Shame. 

People say that shame is the feeling you have when you believe something is inherently wrong with who you are. Guilt, on the other hand, is feeling there’s something wrong with your actions. 

But actually, shame stems from a fear of exclusion. It’s not just about how you relate to yourself, but how you relate to other people. 

I learned about this when I read a definition from a 2003 paper by Thomas Scheff. He wrote that shame is:

“the large family of emotions that includes many cognates and variants most notably embarrassment, guilt, humiliation, and related feelings of shyness that originate in threats to social bond. This definition integrates self (emotional reactions) and society (the social bond).”

Scheff, Thomas J. “Shame in Self and Society.” Symbolic Interaction, vol. 26, no. 2, 2003, pp. 239–262. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/si.2003.26.2.239. Accessed 23 Dec. 2020

Suddenly a whole heap of experiences made sense to me. Including those times when I haven’t felt shame. 

You see, when I felt no shame, it’s because I had no fear of exclusion – even if I was aware that something I had done wasn’t fabulous.

Continue reading Christmas 2020: Week 6, Day 2: Growth →