Our most debilitating feeling is shame, that emotion that sweeps over us and fills us with the desire to be no more. We want to be invisible, put a sack over our heads. We yearn with an aching that is so fierce it threatens to split us in two for a chance to change history. Why can’t we take back that word we just mispronounced to hoots of laughter or back up and walk over the parking divider instead of tripping over it and falling flat on our face?
But shame, as horrible as the feeling is,
isn’t the problem. Shame about our shame is what brands our problems into our skin and into our souls. We feel so horrible about feeling shame, that we want to keep it a secret from everyone, especially ourselves. We doom ourselves to unconscious, fear-based reaction. We chain ourselves to our fears; condemn ourselves to a life spent avoiding situations, which might produce shame. Our lives shrink to fit the amount of courage and awareness we are able to muster.
Even if we experience enormous worldly success, our inner shame can keep us from enjoying any of it. We have tricked the world, but we cannot trick ourselves out of our shame, that deep belief that we are wholly and completely unworthy of being loved.
Shane is what we feel whenever someone says something to us that says we are an idiot. This can be in the subtext as in “You are an English teacher and you think the word develop has an “e” on the end of it?” Unspoken, but ringing through our ears and our souls are the words, “You idiot.“ Less subtle is the derisive laughter, the mocking tone that so ably communicates contempt. “You are beneath me. You disgust me,” their laughter says, and if others join in, adding their voices to the cruelty, our spirits can be broken forever.
Singing Down the Drain
This spirit-breaking behavior is often practiced in our families. One high school boy I worked with had given up his singing because his brother had taped him unselfconsciously singing in the shower and then played the tape at a family gathering. Everyone laughed. Ha-ha! There goes your singing! If he
isn’t careful, he will grow into a man who shames the joy out of others as it was shamed out of him.
It is shame that makes us feel we have fooled people into loving us, tricked our employers into hiring us. Shame masquerades as milder emotions, so it often escapes our knowing it for what it is: an invitation to obliteration of our hopes, dreams, and our ability to love and be loved.
Here are some of the tricksters, those emotions we feel that stop us from allowing our dreams to be born: Embarrassment, Defensiveness, and Humiliation.
• Embarrassment. Notice the “bare ass” part of embarrassment. We will sometimes go to any lengths to avoid being embarrassed. The more we take a stand for avoiding embarrassment, the smaller our world becomes. I invite people to dance at almost all of my presentations. Some people have obeyed the whip of embarrassment so completely, so often, that they cannot move their bodies and feel enormous discomfort at even watching other people move theirs.
• Defensiveness. When we feel defensive, we are saying to ourselves, “You have made a mistake! You are looking like a fool! This can’t be so! Make it go away!”
Some people get very clever and hide their defensiveness in a cool logic; I am very good at this. I can respond with no emotion in my voice or on my face when I’m feeling defensive because I am ashamed of being defensive and I don’t want anyone else to know I’m feeling defensive.
If someone accuses you of being defensive and you are feeling shame, you might get even more defensive or go on the attack. “I’m not the one who is being defensive. Y ou are the one who is being defensive.” You might say with heat and anger in your voice and on your face.
Curiosity Saves the Cat
A non-defensive response is always curiosity, “Really? I seem defensive to you? Huh. Let me go inside and see if I’m feeling any shame or fear.” Do you see the freedom in this response? You are in charge of deciding whether or not you are defensive. If you are being defensive, that is okay because as long as you aren’t ashamed about being defensive, you can get to the roots of what is causing you to be defensive.
It might sound like this: “You are right. I am defensive. I can feel it in my tight chest. Hmmm. I think I’m feeling scared that if you are right about this and I am wrong, I will have to give up something that is really important to me.” Now you can have a conversation that moves truth forward. You can discover new solutions and create more joy and intimacy.
If you stay in defensiveness or shame, though, you are stuck with the problem, perhaps for life.
If you get curious about your defensiveness, you might discover that you have been attacked. This is good information, especially for good girls and boys who do not like getting angry.
Feeling defensive is just a feeling. It is information. That’s all. It is not a sign that you are an unworthy piece of excrement.
• Another shame-inspired feeling is humiliation. Humiliation is much closer to the real feeling of shame. If we feel humiliated we are unlikely to ever step out into the open in a way that makes us vulnerable to that feeling again. If we write a song and someone tells us it’s stupid, we may give up songwriting, or singing, or writing, or laughing, or telling stories, or getting enthusiastic. We may give up much of what it means to be fully alive so as to avoid feeling that feeling again.
Joy Recovery Works
If we don’t go into Shame Recovery or Joy Recovery, we may become a person who shames others to keep them in our comfort zones. Some work cultures and some family cultures are dominated by shaming bullies. They will run the show, they will determine what is allowed to be said and felt. If no one understands what is happening and takes action to create an environment that brings out the best in everyone, then slowly joy, delight and wonder will be replaced by anxiety, depression, and mockery.
Sometimes it is necessary for us to leave our jobs and sometimes to divorce our family members in order to recover our sense of who we are and who we were meant to be in this world. We sell our souls to belong, even though that belonging costs us our salvation: our joy, our integrity, our gifts, our truth, and our authenticity.
