PDF Summary:Healing the Shame that Binds You, by John Bradshaw

Issues like addiction, perfectionism, and persistent negative emotions often seem impossible to resolve. According to psychologist John Bradshaw, this is because they’re symptoms of a deeper and more severe problem—toxic shame. In Healing the Shame That Binds You, Bradshaw explains that shame—a natural and healthy human emotion—can be turned into something sinister when we internalize it. It eats at us from within, controlling our thoughts, behaviors, and emotions until it eventually destroys our lives. According to Bradshaw, the only way to overcome toxic shame and the issues it causes is to understand how it works and consciously commit to the healing process.

In Part 1 of this guide, we’ll explain how toxic shame develops and manifests in your life. Then in Part 2, we’ll walk through the processes of confronting and externalizing your shame so you can reach happiness and fulfillment in life. In our commentary, we’ll supplement Bradshaw’s discussion with contemporary perspectives on shame and complex trauma from psychologists and experts like Brené Brown (Daring Greatly).

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(Shortform note: In Daring Greatly, Brown reiterates that shame causes us to disconnect from our true selves and adopt a false identity we show to the world. She adds that this is perilous because it prevents us from being vulnerable—exposing our true selves to people. Being vulnerable is crucial to living a fulfilling life—what she calls living “wholeheartedly”—because it allows us to build genuine connections with others. These genuine connections cultivate the feelings of love and belonging that are necessary to feel worthy—the opposite of feeling shame.)

There are three “selves” that people with toxic shame build. First is the cultural self—our role in society. According to Bradshaw, this self is dictated by our “sex roles.” We strive to be the perfect embodiment of society's concept of a man or woman.

(Shortform note: Since the publication of Bradshaw’s book, we’ve gained a better understanding of the difference between sex and gender. While sex refers to our sexual anatomy, gender refers to the social roles of our gender identity—whether that be male, female, or nonbinary. As such, “gender roles” would be a more accurate term than “sex roles,” since Bradshaw uses the term in the context of social roles and identity.)

Second is our self trajectory—the life path we plan out for ourselves. According to Bradshaw, this includes our career aspirations, values, and self-image. Since toxically shamed people are unable to connect to their authentic needs and desires, they must shape their goals and values based on external influences like parents, friends, or media.

(Shortform note: While adopting goals, values, beliefs, and other factors from external sources may play a more extreme role in identity formation for toxically shamed people, psychologists explain that it’s normal to a certain extent. The phenomenon is called social influence, and while it can be negative, it’s a common part of identity formation that occurs in our youth.)

Third is our relational self—the role we fill in our romantic and familial relationships. The role toxically shamed people play in adult relationships is usually the role they were taught to play as children due to their abandonment (which we discussed in the previous section).

For example, a child who was abused and played the ghost role in their family will likely play a passive or submissive role in their adult relationships, failing to express their thoughts and feelings. They may also end up seeking a partner who abuses them in the same way they were abused as a child because that’s how they were taught to receive attention.

Opposite Relational Roles Attract

As we discussed in previous commentary, childhood trauma often leads people to develop one of three problematic attachment styles. Psychologists add that not only do our childhood experiences shape our adult attachment style and relational role, but that people with opposite attachment styles often attract each other and potentially further traumatize each other.

For example, an abused child who played a ghost role is more likely to develop an avoidant attachment style and end up in a relationship with an anxiously attached person. This may occur because each person is trying to fulfill unmet needs from childhood. For the anxious person, the relationship offers another chance to earn hard-to-get affection that they failed to win in childhood. On the other hand, the avoidant person’s need for independence is validated by the anxious person’s overwhelming need for intimacy and reassurance—their need for distance seems warranted due to the anxious person’s clingy behavior. This often leads to further relationship trauma, especially for the anxious person, whose abandonment wounds are likely to be triggered by the avoidant person’s distant behavior.

Manifestation 3: Shamelessness

Third, internalized shame causes us to develop behaviors that make us feel shameless. These behaviors are strategies that allow us to either a) feel we’re “correcting” our sources of shame, or b) rid ourselves of the shame by "transferring" it to other people. There are many types of shamelessness.

(Shortform note: Bradshaw’s definition of shameless behavior differs from how society commonly defines shamelessness. Shamelessness typically describes the act of brazenly engaging in unacceptable behavior without concern for the consequences or your public image—in other words, doing something bad and feeling no guilt for it.)

