SURVIVING THE SHAME DUNGEON – A Practical Guide to Not Hating Yourself

Ugh.

BIG Night Out.

The Next Morning you feel like death. Everything hurts, and you have a thirst so extreme you are unsure if you will make it to a liquid source in time.

And you fell asleep wearing your contact lenses.

Which are now stuck to your (severely dehydrated) eyeball. Perfect!

But this half-dressed, mascara smudged, totally parched perfection, is nothing compared to:

THE SHAME.

Not everyone gets it, but those of you who do will recognise the warm waves of self-loathing well.

It might be about something you said, something you did, even something as harmless as, god-forbid, a spontaneous text. To your Ex. Telling them you are still in love with them or some such agony.

Fresh waves come in regular intervals.

Oh God – did I really sing? Out Loud? In front of all those people. Did I actually hook up with Dave/Cherie/My Uber Driver? What a Slut. I can’t believe I fed my kids cereal for dinner. I am such a bad mother. I am such a bad person. I could not suck any more if I tried. Ugh.

And I am never, I mean, NEVER, drinking again in-my-whole-entire-life.

In the more extreme cases of over indulgence, THE SHAME slowly morphs into its less friendly incarnation.

THE FEAR.

This is no longer just some deeply unwelcome anxiety. This is now a full-blown paranoia situation. Oh my God-Oh my God-Oh my God. Your self-loathing steps up a level. You are torturing yourself with visions of last night on continuous replay. You are pretty sure everybody hates you and you see no good reason to ever leave the house again. Ever.

If you are one of the people who also suffer from memory loss after a big night out, then this is a fresh kind of hell that the uninitiated may never understand. Because you don’t remember what you did, your brain rapidly churns through every possible combination of what potentially you could have done. Can you actually imagine? It’s horrendous.

This self-limiting behaviour tends to spiral. You drunk too much, so you feel hungover. So, you skip the well-intentioned breakfast and eat something gross, like cold pizza. Then you hate yourself all over again. Because now, not only are you a drunken hussy but you are also a big, fat pig with a blatant lack of self-control. So, now you are super depressed. So, you go out and spend money on food/shoes/clothes in the hope you might feel better. But you don’t. You feel worse – because now you are quite clearly, a vastly overweight, alcoholic, financially irresponsible loser who is probably going to be poor, sad and fat forever. So, you think, F*ck it and finish off a whole tub of ice-cream and wonder if it’s too early to crack in to a fresh bottle of wine. And so on, and so on. Ad Infinitum.

I had assumed the Shame Dungeon (or the shame spiral, shame shudders, Sunday scaries, the shame-over – call it what you will), was a uniquely female phenomenon. But it appears not. From my extensive research (chatting to a few friends), I discovered many guys also suffer from this dehydrated hell. And some, like my husband, who do not. He might wake up and ruminate, ‘Well, that was a fun night.’ Meanwhile, I am rocking quietly in the dungeon, hating every fibre of my very being.

But why is it that some of us feel this way? What is THE SHAME all about? And more importantly, how can we make sure to avoid it in all future alcoholic endeavours?

Let’s first dissect the key issue at hand. Alcohol. In excess, this is not your friend.* Why?

• Alcohol is a depressant, which is why you get that lovely relaxed feeling after a few glasses of wine. By slowing down our nervous system, alcohol makes us feel less anxious, but once it starts to leave the body, our nervous system springs back to life. That rebound effect results in an increased heart rate and the corresponding return of anxiety, often felt twofold as a result. Ugh.
• Alcohol reduces the amount of ‘anti-diuretic’ hormones in your body so you lose way more water than you would if you were sober. Dehydration can cause dizziness and confusion which in turn churns up feelings of anxiety as your body tries to protect itself from harm. The sicker you feel, the more cortisol (the stress hormone) your body is going to release to ramp up its defences. Ugh.
• The physical symptoms of a hangover – such as feeling shakier, more nauseous and dizzier – can often be confused by the body as panic. Ugh.
• Alcohol also inhibits the neurotransmitter Serotonin which helps us feel good. Less Serotonin = Less Feeling Good about Ourselves. Ugh.

Okay – we get it. There are simple reasons our body responds the way it does after a bender. But, that still doesn’t explain why we insist on beating ourselves up so badly with trash talk about what a total and utter loser we are.

Allow me to introduce you to Brene Brown*, a research professor at the University of Houston who has spent 6 years studying shame. She says that there are three things shame needs in order to survive: secrecy, silence and judgement. So, to try and break free from this self-inflicted cruelty we need to combat these three enablers.

• Secrecy: Shame thrives in secret and unlike guilt, which is a focus on behaviour (‘I did something bad’), is a focus on self (‘I am bad’). Deciding to label yourself as something based on one set of events or on something as fluid and changing as our emotions does seem a bit excessive. Brene suggests we are kinder to ourselves and ‘talk to yourself like you would talk to someone you love’. So less of the ‘you total slut’ talk and more of the ‘these things happen. Did you use protection? If not, let’s get you checked out.’
• Silence: In Brene Brown’s “Daring Greatly”, she speaks about a concept called “shame resilience”. People with strong “shame resilience” do not stay silent, which is good because this opens the door to empathy. “The most powerful two words when we are in struggle is “me too”’. By speaking out we may find comfort in the discovery that we are not alone. There may be way more cold-pizza-eating, drunken idiots out there than you could possibly have imagined.
• Judgement: A lot of our shame comes not only from self-loathing but also the added embarrassment of what other people must surely be thinking about us. We imagine our friends, family, even total strangers all sitting in judgement, but we don’t really know this to be true. Remind yourself that these imagined criticisms are most likely just stemming from your feelings of anxiety and failing that don’t forget –  like most bad things in life  – This SHAME too shall pass.

It’s not personal……………It’s just a Hangover. Duh.

This Get Happier Post is brought to you by someone who enjoys a glass of wine each night for its health benefits. The other glasses are for my witty comebacks & awesome dance moves.

* This is a reminder that drinking too much is not cool. You are old enough to know better and if you are concerned you might have an issue with alcohol, you probably do. Please seek professional advice & stop making the rest of us feel bad.

*Sorry Brene – I don’t know how to give your name an accent over the e. But I thought your TED talk was awesome.