All of us have been shamed and all of us have shamed others. It is often called “teasing.” Someone tells us that we look stupid in our favorite blue shirt. If we let our hurt be known, we might be shamed with the words, “I was only kidding. Can’t you take a joke?”
Too much of what passes, as humor is anger leaking out, shaming others, and stealing our joy and our talent.
Shame Recovery Examples:
1. You publish something on the Internet or in a newsletter and you find you have made some obvious errors. You proofread your work several times! How can there be mistakes? Shame starts to inhabit you. You recognize the feeling of shame, tell yourself or someone else you are feeling shame about the errors you made, and then you go on with your life. You will make more errors. Count on it. Celebrate it. There is no authentic living without lots of errors, so make them with aplomb.
2. You are scheduled to give a big presentation, which would be no big deal usually, but right now you are feeling enormously vulnerable. The Voice of Shame enters your body and says, “You call yourself a motivational, inspirational speaker? You don’t seem very uplifting right now. You phony. You have fooled people all along. This is who you really are, this week Pretender of Wisdom. Shut up! Shut up! Shut Up!”
Note: Most of the messages of the Voice of Shame are to shut up. Stop taking up space and stealing oxygen from other, more deserving people, which is everyone else. Stop pretending you haven’t made a mistake; you are a mistake and now everyone knows and will know forever.
3. If you do not desert yourself, it doesn’t matter whoever else deserts you. You are the only one who can abandon you. If you resist the Voice of shame and let the feelings of embarrassment, inadequacy, and humiliation just flow through you, you will get stronger exponentially. No one can take you away from you except you. Eleanor Roosevelt said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Don’t accept anyone’s invitation to feel inferior.
My Shame Holes
1. I don’t like to admit that I’m tired. There is a part of me that doesn’t think it is okay for me to be tired, and it’s especially not okay for me to look tired. If someone says to me, “You look tired,” my first response is “Oh, no! I can’t look tired! That is terrible to look tired. I’m motivational speaker. I need to be uplifting all the time, every second.
Then I realize this is my shame talking, so I speak it. “Ooh,” I say, “it’s hard for me to admit I’m tired. I feel some shame about that. How interesting.”
2. I also do not like to admit that I am not at the top of my game. (This, you might notice, is closely related to “tired.”) It’s okay for me to not be at the top of my game for an afternoon, a day, possibly even a week, though that is stretching it. But when I returned from Bali after being there for two months, I was not at the top of my game for two whole months. For two whole months I could not think of one fun thing to do. I watched a lot of television, went for walks, talked with friends, even wrote a song, but as soon as a joy moment was over, it was really over. There was no residual effect.
I would feel a little jolly, and then back to the Slough of Despond for me. For two months! I knew it wouldn't last. I knew my job was to experience this transition time and let it be what it needed to be, let go of control and accept. Either I trust everything, including having no enthusiasm, or I don’t. Picking and choosing when I would trust is bargaining and ultimately very unsatisfying.
When I visited my dear friend Genai in a Naples, Florida and she remarked that I looked tired and I had to admit I was not at the top of my game, I felt shame and I spoke it. Speaking it didn’t shift my tiredness, but naming and speaking my shame allowed it to flow through me instead of building up in my system like so much spiritual cholesterol. OOOh, I like that term: Spiritual Cholesterol. That is what shame is exactly, Spiritual Cholesterol.
Shame is the wormhole that lets death seep in and extinguishes life. There is nothing more important you can do than learn to recognize shame in yourself and in others. You simply cannot know the terrain of your life if you do not recognize when someone else is trying to obliterate you or when you are trying to obliterate yourself.
Some people, most people, are unaware of how much shame impacts their lives and the lives of those they love. Once you start noticing how much shame is in the world, you may feel like a stranger in strange land for a while. That’s okay. You will be able to feel more compassion for yourself and others, you will be able to have more creativity and courage, and you will be able to give birth to the best that is within you and help others is do the same. You will become a Dream Midwife for yourself and everyone you meet. We can form a club!
Taking Action
1. Start noticing when you or someone else has been shamed.
2. Start making sure you are not shaming others. We all have bad habits. Don’t’ shame yourself about having a bad habit. Notice it, apologize, and repair what you can and go on.
3. Let yourself and other people you feel safe with know when you feel shamed. Shame is not the problem. Feeling ashamed about feeling shame is the problem. If we can admit to ourselves and others that we feel shame, we make it safe for other people to be who they are, and we let our bodies feel the shame and let it flow out, making space for another feeling, such as self-confidence, to fill us. When I admit I’m defensive or feeling shame or feeling like I want to put a bag over my head or feeling completely inadequate to the task in front of me, magic happens.
The feeling of shame and doubt that was just completely occupying all of my body and all of my brain now melts and flows away. I feel strong and proud, in a good way. The Dinosaur within me that wants me to live small lost another round. The Lion in me that wants me to step into my greatness has more muscle, more experience, and it is more likely that I will be able to admit my shame the next time.
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