grief

I’d Rather Die

Ron Johnson addictions, emotional maturity, grief, mindfulness, Self-Awareness

You’ve heard people say something like, “I’d rather die than…” followed by something that they abhorred. Maybe, they hate tomatoes and would “rather die” than eat them, which would be true of my grandson. Or maybe, the person would find it abhorrent to own a green car or watch a football game on TV. We generally understand that the expression, “I’d rather die than…” means that the person really dislikes something. He or she wouldn’t really prefer to die than to eat tomatoes or watch football. Emotional expressions like that are just typically said in order to give flavor to one’s dislikes.

Knowing that “I’d rather die…” doesn’t really generally mean that the person would rather die than do something, I have heard many people actually say these words in earnest. Odd as it sounds, many people would, indeed, rather die than do something. Sometimes the thing that they’d rather not do is live.

People who feel that they would rather die than do something:

  • A pastor’s wife who “would rather die” than admit to anyone that she has not been aware of the financial situation that her husband and she find themselves in.
  • The pastor who “would rather tie” than go bankrupt.
  • A man who “would rather die” than go through the near-death experience of Covid that he had.
  • A man who would “rather die” than give up his addiction to gambling. And another man who would prefer dying to giving up his promiscuity; another who can’t give his addiction to alcohol; another with heroin; and many more behavioral or chemical addictions.
  • A man who would “rather die” than end a profoundly unhappy marriage
  • A man who would “rather die” than give up his righteous indignation towards someone who contributed to his son’s death

There are many more people who “would rather die” than do something, do without something, have something, give something up, change their lives in some way, accept the world the way it is, or accept the way they are. We have recently heard of some of the individuals who participated in the December 6, 2001 riot who were fully prepared to “die if necessary” for the sake of what they believed. Likewise, we have heard of many terrorists who truly have chosen to die “for Allah” rather than live with a situation they found intolerable.

What are the causes of this very real preference to dying than living with something? Hopelessness, shame, and addiction.

Hopelessness: I don’t want to live

The pastor’s wife whom I noted above feels a profound hopelessness. Her life was shattered by the discovery that her husband had hid their deteriorating financial situation for years. It didn’t help that a primary cause of the choice he made was largely related to keeping her happy and avoiding her hurt and disappointment. The man who had Covid also was hit with his wife’s filing for divorce, and he really did not want to live when I first met him.

The two emotional ingredients of depression are helplessness and hopelessness. Many people who have these feelings, indeed, attempt suicide (usually men) or make suicidal attempts (usually women). More often, people who are depressed would just rather die than live. I encounter this feeling with many of the men I see in my practice, which has brought me to help these men admit that they would really rather not be alive even though they really do not want to die and certainly don’t want to suicide. Odd as it sounds, it often helps for me to help them admit this “don’t want to live” phenomenon clarifying it from wanting to die.

Many more people have the genuine feeling of “I’d rather die than….” They are feeling shame.

Shame: I don’t want to be seen

The pastor whom I noted above feels shame. He would truly rather die than admit publically to his financial dilemma. He has been a good and faithful person all his life but hasn’t had the courage and wisdom to manage his tendency to give too much to his wife and family, something that led to a heavy burden of debt from which he has seemingly no way to correct. How, you might ask, is he unwilling to go bankrupt given the opportunity that America gives people to get out of intolerable financial situations. Indeed, many people have been irresponsible with their finances, have not worked faithfully, and perhaps have acquired gambling debts. But no such situation confronts this man. He just can’t accept the “shame” that he would feel if anyone knew that he had made a mess of his finances, this despite the fact that he has generally and genuinely helped thousands of people in his ministry of nearly 60 years. He would rather die.

Many people suffer from the same malady: shame. What is shame? I suggest you read my previous blogs on shame and guilt for a more elaborate description of these two related, but also quite different phenomena. Guilt, or perhaps we call it real guilt, is the feeling of sadness one has for having said or done something wrong, perhaps hurtful or harmful to someone or to property. Guilt (real guilt) is thus valuable because it is the result of a person having an internal ethic that has been broken. Guilt of this kind can lead to self-improvement. Shame is quite different. Shame is fear-based, not sadness-based as is guilt, namely fear of other’s potential disapproval. Guilt leads to improvement; shame leads to hiding. This pastor is hiding from the potential disapproval of people, know or unknown. Often, when people feel shame, they are afraid of anyone knowing the error they made. Shame is never helpful.

