The Purpose Of 'shame'

[ghotiff]

I found this quote and really interesting and helpful in understanding my 'shame' feelings.

"Researchers such as Dacher Keltner have found that whereas anger often results in fighting and fear often results in fleeing, shame tends to result in submitting and appeasing. Thus, the expression of shame has the potential to elicit a caregiving response from the perpetrator which could ultimately keep the victim as safe as possible within an unsafe situation"

I would love to hear if anyone has any additional thoughts on why 'we' feel shame and what shame actually is. In the beginning of starting therapy I rejected the word as not applying to me and I'm still not quite sure how it applies, but I think it might.

 

[Tinyflame]

I don't think (just personally) shame encourages care-giving, but rather isolation, & in abusive situations might serve to acquiesce for the moment but enables further abuse or long-term escalation.

 

[franciemarnie]

I read that we feel the shame that the abuser(s) don't, and because the abusers don't. If that is true, and I could see it, that sucks.

There is nothing good about shame that I can see. It doesn't make sense that we should experience it when we have done nothing deserving of the feeling.

But if we feel it, though it isn't right, that would make more sense of an unjust abusive situation.

The Nazis saw the Jews as less than human so that they, the Nazis, could behave so abominably. If we felt and acted as if we had been guilty of egregious acts, that could make it easier for the abusers to treat us as if we deserved abuse.

 

[Valentino]

Thanks for bring up an important topic, I've been exploring and ruminating about shame recently after all the Brene Brown threads, and here's some of the conclusions and theories that I've come up with:

Love is the emotion of connection, shame is the emotion of disconnection. They are like the two sides of a coin. Shame is an integral emotion of relationships, it gives us negative feedback when we fail to connect in relationships or fail to follow social norms and expectations.

Shame is also the emotion of human limitation, it's disconnection from God, immortality, infinity, etc.

Shame is like a social radar and glue of social order, it keeps all of society in check. People who get caught consistently breaking social norms end up externally shamed (mob mentality) and banished from accepted society.

Shame exercises an essential function; without shame and the restraint it imposes, even the most rudimentary form of civilization would be unthinkable. Shame is a highly complex phenomenon, promoting the individual's adaptation to collective norms and morals no less than the protection of his privacy. In this respect shame can be likened to a border guard who punishes those who overstep a particular moral code's sense of dignity and respectability. Transgression of such borders offends good morals and can result in social sanctions or at the very least, a certain loss of face.
Shame also sets boundaries on interpersonal contact, thus protecting individuality and identity. Shame can be an accurate gauge of the emotions that regulate closeness and distance in our most intimate relationships.
--- "Shame and the origins of self-esteem: A Jungian Approach" by Mario Jacoby

Shame As Permission To Be Human
What our healthy feeling of shame does is let us know that we are limited. It tells us that to be human is to be limited. Actually we humans are essentially limited. We are by definition limited. Not one of us has or can ever have unlimited power. The unlimited power that many modern gurus offer us is false hope. Their programs calling us to unlimited power have made them rich, not us. They touch our false selves and tap our toxic shame. We humans are finite. Limitation is our essential nature. Grave problems result from refusing to accept our limits.
...
Healthy shame keeps us grounded. It is a yellow light warning us that we are essentially limited. Healthy shame is the basic metaphysical boundary for human beings. It is the emotional energy which signals us that we are not God that we have made and will make mistakes, that we need help. Healthy shame gives us permission to be human.
Healthy shame is part of every human's personal power. It allows us to know our limits, and thus to use our energy more effectively. We have better direction when we know our limits. We do not waste ourselves on goals we cannot reach or on things we cannot change. Healthy shame allows our energy to be integrated rather than diffused.
---- "Healing The Shame that Binds You" by John Bradshaw

With trauma survivors, the psychological abuse endured comes from toxic shame dumped upon the survivor. Then all shame gets associated with (binds into) toxic shame, and then life is spent avoiding or numbing all triggers of any shame.

