Shame is both healthy and toxic. In our SAFE pages we are addressing the ravaging effect of toxic shame on the human heart, but it is good to understand the difference. In his book, Healing the Shame that Binds You, John Bradshaw's description of the difference between Healthy Shame and Toxic Shame is helpful.
Healthy Shame
“Healthy shame keeps us grounded.It is a yellow light warning us that we are essentially limited.It tells us that to be human is to be limited. The unlimited power that many modern gurus offer is false hope.Their programs calling us to unlimited power have made them rich, not us.They touch our false selves and tap our toxic shame.We humans are finite.Limitation is our essential nature.Grave problems result from refusing to accept our limits.
Healthy shame is the basic metaphysical boundary for human beings...[it]signals us about our boundaries...our basic need [for] structure.We insure structure by developing a boundary system....Structure gives our lives form.Boundaries and form offer us safety and allow a more efficient use of energy.
Healthy shame is a part of every human’s personal power.It allows us to know our limits, and thus to use our energy more effectively.We have better direction when we know our limits.We do not waste ourselves on goals we cannot reach or on things we cannot change.Healthy shame allows our energy to be integrated rather than diffused." Toxic Shame
"Toxic shame is experienced as the all-pervasive sense that I am flawed and defective as a human being.Toxic shame is no longer an emotion that signals our limits, it is a state of being, a core identity.Toxic shame gives you a sense of worthlessness, a sense of failing and falling short as a human being.Toxic shame is a rupture of the self with the self.It is like internal bleeding.A shame-based person will guard against exposing his inner self to others, but more significantly, he will guard against exposing himself to himself. Toxic shame is so excruciating because it is the painful exposure of the believed failure of self to the self.In toxic shame the self becomes an object of it own contempt, an object that can’t be trusted.As an object that can’t be trusted, one experiences oneself as untrustworthy.Toxic shame is experienced as an inner torment.... There is shame about shame. People will readily admit guilt, hurt or fear before they will admit shame.Toxic shame is the feeling of being isolated and alone in a complete sense.A shame-based person is haunted by a sense of absence and emptiness.” ______________________________________
Core-Fill
When toxic shame invades a breeched core it blights the surviving remnants of value and dignity, identity and belonging and emotional intimacy, leaving a searing sense of being contaminated at the depth of a person's being. It is usually attended with the message that if people really knew me they wouldn't like me.
Landfills are the public depository for the trash and garbage and unusable items discarded by the community. Toxic shame is the inevitable refuse of both abandonment and sexual abuse. Like the stomach, the core feeds whatever it contains into the entire emotional and spiritual system of the person. If the core is essentially healthy, it provides a stable, nourishing underpinning for the whole person. If the core is shamed, the entire person is affected by it. “It’s like I can’t separatefrom the shame,” a client said.“It’s as though the shame is in my muscle and fiber.It’s so in me that it can’t be separated it from me.”Thus, the shamed person sees themselves, not as having a problem so much as being the problem.Often they will feel that if they weren’t here, everything would be all right....Since “they” are the problem, suicide will fix the problem.Shame flavors everything that happens.It colors all situations and events and directly affects how one sees those things.
--Core Counterfeits-- Much as a fossil is formed when the original fish or insect is gradually replaced by minerals in the soil surrounding it, producing a calcified replica, the toxin in the soil surrounding the core ingredients now seeps into them, creating contaminated counterfeits: Enmeshment replaces intimacy. Identity is replaced by codependency. Belonging is replaced by possessiveness and control. Performance replaces value and worth, and appearance and approval counterfeit for dignity.