Self Acceptance as the Antidote to Shame

Shame is a painful emotion which is part of a deep sense of being flawed, unworthy and unlovable (see my article: Overcoming the Emotional Pain of Feeling Unlovable).

Self Acceptance as the Antidote to Shame

Shame often stems from early childhood experiences of trauma including abuse and emotional neglect (see my article: What is the Difference Between Childhood Abuse and Neglect?).

Shame is feeling bad about who you are as opposed to guilt which is feeling bad about something you did (see my article: Understanding the Difference Between Guilt and Shame).

Core Concepts About Shame

• Childhood/Developmental Trauma: Abuse, neglect and punitive parenting often leads to long lasting feelings of inadequacy.

• The Internal Critic: Negative messages from parents and other authority figures are internalized. This creates the internal critic which devalues the individual and makes them feel ashamed of themself (see my article: Making Friends With Your Internal Critic).

Self Acceptance as the Antidote to Shame

• Cultural Expectations: An inability to meet cultural, societal or religious expectations can create feelings of shame.

• Fear of Disconnection: Shame is a response to the fear of being rejected by others. 

• Trauma and Mental Health: Shame is a common outcome of trauma. Shame is also at the root of many other mental health issues (see my article: Shame is at the Root of Most Emotional Problems).

• Social Media and Comparison: Social media can fuel shame through constant comparisons with regard to perceived shortcomings about looks, success or other issues (see my article: Comparison and Judgment Are the Thieves of Joy).

How is Self Acceptance an Antidote to Shame?

Self acceptance is an antidote to shame because it can dismantle a harsh inner critic as well as feelings of isolation and inadequacy.

By developing self acceptance you can overcome the toxic effects of shame.

Self Acceptance as the Antidote to Shame

You can also develop emotional resilience to develop a kinder, more loving relationship with yourself.

How to Develop Self Acceptance

There are many ways you can develop self acceptance including:

• Focusing on your strengths (see my article: Focusing on Your Strengths).

• Journaling to increase your self awareness and self compassion

Self Acceptance as the Antidote to Shame

• Develop an external perspective: Ask yourself what your best friend would say about you

• Meditation: Mindfulness meditation can help to deepen self awareness and compassion

Getting Help in Therapy

If self help strategies aren't working for you, consider getting help from a licensed mental health professional who is trained as a trauma therapist.

Self Acceptance as the Antidote to Shame

By working through unresolved trauma related to your feelings of shame, you can free yourself of your traumatic history so you can live a more fulfilling life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT (for couples), Parts Work (IFS and Ego States Therapy), Somatic Experiencing and Certified Sex Therapist.

I have over 25 years of experience as a trauma therapist helping individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

How Your Early Unmet Emotional Needs Might Be Affecting Your Relationship

Many adults who grew up with emotional neglect or abuse are unaware that they're expecting their partner to fulfill those needs (see my article: What is Childhood Emotional Neglect?).

Unmet Childhood Needs and Adult Relationships

They're unaware of it because these expectations are often unconscious and, therefore, outside of their awareness.

What Can You Reasonably Expect From Your Partner?

So let's look at what's reasonable to expect from a partner.

Your partner can fulfill many emotional needs including:

• Being trustworthy
• Fostering emotional safety
• Being supportive, loving and empathetic
• Being attuned and validating
• Showing appreciation

However, your partner can't make up for early unmet emotional needs from your childhood because those needs stem from early attachment wounds. 

Why Your Partner Can't Make Up For Your Unmet Childhood Needs

Here are some of the reasons why your partner can't make up for your early unmet emotional needs:

• Unmet Childhood Needs Stem From Early Attachment Trauma: Early abuse, emotional neglect or inconsistent care creates early attachment wounds. These conditions can also create insecure attachment and a need for constant reassurance or, conversely, an avoidance of emotional intimacy.

• A Child-Parent Dynamic in Your Adult Relationship: Without realizing it, adults who were emotionally neglected and/or abused can create a child-parent dynamic in their relationship where they expect their partner to provide them with the good parenting they didn't get as a child. This can create emotional and sexual problems in the relationship.

