Shame is an insidious thing. People have somehow gotten it into their heads that Shame is a teaching tool. Like, if you shame someone, they will change to avoid being shamed again. It’s funny how it doesn’t actually work that way. Guilt, well that does seem to have some impact on a person changing, but it’s the difference between the two that creates a possibility of change. With guilt there is a likelihood of motivation to change, and minimal chance of motivation to change when shamed. Here’s the thing, shame is about a person’s being. Guilt is about a singular action, choice, event, etc. Embarrassment is similar to guilt, and humiliation similar to shame. Singular event vs. about the core of who you are.
When you feel guilty or embarrassed, you see a singular event or action, something someone points out or you see yourself about something tangible and movable. It’s also sometimes something that you have some experience seeing in others or have known others to do. Because it is about something outside of yourself, and action or event, you have agency over the future of that happening again. That is, you can do something different in the future to prevent said guilt or embarrassment. Such as, you chose a perm for class picture day. Not always a good choice, and embarrassing photo ensues. You can choose differently next time, and you can choose to not have the pictures taken or printed. Embarrassment over. You can do something like cheat or lie, which can make you feel guilty, but you can also choose to make amends and be different in the future.
When you feel shame or humiliation, it cuts into your being and is about you as a person, something in you. It is you. It’s the difference between making a mistake and believing you are a mistake. It’s the difference between lying and being a liar. Once you get that label put on you with a shame marker, the hope of being different can fly away. It is much easier to do something different than to try to be something different. When you are humiliated, called out in front of others, an aspect of your person is ridiculed, and you are labeled something about yourself, like fat, stupid, ugly, etc. It can become who you are, not about something you did. Guilt and embarrassment can lead to shame and humiliation depending on your history, and the people around you and how they respond to you in those moments.
For example, if you hear messages about your person throughout your history, like you are weak, have no ambition, can’t do anything right, etc. When you make a mistake, it’s not fixable, because it is who you are, a mistake. You are just proving the history right. It takes a lot of energy and therapy to get out from under those life long message about who you are, and then, sometimes, at the most inopportune moments, the shame and humiliation gets triggered, and there you are in a spiral where you want to crawl under the bed and hide for a decade.
This is the Shame War. It is the war a person fights inside of themselves against the shaming that has happened to them. Because shaming history creates hopelessness, unworthiness, and demotivation, which actually tends to lead to more decisions that might bring on the shaming of the people around you. Yet, you can pick yourself up, you can dust off the shame, and you can say, “Nope, you will not get me today!” Today, I am bigger than the shame, and I know that I am good enough, and even if this was a mistake, I can do better next time because I am not a mistake. The hardest part of this war is that it is not a single skirmish, not a single battle happening in just one place. It can be multiple battles on many fronts with constant skirmishes about different things. There is the weight shame, the food shame, the emotions shame, the scar shame, the balding shame, the gender shame, the on and on and on each one a different battle front of the shame war.
We fight each battle as it comes, and sometimes we win, and sometimes we lose. If we lose too many in a row, the spiral can derail us for a length of time that gets scary. If we try to take on all of the fronts at one time, we will lose more battles because we cannot fight everything all at once. Then we can spiral completely out of control and end up in the closet, sitting in the dark, crying or shaking uncontrollably.
If you have not ever felt this type of shame that takes you out of the game of life for periods of time, you might not be able to relate to this, and so, this is not for you. If you can relate to this spiral, then this series about the Shame Wars is exactly for you. The point of these articles is to call out the shame and put a bright light on it. When we do that, shame cannot hide and like all monsters in the dark, light starts to diminish it until there is a sense of peace. While a skirmish may show up from time to time and be a trigger for a moment, we have the light and the weapons to fight it effectively, and so we win, most of the time. Shame begins to to have less power over us. The war can be won, and even if the Shame tries to start a revolution from time to time, we can resist it and stop it from getting traction, and so it goes back to its hiding place in the depths of our psyche.
I will say two things, these ideas are my personal opinions. I do not have a license to dispense advice as a psychologist or anything like that. I do have a certificate as a Life Coach, for what that is worth, but if you are having mental health concerns, please consult a professional. Second, what I have learned about guilt and shame, embarrassment and humiliation, comes largely from listening to Brene’ Brown. However, I have also studied many other works from intelligent humans, like Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, Dr. Joe Dispenza and Mark Manson, to name a few. What I write here might sound like something they have said, and if I am aware of who said it, I will give them credit. In complete honesty, I am not copying from anyone’s work. It is the ideas that I created in my own mind from all of the books, articles and videos that I have heard, read and seen. I have no idea sometimes if am quoting someone else or not. For this, I apologize to the many teachers in my life who deserve the credit for my ideas in part and sometimes in the whole. Please have grace for me in this one. My ONLY purpose here is to shed light on things in the world, and I hope that in so doing, someone’s day will be brighter and load lighter for reading it.
-Namaste