Toxic shame, the shame that binds you, is experienced as the all-pervasive sense that I am flawed and defective as a human being. Toxic shame is no longer an emotion that signals our limits, it is a state of being, a core identity. Toxic shame gives you a sense of worthlessness, a sense of failing and falling short as a human being. Toxic shame is a rupture of the self with the self.
It is like internal bleeding. Exposure to oneself lies at the heart of toxic shame. A shame-based person will guard against exposing his inner self to others, but more significantly, he will guard against exposing himself to himself.
Toxic shame is so excruciating because it is the painful exposure of the believed failure of self to the self. In toxic shame the self becomes an object of its own contempt, an object that can't be trusted. As an object that can't be trusted, one experiences oneself as untrustworthy. Toxic shame is experienced as an inner torment, a sickness of the soul. If I'm an object that can't be trusted, then I'm not in me. Toxic shame is paradoxical and self-generating.
There is shame about shame. People will readily admit guilt, hurt or fear before they will admit shame. Toxic shame is the feeling of being isolated and alone in a complete sense. A shame-based person is haunted by a sense of absence and emptiness.
---- "Healing The Shame that Binds You" by John Bradshaw

Differences between guilt and shame:

Guilt is an awareness of failure against a standard. Shame is a sense of failure before the eyes of someone else (self, others, community, God).
In other words, guilt is about disobedience to a law or code, but shame is how I perceive others see me (or how I see myself).

 

[Tinyflame]

Really agree with the above short definition @Valentino . And perhaps the critical difference between shame and toxic shame.

 

[ghotiff]

Thanks for the information @Valentino .... I'm still not sure if 'shame' is the right word for me...but on the assumption that it is....here are my thoughts to those quotes.

Toxic shame is the feeling of being isolated and alone in a complete sense

I think the isolation came before the shame. I was sexually abused as a child, I reached out for help many times, each cry for help went ignored and unanswered .... as such I felt (and was) isolated and alone in my problems.

Shame is a sense of failure before the eyes of someone else (self, others, community, God).

Maybe ..because I could not rescue myself from my abuse and when I asked for help I was denied that help the internal message heard was that I should be able to help myself...but I because I couldn't help myself I perceived myself a failure. (Forgiving myself by understanding that I was trapped without any real options was an important step towards healing).

Toxic shame is so excruciating because it is the painful exposure of the believed failure of self to the self.

Yes, I did fail myself...BUT I didn't have a choice in that, I didn't have enough power/control to keep myself safe.

In toxic shame the self becomes an object of its own contempt, an object that can't be trusted. As an object that can't be trusted, one experiences oneself as untrustworthy

Its not that I can't trust myself....I just know that I can't guarantee my own safety...the illusion of having control over my own body has been taken away. I know that ultimately I don't have complete control over my life or body. My life lesson was that if some one is sufficiently motivated to do something to me they will. Maybe I do feel internally untrustworthy....but in reality I'm no less 'safe' than anyone else, I'm just more aware of my true level of safety. (Actually, with my awareness of the dangers of humanity and my hyper-vigilance, I'm probably safer than average)

 

[jmni]

"Researchers such as Dacher Keltner have found that whereas anger often results in fighting and fear often results in fleeing, shame tends to result in submitting and appeasing. Thus, the expression of shame has the potential to elicit a caregiving response from the perpetrator which could ultimately keep the victim as safe as possible within an unsafe situation"

I would agree with the meaning of shame in this quote as for when it is applied by malicious abusers. I would also add that shame causes the victim to carry the burden of the abusers acts. In general I guess I think shame is sort of the fear of the feeling of being scrutinized.

 

[Valentino]

Exploring into toxic shame and how that works with abuse and trauma can get quite complex and detailed. John Bradshaw does a pretty good job with his book "Healing the Shame that Binds You", but I'm still working on getting a better grasp of how the 'binding' aspect of toxic shame works.

each cry for help went ignored and unanswered

This intentional neglect creates confusion and feelings of shame. When a child has emotional pain, and seeks mirroring and validation from adult figures, then ends up 'failing' at connecting and sharing the emotion. This adds the emotion of shame on top of the other painful emotions.

So maybe that's one way toxic shame binds with other emotions? When we have a strong emotion and seek to share it others, then we fail to connect, we feel disconnection which is the emotion of shame, then all the emotions get mixed together into part of our identity; or as an unresolved emotional wound (if we are able to stuff it inside somewhere).

I should be able to help myself...but I because I couldn't help myself I perceived myself a failure.

Shoulds are great ways of increasing shame in ourselves or onto others. Should's are an indirect way of not recognizing our very human and mortal limitations.

