Children traumatised by neglect and abuse experience a double-whammy, negative effect in relation to shame.
Firstly, their experiences mean that they are hypersensitive to shame and unable to tolerate it. Secondly, the on-going need, of such children, to act out their attachment strategies results in challenging behaviour that causes the adults around them to use reward-punishment strategies, which relies upon the impact of shame to modify behaviour.
Therefore, children are compelled to behave in accordance with their hard-wired attachment strategies and trauma experiences, while being simultaneously told that they are bad for acting in this way, causing shame on top of shame.