Bradshaw writes that many shameless behaviors stem from the effort to be impenetrable—a form of “correcting” our shame. Perfectionism is one example of this—if we’re perfect, we don’t have to worry about not being enough, and we can avoid shame. Another example is striving for power—if we’re more powerful than others, they can’t shame us. These behaviors often lead to the tendency to brag or remind others of our superiority—this ensures that everyone sees us as impenetrable and is distracted from anything that might be shameful about us.

Shamelessness as an attempt to correct shame may also manifest as being obsessively “moral” and “good.” For example, you might compulsively put others before yourself to cancel out shameful feelings of selfishness, or you might try to gain moral superiority over others.

(Shortform note: In Complex PTSD, Walker explains that these two forms of shame, what he calls perfectionism and virulent shame, are trauma responses to the abuse (or abandonment) people endured. However, Walker notes that these behaviors aren’t just responses to childhood trauma but to recurring trauma in general. Further, these two responses are likely to result from experiences of victim-blaming—when the abuser makes the victim believe they’re being rightfully punished rather than wrongfully abused.)

Finally, shamelessness as an attempt to transfer shame to others often comes in the form of anger, blame, and acting out toward others. For instance, if we’re having shameful thoughts or feelings, we may offload them by accusing others of having those thoughts and feelings even if they don’t. For example, if we’re annoyed at someone, we might convince ourselves that they’re annoyed at us. Another form of shamelessness is outwardly accusing or getting angry at others for exhibiting thoughts, feelings, or behaviors we’re ashamed of.

(Shortform note: While Bradshaw positions this form of shamelessness as one of the many products of shame, Brené Brown puts a much heavier emphasis on it. In I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn’t), Brown explains that this phenomenon—anger and blame—is one of the big three effects of shame that makes it toxic. She explains that anger and blame not only make us miserable but perpetuate our shame by disabling our ability to connect with others. According to Brown, connection is one of the big three elements of both living a fulfilled life and healing shame.)

Part 2: Overcoming Toxic Shame

Bradshaw explains that since toxic shame subconsciously controls us and manifests itself covertly, the key to overcoming it is being consciously aware of it, expressing it openly, and gaining connection with and autonomy over our true self. When you acknowledge and express your toxic shame, you dismantle its hiding place inside you, forcing it to evacuate. Once shame is externalized rather than internalized, it loses its power over you and you’re able to make changes that will allow you to live a happy and fulfilling life.

Combating Shame

In I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn’t), Brown argues that practicing empathy toward ourselves and others is the key to overcoming shame. Empathy has three components: 1) having the courage to be vulnerable, 2) having compassion for yourself and others, and 3) forming genuine connections with others.

Brown’s methods of developing these three components align with Bradshaw’s methods of combating shame: Become aware of your shame, express it openly, and reconnect with yourself and others. However, she adds another crucial factor for overcoming shame: developing a critical awareness of it.

Having a critical awareness of your shame means understanding why the sources of your shame are deemed shameful in society, how they impact society, who’s impacted most, and who benefits. This will teach you that most sources of shame are unfairly demonized and stem from unrealistic expectations that harm one group to benefit another. For example, shame over skin imperfections largely exists due to images of models with unrealistically perfect skin being praised in the media. This makes people want perfect skin and seek out cosmetics to achieve these results. This harms normal people with normal skin and benefits companies selling cosmetics.

In the following sections, we’ll discuss Bradshaw’s three phases of healing toxic shame and achieving fulfillment in life.

Phase 1: Externalizing Shame

According to Bradshaw, the first phase of healing shame is confronting it and sharing it with others. When we do so, we overcome the two biggest factors that allow shame to control us—the urge to hide it and the belief that it makes us inherently flawed.

Bradshaw explains that the first step of this phase is expressing your shame in your closest intimate relationships—sharing your shame with your partner, friends, and family members who love you unconditionally. This step is essential because your toxic shame was formed by your closest intimate relationships (with your caregivers), and therefore it must be healed by relationships of the same intimacy level. This will teach you that you are a worthy, lovable person regardless of your shame—there’s no need to hide it anymore.

