Have you ever felt bad about yourself and wound up drinking too much or bingeing on something like food, porn, or something equally unhealthy? If that bad feeling is the often overlooked feeling of shame, then you’ve found something that lies at the heart of many people’s addictions.
How Widespread is Shame and Addiction?
Especially while a pandemic is currently going on, addiction is even more widespread than it normally is. We had an opioid epidemic even before that, so you can imagine how much worse things have gotten now. Add to that how bad people feel about themselves either because of their addictive behavior or the feeling of shame that often drives people into addictive or compulsive behavior, and you’ve got a volatile cocktail of two poisonous influences in people’s lives.
Shame is a Quiet Killer
Much has been written about shame in recent years. John Bradshaw wrote a major book on shame in the last 30 to 40 years, and Brene Brown did some important research into it more recently about 10 years ago. What we know about shame is that it is a feeling that although it can be subtle, is a profound experience of being cut off from others. It is a feeling of being somehow bad or defective that is related to people feeling shunned or shunning themselves from the larger social group they would otherwise belong to. When people are having this experience, they will naturally look for solace somewhere...anywhere. If they can’t get it from other people, they will often try to get it from substances or addictive behaviors.
After Shame Starts, Next Comes the Addiction
Once people start self-medicating shame with addictive behavior, they can effectively ‘make the world go away’ for a period of time. Some addictive substances are better at alleviating shame than others. One of those is methamphetamine, which can serve to specifically numb one’s feelings of shame while a person is under the influence. It all depends on what one’s ‘drug of choice’ is, but regardless of that the combination of shame and an addiction will only serve to worsen each other unless it is somehow interrupted by some outside influence. The person who suffers from these two is not likely to reach out to others because of the shame, so the insulating cycle of shame and addiction is self-perpetuating in this case.
How to Break the Cycle of Shame and Addiction
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As scary as this may sound, the only way to break out of this cycle is to interrupt it from outside. Somehow this insular pattern has to be broken out of by reaching out to someone: a trusted friend or family member, someone at an addiction or crisis center hotline, or a counselor or therapist. There isn’t a magic thought or formula that doesn’t involve some form of social support out there. Someone would have already discovered it by now and made millions off of it. The antidote to addiction and shame isn’t possible without other people, no matter how much you would like it to be when in the grips of them. After supportive people have come in, other answers and helps will find their place, but they can only happen after others have broken through the isolation that keeps shame and addiction firmly in their places.
What My Role is in Breaking the Cycle of Shame and Addiction
I’ve been helping my clients to break out of shame and addiction for over 10 years now as a social worker. It’s almost always not easy, and that’s why it takes support from others. What I bring to the table is a set of therapy interventions such as EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and Image Transformation Therapy (ImTT) that can serve to get at the shame to neutralize it. Often the shame is a result of childhood trauma, which is where much of the fuel for the shame comes from. Once this has been eliminated, then people are much freer to be able to freely choose to abstain from addictive substances and behaviors. The focus then is to figure out how to have more balance in one’s life to help avoid addictions going forward. You can call me at the above phone number or fill out the form below for a free consult or screening appointment, depending on what kind of addiction you suffer from. You have every right to be free of enslavement to addictions and shame, so go ahead and make the call to help you have the best chance of a happy future.
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About the author: Scott Kampschaefer, LCSW is a private practice therapist in Frederick, Maryland. He has an extensive background in working with depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder at a clinic for older adults with these disorders in Austin. He now works with adults and adolescents 14 and up in private practice. His new book is entitled The 5 Pillars of Addiction Recovery and is available for purchase on Amazon and in paperback on this website.