Understanding and Healing from Shame
As a survivor of child sexual abuse (CSA), you have likely experienced significant trauma. This series is designed specifically for adult CSA survivors to provide tools that will assist with your healing journey.
Throughout the series, we’ll explore a number of topics and materials. It is important to begin this week’s content with a reminder that none of the following information is meant to provide a clinical diagnosis. If you are actively in crisis and/or need more support than the information we provide in this series, we strongly encourage you to reach out to a licensed mental health professional or the National Sexual Assault Hotline.
You are not alone. Support specialists are standing by 24/7.
What is shame?
Shame is an intense emotion that can be described as believing there is something wrong with you that has caused the sexual abuse you experienced. This can be especially true for survivors of child sexual abuse (CSA). Shame often differs from embarrassment or guilt in two ways:
- Embarrassment generally has an audience (e.g. falling in public) whereas shame is what we tell ourselves in private (e.g. I am unworthy of love)
- Guilt comes from the belief that we did something bad and shame comes from the belief that we are bad.
Feelings of shame can affect you for many years after the abuse has ended. Shame can often result in negative feelings and internal self-talk that encourages us to hide the parts of ourselves that we feel are damaged or unlovable. While all of these reactions are common, know that abuse is never your fault and you are deserving of love. The shame is not for you to carry.
Where does shame come from?
Survivors of child sexual abuse often blame themselves for the abuse they have endured. Shame can come from feeling betrayed by someone you trusted, from staying silent about the abuse, or feeling like you have no one to turn to who will believe or understand you. When we have feelings of powerlessness surrounding the abuse or from other experiences related to the abuse, such as sexual arousal during an assault, these feelings can compound into shame.
Oftentimes, CSA survivors’ experiences during childhood have such a profound effect that shame can impact your sense of autonomy over your body and sexual sense of self throughout adulthood. You may say to yourself, “I should have stopped it,” “Other people have it worse than I do,” or “I should be over it by now.” While it is very natural for survivors to talk to themselves in this way, the abuse was not your fault and healing does not have a set timeline.
What are extreme judgements?
A traumatic event immediately throws your body into situations where you may only have seconds to make a life or death decision. Under these circumstances, your brain is forced to make extreme judgments.
This means that your brain decides very quickly if something is safe or dangerous, if someone is a friend or enemy, and if the situation is good or bad. In many cases, there is not much time to distinguish between the two judgments so these kinds of quick decisions are imperative for survival.
Even after the traumatic event has ended, your brain may have trouble recognizing that you are out of harm’s way and physically safe. When this happens, some survivors experience an inability to focus, high alert (called hypervigilance) even in safe situations, high startle responses, or a hyperfocus on tasks or situations that do not require it.
How do extreme judgements relate to shame?
While extreme judgements are useful for survival from predators in the wild, sometimes our brains overcompensate and continue these judgments when they are no longer necessary for safety. When this happens, it can be challenging for survivors to understand the perspectives of others, “gray areas” in situations they encounter, or finding the middle ground.
When we experience something like CSA, where our brain interprets the abuse as a life or death situation, we might internalize the shame in damaging ways. One of the common manifestations of shame is negative internal messaging, or negative "self-talk." If we believe that our abuse has made us less desirable, less worthy, or means that we matter less than others around us, this self-talk can have major implications on our lives and relationships with others.
Experiencing shame as a result of abuse can lead survivors to have thoughts like:
- “No one will ever love me.”
- “It's just easier for me to be alone.”
- “Why would anyone care what happens to me?”
- “I'm only good for sex.”
Especially having experienced this type of abuse in your impressionable and formative years, it is reasonable that you grew up feeling this way. However, there are ways to counteract that negative internal messaging in order to have compassion for yourself. You deserve a reminder that you survived, your life has meaning, and you are doing your best.
Week two covered shame and extreme judgements. The goal of week two’s content is to help you understand how shame connects to child sexual abuse and help provide tools to counteract feelings of shame. Because responses to trauma look different for everyone, there is no right way or wrong way to heal. With trauma also comes healing and resilience as you tend to your traumatic reactions with care and gentleness.
Do feelings of shame impact the way you talk to yourself & experience relationships? Click for an exercise on countering shame with truth & positive affirmations.
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References
Davis, L. (1990). The Courage to Heal Workbook: A Guide for Women and Men Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse. HarperCollins Publishers.
Feiring, C., & Taska, L. S. (2005). The Persistence of Shame Following Sexual Abuse: A Longitudinal Look at Risk and Recovery. Child Maltreatment, 10(4), 337–349. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077559505276686
Reutter, K. (2019). The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for PTSD: Practices Exercises for Overcoming Trauma & Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. New Harbinger Publications, Inc.