- Hey, everybody, Dr. Alexa Altman is back,
per your request.
And today we're gonna talk about healthy shame
versus toxic shame.
So for those of you who don't know who Dr. Alexa Altman
is, do you want to tell them a little bit about
what you do?
- Yes, so I'm a clinical psychologist, and I specialize
in the alchemy of resilience and authenticity,
which is another way to say, specialize in trauma.
- And she is wonderful at what she does.
I will link all of her website and her Instagram below
so you can check that out.
But like I said, today we're gonna talk about
healthy shame versus toxic shame.
And you said first, people confuse shame and guilt.
- Right, because we don't really distinguish often
when we talk about oh, I feel guilty, I feel ashamed
of something, right?
- Yeah.
Yeah, you'd think they'd be the same thing, I guess.
- And it can kinda feel the same.
But there's a clear difference.
So shame, essentially, is I feel bad, I feel
wholeheartedly disconnected from like the human race.
I feel a sense of aloneness and badness.
And guilt is I did something bad, it's really more
of a focus on behavior.
- Oh, interesting, okay.
So shame is like internal, pretty much.
And then guilt would be like an external.
- External, like, my friend hurt my feelings,
or I did something wrong and I feel like
guilt is I want to act in a way that's aligned
with my values, so I might go and apologize
and say I really screwed up, I'm so sorry.
Guilt, right?
- No, that makes sense and I think I do use them
the same.
Like, I thought they were the same.
When we talked about this earlier, I was like,
what is the difference?
But I wanted to wait to learn along with you.
Okay, so now that we know the difference between
shame and guilt, let's start with the toxic shame.
Let's just go into, right into the icky stuff.
- Right into the toxic stuff.
Yeah, because most people when they talk about shame,
toxic shame is essentially created from ongoing experience
of rejection, humiliation, neglect, abuse.
Often we think of abuse or trauma.
- I was gonna say, childhood trauma.
Like those people with complex PTSD would definitely
come out of situations that could be very shameful.
- Exactly, it's almost like we can use trauma
and shame interchangeably.
It always exists when there's trauma.
- Interesting.
And that makes sense, right, if it's internal.
If the external messages that we're receiving
from others that we're not important or that
how we feel isn't a real thing, no one pays attention.
Or our thoughts and beliefs and what we think's
okay for us, they're not respected.
Then we internalize that as like I'm bad,
this is bad, I've done something wrong.
Everything about me's wrong.
- Right, and I think the thing about toxic shame is
there's never repair.
So like, let's say you have a big event where maybe
your parent was really frustrated at you and yelled at you
"Go to your room right now!"
And the toxic shame experience,
there's never a conversation after that, right?
So the person just leaves the experience feeling like
I'm bad, I have that pit in my stomach.
And we'll talk about the physiology of shame, too.
And I just kind of walk around and go back into my life
and nobody ever talks about it.
It never gets addressed, and there's never
a new narrative that's created, right?
- And that's what makes it toxic?
- That's what makes it toxic, yeah.
And so I think the other thing we could say
that is often seen in toxic shame is there's
an identity formed around that feeling,
so it's like we could say shame-based personality,
where I feel like I'm this unworthy, unlovable self.
- Yeah, and I can see how that could affect
so many other things in our life because we all
act out of what we believe, our own confidence.
You guys know, I always talk about positive self talk
and the importance of how we feel about ourselves
and how we act out of that and make decisions
based on that.
I could see how this could perpetuate toxic behavior.
- Toxic relationships. - Toxic relationships.
Right, right, like we're seeking out oftentimes,
not consciously, people who reflect our shame.
- Wow.
- Not really people who are gonna help us repair it.
- Okay, gotcha.
Yeah, we're almost looking for people to affirm
what we already know.
- Yeah.
Because unfortunately that is, we all, we've talked
about this before, how our brain will do the same
thing expecting a different result because it's
trying to like work through it.
- Right.
Freud calls that repetition compulsion.
We repeat to complete, but we're kind of completing up,
we're barking up the wrong tree.
- Yeah, and we already know where that road leads us.
We're hoping for something different.
- Right.
- So how does this then tie, how do we differentiate
toxic shame from healthy shame?
- So I always think of this story about healthy shame,
when I think of my first child.
He was a runner as a toddler.
