- Despite having studied for weeks, you fail an exam. Expecting your instructor to think poorly of you, you do not attend office hours and ask for help.
- You avoid the gym because you do not want other gym-goers to see you are out of shape.
- Despite your love for playing violin, you stop going to rehearsal because you fear judgment from your better-performing peers.
What common thread ties these three scenarios together? Fear of failure plays a role, but there’s another insidious vice at play: shame. Shame arises when people feel they have violated some standard, and fear exposing their inadequate self to others. Psychologists use shame’s “external orientation” to distinguish the emotion from guilt, in which negative evaluation comes from the self. While a person experiencing guilt directs the negative evaluation at his action, a person experiencing shame points it at himself: creating the emotion’s deep, intimate pain 1 .
Last month, I reflected on how shame has held me back. Take creative writing: as a child, I loved losing myself in fantastical worlds I concocted. Once I began mentally critiquing other people’s writings, I started to worry about how others might respond to my writing’s weaknesses. I stopped writing due to hypersensitivity to exposing my defects; just like the protagonists in the three situations above, shame prevented me from bettering myself.
Here’s the thing: shame isn’t intrinsically bad. Psychologist John Bradshaw may have labeled the emotion “an inner torment, a sickness of the soul,” 2 but evolutionary psychologists identify the emotion’s origin as a mediator for social conflict. When members of the same species compete over a limited resource, like food or sexual alliances, winners and losers emerge. Shame evolved to keep conflict from continuing unarrested, incurring costs of energy, time, and injury 3. Social inferiors employed shame as a life-saving strategy to disengage from conflict, appeasing superiors 4.
It does not feel like an overstatement to conclude shame is biologically programmed in us–entwined in our legacies as social animals.But here’s where we differ from our predecessors: in the situations I bulleted above, we are not fighting to control limited resources. The “best-case scenario” is instead to improve, by raising your test scores, getting in shape, or excelling at violin. Shame’s lying, kids; those disengagement and appeasement instincts do nothing to better your circumstances.
As I enter 2016, I’m intrigued by the thought of revolutionizing my mindset: swapping it for a mindset primed for growth. I invite you to join me in my first step in that process: labeling shame for what it is, and confronting it accordingly. When our toes are pointed toward shame-driven retreat, let’s ask ourselves: “what is the most realistic, best-case scenario I can imagine? Will retreating help me make that happen?” If nothing else, perhaps the mental exercise can help us make our choices a bit more deliberately.
Disclaimer: I am not (yet!) a psychologist; in fact, I have never taken a psychology class. Science is attributed to the brilliant minds responsible; errors in logic and grammar are my own.
- Wong, Y., & Tsai, J. (2007). Cultural models of shame and guilt. The self-conscious emotions: Theory and research, 210-211. ↩
- John Bradshaw, Healing The Shame That Binds You (Deerfield: Health Communications Inc., 1988), 10. ↩
- Gilbert, P., & Andrews, B. (1998). Shame: Interpersonal Behavior, Psychotherapy, and Culture (p. 101). New York: Oxford University Press. ↩
- Kemeny, M. E., Gruenewald, T. L., & Dickerson, S. S.. (2004). Shame as the Emotional Response to Threat to the Social Self: Implications for Behavior, Physiology, and Health.Psychological Inquiry, 15(2), 155. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20447221 ↩
Thanks so much for sharing 🙂 Looking forward to officially subscribing when you get your “follow” button, and continuing to follow your beautiful voice and honest reflections with time.
Afia, I have accidentally stumbled upon your blog.
During our years in school, you have always been an inspiration because you are both diligent and intellectually gifted. As I read your blog, a warm fuzzy nostalgia overcame me. In some way, I am super glad that you have blossomed into a caring, successful young woman. On the other hand, I sometimes do regret that we never became true friends since we were both voracious readers; it must be delightful to have philosophical or political discussions together.
My entire life has always been hampered by my own insecurities. The shame associated with failure is too overbearing for a perfectionist. Throughout my university studies, I retreated back from the many opportunities that I could have taken. I rarely asked for help even when I was overwhelmed by my coursework. I refused to meet my scholarship advisors because I felt that I was not living up to their expectations as my fellow classmates were blatantly outperforming me in their research and internships. It was during these moments of desperation that I thought of successful people I knew and wondered the actions they would have taken if they were in my shoes. Unsurprisingly, you were one of them.
You and I will never meet again, but I want you to walk with knowledge that your perseverance in following your dreams continues to motivate me in even the tiniest bit.
Hi,
From your message, looks like I seriously missed out– I would have loved to have had your friendship. (I don’t think it’s too late, either–always down for spontaneous fb/email/phone/etc. conversations!)
But in any case: thank you so much for your kind words. It means a lot that you read my blog, that you thought of me in the interim, and that you took the time to write this message. To be honest, I wrote this post while in college–a time that my insecurities, like how you describe yours, were keeping me back in frustrating and unproductive ways. One year after the fact, I can say: recognizing those repercussions (and thinking about them long enough to research and write about them) helped a lot. But it’s still a struggle, so it’s good to know we’re not alone.
I hope that you’re doing well now. And if our paths ever do cross again, I look forward to some insightful and candid conversations.