Meaningful Happiness with Dr. Scott Conkright
Meaningful Happiness is a podcast that unpacks the science of emotions, relationships, and personal growth through the lens of Affect Relational Theory (ART), Chronic Shame Syndrome (CSS), and Latalescence—the second act of life where experience, adaptability, and purpose shape our journey forward.
Each episode explores how shame operates beneath the surface, influencing our confidence, connections, and sense of agency. Through deep insights and practical tools, we uncover ways to rewrite our personal narratives, break free from shame-based cycles, and cultivate a life rich in authenticity, curiosity, and joy.
Join me as we dive into the psychological frameworks and real-world applications that help us navigate relationships, self-perception, and the ever-evolving landscape of human experience.
Let’s make happiness meaningful.
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Meaningful Happiness with Dr. Scott Conkright
Ep. 06- Understanding Chronic Shame Syndrome: Overcoming Persistent Self-Doubt
Can subtle, everyday moments of shame be more impactful than intense emotional episodes? Join Dr. Scott Conkright on the Meaningful Happiness podcast as we uncover the hidden world of Chronic Shame Syndrome. Drawing inspiration from Pixar’s Inside Out, we analyze how low-level yet persistent feelings of shame—rooted in societal and familial expectations—can erode self-worth and confidence over time. Through Affect Relational Theory (ART), Dr. Conkright explains how even minor incidents, like a missed elevator or an unprepared meeting, contribute to a cumulative emotional toll, often manifesting as sadness, self-consciousness, and disappointment.
Understanding and managing these omnipresent feelings are crucial. From learning the dynamics of shame responses to building shame tolerance within relationships, this episode offers valuable strategies. Delve into the importance of self-reflection and community support in combating Chronic Shame Syndrome. Discover how caregivers can nurture shame tolerance in children and why creating a supportive environment is essential for emotional well-being. With insights on the shame evasion wheel and practical resources, Dr. Conkright equips listeners with the tools to recognize, manage, and mitigate the subtle, lingering shame that affects us all.
For more information about Scott and his practice, articles, videos, and more: https://linktr.ee/scottconkright
Hello and welcome to the Meaningful Happiness podcast, where we talk about emotions and those feelings that shape our lives. I'm Dr Scott Conkright, the host of this podcast and the founder of the platforms Meaningful Happiness and the Relationship Workshops. Today, let's once again talk about shame. I'm not talking about the high-level, high-intensity shame that most people think of when they think of the word shame, but I'm talking about those low-level feelings, those more persistent, nagging feelings of self-doubt and lack of self-confidence, the ones that stay with you all day long, that maybe have been there with you most of your life. At the very low end, they're there hour by hour and they color negatively the way that you are in the world, and this often goes unnoticed as a shame phenomena. In my field, most of us have grown up with both overt and covert, hidden and very explicit expectations of who we're supposed to be. We may have grown up in families that were very demanding, that were very clear about what type of grades we were supposed to get, where we were supposed to go to school, who we were supposed to be in the community and so forth. There also may have been very covert, hidden but known ways in which you are expected to be a certain way In terms of following church rules or religious rules, how you're supposed to look, how you're supposed to dress, how you're supposed to be liked, how you're supposed to be perceived by those around you. Those can be really very toxic and that can be a pretty big burden for a kid. All of those expectations most of them are pretty well-intentioned. Our parents are tasked I was tasked as a parent to help raise children who are safe in the world that we live in. They had to follow certain rules my ex's rules, but also the school's rules. They had to learn how to be in society and shame is a part of that process. It's a normal and expected and healthy part of teaching people what societal expectations are, what the family expectations are and the expectations at school and the expectations when you're out and about with other people. Those are needed to be safe. They are also needed when you're using shame. You always have to use the lowest dosage possible.
