Part 2

How Shame Develops in Childhood and Becomes Internalised

Many patients who struggle with shame in adult life eventually return, through recollection, to experiences from childhood.

They may begin psychotherapy by describing difficulties that appear to belong entirely to the present. They feel incapable at work, inadequate in relationships, uncomfortable in social situations or deeply anxious whenever somebody criticises them. They may constantly compare themselves with other people and conclude that they are less attractive, less intelligent or less emotionally capable.

At first, these experiences may seem to be caused by current circumstances. As psychotherapy develops, however, earlier memories often begin to emerge.

The patient may remember being criticised by a parent, humiliated by a teacher, laughed at by other children or repeatedly treated as though they were disappointing, troublesome or different. They may remember particular incidents, but they may also remember a general atmosphere in which they never felt entirely acceptable.

These childhood experiences do not automatically explain every difficulty in adult life. However, they can help the psychotherapist and the patient understand how particular ideas about the self began to develop and why they continue to feel so convincing.

Why Childhood Experiences Have Such a Powerful Effect

Children are emotionally and physically dependent on other people.

They need adults to provide safety, guidance, care and an understanding of what is happening around them. A young child cannot evaluate every situation independently. They rely on parents, grandparents, carers, teachers and other important people to help them decide what is safe, what is dangerous, what is acceptable and how they should understand themselves.

Children differ considerably in how quickly they become more independent.

Some appear highly observant and self-directed at a very early age. Others continue needing a great deal of reassurance and guidance much later. Neither response automatically indicates strength or weakness. Children develop at different rates and possess different temperaments, sensitivities and emotional resources.

What they share is vulnerability.

When an emotionally important adult responds to the child with warmth, patience and proportionate correction, the child can begin learning that mistakes are manageable.

The child may understand:

I did something wrong, but I am not entirely wrong.

I can be corrected without being rejected.

I can disappoint somebody and still remain loved.

I can make a repair and continue within the relationship.

These lessons gradually support a more stable sense of self.

When adults respond through contempt, ridicule, excessive anger or withdrawal, the lesson can become very different.

The child may understand:

I have done something wrong because I am bad.

If I make a mistake, people will stop loving me.

If somebody is disappointed, I may be abandoned.

My feelings, needs or personality are unacceptable.

The shame does not remain attached only to the behaviour. It begins attaching itself to the child’s developing identity.

The Importance of Emotional Closeness

The closer the child is to the person involved, the more powerful the effect may be.

A cruel remark from a stranger can be upsetting. The same remark from a parent, grandparent or another person upon whom the child depends can become far more significant.

Children usually assume that the adults raising them understand the world better than they do. If a parent repeatedly describes the child as stupid, selfish, ugly or incapable, the child may not possess enough emotional distance to question that judgement.

They may conclude that the adult must be telling the truth.

The child begins seeing themselves through the eyes of the person whose approval and protection they need most.

This creates a deeply painful conflict. The person upon whom the child depends is also the person communicating that something about them is unacceptable.

The child cannot easily reject the adult’s judgement without feeling that the whole relationship is threatened. It may therefore feel safer to accept the negative view of themselves.

In this way, shame can preserve attachment.

The child remains emotionally connected with the parent, but carries the badness internally.

Instead of recognising that the adult may be unfair, insensitive, overwhelmed or psychologically disturbed, the child concludes that they themselves are the problem.

This understanding may remain active for many years.

Criticising Behaviour and Attacking the Child

There is an important difference between correcting a child’s behaviour and attacking the child’s whole personality.

A child may behave aggressively towards another child. An adult can explain that the behaviour was harmful and must not continue.

The message is directed towards what happened:

You hurt somebody.

That behaviour is not acceptable.

We need to understand what happened and find another way of responding.

The child is still held responsible, but the whole self is not condemned.

A different response would be:

You are horrible.

You are wicked.

Nobody will want to play with you.

You always ruin everything.

These statements do not help the child understand the behaviour. They communicate that the child’s nature is the problem.

The distinction may appear small to an adult, but it can be enormous within the developing mind.

When the whole personality is repeatedly attacked, shame can become chronic.

The child no longer needs a particular event to feel ashamed. They begin expecting their badness to appear in every situation.

A forgotten homework assignment proves laziness.

Difficulty understanding a subject proves stupidity.

An argument with another child proves that they are impossible to like.

The child begins collecting evidence against themselves.

Humiliation and Public Exposure

Shame is particularly powerful when criticism or failure occurs in front of other people.

A child may be corrected harshly in a classroom, mocked by other pupils or exposed by a parent in front of relatives. An accident, physical characteristic, learning difficulty or emotional reaction may become the subject of laughter.