Here's three more excerpts from 'Healing the Shame that binds you', that might be helpful:

Shame As Self-Alienation And Isolation
When one suffers from alienation, it means that one experiences parts of one's self as alien to one's self.
For example, if you were never allowed to express anger in your family, your anger becomes an alienated part of yourself. You experience toxic shame when you feel angry. This part of you must be disowned or severed. There is no way to get rid of your emotional power of anger. Anger is the self preserving and self-protecting energy. Without this energy you become a doormat and a people-pleaser. As your feelings, needs and drives are bound by toxic shame, more and more of you is alienated.
Finally, when shame has been completely internalized, nothing about you is okay. You feel flawed and inferior; you have the sense of being a failure. There is no way you can share your inner self because you are an object of contempt to yourself. When you are contemptible to yourself, you are no longer in you. To feel shame is to feel seen in an exposed and diminished way When you're an object to yourself, you turn your eyes inward, watching and scrutinizing every minute detail of behavior. This internal critical observation is excruciating. It generates a tormenting self-consciousness which Kaufman describes as, "creating a binding and paralyzing effect upon the self." This paralyzing internal monitoring causes withdrawal, passivity and inaction.
The severed parts of self are projected in relationships. They are often the basis of hatred and prejudice. The severed parts of the self may be experienced as a split personality or even multiple personalities. This happens often with victims who have been through physical and sexual violation.
To be severed and alienated within oneself also creates a sense of unreality. One may have an all-pervasive sense of never quite belonging, of being on the outside looking in. The condition of inner alienation and isolation is also pervaded by a low grade chronic depression. This has to do with the sadness of losing one's authentic self. Perhaps the deepest and most devastating aspect of neurotic shame is the rejection of the self by the self.

Shame As False Self
Because the exposure of self to self lies at the heart of neurotic shame, escape from the self is necessary. The escape from self is accomplished by creating a false self. The false self is always more or less than human. The false self may be a perfectionist or a slob, a family Hero or a family Scapegoat. As the false self is formed, the authentic self goes into hiding. Years later the layers of defense and pretense are so intense that one loses all awareness of who one really is.
It is crucial to see that the false self may be as polar opposite as a superachieving perfectionist or an addict in an alley. Both are driven to cover up their deep sense of self-rupture, the hole in their soul. They may cover up in ways that look polar opposite, but each is still driven by neurotic shame. In fact, the most paradoxical aspect of neurotic shame is that it is the core motivator of the superachieved and the underachieved, the Star and the Scapegoat, the "Righteous" and the wretched, the powerful and the pathetic.

Felt Sense Of Toxic Shame
Toxic shame results from the unexpected exposure of vulnerable aspects of a child's self. This exposure takes place before the child has any ego boundaries to protect himself. The early shaming events happen in a context where the child has no ability to choose. The felt experience of shame is the feeling of being exposed and seen when one is not ready to be seen. Toxic shame is often manifested in dreams of being naked in inappropriate places, or in not being prepared, as in suddenly having to write your final exam without having studied for it.
The unexpected quality of a shaming event creates a lack of self-trust in a child. As toxic shame develops, the child stops trusting his own eyes, judgment, feelings and desires. These faculties form our basic human power. The distrust of our basic faculties results in the feeling of powerlessness. As vulnerable aspects of the self are shamed, they are disowned and separated from our felt sense of self. This self-separation process results in a split self. We are beside ourselves. We become an object to ourself. When I become an object, I am no longer in me. I am absent from my own experience. What I feel is emptiness and exposure. I have no boundaries and therefore no protection. I must run and hide. But there is no place to hide since I am totally exposed. They are after me and they are going to take me by surprise and catch me. I'm being hunted from moment to moment. The hunter is always approaching. There is never a moment when I can relax. I must be constantly guarded lest I'm ever unguarded. I am alone in the most complete way.
The agony of this chronic stage of being cannot be endured for long. At the deepest level toxic shame triggers our basic automatic defensive cover-ups. Freud called these automatic cover-ups our primary ego defenses. Once these defenses are in place they function automatically and unconsciously, sending our true and authentic self into hiding. We develop a false identity out of this basic core. We become master impersonators. We avoid our core agony and pain and over a period of years, we avoid our avoidance.

 

[Suzetig]

This thread is so useful, shame is a huge issue for me - I can be completely stopped in my tracks by a deep sense of shame. I recognise "shoulds" increase shame, I'm forever saying I should have done x, y or z when in reality they were out of my control. I can also agree with @jmni that shame is the fear of being scrutinised. I hold people at bay all the time because I don't want them knowing the real, dreadful me and rejecting me.

I'm reading the Bradshaw book just now but finding it very hard going, I plan to start talking about shame with my T when I come back from holiday but I even feel shameful about feeling shame if that makes sense. It's such a paralysing thing.

 

[Promicarus]

@Valentino

Thanks so much for your voluble and valuable posts. I'm interested to know the sources of the quotes contained in your second post, if you could be so kind as to supply them (I would assume they're derived from Bradshaw's work cited above, as well, but not sure...as I don't have the work handy, myself).

There's much confusion over the subject of shame, on average...i.e. varying definitions-both "working definitions", as well as in the abstract...and especially with regard to its contrast to the concept of guilt.

