• And most importantly, what can we realistically do to change the culture so we aren’t always trying to work against it?
Through hundreds of interviews with women and men, I’ve learned that empathy and vulnerability are at the core of courage, compassion and connection. Conversely, shame is one of the primary sources of fear, blame and disconnection. Once we begin to understand how empathy, vulnerability and shame are developed and practiced, we can start to answer these questions.
How widespread is this feeling of shame among women that it warrants a study?
We all experience shame. It is an absolutely universal emotion. To varying degrees, we all experience the struggle to feel comfortable with who we are in a society that puts so much importance on being perfect and fitting in. We also know the painful wave of emotion that washes over us when we feel judged or ridiculed about the way we look, our work, our parenting, how we spend our money, our families or even the life experiences over which we had no control. And it’s not always someone else putting us down or judging us; the most painful shaming experiences are often self-inflicted.
People often want to believe that shame is reserved for the unfortunate few who have survived terrible traumas, but this is not true. As I mentioned before, we all feel shame. And, while it feels like shame hides in our darkest corners, it actually tends to lurk in all of the familiar places, including appearance and body image, motherhood, family, parenting, money and work, mental and physical health, addiction, sex, aging, religion, and speaking out.
Shame is sort of a double-edged sword. We need to talk about it in order to feel whole, and yet we bury it deep inside because of our fears of being found out. Why is it such a closed-mouthed subject?
When people hear the word shame, they often have one of two responses: “I’m not sure what you mean by shame, but I know that I don’t want to talk about it,” or “Oh, shame. I know it well, but I don’t want to talk about it.” As a shame researcher, I understand our reluctance to talk about it—shame is so powerful that we sometimes feel shame just talking about shame. Unfortunately, the less we understand shame and how it affects our feelings, thoughts and behaviors, the more power it exerts over our lives.
We hide our imperfections, keep secrets and stay silent about our shaming experiences because our greatest fear is disconnection and isolation. We are wired for connection. It’s in our biology. As infants, our need for connection is about survival. As we grow older, connection means thriving—emotionally, physically, spiritually and intellectually. Connection is critical because we all have the basic need to feel accepted and to believe that we belong and are valued for who we are.
Shame unravels our connection to others. In fact, I often refer to shame as the fear of disconnection—the fear of being perceived as flawed and unworthy of acceptance or belonging. Shame keeps us from telling our own stories and prevents us from listening to others tell their stories. We silence our voices and keep our secrets out of the fear of disconnection. When we hear others talk about their shame, we often blame them as a way to protect ourselves from feeling uncomfortable. Hearing someone talk about a shaming experience can sometimes be as painful as actually experiencing it for ourselves. Shame is even a difficult topic for mental health professionals. There is no “us and them” when it comes to this very human emotion.
You say shame is often confused with feelings of guilt and embarrassment, what is the difference?
One of the simpler reasons shame is so difficult to talk about is vocabulary. We often use the terms embarrassment, guilt and shame interchangeably. Without much thought, we whisper, “That was so humiliating!” when we walk out of a restroom with toilet paper stuck to our shoe or shout, “Shame on you!” to a child who has unfortunately (but age-appropriately) colored on the table rather than in the coloring book.
It might seem overly sensitive to stress the importance of using the appropriate term to describe an experience or emotion; however, it is much more than just semantics. “Speaking shame,” or being able to identify and label these emotions, is one of the four elements of shame resilience.
Embarrassment is the least powerful of these emotions. Women described “embarrassing situations” as much less serious than either guilt or shame. Embarrassment is, by definition, something that is fleeting, often eventually funny and very normal (e.g., tripping, misspeaking, etc.). Regardless of how embarrassing a situation might be, we know (or at least have heard) that it happens to other people and we know it will go away. I don’t want to walk out of the bathroom with toilet paper on my shoe, but if I do, I’ll know I’m not the first or only one to have done it.
