Understanding Toxic Shame: Healing the Wounds of Childhood
I was with a new client, Izzy. She told me how, as a seven-year-old at school, she had accidentally spilled water on her artwork and her first instinct was to look around anxiously to see if anyone had noticed. Heart pounding, she quickly covered the stain with her hand.
It wasn’t just embarrassment.
Even at this early age, Izzy experienced a familiar, heavy feeling she couldn’t name. She could hear her father’s voice in her mind:
“What’s wrong with you? Can’t you do anything right?”
As a therapist specialising in domestic violence, sexual abuse, and complex trauma, I’ve met many people who carry similar burdens from childhood. Izzy’s story reflects a pattern I often see: the development of toxic shame that begins in childhood and shapes adult lives in profound ways.
The Difference Between Healthy Shame and Toxic Shame
Have you ever spilled a drink at a friend’s party and felt a pang of embarrassment? Maybe you apologised, helped clean up, and then moved on.
That’s healthy shame, a short-lived emotion that signals you’ve made a mistake or broken a social rule. It guides behaviour, but it doesn’t define you.
Toxic shame works differently.
It’s not about what you’ve done. It’s about who you believe you are.
“You didn’t just make a mistake – you are the mistake.”
This kind of shame becomes woven into identity. It colours every experience and relationship.
For those who have experienced domestic abuse, sexual trauma, or childhood neglect, toxic shame often becomes the filter through which they view themselves and the world.
The first step to healing is understanding where this shame came from.
Toxic shame takes root early, shaping how we see ourselves before we even understand why.
How Toxic Shame Takes Root in Childhood
Children are especially vulnerable to developing toxic shame. Their brains are still developing and are wired to learn about themselves and their value from their environment, especially their caregivers.
When Caregivers Are Unpredictable or Blaming
When James was growing up, his mother struggled with alcoholism. Some days she was present and loving. On others, she lashed out and told him he was the reason she drank.
Young James couldn’t understand the complexities of addiction. Instead, his developing mind created a simpler explanation:
“There must be something wrong with me.”
Children make sense of the world through an egocentric lens, not because they’re selfish, but because developmentally they can’t yet see that adults’ behaviour is often about the adult, not the child.
When caregivers are consistently critical, unpredictable, or emotionally unavailable, children often internalise this as:
“I am bad. I am the problem.”
Many of these patterns develop in homes where caregivers were emotionally unavailable or unpredictable, something I explore further in my blog on emotionally immature parents.
Domestic Violence: When Love and Fear Coexist
Domestic violence creates particularly fertile ground for toxic shame.
A child watching one parent abuse another learns terrifying lessons:
Love and violence can coexist
Powerlessness is normal
“Something is wrong with us – and therefore, with me”
Shame becomes the explanation for the chaos: “If I were different, maybe this wouldn’t be happening.”
Sexual Abuse and the Weight of Secrets
Sexual abuse adds another layer of shame.
Elena, a client in her forties, remembers her uncle telling her their “special time” was secret because “no one would understand”. The secrecy and boundary violations made her feel different and defective, as if she carried a “dirty secret” inside her.
The natural physiological responses her body had during the abuse (which are automatic, not chosen) further confused and shamed her. Over time, this turned into deep self-blame that outlived the abuse by decades.
Emotional Neglect: When Feelings Are Not Welcome
Even without overt criticism or abuse, emotional neglect can create toxic shame.
When children’s feelings are regularly:
Dismissed: “Stop crying, it’s not that bad.”
Invalidated: “You shouldn’t feel that way.”
Ignored: no one notices or responds
…they learn that their emotional needs are a problem.
This often becomes: “What I feel is wrong; therefore, something is wrong with me.”
Read my blog Understanding Attachment Styles: How Your Early Experiences Shape Your Adult Relationships, to learn more about how early experiences impact our ability to form relationships as adults.
When Shame Leads to Repeated Trauma in Adulthood
One of the most painful patterns I witness in my practice is how childhood toxic shame creates vulnerability to domestic abuse and unhealthy relationships later in life.
When Sarah first came to therapy, she was recovering from her third abusive relationship.
“I keep choosing the same type of person but with a different face,” she said.
“And the worst part is, even while it’s happening, some part of me feels like I deserve it.”
This is the insidious legacy of toxic shame.
Growing up believing you’re inherently flawed makes criticism, and even abuse, feel familiar, sometimes even deserved. The harsh words from an abusive partner echo the inner critic that has been with you since childhood, creating a terrible sense of confirmation rather than violation.
Warning signs that might alarm someone with healthy self-worth can barely register when they align with your deepest beliefs about yourself.
On top of that, people carrying toxic shame often:
Have poorly defined boundaries
Have learned their needs “don’t matter”
Confuse hypervigilance with love
The skill of reading moods, anticipating needs, and becoming invisible when necessary can be mistaken for devotion:
“I know what he needs before he does.”
It’s not unusual to unconsciously seek to resolve old wounds by entering relationships that recreate the same emotional patterns, hoping for a different outcome.
“The devil you know feels safer than the devil you don’t.”
It’s not enough to leave an abusive relationship. Healing also involves challenging the toxic shame that made the relationship feel acceptable in the first place.
If you're curious how toxic shame continues shaping romantic relationships in adulthood, you may also find this guide on how shame shows up in adult relationships helpful.
