“This is bigger than a football game.”
-Al Franken
Currently, there are four players in the NFL who have been charged with either domestic violence or child abuse. While there are many important issues related to these cases, including how the NFL handled the situation, in this article I am going to focus on but two aspects: 1) how they highlight the fact that shame is at the core of abusive behavior, and 2) how a lack of compassion for self and others is one of the many long-term effects of having suffered abuse in childhood. I will use the cases of Adrian Peterson and Ray Rice to illustrate my points.
Professional therapists and trauma experts know that those who were abused in childhood often repeat the cycle of abuse by becoming abusive themselves. About 30 percent of abused and neglected children will later abuse their own children (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2013). And many who work with those who abuse others are finding that these clients are typically filled with shame. In fact, experts such as myself are now realizing that former victims who become abusive do not need “anger management” as much as they need “shame management.”
Shame is the source of cruelty, violence, and destructive relationships, and is at the core of many addictions. It can damage a person’s self-image in ways no other emotion can, causing him to feel deeply flawed, inferior, worthless, unlovable. If someone experiences enough shame he can become so self-loathing that he becomes self-destructive or even suicidal. He can also become abusive.
Shame is a natural reaction to abuse. This is because abuse is by nature humiliating and dehumanizing. There is a feeling of being invaded and defiled, and the indignity of being helpless and at the mercy of another person. This feeling occurs most profoundly in the case of child sexual abuse, but it occurs with all forms of abuse. For example, physical abuse is not only an assault on the body, it is an insult to the victim’s integrity. No one has the right to attack our body—it is a violation. Emotional abuse has been described as “soul murder” (Hirigoyen 2000). Constant criticism, name-calling, belittling, unreasonable expectations, and other forms of emotional abuse can be just as harmful and just as shame-inducing as physical or sexual attacks; some experts, including myself, believe that the negative effects of emotional abuse can last longer and have more far-reaching consequences than other forms of abuse. Neglect can also create shame in a child, causing her to think, “If my own mother doesn’t love me enough to take care of me, I must be worthless.” How else can a child interpret being neglected or abandoned by a parent?
Victims of childhood abuse also tend to feel shame because, as human beings, we want to believe that we have control over what happens to us. When that is challenged by a victimization of any kind, we feel humiliated. We believe we should have been able to defend ourselves. This is particularly true of male victims. And because we weren’t able to do so, we feel helpless and powerless. This powerlessness leads to humiliation and to shame.
A person who was deeply shamed in childhood, especially if he was shamed by being abused by a parent, can become so full of shame that it is overwhelming and even unbearable. Therefore, he looks for ways to rid himself of this debilitating shame. A common way to accomplish this is to project shame onto someone else. This can take the form of viewing others in a critical, contemptuous way or by becoming emotionally, physically, or sexually abusive.
If a parent was deeply shamed as a child due to physical abuse by a parent he may unconsciously project that shame onto his own child and justify this by telling himself that the child needs to be punished or “taught a lesson.” This punishment tends to be extreme and severe, having little relationship to what the child actually did.
Shame can also manifest itself by a parent having unreasonable expectations of his or her child—unreasonable in the sense of him expecting behavior or knowledge that are beyond the child’s ability, skill, or emotional maturity.
In cases where a simple correction might be in order, a parent who is full of shame is likely to go overboard by strongly chastising the child, humiliating the child, or physically abusing him. In Adrian Peterson’s case, one has to wonder what a four-year-old could possibly have done to warrant the severe beating he received—a beating that caused visible cuts, lacerations and bruises.
“There is no more humiliating experience than to have another person who is clearly the stronger and more powerful take advantage of that power and give us a beating.”
-Gershen Kaufman, Ph.D.
It is especially shaming to a child when a parent abuses him, violating his body and integrity. Physical abuse in particular sends the message that the child is “bad” and therefore “unlovable.” Children want to feel loved and accepted by their parents more than anything. And because parental love is so important, children will make up all kinds of excuses for a parent’s behavior—even abusive behavior. Most often the child ends up blaming himself for “causing” his parent to abuse him, thinking, “If I had just done what she asked me to she wouldn’t have gotten so mad,” or, “I know I’m a disappointment to my father—no wonder he has to get on me all the time.”
Victims of physical abuse often feel they disappointed their parent or other authority figure and thus deserved to be chastised or even beaten. Many of my clients who were severely physically abused argue with me when I call what happened to them “abuse.” I’ve heard everything from “You don’t know what a terror I was. My mother could only control me by hitting me with that cord” to “I deserved every beating I got. My father was just trying to teach me to be a man.”
