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Fear, shame, and guilt are feelings that all of us have experienced and none of us enjoy. However, they’re supposed to be uncomfortable as they are, along with pain, the body’s built in early warning system. They exist to get our attention and provide us with information about the people and environments we encounter so that we can keep ourselves safe and avoid or mitigate danger.
However, for those of us who have experienced abuse, this early warning system can go awry causing us to feel guilt, shame, or fear about things that are healthy and good for us. This can happen with any abuse for any length of time but is especially prevalent in folks who experience child abuse as these misplaced reactions can become ingrained in the patterns and beliefs that make up our personality.
First, you might be wondering, how does this even happen? How can someone learn to misread the body’s danger signals so profoundly? It comes through the behaviors that are reinforced or extinguished by abuse. Abusers often punish you for prioritizing yourself, advocating for yourself, setting boundaries, or even protecting yourself from danger (especially if the danger comes from them.) While rewarding you (via loving behavior or no abuse) for prioritizing them, centering them, and forgetting about your own needs. These abusive patterns can, over time, cause you to believe that engaging in healthy self-love and self-care is actually wrong and to make you feel bad for doing healthy things for yourself.
I see this with survivors of abuse so often. They feel guilty and afraid when they set healthy boundaries. They feel ashamed or panicky when they choose themselves over someone else. Then they take these negative feelings as signs that what they’re doing is wrong because that’s what those feelings can signal to us. BUT they aren’t considering how the conditioning of abuse has trained them to put themselves dead last and allow all kinds of mistreatment in their personal relationships.
This is one of the reasons folks who have been abused tend to get into future abusive relationships. Not only is abuse normalized for them but they’ve been trained to prioritize others over themselves, minimize abusive behavior, and blame themselves for things that were never their fault. This doesn’t even include the strong psychological bonds that develop between an abuser and their victim.
So, the age old question, If I’m someone who feels shame, guilt, or fear when engaging in healthy self-love and care, what the heck do I do about it? I have a few tips.
1) Practice mindfulness so you become more aware of your patterns.
When addressing a mental health concern, one of the first steps is learning more about our patterns so that we have a better understanding of what is happening and can target specific parts of the process for change. Mindfulness, or learning to be compassionately present with yourself and your experience, is critical to this process. In fact, one type of meditation, insight meditation, is designed to help us understand our own mental processes better and I, along with many of my clients, have been amazed at the impact this form of meditation has had on our lives.
It will also be helpful to have a place to share the information that you find. A therapist is great to do this work with but you could also use a supportive, loving friend, an online support group, or even a journal if you don’t feel comfortable sharing with anyone else just yet. The point is to start processing what you’re learning about yourself so you can use that information to create change.
2) Practice emotional regulation skills so you can manage negative feelings in a healthy way.
Negative feelings suck and that’s just all there is to it. We still need to learn to be with them anyway but I think it’s important to honor how painful and difficult they are. That’s why so many of us do all types of things to avoid pain. We drink too much. We hang out with the wrong people. We never sit down or relax. It’s a natural and normal response.
But it’s also a huge contributor to unhealthy behavioral patterns and is an instinct we have to fight against. We don’t want to be drowned in negative feelings either (which a lot of people fear) but find a way to sit with them, manage them, and work with them in a healthy way.
The good news is there are a lot of effective emotional regulation skills out there that you can learn and use to work with your painful feelings in a healthy and life-affirming way. A therapist is a great resource to teach you these but can also do some online research and find a whole host of information out there. Support is helpful when making any behavioral change so find a support group, online group, or even a supportive friend to share your journey with.
3) Do healthy things for yourself despite feeling afraid, guilty, or ashamed.
The fact is at some point you’re going to have to feel afraid, guilty, or ashamed in order to overcome these patterns. If this is something you struggle with, there is no way to get better and never feel negative emotions. In fact, emotional regulations skills are there so we can cope better with the feelings while actually feeling them.
I think accepting this is important to moving forward. I can’t tell you how many folks I’ve worked with who were stuck because they would do everything and anything but feel those painful emotions including put themselves dead last and end up feeling depressed or anxious anyway. Negative feelings are a fact of life and all we can control is how we deal with them not if we do.
4) Set boundaries or end relationships with people who engage in abusive behavior.
Continuing to engage in abusive relationships will only make your growth and healing harder and will prevent you from reaching higher levels of recovery. Abuse is also a trigger of other mental health issues like PTSD, CPTSD, depression, panic, anxiety, and even psychosis. It is imperative that you learn to set boundaries, including being willing to end relationships, if the abusive behavior continues.
Fear, guilt, and shame are normal human emotions and effective warning signs for danger. However, for abuse survivors they can also be a sign of engaging in healthy and self-loving behaviors. In order for survivors to move forward, this must be addressed by increasing awareness of your patterns, learning effective ways to manage your emotions, being willing to tolerate the feelings, and ending or limiting interactions with abusive people.
It is possible to love yourself and prioritize yourself without feeling like a bad person for it.
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