Your Sympathetic Nervous System

Indeed, shame is so powerful that we can notice its effect on our bodies and our nervous system. For adults, this emotion is incredibly intense and painful. So you can imagine how much more painful shame is for a child who is desperate for their parent’s love. The process begins in the brain, which reacts to shame as though we are in danger. This triggers your sympathetic nervous system, which is always on the lookout for danger so it can protect you. Your sympathetic nervous system triggers your fight, flight, or freeze response. When this response is triggered in your body, your heart rate increases and more blood flows to your muscles, thereby decreasing blood flow in your organs. This is why you feel that warm feeling inside you when you feel ashamed, because your activated sympathetic nervous system increases your body temperature and causes sweat, queasiness and blushing. At the precise moment shame is triggered, we are emotionally hijacked, and there is no prefrontal activity. Our desire for anonymity is caused by the flight response. Then there is the freeze response. The freeze response also stems from our sympathetic nervous system which shuts down automatically in response to what it considers a threat.

Lying Down In Darkness

Since our brains react to shame as it reacts to danger, our brain disassociates, rendering us immovable and passive. If you have ever been in a physically dangerous situation, you may have encountered the freeze response. Maybe you found yourself unable to move when you noticed a huge truck speeding toward you. At that moment, all you could think about was how you would be hit by the truck. Despite this, you did not flee to safety. The freeze response operates out of the premise that our only chance for survival in a situation is to give in to the threat. Your brain feels you are not able to handle the threat because it is too much, so it shuts you down to protect you. Think of a centipede that curls up in the presence of dangerous stimuli. It cannot withstand much external pressure, so it instinctively moves into a defensive pose. So, for example, if you were verbally abused by your schoolmates, your brain may have decided that the best way to survive is to put your head down and allow the abuse to continue. The flight or fight response is a healthy response in relation to external physical threats. Against shame, the fight and flight responses give us a sense of agency and power.

Everybody Finds Out Sometime

But shame still comes with this method because the flight or fight response causes our relationship with others to break down. It hijacks our brain into acting dysfunctional and in ways that push people away. This leaves us feeling ashamed and worthless unlike those people who can maintain loving relationships in their lives. The freeze response operates contrastingly to the flight or fight responses. It makes victims feel even more powerless and worthless. You may ask yourself afterwards why you did not fight back or flee. It is easy to blame yourself afterwards once the damage of the threat has been done. Why didn’t I stand up to my father when he humiliated me in front of the family? Why didn’t I tell my teachers the truth of my family’s abuse when they asked me? The freeze response lies to us that we are powerless and, therefore, deserved whatever abuse we received. The unfortunate truth is that the fight, flight or freeze responses only act to reinforce our original shame, digging us deeper into darkness. And so also does the shame that stems from being abused affects how our brain and nervous system work, leaving us more vulnerable to the original pain, trauma and shame that caused these changes in the first place. I think it is really ironic that the human brain developed this way. In the past, these responses really did serve as a way to protect us.

From A Distance

Today, however, these evolutionary brain changes harm us significantly. Have you noticed that it is rare to find adults who treat children with respect? Obviously, respect is a big part of our cultures globally, but that respect always seems to be demanded of adults at the expense of children. Very often, teachers feel as though they can berate students to get them to submit and become docile. He humiliated me in front of the class when I was caught talking, smacking me across the backside with a meter ruler in front of everyone. I never felt smart enough or good enough and I really struggled in school. At home, my mother’s method of parenting was rooted in the belief that children should be seen and not heard. She would be prone to fits of rage over the most trivial of things. To be fair, my mother did not have an easy childhood either, but it was not until I was an adult that I realized this. She did not get the parenting skills she needed to be a good parent to me. And school, my caregivers taught me that the only way to prove I was a worthy child was to be docile and to be exactly who they wanted me to be, no matter the personal cost to my mental health. The adults around me were selfish, choosing to project their own insecurities and trauma on a child rather than face themselves in the mirror. Today, psychology is only really starting to explore how deeply pain and trauma influence humans. I doubt the people who abused you in your childhood understood the mechanism of why shame worked to keep others subdued. All they knew was that it worked. Think about the last criticism someone gave you. There is a very high chance you still remember what you were told, even if the criticism was given respectfully and lovingly. That is why many psychologists will advise you irrevocably that those who abuse others do so knowing what they are doing.