Shame Is Also Bodily Pressure

Social, racial, economic, aesthetic, school, and family shame

We continue in Jiwasa — we together — with an important sentence:

repeated shame becomes tension; repeated belonging returns elasticity.

Shame is not only an idea in the head. It can enter the body as heat in the face, tightness in the chest, a lump in the throat, a locked stomach, short breathing, the desire to disappear, fear of speaking, neck tension, or tiredness that is hard to explain.

Sometimes shame begins in a small situation. But when it repeats many times, it can become bodily pressure.

Shame about home.
Shame about clothing.
Shame about skin color.
Shame about lack of money.
Shame about family.
Shame about making mistakes at school.
Shame about the body.
Shame about not looking as confident as others.

The base document of this block already points to this idea: repeated shame can become interoceptive tension, while repeated belonging can help return elasticity to the body.

Shame enters Tekoha

In BrainLatam2026 language, Tekoha is the internal territory of the body. It is the world entering us.

When someone laughs at our clothes, it enters.
When someone compares our family, it enters.
When someone treats our origin as inferior, it enters.
When school becomes fear of making mistakes, it enters.
When the screen shows “perfect” bodies, homes, and lives, it enters.

The body tries to organize all of this.

If it can feel and return, there is elasticity.
If it cannot return, shame can remain trapped as tension.

In the language of Biopsychosocial Medicine, this makes sense: health and illness do not depend only on isolated biology; psychological, social, and biological factors interact in the way symptoms and distress appear. Bolton’s 2023 update of the biopsychosocial model emphasizes regulation and dysregulation as central ideas for understanding health, stress, and clinical care.

Allostasis: when the body pays the price of repeated shame

The body was made to adapt. It changes breathing, heartbeat, attention, posture, hormones, and energy to deal with the world. This is allostasis: the body adjusting its systems to respond to demands.

The problem begins when the demand does not stop.

If every day brings humiliation, comparison, racism, economic fear, body criticism, or the feeling of not belonging, the body has to defend itself again and again. This repetition can increase allostatic load, the accumulated wear on bodily regulation systems. A 2023 systematic review on children and adolescents found that higher allostatic load is associated with poorer health outcomes in both clinical and non-clinical pediatric populations.

In our language:

repeated shame can push the body toward Zone 3.

Zone 3 is not guilt. It is prolonged defense.

Social, racial, and economic shame

Social shame appears when the body feels that its place in the world is smaller.

It can come from poverty, the neighborhood, school, skin color, accent, clothes, religion, hair, home, food, family, or origin.

When racism appears at school, in the street, in a look, or in a joke, it is not only an opinion. It can become pressure in the body. A 2024 CDC report on high school students found that experiences of racism at school were more common among American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black, Hispanic, multiracial, and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander students than among White students, and were associated with worse mental health and substance-use indicators.

A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis on racial–ethnic discrimination and mental health in adolescents and young adults also found negative associations between discrimination and mental health, both at daily and between-person levels.

In BrainLatam2026 language:

when the world treats a body as smaller, Tekoha has to spend energy remembering that it belongs.

That is why belonging is not a luxury. It is health.

Aesthetic shame without attacking the body

Here we need care.

Talking about aesthetic shame must not become another criticism of the body. The goal is not to say how someone should look. The goal is to notice when the body has been turned into a public test.

Aesthetic shame can appear when someone feels they must correct everything: skin, hair, clothes, size, posture, smile, photo, angle, presence. Not because the body is wrong, but because comparison has been repeated until it becomes the sensation of defect.

A 2023 systematic review on social media, body image, and well-being among adolescents and young adults found links between intense or problematic social media use, body dissatisfaction, lower self-esteem, and risk behaviors. A 2025 meta-analysis also found a significant association between online social comparison and greater body image concerns.

The sentence here is simple:

the body does not need to win comparison in order to deserve care.

School shame and family shame

School shame appears when making mistakes stops being part of learning and becomes a threat to personal value.

The person no longer asks, “what can I learn?”
They ask, “what will people think of me?”

Family shame appears when home, parents, siblings, income, conflicts, or origin become something to hide.

In these cases, the body learns to monitor itself.

How am I speaking?
How am I dressed?
Will they notice?
Will they laugh?
Will they compare me?

This constant monitoring consumes energy. Attention gets stuck in defense. APUS becomes smaller. Tekoha feels tight.

When shame becomes psychosomatic

Shame can become a bodily symptom not because “it is all in the head,” but because body and world are connected.

The stomach may lock.
Sleep may worsen.
Breathing may shorten.
The skin may react.
Posture may close.
Muscle tension may increase.
The voice may disappear.
Tiredness may appear.

Biopsychosocial Medicine does not say the symptom is false. It says the symptom can be real, bodily, and relational at the same time.

In BrainLatam2026 language:

when shame does not find words, movement, and belonging, it can become pressure in Tekoha.

Acupuncture, osteopathy, and complementary care

When repeated shame becomes pain, tension, held breathing, poor sleep, or a persistent bodily sensation, professional care may be important. This can include medical, psychological, physiotherapeutic, or safe complementary care, depending on the case.