Unmet Childhood Needs and Adult Relationships

• Communication Problems: Many people whose emotional needs weren't met in childhood also learned as children not to ask for what they needed. This inability to ask for what they needed carries over into adulthood. It's not unusual for adults, who didn't get what they needed in childhood, to have childlike expectations that their partner will know what they need without telling their partner. This creates confusion, communication problems and resentment (see my article: Are You Expecting Your Partner to Be a Mind Reader?).

• Confusing Love and Codependency: When adults didn't get what they needed as children, they can confuse love and codependency rather than creating a relationship with healthy interdependency (see my article: What is the Difference Between Codependency and Interdependency?).

How to Cope With Unmet Childhood Needs as an Adult

• Recognize Your Misplaced Expectations: Accept that your partner can't provide you with the nurturance you didn't get as a child and that your partner can never make up for what you didn't get. What you didn't get is a loss and needs to be grieved so you can heal.

Unmet Childhood Needs and Adult Relationships

• Learn to Communicate Clearly: Be aware that if you have an unconscious expectation that your partner should know what you want before you ask, you are acting from a very young part of yourself. This is unrealistic and it's your responsibility to learn to communicate what you want in a clear, tactful way (see my article: Improving Communication in Your Relationship By Avoiding the "4 Horsement of the Apocalypse").

Unmet Childhood Needs and Adult Relationships

• Focus on Healing Yourself: Recognize and accept that your partner isn't your parent and that you need to focus on healing yourself or get help in trauma therapy so you can heal (see below).

• Get Help in Trauma Therapy: A licensed mental health professional who is trained as a trauma therapist can help you to heal from the unresolved trauma, including early unmet emotional needs. There are different types of trauma therapy:

• EMDR Therapy (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)

• Parts Work Therapy: IFS (Internal Family Systems and Ego States Therapy)

• AEDP  (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy)

• Somatic Experiencing
  

Getting Help in Trauma Therapy

If you're struggling with unresolved trauma, you're not alone.

Getting Help in Trauma Therapy

Rather than struggling alone, seek help from a licensed mental health professional who has an expertise in helping clients overcome trauma so you can live a more fulfilling life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, Parts Work Therapist (IFS and Ego States Therapy), Somatic Experiencing, EFT (for couples) and a Certified Sex Therapist.

As a trauma therapist, I have over 25 years of experience helping individual adults and couples to overcome trauma.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

 

 

How Can Unresolved Trauma Affect Your Ability to Know Whether You Feel Emotionally Safe?

In my prior article, Recognizing When You're Safe or Unsafe in Your Interpersonal Relationships, I discussed basic issues about feeling emotionally safe based on your nervous system (Polyvagal Theory), personal history and other relevant factors.

In the current article I'm discussing how trauma can affect your ability to know whether you feel emotionally safe.

Unresolved Trauma and Emotional Safety

Unresolved trauma can have a profound effect on your mind and body. It can also impair your ability to know whether you're safe or not.

What is Psychological Trauma?

Before I discuss the impact of trauma, let's first define trauma.

You can experience trauma emotionally, psychologically and physically due to a distressing event (or events) that overwhelm your ability to cope.

The event can be a single incident like a natural disaster, a robbery, an assault or other types of one-time events (see my article: What is Shock Trauma?).

Trauma can also be ongoing events such as recurrent abuse in a relationship. It can also be related to repeated traumatic events in childhood trauma, also known as developmental trauma.

You can also be impacted by the chronic stress related to trauma on a physical level including:

• Sleep problems
• Chronic pain
• Hypervigilance
• Cardiovascular issues
• Weakened immune system
• Digestive problems
• Inflammatory disorders such as Type 2 diabetes, asthma, arthritis and so on

How Can Unresolved Trauma Affect Your Ability to Know Whether You Feel Safe?

Unresolved trauma can affect your ability to sense safety by keeping you in a constant state of high alert (also known as hypervigilance). This can make it difficult to interpret safe situations from dangerous situations.