Toxic Shame in Adulthood: Recognising the Patterns
As Izzy, James, and Elena moved into adulthood, shame evolved from a feeling into a defining lens through which they saw themselves and others.
Izzy became a perfectionist, trying to earn worth through endless achievements.
James developed a “radar for rejection”, scanning constantly for signs people would leave.
Elena built strong walls, keeping everyone at a distance so no one could see – or hurt – the “real her”.
These patterns show up in many forms:
The people-pleaser who believes love must always be earned
The rage-filled partner who projects their shame onto others
The perfectionist whose inner critic blocks risk-taking or vulnerability
The substance user who numbs the unbearable feeling of defectiveness
Underneath these different behaviours sits the same core belief:
“I am not worthy of love.”
These patterns often align with what I describe as the four shame archetypes—different ways the nervous system protects you when you’ve grown up with toxic shame.
The Body Keeps the Score: Shame’s Physical Impact
Toxic shame is not just a story in the mind; it’s also held in the body.
When Elena spoke about her childhood, her shoulders rounded forward, her voice dropped to a whisper, and her eyes fell to the floor. Her body became what she had learned to be: small, invisible, unnoticed.
Trauma survivors often describe physical sensations that accompany shame:
Heaviness in the chest
A hot flush in the face
Emptiness or nausea in the stomach
A strong urge to hide, shut down, or disappear
These sensations can be triggered by something seemingly minor – a mistake, a misunderstood text, even a compliment that clashes with their negative self-image.
The body often recognises shame before the conscious mind does. Learning to notice these physical cues gives us valuable information:
“Something old is being triggered in me right now.”
This awareness becomes the first step in responding differently.
Breaking Free: The Path to Healing Toxic Shame
Healing from toxic shame isn’t about eliminating shame altogether. It’s about changing your relationship with it.
Several strands of healing often weave together:
1. Bringing Shame Into the Light
Shame thrives in secrecy and silence.
Researcher Brené Brown describes how shame can’t survive being spoken and met with empathy. For James, simply naming his experience as “toxic shame” rather than “the truth about me” created enough distance to start questioning it.
In therapy, we create a space where these deeply held beliefs can be gently brought into the open. When Elena described herself as “damaged goods”, that belief was met with compassion rather than agreement. This began to erode the foundations of her shame.
2. Rewiring Through Self-Compassion
Izzy’s inner voice had always echoed her father’s criticism. Speaking to herself kindly felt wrong, as if she was “letting herself off the hook”.
Self-compassion is not self-indulgence or denial. It’s a different way of motivating and soothing ourselves that research shows leads to greater emotional resilience than self-criticism.
It has three components:
Self-kindness; speaking to yourself as you would to a dear friend
Common humanity; remembering that suffering and imperfection are part of being human
Mindfulness; noticing painful feelings without suppressing or fusing with them
For Izzy, this began with simple practices: placing a hand over her heart during stressful moments, acknowledging her pain without judgment, and slowly replacing her father’s voice with a more understanding one.
3. Rewriting Your Narrative
Our stories shape our identity.
People living with toxic shame often have internal narratives dominated by inadequacy, unlovability, and isolation.
Healing involves expanding the story to include:
Strength and survival
Context (what was happening around you)
The ways you coped and protected yourself
James began to see that surviving his childhood required significant strength. The sensitivity he’d always viewed as a liability was actually a deep capacity for empathy. His story widened from “I was too much” to “I adapted as best I could in a painful environment.”
4. Finding Connection That Heals
One of the most powerful antidotes to shame is safe connection.
This might happen in:
Therapy
Close friendships
Support groups
Spiritual or community spaces
For many, therapy is the first place they experience being fully seen without judgment. That relationship becomes a new template:
“If one person can know the truth about me and stay, maybe others can too. And maybe I can begin to stay with myself as well.”
If childhood shame has contributed to distance in your family relationships, this blog on estrangement and grief may resonate too.
Moving On
Recovery from toxic shame is rarely linear. There will be days when your internal critic sounds convincing and the old weight of shame feels stronger than any new perspective.
These moments aren’t a sign you’ve failed. They’re opportunities to:
Notice shame as a state, not a fact
Respond with a little more kindness than you received as a child
Reach out rather than disappear
Toxic shame once functioned as a kind of survival map. It helped you make sense of painful, confusing experiences. It was an adaptation that made sense at the time.
Now, with an adult brain, more resources, and supportive relationships, you have the chance to gently update that map.
Your worth has always existed underneath the shame. It has never been erased – only obscured.
Recognising that worth doesn’t come from magical thinking or affirmations alone. It grows through:
Being treated with dignity and respect
Allowing yourself to be known by safe people
Practising self-kindness in small, repetitive ways
This work asks for courage and patience, but you don’t have to do it alone.
If This Resonated With You
If you recognise yourself in these stories, therapy can help.
At Safe Space Counselling Services, I offer a compassionate, trauma-informed space to explore and heal from toxic shame, childhood wounds, and abusive dynamics.
You can contact me at:
📧 Email: kat@safespacecounsellingservices.com.au
📞 Phone: 0452 285 526
You’re not “too broken” or “too late”. You’re someone who adapted to survive.
Healing is about letting that part of you rest, and slowly building a life where you’re allowed to feel worthy, safe, and enough.
Related Reading
More resources to help you understand shame, safety and healing.
