Shame Is Not the Ticket to Our Best Future

Source: Samantha Stein

According to the American Psychological Association Dictionary of Psychology, shame is defined as “a self-conscious emotion that arises from a sense of dishonor, immodesty, or indecorum in one’s own conduct or circumstances. Shame is a feeling of embarrassment about having done something wrong.” Most people understand shame to be a feeling that “there is something wrong with me” because I have erred.

People who feel shame often feel powerless, worthless, or exposed. Shame can lead to feelings of:

• Depression.
• A deterioration of self-esteem.
• Negative and self-critical thoughts.
• Rumination on past failures and rejections.
• Urges to hide or withdraw from other people.
• Feeling small, weak, helpless, or “frozen."
• Feeling unlovable.

Often there is confusion between shame and guilt. Brene Brown, an expert on shame and shame research, makes a clear delineation between the two. “There is a profound difference between shame and guilt,” she has written. “I believe that guilt is adaptive and helpful—it’s holding something we’ve done or failed to do up against our values and feeling psychological discomfort.” In other words, guilt lets us know that we’ve done something that we don’t feel good about and need to learn from/not do again.

Shame, on the other hand, Brown writes, is 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.” She goes on to argue that shame is neither helpful or productive and, in fact, is “much more likely to be the source of destructive, hurtful behavior than the solution or cure. I think the fear of disconnection can make us dangerous.”

Brown and other researchers have found that, unfortunately, shame is endemic in society at all levels—families, schools, companies, and governments. In some of these instances, there is a misguided attempt to teach through shame; in others, shame is used as a weapon to manipulate, control, demean, and silence others. Some examples of this might be bullying a peer for being different, shaming a student for getting an answer wrong, using the term “woke” to demean someone’s efforts to call attention to injustice, using terms like “Karen” when someone displays ignorance or prejudice, or making crude jokes about someone’s values or beliefs.

Ideally, we would all live in environments that foster learning, but that goal is not possible when we are shamed for making mistakes. In order for learning to exist, we must create interactions that are open and kind. Even conversations that may be difficult or painful can still be respectful and encourage connection and growth–the kind of growth that we all need.