While we are not born feeling shame every human being has the capacity to and will experience it, particularly in childhood and adolescence. Despite this fact shame is often misunderstood and rarely discussed. This is what I have learned about shame.
We are social animals who live by social rules and shame is a powerful mechanism used to ensure we keep to these rules. For children there are a lot of rules to learn. Let’s take the example that biting other children is generally frowned upon. If we, knowingly or unknowingly, break this rule others let us know we have transgressed. They are disappointed in us and may withdraw their affection to signify that our behaviour is unacceptable. This is the function of shame; biting others is not OK and hopefully we learn the lesson and move on. However, what is often learned is not “it is bad to bite people” but “I am bad”. We internalise the message and form a belief that we are unlovable, defective or not enough.
If shame with positive intentions can have this negative outcome shame with negative intent can be devastating. The experience of invalidation, bullying, neglect or abuse can leave us with toxic shame, defined as a deeply held feeling of worthlessness, personal inadequacy and self loathing. Others treat us badly and we turn that experience into a belief about ourselves. Unlike guilt, the feeling of doing something wrong, shame is the feeling of being something wrong. In Ireland the school system and the church used shame to ensure compliance, social media now does the same thing.
The affect or feeling of shame is extraordinarily painful. The words used to describe the feeling point to inner collapse, a sinking feeling in the pit of our stomachs, we cringe inwards, we drop eye contact. To feel shame feels like falling from grace. It cuts, “to the bone of our sense of basic worth and capacity to survive and cope” (Wheeler, 1997). The experience of shame alters how we feel about ourselves as people in a way other emotions do not. “Shame is felt as an inner torment, as a sickness of the soul. It is the most poignant experience of the self by the self…. a wound felt from the inside” (Kaufman, 1980).
Shame also causes us to organise our world around avoiding feeling it. The intensity of the feeling is such that we will do whatever is necessary to not feel it again. We hide from ourselves and from others, often with damaging effects. The “realisation” that we are not good enough is so devastating why risk the disgust others would feel if we showed who we really are. We get locked into our own shame bubbles, presenting a more “acceptable self” to the world. We all do this to greater or lesser extents. It’s exhausting.
As shame is accumulated it can also be dispelled. We do this by naming it, understanding that it is a universal phenomenon and not our worst secret. Shame is the result of insufficient support. We needed our caregiver to explain that while we are acceptable, the behaviour of biting is not. We needed to be seen and our opinions validated. We needed someone to step in and call the bully out. We needed to be kept safe. Once we recognise this awful feeling (not fact) is about what happened we can support ourselves in how we treat ourselves and allow support from others. We can revisit what was threatened in the first place; our basic sense of worth and our need for connection and belonging. To be with a safe other and allow our shame to be present is to allow for a corrective experience. When we experience acceptance rather than rejection and know we are not the only one who feels this way, the grip of shame is loosened. “Shame dies when stories are told in safe spaces” (Voskamp).
Adolescence and the Age of Painful Embarrassment
