Shame in the Shadows
A ‘Secret’ Emotion With a Huge Impact.
This was a really difficult article to write. I wrote a first draft that was my usual collection of quotes and insights. I sent it to a friend, and he challenged me to inject myself into the story, because that’s what it’s really been about. For the last few months I’ve been focused on the difficult process of inner work. The idea is to explore the emotions and triggers that have unconsciously influenced my actions throughout my life. The rub is that sometimes you can only really understand the personal hell where you suffer the most by willingly going down there to have a look around.
I only recently achieved full awareness of how significantly shame had dominated my life and led to cycles of despair, suffering and withdrawal. My shame is like a giant, invisible parasitic worm that feeds on self-esteem. The more I read about shame, the more fascinating it became and the more it emerged as a critical piece of the framework of life and meaning that I’ve been researching for the last few years. I also realised I don’t think I’ve ever had a direct conversation about shame with anyone close to me, and I now feel pretty ashamed of that (ha ha). So please consider this an open invitation.
Research professor and author Brené Brown defines shame as an ‘intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging - something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection.’ Her original, simply brilliant TED Talk is one of the top 5 most viewed TED talks in the world, and well worth 20 minutes of your time. 40 million views is the kind of popularity that once again indicates how ubiquitous this problem is.
Shame slinks in the shadows, the gremlin in our mind that constantly needles us with our own shortcomings. Carl Jung appropriately described shame as a ‘soul-eating emotion’. But the full influence of shame is often a secret even to our own direct awareness; it wasn’t until I rigorously inspected the narrative of my entire life that I saw a clear pattern of shame and withdrawal. What’s true for me might indeed be true for many of us. Sociologist Thomas Scheff writes that shame is ‘the most obstructed and hidden emotion, and therefore the most destructive. Emotions are like breathing- they cause trouble only when obstructed.’
Shame is both deeply personal, and incredibly universal. There’s a pivotal passage in John Steinbeck’s sublime novel East of Eden that explains the parable of Cain and Abel in the context of shame.
‘Lee answered Samuel. “I think this is the best-known story in the world because it is everybody’s story. I think it is the symbol story of the human soul. I’m feeling my way now — don’t jump on me if I’m not clear. The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt — and there is the story of mankind….
...I think that if rejection could be amputated, the human would not be what he is. Maybe there would be fewer crazy people. I am sure in myself there would not be many jails. It is all there — the start, the beginning. One child, refused the love he craves, kicks the cat and hides his secret guilt; and another steals so that money will make him loved; and a third conquers the world — and always the guilt and revenge and more guilt. The human is the only guilty animal. Now wait! Therefore I think this old and terrible story is important because it is a chart of the soul — the secret, rejected, guilty soul. Mr. Trask, you said you did not kill your brother and then you remembered something. I don’t want to know what it was, but was it very far apart from Cain and Abel?’
Our shared shame is the subtext of the second story in the Bible. That’s a strong claim to ubiquity. For those with an evolutionary psychology bias, social animals having incredibly finely-tuned shame sensors makes complete sense. Repeating the kinds of behaviour that could get you thrown out of the tribe could quickly prove fatal to you as an isolated individual. Connection is central to humanity’s welfare and shame is fear of potential disconnection. The emotion may originate from a helpful place, but can spiral into negative consequences.
I recently read another, really, really good article in The Cut on shame. A reader writes in to say that she’s 35 and feels like she’s wasted her entire life. The author responds with an incredibly insightful treatise on shame.
‘Shame turns every emotion into the manifestation of some personality flaw, every casual choice into a giant mistake, every small blunder into a moral failure. Shame means that you’re damned and you’ve accomplished nothing and it’s all downhill from here.’
The transformational realization that comes with clearly seeing our shame, is that we are not being punished, we are punishing ourselves. You are not stuck in a job, relationship or lifestyle you hate because you deserve it, but because you may simply have made a mistake. As Brown puts it:
‘Shame is a focus on self, guilt is a focus on behavior. Shame is “I am bad.” Guilt is “I did something bad”….
…Shame is highly, highly correlated with addiction, depression, violence, aggression, bullying, suicide, eating disorders. And here’s what you even need to know more. Guilt, inversely correlated with those things. The ability to hold something we’ve done or failed to do up against who we want to be is incredibly adaptive. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s adaptive.’
Once you understand that the hole of withdrawal, shame and despair you may sometimes find yourself in is probably not due to deep flaws in your character, you can start to work your way out.
Shame cannot survive as easily in the light of awareness. For example, it helps to know that shame has common triggers; the primary shame trigger for women still remains physical appearance. For men, it’s the fear of being perceived as weak. That’s the joy and purpose of coaching or therapy, it helps bring the light of awareness to our own hidden dragons.
The final thing to say about shame is that Brown found the key to beating it required vulnerability. Vulnerability requires being your authentic self, shedding your acquired persona, and yet hoping to be loved regardless. She called this being ‘whole-hearted’; possessing the courage to be outwardly imperfect. Simply put; ‘ The people who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe they’re worthy of love and belonging. That’s it.’ The threat of isolation and disconnection doesn’t work for those who deem themselves to be intrinsically worthy of love. Self-love is arguably the hardest defense to maintain against shame, but is intrinsic and therefore the most enduring.
By bringing your authentic self to the world, you are enabling your true gifts to shine. Jordan Peterson believes shame is often the emotion behind why we don’t always dare to make the most of ourselves in life. ‘People don’t aspire to the highest good because they’re deeply ashamed of themselves, their weaknesses, and their insufficiencies.’ With the acceptance of shame, and its diminishment, comes the responsibility to pursue higher goals. And that can also be terrifying.
Vulnerability also requires the immense courage to face chaos and uncertainty, a conclusion that was so difficult for Brown herself to accept that she had a breakdown. Indeed she stated in a later interview that ‘Vulnerability is courage. We were looking at data the other day — we have 200,000 pieces of data now- and I can’t find a single example or incident of courage that is not completely defined by vulnerability.’ As I wrote recently, repeated exposure to a fear numbs its effect; it seems like these whole-hearted people have repeatedly exposed themselves to the fear of disconnection and thus diminished its power. That’s just one reason why writing this article was important for me.
Brown thinks we aggressively numb our vulnerabilities as a society because we cannot accept that we are permanently subject to chaos. And the cost of numbing is just so high:
‘ You can’t numb those hard feelings without numbing the other affects, our emotions. You cannot selectively numb. So when we numb those, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness. And then we are miserable, and we are looking for purpose and meaning, and then we feel vulnerable, so then we have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin. And it becomes this dangerous cycle.’
As I’ve written about before, total security is an impossible dream, it’s a path towards stagnation and death. This links back to the Adam and Eve story. Knowledge that chaos is always possible, as represented by the serpent with the apple in the Garden of Eden, often leads to a breakdown; The Fall. Just like it did with Brown. After the fall comes disconnection and with that shame; as told in Cain and Abel. Regaining that connection involves vulnerability, and vulnerability requires a kind of faith. Faith is the idea that if we truly show our true, true selves to the world, we will be embraced not rejected. Vulnerability is also the acceptance that even if we are wounded in the process, we are resilient enough to withstand it and try again.
To start and end with the shame expert Brené Brown: ‘Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.’
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