How Shame Devalues the Self and Reviving the True Self

One of the commonalities in nearly all of the people I see as a therapist is the shame they feel about who they are as human beings. And to clarify, shame is the sense that "I am wrong, defective, worthless." Shame is often confused with guilt, which is the sense that "I did something wrong." There is a huge difference - shame is about who we are, guilt is about what we did. And to confused things, we can sometimes become shame-filled about things we have done or not done if those actions are seen as a reflection of who we are as people.

Margarita Tartakovsky, over Psych Central's World of Psychology blog, offers some insights on shame from Darlene Lancer's book, Conquering Shame and Codependency: 8 Steps to Freeing the True You.

One of the cool distinctions is the four selves:

• Ideal self: “who we believe we should be”
• Persona: “what we show to others”
• Critic: “our inner shaming voice”
• Devalued self: “the result of the critic’s shaming”

This is the material, the selves, I often end up working with in clients. I don't if the book is good, but the suggestions in this article for working with these selves on your own are good.

Overcoming Shame to Connect with Your True Self 

By Margarita Tartakovsky, M.S.
Associate Editor

Each of us experiences shame.

“[I]t is part of our human condition,” writes author and therapist Darlene Lancer, LMFT, in Conquering Shame and Codependency: 8 Steps to Freeing the True You.

Without good coping skills, we may feel like failures when we don’t meet our own or others’ expectations, she writes. In fact, shame can even prevent us from being our true selves. Shame often starts in childhood. It can even get passed down from generation to generation. 

Shame thrives in families where kids must keep secrets about such as issues as addiction, infidelity or poverty, to keep up appearances.

Teachers might shame kids for their academic performance. Parents might shame kids for expressing feelings such as anger or sadness.

Shame can camouflage our true self, because it can lead us to manufacture false selves, according to Lancer. These are the:

• Ideal self: “who we believe we should be”
• Persona: “what we show to others”
• Critic: “our inner shaming voice”
• Devalued self: “the result of the critic’s shaming”

For instance, if your parents or caregivers rejected or denied certain parts of your real self, you might’ve experienced shame and created an ideal self. If sadness wasn’t accepted in your family, then you might imagine being the “family hero,” a “tough kid” or a “good girl,” Lancer writes.

This ideal self provides an imagined sense of acceptance and worth. But it also alienates the real self, because, after all, it’s a false self. People may pick professions, partners and lifestyles to garner others’ approval.

Before she was a therapist, Lancer pursued a law career. “I unconsciously thought that being a lawyer would gain my parents’ respect, since they didn’t support my original career goals — one of which was to become a therapist.”

We also bend for our inner critic. We suppress our real feelings and anything else that doesn’t conform to the ideal. So we force ourselves to think different thoughts, to feel different feelings and do different things. When we inevitably don’t measure up to our ideal image, we’re stricken with shame. But as Lancer writes, “In actuality we’re expecting the impossible — to become someone other than ourselves.”

In Conquering Shame and Codependency, Lancer includes valuable and practical strategies for overcoming shame and becoming our authentic selves. She notes that “getting to know our real self is a process of uncovering and discovering.” These tips from her book can help with this process:

Check in with yourself on a daily basis.

Ask yourself what you’re feeling and what you want today. Ask yourself what you’d like for the future. Consider what your body, mind, heart and soul need. Then figure out the steps you can take to respond to these needs.

Write about your interactions.

You also can review your interactions every day. Lancer includes these additional questions to explore: “Did you ever avoid saying what you were really thinking or feeling? What kept you from doing so? Did you make decisions based on your values?”

Write about your feelings.

Be honest about what you’re feeling, and know that you can express yourself fully on the page. If you were shamed for having certain feelings — such as anger or sadness — know that any feeling you’re experiencing is valid.

Explore your values.

“Knowing our values helps us make decisions that are right for us,” writes Lancer. Look within and write down what’s important to you – not your parents, partner or anyone else.

Share your real self.

According to Lancer, being vulnerable with others creates connection, builds trust in them and ourselves and strengthens our true selves.