The experience contains more than embarrassment. The child feels publicly exposed and unable to control how others now see them.

The memory may remain emotionally vivid long after the people involved have forgotten it.

A teacher may have made one dismissive remark and continued with the lesson. For the child, the moment may have become a defining experience.

The child may remember the expression on the teacher’s face, the laughter of classmates, the physical sensations in the body and the wish to disappear.

Later experiences of evaluation can reactivate the same shame.

An adult presentation at work may suddenly feel like standing before the old classroom. A minor correction from a manager may produce the emotional force of public humiliation.

The person may understand that the present situation is different, yet the earlier emotional experience continues to shape the reaction.

This is one reason shame can remain so difficult to control through reason alone.

Shame Among Other Children

Parents and carers are not the only sources of childhood shame.

Nursery, school and peer relationships can also have a profound effect.

Children can be highly observant of difference. They may notice clothing, speech, body shape, physical disability, learning difficulty, family background or unusual behaviour. A child who appears different may become excluded, mocked or repeatedly treated as inferior.

This can be particularly damaging because belonging becomes increasingly important as the child grows.

The child may begin adapting themselves to avoid further exposure.

They may speak less, hide particular interests, avoid physical activities or try to imitate other children. They may become highly watchful and study what appears socially acceptable before participating.

Some children become withdrawn. Others become entertaining or excessively compliant. Another child may become aggressive in order to prevent further humiliation.

These are different methods of managing the same fear: the fear of being exposed again.

The child may carry these strategies into adulthood without recognising their origins.

An adult who continually studies other people’s reactions may once have needed to do so for protection.

A person who makes jokes about themselves before anybody else can do it may be trying to control anticipated humiliation.

Somebody who avoids close friendships may fear that greater familiarity will reveal the difference they learned to hide.

Shame and Difference

Children can develop shame around any feature that appears to separate them from those around them.

This may concern:

• physical appearance;
• body shape or weight;
• disability;
• illness;
• autism, ADHD or another neurodevelopmental difference;
• learning difficulties;
• speech or language;
• poverty;
• family circumstances;
• cultural background;
• sexuality;
• religion;
• emotional sensitivity.

The feature itself may not be inherently shameful.

The shame develops through the reactions of other people and through the child’s conclusion that acceptance depends upon hiding or changing.

A child who struggles to understand social expectations may repeatedly be told that they are rude, difficult or deliberately uncooperative. They may have had no intention of causing offence, but the reactions of adults and peers gradually create a picture of themselves as socially wrong.

A child with a learning difficulty may be treated as lazy rather than helped to understand why certain tasks are harder.

A sensitive child may be told that they are overreacting, weak or dramatic.

Over time, the child may begin feeling ashamed not only of particular difficulties but of their whole way of experiencing the world.

Family Comparison

Shame can also develop through comparison within the family.

One child may be continually compared with a sibling who is seen as more intelligent, attractive, sociable or successful.

The comparison may be direct:

Why can you not be more like your brother?

Your sister never causes these problems.

Or it may be communicated indirectly through praise, attention and disappointment.

The child begins understanding their value in relation to somebody else.

They are not simply encouraged to develop their own abilities. They feel that they are continually failing to become the preferred version of a child.

This can create shame that remains active throughout adult life.

The person may compare themselves with colleagues, friends and partners without recognising that they are repeating the old family structure.

Somebody else’s success becomes evidence of their inadequacy.

Praise may feel uncomfortable because the person expects a later comparison or discovery that they are not truly deserving.

The adult may appear competitive, but beneath the competition there may be a frightened child expecting to be placed in the inferior position again.

When Parents Carry Their Own Shame

Parents may unintentionally pass their own shame to a child.

A parent who feels ashamed of poverty, education, social status, appearance or family history may become highly sensitive to how the child behaves in public.

They may demand perfect manners, academic success or a particular appearance because the child’s behaviour feels connected with how the whole family will be judged.

The child receives the message that ordinary mistakes do not belong only to them. They expose and humiliate the family.

The parent may say:

You have embarrassed us.

What will people think?

You make the whole family look bad.

The child then becomes responsible for protecting the family from external judgement.

This can produce considerable anxiety and perfectionism.

The child may learn that acceptance depends upon maintaining an image. Private difficulties must not be discussed because disclosure would bring shame upon everyone.

In adulthood, the patient may continue hiding mental-health problems, relationship difficulties, financial concerns or experiences of abuse because speaking feels disloyal.

The shame is not only personal. It is tied to the family’s identity and reputation.

Culture, Community and Social Expectations

Shame also develops within wider cultural and community settings.