Shame is the driving force behind the real “I’d rather die” phenomenon. It is a very powerful element in life and is not well understood, partly because we have such a shaming society. As bad as shame is in America, it is even worse in some countries and sub-cultures. Japan has a history of suicide that is related to one’s shame, which is usually related to shaming the family. Likewise, there is a shame factor in Latino society as I am able to detect, and seemingly underlying the Black community in many circumstances, but shame is nearly universal in humankind and a driving force for hiding, defending, or causing harm to other people.

While shame is the primary element in most “I’d rather die” phenomena, and hopelessness is the driving force in depression, another significant factor is with people who are addicted to something.

Addictions: I’d rather not give up my wat of life

Addictions are behavioral or chemical and sometimes both. Very often an individual is addicted to more than one element often combining a chemical with a behavioral addiction.

  • Behavioral addictions include sexual activity, gambling, eating, buying, hoarding, working, playing, talking, never talking, athletics, and screen time among many other addictions. Screen time includes TV, video games, cell phones, and computers.
  • Chemical addiction include alcohol, street drugs, prescription drugs, and eating. Note that eating is both a behavioral and a chemical addiction. Many people are addicted to so-called “bad” carbohydrates, like pure sugar, while others are addicted to salt or fat.

An addiction is generally understood to be a behavior, chemical or behavioral, where the individual has found something essentially good for him, which then became a good habit, and then became a “go to” phenomenon, meaning that he or she went to this behavior or chemical as a means of coping life. Other elements of addiction include a need for more of the substance or behavior for the same positive effect, attempts to hide the addiction, and then failed attempts to end or reduce the addiction.

I am not an expert in addictionology, but I do see people who “would rather die” than give up their addiction. Ever see people who weigh 300 pounds and wonder why they just don’t give up their excessive eating, or people who have had their seventh DUI but can’t stop drinking, or people who have been prosecuted for some sexual crime but continue with sexual promiscuity? All of these people are addicted to something and would rather die than change their behavior.

I there any solution for this problem of “I’d rather die than…”?

Wanting to live: an alternative to wanting to die

It would be great if I could just tell people things like, “You don’t really want to die,” “A lot of people would be hurt if you would die,” or “Just give up this thing and you will be happier.” But such statements never help. In fact, they may actually increase the person’s addiction, hopelessness, or shame. The first thing we must realize is that this “I’d rather die” is a real feeling. So, if you’re facing some kind of choice and “would rather die” than change, admit to your feeling. And, if you’re someone who is trying to help someone who feels such things, know that this is a very real feeling. Admitting to how I feel is a beginning, and in fact the essential ingredient to overcoming the “I’d rather die than…” feeling.

If you can admit to the feeling of “I’s rather die” feeling, you are well on the road to face the underlying phenomenon. The underlying phenomenon is always love lost, hurt, and unfinished sadness. In other words, you need to find, feel, face, and finish the loss you had in life. This loss might be the marriage you got into, the loss of the use of your right arm, the shame inflicted on you by a parent, your financial mistakes, or whatever you did…or didn’t do. Face the feeling. The feeling is always unfinished sadness. You probably need a good therapist to help you through this process.

If you can find, feel, and finish the sadness of your past, you will need to find a way to develop discipline in your life. You can’t go to discipline if you are still feeling shame, addictive coping, or depression. Discipline is doing what I don’t want to do in order to get to a place where I want to be. Discipline is not punishment. Discipline is not pleasant. Discipline is not fun. It is necessary. Unless you find some kind of discipline in your life, you have not gone far enough. Good psychology begins with feelings, leads to good thinking, and then leads to meaningful action.

The Centrality of Disappointment

Ron Johnson appreciation, Development, emotional maturity, Feelings, grief, happiness, love, mindfulness, Positive psychology, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

One of the most important terms to use daily is “disappointment.” Think about it: how many times during a single day are you actually disappointed. If you’re careful to note your feelings and thoughts, you will notice that disappointment is an experience that occurs several times a day. I want to discuss what disappointment is, how to handle it, when to express it, and how to use it profitably on a daily basis. Simply stated, if you can observe, feel, and selectively express your disappointment, you will ultimately reduce anger and fear substantially, you will improve your relationships, and you will find life much more enjoyable. How weird does that sound? Feel more disappointment and feel better about life? Yes.