Share your feelings and needs with people who make you feel safe and won’t judge you. For instance, Lancer suggests attending a 12-step meeting, such as Al-Anon or Codependents Anonymous, or working with a therapist.

She also suggests starting to express your vulnerability by sharing a mistake you made with someone you trust.

Shame can stifle our true selves. By seeking supportive resources and delving into your feelings, thoughts and values, you can get to know yourself better, overcome your shame and embrace the real you.


~ Margarita Tartakovsky, M.S. is an Associate Editor at Psych Central and blogs regularly about eating and self-image issues on her own blog, Weightless.

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Feeling Self-Critical? Try Mindfulness (Emily Nauman at Greater Good)

This is a brief but useful article from the Greater Good Science Center (UC Berkeley) on using mindfulness to deal with inner critic, although they frame it more in terms of self-esteem.

I would suggest using mindfulness directly in the inner critic by learning to identify its voice, its criticisms, and then be curious about the reasons the critic might be acting this way. What does it want? What are its needs? How is it trying to serve you?

And that last question is crucial - when we begin to understand that all of our "parts," including (and maybe especially) the inner critic, came into existence to help us in some way, then our relationship with them can shift from adversarial to cooperative.

Feeling Self-Critical? Try Mindfulness

New research shows that mindfulness may help us to stop comparing ourselves to other people

By Emily Nauman | March 9, 2014


Our Mindful Mondays series provides ongoing coverage of the exploding field of mindfulness research. Dan Archer
Many of us feel great about ourselves when we focus on how much success we’ve had in comparison to others. But what happens when we don’t succeed? Self-esteem sinks. 

New research shows that developing mindfulness skills may help us build secure self-esteem—that is, self-esteem that endures regardless of our success in comparison to those around us.

Christopher Pepping and his colleagues at Griffith University in Australia conducted two studies to demonstrate that mindfulness skills help enhance self-esteem.

In the first study, the researchers administered questionnaires to undergraduate students in an introductory psychology course to measure their mindfulness skills and their self-esteem. The researchers anticipated that four aspects of mindfulness would predict higher self-esteem:

• Labeling internal experiences with words, which might prevent people from getting consumed by self-critical thoughts and emotions;
• Bringing a non-judgmental attitude toward thoughts and emotions, which could help individuals have a neutral, accepting attitude toward the self;
• Sustaining attention on the present moment, which could help people avoid becoming caught up in self-critical thoughts that relate to events from the past or future;
• Letting thoughts and emotions enter and leave awareness without reacting to them.

The results, published in The Journal of Positive Psychology, support the researchers’ predictions: students with these mindfulness skills indeed had higher self-esteem. However, this study did not clarify whether mindfulness causes self-esteem, or whether those with mindfulness also had higher self-esteem because of some other factor.

In order to find out if mindfulness directly causes higher self-esteem, the researchers conducted a second study. They instructed half of the participants to complete a 15-minute mindfulness meditation that focused on the sensation of their breath. The other half of participants read a 15-minute story about Venus fly-trap plants. All of the participants completed questionnaires that assessed their level of self-esteem and mindfulness both before and after they completed the 15-minute task.

Consistent with the researchers’ predictions, those that participated in the mindfulness meditation had higher scores in mindfulness and in self-esteem after meditating, while there was no change in these dimensions for those that read the Venus fly-trap plant story.

Because the only difference between the two groups was whether or not they participated in a mindfulness exercise, these results suggest that mindfulness directly causes enhanced self-esteem.

The authors write that because the effects of the mindfulness exercise on self-esteem in this study were temporary, future research should examine if mindfulness interventions can lead to long-term changes in self-esteem.

However, these findings are promising. The authors write, “Mindfulness may be a useful way to address the underlying processes associated with low self-esteem, without temporarily bolstering positive views of oneself by focusing on achievement or other transient factors. In brief, mindfulness may assist individuals to experience a more secure form of high self-esteem.”

About The Author

Emily Nauman is a GGSC research assistant. She completed her undergraduate studies at Oberlin College with a double major in Psychology and French, and has previously worked as a research assistant in Oberlin’s Psycholinguistics lab and Boston University’s Eating Disorders Program.

