Why Interpersonal Trauma Is More About Shame Than Fear
- joannacheek
- May 8
- 4 min read
Here’s how trauma is a social problem that requires a social cure.
Trauma is not only a disorder of fear but of shame, Harvard University trauma researcher and psychiatrist Judith Herman told me when discussing her new book, Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice.[1]
"It shakes your trust in people," she says. "It affects your sense of self, your sense of relationships, and your sense of safety in the world."
It makes sense that shame is the predominant emotion of relational trauma. When a distressing event is not interpersonal, such as an earthquake, we develop a heightened fear alarm to ensure we don't miss the next physically threatening event. But when people harm us, shame is the more appropriate alarm.
As I've discussed, our shame alarms warn us that others are not safe to hold our vulnerable parts and may reject or harm us if we are to show ourselves fully. So when we experience interpersonal harm, it's adaptive to make our shame alarm more sensitive—monitoring others for the slightest sign of rejection or guarding ourselves by hiding any potential vulnerabilities that could be unsafe in the hands of others.
My alarm system is extremely sensitive. I'm the canary who can detect interpersonal danger months before anyone else. This does mean that I marinate in shame most of the time, but I'm now able to see it for what it is—a well-tuned alarm—and not take it so personally. Shame says nothing about my worthiness; it's simply an alarm signal indicating that the people around me may be rejecting me.
Everyone understands shame differently. Brené Brown, a research professor of social work at the University of Houston, uses a grounded theory method to define shame. [2] After interviewing hundreds of people about how they view shame and then reviewing all that's been published about it, she landed on one common definition that fits all these different sources:
“Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love, belonging, and connection.”
This definition shows the impact of our evolutionary shame alarm when our thinking minds get a hold of it: We concoct the story that we are the problem rather than its intended purpose of alerting us to situations where others may be rejecting or unsafe. In this way, shame has nothing to do with our actual worthiness and everything to do with how safe those around us are.
It makes sense for our minds to take this shame signal and then displace the blame onto ourselves: We have more agency if we're the problem. Then, it's within our control to fix it.
Blaming ourselves feels more empowering than acknowledging that the people we depend on for survival and belonging are unsafe.
This is how interpersonal harm leads to Brown's definition of shame. When we are faced with threatening social situations where we are powerless to be hurt by others, our adaptive brain convinces us that we're the problem to maintain a sense of agency in a situation where we don't have any. We believe we are flawed and unworthy of belonging as a way to maintain hope for a better future. It's how we keep some of the power that others ripped away from us. It's a fantasy that it's our fault, but it keeps away the anguish of losing hope in those we depend on to survive and humanity itself.
This is why recovering from trauma involves healing the wider communities around us. We need to restore our belief in the safety of others and our belonging in just communities. Only then can our screaming shame alarms silence.
Brown describes the antidote to shame as sharing the parts of us that carry these stories of unworthiness to those who are safe enough to hold it. In this way, when these vulnerable parts are met with safety and acceptance, we can learn that there's nothing inherently wrong with us. Instead, the shame belongs on the shoulders of those who have hurt or rejected us.
Shame thrives in secrecy, silence, and judgment, Brown teaches. That's why Herman defines trauma as a social problem that requires a social cure. We need to collectively bring it out of the shadows to heal the shame that survivors typically carry alone. But many of us would prefer to keep these dark parts of humanity hidden as it's too disturbing to bear.
"It's hard to talk about trauma if you don't have a social movement that names the problem because the bystanders and the wider community would just as soon not think about it," Herman told me.
We often choose our comfort by turning away instead of sharing in the pain of humanity's cruelty and injustice with trauma survivors. It's easier to deny that a sexual predator is capable of his cruelty because he's a "nice guy," that racism exists at all, or that our privilege comes at the cost of systemic oppression of others. And it's easier to blame the victim—she was "asking for it" or that the cultural genocide of residential schools was needed as Indigenous people were "unfit" parents.
That's why anti-war and women's movements, #MeToo, Every Child Matters, and Black Lives Matter play such a vital role in healing the split-off fragments of our traumas that hide in plain sight. We need to hold the pain of trauma with its survivors by acknowledging that this darkness lives within our communities.
"When survivors receive acknowledgment and apologies and amends from their communities, it restores the survivor's faith in humanity; it restores a sense of belonging," Herman says.
Healing requires social justice.
References
[1] This interview first appeared in: Cheek, J. (2023). Healing Doesn’t Happen in Private: An Interview with Trauma Pioneer, Dr. Judith Herman. The Walrus. https://thewalrus.ca/healing-doesnt-happen-in-private-an-interview-with-judith-herman/
[2] For more information on Brown’s use of grounded theory, see https://brenebrown.com/the-research/
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