About shame

Submitted to COTW anonymously from QC, Canada; translated from the French using ChatGPT

Shame is the emotion associated with the feeling of being inadequate, defective, or unworthy of belonging to the group. A painful, even debilitating emotion, it is fundamentally social in nature. From as early as age 3–5, it brands with a hot iron the behaviors deemed socially reprehensible. It is the ultimate physiological punishment for having “acted wrongly.” The sentence: exclusion from the group and the anticipated loss of one’s humanity. For the nervous system of a social animal, exile is death. Shame, therefore, is the feeling of imminent death. No wonder we constantly pass it around like a hot potato — both a source of power when imposed on others (symbolic murder) and a source of deep suffering when endured ourselves (living is killing me).

The physical consequence of shame is the inhibition of the motor system, the protection of internal organs (shoulders curving inward), and a painful tightening in the chest or stomach. The internal message is: if I keep acting, I will die. In its primary function, shame is essential to social regulation. It is likely the first regulator of our instinctive violence. We will all experience shame many times throughout our lives. As long as it is felt occasionally, in response to deviant, violent, or destructive behaviors, it is an emotion that has its place in the normal conditioning of human beings.

Shame becomes problematic when it is experienced systematically, with no symbolic possibility of correction, repair, or lasting return to inclusion. When one endures shame continuously, one ends up living in a state of constant chronic stress. Cortisol, at high doses and for long periods of time, becomes neurotoxic. Executive functions diminish, as does our capacity to self-regulate and return to a “rest and digest” state. In some cases, it kills. At best, it generates trauma.

As with any stressor, the nervous system will typically seek a fight-or-flight response to cope. When physical escape from the shame-generating environment is impossible — or when shame has become internalized and follows us wherever we go — two other options arise: chemical regulation (drugs) and/or dissociation (inhibition of the circuits associated with pain and emotion). On the “fight” side, it is generally through contempt or violence that one seeks to silence shame. Contempt is the psychological belittling of the person generating shame — in other words, the externalization of shame: It’s not me who should be ashamed — it’s you. Violence is the desire to subjugate, psychologically or physically, the perceived source of one’s shame: If you disappear, I will no longer feel ashamed. All of these strategies temporarily dispel the feeling of shame, but if the source of shame is not addressed and resolved, the pendulum almost inevitably swings back.

This duality of shame and contempt/violence may be at the root of the worst facets of human experience. It is a self-fueling pendulum, naturally and indefinitely oscillating between one state and the other, as long as the underlying issue — internal or external — remains unresolved. When two shame-carrying individuals live in close proximity, their pendulums tend to synchronize.

Sometimes the pendulum stays in relative equilibrium, sometimes for many years, with each party managing to counteract the other’s contempt in a roughly symmetrical way. These are painful, loveless partnerships, but relatively functional ones — not without their good moments, between each swing of the pendulum, when both parties find themselves at a standstill.

One day, however, in such dynamics, a vulnerability appears: one party cracks, asks for forgiveness, and promises to change. The pendulum, established over years, will not stop for that. This time, contempt will meet vulnerability, driving a little deeper with each swing. Contempt — the antithesis of shame, or rather, externalized shame — is strangely addictive. It confers a sense of power on the one who expresses it. Left unchecked, it tends to grow, naturally escalating into violence.

Eventually, the party in the weaker position within this dynamic will seek to flee, appease, or retaliate. Flight, without external support, will not always be possible, or at least not immediately. Flight also means the unknown. Letting go of familiar bearings, even unhealthy ones, is always a painful experience. Appeasement works in the short term, calming the aggressor’s impulses, but at the same time, by avoiding conflict, legitimizes them. Retaliation, costly in energy, becomes increasingly difficult as the victim’s resources are depleted. The experience of violence, and the shame that follows from it, is inherently incapacitating and traumatic.

It is generally through a combination of these strategies that the victimized party manages to extract themselves from the dynamic. If sufficient distance is achieved and an adequate support network exists, and with appropriate psychological help, each party’s pendulum will gradually return to equilibrium.

In the absence of such a support network or sufficient distance, the dynamic will not stop. The violent party, convinced of their superiority and frustrated at not being able to exploit the dynamic for longer, will want more. Violence, and the sense of power it produces, is addictive. If they can no longer reach the victimized party in their immediate environment, they will do so through that person’s social circle —spreading rumors, rallying as many people as possible to their cause, positioning themselves as the victim. The violence becomes communal.

In a healthy community, mechanisms would exist to regulate such processes. The victimized party could draw from their social circle the additional strength needed to provide adequate counterweight to the violent party. The violent party would be brought back into balance by their own circle, or threatened with sanctions. Eventually, if the damage was relatively superficial, after both parties had stabilized, a process of mutual understanding — and perhaps even repair — could be envisioned.

Unfortunately, we do not live in healthy communities, but in a social environment that perpetuates violence and shame across the full breadth of human experience — domestic, geographic, and in working relationships. We have become isolated, inhibited, selfish, and/or full of shame in relation with ourselves. It is no surprise that the far right, which makes its business out of channeling violence and contempt toward marginalized social groups, is flourishing in the current context. Behind the social mechanisms — capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy — that fuel this system, one constant remains: the human propensity to maintain or consolidate one’s status, and to flee from suffering. Dehumanizing the other is simply a means among many to achieve that end. To my knowledge, there is only one remedy to this psychological cancer: connection, community, and love. In the current social and economic environment, opportunities for these are fragile — but not nonexistent. They must be protected and carefully tended.