Healing Toxic Shame (Recovery Session) – FreeCourseSite

Toxic shame is a source of most mental health conditions we now understand. It is also a source of violence to self and others.

Healthy shame is an essential part of the ego ideal necessary for healthy brain development in childhood. Healthy shame is developed from age 6 months once a baby can differentiate the face of their primary caregiver from others. However, developmental trauma or trauma in adolescent-hood or adulthood can transmute healthy shame into toxic shame.

Toxic shame is a soul tormentor experienced in the entire being in the all-perversive sense that ‘I am fundamentally broken, defective, and flawed as a human being.” Once toxic shame becomes a state of being, one’s core identity, it overwhelms us with a sense of worthlessness and helplessness. Since a shame-based identity makes us feel abjectly exposed, we then look for how to cover it up using defenses and other control behaviors.

Toxic shame cover/defenses may include addictions, co-dependency, borderline personality, narcissistic personality, paranoid personality, offender behaviors, etc. The Toxic shame defenses also include other dysfunctional family system roles such as; scapegoat, family hero/star, lost child, surrogate spouse, caretaker, rescuer, etc.

The purpose of this recovery session is to give us a safe space to fully understand and heal our toxic shame, uncover hidden defenses and free the inner child so that we can start to live to the full and enjoy all the good things life has provided.