What is disappointment?

Disappointment is, quite simply, the feeling of sadness that occurs when you have lost something. We might also add that there is often a feeling of hurt that almost always accompanies the feeling sadness. In fact, these three terms are largely equivalent, but I think the term “disappointment” is the most palatable and understandable of the three. I often help people to feel disappointment in their daily lives and hence forestall anger, fear, and agitation. Deb and I have seen the centrality of the feeling of sadness in life for decades and published our first book, The Positive Power of Sadness: Good Grief, and on this experience as well as good portions of our second book, I Want to Tell You How I Feel.

Disappointment (and sadness and hurt) come when I lose something, usually something that I did not expect to lose. Most of our daily disappointments are of simple, often trivial, matters:

  • I spill my cup of coffee
  • I take wrong turn on the highway
  • I forgot to drink enough water in the day
  • I didn’t get a call from my daughter
  • My friend was late to our pizza date
  • My computer took forever to boot up in the morning
  • I pressed the wrong key on my computer and ended up with a note from Ethiopia
  • I bit into an apple and realized I just bit into a worm hole

There are more significant disappointments that often occur frequently, of not usually daily:

  • I lost a game of golf on an important tournament
  • My book didn’t get published as I expected it would
  • I lost my job
  • My spouse left me for another person
  • A good friend or relative died
  • I had a heart attack

While the simple and profound disappointments are both essentially sad and often hurtful, the degree of sadness and hurt is obviously greater. In our Good Grief book we wrote a lot about “little sads,” which are spilling my coffee and such, as perhaps the most important ways to learn of the centrality of sadness and find good ways to cope with these disappointments. If I can learn that I have many disappointments in a normal day, I will be better equipped to deal with the larger losses and consequent disappointments that will most certainly occur in my life.

Why do I have so many disappointments?

Because you love a lot. Love a lot? What does that mean? We talk about people have various “love problems,” which means that they love a lot of things and are disappointed a lot. Let me explain. Let’s review the small disappointments, the “small sads” as we call them, and see how each one of them has a love factor imbedded in it:

  • I spill my cup of coffee: I love to have a good cuppa and a clean floor.
  • I take wrong turn on the highway: I love to drive on the right road.
  • I forgot to drink enough water in the day: I love to engage in healthy endeavors.
  • I didn’t get a call from my daughter: I love hearing from my daughter.
  • My friend was late to our pizza date: I love having people be on time.
  • My computer took forever to boot up in the morning: I love jumping right into my computer work.
  • I pressed the wrong key on my computer and ended up with a note from Ethiopia: I love to be efficient on my computer.
  • I bit into an apple and realized I just bit into a worm hole: I love good apples.

Now, you might not normally use the term “love” for all of these activities, but I think it is actually the best word. You could use “value” or “what’s important to me” but these terms are equivalent to love, albeit we have different amount of love for all of them.

You can see how the more significant losses are also love-based, like losing a love one, losing a job, or losing your health. If you can conceive that every time you are disappointed, you have a “love problem,” you will begin to see how central love is in your life. You might prefer the term “value” to love but I think it is better to use the term “love” because it brings us closer to how we can handle these regular and unavoidable disappointments that come from some kind of loss.

How exactly do we process disappointments?

Simply stated, by being sad. This is simple but immensely hard, perhaps especially for us Americans who are generally not particularly good at feeling sad. One of the greatest things about America is the pioneering spirit that has made this country so great and successful. This pioneering spirit drives us to move forward, to get through, to forge ahead, and to not stop when we have found some kind of impediment in our way. I read Lewis and Clark’s journal of their trek west from St. Louis to the Portland, OR area and back again. They forged through and opened up the west for America. We might notice, however, that this opening up of the west for “Americans” also set the stage for the displacement of Native Americans, a thought that deserves some attention in our discussion with our tendency to move forward when we meet some challenge or disappointment,

The process of disappointment is simple but hard, meaning that the process is a clear road but the road is a tough one. What makes the road tough is the emotion of sadness that is always at the heart of disappointment. Simply stated, it is hard to be sad, at least it is hard for most people, certainly most Americans, and generally harder for men than for women. The beauty of feeling naturally disappointed, and eventually sad, is that sadness ends. Thus, disappointment ends. We tend to interrupt the process of sadness by some other means, usually with anger, fear, resentment, cognition, or action. In other words, instead of simply feeling sad, we tend to run away from it into anger or fear, action, or thought. I just had a session with a man who has lost his job, talked about having lost his marriage some years ago, and how is afraid of continuing in a female relationship. All of this has to do with the fact that he hasn’t felt disappointed and eventually sad, felt the sadness through, and then being able to think clearly and take clear action. The process of (natural) disappointment is all about love:

  • I love something
  • I am assaulted (I may “assault” myself by doing some untoward)
  • I lose something
  • I feel disappointed
  • I feel sad
  • I continue to feel sad until I no longer feel sad
  • I now can think clearly with the impediment of fear, anger, or fear
  • I feel some hope of resolution or adjustment if that is necessary
  • I take action
  • I review my action…which may be good or less than good
  • I adjust my action of necessary.

Notice that the core of this whole array is the emotion of sadness caused by being disappointed. It is not anger, it is not anxiety, it is not resentment, it is not getting even, it is not avoidance, and it is not denial. So what is it? It is the realization that when I am disappointed, I am helpless, at least for the moment. I cannot change the past (with anger) and I cannot change the future (with retribution). I cannot change the present. Rather, I need to simply (but with difficulty) feel sad and let sadness run its course. What does “run its course” mean? It means finishing sadness.

How do I “finish” feeling sad?

We say this about sadness: “Find it, feel it, feel it, feel it…, finish it.” This means that I have to notice the disappointments that I have every day. I have to admit that I feel disappointment. Then I have to simply be sad about the loss that I suffered, which might actually be something that I caused. Then I have to bear the burden of feeling sad and seeing that whatever I lost, I can never have back again. I might have something as good or even better, but I can’t retrieve what I lost. I can’t go back in time and take the right road. I can’t unspill my coffee. I can’t bring my friend back to life. I have to be sad, sad, sad…until I no longer am sad.

But how can I ever get over being sad about losing my child, like Deb and I did when we lost our dear daughter, Krissie, three years ago? When I think about Krissie these days, I often feel nostalgic: nostalgic about the good and the not so good; about what I did right and what I did wrong. And as I do this, my love for Krissie rises in my heart and I feel tearful. These are tears of love and mostly joyful tears and perhaps a few sadness tears. But largely, my sadness of Krissie dying is largely gone these days. But, of course, Deb and I did a good deal of grieving, crying, and sharing our grief in order to no longer be sad about this tragic loss. If I can get through the sadness of losing a child, you can get through the sadness of spilling your coffee or hitting yourself with the hammer by accident…without being angry. Just feel the disappointment and ultimately the sadness, and it will finish.

An important aspect of finishing sadness is that you now become a better person. You are a better person because you realize that you are a person of love. You have loved and lost, and now you know that you will love and lose again…and again…and again. You will get better and better at the loving-and-losing process. You will be a more loving person…because you are now a person who knows how to love and lose, so you will actually be better at loving. You will not hang on to things, people, property, and ideas when they have been lost. You will remember what you have lost, remember the love you had…and have…for what you lost.

So, Love much, Lose much, Love again, and Love better.

Overcoming Shame

Ron Johnson emotional maturity, Feelings, grief, love, marital, men's issues, mindfulness, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

Almost everyone I see in my office suffers from shame. I wrote a blog a few years back differentiating shame and guilt, which remains an important element in understanding and conquering the phenomenon of shame in one’s life. In this blog, I will give some examples of shame that people feel in their lives, then define shame, consider the causes of shame, examine the consequences of shame, differentiate shame from guilt, and make recommendations for conquering shame in one’s life. Let’s start with real people understanding that the names and other identifying information of these people have been changed…”to protect the guilty,” but not the shame.

Real people who feel shame:

  • Bud, who is a physician, feels shame because he has been unable to overcome his tendency to get angry very quickly, something that has damaged his life in many ways, not the least of which is the relationship with his wife
  • Sam, who is a very bright person as well as a person of very good character, feels ashamed of the fact that he is gay, largely because of his evangelical Christian roots and harsh father
  • Jason, who is also bright and successful, but feels shame because he is overweight, something for which he was bullied and teased as a child 25 years ago
  • Jack, also very bright and a deeply intuitive person but also unable to sustain a job in his profession or sustain a lasting female relationship because he hasn’t found a way to successfully relate to people
  • Rick, another very bright person, who took several years to get the last class he needed to graduate from the university, finally found a lasting relationship, but has not been able to engage faithfully in a job
  • Peter, another very bright person as well as person of impeccable character, a pastor for many years but quite unsuccessful in his marriage because he tried too hard to please and give to his wife to such an extent that now he is woefully in debt with little option to get out of it. He also feels more shame for even considering bankruptcy.
  • Cannon, a very capable musician and a person of good character as well as being in a lasting female relationship, feels shame because he is suffering and has suffered from anxiety since he was at least four years old.
  • Freddie, a young man of nine, who feels shame for not being able to do compositions in school and otherwise write despite the facts that his parents are really good people. I tested him with a 120 IQ and a possible learning disability (dysgraphia)
  • Dwight, a very successful businessman as well as a person of deep spiritual development, feels shame every time he has made even the smallest mistake. He also feels shame because his wife, also a successful professional and kind person, has a tendency to tell him what is wrong with him
  • Jose’, an 18-yearold man who recently won a state championship in his chosen sport and generally does well with his friends. He is reading at the fourth grade level and about to enter college. I told him that he was a “genius” in his sport, but he feels ashamed of his difficulty reading and writing
  • Jim, another physician, bright, and deeply spiritual, feels ashamed that he spent an undue amount of money having been convinced that the world would be deteriorating soon. He also feels ashamed because he gave $100K to a “false prophet” who has evidently taken advantage of many other people.
  • Greg, a very capable person and a person of very good character, feels ashamed of his sexual proclivity even though he has never been unfaithful to his wife or engaged in this unique form of sex.
  • Gavin, another person of very good character and a very likable person, feels ashamed because he frequently lies to his female partner, often regarding trivial matters.
  • Justin, a very bright person working diligently on his PhD in history having successfully completed two master’s degrees, feels shame at every drop of the hat and ends up getting angry or avoiding life in some way or another.

There is much that differentiates these men: age, religious persuasion, gender orientation, characterological development, marital/spousal status and other factors, but they have many things in common, namely the feeling of shame, the results of shame, and the challenges that are necessary to get out of shame.

What is shame?

Shame is the feeling that there is something wrong with me, a feeling that immediately leads to the tendency to hide in some way and thereby feel some assuaging of the feeling of shame. The feeling that “something is wrong with me” can take relate to many things that could be wrong: physical, emotional, legal, cognitive, financial, sexual, relational, professional, and others.

This feeling that something is wrong with me might seem to be normal. You might think, “We all have something wrong with us because no one’s perfect, right?” However, reasonable that seems, the matter of shame is much deeper and darker than simply admitting that you’re not perfect. Indeed, no one is perfect, and we might make a case for saying that nothing is perfect; perhaps just good, valuable, helpful on the one side of the spectrum and bad, not valuable, and harmful on the other side. Shame is not about being perfect and it is not about thinking that I should be perfect. It is a phenomenon that has deep roots in childhood as well as deep roots in daily life, and deep roots in causing an immense amount of difficulty in life.

In a way, shame is like so many other psychological, philosophical, and theological phenomena: it is not entirely definable. As I have previously written (and it is written many other places), the most important elements of life are undefinable: in physics time, distance, and mass are undefinable; life itself is undefinable; love is undefinable; God is undefinable. We know things like time, love, and life because of experience, not because of definition. We use these terms every day, or at least organize ourselves around these things, like time and love. So, we must grant that we can define shame to some degree but not with absolute definition, and certainly not without using other terms, like life and feelings that are undefinable. Shame is a feeling (there we go with another undefinable word) that occurs when I feel this “something is wrong with me” feeling and usually has deep roots in childhood experiences. Before we examine these causes of shame, let’s differentiate shame from other feelings that are second cousins: humiliation, guilt, and embarrassment.

Shame, humiliation, guilt, and embarrassment

These concepts are intrinsically related because they all have certain things in common. When I feel any of these feelings, I tend to hide in some way. I drop my head when I feel, guilt, for instance, cover my face with a piece of paper when I feel embarrassment, hide myself in my room if I feel shame, or run away if I feel humiliation.