Unresolved Trauma and Emotional Safety

Unresolved trauma can also create dissociation where you feel emotionally and psychologically numb. 

Dissociation might have been an effective survival strategy if you were overwhelmed by distressing events when you were a child because it kept you from being completely overwhelmed. However, as an adult, dissociation can have a negative impact on your ability to trust your own judgment or trust other people.

Being either hypervigilant or emotionally numb (dissociated) can impair your ability to know if certain situations are safe or unsafe.

In general, you might have problems connecting with others and forming healthy relationships because you might interpret safe situations as unsafe and unsafe situations as safe.

You might have extreme emotional reactions to relatively small stressors, not react to big stressors or you might have difficulty finding a middle ground.

Unresolved Trauma and Emotional Safety

Unresolved trauma can also impair your ability to deal with conflict. Whereas most people don't like conflict, you might not be able to avoid certain conflicts in your relationships. 

So, if you can't deal with conflict, you might resort to people pleasing (also known as fawning) to avoid conflict and keep the peace--even if it comes at the expense of your  psychological, emotional or physical well-being.

Clinical Vignette

The following clinical vignette is a composite of many different cases to protect confidentiality:

Anna

As an only child, Anna grew up in a family where she experienced emotional abuse, neglect and sexual abuse by her father.  

Unresolved Trauma and Emotional Safety

The sexual abuse began when she was 10 years old. At the time, her mother was in and out of the hospital due to serious chronic health problems. 

During those long stretches of time when her mother was away, her father, who had alcohol problems, would get drunk and come into her room late at night when Anna was sleeping. She would awaken suddenly to discover her father fondling her breasts.  

Not knowing how to respond, Anna froze and her father told her that if she told anyone else that he touched her, she would take her away by Child Welfare and they would make live with strangers in a foster care home.

Anna was frightened and confused by her father's inappropriate touching, but she was even more afraid of being forced to live with strangers, so she didn't tell anyone what was happening at home.

Her teacher noticed that Anna was withdrawn and she spoke to Anna after class to ask her if there was a problem at home. In response, Anna denied any problems at home because she was afraid. After that, Anna's teacher called her home and Anna's father told the teacher that Anna was feeling sad due to the mother's hospitalization.

The father continued to sexually abuse Anna for several months whenever he got drunk. After the first experience, Anna was hypervigilant at night, especially when she heard her father's footsteps approaching her room.  After a while, Anna pretended to be asleep and she numbed herself while her father was touching her. 

After Anna's maternal aunt came to stay with Anna and her father, her father no longer visited her at night.  

As a child, Anna never told anyone about the sexual abuse because she was too afraid. But when she began dating in college, she didn't know how to discern safe situations from unsafe situations.

Her lack of discernment created problems for her because she would sometimes put herself at potential risk by going into the cars of young men she didn't know because she thought she could trust them. In one incident, she was almost sexually assaulted, but her friends, who were nearby, heard Anna yelling and they rushed over to get her out of the car.

In another situation, she was too afraid to accept an invitation to go for a walk with another young man, John, because she didn't know whether or not she could trust him.  Later on, she spoke with her friends, who knew John well, and they told they didn't think she needed to worry.

Over time, Anna continued to see John and she realized she could trust him. Getting to the point where she could trust him wasn't easy. But after they got into a relationship and they talked about being sexual, Anna felt an overwhelming fear of sex. 

Initially, she didn't understand what her fear was about, but she knew she needed help, so she sought out a licensed mental health professional.

Unresolved Trauma and Emotional Safety

After her therapist did a thorough family history, Anna revealed the childhood sexual abuse. It was the first time she had ever told anyone.

Her therapist helped Anna to understand the connection between the sexual abuse and her inability to discern whether she was safe or not in interpersonal relationships. She also helped her to understand the connection between her fear of sex and the abuse.

Using a combination of EMDR therapy and IFS Parts Work therapy, her therapist helped Anna to work through her unresolved trauma.