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Self-Trolling Is Symptomatic of Dissociative Experience

As I read this article, I was continually reminded of trauma survivors, especially those with developmental trauma, and the parts of them who criticize, ridicule, shame, and essentially hate them. These parts once served a role - they exposed every possible flaw and weakness before it could be seen by others and possibly be targeted by others.

The thinking is this: If I can shame myself for my weight before anyone else does, it won't hurt so bad when someone else does it; or this: If I am aware of every flaw I have then I will work extra hard not to let anyone else see them, which would make me the target of shaming and ridicule.

These are examples of the inner critic, a very common and difficult part in many of us, but in trauma survivors that part can be brutal and debilitating.

No healthy person would ever even think of doing this ("self-trolling") - but a trauma survivor with an inner critic that is partially or wholly dissociated sure would. The internet provides a public venue for what has traditionally happened in private. I have seen people with Dissociative Identity Disorder carve insults into their flesh with razors - now they can make the self-shaming even more obvious (and potentially deadly) through "self-trolling."

Hidden hatred: What makes people assassinate their own character online, sometimes driving themselves to suicide?

Phillip Hodson examines a form of self-harming for the internet age

Philip Hodson
Thursday 20 February 2014

Why would anyone post dozens of fake messages of abuse about themselves on a social media website? And then complain that they are the victims of bullying? Could it be a form of research? Self-hatred? Or a perverse effort to find love? If this self-abuse is the "answer", then what on earth's the question?

We can't ask 14-year-old Hannah Smith because it may have been precisely this exercise that killed her. During a pre-inquest review into her death last week, it emerged that there was no evidence she was the victim of trolling, with her father revealing that police believe she sent the anonymous messages to herself. If true, Hannah killed herself last August in the ultimate act of self-criticism.

And then there was 24-year-old Michelle Chapman repeatedly posting self-slanders – of a "very unpleasant sexual nature" – from false Facebook accounts in the name of her father and step-mother before having them both arrested. After a legal investigation, Michelle found herself in jail for 20 months.

What is the profit in pretending that people hate you when they don't? In the Chapman case, it was possibly some sort of response to a family fracture but these don't usually involve assassinating your own character as a means of redress. Statistics are scant help. One research study from the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Centre found that 9 per cent of 617 students might be tempted to bully themselves online falsely. When asked about potential motives, they came up with "cries for help", "gaining adult attention" or "forcing peers to support them".

Read more: Woman is jailed for 'trolling herself'

In the pantheon of attention-seeking disorders, self-trolling has much in common with self-harming and self-starving. There are possible parallels with Münchausen's syndrome where patients typically fake illness to gain care. Even Hilaire Belloc's poem "Matilda" (who "told such dreadful lies it made one gasp") may be relevant because the child crying wolf – rather than asking for what is wanted – seems to be an underlying mechanism.

So in the absence of data or definitions, what to make of it? As a therapist, I think we're confronted by people in severe distress feeling insecurely attached to parents, guardians and peers. As a result, mental processing remains juvenile whatever their biological stage. Their sense of personal identity seems fluid, fragile or miscalculated (one reason to denounce yourself in public is to conduct a rather risky opinion poll). Fantasy becomes reality – it's notable that some of the American students in the study came to believe that they'd been trolled for real just because their own words in print said that they had.

Michelle Chapman was sentenced to 20 months in prison for setting up fake Facebook profiles to send herself offensive messages

It's no help that the inner world of emotionally damaged children already contains its own bully. Starve children of enough affection and stability and they're too terrified to decide that the world is mad; instead, they invent a fantasy of themselves as evil. I think it's quite a simple step to graduate from such a mindset to active self-trolling. Better to self-blame aloud in four-letter tirades than conclude that nobody cares. Bad attention is always better than none.

And yet despite feeling hopeless, the child is also angry enough to act. Self-trolling differs from self-harming by being more exhibitionistic than secret. All of us when disappointed in love tend to seek power as an alternative. The self-troller is masochistically gratified up to the moment their self-abuse causes social disaster.

