Shame
- Intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that you are flawed and therefore unworthy of love, belonging, and connection
- Shame thrives in silence, secrecy, judgment.
- The antidote is empathy and believing you are not alone
- Self-compassion helps, consists of self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness
- Shame is the root of unethical behaviours in culture
How to build shame resilience
| Recognize shame and understand its triggers | Recognize when you’re in the grip of shame, name it, feel your way through it, and figure out what messages and expectations triggered the shame. Don’t pretend it’s not happening and get swept away. |
| Practice critical awareness | Reality-check the messages and expectations that are driving your shame. Are they realistic, attainable, what you want to be? Or what you think others need from you? |
| Reaching out | Own and share your story. You cannot experience empathy if you’re not connecting. |
| Speaking shame | Talk about how you feel and ask for what you need when you feel shame. |
Perfectionism
- Shame is the birthplace of perfectionism
- Perfectionism is a “self-destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect, live perfectly, work perfectly, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame.”
- Perfectionism is not self-improvement. Perfectionism is, at its core, about trying to earn approval and acceptance.
- Perfectionists were raised being praised for achievement and performance (e.g. good grades, manners, nice appearance, sports prowess, rule following, people pleasing).
- The danger lies in adopting the belief that you are what you accomplish and how well you accomplish it
Healthy striving is self-focused—How can I improve?
Perfectionism is other-focused—What will they think?
Guilt
- Guilt focuses on the behaviour, not your self (i.e., you did something bad verse you are bad)
- Can be a positive because can lead you to do something to set things right
- Negatively correlated with addiction, violence, aggression, depression unlike shame
- Remorse is a subset of guilt; acknowledge we have harmed another, feel bad about it, and want to atone for our behaviour
Humiliation
- Unjustly degraded, ridiculed, or shamed by others
- Strong link between mass violence (e.g. school shootings) happening from humiliation as the root cause
Never allow anyone to be humiliated in your presence. – Elie Wiesel
Embarrassment
- Fleeting discomfort during social situations
- Usually minor in nature and usually humor involved