In addition to the shame perpetuated by believing the abuse was their fault there is the shame associated with the violation itself. This is the shame that comes from feeling rejected and abandoned by an adult who one loves and desperately wants to be loved by. Facing up to the truth—that they were powerless and helpless or that they were abandoned by someone they loved—is so painful and frightening that many simply refuse to do it.
There are certain tendencies that those with a history of having been abused have when it comes to how they view and treat their children, including: an inability to have compassion toward their child, a tendency to take things too personally (causing them to overreact to their children’s behavior), being overly invested in their children looking good (and themselves looking good as their parent) because of a lack of self-confidence, and an insistence on their children “minding” or respecting them to compensate for their own shame or lack of confidence.
And there is another reason, not often discussed, that can cause a parent to become abusive: seeing their own weakness or vulnerability in their child. Those with a history of having been victimized may respond by hating or despising weakness. If they see weakness in their child, they may have been reminded of their own vulnerability and victimization and this may have ignited self-hatred, causing them to lash out at their child. (This phenomena can be likened to what causes bullies to attack other children).
When Adrian Peterson stated that he was just doing to his son what was done to him he was no doubt telling us the truth. We know that child abuse, especially physical abuse, gets passed down from one generation to another. But when he stated he didn’t intend to hurt his son, but only wanted to discipline him, he probably wasn’t telling the whole truth. I’m not saying he was lying to us—it is far more likely that he was lying to himself. Although I don’t believe he was consciously trying to hurt his son, on an unconscious level I believe he was taking his anger and rage out on his child—the repressed anger he likely felt because of his own abuse. Like so many victims of child abuse, he was passing onto a weaker person the abuse he had suffered. As the one who was now in power, he was trying to rid himself of the shame and humiliation he had felt at the hands of his parent.
Rage comes naturally and spontaneously when someone is shamed. It serves as a self-protective measure to protect the self against further experiences of shame. It also serves as a way to actively keep others away. But whether held inside or expressed openly, rage serves the purposes of defending and may also, secondarily, transfer shame to another—in other words, making someone else feel shame in order to reduce our own shame.
In his masterpiece on shame, Shame: The Power of Caring (1992), Gershen Kaufman, Ph.D., an expert on shame, conceptualized a variety of shame-based syndromes rooted in, and organized around the effect of shame. One such disorder, caused by physical abuse, is rooted in powerlessness and humiliation.
“Repetitive beatings are a recurring source of shame for children whose parents cannot control and otherwise safely discharge their own mounting rage. Parental rage, which triggers the enactment of a scenario involving physical abuse, itself is a part of the unfolding drama. Parents who physically abuse their own children were typically themselves abused when young. They felt equally humiliated, and continue to live with unresolved shame in their lives. Children of shame-based parents will inevitably activate their parents’ shame, and the cycle repeats itself with shame passed from generation to generation” (p. 181).
“Parents who are about to abuse their own children are simultaneously reliving scenes in which they were also beaten, but they relive the scene from the perspective of their own parents as well. They now play their parents’ role, thereby recasting the scene. The internal image of the abusive parent mediates the process” (p. 182).
Denial Leads to Lack of Compassion
As those who work with victims of child abuse can attest, victims of child abuse typically deny they were abused and repeatedly defend their abusive parent’s actions. These behaviors serve the function of preserving the child’s primary attachment to his parents, even in the face of daily evidence of malice or indifference. According to trauma expert Judith Herman, M.D., the abuse is either walled off from conscious awareness and memory, so that it did not really happen, or minimized, rationalized, and excused. Unable to escape or alter the unbearable reality in fact, the child alters this in his mind.
But not all abused children have the ability to alter reality through denial, minimization or dissociation. As Judith Herman explained in her book, Trauma and Recovery:
“When it is impossible to avoid the reality of the abuse, the child must construct some system of meaning that justifies it. Inevitably, the child concludes that her innate badness is the cause. The child seizes upon this explanation early and clings to it tenaciously, for it enables her to preserve a sense of meaning, hope, and power. If she is bad, then her parents are good. If she is bad, then she can try to be good. If, somehow, she has brought this fate upon herself, then somehow she has the power to change it” (p. 103).
In all likelihood, Adrian Peterson wouldn’t have beaten his son with a switch if he had not been in denial about his own abusive experiences and if he had been able to have some compassion for himself about how he had suffered.
