skills, people would care about me. It is the wrong way, though because I need to know I am loved first before I can develop my autonomy. I need to develop healthy shame, which comes in stages. Until then I cannot get to know who I am, and Bradshaw says, “Without total self-love and acceptance, we are doomed to the enervating task of creating false selves. ... it takes lots of energy and hard work to live a false self” (Xix).
This is all the result of lifelong, internalized shame from religion, trauma, and trauma bonding. I am working hard on releasing all the pent up shame and triggered feelings of never being good enough, that I get from the environment and people around me, and from situations in my personal life that bring them up. I want to be free, to know I am worthy of love and life. This is the only way I will heal, as people want me to keep blaming myself and subconsciously project their own feelings of not being good enough on me, I can listen to my feelings and be happy, wether others believe it or not. Studying my trauma and validating myself is the start.
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