He ran all around, and one time he, I want to say
one time (laughing), it happened a lot.
He'd run towards the street.
And I'd go "Rider! Stop!"
and being yelled at, his body froze.
Appropriately so.
And he had his head down,
and kind of went into that traditional
shame posture.
I call it the shame hole.
- It's like, yeah.
- Averted gaze, hunched shoulders.
- The opposite of empowered, confident.
- But it stopped him in his tracks.
And so when I think about healthy shame,
it is one way that we navigate our social world.
Without shame, it creates boundaries.
As parents, we have to say no, we have to set a boundary.
- It's like in a way the healthy shame is like
you acting this way isn't okay.
Because that's hurtful or that's dangerous.
But then you acting this way is okay.
In a way it's like we need a healthy level,
just like everything.
It's not all or nothing.
We're not black and white thinking here.
It's like there's a healthy percentage of all things
in our life.
And I think it's also this communication that as human
beings, we're limited.
We're not that powerful.
I mean, we can be powerful, but there's a limit
to the power.
- And a limit to what's acceptable societally
that we can actually do and follow through on.
Like we have limits to us as a whole.
Just healthy wise, right?
- Right, so the story of my child and the street,
I think an example, not that this happens every time,
but in the extreme example is stopping him
when he stops, and walking up to him and saying,
"Here, I want to tell you what just happened,"
and create a new narrative.
"I yelled, not because I was mad at you,
"but because you could have gotten hit by
"the car, and so my voice got really loud
"and then it stopped your body, and that must have
"felt really bad.
"How did it feel to you to have me yell at you?"
And then there's what we call a shame repair,
and then he has a different story created internally
over why I feel the way that I do.
I'm not bad.
Actually something just happened that led to that
feeling, right?
- Interesting, and I do know, I learned...
I did some research for my night terror video
that I put out a long time ago, where we learned
that children learn through storytelling,
and that's how they process through their days.
Like if you ever remember if anybody's ever been
around a toddler or a child maybe first learning
to speak, they tell these long stories that
maybe don't even make sense, but they're like
"And then I went to the...and the dog was so cute,"
and it's jumbled, but it's their way of processing
through their day, and so it's really interesting
if you tell them a new narrative, it helps explain
and help them almost accept what they felt
and what they went through, and then move forward.
- Exactly.
And when we talk about shame resilience, building
a narrative is key to help make sense and process.
So kids need narrative, but adults need it, too.
- Yeah, we do, too.
- We need it, too.
Evolutionary psychologists think about it as
we're tribal in nature, we have a need to belong
and fit in, and be connected, and that shame was
thought of as an emotion that was healthy,
that allowed us to stay within the social norms,
the social group.
That if you acted outside of that boundary,
shame represented like you've done something wrong,
come back in.
It's like a learning tool.
- Yeah, that totally makes sense.
Just to kind of wrap this up, 'cause we understand now
the difference between shame and guilt,
toxic and healthy shame.
If someone is struggling with toxic shame--I know we're
gonna talk about it in our next video,
make sure you're subscribed and you have your
notifications turned on--but what's something that
they can do today to kind of start maybe untangling that
toxic shame or just helping them better understand it?
- Yeah, I think it's a journey to understand shame
and detangle and deconstruct it, but just to begin
journaling around the story of unworthiness
and what that could look like.
I'm unworthy, I'm unlovable, it can look like
all the ways that it presents itself in your life.
- Yeah, so maybe a journal prompt would be
when are times that I feel unlovable?
When do I remember that starting?
Or are there times when I felt like I'm not
worthy of someone's attention, love?
It could be the promotion, it could be anything.
And then maybe just writing about that
and why it started.
- Why it started, when it started, maybe who
it was initiated with?
Oftentimes it's early relationships that we
talked about.
And the different between somebody who has
healthy shame and toxic shame is really belief.
One person believes that they're worthy,
and toxic shame, the other person believes
that they're not.
- Interesting.
Thank you so much for sharing your expertise.
I hope you found that helpful.
I think it's really interesting for us to
kind of define the differences between things
because we use them interchangeably without
realizing it.
So thank you so very much.
And we're doing another video about shame resilience,
so make sure you're subscribed and check it out,
because we'll take this conversation even further.
Thanks again, Alexa.
- So good to be here.
- And we will see you next time.