Shame Is Anger Turned Inward

Where shame really comes from

Shame is formed when the people around us, often our caregivers in early childhood, don't meet our needs, or even worse, betray us or override our boundaries. This happens to some extent for everyone, but for some of us it happens to a much greater extent.

Here's where it gets interesting. As children, we are fully dependent on our caregivers for our survival, so we will do anything to keep them close. In healthy child-parent relationships, a child is allowed to be angry, and the parent does not abandon them for it. But in more unhealthy relationships, anger from the child is punished and probably threatened with physical or emotional abandonment. So the child has no other option than to turn their anger inward, toward themselves, instead of acknowledging that someone else hurt them.

How internalized shame is born

When our needs aren't met, or worse things happen, the caregiver both fails to attune to us and doesn't allow us to be upset with them for it. So the child is bound to keep relating to someone who doesn't meet their needs for their own survival. Silent anger builds up and can't be expressed outward, so it ends up directed inward, because it needs to go somewhere. This is how internalized shame is born: "Something must be fundamentally wrong with me, my needs don't matter, I don't matter, I'm weak and incapable." All of these words come from shame.

How this shows up as adults

If you don't work on healing this, you'll probably keep attracting people from this shame: people who can't handle your no, who don't genuinely respect your needs and boundaries, and who are manipulative. There is still a little voice inside that says, "I'm destined to be in a relationship where I need a person who doesn't truly meet me, for my own safety." That's where betrayal trauma comes into play: the person who was meant to keep you safe was actually the person who hurt you. So love, safety, and being disrespected are no longer separate things. Being safe and loved starts to mean you're also disrespected at the same time.

What healing this looks like

I've been through this process myself, and there is a lot of grief involved. As children, we start seeing ourselves as the problem, because in this way we are still in control and can do something about it, like becoming sweeter or nicer to our parents. Acknowledging that they weren't meeting our needs was impossible, because we needed them for our safety. But that is exactly what we need to start doing as adults.

Now that we don't need our caregivers for our survival anymore, we can start grieving how lonely, unseen, and unsafe we've felt in certain moments. Part of this healing also includes allowing the anger to return to where it belongs: the outside, to the people who betrayed us. This doesn't have to involve screaming and shouting at them. We can simply do this within ourselves, through healing work.

A practical tip

"Shame cannot survive being spoken." I love this quote. Another thing I practice when I feel shame coming up is to actively speak on it. Shame wants to create more shame by turning even more inward and isolating. So when we feel shame arising and give it words, something instantly starts to transform. Just make sure you do this with people who won't judge or shame you for it, because that will probably only reinforce it.

You're allowed to grieve the childhood you didn't get, so you can build the adulthood you deserve.