But there is an important point that's often overlooked, when thinking of shame...which Valentino very appropriate referred to in his citation of the quote originating from

"Shame and the origins of self-esteem: A Jungian Approach" by Mario Jacoby

This is what's referred to as "prosocial" shame. In other words, and put simply-it's the shame parents instill in their children as part of discipline during childhood, which was at one time considered every parent's "Civic Duty" (and still is, in all othercultures, which are now considered "traditional" cultures, as opposed to the post-60s American "post-traditional" culture).

So the main confusion enters in due to the fact that we are really "talking apples and oranges", here--

The idea of Prosocial Shame is one meant for use in Sociology, on a broad scale, when talking about factors influencing social groups, etc.

...whereas we are talking instead about what Bradshaw refers to as "Toxic Shame", as Bradhshaw puts it (again, in Valentino's quote, above).

The first is an abstract concept used as a term applicable broadly, to the development and maintenance of civilizations, in general, when what we're after is related to an emotion which is destructive to us, personally.

But interestingly, the idea that all shame is negative, and should be replaced instead with the idea of "Guilt", as a simple recognition that one has erred in relation to a legitimate normative social value, is somewhat in err.

For example--which is more highly motivating as a "stick" to keep members of a society in line...a simple intellectual recognition that they are factually at fault?...or a deeply negative emotion which gives an individual much motivation not to engage in the behavior again...in the form of actual "shame". You see the point.

The problem is that there is presumably a "window", as with all else. Too much parental shame creates a "shame-based" individual, running and hiding from a self he/she experiences as worthless, and so hides from the world, resulting in a life devoid of intimacy, and therefore, any real experience of satisfaction, resonance, or acceptance. And shame over the wrong things...things which are not and should not be commonplace to any childhood...molestation, brutality (physical or emotional)--creates "mislaid" shame.

But the idea that ANY shame at all is to be avoided, and labeled as negative, by virtue of its very nature...is an idea born of the 60s cultural revolution in the U.S., which has since been thoroughly debunked. It simply doesn't make for a group of people you want to have to live among, in a society.

My personal take on it is that the Depression era/WWII era essentially experienced the world as such a dangerous place...that they overshamed the generation they raised...the baby-boomers...in attempts to produce a generation that was "civically minded" enough to ensure that society would in the future cooperate in "being good boys/girls" so that the world would be a better place, instead...

...the result of which was the boomer's "reaction-formation", or overcorrection...of rebelling by not shaming their children at all in the course of disciplining them to abide by social norms.


But ghotiff's quote is more telling, I think--the idea that a show of shame to others could be a sort of defense, in that it might inspire a caretaking sort of reaction.

I liken this to the kind of "neck-baring" behavior you see in animals..dogs, for example, rolling over on their backs to expose their bellies, in effort to show a kind of deference which makes it clear that attack is not the motivation. There are others in different species, but that's the idea-in exposing your "soft underbelly", you're making it clear that your intentions are cooperative rather than oppositional, in hopes of receiving the same, in return. Getting off on the right foot, so to speak.

It makes me wonder if the human version is the open-palm of the handshake...which supposedly originated with the same intention...to show you had no weapon, ie, that your intentions were cooperative rather than aggressive.

...which leads me to wonder...in a culture where such a display of innocence and goodwill has been replaced, instead, with what seems an inherently combative bumping of closed fists...is the kind of "neck baring" of shame still effective in producing a caretaking response? Or instead, the response one would expect of baring one's neck to a predator?

So shame at having "been bad" is something I value, in myself--when I HAVE "been bad"--and is something I associate with being a good person. If I only intellectually acknowledge that I've acted in violation, so to speak...that would make me an astute person...but not necessarily a good one.

But being "overshamed", so that I walk around with the permanent and pervasive sense that I AM bad...is something that I've identified as a pathological expression resulting from childhood trauma, and which I try to recognize, and "externalize"...as I would notice when, for example, my leg hurt as a result of a childhood injury--I would just say "huh, darn leg is acting up again"...and not think much more about it. And it's that degree of detachment from that sense of fundamental inadequacy I work towards in my recovery.

 

[zaniara]

This was really interesting. It explains an aspect I hadn't thought of. Of course from a survival point of view the shame really has it's function in that traumatic event: making the victim submissive and thus making it more likely to survive. Then of course it grows into something toxic after that: when the shame get internalized and no help is available afterwards to heal the trauma. A lot of other good stuff to read in this thread, but will come back later when my brain is more checked in. Thank you for bringing the topic up.

 

[ghotiff]

Really good posts. I will need more time to think about it all :)