I went looking for more information on the negative impact of shame on our children. Quite frankly, there's not a lot of concrete information out there in cyberspace. But the prevailing opinion of those who study and write about shame includes these tenets:

1. Shame is a negative emotion and can easily become chronic - i.e. not related to the "fault" of the person feeling ashamed. There is a lot of discussion of shame in conjunction with victims of abuse, especially sexual abuse and the way that shame alters their lives.
2. Many professionals link long-term shame with depression, anxiety, OCD, personality disorders, addictions, and eating disorders.
3. Shame is at the root of low self-esteem.
4. Shaming messages received in childhood are more difficult to overcome than shame felt by adults.
5. There is no one universal facial expression for shame, making it very difficult for others to know when a person is feeling shame versus another negative emotion. Because it is a "hidden" emotion, it may produce very harmful, lasting negative effects on a person's view of themselves and of the world around them.
6. Feelings of shame often impede a child's recovery in therapy.
7. Shame is often expressed through violence - researchers often call this "shame-fury". While some researchers believe that violent acts are perpetrated by people who "have no shame", many now believe that chronic or acute shame is at the center of a person's ability to become violent, because intense shame produces anger.

So what does this mean for us special parents of special kids? My take on this is two-fold. First, of you're parenting a child who has been abused or neglected, understanding the role of shame is paramount. Time and time again, literature points out that traumatized people develop shame related to the trauma. We need to understand that there is a component of shame and self-blame that may be manifested through our children's behaviors. Their self-image will be impacted. As LuLu was working through the shame she felt, she would express this in age-appropriate ways by saying things like "I'm trash and you should throw me away." This was incredibly difficult to hear, but she needed to be able to express this, as it was what she was thinking/feeling.

Secondly, we have to work very hard as parents of children with disabilities (even if they haven't been traumatized) not to reinforce negative messages. The world tells our children they are different, less, flawed. It happens all the time, regardless of how much we try to stop it or don't want to see it. We have all experienced those social interactions, the sideways glances, the disapproving "tut tut" in relationship to our children's behaviors or the accommodations we make for them.

Some literature out there correlates shame with trust and talks about children who feel safe and are in a trusting relationship feel less shame. Hmmm...makes a case for strong positive attachment parenting. Shame and Attachment...good thing that's a topic for one of the workshops at ADN's upcoming conference. Can't wait to hear what Larry Smith, an attachment therapist in Maryland, has to say about it all!

I have no wonderful insightful conclusions from my cyberspace search for the effects of shame, except to say that shame is a profound negative emotion. While a case could be made that healthy shame is necessary for a moral society -- much of the shame children with special needs feel is based in issues beyond their control and has a very unhealthy impact on their psychological well being.

The one very revolutionary idea I found is below (and will be of interest to parents of special kids researching biomedical interventions): This is from the results of a study conducted in 2002 by Sally S. Dickerson, MA, Margaret E. Kemeny, PhD, Najib Aziz, MD, Kevin H. Kim, PhD and John L. Fahey, MD of the University of California where they measure the tumor necrosis factor- receptor levels (sTNFRII), an indicator of proinflammatory cytokine activity and the cortisol levels of participants who were writing about a shameful event i their lives.

In the current study, we verify that inducing self-blame can result in elevated levels of shame and guilt. We also show that these self-blame inducing conditions result in alterations in the immune system, particularly activation of proinflammatory cytokine activity. Finally, we show that these cytokine changes are particularly tied to the experience of shame. To our knowledge, there are no other published studies that evaluate the acute effects of shame on immunological parameters. We also propose a model that provides an adaptive link between the experience of shame and the induction of proinflammatory cytokine activity. This model is based on a growing literature indicating that cytokines can affect mood, cognition and motivation and may play an adaptive role in the body’s response not only to pathogens but to other threats as well.

Hmmmm...shame causing a break down in the immune system...interesting concept!