The Value of Shame
When I was training to become a counsellor there was a strong strain of thought that shame is unhelpful. The idea being that guilt, is a feeling about what we have done, or our behaviour and therefore can provide impetus for change - it makes us want to do things differently. However shame is an emotion that is about feeling bad about who we are, and therefore causes paralysis. The idea being, that if we feel bad about who we are, change feels impossible, it is too big and too hard. Instead that we should move from the position that who we are is always OK, but sometimes (or maybe often!) our behaviour might need to change. I think this is something that is still commonly accepted and taught in counselling training, as well as other disciplines such as psychology and psychotherapy.
As I have practiced for longer, particularly as I have worked with people who have caused significant harm to others, my ideas about this have changed. I have started to think about it differently. I have decided on a framework that frames guilt as an individual emotion - how I personally feel about my own actions, but shame is related to our place in the collective. I think that when we feel shame it is giving us information that we are transgressing a collective value or norm. It could mean that who we are is not acceptable to the collective in ways that hurt us for example if we are queer and grow up in a conservative christian environment. However, it could just as much let us know that who we are is not acceptable in ways that it is important for us to assess. For example - if I am the kind of person who is routinely harming other people in my community. Sometimes we feel shame because we are unhappy with the kind of person we are, and this can be OK, if we are able to move through this constructively. I recognise that this is much easier said than done, and often requires significant support.
As with all emotions, I don’t believe the feeling is the problem , I think it becomes a problem when we treat it like the problem and attempt to avoid feeling it at all costs. For example, if we look at toxic relationship ecosystems, an abusive partner will do anything and everything to justify their behaviour in order to avoid feeling shame. Similarly, an enabling partner, who also often feels plenty of shame for being or remaining in such a dynamic, will also do all sorts of justifying and minimising to avoid the pain of shame. Of course, there are many other complexities in such situations, but this is one strand.
If we approach shame using the model of feelings competence that I have previously alluded to, where we seek to become skilled interpreters of the information we receive from our feelings, then how we respond to shame when we feel it might go something like this:
Feel shame → assess why → evaluate what parts of me seem unacceptable → recognise what community values they transgress → decide if these are community values that are important to me as an individual→ decide if I need to change to fit, or if the community needs to change, or if I need to find a new community.
This is just one example of how this process could go, but I think what is important about it is that it recognises that we have choices in how we can respond to shame other than just ‘feel bad about who we are.’ However truly being able to access these choices requires a lot of effort, it is not that easy to try to shift community norms, or to find a new community. With many types of shame, I think ‘the community needs to change’ can be the correct answer, for example I think of the shame that many women feel when they do not meet gender role expectations.
However sometimes as individuals we do need to change too! This is particularly true if we have caused harm. When we are thinking about building healthy well functioning communities, we have to think carefully about how we handle people who cause harm. Despite what contemporary purity culture attempts to indoctrinate us with, it is impossible to live without causing harm. Therefore we need both individual and collective practices that allow people to move through the shame of causing harm and rejoin community fully. I think the transformative movement has a lot of valuable resources around this. I have linked some below.
Transformative Justice Resources
https://transformharm.org/transformative-justice/