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I recently attended the conference Shame: Interdisciplinary Applications and Therapeutic Approaches, hosted by The Freud Museum in London and Bournemouth University’s Centre for the Study of Conflict, Emotion and Social Justice (CESJ). The discussions covered topics like the role of shame as a driver of polarisation, aggression and violence; the psychosocial drivers of shame; and breaking shame cycles. I thought the day captured well just how pervasive and corrosive shame can be but also how we can address it. It seems to me a good starting point is talking about shame more, so I thought I would share five of my key take-aways and perhaps we can take it from there.
Across the day and the speakers there was no one working definition of shame and by the end of the day any remotely concise definition felt like it would be too limiting. However, I think it is worth noting that it was often used alongside word like humiliation and embarrassment and, in contrast to other emotions like sadness or joy which we are born with, there is a distinctly relational and learned component to shame.
5 key points:
1. Shame as power imbalance: This idea holds that feelings of shame are a reaction to a power imbalance: the experience of feeling ‘less than’. There is of course the physical manifestation of a power imbalance when you feel or are made to feel physically weaker than, but also the power someone (or indeed a community or political system) might have or seem to have over you. This could be the power to withdraw love, to alienate you, to abandon you, to reject or ostracise you. Shame doesn’t exist in interactions where there is equality. For example, the child that gets told off for wetting the bed; the employee that is picked on in the team meeting; the many people who need to use foodbanks described as being bad with money or lazy. If identifying the power imbalance feels too abstract, it might be useful to notice feelings of vulnerability or a fear of exposure (or conversely a desire to hide or be invisible).
2. Responses to shame: If shame is about who has power and who doesn’t then shame is also about responding to a sense of threat. Behind each of the examples above there is a threat that we might be made worse off in some way. For example, the child might feel there is something wrong with them, something unlovable which makes them at risk of abandonment, the employee might feel like they will never be good enough and rejected as a failure; people using foodbanks or claiming benefits are often accused of not contributing to society and may feel the threat of isolation. Any threat of being left out or left behind has the potential to make us feel very unsafe. This means that just as with other threats we can also understand shame-based reactions along the fight, flight or freeze model. (This model has been expanded to also include reactions like fawn and faint, however, this Healthline article offers a useful introduction to the reactions.) When you feel shamed, or humiliated what do you do? Do you shut down? Or want to escape the situation? Or…?
3. Shame and violence: the conference particularly focused on the relationship between shame and violence (or ‘fight’ mode) and this quote from Professor James Gilligan particularly stood out to me “shame is a necessary but not sufficient cause of violence.” Professor Gilligan has written extensively on violence and draws particularly on his experience of the U.S prison system. This idea that while shame does not necessarily have to lead to violence, but if there is violence there will be shame, frames the violence as means of warding off the shame. This shifts the focus away from how to we stop the violence to how do we stop the shame and the potential impact of this can be seen in the example shared in the final learning.
4. Antidotes to shame: Working with shame ultimately takes time and care and at no point over the course of the day was there a sense of a drive to one catchall solution when there are so many different sources of shame. However, two speakers shared their thoughts on what an ‘antidote’ might be: 1. Humility and 2. Inclusivity.
The first antidote suggested was humility. It draws on the idea that when something shames you, you might either feel humiliated or humility. Both words draw on the Latin root humus, meaning ground, which becomes humilis meaning low or lowly. When you feel shame, you can either feel embarrassed and lowly or you can embrace the feedback, be brought back down to earth and be humbled as part of your own growth and learning.
The second was inclusivity. This is about bringing people in and creating the support or structures that help them to be confident that who they are (mentally, socially, physically, their personhood) is not under threat. Where there is a choice between diminishing that person further or finding ways to raise them up, you choose the latter because they are not less worthy of care and belonging than anyone else. As noted earlier, the example in this conference that I thought brought this to life was shared by Professor Gilligan who described research that followed over 200 prisoners who had received a bachelor’s or master’s degree whilst in prison. In the 25 years after their return to the community there was not one person who had committed a new crime and been returned to prison.
5. “Shaming the perpetrator, only perpetuates the vicious cycle. Addressing shame with shame is like pouring petrol on the fire. It is counter-productive.” (Gerodimos 2022). Associate Professor Luna Dolezal at the University of Exeter shared this quote as part of her research on the relationship between shame and healthcare and how the anticipation of potentially shaming experiences results in avoidance which is detrimental to our health. This is seen not only in clinical settings, for example where people avoid seeing their doctor but also in other spaces like the avoidance of using food banks for fear of judgement. Despite this, shame is still routinely used to encourage/discourage certain behaviour (like public health campaigns around alcohol use, obesity, teen pregnancy). Research finds that while some people will change their behaviour, shame as a tactic can also exacerbate or compound issues, particularly amongst already shamed communities. Ultimately, it is a tool which “too easily misfires” (Brewis & Wutich, 2019).
More information on the conference and all of the speakers can be found here: https://www.freud.org.uk/event/shame-interdisciplinary-applications-and-therapeutic-approaches/
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