The Mask Created by Shame
"Only authentic love can restore broken and distorted love." (St. Miriam James Heidland)
Shame is a primary issue common to all of us, a core wounding “from the beginning”(Gen. 3:7), so it must be explored thoroughly. It’s common for partners who abuse and betray their loved ones to struggle with intense feelings of shame, which then seeps outward to infect the innermost self of the one who has been betrayed. Both wounds need to be explored, which is what I plan to do in this—and upcoming—articles.
Shame is an inner awareness of our brokenness and sin—or our assumed brokenness and sin. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and healthy shame is useful because it can steer us toward repentance and virtuous living.
We all need healthy shame—otherwise we’d devolve into shamelessness. Healthy shame promotes virtuous behavior and helps us keep our boundaries in place—as well as respecting the boundaries of others. It’s when shame becomes rancid that it proves damaging to relationships. Toxic shame prevents us from loving and puts walls—rather than healthy boundaries—around the heart.
Healthy shame helps guide us into being better people, able to love and live fully. Toxic shame does the opposite; it prevents relationships by convincing us we’re bad in some way, unlovable and irredeemably broken.
This, of course, is a lie from the evil one that needs to be renounced, rebuked and rejected. We are all redeemable, and in fact have been redeemed.
Because toxic shame is always relational, those who are consumed by it feel an intense need to disguise their shame by wearing a false mask, a persona of who they want others to perceive them to be. Yet this mask cannot be worn indefinitely, and most often comes off during interactions with intimate partners.
In the experience of shame, the human being experiences fear in the face of the ‘second I’ … With shame the human being manifests ‘instinctively,’ as it were, the need for the affirmation and acceptance of this ‘I’ according to its proper value. He experiences this at the same time within himself and toward the outside, in the face of the ‘other.’
(St. Pope John Pau II, Theology of the Body 12:1)
Someone living with toxic shame gets so accustomed to hiding their feelings that they usually don’t even know they’re experiencing them. Instead, they live inside their mask, yet the underlying shame never goes away. It taints their relationship and causes them to try to control their situation by blaming others or using projection, chronic lying, gaslighting, and other manipulative techniques in an effort to continue to hide from the shame.