Guilt and shame are both emotions of self-evaluation; however, that is where the similarities end. The majority of shame researchers agree that the difference between shame and guilt is best understood as the differences between “I am bad” (shame) and “I did something bad” (guilt). Shame is about who we are and guilt is about our behaviors. If I feel guilty for cheating on a test, my self-talk might sound something like “I should not have done that. That was really stupid. Cheating is not something I believe in or want to do.” If I feel shame about cheating on a test, my self-talk is more likely to sound like “I’m a liar and a cheat. I’m so stupid. I’m a bad person.”
Guilt is holding an action or behavior up against our ethics, values and beliefs. We evaluate that behavior (like cheating) and feel guilt when the behavior is inconsistent with who we want to be. Shame is focusing on who we are rather than what we’ve done. The danger of telling ourselves that we are bad, a cheat, and no good, is that we eventually start to believe it and own it. The person who believes she is “no good” is much more likely to continue to cheat and fulfill that label than the person who feels guilt.
Here is the definition of shame that I use in my work: “Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging.”
What does shame do to one's self-esteem?
Shame and self-esteem are very different issues. We feel shame. We think self-esteem. Our self-esteem is based on how we see ourselves—our strengths and limitations—over time. It is how and what we think of ourselves. Shame is an emotion. It is how we feel when we have certain experiences. When we are in shame, we don’t see the big picture; we don’t accurately think about our strengths and limitations. We just feel alone, exposed and deeply flawed.
My friend and colleague Marian Mankin described the difference between shame and self-esteem this way: “When I think about my self-esteem, I think about who I am in relation to who I want to be, where I come from, what I’ve overcome and what I’ve accomplished. When I feel shame, I’m taken back to this place of smallness where I lose that sense of context. I’m returned to a small place—I can’t see everything else. It’s just a small, lonely place.”
Over time, shame can certainly take a toll on our self-esteem. That’s why building shame resilience is so important.
Ours is a culture with high expectations of women in how we look, the choices me make as mothers, career women, etc., and when we fail to meet them we see the fallout, which is clear in any of the stay-at- home/working mom, body image discussions - somebody always ends up feeling lousy - do you think this culture is set up for women to be caught up in the shame and blame game?
To understand how shame is influenced by culture, we need to think back to when we were children or young adults, and we first learned how important it is to be liked, to fit in, and to please others. The lessons were often taught by shame; sometimes overtly, other times covertly. Regardless of how they happened, we can all recall experiences of feeling rejected, diminished and ridiculed. Eventually, we learned to fear these feelings. We learned how to change our behaviors, thinking and feelings to avoid feeling shame. In the process, we changed who we were and, in many instances, who we are now.
Our culture teaches us about shame—it dictates what is acceptable and what is not. We weren’t born craving perfect bodies. We weren’t born afraid to tell our stories. We weren’t born with a fear of getting too old to feel valuable. We weren’t born with a Pottery Barn catalog in one hand and heartbreaking debt in the other. Shame comes from outside of us—from the messages and expectations of our culture. What comes from the inside of us is a very human need to belong, to feel and be connected.
How is shame different for women than it is for men?
All of us, men and women alike, have the basic need to feel accepted and to believe that we belong and are valued. The definition that I developed from my interviews with women fits equally well with men. Just like us, they experience shame as the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing they are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging. And, just as women described it, shame leaves men with overwhelming feelings of fear, blame and disconnection.
However, there are tremendous differences when it comes to the social-community expectations that drive shame and the messages that reinforce those expectations. For men, the expectations and messages center around masculinity and what it means to “be a man.” In other words—the “how we experience shame” might be the same, but the “why we experience shame” is very different.
Our culture seems to be the catalyst for a lot of the insecurity and self-esteem issues that plague women - how do we stop buying into the message that we're not good enough?
One of the four elements of shame resilience is “Practicing Critical Awareness.” When we look at the shame categories—appearance and body image, motherhood, family, parenting, money and work, mental and physical health, sex, aging, religion, being stereotyped and labeled, speaking out and surviving trauma—most of us have not been taught how to see the connection between our private lives and social, political and economic influences.