Speaker 1:Too much of it too often. If it's in too intense forms and it's giving you the impression that there is something wrong with you, that it's something about you or it's done so often and it's such a shaming. You know, in a way, in the shaming way that really gets to the core of you and you start feeling, whether intentioned or not, that the people around you, your parents and so forth, don't think highly of you. You may come to the feeling at some point but that perhaps true I don't know that you're unlovable. Perhaps true that those around you didn't feel that you were lovable for their own reasons, because of their own shame, because their own depression and so forth wouldn't. That takes place in childhood, when it's when you've gotten at an early age, that sense that there's something wrong with the core of you, but it's not quite full depression yet and you're able to really function well, like.
Speaker 1:You've gone to school, you're getting good enough grades, you have friends and so forth, but throughout the day, at least once an hour, okay, at the most perhaps way too, but too frequently. There's another example Social media with your friends, with school. Somewhere there's going to be another trigger that says you know what, you just don't have it. You don't have it the same way that everybody else does. So you're walking around with a certain type of hidden hurt. It seems to me like too insignificant to go to the psychologist or to a psychiatrist and say I'm depressed or I'm too anxious or I'm really suffering at this low level way for a long, long time. Because I've been working with these issues of shame as a psychologist, with anxiety and depression, for many years now, because I've been working with these issues for many years now, because I've been working with these issues for many years now, I have decided to give this syndrome its own name Chronic Shame Syndrome. So I'll jump into that in a second For all you Pixar fans. We're going to use Pixar's Inside Out Disney Pixar. We're going to use Inside Out the story of Riley and her struggles, often not called this, but her struggles with shame and with her whole console of affects, of feelings.
Speaker 1:Wonderful movie gives a great insight to how affect theory explains what motivates, what motivates us. Well, in Riley's case, in the first movie, shame is called sadness. Sadness is, as I talked about earlier, is one of the low movie. Shame is called sadness. Sadness is, as I talked about earlier, is one of the low intensity shame feelings like disappointment and so forth, which is not to say that sadness or disappointment or any of the low intensity shame family feelings don't hurt. I'm not saying that they're. They don't really get to us and really cause a lot of distress. I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying in comparison to how most people think of shame as being on the really high end. I mean, fortunately for most of us, fortunately for me, I can say I don't do really embarrassing, high end, high intensity, super embarrassing, publicly humiliating things, somehow managed to avoid that. It's the smaller ones, it's the death by a thousand shames that I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:When we're talking about chronic shame syndrome. If this seems to apply to you, stay tuned, because I think that there's a lot of people that really suffer from this and it could use some help. At least recognize it as something that so many people deal with. In that it's it's just slightly off the radar, just a little bit. I think what happens when people go through periods where it gets really intense, with where things start falling apart. There's a lot of failures or losses and if you're grieving and so forth, that's what brings people in, that's what the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. That's when people end up going to psychiatrists and psychologists like myself for bona fide depression or anxiety. Keep in mind, majority of cases of depression and anxiety are shame-based as it is. I'll come back to that in a minute Now.
Speaker 1:Chronic shame syndrome is not to be found in the DSM-5. It is not a formal diagnostic category. I think it should be. I think there's a lot of merit to it. My point is not so much to create a new diagnostic category to get into DSM-4 or DSM-5. I don't really care. Truthfully, I mean I think it's a great idea. Or DSM-5, I don't really care. Truthfully, I mean I think it's a great idea.
Speaker 1:I'm more interested in helping people build shame tolerance. That is one of the issues that I think people really struggle with is that because, on the one hand, shame is so necessary and normal and just a part of our lives in a healthy way in terms of education and parenting and so forth, that we don't have a good understanding in our society of how painful shame can be in higher dosages. We don't really understand. The bottom line is our culture is ashamed of shame, which really distorts our knowledge of shame, prevents us from understanding shame, studying it, exploring it, also recognizing it in ourselves. But also because we're not recognizing it in ourselves, we're not recognizing it in others either. So we're kind of affect blind. There's kind of affect blindness there, especially around shame, and I want to change that. I want it such that we see the effects and we learn how to use it appropriately and in the dosages that work, so that people don't walk around feeling horrible about themselves. And if you're feeling that way about you, keep listening. I have my own theoretical model that I built over the last decade or so. It is a combination of affect theory and Lekanian psychoanalytic theories grabbing from Polly Vagel and yeah, there's a lot of I borrow a lot and it's an admixture of various theories that I think work well together to explain both what motivates us which I strongly believe that affects, or what motivate us and also how society then tells us who it thinks we should be and how we're in conflict with that.
