The conversation these days in therapy and on social media is all about accepting our emotions, feeling our emotions, and trusting our emotions... but not shame. The current zeitgeist is decidedly anti-shame with many people on a quest to overcome shame and “deshameify” themselves. But why is shame less valid, real, or natural than any other emotion? Shame is a part of our real and healthy emotional spectrum.
The issue is in what we allow to generate the feeling of shame. It’s hard to find a clear and consistent definition of shame. Many people associate shame with arbitrary social insecurities or with external standards, which put them in a position of being powerless in regard to shame. A common distinction is that guilt is connected to what you do and shame is about who you are. In this blog post, I am putting forward a specific understanding which I think would be a more useful definition and approach to shame.
In contrast to shame, guilt is a more cognitive feeling. A recognition we have broken the rules and we need to apologize and repair. Shame is an almost somatic feeling. As I assert here, it arises from a violation of our deepest values. We feel it in our body, in our heart, in our psyche. That’s why it hurts so much and can feel so bad. It’s visceral. In spite of the fact that it shakes us to our very core, there is nothing wrong with shame. The problem is with what we hold as our deepest values and what triggers those experiences of shame.
By accepting, feeling, and tolerating shame; we have the opportunity to recognize our most deeply held values. And consider if those tenets make sense and resonate with us or do they confuse us, hindering our functionality. In going through the exercise of evaluating our value system, we develop the agency to choose the set of deep ideals that make the most sense for us at this phase of life, defining the type of person we want to be.
No one can shame you. Shame arises from standards you set within yourself. As opposed to guilt which is externally defined. That’s why you can be found guilty within a court of law. And why doing the “right thing” can sometimes involve breaking the rules.
When someone says, “you should be ashamed of yourself,” what they are really saying is “I think you should hold this particular ideology that I believe in.” It’s up to you whether you would like to consider their suggestion and closely evaluate that particular paradigm for integration into your belief system, or not.
Unlike guilt, shame cannot be resolved by saying “I’m sorry.” Because the violation is to my own definition of good character, impacting my sense of self. Rectifying the interpersonal situation is not enough, shame dictates that I need to recenter myself in a way that I can feel good about the person I am.
There is a lot of shame around women's bodies, which makes no sense to me as a useful social value, except to control women. There are other examples of shame internalized from social hierarchies and used to control, such as when people have shame regarding racial characteristics or caste lines. The internal experience of shame motivated from bodily attributes is demoralizing and oppressive and can lead to problematic behaviors by a person individually and by society as a whole.
On the other hand, there is not enough shame in society today around behaviors such as hurting, demeaning, using, and humiliating one another. Because, as a society, we aren't valuing each other as humans and community members enough.
The times when I’ve seen my husband racked with shame are the times that I have felt closest to him and most confident about him. Because it was in those moments that I could see most clearly what his deepest ethics were. It makes me feel secure in his character to know that he values and feels shame when he falls short of caring for his parents, being there for me, or fulfilling his promises and commitments.
Shame is a powerful emotion. It’s both stinging like a slap across the face and a deep writhing in the belly like a whole night sitting on the toilet. It hurts the way it does because it’s a reflection on how I am seeing myself as a person. It says hey, “that's not who you want to be, you are being a bad version of yourself.”
What kinds of things do I want to trigger that response? How do I define, for myself, what a good person is? What kinds of behavior, if I were to engage in them, would rightly make me feel like I’m not a good person, and if I continued in that way, that I don’t like myself? These are my deeply held values. And when I act in violation of those, shame motivates me to be the kind of person I want to be.
At the heart of it, shame is just a feeling. We can tolerate it. We can learn from it. We can be in control of it by being explicit about and having agency in choosing our deepest values.