EMDR and IFS are both safe and effective types of trauma therapy which were developed to help clients to work through unresolved trauma.

Unresolved Trauma and Emotional Safety

The work was neither quick nor easy but, gradually, over time Anna began to feel unburdened by her trauma. She also learned in her trauma therapy how to detect internal and external cues to discern safe situations from possibly unsafe situations.

Over time, Anna and John were able to have pleasurable sex as she worked through her trauma. 

Getting Help in Trauma Therapy

Unresolved trauma can impair your ability to know whether you're safe. It can also have a negative impact on your interpersonal relationships.

Getting Help in Trauma Therapy

Trauma therapy, including EMDR, Parts Work therapy, AEDP, Somatic Experiencing and other types of trauma therapy can help you to work through unresolved trauma in a safe and effective way.

If you feel unresolved trauma has had a negative impact in your life, seek help from a licensed mental health professional who has advanced trauma therapy training and skills.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT (for couples), Parts Work (IFS and Ego States Therapy), Somatic Experiencing and Certified Sex Therapist.

As a trauma therapist, I have helped many individual adult and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at 917-742-2624 during business hours or email me.

What's the Difference Between Emotional Co-regulation and Emotional Self Regulation?

People sometimes confuse the terms "emotional self regulation" and "emotional co-regulation" so I'm addressing the differences in this article.

Co-regulation vs Self Regulation

What's the Difference Between Co-regulation and Self Regulation?

When caregivers provide external support to their children, this is an example of emotional co-regulation, which is a foundational step for developing emotional self regulation.

Whereas co-regulation is the process in which one person helps another person to regulate their emotions, self regulation is the ability to manage your own thoughts, emotions and behaviors.

Both skills, co-regulation and self regulation, work together throughout life.

Let's break it down further:

Self Regulation

• Definition: The internal ability to control your own thoughts, emotions and behaviors without relying on others.

• Examples of Self Regulation:
• Doing breathing exercises on your own to calm down
• Managing frustration during an argument by going for a walk to calm down

• Goal: To respond to a situation thoughtfully instead of reacting impulsively

Co-regulation

• Definition: The process of two or more people working together to manage emotions and behaviors. This involves providing support, structure and warmth to help someone to calm down and learn coping skills.

• Examples: 
• A parent helping a child to calm down by speaking in a gentle tone and providing comforting hugs
• One romantic partner helping another to calm down by listening in an attuned way, holding their hand and gently helping them to take relaxing breaths

• Goal: To help someone to feel safe and understood which, in turn, builds their capacity for self regulation

• Relationship Between Self Regulation and Co-regulation: Co-regulation is an essential step in helping someone to self regulate. A caregiver or partner's ability to self regulate is necessary in order for them to help co-regulate others. 

Clinical Vignette

The following clinical vignette illustrates the relationship between self regulation and co-regulation and how psychotherapy can help. As always, this vignette is a composite of many different cases to protect confidentiality:

Paul:

Paul was a latchkey kid. Both of his parents worked two jobs each so they weren't around when he came home from elementary school. 

There were times when he was at home alone that he thought he heard noises in the house and he was so scared he hid under his blanket until his parents came home. 

He knew his next door neighbors were at home, but his parents told him to never let them know he was home alone because they might call the child welfare bureau and then he would  be taken him away from his parents due to childhood neglect.

His parents explained to him they didn't want to leave him alone in the house, but they both needed to work and there were no other relatives to take care of him. They also couldn't afford childcare, so he would hide in fear until his parents came home.

Since Paul grew up being alone much of the time, he was often without his parents' emotional support, so he didn't learn how to manage his emotions.

His teacher told his parents that Paul had a difficult time calming himself down in school when he was upet. She suspected his parents weren't helping Paul to manage his emotions so she encouraged them to help him--although she didn't know they were often away from home.

By the time he went away to college, he was so anxious he was having panic attacks.  A college counselor referred him to a psychotherapist for help. 

His therapist used her co-regulate skills to help Paul. She also taught him self regulation skills by teaching him breathing exercises and other coping strategies. 