Speaker 1:So often, low intensity shame family is one that I really want you to get familiar with. They include sadness, as I mentioned, self-consciousness, disappointment, unworthiness, loneliness which is a unique and painful form of shame and shyness. Like I said before just a few minutes ago, we want to use as little amount of shame as we can to get the job done, eyebrow raised if that gets the job, if that signals I'm not happy with you and you change your behavior as my child or student or whatever. That gets the job. If that signals I'm not happy with you and you change your behavior as my child or student or whatever, if that gets the job done, perfect, that's all that's needed. Anything more than that it can start being really painful. Obviously, if you start calling somebody names, if you start gaslighting them, you start doing all these things and these are things that I'll get into those can be very painfully, in some ways stealth-like shaming that causes more damage than it does good.
Speaker 1:Through my model affect-affect relational theory, which, gratefully, is called ART. When I first called it relational affect theory, we is called art. When I first called it relational affect theory, we had rat. I decided that's not gonna work. Through art, through affect relational therapy, we can take a look at what causes all those. By a thousand shames they could add up.
Speaker 1:What I'd like to do next is to point out three fascinating truths about how shame works. The first one is that it causes an immediate and involuntary slump. It causes the body to lose tone. Your head goes down, your eyes go down. There's a little bit of confusion sometimes around your ability to think and answer questions. You're kind of lost for a second. Again, the higher intensity, the more that's the case. But I want to point out to you that that slump, what I call the slump of shame, is a part of everyday life and I'm going to give you some examples here. On the low end disappointment trying to reach the elevator, it shuts on you. You might do that, that sl, but you get the next one and you move on. You don't think about it Once. I point this out to you, go look at it, go watch how people do.
Speaker 1:The slumps In sports happens all the time. You miss the ball. Boom, a little bummer, a little bummer movement, right. So like what a shame. We actually interestingly use this in our language. What a shame. Bigger disappointment, let's say you had taylor swift tickets but you also caught a really bad flu and there was no way you're going to go to that concert. That's a super big disappointment. That's life-changing. That's a miss that you're going to be talking about for a long time, especially if you're a swifty. That's a a major disappointment. That's a major bummer. You found out that you're not able to go. You can do a big slump Around self-consciousness, for instance, if you're in a meeting, let's say at work or church or something like that, and you're supposed to be doing some work for this group and somebody calls on you and you're not prepared.
Speaker 1:You're going to feel so self-conscious. You're going to feel like, oh my God, I could just die. It's not going to die, obviously, but you feel very self-conscious. You want to look good in front of your friends or your workers, your boss, and it's not going to happen. In that moment, that shame moment, did you do something that's horribly shameful? No, you'll get over it. Everybody's going to get something that's horribly shameful. No, you'll get over it, everybody's gonna get over it. Everybody that brews up every once in a while and it's a moment that we all have again where it's a low level intensity, shame, response, and you're going to cringe. Cringing is kind of cringe, I think refers to um, okay, the slump of Sadness often occurs when we want something and we can't have it.
Speaker 1:If we want to be with our friends and we happen to have moved to a new city, we don't know anybody or what happened to me last couple weekends ago while my friends were on vacation. Everybody was gone. I was mildly bummed out, mildly sad. What a shame. If that is ongoing, it's really easy to say to yourself what's wrong with me that I don't have any friends, and this happens to a lot of people. It is hard to make friends and it's hard to connect with people right now, and that often gets interpreted as you're not fitting in, that there's something wrong with you.
