1718 || generational shame || book club

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Welcome to the Make Your Damn Bed Podcast. A daily motivation podcast,

designed to help you get out of bed every morning with a little company from me,

Julie America. If you struggle with consistency,

let's build a little momentum together, whether you make your bed or not.

Good morning sunshine. Welcome to another day of the Make Your Damn Bed Podcast.

Over the last few days, we've been reading from John Bradshaw's book,

Healing the Shame that Binds You. As always, it's linked in the show notes,

and I highly suggest you check it out. This book in particular has been infinitely helpful to me,

personally, and has also helped me repair some of my relationships.

So yesterday, we talked about how when you start developing toxic shame

through various stages of your life, you learn to your dismay that you only feel loved when

you aren't being yourself. So you build this false self to protect yourself from this deep

toxic shame. According to Bradshaw, quote, toxic shame is primarily fostered in your significant

relationships. If you don't value somebody, you can't be shamed about what he or she says or does.

So toxic shame typically begins with our source relationships. If our primary caregivers are

shame-based, they will probably act shameless and then pass that toxic shame onto us.

You can't teach self-value if you don't value yourself.

Toxic shame is multi-generational. It's passed on from one generation to the next,

and shame-based people find other shame-based people to get married to and have children with.

But the major outcome of this will be a lack of intimacy. It's very difficult to let someone get

close to you if you feel defective, or if you feel flawed as a human being. This leads to a lot

of poor communication, non-productive circular fighting, manipulation, games, vying for control,

withdrawal, blaming, and confluence. Confluence is the agreement never to disagree.

This creates a pseudo intimacy. Later in the same section, he talks about how part of the work of love

is listening. Children are really clear about what they need, and they tell us in no uncertain terms.

We need to listen to them, but this requires a fair amount of emotional maturity.

If you want to listen well, you have to have your own needs met. If you're needy,

it's really hard to listen to other people's needs. Our neediness is like a toothache.

When we're shame-based, we can only focus on our own ache. And that means the child becomes

shamed whenever they need something from the adult because the child's needs are now clashing

with the parent's needs. And needy children become insatiable. They have this whole that develops

in their soul, created by the unresolved grief and developmental dependency deficits. This makes

them adult children. They can never get enough as adults. Throughout the next few sections, Bradshaw

shares his own personal examples of how toxic shame has developed through his life, and he would

take it into relationships, and even his marriage, followed by a deep dive into another example

of the development of toxic shame over time and how it impacts our relationships, our behaviors,

and our energy. But I want to focus in on the shame-based families and the multi-generational illness

that it is. According to Bradshaw, toxic shame is multi-generational because it is a secret,

and because it's hidden in our families, there's no way to uproot it. There are probably deep,

shameful secrets in your family that are family secrets that are not passed down but instead

preserved and protected in the generations of people hiding it, hiding the crimes, hiding the

violence, hiding the financial disasters, or whatever else it might be. And though these secrets

are never confronted, they are acted out through toxic shame. And this is the power of toxic shame.

The pain and the suffering of shame generate automatic and unconscious defenses.

Freud called these defenses by various names, things like denial, idealization of your parents,

repression of your emotions, and dissociation from your emotions. What is important to note

is that we can't know what we don't know. Denial, idealization, repression, dissociation,

these are all unconscious survival mechanisms. And because they're unconscious, we lose touch with

the shame, hurt, and pain that they cover up. We cannot heal what we cannot feel. So without

recovery, it gets carried on for generations and passed down. Next, Bradshaw goes through the

specific ways and specific examples of how this can manifest in family systems, specifically

starting with passing on secrets or shame-based family rules. Quote, in shame-based families,

the rules consciously shame all of the members. Generally, however, the children receive the

majority brunt of the shame. Power is a cover-up for this. Power is frequently hierarchical.

