This is How Shame and Guilt Trap You in the Chronic Stress Cycle
I think a lot of people who end up chronically stressed, particularly the ones who could have given themselves a break but never did, carry a lot of guilt and shame. From my perspective, many of them have been carrying that guilt or shame with them since they were children. And it was given to them by another person, usually an adult.
The tragic irony is that this guilt and shame is something that both causes and traps you in chronic stress.
As I shared before: researchers have seen that their clinical burnout patients all seem to have something in common. And that is the fact that they display unhealthy coping mechanisms when it comes to stress. This is in stark contrast to people who only experience short-term stress, and then seek to solve their troubles within the first three months. (The act of taking action quickly on stress shows that these people are coping in a healthy way.)
The clinical burnout study subjects however… They do not ask for help or seek it for themselves. They press onward without complaining. They considered living in stress to be normal for them. Often, they were unaware of their stress until they reached their breaking point.
As I reflect on my own experience with chronic stress and burnout, I have to ask: why do we not ask for help or help ourselves? Why do we push ourselves past limits and think that’s normal?
Yes, we display an unhealthy use of the perseverance coping mechanism.
The researchers are careful to point out that a perseverance coping mechanism can be healthy as long as you have control over your situation.
But then, why are there so many people who are chronically stressed or burned out who could have given themselves a break but didn’t?
There is a perceived lack of control. There’s something inside of you that won’t let you care for yourself the way you’d care for others.
I want to take a moment before going on to acknowledge that society-wide we are living under unique and highly stressful conditions that humans have never really lived with before. There are existential crises occurring while we can only watch, there is an epidemic of overwhelming, constant distractedness, there is major wealth inequality, unhealthy corporate expectations for worker productivity, and a culture that denies that you are human. This is all very much occurring around us, and I’m not trying to ignore that fact.
But there’s another aspect I think it’s worthwhile to examine: how come you never felt able or allowed to protect yourself from stress within your circle of control?
As I reflect on myself during that time, it strikes me that it was because I felt like I had no control. I didn’t feel safe to ask for help, and I didn’t feel like I deserved the self-care that I needed. After my breaking point, I had to teach myself how to self-care and learn what that looked like.
Isn’t that silly? Something that appears so simple on the face of it was an actual challenge for me to understand.
This is where I come to the guilt and the shame of it all.
Along the way, I read two books that are relevant here:
Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect by Jonice Webb, PhD, and
When the Body Says No by Gabor Mate
I learned in Running on Empty that you can be emotionally neglected in your childhood. What that means is that all humans require emotional nurturing from the moment of birth into their adult years. You need different things at different times, but the primary requirement is that your adults be emotionally attuned to you. You need to be able to express your emotions safely, learn about them, and learn how to manage them and direct them constructively. When your adults do not allow the expression of emotion or support your experience and understanding of emotion, you are being emotionally neglected. You are not feeling loved, even though you may be being fed and taught the ABC’s.
As a child, it’s an extremely vulnerable position to be in, when you recognize that your adults don’t love you. Evolutionarily speaking, not being loved by the adults means you’re more likely to get left behind. And as a child, if you’re left behind, you will die. So you start trying to find ways to get their love.
You start trying not to be a burden and often the adults perceive your emotions to be burdensome so you learn to hide your emotions from others and may feel intense shame when they come out. You start being really hard on yourself, pushing for perfection, and learning to meet the needs of the adults so maybe they’ll like you. You don’t learn to meet your own needs.
“The natural human experience of simply having feelings becomes a source of secret shame. “What is wrong with me?” Is a question she may ask herself.” - Running on Empty, page 87 by Dr. Jonice Webb
This guilt and shame over emotions or having normal human needs is tied in with depression, emotional numbing, and hiding your feelings from others. You think to yourself that you have no excuse to not be happier in your life, because “nothing is wrong”. (But, oh boy, is there something wrong.)
Next, while reading When the Body Says No I noticed that many of Gabor Mate’s patients were emotionally neglected (or worse). If you’ve read this book, you’ll know that it’s an exploration of how lifelong stress sourced from unhappy childhood environments seems to lead to chronic disease in adults. I noticed that a lot of these people struggled with the stress of threatened relationships and had learned to suppress parts of themselves to try to re-secure those relationships. A lot of this seemed to come from childhood experiences of feeling unloved and trying to secure the love of the adult. If you will, it was like the lifelong suppression of the self and the stress from these insecure attachments eventually squeezed its way out in the form of chronic disease.
(I imagine it like those videos of the machine squashing random objects and as the pressure builds that material inevitably squeezes out the sides.)
At the very least, this internalized guilt and shame over being a human turns into chronic stress as an adult. You’ve lived under pressure for as long as you can remember, and have gotten so good at neglecting your own needs that when this manifests as chronic stress or burnout in adulthood, you’re left with no healthy tools to manage it.
I remember the shock and shame of realizing that I was “crumbling under pressure”. I used to wonder ‘What’s wrong with me?’, ‘Why is no one else around me also crumbling?’, and ‘Am I just weak? A pathetic excuse for a human being?’
The only way I knew to deal with this crumbling and to push harder. To cover up my mistakes and brain fog. To pretend like I was fine.
This obviously did not help, and eventually I crumbled all the way down into full burnout.
The guilt and shame of being a human and having needs, combined with my perceived failure as a “worker” created a trap. This trap of guilt and shame prevented me from helping myself or seeking help until I eventually reached my breaking point. For me, the breaking point was a wake-up call that I’m allowed to and could solve this problem and learn to care for myself.
(If you’re a childhood emotional neglect person, I think it’s pretty common to only perceive any value in yourself around “working” or what energy you can give away to others.)
I started researching, as you know. But I also started learning about my childhood and how it had shaped me into the person I am today. I learned that I am not a failure, but simply a product of my experiences. I learned to give myself some of that compassion I’m always giving to others. I also learned that I can find new ways of being to help myself live a happy and healthy life.
And you can too.
If any of this has resonated with you, there is more relevant information you can find on my blog, on my social media, and in the books I mentioned above. As always, I’m here for you if you want direct one-on-one support and you can schedule a free call here if you want to talk.