Eventually, he learned to regulate his emotions on his own.

After he graduated college, the skills he learned in therapy helped Paul to self regulate and co-regulate emotions with his new girlfriend, Sara.

Conclusion

Young children usually learn to co-regulate with their parents so they can develop self regulation skills as they get older.  However, there are times when children don't learn these skills because their parents are not around or the parents never learned to regulate their own emotions when they were growing. up so they can't help their children to develop skills they don't have.

Fortunately, people who didn't learn to regulate their emotions have an opportunity to learn as adults in psychotherapy.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT (for couples), Parts Work (IFS and Ego States Therapy), Somatic Experiencing and a Certified Sex Therapist.

I work with individual adults and couples.

As a Trauma Therapist, I have helped many clients to overcome trauma and manage their emotions so they can lead a more fulfilling life.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Also See My Articles:

What is Emotional Regulation in a Relationship?

Managing Your Emotions During Stressful Times

Emotional Regulation: What is the Difference Between Being Calm and Being Numb?

Overcoming Fear of Abandonment in Trauma Therapy

Fear of abandonment is an issue that is more common than most people realize.  

Fear of Abandonment

Prior Articles

In the past, I have written about abandonment issues in prior articles including:

Self Abandonment - Part 1 and Part 2

How to Overcome Fear of Abandonment

The Current Article

The current article will focus on:

• What is Fear of Abandonment?

• What Causes Fear of Abandonment?

• What Are Signs and Symptoms of Fear of Abandonment?

• How Can Trauma Therapy Help to Heal Fear of Abandonment?

What is Fear of Abandonment?

Some of the signs and symptoms of fear of abandonment might include some or all of the following:

• Fear of Rejection: People who have abandonment issues often have a fear of being rejected--even when there is no objective reason to have this fear.

• Difficulty Trusting Others: A fear of trusting others often involves a fear that someone will hurt or leave them.

Fear of Abandonment

• Dependency: A fear of abandonment can lead to someone becoming overly dependent on others to give them reassurance and validation.

• Relationship Problems: This includes getting involved in a relationship too quickly, making unhealthy relationship choices, sabotaging a relationship or staying in an unhealthy relationship to avoid being alone (see my article: Is Your Fear of Being Alone Keeping You in an Unhealthy Relationship?).

• Low Self Esteem: Low self esteem can create difficulties in all areas of life including developing connections with others (see my article: Overcoming Low Self Esteem).

What Causes Fear of Abandonment?

Fear of abandonment can develop in many different ways.

The most common reason for abandonment issues is childhood trauma including:

• Losing a Parent (see my article: Fatherless Daughters)

• Childhood Emotional Neglect (see my article: What is Childhood Emotional Neglect?)

• Inconsistent and/or Chaotic Caregiving (see my article: Dynamics of Adult Children From Dysfunctional Families)

• Physical and/or sexual abuse

Other possible causes:

• Unresolved Trauma: Physical or emotional abuse at any time in life can lead to fears of being abandoned (see my article: Unresolved Trauma Can Negatively Impact Your Ability to Be in Romantic Relationships).

• Relationship Instability: Unstable relationships can create a sense of insecurity.

What Are the Signs and Symptoms of Fear of Abandonment?

Common signs include:

• People pleasing (see my article: Trauma and the Fawn Response)

• Jealousy including:

• Jealousy of other friendships or family relationships

• Jealousy of prior relationships (see my article: Retroactive Jealousy)

Jealousy and Fear of Abandonment

• Problems trusting a significant other's intentions--even when there is no objective reason not to trust

• Difficulty being emotionally vulnerable and sexually intimate

• Needing to feel controlled by a partner

• Needing to control a partner

• Getting involved in a relationship too quickly before getting to know the other person

• Settling for an unhealthy relationship to avoid being alone

How Can Trauma Therapy Help With Fear of Abandonment?

Trauma therapy is a general term for different types of therapy developed specifically to help clients overcome trauma (see my article: How Does Trauma Therapy Work?)

