Learning How to Live With Shame

Shame often feels unbearable. So, many of us attempt to corral and subdue it before it overwhelms and suffocates us.

Those who struggle with perfectionism tend to have a love/hate relationship with shame. On the one hand, they deeply fear it. On the other hand, they believe they can and ought to harness it in their quest for perfection. Perfection, after all, is a utopian state, wherein shame is extinguished once and for all. In this respect, shame is only tolerable as a means to an end. This fact is evident in the frequent question perfectionists ask in treatment: “What am I supposed to do with that?” To them, anything apparently negative should always be a means to an end; all of it must be part of some grander purpose. Sitting with shame, examining it, learning about it and its sources may feel “pointless.” Unless the therapist can adequately articulate how doing so can aid the perfectionist’s circumscribed goals, they’re merely “wasting time.” And this, which is likely obvious to you now, is a defense. Here, the patient, seeing no clear way of how to utilize this repugnant emotion, is struck with terror and, therefore, becomes irritated or even irate. And that impatience is supported by all sorts of ideas in popular culture, from “turning pain into purpose” to “trauma is a gift.”

Many of us can’t seem to tolerate the possibility of living with shame long-term or having it be in vain. We want to look back on our lives and say, “I know that was terrible, but I’m glad it happened.” We’re obsessed with growth. And perfectionism is much more ubiquitous than we tend to think. Underlying it is the common belief that past trauma is completely surmountable. While this degree of optimism isn’t in and of itself negative, it can be when perfectionism, and the accompanying goal of eliminating shame for good, takes over one’s life, preoccupying much of one's thinking.

Perfectionism can be classified as obsessive-compulsive because: A) It entails ruminations about how fundamentally bad one is and the accompanying anxiety that one is going to always feel that way, and B), it entails a compulsive drive to perfect oneself in order to feel more hopeful about the negative thoughts someday stopping. When feeling ashamed, we often engage in black-and-white thinking, believing that perfection is the only path to self-love. We overgeneralize, believing that we’re globally bad. We catastrophize, believing we’re always going to feel that way. And we personalize, believing that our essence is tainted. So, as you can imagine, it may feel as though effort is the one and only remedy, especially when thinking differently feels impossible.

Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams noted, “The obsessive-compulsive uses words to conceal feelings, not to express them.” One may add that the perfectionist also hides those feelings from themselves, in particular while they’re working to improve. So, for treatment to mean anything, shame has to be explored, sat with, and experienced. The questions we ask are: Can we look at where it came from? Does the evidence support it? Is it necessary? Are there better ways to grow, ones that also include self-forgiveness? Will you necessarily always feel so afraid of it? Or is it just another passing feeling?

One of the best and most exciting parts of treatment is its ambiguity, which most people implicitly ask for when they ask for personalized treatment. To paraphrase McWilliams, often, treatment’s goals shift dramatically in time. You may discover that while you initially wanted one thing, you now want another. Thus, while many enter treatment to perfect themselves, according to her, they may instead resolve to address their loneliness and deep fear of abandonment. They may explore how shame influences much of what they do, including their relationships with important others.

For many perfectionists, shame isn’t just avoided through effort; sometimes, it’s projected. Therefore, those of us who tend to be hard on ourselves are often equally hard on others. Ultimately, the goals of treatment tend to entail reducing shame through introspection and learning how to live with it by taking it less seriously. On its own, shame isn’t good or bad but can easily become excessive, especially if we continue to avoid it in unhealthy ways.

Perfecting, an extreme form of doing, is a way of avoiding thinking and feeling too deeply. At some point, however, we need to face our fears.

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