Is this type of behaviour new? No. Every town in history has probably contained someone who sent a poison-pen letter to themselves and basked in the resultant outrage. But it is probably no help that ours is an era of digital delusion. First, with a computer you can transmit much bigger messages. Second, we already suffer from the misconception that happiness is a Twitter following. Think @MsSallyBercow (5,508 followers) over her various tweeting mishaps. The result is that we are slow to perceive that the internet is both illusory and lethal.

This subject of cyber self-harm matters because children die. We need to remember that when young people say one thing it may often mean the opposite.

Phillip Hodson is from the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (psychotherapy.org.uk). His views are personal.

Dr. Christine Courtois on Trauma

PsychAlive, hosted by Dr. Lisa Firestone, posted this collection of short video clips featuring trauma and PTSD expert Dr. Christine Courtois discussing various aspects of trauma and recovery. All eight video segments are embedded here (I wish we could see the full interview in one piece).

Among her many books are Treating Complex Traumatic Stress Disorders (Adults): An Evidence-Based Guide (2009), and Healing the Incest Wound: Adult Survivors in Therapy (Second Edition) (Norton Professional Books) (2010).

There is a very good introductory essay on complex PTSD (what has traditional been known as Borderline Personality Disorder) at the Gift From Within site, Understanding Complex Trauma, Complex Reactions, and Treatment Approaches.

* * * * * *

Christine A. Courtois, Ph.D., ABPP, is the principal and founder of this practice. She is a graduate of the Counseling Psychology program at the University of Maryland and a licensed psychologist in DC and MD. Dr. Courtois has received international recognition for her work on the effects of incest, child sexual abuse, complex traumatic stress disorders and other types of trauma and has received awards from numerous professional organizations. She is a psychotherapist (with broad experience in outpatient and inpatient treatment), workshop leader, and consultant specializing in posttraumatic and dissociative conditions and disorders. Her approach is integrative, relational, and trauma-referenced, based upon respect for the client and his/her life experience.

Dr. Courtois has authored the just published the second edition of Healing the Incest Wound: Adult Survivors in Therapy (W. W. Norton), co-edited (with Dr. Julian Ford) the book Complex Traumatic Stress Disorders: An Evidence-based Guide (2009, Guilford Press) and authored Recollections of Sexual Abuse: Treatment Principles and Guidelines (1999, W. W. Norton), Adult Survivors of Sexual Abuse: A Workshop Model (1993, Families International), and Healing the Incest Wound: Adult Survivors in Therapy (1988, W. W. Norton). She has also co-edited a special section on complex trauma with Dr. Bessel van der Kolk in the Journal of Traumatic Stress (2005). Dr. Courtois is past Associate Editor of the new journal Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, & Policy http://www.apa.org/journals/tra/).

Margarita Tartakovsky, M.S. - 5 Strategies for Self-Compassion

Here is a brief article from the World of Psychology blog at Psych Central offering five quick tips for self-compassion. The material in this article is based on the cutting edge research of Kristen Neff, the leader (along with Christopher Germer) in the field of self-compassion.

5 Strategies for Self-Compassion

By Margarita Tartakovsky, M.S.
Associate Editor

Many of us are all too used to bashing ourselves. And it’s not surprising. In our society, we’re taught that being hard on ourselves and ashamed of everything from our actions to our looks gets results.

Self-criticism is the preferred path to success. We rarely think about showing ourselves kindness. Or even if we do, we worry that doing so is selfish, complacent or arrogant.

But research has found that self-criticism only sabotages us and produces a variety of negative consequences. For instance, according to Kristin Neff, Ph.D., associate professor in human development at the University of Texas at Austin, studies have shown that self-criticism can lead to lowered self-esteem, anxiety and depression.


Neff is the author of Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind. Self-compassion is what you’d show a loved one struggling with a similar situation. Self-compassion has been linked to greater well-being, including diminished anxiety and depression, better emotional coping skills and compassion for others.¹

Specifically, according to Neff, self-compassion consists of three components:

• Self-kindness: Being kind, gentle and understanding with yourself when you’re suffering.
• Common humanity: Realizing that you’re not alone in your struggles. When we’re struggling, we tend to feel especially isolated. We think we’re the only ones to experience loss, make mistakes, feel rejected or fail. But it’s these very struggles that are part of our shared experience as humans.
• Mindfulness: Observing life as it is, without being judgmental or suppressing your thoughts and feelings.

