how shame shapes us
I had an hour to kill as I was driving up to Missoula to meet a friend for a climbing and dinner date. There was a storm on the horizon that hadn’t yet dropped. When it did it brought a week’s worth of winter and froze autumn. I can still see kisses of golden and soft green as the snow begins to recede and I worry the trees at the front of the house will forever sway askew from such sudden and persistent weight.
As the sun passed beneath the mountains, I resumed an interview I had started earlier of Terry Real, a brilliant relationship therapist and author, interviewing Jim Gillian, a Harvard psychiatrist who spent his career working with violent offenders in the prison system in order to better to understand male aggression. What could be seen in these extreme cases that might be hidden in lesser forms of violence? The part of their conversation that struck me most was the impact of shame as a driving force for violence. For instance gang members willing to kill rather than risk feeling shamed by the group. Or soldiers willing to die versus face dishonor. In fact, almost all cases of murders came because someone felt disrespected (I.e. shamed) by another. This is where I got interested because I meet client’s shame every week. These were extreme cases of men who had faced deep shame their whole lives, but it paints a vivid picture of how shame might operate for the rest of us.
Shame annihilates the Authentic Self. Shame keeps us small (and safe, but unexpressed and unfulfilled). We hold back how we’re really feeling; we don’t create that thing that’s aching to come out or reach out to that person we’re into or apply to the job . . You get the picture. It definitively stunts growth because it doesn’t allow us to risk failure. It desiccates intimacy by shying away from sharing who we really are and it severs us from essential parts of ourselves. The parts that play a big role in helping us to feel alive and whole.
Brenè Brown writes about shame in her book Atlas of the Heart and much of her work around vulnerability. Shame, according to the research of Brown, is “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love, belonging and connection.” In many ways this is how the “psychology of the patriarchy” works. That phrase is Terry Real’s and I love it so I’m stealing it. We are shamed to conform. We are shamed and ashamed to keep our most intimate parts hidden, sometimes so well that they are hidden even from our selves.
Unchecked shame operates in the psyche like a thug, holding hostage our most vulnerable parts. It places conditionality on all that we do so that we are either better than (the shaming of others) or not good enough (the shaming of ourselves).
Lessening shame’s grip is an essential part of cultivating an authentic sense of self. One of the main solutions to shame. . . drum roll please … is self-love. I always think of Stuart Smalley on SNL at this point saying, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.” And we all get a little squeamish and laugh at the cloying way he speaks to himself, which I think just goes to show how uncomfortable we are with being genuinely nice to ourselves. We outright mock it.
While it’s incredibly simple in theory, I see countless people who cannot say nice things about themselves unless it involves some kind of achievement. Which to me is frequently stemming from the sentiment, “I only matter if I’ve produced something” or “I only matter if you accept me” and not genuine self-appreciation. I’m talking about the kind of self-love that is gentle when you’ve had a long day. The love that gets a kick out of your quirks. The love that listens and acts on what she needs. The kind that speaks up and knows her boundaries. The love that says, “no.” The love that says, “yes!”
We cannot change something we cannot see. The first step in moving away from shame is becoming aware of it. Where are you holding yourself back? What do you put yourself down for? What do you put others down for? How do you judge yourself for these same things? In the beginning, I had a very tricky way of hiding shame from my thoughts. I refused to acknowledge what I would have labeled “bad” thoughts. So shame for me showed up as a feeling in my body of total overwhelm and embarrassment from the most basic of speaking up like raising my hand in class. It showed up as indecision and uncertainty and a tightness in my belly. I would overthink email responses and experience genuine terror at expressing what I wanted for things as simple as telling a friend I preferred to stay in for the night.
According to Brown shame festers in secrecy, silence and judgement. So, part of healing from shame is airing it out. First, seeing it ourselves and then sharing our fears, worries, and judgements (our vulnerabilities) with others. Oddly enough, the act of sharing the very things we are trying to hide about ourselves is ultimately what fosters intimacy and a feeling of belonging. Learning to work with your shame rather than your shame working you begins to build trust and capacity in yourself to move beyond all the ways you keep yourself down and put yourself down. So while shame ain’t so sexy it is worth cozying up to because on the other side of shame are the fruits of true creativity, connection and change in our lives.