The second step of this phase is forming a connection with a higher power—this can be God, the universe, or any force you believe in. Bradshaw says that forming a loving relationship with your higher power teaches you that only God is perfect—as a human, you make mistakes that are natural and forgivable by God. This shows you that mistakes don’t make you bad, they make you human.

(Shortform note: In Seeking Wisdom, Julia Cameron explains that the first step in forming a supportive relationship with a higher power is forming your own unique “God concept.” This is crucial because many people’s concept of God is one that was imposed upon them and is stifling rather than supportive. To form your God concept, consider all the attributes you think a loving, supporting, all-powerful being would have—what do they look like, act like, and talk like? What kinds of things would they enjoy doing and what characteristics would they have?)

The third step of this phase is connecting with a non-shaming support group of people who have experienced toxic shame. Bradshaw explains that for many people, joining Alcoholics Anonymous’s 12-step program is highly effective. The program heals addiction, and since toxic shame is the root of addiction, says Bradshaw, the steps heal toxic shame as well.

Actionables for Identifying and Talking About Shame

In I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn’t), Brown reiterates the importance of acknowledging your shame and sharing it with others and provides some additional advice to help demystify the process.

For example, before you can talk about your shame, you need to clearly identify it. One way Brown recommends doing so is by making a list of identities you value and identities you find shameful—for example, you value being seen as powerful and feel afraid of being seen as weak. This indicates that you need to focus on overcoming shame surrounding things that make you feel weak—for example, asking for help or being wrong.

Further, Brown reiterates the importance of sharing shame in both intimate relationships and public settings; however, she adds that before you can do so, you need to learn how to effectively talk about shame and how to properly connect with others.

To effectively talk about shame, explain 1) the identity that causes you shame, 2) how it makes you feel, 3) why it makes you feel that way, and 4) what kind of support you need. For example, “I feel ashamed of things like asking for help because it makes me feel weak. This happens because I was always belittled as a child when I needed attention or assistance from my parents. It would be really helpful to me if you could be there to listen and support me in areas that I struggle in.”

To effectively connect with others, Brown says you need to be willing to do more than talk about your shame—you need to be willing to listen to others talk about their experiences and pain as well. This can be uncomfortable and many people avoid it, but avoidance prevents you from forming a genuine connection. You should also be willing to speak up when you see someone being unfairly shamed.

Those based in the US can put these tactics into practice by finding a nearby AA meeting or contacting a local Mental Health America affiliate to find a support group, as Bradshaw recommends.

Phase 2: Healing Your Wounds

Bradshaw explains that the second phase of overcoming toxic shame is to heal the wounds of your past that caused your toxic shame to form. There are three steps to doing so.

Step 1: Identify and Grieve Your Childhood Trauma

The first step in healing your wounds is to identify and grieve the childhood trauma that formed your toxic shame and gave rise to your shame-based behaviors—your shame barriers, false selves, and shamelessness tactics. Revisiting these traumas and feeling the pain they caused allows you to mentally process them and release their grief—they will continue to produce toxic shame as long as your grief remains internalized and unprocessed.

Bradshaw says the following factors must be present to process your grief: 1) validation that the trauma was real, 2) support, 3) emotional expression of trauma-related feelings like anger or loneliness, and 4) corrective experiences that fulfill the childhood needs which your trauma denied you. We’ll discuss how to do that in the next step.

The Role and Process of Grief in Healing Trauma

In Complex PTSD, Walker reiterates the importance of grieving your trauma to process it. He adds that doing so not only helps you overcome your trauma, but is crucial to overcome the learned behavior of suppressing your emotions—one of the detachment shame-barriers that Bradshaw mentions.

Further, while Bradshaw discusses four elements that are necessary to process grief, they don’t encompass the full extent of the grieving process. Walker outlines the four main phases of grief involved.

• First, Walker says you must feel sorrow—the original sadness and anger of the experience—and express it by crying. This is likely the first part of validating your experience because you’re seeing the real effects of it.

• Second, you must express anger over your abuse and what you’ve lost. This step is also important for the validation process—you’re coming to terms with the fact that your abuser was wrong, not you.

• Third, you must verbalize what you’re feeling currently without censoring yourself. This is likely where support from others is crucial—you’ll need someone understanding and caring to talk to.

