Childhood, toxic shame, toxic guilt and self-compassion

Abstract

Background and objectives: Feelings of toxic shame and guilt are common symptoms of
many mental disorders. Both these feelings arise from self-referential processing and it is
supposed that they 1) result from maladaptive emotional schemas developed during childhood
in interaction with parents and 2) are connected with lack of self-compassion. The aim of this
study was to determine the correlations between these variables in two nonclinical samples.
Methods: Two questionnaire surveys were conducted to investigate connections between
1) parental emotional warmth in childhood or attachment in adulthood, 2) shame-proneness or
omnipotence guilt and 3) self-compassion.
Results: In sample 1 (N1 = 302) weak to mild correlations were found between parental
emotional warmth, omnipotence guilt and self-compassion. In sample 2 (N2 = 263) weak to
moderate correlations were found between avoidance or anxiety, shame-proneness and self-
compassion.
Discussion: We hypothesize, on the one hand, that deprivation of basic needs in childhood as
well as the child's efforts to fill the holes in the roles, leads to lack of self-compassion and
toxic shame and toxic guilt-proneness in adulthood. And these transdiagnostic factors seem to
cause many symptoms of mental disorders. The corrective experience with the image of
“ideal parents”, on the other hand, probably induces memory reconsolidation, changes the
relevant emotional schemas, encourages the development of self-compassion and, as
a consequence, many symptoms disappear.
Conclusions: Two independent surveys confirmed links between 1) parental emotional
warmth in childhood or attachment in adulthood, 2) shame-proneness or omnipotence guilt
and 3) self-compassion.

Full text

CHILDHOOD, TOXIC SHAME,
TOXIC GUILT AND SELF-COMPASSION
Jan Benda1, Antonín Vyhnánek2
1Department of Psychology, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic, 2Department of Psychology, Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic.
Background
Feelings of toxic shame and toxic guilt are common
symptoms of many mental disorders. Both these feel-
ings arise from self-referential processing and it is sup-
posed that they 1) result from maladaptive emotional
schemas developed during childhood in interaction with
parents and 2) are connected with lack of self-compas-
sion (Benda, 2019). The aim of this study was to deter-
mine the correlations between these variables in two
nonclinical samples.
Methods
Two questionnaire surveys were conducted online
to investigate connections between 1) parental emo-
tional warmth in childhood or attachment in adult-
hood, 2) shame-proneness or omnipotence guilt and
3) self-compassion.
Participants
Sample1 (N = 302) consisted of 200 females (66.2
%) and 102 males. Their mean age was 43.68 years
(SD = 13.24). Sample 2 (N = 263) consisted of 144
females (54.8 %) and 119 males. Their mean age was
34.60 years (SD = 11.36).
Measures
Early Memories of Warmth and Safeness Scale (EM-
WSS; Richter, Gilbert, McEwan, 2009). The EMWSS
is a 21-item measure which measures recall of feel-
ing warm, safe and cared for in childhood. The sum of
scores of the EMWSS items was used for the statistical
analysis.
Experience in Close Relationships – Relationship
Structures (ECR-RS; Fraley et al., 2011). The ECR-RS
is a 36-item measure designed to assess adult attach-
ment in relationships with mother, father, romantic
partner and best friend. The sums of scores of the anx-
iety scale and the avoidance scale were used for the
statistical analysis.
Interpersonal guilt questionnaire-67 (IGQ-67;
O’Connor et al., 1997). The IGQ-67 contains 67 items
which attempt to measure four types of guilt: survivor
guilt (22 items), separation guilt (16 items), omnipo-
tent responsibility guilt (14 items), and self hate (15
items). Only the omnipotent responsibility guilt sub-
scale was used for the statistical analysis.
Test of Self-Conscious Affect-3 (TOSCA-3S, Tangney,
Dearing, 2003). The TOSCA–3S is composed of 11
scenarios, each followed by 4 possible responses. It
measures shame-proneness, guilt-proneness, detach-
ment and externalization (blaming others). Only the
shame-proneness subscale of the TOSCA-3S was used
for the statistical analysis..
Sussex-Oxford Compassion for the Self Scale
(SOCS-S; Gu et al., 2019). The SOCS-S is a 20-item meas-
ure which measures compassion for the self. The sum
of scores of the SOCS-S items was used for the statisti-
cal analysis.
Self-Compassion Scale (SCS-CZ, Neff, 2003; Czech
version Benda, Reichová, 2016). The original Eng-
lish version is a 26-item self-report inventory. In the
Czech version, six items were removed from the orig-
inal scale (items 3, 9, 15, 21, 22 and 23) to achieve the
same factor structure as in the original scale (see Ben-
da, Reichová, 2016). The sum of scores of all 20 items
was used for the statistical analysis.
Statistical analysis
Data was analyzed using the IBM SPSS Statistics soft-
ware, Version 23. Associations between study varia-
bles were analysed by calculating the Pearson’s corre-

Results
Correlations between study variables
The intercorrelations between all study variables in
both samples are presented in Figures 1, 2 and 3. In
sample 1 weak to mild correlations were found be-
tween parental emotional warmth, omnipotence guilt
and self-compassion. In sample 2 weak to moderate
correlations were found between attachment avoid-
ance or anxiety, shame-proneness and self-compas-
sion.
As expected, self-compassion was negatively corre-
lated with omnipotence guilt (r = -.14; p < .01) and
shame-proneness (r = -.50; p < .05). Parental emotion-
al warmth was positively correlated with self-compas-
sion (r = .22; p < .01) and negatively with omnipotence
guilt (r = -.14; p < .01). Attachment anxiety was neg-
atively correlated with self-compassion (r = -.41; p <
.01) and positively with shame-proneness (r = .23; p <
-
related with shame-proneness or self-compassion.
Figure 1
Correlations between study variables in Sample 1.
**p < .01; *p < .05
Figure 2
Correlations between anxiety, shame-proneness and self-compassion in Sample 2.
**p < .01; *p < .05
Figure 3
Correlations between avoidance, shame-proneness and self-compassion in Sample 2.
**p < .01; *p < .05
Discussion
We hypothesize that deprivation of basic needs in
childhood
in the roles, leads to lack of self-compassion and toxic
shame-proneness and omnipotence guilt-proneness
in adulthood. And these transdiagnostic factors
seem to cause many symptoms of mental disorders
(Benda, 2019). The corrective experience with the
image of “ideal parents”, on the other hand, proba-
bly induces memory reconsolidation (Ecker, 2018),
changes the relevant emotional schemas, encour-
ages the development of self-compassion and, as a
consequence, many symptoms disappear. Howev-
   
correlation analysis. And the fact that there is no

harder.
Therefore, in future research it may be useful:
1) to develop a new questionnaire suitable to meas-
        
childhood.
2) to compare the levels of self-compassion,
shame-proneness and omnipotence guilt-prone-
ness before and after the PBSP intervention which
uses the image of “ideal parents” to provide cor-
rective experience to patients with different men-
tal disorders.
-
search on self-compassion and research on shame.
Conclusions

parental emotional warmth in childhood or attachment
in adulthood, 2) shame-proneness or omnipotence guilt
and 3) self-compassion.
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This poster was presented at the 7th International Conference on Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor® (PBSP®): Science and Good Practice – Prague, September 26 – 29, 2019.
CONTACT: Jan Benda, www.jan-benda.com, e-mail: psychoterapeut@gmail.com