It is common for individuals and couples to experience intense feelings of shame during and after a pregnancy loss. The Cambridge English Dictionary defines shame as “to make someone or something lose honor and respect.” Dr. Brené Brown defines shame as an “intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love or belonging” (Brown, 2015). After my second pregnancy loss, I experienced intense shame. I felt that doctors were dismissing my grief and confusion. When I asked, “why is this happening,” they responded, “it’s just a blip on the radar. You’ll be pregnant again in no time!”
When we don’t address feelings of shame, we can withdraw from the people we love, or we can lash out at them. If shame is the intense fear of disconnection, we might preemptively disconnect ourselves from others to avoid that potential hurt.
Why Pregnancy Loss Survivors Experience Shame
As a clinician, I love emotions. I don’t label emotions as “bad” or “good.” Rather, I use adjectives such as “wanted” or “unwanted” emotions (for example, happiness is often a wanted emotion, whereas guilt is an unwanted emotion). All emotions, even the ones that are harder to experience, are a natural part of our human experience. Shame, however, can lead to behavioral manifestations that exacerbate the already intense feeling. And while shame is part of the human experience, lingering in shame is detrimental to our emotional and physical health. Intense, prolonged feelings of shame lead to heightened states of depression and anxiety, and correlates with addictive behaviors, such as binge eating, online shopping, alcohol use, and domestic violence.
Thus, addressing shame is crucial to our wellbeing.
Shame manifests in many ways for pregnancy loss survivors: shame in their identity, their physical body, and their emotional response to the loss. For many, once there is a positive pregnancy test, they immediately start identifying as mother/father/parent. How do we readjust when that identity is taken from us? Some people feel their body is inherently flawed because it can’t do the one thing nature has designed some bodies to do. And finally, some experience immense sadness, but feel their sadness is unwarranted because no one validates their emotional experience. As a result, people are led to believe two things:
1. Pregnancy loss is common, we all experience it, so get over it. If I don’t get over it, then what is wrong with me?
2. Pregnancy loss is so uncommon that we don’t talk about it, making you feel alone, silenced, and othered. If it’s uncommon, then I must be damaged.
How Do We Address Shame? Using Shame Resilience!
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