• Finally, you must experience the full range of emotions the trauma caused without needing to cry, rage, or verbalize them. This signifies you’ve healed—you can acknowledge your emotions without them controlling you.

Walker doesn’t discuss Bradshaw’s fourth element, corrective experiences. We’ll comment on corrective experiences more in the following section.

Step 2: Discover and Support Your Inner Child

Step two in healing your wounds is to identify your unfulfilled childhood needs and determine how to fulfill them as an adult. This often requires you to build relationships with people who can help you fulfill these needs. For example, if you had a caregiver who never showed interest in you, you would benefit from having a relationship with someone who asks you about yourself and your interests and shows their interest in hearing your answers. These practices can also happen in support groups.

(Shortform note: Researchers explain that the process of identifying your childhood wounds is commonly referred to as inner child work, and the process of repairing these wounds is called reparenting. However, unlike Bradshaw, they emphasize that reparenting can only be done to yourself—as hard as it may be to accept, only you can provide yourself with the things you lacked in childhood. Skills for self-love and self-reliance should initially be taught by a therapist, but then clients must learn to continue these practices on their own—not by leaning on others to provide love and acceptance for them.)

According to Bradshaw, one of the best ways to support your inner child is to rewrite shameful childhood experiences using Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). NLP is a system of tools that help you understand how your brain works so you can rewrite past memories (like trauma) in order to alter your brain function and affect positive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in the present. Essentially, Bradshaw’s use of this practice is to change how you perceive past traumas so they don’t produce shame and cause you to engage in shame-based behaviors.

(Shortform note: NLP was created in the 1970s by John Grinder and Richard Bandler. It’s based on a few different psychological theories, one of which is cybernetics. In a psychological context, cybernetics theorizes that our experiences and behaviors are feedback loops that cause us to perceive and react to future experiences in ways that produce the same outcomes as the first experience. Another theory that inspired NLP is constructivism—the idea that rather than there being an objective reality, reality is constructed by individuals based on their experiences. To learn more about NLP and acquire training, you can visit The Association for NLP’s website.)

Step 3: Nurture Your Self and Lose Your Shame

The final step to healing your wounds is reintegrating the shame-based parts of your identity that you’ve hidden and overcoming your shame-based behaviors.

Bradshaw says that to do so, you must first identify the internalized parts of your personality that you feel shame over—the parts that cause your shame-based behaviors—and learn to accept these selves. First, embracing these selves lessens their ability to control you because their control comes from your desire to hide them. Second, familiarizing yourself with these hidden selves allows you to recognize when they’re being triggered so you can gain control over yourself and your behavior before they do.

(Shortform note: In Rising Strong, Brené Brown reiterates the necessity of identifying your harmful thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to overcome them. However, she argues that before you can start this process, you first need to recognize when you're having a shame-based reaction so you can gain control of yourself—when you're in the midst of heightened emotions, it’s nearly impossible to think rationally about their cause. Once you do this, then you can start the rationalization process by identifying flaws in your thinking. After you’ve rationalized your thoughts, then you can identify where they came from (your sources of shame) and how to overcome them.)

Next, you must help these shamed hidden selves become rational by de-escalating the shame-based thoughts, feelings, and behaviors they spark when triggered. One way to do this is to say the thoughts or urges of the hidden self out loud—saying a thought out loud often releases it from your mind. You can also replace these shame-based thoughts with positive ones using affirmations. For example, if your body-conscious hidden part is telling you not to eat, you can use an affirmation like “my body is strong and food is fuel.”

(Shortform note: In Rising Strong, Brown also recommends rationalizing your harmful thoughts and feelings by expressing them and provides a specific exercise for doing so. First, she says, record the initial story you told yourself, regardless of how extreme it sounds—for example, “I can’t eat in public because everyone will watch me and make fun of my weight.” Record all the details you can think of—make it like a story. Then, consider how your thinking might be flawed—which parts of the story are facts and which are assumptions. How might these assumptions have led to an inaccurate story? Is there additional information you need to seek out to gain a more informed perspective?)

Finally, love yourself, including your flaws, and forgive yourself for your mistakes. One way Bradshaw says to practice self-love is to tap into the love you feel for someone else, then direct that love toward yourself and hold it there for a few minutes of concentrated focus. A method you can use for self-forgiveness is to think of your mistakes as lessons for the future rather than calamities—consider what you can learn, what you can do differently, and so on.

