Many child emotional and behavioral problems are due to the child not yet learning healthy ways to manage experiences of inadequacy and failure and the associated emotions of guilt, regret, and shame. These are difficult experiences and emotions, so children need special help to learn to manage them.
Understanding the Emotion of Shame
Humans, as a social species, have evolved to prioritize acceptance, love, and belonging. Shame, guilt, remorse, and embarrassment are called self-conscious or prosocial emotions because they are designed by evolution to get us back in alignment with the morals of our “tribe” and regain acceptance. Guilt should drive us to correct immoral behaviors (selfishness, cheating, lying, etc). It should encourage reputation management behaviors such as accountability, contrition, reciprocity, generosity, altruism, compassion, and caregiving. Social affiliative motives are survival related and help shape human social and moral behavior by bringing us back in connection in relationships and in society. We could categorize shame as the opposite of love, because disconnection and exclusion are contrary to the primal need for connection and inclusion.
What is Shame Intolerance?
Shame is a natural response to the threat of disconnection from social relationships and feelings of belonging that we all crave. But this family of emotions is so powerful it can foster unhealthy emotional and behavioral responses, especially in children who have limited cognitive skills and life experiences.
If a child perceives he or she may be rejected and that prized attachment bonds are at risk, he or she may feel judged as unworthy of love, one of our deepest human fears. The child may engage in self-shaming as a programmed strategy to try to regain connection. While guilt can be felt as helpful in building social skills it is also very triggering emotionally.
When poorly tolerated, shame is often the driver of a wide range of inappropriate behaviors, including defensive anger and excessive arguing, making excuses and rationalizing, excessive negotiating and manipulation, impulsivity, inattentiveness, hyperactivity, perfectionism, task avoidance, and “depression and anxiety.” Shame is the foundational emotion that fosters so much dysfunctional human behavior because it creates the feeling of being unworthy of love and leads to a survival-related dread of social exclusion.
Poorly tolerated shame drives us away from feeling loved AND from loving ourselves, provoking levels of distress that can be labeled as mental illness. A child can learn to automatically blame themselves and engage in negative self-talk and self-criticism. Feeling unloved by others is devastating; feeling unloved by oneself is an existential crisis. It is no wonder a person would respond with escalated emotions, illogical thoughts, self-loathing, and unstable behaviors.
Early shaming experiences are likely to instill a view of self as unworthy of love, leading to maladaptive behaviors that help a child cope with shame by blaming others with defensive anger, being hyper vigilant to signs of social rejection, or internalizing self-blame and guilt.
We can categorize these in three predictable and easily identified behavioral responses called Counterproductive Shame Management Strategies:
- Other-Blaming or Externalizing
- Self-Blaming or Internalizing
- Blame Avoiding
The simple key to understanding the three Shame Management Strategies is the answer to this question: How does the person handle criticism?
When held accountable for a behavior, what does the person do?
- blame others
- blame themselves, or
- preemptively try to avoid blame
All three behaviors have self-blaming or low self-worth as a root cause. Individuals may use all three behaviors, but often have one predominating behavior. The behaviors occur on a continuum from minimal to high levels. If untreated, chronic shame can become a procedurally learned response, provoking feelings of not being safe. The child will habituate automatic maladaptive responses, such as self-blaming, defensive anger, or emotional disconnection in relationships.
For detailed information on how all people handle shame: https://www.harperwest.co/handle-shame/
Where does Shame Intolerance Come From?
Remember that shame and other prosocial emotions are normal and even helpful. We all need them to have healthy relationships and be responsible, accountable adults. Children just need help regulating these emotions.
The prosocial and attachment emotion of shame makes its appearance in development from 14 to 16 months old and can be triggered by misattunements and attachment failures from parents that the child interprets as disgust and rejection.
Many parents are not even aware of these emotions so the first step is to learn to recognize them in your child so you will know how to respond. If you mistake a child’s arguing, crying, “anxiety,” or “ADHD”, as unrelated to shame, you will respond incorrectly. A child judged to be behaving “badly” or “disrespectfully” may provoke a punitive response from a parent, but a child who is understood to be filled with guilt or shame will (hopefully) provoke a kinder, more tolerant response. I often say that if you spot guilt in your child, then you can stop piling on guilt, because it is doing its job already.
Recognize that shame is often the driver of inappropriate behaviors, including defensive anger and excessive arguing, excuses and rationalizing, excessive negotiating and manipulation, impulsivity, inattentiveness, hyperactivity, perfectionism, fears and phobias, task avoidance, and “depression and anxiety.” In reality, all that has occurred is that chronic shame has become a procedurally learned response, provoking feelings of not being safe, so that the child learns maladaptive responses, such as self-blaming, defensive anger, or low motivation.
Parenting Skills for Building Your Child’s Shame Tolerance
As with any emotion, the rule is to first attune to and recognize the emotional experience of the child. Learn how to identify shame in children: https://www.harperwest.co/help-your-child-manage-unworthiness-and-identify-shame/
And identify low self-worth: https://www.harperwest.co/how-to-identify-low-self-worth-in-children/
Parents must learn to respond appropriately, usually with calming and co-regulating your child. Correcting behaviors when a child is upset will only provoke shame-based responding.
Many parents inadvertently over-shame their children. Shame should be titrated out in very small amounts and only at the appropriate time (when the child is calm and emotionally regulated). Piling on shame when a child already feels guilty merely entrenches their shame intolerance patterns, making them more anxious, oppositional/defiant, hyperactive, angry, etc.
When the source of judging and shaming is a child’s parent, the impact of emotional abandonment and loss of attachment on the child’s emotional wellbeing is enormous. It is no surprise that a child might become upset and behave poorly. The child is attempting to solve an emotionally difficult situation without the cognitive skills to do so thoughtfully.
Other parents under-shame a child by failing to hold them accountable in age-appropriate ways. They may bail children out of responsibilities, be lax about enforcing consequences, or over-sympathize with a child. This is often driven by a parent’s inability to manage shame themselves, so they struggle to make a child feel ashamed by holding a child accountable.
It is ESSENTIAL that parents recognize how THEY handle shame, as this is being modeled for the child on a daily basis. If you engage in excessive Self-Blaming, Blame Avoiding, or Other-blaming, the child will copy this behavior. Model healthy shame tolerance by admitting fault, admitting you do not know something, and apologizing for mistakes. This gives the child a sense that there is a way through this “big” emotion.
Many families have a cycle: Parents may not model or teach emotional regulation in moments of shame, so a young child does not build skills to manage this difficult experience. As the child grows and experiences normal struggles, such as learning new behavioral, academic, or athletic skills, they take any “failures” personally. If their reactions are extreme, such as tantrums, arguing, isolating, or low persistence with tasks, parents may focus on correcting the behavioral issues. The child will feel chastised and embarrassed. The child may also be diagnosed and medicated, when all they needed was help managing a normal emotion.
More tips for parents:
Parenting skills you can consider include reflective listening to build a child’s sense of worth and connection to you: Reflective Listening
Here are general parenting tips: General Parenting Tips
My Resources page has many parenting articles and videos.
Have hope! This information may be a lot to take in, but your family situation is very common and can be fairly quickly addressed with your involvement. Parents have so much influence on children that often a few simple changes in your relationship with your child can bring about big changes in behavior and emotional functioning.