Acupuncture has variable evidence depending on the clinical condition. The NCCIH/NIH points, for example, to moderate-quality evidence for acupuncture in chronic low-back pain and evidence in some pain conditions, but that does not mean it works for everything.

Osteopathy and manual therapies also need to be treated with rigor. NICE recommends manual therapy for low-back pain only as part of a package that includes exercise, with or without psychological therapy. At the same time, a 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis found that osteopathic manipulative treatment was not superior to sham or placebo for neck or low-back pain, showing that the evidence is debated and should not be exaggerated.

In a BrainLatam2026 reading, we can say this: acupuncture and osteopathy may help some people perceive the body, reduce tension, and recover bodily signaling. Acupuncture can be understood as stimulation of points that may favor sensory and autonomic pathways; osteopathy as touch and movement that may help open space for the body to reorganize.

But “release of anergies” should enter as a decolonial conceptual metaphor, not as a proven biomedical mechanism. The result depends on the person’s Tekoha: bodily history, DNA, culture, trust, beliefs, bond with the therapist, safety of the environment, sleep, food, movement, and social context.

Always with qualified professionals, safety, and without replacing necessary clinical treatment.

Repeated belonging returns elasticity

If repeated shame becomes tension, repeated belonging can return elasticity.

Belonging is not empty praise. It is the body feeling:

I can exist here,
I can make mistakes and still belong,
I can speak without being ridiculed,
I can have my origin without hiding it,
I can have my body without turning it into an enemy,
I can learn at my own pace,
I can be different and still be together.

In Jiwasa, we do not need to become perfect in order to belong.

We belong first.
Then we breathe.
Then we learn better.

Questions of Metacognition

When shame appears, we can ask:

was this shame born in me, or was it placed in me?
does it protect me or imprison me?
which part of my body becomes smaller when I feel this?
who profits when I feel ashamed to exist?
which person, place, or practice returns belonging to me?
what can I feel without turning it into guilt?

These questions do not erase everything. But they open space.

And space is the beginning of elasticity.

EEG/NIRS/fNIRS window: how could we study shame, belonging, and Tekoha?

A BrainLatam study on Shame Is Also Bodily Pressure could investigate how adolescents respond to social evaluation, comparison, exclusion, belonging, and repair.

With EEG/ERP, we could observe markers such as LPP, P300, N2, and frontal asymmetry, depending on the task. A 2023 study showed that body-related shame in adolescents was prospectively associated with difficulties in attentional focus, suggesting that shame can consume cognitive resources.

With NIRS/fNIRS, we could observe prefrontal hemodynamic activity during tasks involving social evaluation, metacognitive pause, safe conversation, or reconstruction of belonging. With HRV/RMSSD, respiration, GSR, EMG, and eye-tracking, it would be possible to measure the whole body: tension, autonomic activation, gaze, breathing, and recovery.

The experimental question would be:

what changes in the brain and body when shame narrows Tekoha — and what changes when belonging returns elasticity?

Closing

Shame is also bodily pressure.

When it repeats, the body may shrink, monitor itself, lock up, and enter Zone 3. But this does not mean the person is broken. It means the body learned to defend itself in a world that often made belonging feel conditional.

In Jiwasa — we together, the proposal is not to order someone to “have self-esteem.” It is to create conditions so the body can stop feeling judged all the time.

Repeated shame becomes tension.
Repeated belonging returns elasticity.

When Tekoha stops hiding, APUS can breathe again.

Post-2021 References

Base document of the block: Bloco de Blogs Épico para Estudos Comportamentais — Neurociências Decolonial.

Bolton, D. (2023). A revitalized biopsychosocial model: core theory, research paradigms, and clinical implications. Psychological Medicine.

Lucente, M., & Guidi, J. (2023). Allostatic Load in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.

McKinnon, I. I., et al. (2024). Experiences of Racism in School and Associations with Mental Health, Suicide Risk, and Substance Use Among High School Students. CDC MMWR.

Wang, Y., et al. (2025). Racial–Ethnic Discrimination and Young People’s Mental Health in Intensive Longitudinal Studies: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.

Vincente-Benito, I., & Ramírez-Durán, M. del V. (2023). Influence of Social Media Use on Body Image and Well-Being Among Adolescents and Young Adults: A Systematic Review. Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services.

Bonfanti, R. C., et al. (2025). The association between social comparison in social media, body image concerns, and eating disorder symptoms: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Body Image.

Vani, M. F., Lucibello, K. M., Welsh, T., & Sabiston, C. M. (2023). Body-related shame disrupts attentional focus over time in adolescence. Journal of Adolescence.

National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Acupuncture: Effectiveness and Safety.

NICE. Low back pain and sciatica in over 16s: assessment and management — recommendations.

Ceballos-Laita, L., et al. (2024). Is Osteopathic Manipulative Treatment Clinically Superior to Sham or Placebo for Patients with Neck or Low-Back Pain? A Systematic Review with Meta-Analysis. Diseases.