Myths about Self-Compassion

Because beating ourselves up is so entrenched in our society, you still might be suspicious of self-compassion. Below, Neff dispels common myths that may stand in the way of people being kinder to themselves.

Myth: Self-compassion is self-pitying or egocentric.
Fact: Self-pity is being immersed in your own problems and forgetting that others struggle, too, Neff said. However, being self-compassionate is seeing things exactly as they are — no more and no less, she said. It means acknowledging that you’re suffering, while acknowledging that others have similar problems or are suffering even more. It’s putting your problems into perspective.

Myth: Self-compassion is self-indulgent.
Fact: Being self-compassionate doesn’t mean solely seeking pleasure, Neff said. It’s not shirking responsibilities or being slothful. Rather, self-compassion focuses on alleviating suffering. From this perspective, you consider whether something will hurt you in the long run, she said.

Myth: Self-criticism is an effective motivator.
Fact: There’s actually nothing motivating about criticizing yourself, Neff said, because it makes you fear failure and lose faith in yourself. Even if you do achieve great things, you’re often miserable, anyway.

It’s interesting that in other areas of our lives we understand that being harsh doesn’t work. Take the example of parenting. Decades ago, we thought that harsh punishment and criticism were effective in keeping kids in line and helping them do well, Neff said.

However, today, we know that being a supportive and encouraging parent is more beneficial. (When you’re told you’re a failure, the last thing you think you’re capable of is succeeding, or even trying.)

Self-compassion acts like a nurturing parent, she said. So even when you don’t do well, you’re still supportive and accepting of yourself. Like a kind parent, your support and love are unconditional, and you realize that it’s perfectly OK to be imperfect.

This doesn’t mean being complacent. Self-criticism tears us down; it presumes that “I am bad.” Self-compassion, however, focuses on changing the behavior that’s making you unhealthy or unhappy, Neff said.

Strategies for Self-Compassion

Being self-compassionate might seem unnatural at first. These strategies can help. This may be harder for some individuals, Neff said, particularly if you’ve experienced trauma, so it’s important to work with a therapist.

1. Consider how you’d treat someone else. The simplest thing you can do, according to Neff, is to imagine what you’d do if someone you cared about came to you after failing or getting rejected. What would you say to that person? How would you treat them?

2. Watch your language. You may be so used to criticizing yourself that you don’t even realize that you’re doing it. So it helps to pay particular attention to the words you use to speak to yourself. If you wouldn’t say the same statements to someone you care about, then you’re being self-critical, Neff said.

3. Comfort yourself with a physical gesture. Kind physical gestures have an immediate effect on our bodies, activating the soothing parasympathetic system, Neff said. Specifically, physical gestures “get you out of your head and drop you into your body,” she said, which is important since “the head loves to run away with storylines.” For instance, she suggested putting your hands over your heart or simply holding your arm. Any gesture will do.

4. Memorize a set of compassionate phrases. Whenever you find yourself saying, “I’m horrible,” it helps to have a few phrases at the ready. Pick statements that really resonate with you. Combining that with a physical gesture — like hands over your heart — is especially powerful, Neff said. She uses the following phrases:

This is a moment of suffering.
Suffering is part of life.
May I be kind to myself in this moment?
May I give myself the compassion I need?

5. Practice guided meditation. Meditation helps to retrain the brain, Neff said. This way, self-compassionate gestures and self-soothing become more natural. Neff includes several self-compassion meditations on her website.

For more on this research, check out Neff’s comprehensive list of articles and chapters on self-compassion.

Dennis Palumbo - Dealing with Your "Inner Critic"

This is a rather shallow article on working with the inner critic, but it does offer some useful advice so I thought I'd share it here. At one point he mentions, briefly, having some self-compassion around this issue, which is really central to the ability to harmonize with the inner critic. The key is that we also must feel calmness, curiosity, clarity, compassion, confidence, creativity, courage, and connectedness with and toward that part of ourselves.