Shame works like the zoom lens on a camera. When we are feeling shame, the camera is zoomed in tight and all we see is our flawed selves, alone and struggling. We think to ourselves, “I’m the only one. Something is wrong with me. I am alone.” When we zoom out, we start to see a completely different picture. We see many people in the same struggle. Rather than thinking, “I’m the only one,” we start thinking, “I can’t believe it! You too? I’m normal? I thought it was just me!” Once we start to see the big picture, we are better able to reality-check our shame triggers and the social-community expectations that fuel shame.
The need to be validated as worthy and to belong seems to be at the core of women's experiences with shame. What is the central theme among the women in the study and what can we learn from this?
The constant struggle to feel accepted and worthy is unrelenting. We put so much of our time and energy into making sure that we meet everyone’s expectations and into caring about what other people think of us, that we are often left feeling angry, resentful and fearful. Sometimes we turn these emotions inward and convince ourselves that we are bad and that maybe we deserve the rejection that we so desperately fear. Other times we lash out—we scream at our partners and children for no apparent reason, or we make a cutting comment to a friend or colleague. Either way, in the end, we are left feeling exhausted, overwhelmed and alone.
We spend an extraordinary amount of time and energy tackling the surface issues, which rarely results in meaningful, lasting change. When we dig past the surface, we find that shame is often what drives us to hate our bodies, fear rejection, stop taking risks or hide the experiences and parts of our lives that we fear others might judge.
Until we start addressing the role shame plays, we may temporarily fix some of the surface problems, but we can’t silence the old tape in our head that suddenly blares some version of “something is wrong with me.” Shame forces us to put so much value on what other people think that we lose ourselves in the process of trying to meet everyone else’s expectations.
If we are willing to explore this topic and share our stories then we are capable of turning the pain caused by shame into courage, compassion and connection. I believe that we are all capable of developing resilience to shame. Equally important, we are all capable of helping others do the same.
In the book you give examples of your own struggles with being an overwhelmed mom and feeling ashamed because you can't do it all, I'm sure a lot of women identified and recognized that they're not alone. Sharing stories seems the most effective way of recognizing and coming to terms with one's shame?
Absolutely. Shame can’t survive when we tell our stories. There are certainly real differences that separate us all in many ways, but in the end, we are more alike than we are different. We all need to feel valued, accepted and affirmed. When we feel worthless, rejected and unworthy of belonging, we feel shame. One of the most important benefits of reaching out to others is learning that the experiences that make us feel the most alone are actually universal experiences. When we find the courage to share our experiences and the compassion to hear others tell their stories, we force shame out of hiding and end the silence.
You give steps on recognizing and overcoming shame. Can you briefly explain how a woman becomes "shame resilient"?
We can never become completely resistant to shame; however, we can develop the resilience we need to recognize shame, move through it constructively and grow from our experiences. Across the interviews, women and men with high levels of shame resilience shared four things in common. I refer to these factors as the four elements of shame resilience: 1) recognizing shame and our triggers; 2) practicing critical awareness; 3) reaching out; and 4) speaking shame. Shame resilience helps us move through the by-products of shame—fear, blame and disconnection—and move toward the courage, compassion and connection we need to live our best, authentic lives. These four elements of resilience are the heart of my book.
What is the one word that women need to become empowered and what one word should we banish from our vocabulary?
Ironically, I think the word we need to become empowered is shame. We need to speak shame! When we speak shame, we learn to speak our pain. As I wrote earlier, we are wired for connection, and this makes us wired for story. More than any other method, storytelling is how we communicate who we are, how we feel, what’s important to us and what we need from others. As far as the one word that I think we should banish . . . PERFECT.
Who will benefit from reading "I Thought It Was Just Me"?
I think women who are ready for this conversation will truly benefit from learning that our stories of imperfection are the stories that connect us to each other and to our humanity. We are all in this together!
About The Author
Brené Brown, Ph.D., L.M.S.W., is an educator, writer, and nationally renowned lecturer, as well as a member of the research faculty at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, where she recently completed a six-year study of shame and its impact on women. She lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband and two children.
For more information, please visit www.brenebrown.com.
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