We The Creators: From Shame to Honor

SHAME OF INDIVIDUALS

Webster’s dictionary describes shame as “a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or impropriety.”

If shame is that simple, why write a book about it?

Shame is not that simple. Shame is an extremely complex emotional experience that causes far reaching and long lasting effects on individuals, families, groups of people and nations.

What we have covered so far shows shame is not a simple, isolated, unique experience.   Shame wears many faces and happens in many different ways.  It is possible to feel shame for being rich or for being poor.  It is common to feel shame about what someone else does or says.  It is also common to feel shame for what we do or say or neglect to do or say. We can shame ourselves with our thoughts and self-talk.

The experience of shame is total.  Every aspect of our Self becomes involved.  Our emotions are churned up and turned inside out; our body is revved up and ready to fight, freeze or flee.  Our thoughts are spinning and tumbling over each other as we try to figure out what to do. After the confusion subsides, we feel isolated from the community of people whether it be our family, friends, neighborhood or town.  We feel disconnected from God, and we become isolated even from our Self.

Obviously not all shaming is devastating or traumatic. We use words such as “embarrass,” “scold” or “reproach” for shaming that is less intense, say, than the shame we feel if we are slapped or beaten. Other words such as “debase,” “degrade” or “humiliate” seem to connote an intermediate degree of shame placed somewhere between a feeling of slight shame to intense shame.

Shame by any other name is still shame.  The only significant difference is one of degree or intensity, related to what has caused the shaming and to the sensitivity of the person rather than being a different emotional experience.

Deep shame is associated with another feeling we call “cringe.”  If you cringe when certain memories flit through your mind, then you know what shame is.  Usually we cringe over things we have done or said that caused us to feel shame, but we may also experience cringe when we remember times we were shamed by others, especially if the shaming happened in front of our friends, family members or even strangers.

Shame affects us spiritually. When we look at the negative emotions and destructive revengeful thinking that can make up the shaming experience and realize that if this negativity is not dealt with but instead becomes habitual and hardened in the person, then spiritual “bankruptcy” could result if we consider hate, resentment and revenge harmful to the soul.

The experience of shame is a complex cluster of emotions and emotional states which includes rage, fear, hurt, hate and feeling powerless, revengeful, lacking, hopeless, discounted, abandoned, inferior, trapped, worthless, isolated, helpless, without identity, and unable to “save face.”

When we experience this array of emotions in a shaming experience, we wish we could crawl under something to disappear from the face of earth.

SHAME AND SELF-IMAGE

Repeated experiences of shaming during the formative years of childhood, which are directed not only at the child but also to the basic dependency needs of the child, can result in a permanently distorted, negative self-image. During the formative years children are defenseless against the beliefs they internalize about themselves. They have no choice but to accept what is given to them in the form of information about themselves from parents, siblings, caretakers, teachers, preachers, and others in authority. If that information is negative and shaming, then the child will develop a core belief system about himself or herself which reflects what was accepted as truth.  Not only does shame become the core of a negative self-image; it also interferes with the natural mental, emotional and spiritual development of the child which reinforces the negative self-image as the child interacts with others.

The family has more influence on the development of a child’s self-image than any other force.  If the family is dysfunctional, then the family is shaming and the child will develop a negative self-image.  The family is the source of initial shame which sets up the individual to continue in a shaming and shameful lifestyle unless measures are taken to deal with it. If we do not process the shames of the past that we have denied for so long, we are doomed to keep on repeating the same old patterns and the same old mistakes. To admit and work through past shame is not dwelling on the past; it is a way to be free of the past.

Individuals who grew up in a shaming family and have not worked through their shames have difficulty knowing what their emotions are in present situations and how to express them appropriate