Speaker 1:But the issue is that in shame, shame always has to do with not getting what you want, whether it's a connection with somebody or their esteem, their smile at you, their wanting to be with you, a test that you want to pass, whatever task objectives you have. If you don't reach it, if there's a barrier to that, that causes a shame response. And one of the things that I'm wanting to educate people on is that the small end, low intensity shame ones add up in ways that can be more painful than the high end ones. It's horrible when some public humiliation, something really dreadful, happens. Fortunately, that doesn't happen to most people.
Speaker 1:There's times where you miss the ball big time and you didn't win the game. That's going to last for a while. Those are infrequent. What's really frequent and too frequent for some people? The daily, hourly insults that are stealth level. So that's the first one. Oh, I'm not quite finished with that. Oh, I scrolled down too much. Here we go so unworthiness.
Speaker 1:So if you're comparing yourself with others on social media, it is not hard when doing that you don't have the body that you want, you're not as tall, you're not as whatever To compare yourself to the people that are successful with that. They're successful for a reason because they look gorgeous and apparently have the money to buy beautiful clothes and travel around the world. If that's what you're looking for and that's what you want, social media is going to really put you in a shame place. It's designed to do that. I don't think intentionally, but that's how we work biologically. We can believe we want certain things and that's a good thing Wanting to get a degree, wanting to pass a test, wanting a yacht at age 21,. Well, good luck. If that's really what you want and you can't have access to it, you're going to be in a slump. You're going to feel the low-intensity shame. Rejection is getting up there. We're getting higher and higher up there.
Speaker 1:It feels horrible to be rejected because, by definition, rejection if it did not care about any of the things that I just mentioned friends, others tasks, getting good grades you wouldn't have shame because it wouldn't matter to you. So keep in mind it's always attached to wanting something and the barrier. If somebody insults you and you don't care about that person, that hurt. It doesn't matter at all. If you're really in love with somebody and they reject you, that could hurt. That could be a major source of shame because you were in love with that person and the intensity of that rejection and that person in the intensity of that rejection and that hurt, the intensity of that shame doesn't mean that you did something shameful. What hurts so much about it, what the shame feels so tense around, is the immense barrier to getting what you want. You're not going to get it, you've just been told you can't have it and that's what a lot of people don't understand. Again, it then becomes easy to blame yourself for not getting what you want. So abandonment is high intensity rejection response.
Speaker 1:The second truth about shame is that the immediate feeling of shame affect what's called the biological basis of our feelings gets set off and it sets off memories of all the other shame things that we've done that you associated with it, not every single one of them, but Once it come to mind the quickest in these memories trigger the emotions of shame. If we don't have Good shame tolerance, we will feed that and that's what happens too often, is it? Something triggers the shame, a low-intensity one, but then if you're like five or six of them in a row, when you're putting a lot of energy into like Tolerating a lot of shame, then another big one happens, then a rejection and so forth. All the rejections, all the times that you've got yourself shaving, all the times that you've missed the elevator, all the times that you failed an exam, all those can come rushing back Because the affect, the biological, immediate response to disappointment, to shame, to all those things, triggers memories and triggers emotions that are negative. Shame emotions and shame affect are not the same thing. Insofar as the affect you can't really control, you're going to have an automatic response. Whether it's shown physiologically or not, whether your body shows it inside your soul, inside your body shows it inside your soul, inside your body, inside your heart, you're still going to have that slump. Even if you have absolutely a face like you've turned the face off for visual display, and even if you try to fake it, it's still going to be felt at a certain level.