(Shortform note: A practice called mirror work shows that practicing self-love while looking into a mirror may help you achieve better results. You can start by looking into a mirror for five minutes, three times a week. During this time, you can practice Bradshaw’s self-love techniques, or as researchers suggest, play relaxing music and repeat affirmations like “I love myself,” “I forgive myself,” and “I’m capable of learning from my mistakes.” Once you get comfortable, you can enhance the exercise by doing it for 10 minutes, five days a week.)

Phase 3: Achieve Fulfillment

According to Bradshaw, the final part of healing from toxic shame is connecting with your authentic self and higher purpose in life—what he refers to as having a spiritual awakening. Connecting with your authentic self facilitates a spiritual awakening because it allows you to receive guidance toward your destiny from a higher power. Bradshaw says that this happens because your authentic self is directly created by the higher power—when you’re in touch with yourself, you’re in touch with your higher power by default.

Undergoing your spiritual awakening leads to a life of fulfillment and happiness because it ultimately allows you to go with the flow, without resistance or the need for control, and love yourself unconditionally. It also enhances your connection to the external world—you’ll be more fit to help others and able to form healthy and mutually nourishing relationships. Further, your lack of resistance will enable you to embrace the beauty of the world without negative feelings—this allows you to be more in tune with opportunities and signs from the universe (or higher power) that are meant for you.

Ultimately, the combination of these factors brings you happiness and guides you toward your higher purpose in life, which brings fulfillment. Living in this way is akin to swimming with the current rather than against it, nourishing your soul in the process.

Factors Required for Post-Traumatic Growth

The spiritual awakening process that occurs after healing toxic shame (and reckoning with complex childhood trauma) is very similar to what researchers refer to as post-traumatic growth (PTG). While PTG typically refers to the growth period after a traumatic event, research suggests that people with complex trauma (toxically shamed people) can also experience PTG.

While Bradshaw attributes his concept of this growth phase to divine guidance, the symptoms of his “spiritual awakening” align with the five effects found when people experience PTG: appreciation for life, relationships with others, personal strength (resilience and self-understanding), new possibilities in life (being able to see positive potential futures and a higher purpose for yourself), and spiritual change (belief in a higher power and less resistance in life).

Connect to Your Authentic Self

To achieve spiritual awakening, you must first connect to your authentic self; however, Bradshaw explains that our “self” isn’t just one thing. There are many different and sometimes opposing parts of us making this feat difficult to achieve. Truly connecting to your self requires you to acknowledge and embrace all of your parts—even the ones you dislike.

To do so, Bradshaw recommends exploring a mental exercise where you create an imaginary room tailored to your specific taste—decorations, music, and so on. In this room, you also include all your favorite versions of yourself—for example, the version that wants to be an astronaut, the version who loves to cook, and the version who’s a mother. Finally, envision the disliked versions of yourself and imagine they’re requesting access to the room—forgive them and let them inside. This room is a sanctuary for all parts of yourself to exist and be loved.

(Shortform note: Eckhart Tolle’s concept of the true self, and his ideas about how to connect to it, seem to contradict Bradshaw’s. In The Power of Now, Tolle explains that our true self, or being, is our pure life force. Our thoughts, beliefs, and experiences—hobbies, likes, dislikes, and so on—are not who we are. Nor are any physical artifacts we possess, like clothes or homes. These are all simply elements of our ego, and according to Tolle, when we identify with these things, we actually prevent ourselves from achieving true happiness. To truly connect to yourself and attain happiness, Tolle says you must detach from your ego—thoughts, desires, and material elements—and focus your attention on the present moment.)

Bradshaw also recommends connecting to your purpose by reflecting on the following factors: the people that bring out your best self and make you happiest, the activities that energize you, your life dreams, the passions you feel in your heart, and the places where you feel like you belong most.

(Shortform note: In Designing Your Life, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans also recommend reflecting on the things that make you feel good to find your purpose in life. They note that one of the best ways to do this is by journaling about how you felt during different experiences throughout your day. In particular, note instances when you felt joyful, engaged, energized, bored, and drained. Not only will this help you identify what makes you feel good so you can spend more time on it, it’ll also help you notice what makes you feel bad so you can avoid those things in the future.)