Trauma can produce a tidal wave of negative effects throughout your life, from attachment issues and self-defeating behaviors to mental health disorders and substance abuse. Yet there’s one byproduct of trauma that often hides in the background, and its damaging influence on your life (and your healing) is profound: shame.
At The Guest House, we understand the major role that shame plays in your trauma story. We also realize that shame could very well be keeping you from the healthy, fulfilling life you deserve. But here’s the good news: You can take steps to overcome your shame and ultimately, heal your trauma.
What Happens When You’re Traumatized
If you’ve dealt with trauma at some point in your life, know that you’re not alone. According to the National Council for Mental Wellbeing, 70% of adults in the United States have experienced a traumatic event at least once in their lives. That’s over 223 million people. In other words, trauma’s influence is widespread. There’s a good chance that the majority of people you know have, like you, felt the impact of trauma along their journeys.
Trauma itself is a deeply disturbing or distressing experience that makes a major impact on your physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Judy Crane, co-founder of The Guest House, describes trauma this way in her book The Trauma Heart: “Trauma is visceral, sensory, and cellular. It’s a soul wound that impacts the very core of who we are, what we believe about the world, and our place in it.”
A traumatizing experience can happen to anyone at any time, and may look entirely different than someone else’s experience, including its impact. Trauma can arise from one major event or a series of smaller events that occur over an extended period of time. Some examples of traumatizing experiences include:
- A sudden accident or disaster
- Abuse or neglect
- Experiencing or witnessing violence
- Grief and loss
- Abandonment, betrayal, or rejection
- A severe injury or chronic illness
- Stress or burnout
Trauma affects you as a whole person. “We experience trauma with all of our senses: taste, touch, smell, sound, sight, and our sixth sense, intuition,” Crane explains in The Trauma Heart. In the aftermath of trauma, you can have psychological symptoms such as emotional pain, anxiety, fear, or mood swings, as well as physical manifestations like sleep disturbances, tense muscles, loss of appetite, and hypervigilance.
Eventually, the lingering impact of trauma can change the course of your life if you don’t address it. According to Dr. Peter Levine, a leading expert on stress and trauma, “Our lives can be severely diminished by [trauma’s] effects. Some people have even described this situation as a ‘living death.’”
As a trauma-first clinic, we’re well aware at The Guest House of both the short- and long-term effects of traumatizing experiences. That’s why trauma treatment is at the core of everything we do—including addressing any of your accompanying guilt or shame in the process.
Trauma’s Co-Conspirators: Shame vs. Guilt
When looking at shame vs. guilt, it’s easy to lump them together. But they are actually two different experiences. Shame is associated with negative beliefs about yourself that are ultimately pervasive and destructive to your sense of self, explains McGill University. When you feel shame, it defines you as damaged, bad, helpless, and a failure. Guilt on the other hand is associated with negative feelings you have about something wrong that you did. In short, guilt is the feeling of doing something bad, while shame is a feeling of being bad.
In considering guilt vs. shame, they both go hand-in-hand with trauma, usually in two different ways. First, you can feel guilt or shame about a traumatizing experience that happened either to you or through the vicarious trauma you witnessed, such as a violent crime, a loved one’s abuse, or a loved one’s addiction. When you become traumatized, it is sometimes easier to believe that there is something wrong with you that led to your trauma, rather than believe that your traumatizer (such as a loved one) could hurt you for no reason, according to McGill University. You may even blame yourself for your own trauma, leading to shame and guilt.
Alternatively, you can also feel guilt or shame about your response to a particularly traumatizing experience. Perhaps you were abused and enjoyed certain aspects of it, only to feel shame later on when you realized what was actually happening. Upon reflecting on your response to traumatic events in childhood (even those you witnessed), maybe you’re ashamed as an adult that you didn’t seek help and let the events continue to transpire. Or a recent traumatizing experience may have led you to pursue self-destructive behaviors to cope, generating guilt and shame about your actions in the aftermath.
Trauma and Recovery: How Shame and Guilt Get in the Way
Over time, the shame and guilt associated with your trauma can actually hinder your ability to find healing. That’s because the feeling that you’re a bad person begin to take hold, so much so that you believe them to be true. Consequently, you live in constant fear of rejection (“if they only knew the real me!”), and you begin to create (and eventually get trapped in) avoidance strategies to escape the pain that shame causes, explains the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine (NICABM).
One avoidance strategy that’s common to pursue as a result of shame is secrecy. Complex childhood trauma in particular is often intertwined with secrets. As a child, you’re told not to tell others about abuse or some other problem at home. Consequently, you feel afraid that you’re not normal or something bad will happen (perhaps retraumatization) if you tell others about your traumatizing experience. However, these “secrets keep us sick,” explains Crane in The Trauma Heart. Because you feel shame and guilt as a result of these traumatic experiences, you don’t tell your secrets, let alone get the help you need to heal your trauma.
According to the Journal of Clinical Medicine, shame prevents you from integrating your traumatic memories into your identity, which ultimately keeps you from achieving recovery and long-term healing. Instead, shame and guilt drive you to accept that you don’t deserve to be happy, or that you’re incapable of doing anything to improve your life. As a result, your untreated shame and guilt grow more powerful, leading you to pursue self-destructive behaviors that invite even greater shame, explains NICABM.
Healing From Shame at The Guest House
“We’re not bad people trying to get good; we are wounded people trying to heal,” Crane insists in The Trauma Heart. That’s why we work to create a loving, non-judgmental environment at The Guest House that fosters emotional intimacy, connection, and trust. This gives you the space to not only share your story—including your feelings of shame and guilt—safely, but ultimately experience real forgiveness, reconciliation, and transformation.
The fundamental goal of our trauma treatment program is to uncover and directly address the root causes of your struggles. Our co-founders and many of our staff have personally navigated their own trauma journeys, allowing us to come alongside you as both an empathetic peer and an expert guide. We tailor our trauma treatments to your unique needs, using a variety of holistic therapies to heal your trauma at its source and empower you to reshape your life for the better. And once you’ve found freedom from trauma, it’s impossible to hang onto those feelings of guilt and shame any longer.
Strategies to Overcome Shame and Guilt
Shame and guilt are the enemies of your trauma recovery, hands down. Though they’re commonly associated with trauma, shame and guilt are not productive or helpful. And worse, they hinder you from seeking the help you need or simply ever sharing how and why you hurt from your past trauma. Can you relate to these experiences?
If so, it’s important to consciously take steps to overcome the shame and guilt associated with your trauma. By doing so, you can actually create space to heal from the deep trauma wounds that have affected your life for too long. Here are some practical strategies you can implement to address and break free from shame and guilt:
- Learn to recognize your feelings of shame and guilt when they happen
- Share your feelings of shame and guilt with a trusted friend or therapist
- Identify the source of your shame and guilt associated with your trauma
- Engage in self-compassion, treating yourself with kindness, encouragement, and understanding
- Replace negative thinking patterns with positive self-talk and affirmations
- Pursue self-care practices like exercise, nutrition, and getting enough sleep
- Utilize mindfulness to stay focused on the present
- Cultivate gratitude
- Learn to forgive yourself and move forward
While some of the above you can pursue on your own, it’s best to practice these strategies alongside a clinician in trauma treatment. At The Guest House, we realize that this may be difficult to do, which is why our compassionate team partners with you in all stages of trauma recovery so you can finally let go of your shame and guilt once and for all. To learn more about our trauma treatment program in beautiful Ocala, Florida, contact our team today.