Comments on: The Neuroscience of Shame

By: Margaretta

Margaretta — Sat, 07 Jun 2025 08:26:50 +0000

I am grateful for your article and the important contribution to our understanding of shame and impact on brain regions. I am always looking for ways to differentiate CPTSD from neurodivergence and some of the prevalent and obnoxious diagnoses such as borderline personality disorder, Bipolar etc that can be so overwhelmingly detrimental to survivors of childhood trauma but it is quite a journey with new directions at every turn. I will continue reading with great interest and personal and professional curiosity thank you.

By: Jen

Jen — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 12:20:06 +0000

In reply to Blush. This sounds like a possible fawn response. IFS therapy could be very helpful for this. When healing the fawn response it's important to have realistic boundaries around what is and isn't your responsibility....starting with the reality that other people's feelings are not your responsibility, that you can only manage and be responsible for your own feelings, whilst every other person can only manage and be responsible for theirs.

By: Suzanne Newnham

Suzanne Newnham — Sat, 13 Jul 2024 05:05:24 +0000

Thank you Shirley for a wonderful article. I was exploring synonyms for humiliation and shame was one of them. Your connecting of shame to the ANS, and the chronic over-activation to toxic shame makes a lot of sense. My SNS is triggered by high and low pitched sounds, droning mid-range/general background noise, loud sounds, and vibration which goes through my feet and central chest. The SNS produces the hormones and I have an anaphylactoid (not anxiety or panic/hyperventilation) response to the quantity of those chemicals. Since an acoustic shock trauma 17 years ago, and as my cholesterol levels increased I had a severe reaction to a statin (5 days low-dose) which sent my health spiralling downwards from which it has never recovered – despite many treatments. I have spent the last 17 years trying to find how to move out of this debilitating condition (my specialist on a recent report classified my health situation as a very rare complex combination of chronic conditions). I am still alive. I have seen others either with being continually traumatised by their deteriorating condition they die; or suicide because their coping mechanism and resilience has been tested to a point where life is not worth living. My suicidal thoughts started in 2010 as a result of severe side-effects from various medication and at the same time I was not being believed by my primary medical practitioner until it was nearly too late. It’s only that I have a very supportive husband and family, and pain specialist, that I have learned to embrace their joy in life – especially when mine is absent – that I am still here. I live moment to moment throughout the day and night being triggered to various degrees (pain wakes me during the night). Your article on the emotion of shame and its effect on the ANS will give me alternative focus to what I (and my specialist) have been researching for many years. Again, thank you Shirley for your article.

By: Jennifer Lock Oman

Jennifer Lock Oman — Sun, 19 May 2024 20:20:49 +0000

Excellent article, and thank you for your reference to Silvan Tomkins. He was an American Einstein, little understood in his brilliant thinking and dense prose, but a major source in our understanding of toxic shame. You may also want to look at the work of Donald Nathanson, M.D. who took Tomkins’ work and made it accessible for the rest of us!

By: Laiah

Laiah — Wed, 15 May 2024 23:15:08 +0000

Thank you, you are one of the only people I have read who actually encourages the reader, and doesn’t just say cliche things like ‘talk to your therapist’. Thank you for seeing me.

By: Blush

Blush — Fri, 19 Apr 2024 13:02:22 +0000

In reply to Shirley Davis.

Hi,

Can someone help me with this. I go to social events
And when I am there I feel a huge pang of guilt for leaving the person I’m talking to and speaking to other people. I know it’s illogical but I can’t help it.
Is there a way I can soothe my mind or a mantra I can tell myself.

By: What Is the Purpose of Shame? - Courtney Medical Group

What Is the Purpose of Shame? - Courtney Medical Group — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 13:30:33 +0000

[…] https://cptsdfoundation.org/2019/04/11/the-neuroscience-of-shame/ […]

By: Cindy

Cindy — Thu, 17 Aug 2023 19:23:37 +0000

I appreciate the simplified explanation you have given about how are brains are impacted by chronic trauma and toxic shame. I wish I could find a therapist that specifically works with survivors of CPTSD. I am living with it and while CBT has given me the tools to be able to navigate interpersonal relationships and interpret social encounters, I continue to feel a deep sense of shame in my every day life. I lack compassion toward myself, and never put myself first and don’t have a strong sense of self. I struggle with deep bouts of depression. I can’t find a therapist who fits my needs.

By: wilma Eileen LaFayette

wilma Eileen LaFayette — Tue, 27 Jun 2023 08:31:03 +0000

In reply to Tim Ward. I have never known shame to ever be benign. In my 30 plus year of practice, I have not observed it nor have I experienced it. How a disorder or state of mind is defined determines the movement in one direction or another for treatment. I have no desire to teach my clients how to treat "benign" shame. The concept does not compute into anything I have seen in my practice. In one of his early books, John Bradshaw seemed to differentiate shame in this way and despite the delimitation he gave, I was unable to accept then as I do now.

By: Tim Ward

Tim Ward — Sat, 24 Jun 2023 14:44:30 +0000

This is a very informative article. Thank you for writing this.

I’m a little confused at the following:

In this case, when the child’s sympathetic nervous system is triggered, they enter a state of arousal. They feel fear and freeze at first, and then begin to cry. However, because there is no reassurance, the parasympathetic nervous system is not triggered and does not do its job of calming them down.

===The Threat to Relational Bonds in Adulthood===
A child exposed to toxic shame has a conundrum. Their brain experiences the arousal of the sympathetic nervous system and the acceleration of the parasympathetic nervous system at the same time.

The statement “the parasympathetic nervous system is not triggered and does not do its job and calming them down”, which is followed up by “The brain experiences the arousal of the sympathetic nervous system and the acceleration of the parasympathetic nervous system at the same time”

I am confused because it sounds like the parasympathetic does not get activated, yet the next statement states the “acceleration” of the parasympathetic nervous system, in parallel to the sympathetic.

Could you elaborate on this?

Thank You.