Passing on the Voice of Cultural Shame

(20 slides)

creatively compiled by dr. michael farnworth

The most deadly of all sins is the mutilation of a child’s spirit. -Erik Eriksson

Jean Piaget spoke of a major characteristic of childhood being:

An unquestioned acceptance of the given.

To the young child everything is as it is wonderful, exciting, inviting as long as the environment is normal and healthy.

When shame enters the picture things change dramatically.

(The Transcendence of Biology, p.143)

Once shame is imprinted, however, there will never again be unquestioned acceptance of the given.

Instead there will be a faltering hesitancy as doubt intrudes

and clouds his knowledge of self and world.

Joseph Chilton Pearce

Passing on the shame…

• The use of shame, as a socializing technique, passes on to the child the very wounds carried by the parent.

• It’s for your own good! Is a well known rationalization for the hostile and shaming treatment of children.

• Parents who were shamed as children will shame their children as a natural effect of modeling and the next generation will follow suit.

The effects of shame…

• Shame stress is an essential affective mediator of the socialization process.

• Shame elicits a greater awareness of the body than any other emotion.

• Shaming conditions specifically induce stress reaction.

Darwin- quoted by Allan Schore, Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The

Neurobiology of Emotional Development. (P. 200)

Imprinting shame…

• Many children, having internalized the shame, become the eye of the self looking inward (self conscious).

• The shame that was once induced by the caregiver-- is then taken over by the child them self.

• • Shame becomes the imprint for the child’s construction of

their inner self and world.

• The behavior that was once uninhibited, free and richly rewarding becomes guarded, self- conscious, awkward and stilted.

Normal shame is ok and says:

“I made a mistake.”

Toxic shame feels like:

“I am the mistake.”

This shame state is characterized by elevated cortisol levels and withdrawal response.

This shame state results from abandonment, abuse or attachment disorders between the child and caregiver.

Shaming essential?

• Many of the child authorities that Allan Schore quotes in his book: Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self, assume that this kind of shame socializing be enforced to prohibit the self generated impulse of the child, thus guaranteeing a properly socialized child!

Robert Firestone has done a tremendous amount of work concerning the inner voice.

This inner voice is a hostile, judgmental, mean spirited voice that constantly harasses and belittles.

The role and nature of the voice is the transmission of the parental defenses:

the remnant of parental warnings, directives,

teachings, values and parental negative feelings and energies.

The motivation of parents…

• Many parents consciously believe the motivation of socializing their children is in their own best interests.

• Their preoccupation with discipline is to teach discipline and parents couple that with statements about the importance of obedience and doing what they are told.

What happens

• Question: What happens to parents that place obedience to cultural values and institutions above all else?

• Answer: An inappropriate emphasis and preoccupation with power and control over their children which often takes the form of parental shaming.

• Or as one woman points out: I open my mouth and my mother comes out.

Many parents are logically committed to their children but are seduced by the culture and end up forcing its stilted

values in the lives of their own beloved children.

This cultural promotion is often abusive and inappropriate.

Take a moment and think about the critical voice of self in your own life.

What do you say to your self when you make a mistake or when you say something that you think is stupid?

How hostile is the voice?

How conscious are you of it?

• Many of us have little conscious awareness of how we treat ourselves

• The thoughts/voice we have towards ourselves may have been with us so long that we think nothing of them.

• I am convinced that if we treated other people as we do ourselves we wouldn’t have any friends.

• Maybe that explains our self-contempt.

Treatment of the self...

Objectification of the self

• Most of us have a tendency to objectify ourselves and treat ourselves in many of the same ways we were treated as children.

• This objectification allows us to be mean spirited with ourselves and think nothing strange about it.

• But where did such contempt originate?

Energy and word bonding…

• The higher and more intense the parental energy the greater the bonding power of it and the words used at the peak of the energy flow will be internalized.

• That explains why so many of us are shocked by our using the same exact phrases with our children our parents used with us even though we swore we would never say such stupid things.

“You can drive the devil outof your own garden, butyou will find him again inthe garden of your child.”

Heinrich Pestalozzi

As a parent it is vital to awaken to our own shame history and try not to repeat that history with our own children.

It is not an easy thing to do.

the end