Note that it seems that the source of these feelings is always external although that is not actually the case. In fact, however, these four experiences are profoundly different. Simply noted, the differences are in the emotions associated with the experience, the result of the experience, and the value or disvalue of the experience

  • Shame is fear-based. It is the feeling there is something wrong with me, not with what I have done. Secondly, shame is external in its origin, namely another person. This “other person” is usually an imagined other person. I imagine that someone will think ill of me for some reason. The first result of shame is that I hide from this person, or perhaps I might hide from everyone. The second more important result of shame is that in my hiding, I do not improve as a person and may actually deteriorate.
  • Guilt is quite different. It is sadness-based. I feel guilty when I have done something wrong. Note the difference between thinking there is something wrong with me and what I have done that might have been wrong. Note also, that guilt originates from me, perhaps my own ethical or moral stance, or what I expect of myself. It does not originate from an external source like another person. Most importantly, guilt makes me a better person because I can see what I did that was wrong and make personal improvements and perhaps make amends.
  • Humiliation is anger-based. It is similar to shame in that it is externally based, i.e. from another person, but distinct from shame, which is imaginary (“What will she think of me about this?”), it comes from a real person who intends to humiliate you. While shame occurs mostly in adulthood, humiliation occurs most often in childhood, very often by siblings, parents, or ex-friends. Most importantly, like shame, humiliation makes me hide and prevents me from maturing and becoming a different person.
  • Embarrassment is joy-based. I feel embarrassed when I eat that second piece of pie in front of a friend knowing that it is not good for me. I laugh at myself. Hence, embarrassment, like guilt, is self-based. It is not based on the anger I feel for what someone has done to me (humiliation) or the fear of what someone might think of me (shame). I simply laugh at myself, and as a result, I become a better person. Perhaps I determine to never have a second piece of pie.

In general, guilt and embarrassment are good for me because I admit what I have done wrong, while shame and humiliation are not good for me because I hide. So, how do these experiences, particularly shame, originate develop in life?

The origins of shame

Briefly stated, the origins of the other experiences are as follows:

  • Guilt: I am able to see mistakes and rectify them in some way
  • Embarrassment: I am able to laugh at myself
  • Humiliation: I cannot prevent being humiliated, but this occurs mostly in childhood, and is actually the origin of much shame.

The origin of shame is almost always rooted in a childhood experience of humiliation, e.g.:

  • A playmate on the soccer field pulls my pants down in front of everyone
  • A teacher berates me because I don’t understand what she has said
  • My brother teases me about being fat
  • My parent frequently ask rhetorically, “What’s wrong with you?”
  • And many others

These are real experiences that set the stage for thinking, feeling, or fearing that there is something wrong with me. How can I answer the rhetorical question, “What’s wrong with you?’ but to come to believe that there is something wrong with me…not just wrong with what I said or did? Shame in adult life is based on these early experiences when I couldn’t get away from my attacker and the feeling was awful. All I could do was to be quiet, hide, or find some kind of escape.

For the most part shame occurs in my mind, not in reality. I fear that someone might think ill of me in some way, and this ill feeling is too close to the awful feeling I had as a child that I become afraid to be myself, admit what I said or did, or just see if my fear of rejection actually occurs.

Shame in adult life comes in forms not dissimilar from those in childhood when I was humiliated, but when I was a child, I was angry at being humiliated, but not in a position to be angry in fact. I had to hide my anger. So, when I feel shame, my basic emotion is fear, and I hide myself from being potentially humiliated. I feel shame when I fear that he or she might say, think, or feel that:

  • I am a bad person
  • I am stupid
  • I am not honest
  • I will be rejected

I feel shame that people might see these things in me even if none of them is true. I can also feel humiliated when he or she actually does these things. Most specifically, at least for men, they feel fear of judgment or some kind of criticism when their partners might criticize them. Unfortunately, women are too inclined to “help” the men in their lives by finding fault with them, but this is beyond the score of this blog (Wait for my forthcoming book, Balls, where I unpack this undue fear that men have of female rejection.) Whatever the origin, whoever the individual feared, whatever the situation, shame has dire consequences.

The consequences of shame

The consequences of shame are dire. They are dire because shame inhibits much of what is good about life: truth, intimacy, openness, love, caring, enjoyment, and contentment. Most importantly, shame creates a sense of danger, which then creates fear and anxiety, which itself creates a life that is worrying about the future, not a life where you are enjoying the present or working on enjoying the present. The essence of these dire results of shame are that we live in the future, namely what someone might say to me, where someone might criticize me, or where someone might humiliate me. Shame leads to a basic fear orientation to life rather than life itself, which is composed of joy and sorrow, not of fear that is at the heart of shame based on the feeling of anger that occurred early in life.

