The Shame Critic and the Anxiety Machine

Posted on by Wendy E. Smith, MA, LMHC

According to Les Greenberg, Ph.D.,  the creator of Emotion-Focused Therapy, there are two kinds of inner voices that cause problems in people’s interior worlds, often just outside of their awareness.

One of these voices is what I have come to call the “shame critic”. This is the voice that tells people what is wrong with them, often in the most damning of terms. When people don’t realize that it is their shame critic that is talking to them, they tend to hear its words as “the truth”, and the result is they feel crappy about themselves–crappy and ashamed.  And, since shame is such a painful feeling, people with an active shame critic often become depressed.

The other  inner voice is what I call the “anxiety machine”.  This voice produces anxiety by telling people all the things they should be afraid of.  It has a very active imagination and comes up with all sorts of scary scenarios to warn people about.  People with an active anxiety machine in their heads often can’t relax or sleep.  They may feel exhausted, and their necks and jaws may ache.

So, if the result of these inner voices speaking to us is so emotionally destructive, why do they do what they do?  The answer usually is that they came into being early in life, often modeled after the voices of parents or other authority figures, in order to protect the child who has been hurt from further hurt, or the child who has been neglected from getting into trouble when she finds herself having to deal with situations above her developmental level.

If our shame critic gives us a good walloping for making a mistake, the logic of the critic goes, especially if the mistake is the kind that may lead to others’ disapproval or rejection, then perhaps we won’t make that mistake again, and will therefore not suffer the painful results.  If our anxiety critic warns us about every possible bad outcome that might occur, then we will be really, really careful and maybe not get into situations in which we are over our heads and maybe, just maybe, be able to avert interpersonal and other disasters.

After the shame critic and the anxiety machine get created in childhood, they just keep  on going, causing  emotional problems for adults who no longer need their protection.  These inner voices may be well-intentioned, but their effects are deleterious.

In working with these inner voices, Emotion-Focused therapists like me first help clients to become aware of them, and then create in-session experiences in which the part that has to listen to the inner voice, the “experiencing self”, and the voice itself can come to a better understanding of each other.  Once shame critics and anxiety machines realize the actual impact of their actions, they are often quite willing to soften their approach, or even stop talking altogether.  Often, after such therapeutic work, all that it takes to get one or both of these inner voices to pipe down in real time is a reminder from the client about the in-session agreement that was made.

 

Shame, and Its Antidote

Posted on by Wendy E. Smith, MA, LMHC

From both personal and professional experience, I’m pretty convinced that shame is one of the two most painful human emotions. Shame is the feeling that there is something wrong with us or that we are not good enough or, to put it more strongly and the way clients often do, that we are worthless and unlovable. Shame is usually installed by early personal history (e.g., parental neglect, childhood sexual abuse, growing up with a disability) and, later, becomes a habitual internal process in which part of the adult mind harshly criticizes another part. Viscerally, when shame is triggered, the experience is of a punch in the gut or a knife in the heart. That is why people experiencing shame often visibly cringe.

One problem with shame, aside from how painful it is, is that it stops us from being willing to engage in relationships in an authentic and vulnerable way (who who feels worthless would want to be truly seen?) and therefore people who suffer from shame also suffer from loneliness. Additionally, shame can often lead either to paralysis with regard to life goals (I’m worthless, so why even try?; I’m bound to fail) or unrealistic and exhausting perfectionism (I must ceaselessly prove that I am worthwhile). Paradoxically, despite their intense pain, people who suffer from shame often have very little compassion for themselves, wrongly assuming that their suffering must all be the result of their inherent worthlessness and, therefore, deserved.

Here is a link to an excellent TED talk by Brene Brown that touches on many of these issues:
Brene Brown on vulnerability

I have been consciously working with my own shame for about 20 years and I’m happy to report that I am much less pained by “shame attacks” than I used to be, both because I am less frequently triggered and because I have much more compassion for myself when I do feel shame. Additionally, I’m no longer a perfectionist and my internal critic has softened considerably. This is how I know there is hope for fellow sufferers!

When working with clients on their shame, I (very tenderly) use Emotion Focused Therapy techniques, both to help clients see how their internalized shaming process works so that they can start to dismantle it, and to re-experience with them in a healing way the specific history that installed the shame in the first place. Ultimately, the goal is for clients to start to know and feel that they are lovable and worthwhile in all their imperfection, just the way they are.