Trauma therapy includes:

• EMDR Therapy

• Parts Work Therapy: Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Ego States Therapy

• AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Therapy)

• Somatic Experiencing

• Hypnotherapy (Also known as Clinical Hypnosis)

Clinical Vignette

The following clinical vignette, which is a composite of many different cases, illustrates how trauma therapy can help to overcome abandonment issues.

Alice

When Alice was five years old, her father left the family suddenly and they never heard from him again.

After her father left, Alice had nightmares almost every night where she saw her father and she would ask him why he left, but the dream always ended before he responded.  When she woke up in the morning, her dream seemed so real that she felt like she had actually seen her father--until she became fully awake and she realized it was a dream.

After her father abandoned the family, Alice's mother had to work three jobs to support the family, As a result, Alice spent most of the time with her elderly maternal grandparents, who criticized Alice's father to her. In response, Alice wanted to tell her grandparents that she loved and missed her father, but she was too afraid to sound like she was contradicting them, so she kept her sadness to herself.

After her father deserted the family, Alice had a hard time making friends. She lacked confidence in herself and she believed the other children didn't like her.  She was also afraid that if she tried to make friends with anyone, she would be rejected.  So, Alice spent a lot time alone in her room.

When she got to high school, she was aware that many people in her school were dating, but her self esteem was so low that she didn't believe anyone would like her.

When she got to college, she met a friendly young woman, Tina, who took Alice under her wing and introduced her to some of the other young women at the college. Tina was so outgoing and friendly that Alice met a lot of people on campus through her, but she still didn't feel confident.

After she graduated from college, Alice moved into an apartment in New York City with Tina. She found a job as a software engineer and she mostly worked on her own. Other than the friends that Tina introduced her to, Alice had no other friends of her own.

She was aware her low self esteem was holding her back personally and professionally, so she sought help in therapy to try to understand why she was having these problems.  She wanted to go out on dates, but she was afraid that if she liked someone, he might reject her.

Fear of Abandonment and Trauma Therapy

Her therapist was a trauma therapist who had advanced skills in trauma therapy.  After her therapist did a thorough family history, she traced Alice's fear of abandonment to her father's disappearance (see my article: Why is Family History Important in Therapy?).

Her therapist used a combination of EMDR Therapy and Parts Work Therapy to help Alice to heal from her trauma.

As Alice began to develop a little more self confidence, she began dating a man she met at a discussion group. Tom was kind, intelligent and patient with Alice but, even though she knew she had no objective reason for not trusting him, she had a hard time letting her guard down when she was with him (see my article: What Does Fear of Abandonment and Fear of Engulfment Look Like in a Relationship?).

Healing from her childhood trauma was neither quick nor easy. But, over time, with the help of her therapist, Alice was able to separate her childhood trauma of being abandoned by her father from her experiences with Tom (see my article: Overcoming Trauma: Learning to Separate "Then" From "Now").

Fear of Abandonment and Trauma Therapy

As she opened up more, her relationship with Tom improved and she was able to make new friends more easily.

Although she felt more emotionally secure with herself, there were still times when she had setbacks but, overall, she felt her life was opening up to new and rewarding experiences.

Conclusion

Abandonment issues usually stem from childhood issues, but they can also develop or become exacerbated by an unhealthy adult relationships or experiences.

Fear of being abandoned rarely, if ever, gets resolved on its own.

Trauma therapy is specifically designed to help clients to overcome trauma.

Getting Help in Trauma Therapy

A skilled trauma therapist can help you to overcome traumatic experiences like fear of abandonment or other unresolved trauma.

Getting Help in Trauma Therapy

Rather than struggling on your own, seek help from a licensed mental health professional who has advanced training and skills in trauma therapy.

Overcoming trauma can help you to lead a more fulfilling life.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT (for couples), Somatic Experiencing and Sex Therapist.

I have over 20 years of experience helping individual adults and couples to overcome trauma (see my article: What is a Trauma Therapist?)

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.