Dad can yell at anybody. Mom can yell at anybody, but dad. The oldest can yell at anyone,

but mom and dad. And the youngest is left to take it out on the cat. And this is a hierarchy

that I've been referencing, especially in my service industry job for years. But I think it's

important to call out. But the next thing I want to highlight is Bradshaw's feature of dysfunctional

family rules. He talks about max. An example he's been using throughout the book to demonstrate

how toxic shame develops and how it manifests. And so in the next section, he shares some dysfunctional

family rules that may lead to toxic shame, the first being related to control or chaos. Quote,

one must be in control of all interactions, feelings, and personal behavior at all times.

Control is your major defense strategy for shame. Or it must be chaos all the time, so you never

have to take accountability. The second rule is perfectionism or anime. Anime is deviance or alienation.

But this means you must always be right in everything you do, or you fear and avoid every negative

opinion. So you don't do shit. The point is you fear the negative and you've organized your

life around it. Whether that means tapping out completely or tapping and completely, you know

that you will never measure up. So you live according to your externalized image. The third rule

in a dysfunctional family is blame. When things don't turn out as planned, you can blame yourself

or you can blame others. This is a defensive cover-up for shame. It maintains the balance

in the dysfunctional family system, especially when the hierarchy for control has broken down.

The fourth is the denial of the freedoms. The five freedoms, first enunciated by Virginia

Satir, described full personal functionality. Each freedom has to do with a basic human power,

the power to perceive, to think and interpret, to feel, to want and choose, and the power to imagine.

In shame-based families, the perfectionist rule prohibits the full expression of these powers.

It says you shouldn't perceive, think, feel, desire or imagine, in the way that you want to.

You should do these the way the perfectionistic ideal demands.

The fifth rule is no talking. This prohibits the full expression of any feeling,

any need or want. In shame-based families, you gotta hide your true feelings. Otherwise,

we'd have to call out the shame. The sixth rule is not listening. Everyone is so busy using their

energy to defend themselves or play by their old rigid rules that no one hears anything from the

others' truest selves. The seventh is not to make mistakes, because again, mistakes reveal

your flawed, vulnerable self. And to acknowledge a mistake is to open yourself up to scrutiny,

so you cover them up, and if someone else makes them, you shame them.

Eight is unreliability. You cannot expect reliability in relationships, because you can't be

disappointed if you never trusted anybody to begin with. Nine is not to trust. Since no one feels

validated or listened to, there's unpredictability and unreliability, and so nobody develops basic

trust in themselves or in others. Now, naturally, these rules and dysfunctional families are not

posted on a refrigerator door. There's no sign you can buy from home goods, but they're the

operative principles that govern the families in their interpersonal relationships.

And this governs a lot of Western world families. And then when we add normal family issues

to cover up that shame, like alcoholism, physical abuse, violence, incest, etc., you get major

dysfunctionality. When the adult in the family is the all-powerful, all-knowing king or queen and

can't be questioned, the child then is held responsible for everything, including the parent's

anger. But as we know, if you need violence to maintain a system, it is not a system worth

maintaining. And coercion, isolation, withdrawal of love, lying, duplicity, manipulation, ignorance,

and physical beatings are all violent methods to increase toxic shaming. If this sounds familiar,

like it did for me, I want you to know there is a way out. That though it has been passed on

for generations, it doesn't have to continue to be. In fact, you're on the right track, simply

by being open to this information, because calling out shame is what brings it to the light,

so it cannot fester and become a bigger problem. Of course, eventually we'll talk about more specific

ways to uproot toxic shame, but for now, just have faith that it's not hopeless. And if you can call

it out when you notice it, you're on your way to rectifying it. Either way, just know I love you so

much. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day, and I will talk to you tomorrow while you make

your damn bed. Goodbye, cutie.

If you have anyone in your life you think might be interested in hearing what I have had to say,

it also makes a huge difference in the sustainability and my ability to make this something worth

sharing. So if you have questions or want specific advice, you can email me at nydbpodcast.gmail.com.

In the meantime, I've been your host, Julie America. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day,

and I'll talk to you tomorrow while you make your damn bed.

With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One bank guy is so

passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about

no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how most Capital One cafes are open seven days a week

to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends, it's pretty much all he talks about.

In a good way. What's in your wallet?

Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash bank Capital One NA member FDIC.

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