Shame is not something most people reflect on or are willing to discuss. Shame hides in words like “stigma” and “offensive” and is behind concepts like low self-esteem. Humor is many times triggered by an experience of shame. In Christianity, shame is something to avoid because it’s a negative emotion caused by wrongdoing and therefore a sign of sinfulness.
The experience of shame is a very unpleasant one. The phrase “shame on you” (in English speaking countries) is commonly used as an insult, suggesting that most people unconsciously know how emotionally devastating the feeling of shame is. This is why shame phobia is, without a doubt, the most common phobia. For instance, Homophobia can be explained not as fear of homosexuality, but as fear of the shame that aspects of homosexuality may trigger.
Shame, like every other emotion, has a particular purpose in the emotional life of people. This is important to have in mind because the huge discomfort that shame generates gives the impression that shame is something to avoid. As Sartre said, “Shame always comes upon me like an internal hemorrhage for which I am completely unprepared.”
It may seem like an untrainable beast, but shame is just another emotion that most people are unprepared to manage, unlike sorrow or anger. A book by Donald Nathanson; Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self (1994) provides an excellent overview of shame and an explanation of the role of shame. We will only focus on the concepts of shame proposed by Nathanson that are relevant to Corporeal Epistemology.
Before
Emotions are culturally constructed using nine Affects that are common to all humans since birth. The following are the nine Affects, showing both their low and high intensity:
1. Interest - Excitement
2. Enjoyment - Joy
3. Surprise - Startle
4. Fear - Terror
5. Distress - Anguish
6. Anger - Rage
7. Dissmell
8. Disgust
9. Shame – Humiliation
Affects are the equivalent to the hardware of a PC which is built to respond in certain fixed ways. Emotions are the equivalent to the software of a PC which uses the available hardware to present itself to the user, but instead emotions use affects.
Depending on the children’s experience, which includes the interaction with caregivers and the social environment around them, Emotions are constructed using the available nine Affects. This is why the experiences and responses to emotions will vary as people age, or may vary from person to person and inter-culturally.
It’s worth noting here that Shame is both the Affect Shame – Humiliation and the Emotion Shame. On the other hand Guilt is only an emotion based on Affects Shame – Humiliation and Fear – Terror.
Affects are broken up into Positive (Interest - Excitement and Enjoyment - Joy), Neutral (Surprise - Startle), and Negative, all other six: Fear - Terror, Distress - Anguish, Anger - Rage, Dissmell, Disgust, Shame – Humiliation.
Most people have no trouble with emotions associated to all negative effects, with the exception of shame. Although the experiences of bad taste and bad odors, people manage experiences of disgust and those who work cleaning sewers, manage some awful odors.
Anger – Rage and Distress – Anguish are in the negative category but “feeling angry” and “feeling sad” can sometimes be enjoyable experiences. On the other hand, experiences of shame are always unpleasant, so unpleasant that shame is immediately replaced aby other affects and emotions.
Nathanson’s theory explains shame as a response to an impediment to whatever we were doing that we were interested in and enjoying. What happens when the moment of shame occurs? It causes a cognitive shock. “No one can think clearly in the moment of shame,” said Darwin more than 100 years ago.
The purpose of the shame-affect is to mitigate positive emotions which are based on the two positive affects, Interest - Excitement and Enjoyment – Joy.
A good example to explain this is a toddler moving towards an object of interest, such as an expensive crystal lamp. There are three possibilities.
One option is to let the toddler reach the expensive lamp and see what happens. Apart from the value loss is the danger of the toddler getting hurt and scared. This is not the ideal choice.
A second option, which is what most caregivers would pick, is to interrupt the experience of joy and excitement being felt by the toddler and somehow deny the toddler of that pleasant and exciting experience. The problem with this option is that it has the conditions to trigger shame because the toddler’s experience of joy and excitement is being interrupted. The toddler will experience an episode of shame. Although there is nothing wrong with feeling shame the situations of shame especially in children should be minimized.
There is a third option that will avoid any potential destruction to the lamp while at the same time prevent shame. Rather than interrupting the child’s enjoyable experience the solution is to provide them with an alternative experience, by first using Surprise – Startle with a bell or any other distracting object, the toddler will switch the attention to the new object being presented and enjoy it with excitement.
It is impossible to avoid experiences of shame happening to children and maybe affecting them, and to feel guilty about that. The best approach is minimizing experiences of shame in a toddler and young children because shame will always violently interrupt a pleasant experience.
Jean Piaget believed that the need to learn is unquestionably an instinct, which is why people don’t like being bored and prefer being “entertained” with new experiences.
Experiences of shame are so unpleasant that instantly the behavior changes in four possible ways as a reaction to shame. It’s called the Compass of Shame.
The Compass of Shame describes the four most common ways people behave in reaction to shame:
(1) Wanting to hide (Withdrawal)
(2) Feeling depressed (Attack Self)
(3) Avoiding shame situations altogether. (Avoidance)
(4) Feeling anger towards the source of the shame (Attack Other)
The fleeting characteristic of shame makes it difficult for people to acknowledge any experiences of shame. A violent homophobic man would never acknowledge feeling shame when confronted with male homoerotic situations. Instead, he would be angered and say something like “fags should die”. The case of the homophobic man is Attack Other of the Compass Suicides are Attack Self, after a long depression and lack of self-worth.
Shame can be paralyzing for people who are unable to handle it. Shame has the power to ruin a person’s emotional life by constant self-tormenting. Shame can both motivate and discourage behavior and can be present in addictive behavior. Bad management of shame affects a person’s emotional life which feels out of control.
The odd thing about shame is that although experiences of the emotion are extremely uncomfortable, dealing with the discomfort is relatively simple. All it takes is the recognition that shame is involved in the situation and reflects on what may be causing it. In all likelihood, the cause is some silly circumstance. Using the words of Shakespeare, shame is usually a “Much Ado About Nothing”. Because shame and guilt are commonly mentioned together, let’s compare shame and guilt.
Dealing with guilt can be a very difficult journey because the person has done something that is at the root of the guilt.
One common reaction to shame is a feeling of paranoia that “now the entire world knows”. There is little justification for the paranoia because most people are too concerned about their own experience of shame to be reacting to the shame of other’s. The experience of focusing on someone else’s shame is usually a very fleeting experience.
The use of the term “phobia” has become popular to describe current social issues, such as homophobia, transphobia and Islamophobia. Yet, the most common and universal phobia, rarely mentioned, is fear of shame, sometimes called shame-o-phobia.
If you are still not convinced that feeling shame is a devastating experience, search in your favorite web-browser “shame the most difficult emotion to deal with” or “phobia of shame”, and check some of the results.
Also important is the work of Dr. Brené Brown. She focuses on empathy and she claims that shame breeds fear, blame and disconnection. Both Nathanson and Brown provide a good framework that helps in the understanding and the management of shame.