Every community communicates expectations about what a respectable person should look like, how a family should behave, what success means and which difficulties should remain private.

A person may feel ashamed of being unmarried, divorced, unemployed, childless, mentally unwell or unable to fulfil a traditional family role.

Another may feel ashamed because their sexuality, gender expression, religion or way of living conflicts with the expectations of the surrounding community.

These experiences need to be understood carefully.

It would be too simple to divide societies into cultures of shame and cultures of guilt. People within the same culture differ greatly, and families interpret cultural expectations in different ways.

The psychotherapist needs to understand the particular social world of the patient.

What would disclosure mean in that family or community?

What consequences did the patient realistically fear?

Was the shame imposed through prejudice, exclusion or discrimination?

Did the patient internalise a social judgement that continues even after leaving that environment?

A person may consciously reject the old values while still feeling emotionally governed by them.

They may know that there is nothing wrong with their identity or choices, yet continue feeling exposed and unacceptable.

Emotional Neglect and the Shame of Having Needs

Shame does not always develop through direct criticism or humiliation.

It can also emerge when the child’s emotional needs are repeatedly ignored.

A child may seek comfort and receive little response. They may cry and be told to stop being difficult. They may feel frightened and discover that adults are irritated rather than reassuring.

The child cannot easily understand that the adult lacks emotional availability.

Instead, they may conclude that their need itself is excessive or shameful.

They begin suppressing feelings because asking for support creates discomfort in others.

The child may become highly independent and appear mature. But the independence may have developed through the belief that dependency is humiliating.

As an adult, the patient may feel ashamed when they need comfort, become ill or cannot manage alone.

They may delay seeking psychotherapy because needing help feels like evidence of failure.

Even after treatment begins, they may apologise for being distressed or worry that their emotions are too much for the psychotherapist.

The original shame concerned not only what the child did. It concerned the fact that they needed anything at all.

Physical and Sexual Abuse

Physical and sexual abuse can create profound shame, even though the child is not responsible for what was done to them.

The child may feel ashamed of their body, fear, helplessness or inability to stop the abuse. They may feel responsible because they did not disclose it, because they obeyed the abuser or because the abuse continued.

They may also feel shame about involuntary bodily reactions.

These reactions do not indicate consent, but the child or later adult may interpret them as evidence of participation or badness.

Abusers sometimes deliberately create shame in order to maintain secrecy.

The child may be told that nobody will believe them, that they caused the event or that disclosure will destroy the family. They may be threatened with punishment or rejection.

The shame then becomes part of the control.

The child is not only frightened of the abuser. They are frightened of what other people will think if the experience becomes known.

This can make later disclosure extremely difficult.

A patient may spend many years unable to speak about what happened. They may fear that the psychotherapist will see them as contaminated, damaged or somehow responsible.

The patient may know intellectually that they were abused while still feeling emotionally ashamed.

This demonstrates again that shame does not always depend on wrongdoing. It can arise from what was inflicted upon the person and from the meanings that became attached to the experience.

Feared Events and Internal Experience

There are also patients whose shame is connected with something they feared might happen rather than with an event that can be clearly established.

A child may have lived in an environment in which sexual, physical or emotional threat felt constantly present. They may have witnessed behaviour, overheard conversations or experienced interactions that created intense fear without being able to understand them.

Later memories may be fragmented, uncertain or mixed with dreams and fantasies.

The psychotherapist must proceed carefully.

It would be unwise to assume automatically that every feared or remembered event occurred exactly as described. It would be equally unwise to dismiss the patient because the external facts remain uncertain.

The internal experience still requires understanding.

The child may have lived with terror, confusion and a sense of contamination. Those experiences can have lasting psychological effects regardless of whether every detail can be objectively verified.

Psychotherapy is not a criminal investigation.

Where information suggests that somebody remains at risk or that criminal conduct requires action, safeguarding and legal responsibilities must be considered. But the psychotherapeutic task remains focused on how the experience has affected the patient and how it continues to operate in the present.

Why Establishing the Facts Is Not Enough

Some professionals may concentrate heavily on determining exactly what happened because the event appears to be the key to the problem.

Accurate information is important. It can help establish reality, responsibility and safety.

But factual clarification alone does not necessarily alter the internal effect.

A patient may know exactly what happened and remain overwhelmed by shame decades later.

Another may receive confirmation that they were not responsible, yet continue feeling contaminated, weak or damaged.

The event has already entered the patient’s emotional life. It has become connected with the body, identity, relationships and expectations of how others will respond.

This is why the psychotherapist must keep returning to the effect.

How did the child understand what happened?

What conclusions did they draw about themselves?