Speaker 1:So the third one, which I kind of referenced a minute ago, the third one is around our taking responsibility for a biological shame response was we should because it's ours. But what we tend to do is take every should, use every trigger for every shame episode as evidence that there's something wrong with you. Because it's so easy, especially as a kid, to come to the conclusion that there's something wrong with you. Because it's so easy, especially as a kid, to come to the conclusion that there's something wrong with you, as opposed to something wrong with your parents, something wrong with the world around you, or your caregivers, or the environment or the political situation Name it, it doesn't really matter. You don't have the cognitive, for that matter, emotional or affective skills to come to that conclusion part because it doesn't feel safe. It is a lot safer for you to take on that responsibility then to blame an environment that you totally depend on, to blame parents, caregivers, who you totally depend on. So your shame is going to be brought back to yourself in the way, in the, in ideal circumstances. The way to deal with that is to have caregivers on dosing it very carefully, that they do it minimally, that it's not okay, obviously, to shame a kid into submission. There's other ways of doing it. I actually have a whole series of podcast series on parenting coming up probably in January. We also want caregivers to teach shame tolerance, and so we need to teach shame in school. We need to teach it to parents, so that way they're using the minimal amount of shame to get the job done. Also, the healthy steps to take care of yourself when you're hurt with shame, and I will go into that probably, if not in this podcast, but a couple from now.
Speaker 1:By the way, I did want to make reference to the idea that, keep in mind, shame is a signal telling you that there's a disconnection from what you want. When you're feeling that shame, yes, you should self reflect. That's what it's there for. You should take a look and say, hmm, hmm, I wonder what I did, what's my role in this? Ah, dad told me to go to bed. I didn't go to bed, I got in trouble. Hmm, maybe I'll go to bed on time, I won't get in trouble. That's a super simple example, but that's the type of self-reflection you should do when the shame is at a really toxic level. It's clear that there's not a connection between the intensity of the shame and whatever you did that was so bad. I doubt if it deserved that much, if it was fair at all. So that's the point that I wanted to make sure that you understood that I do want you to be self reflective.
Speaker 1:We need to look at shame and understand what it does, which is signals to us that we have to study harder If you want to get that elevator during busy times, get there faster. Things like that Feeling shame and disconnection in your relationship yes, look to see what you could do to change that. You have a responsibility to do that. But chronic shame syndrome is really about the residue that's been left over from childhood. It's still there, that's still hurting that you're still repeating that At some level there's a sense inside of you that there's something off, that there's something not right that you've picked up from your caregivers, in the world around you, that you're just not what it takes, or you really should just be a little bit more hidden. You shouldn't put yourself out there too much that you have reason to be self-conscious. You have reason to be ashamed, even though you can't really come up with any concretely from any time recent, but you can certainly find them from the past. Keep in mind, with affects in general, all the affects, all nine of them. I'll just name a couple right now. But let's say anger. I'll use anger and shame Probably the two affects that love to be fed. One of the secrets to shame tolerance is not feeding them.
Speaker 1:One of the things I'm going to talk about, probably in the next podcast, is about our defenses against shame. Next podcast is about our defenses against shame. I have created the shame evasion wheel in which I'll describe how so often, because shame is so intolerable, we'll find another way, we'll find another set of emotions to take care of it and to hide from it. You'll be able to find more about that on the website. Also on the website, soon you will have a quiz, a little spinning wheel quiz, which is really fun. My team just got done finishing that and I hope it's going to be up this weekend. Any time you spin it, you'll learn something else about the shame evasion wheel. Do take the quiz as well. There's also a brochure that I have available that you can download. So and keep following. Okay, next week, with the next, I'm going to go into all the ways to identify chronic shame syndrome. It's really not that hard. I'll have a few lists and I'll also have a brochure and something for you to download as well. That goes with that podcast.
Speaker 1:The transcripts for this are available online. If you want to see them, they're available. This podcast is available both in audio and in video. You can go to YouTube and watch the video. If there are topics you'd like me to cover, please let me know. I would be more than happy to consider that and I would love your feedback on this. I'd love to hear what you have to say and if you're suffering from this, share this. I would love people to share in ways that feel comfortable, in ways that don't feel shameful. That's certainly not what I'm looking for, but it'd be nice if there could be a community of people that we can go to as part of building our shame tolerance. So enough for now. Again, scott Conkright, with the Meaningful Happiness Podcast. Be kind to yourself and others. Life is short. See you next time.
