How Childhood Shame Shapes Adult Identity
The feeling of shame comes from the belief that “I am basically flawed, inadequate, wrong, bad, unimportant, undeserving or not good enough.” At some early point in our lives, most of us absorbed this false belief that causes the feeling of shame. As a result of not feeling seen, loved, valued and understood, we developed the belief that we were not being loved because there was something wrong with us. While some children were told outright that they were stupid, bad or undeserving; other children concluded that there was something wrong with them by the way they were treated.