What did they fear other people would think?

What did they have to hide?

How did the experience influence later relationships and behaviour?

The patient is not usually entering psychotherapy only because the facts are unclear. They are entering because the experience continues to affect everyday life.

Major Events and Apparently Minor Events

It is tempting to assume that the most severe external events will always produce the greatest shame.

Often they do have profound effects. But psychological impact cannot be calculated only from the visible seriousness of the event.

A relatively small incident may become emotionally enormous for a particular child.

A child may spill a drink at an important family gathering and be publicly humiliated. Another may be laughed at after answering a question incorrectly. A parent may make one cruel remark about appearance that remains active for decades.

The event may appear minor to an adult observer. For the child, it may have occurred at a moment of great vulnerability and become attached to a larger fear of rejection.

The meaning is individual.

One child may recover quickly because the event is later repaired. Another may receive no reassurance and conclude that the humiliation revealed something permanently wrong with them.

This is why simple comparisons are unhelpful.

The patient should not be told that their experience was insignificant because somebody else endured something more severe.

The psychotherapist needs to understand why this event, in this person, at this stage of development, acquired such enduring power.

Shame Memories and Adult Identity

Some childhood experiences become central memories around which the adult continues to organise identity.

The person may repeatedly return to the moment when they were laughed at, rejected, exposed or treated as inferior.

The memory is not held only as something painful that occurred. It becomes proof of who the person believes they are.

The adult may think:

That was the moment everybody saw what I really am.

I was always the ugly one.

I was always the stupid child.

I never belonged.

Later experiences are then interpreted through this conclusion.

A partner’s criticism confirms that they remain unacceptable.

A workplace mistake confirms that they are incapable.

Social anxiety confirms that they never learned how to belong.

Research has found that shame memories can become closely connected with identity, depression, anxiety and social fear. This helps explain why some events remain emotionally active long after childhood has ended.

The memory continues to operate because it has become part of the person’s explanation of themselves.

The Child’s Strategy for Survival

Children develop different ways of surviving shame.

One child becomes quiet and tries not to attract attention.

Another becomes highly successful and perfectionistic.

Another continually pleases adults and avoids disagreement.

Another attacks first, humiliating other children before they can humiliate them.

Another creates a humorous personality and turns every difficulty into a joke.

These responses may appear very different, but each can protect against exposure.

The child is trying to find a way to remain connected, avoid rejection and preserve some sense of control.

The strategy may have been highly effective at the time.

The difficulty is that it can continue operating in adulthood long after the original environment has disappeared.

The quiet child becomes an adult who cannot express needs.

The perfectionistic child becomes an adult who experiences every mistake as collapse.

The compliant child cannot establish boundaries.

The attacking child humiliates others whenever they feel criticised.

Psychotherapy does not simply condemn these strategies. It tries to understand why they became necessary and whether they are still protecting the patient or now limiting their life.

How Childhood Shame Appears in Adult Relationships

Childhood shame often becomes most visible in present relationships.

The patient may expect partners, friends, employers and the psychotherapist to respond as earlier adults did.

They may fear criticism before it occurs. They may conceal mistakes, apologise excessively or become defensive when questioned.

A partner’s disappointment may feel like complete rejection.

A manager’s correction may produce days of self-attack.

A disagreement with the psychotherapist may awaken fear that treatment will end.

The adult may recognise that the present person is different from the parent, teacher or peer involved in childhood. Emotionally, however, the old expectation remains active.

This is one of the ways the past enters the present.

The patient is not deliberately confusing people. Their mind has learned to anticipate humiliation and attempts to protect them before it occurs.

Understanding this pattern is an important step, but it does not remove it immediately.

The patient needs repeated experiences in which mistakes, needs and disagreements can be tolerated without humiliation or abandonment.

The Beginning of Therapeutic Understanding

When childhood shame first emerges in psychotherapy, the patient may feel relieved to find an explanation. They may begin recognising that current self-criticism has a history.

But the psychotherapist must avoid offering one simple conclusion.

Not every adult difficulty is caused by childhood, and not every painful childhood event has the same meaning.

The work has to remain individual.

The psychotherapist and the patient gradually examine how the early experience was understood, what the child needed, what remained unspoken and how the old shame now appears in everyday life.

The aim is not to blame parents, teachers or communities for everything that followed.

It is to help the patient recognise that the negative view of themselves did not arise in isolation and may not represent an objective truth.

What once felt like the child’s essential defect may begin to be understood as a conclusion formed within a particular relationship and environment.

This creates the first possibility of change.

The patient may begin to see that the shame belongs to their history without having to remain the final definition of who they are.

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