If we can befriend it instead of doing battle with it, we discover that it is there to help us, and it has always had that single goal in mind. When we were children (which is when these types of parts develop) it may have been the best option for feeling safe, to anticipate criticism before it comes from the parent and act accordingly. But as adults, these behaviors and beliefs limit our options, inhibit our creativity and joy, and are no longer useful in our lives in quite the same way.

When we befriend the critic, and learn about its needs and concerns, we may over time free it up to assume a more supportive role in our lives - in the end, it only wants our safety and happiness.

Dealing with Your "Inner Critic"

Self-criticism is a two-edged sword

Published on May 19, 2012 

by Dennis Palumbo in Hollywood on the Couch

Among the majority of my creative patients---TV and film writers, directors, actors, etc.---a primary concern is the struggle against their “inner critic.” By that I mean the persistent, sometimes harsh and almost always shaming “voice” that belittles or invalidates their work.

Indeed, the term “inner critic” is such a well-known concept in our culture that millions of dollars are spent on books, DVD’s, online classes and seminars promising to silence---or even banish altogether---this punishing element of most people’s inner world.

There’re two problems with this approach: first, the goal of killing off the self-critical, judgmental part of your psyche confirms the idea that there’s something wrong with you that needs to be fixed. It suggests that there’s a perfectable “you” in the future who’s unencumbered by such conflicts.

Not to mention my second objection, which is that it isn’t even possible.

Unquestionably, there’s nothing more painful about the creative process than struggling against feelings of self-doubt, even self-loathing. I’ve worked with patients who literally hate everything they create---it’s not good enough, funny enough, smart enough, commercial enough. Even those with a more balanced view of their output acknowledge the stress of continually having to keep deeply critical inner voices at bay just to get through the damn thing.

"Killing off” your inner critic won’t work; it isn’t even desirable. It’s part of who you are. A necessary part. As much as your enthusiasm, your work habits, your loves and hates, your joys and regrets. Because, like these other aspects of your emotional life, an inner critic is a two-edged sword.

Think of it this way: the same inner critic that judges our work so severely provides us with the ability to discern our likes and dislikes, to form opinions, to make decisions. It reinforces the faith in our subjective experience that allows us to choose this rather than that.

We need a sense of judgment to navigate in the world. The amount and intensity of that judgment, as with most things, lies along a continuum. Hopefully, we possess neither too much, nor too little.

Imagine waiting to cross the street at a busy intersection: With too little judgment, you might ignore the “Don’t Walk” sign and get run over; with too much judgment, you stand frozen even when the sign reads “Walk,” and therefore never get anywhere.

What I’m trying to suggest here is that we don’t judge our having an inner judge too harshly. Doing creative work in the face of a persistent inner critic is draining enough. To compound the problem by blaming yourself for being engaged in the struggle is ridiculous.

Remember, too, what I said about your inner critic being a two-edged sword. Because if we can accept with self-compassion this troubling aspect of ourselves, we might even learn something.

I’m thinking of an example from my own experience as a patient in therapy. This was many years ago, when I was struggling with some very painful issues, specifically a rather profound fear of failure that seemed unaffected by my outward success. The sessions were so gut-wrenching, I thought about quitting therapy.

Yet I kept coming, week after week, much to my own surprise. When I mentioned this to my therapist, he suggested that while the issues underlying my fear of failure were indeed painful and difficult, it was this same fear of failure that kept me coming back to therapy every week. In other words, the same thing that was causing the problem was providing the determination to keep slugging away at it. I just wouldn’t quit.

That’s when I realized what a two-edged sword my particular problem was. Like the ancient concept of yin and yang, almost every aspect of our emotional life has both an affirming and an invalidating component. Our job, then, is to examine an issue that troubles us---a harsh inner critic, for example---and learn what is both positive and negative about it, in terms of our work and our life.

If we approach our inner critic from this perspective, that of a life-long process of examination, we can co-exist with it. That along with feeling the pain of its intense scrutiny, we also develop the courage to challenge the self-defeating meanings we give to that pain. This has always been the artist’s struggle. What Rollo May calls “the courage to create.”

Or, to put it bluntly: You’re an artist. Which means, you’re your own worst critic. Join the club.