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.