He wouldn’t have wanted to beat his son if he had been able to admit to himself how the beatings he experienced had left him feeling humiliated, inadequate and worthless. He wouldn’t have felt compelled to pass on the shame to his son if he had the ability to empathize and feel another’s pain. Instead, he did what so many victims do. In order to protect his dignity and prevent himself from ever being shamed again, he built up a defensive wall. He hid his feelings of vulnerability and weakness and pain and closed off his heart in order to avoid any further emotional wounding.
Instead of defending his father and fooling himself into believing that the beatings he suffered kept him on the straight and narrow and helped him to become a successful football player, Adrian’s salvation lies in admitting that while his anger and rage may have made him hard enough and tough enough to tackle other men, it also made him too hard to have compassion for his 4-year-old son, even as he cried out in pain, even as his tender little body began to tear and bleed.
And while we don’t know Ray Rice’s history, we can surmise that he, too, has closed his heart and built up a defensive wall to keep his pain and vulnerability safely hidden, most likely due to experiences of childhood abuse or trauma. We can assume this, not just because he knocked his then fianceé out cold but because at that moment, when he realized he had really hurt her—possibly critically—he didn’t kneel down to say, “I’m sorry honey,” or even, “Are you okay?” He didn’t lift her up in his arms to take her to get help or even to put her on a comfortable couch or bed. He bent down and grabbed her legs and dragged her halfway out of the elevator. He didn’t even show her enough respect to pull her dress down. Instead he let her lie on the ground while he talked to someone else. What kind of a person does that to anyone—much less someone he supposedly loves? What kind of a man not only hits his fianceé so hard that he knocks her out but doesn’t show any concern for her or any remorse? The answer: someone who had closed off his heart, someone who has no empathy or compassion for the suffering of others.
Carrying around debilitating shame is like being weighed down by a heavy burden. And defending against the shame doesn’t make it disappear—it continues to fester like a wound that won’t heal. So how does one heal debilitating shame from childhood abuse? By facing their shame, not running from it. As much as it hurts to come out of denial and face the truth about the abuse and their abuser, it hurts even more to keep carrying the shame caused by blaming themselves.
Those who have become abusive need counseling to help them through the process of coming out of denial, expressing their anger and rage in appropriate ways, and perhaps most importantly, learning to have compassion for their own suffering.
As their ability to be self-compassionate continues to grow, they will discover that their compassion for others will grow as well. When they stop ignoring their own pain and suffering and begin comforting and soothing themselves in times of trouble, they will find that their capacity to care for the suffering of others will increase. .
Those who have become abusive are notorious for not having empathy or compassion for others, especially their victims. But once they no longer have to work as hard to defend against their shame, they will be able to take their blinders off and actually see other people’s pain and suffering—including the pain and suffering they have caused.
This increased capacity to have compassion for others will, in turn, make them far less likely to re-offend. Once much of their shame has been eliminated, they can afford to face themselves much more honestly, including admitting when they have been abusive in the past and catching themselves when they start to become abusive in the present.
I have written a book that will be coming out in January entitled, It’s Not Your Fault: Healing the Shame of Childhood Abuse through Self-Compassion. In it I help those who were abused in childhood to stop blaming themselves for their abuse and to learn how to have compassion for their suffering. In Part II of this article I will share with you how teaching self-compassion to those who have become abusive (as well as those who have become self-abusive or established a victim pattern) can not only help former victims to heal but help them to break the cycle of abuse.
The worst thing you can say to a child who is worried and voices fear is, "you have nothing to be worried about." It only drives the fears underground, unresolved, which compounds the anxiety and makes it shameful. 
Americans are not ignorant. They know that the gap between the rich and everyone else is growing. They know that CEO salaries are out of control and that wages for everyone else are standing still, barely moving, or in some cases going down. They know that they have less money to spend, that prices for just about everything are going up. They know that the job market is still very tough and that many people are settling for less than ideal positions or have given up entirely. So where are the pitchforks? Knowledge is power, right? And since people have the knowledge they should be stepping up to take the power, to demand change.
Do I think about it? Yes. Every time I experience something that feels like a whopping error in judgment or a big mistake on my part sets off the “you screwed up and must punish yourself” alarm. My m.o. for the past 23 years when that alarm goes off has been to restrict calories and/or increase my exercise.
The renowned psychologist 
Ignoring the most important part of aftercare:
A young woman knocks at the door one night asking for help because she’d been in a car accident--shot to death by the man inside, who says he was afraid. A troubled young man walks into a movie theater, shooting everyone in sight. Our nation’s colleges, high schools, and elementary schools from Columbine to Virginia Tech to Sandy Hook are scenes of violent mass murders.
Yesterday I posted
Earlier today I recorded a live 