Shame: What Is It and What Can We Do About It?
What is shame?
The dictionary definition of shame is “a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming or impropriety.” I have heard some people describe shame by distinguishing it from guilt by saying that shame is synonymous with “I am bad” whereas guilt is synonymous with “I did something bad.” One study even defined shame as “negative emotions in which the feeling of global self-evisceration is experienced.” Global self-evisceration. Oof! Shame is extremely unpleasant and painful, and it can affect one’s identity and self-esteem.
How does shame operate?
For our purposes, we are going to actually say that shame is a coping strategy that people use to survive. We are going to look at it as more of a secondary response than a primary emotion. Even the dictionary definition explains that it is caused by “consciousness of guilt”, making it appear secondary. This is helpful for us because it can give us more agency over what to do about shame (see below), but first we want to talk about how shame operates.
Shame is more of a flight/freeze response than a fight response. Think of a child who is experiencing shame. What do they do? They hide! They turn inward, withdraw, get sad, get quiet. Shame serves to protect us by allowing us to focus inward on ourselves in the midst of pain. It can keep us surviving, but sometimes it does not feel like it helps us much.
If we look at shame as secondary, then what feeling is underneath that shame? Unloved, not good enough, wrong, bad? Let’s take unloved as an example. Let’s say you get broken up with, making you feel unloved. Shame may come in and say “you got broken up with because you are so unloveable, no one will ever love you, so you better figure out what to do to make yourself more loveable so this doesn’t happen again.” See how shame is trying to help you survive?
The unfortunate part is that shame tears you down and makes you focus inward. Shame gives you a false sense of control. If you can make yourself loveable (how exactly you do that is unclear) then you would not be in pain. As your attention is drawn inward throughout this process, you are simultaneously losing sight of the relationships and even the reality in front of you. Have you ever witnessed someone “shame spiral”? Where all of a sudden it started as one unpleasant feeling and they somehow landed on “I am the worst person in the entire world’? Then you try to be like “hey it’s ok you aren’t the worst person in the world,” but they literally do not believe you? It can be so hard to watch someone go down that path.
Shame works to keep you stuck. It keeps you convinced that you are wrong, bad, not good enough, helpless and powerless.
What can you do about shame?
The first thing you can do is to identify shame when it happens. Once you see yourself engaging with shame, try asking yourself the following questions:
What feeling is intolerable or unpleasant that shame is using against me?
What is shame telling me?
What is true about myself even in this pain?
Once you have shown yourself that shame is lying to you, you can work to focus on the feeling underneath the shame. You can validate your feelings and tolerate them so that you don’t need shame to keep you stuck in the pain. You can choose to react differently to the unpleasant emotion that does not cut you off from support and connection. Because shame thrives in isolation, the next step would be to re-engage with the safe people in your life so you can feel supported and cared for.
If you feel stuck in shame and are looking for some extra support, feel free to schedule a free 30-minute consultation with our Therapist Matchmaker. She would be happy to get you connected to either me or one of our other therapists who can help!
Interested in learning more about our unique approach to trauma therapy?
These blogs talk more about the basics of EMDR:
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