Shame

Image credit: Hiding in Shame, by Trine Meyer Vogsland.

This post is less about my research work than it is about counselling, both my experience with clients and my own, personal, experience.

Adrian Furnham, author of ‘The New Psychology Of Money’ lists money as a bigger taboo in conversation in post-modern times than the topics of either sex or death. My counselling experience in speaking with clients about their life circumstances parallels this, both for where financial problems have ended up causing problems for people or families in respect of welfare and wellbeing, or in respect of the financial burden associated with additions. Conversations in counselling chairs, it seems, frequently turn to feelings of shame.

Shame defined is:

the painful feeling arising from the consciousness of something dishonorable, improper, ridiculous, etc., done by oneself or another.

Shame is similar to guilt, which also is often reported as a feeling by clients, but is more internally focused than guilt – guilt perhaps can be understood as more closely aligned with responsibility, there is an outside connection in guilt, by which, things may be in some way, put right (pointed out by Aunty Barb Wingard, Dulwich Centre, 2013).

Shame itself is not so amenable – it doesn’t have ‘a way out’, so neatly available in it’s definition. In working with addictions, some psychiatry literature now describes shame as a normal reaction given a failure to live up to standards, whether these are more internally or externally derived. The standards part there describes an important aspect of shame – the fact that it’s occurrence arises in a shared social space. Whether it’s thoughts about what people think of you, a feeling of having done something bad or wrong or an acknowledgement of doing bad and wrong in the act, whether it’s direct or subtle and whether it’s in someone else’s or your own reactions, words or deeds, shame is an emotion that indicates hurt, and a feeling of wrongdoing in a relationship.

With clients, and with myself, I know, shame is a highly sensitive emotion, and, it goes to the core of who we are, it calls to question basic qualities of ourselves as selves. Levinas describes it as the inability to make others forget we are naked in our flesh, in his book, ‘On Escape‘. Escape is certainly a feeling that clients often describe in concert with shame, yet with shame, we know we cannot, we are caught. The gaze of the other, another person, which stands on one hand to provide us with recognition of who we are and thus, a power of a sort, in this case, has the character of something like a cage, a situation where we are caught, we are uncomfortable, and we are naked. We cannot, escape.

When shame is present, all survival instincts suddenly become much more salient, so, the sorts of behaviours that might otherwise never or rarely be considered suddenly are online and available. Rick Hanson here describes the evolutionary neurobiology of shame – it’s role in our social lives extends through generations, and it’s deep roots mean it’s hard for us to catch it as it happens, sometimes, it’s easier to know it by it’s after-effects.

Shame interacts fairly solidly with mental health concerns, particularly, in my experience, anxiety and addictions. My work brings me into contact with cycles. Life events or circumstances may trigger changes in social conditions (ending of a job, loss of relationship, shift in the state of health, for example). The change in social conditions of themselves may bring about a change in mental health, and while there is little literature available on the subject, I’d sense there can be an interaction between short term situational shifts in mental health, and longer term persistent or dispositional conditions, for mental health. This change sees a change in the capacity to connect back in to the social conditions and circumstances previously occupied – loss of relationships and social circles accompanying, a felt loss of status given an ending to work role, a significantly impacted income and thus a decreased ability to participate in the usual financial and consumer behaviours one might otherwise have had can compound the change in mental health circumstances, exactly via, the impact of shame.

This post comes about because I sense shame as a taboo itself, never mind it’s link to other hot-topic taboos like money, sex or death. No one talks about it, and it’s effects are pervasive. It is taboo, yet it affects all of us. The art chosen above captured something of shame’s feeling, for me, red, and tendril-like and uncomfortable tinged with sad. It’s hiding-ness, and, pervasiveness.