The practical result of shame is some kind of hiding, whether that is hiding in your room with a blanket over your head, keeping quiet about what you think or feel, hiding in some addiction, or hiding that occurs with some kind of dishonesty. I don’t know of a single man who is not afraid of his wife’s or partner’s potential rejection. I wrote a blog some time ago entitled, Why Do Good Men Lie, and proposed that it is the fear men have of female rejection, which always is built on a basis shame that so many men feel, particularly with the women in their lives. This fear and the result of some kind of dishonesty with women is devastating to men’s female relationships and often leads to women saying, “I can’t trust anything you say.”

While hiding of some kind and the dishonesty that goes along with it is bad for men in their relationships, even worse is the feeling of low self-esteem that is the result of feeling shame. If I think there is “something wrong with me,” I most certainly do not want anyone to know about it, so I naturally will not talk about it. The result of this fear, I never come to grips with the reality of something that I did wrong or the falsity of there being something wrong with me.

When these two things, hiding and low self-esteem, begin to operate in life with a man, everything else suffers: vocation, money, property, relationships, and even play. Nothing is ever good enough because I am not good enough, or so I feel when I feel shame. I can’t really enjoy my successes because I feel this “something is wrong with me,” I have great trouble accepting the small mistakes I make for the same reason, and I certainly can’t accept criticism, whether accurate or inaccurate if I feel shame. My life is dominated by fear.

So what can be done about shame and how can I get rid of it? Possible. Necessary. Hard.

Getting over shame

There are essentially two elements involved in overcoming shame: honesty and sadness.

Honesty: the key here is to first be honest with yourself and then be honest (carefully and selectively) with someone else. I put being honest with God in between those two but your understanding of the universe may not include such an entity. The key is honest. Honest to yourself is admitting all that you can admit to that scares you, particularly the inner feeling that you are not good enough for some reason, however irrational the “reason” may be. When you first admit to what you feel, the words you use may be quite irrational, or even downright wrong, like:

  • I wish I weren’t alive (By the way, this statement doesn’t mean you want to die, much less suicide.)
  • I am a complete loser
  • There is something terribly wrong with me
  • I can never admit to anyone what I feel (or what I did or what I said)
  • I can’t trust that anyone really likes me or loves me
  • I have to leave the country; maybe I should just to go Lover Slovovia
  • I can’t do this job
  • I want to have an affair

Once you admit to yourself, however wrong or irrational the words are, you might be able to admit to someone else what your feelings are. But be very careful doing this because most people have their own shame, their own craziness, and their own feelings. You don’t need someone telling you that you’re crazy, or wrong, or selfish, or wonderful, or perfect. You need someone who can listen silently and govern their own feelings.

This being honest, especially if you have been dishonest for a long time, is very very hard, and you most certainly don’t want to do it. Of course you don’t want to do it. Nothing wrong with that. I don’t want to work out either but I do it because it is good for me. I’d much rather watch a movie or read a book. Honesty is central, but it might take some time to become honest: first with yourself, (possibly with God), and then with just one or two other people selectively chosen. If you’re working on being honest, be prepared to be sad. Sadness cures shame.

Sadness: Sadness is without a doubt the most important emotion we have. Read what I’ve said about sadness in previous blogs or in our book on sadness. You will learn that sadness is always the result of loving something. If you love something, some person, some thing, some idea, or anything, you will most certainly lose this thing. Perhaps in an hour, perhaps in 50 years. But you will lose everything you love, so you need to have the God-given mechanism of feeling sad when you lose something. (Read more on sadness elsewhere in blogs or the book.)

When you really feel shame, you will feel awful at first, but the more you admit to the feeling, the sadder you will feel. You will feel sad about all the dishonesty you have engaged in, like with yourself and with others. You will feel sad about all the humiliation you suffered when you were a child. You will feel sad about all the shaming you get from the people in your current life. Most important of all, you will feel sad about all the hours and years you have wasted feeling ashamed of yourself. These are hours and years that can never be recovered because they are in the past forever, but you can feel sad about the losses. The beauty of sadness is that it ends. Shame and its origin, fear, and its result, anger, do not end. They go on forever. But when you become familiar with feeling sad, you will begin to be freed of your shame. Shame is never helpful. Guilt, which is feeling sad about what you said or did, is valuable. Shame leads to hiding. Guilt and sadness lead to love.