Shame is an Inner Wasp
By Richard Bartz, Munich aka Makro Freak - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2576477
I opened my computer this morning to compile my November newsletter and realized that my October edition was still in drafts. After all the hard work of putting it together, I failed to send it out to my subscribers.
Ugh. Marketing genius I am not.
My first response? To get really mad at myself. That critical voice I’ve worked so hard to soften came back with a vengeance: how could you be so stupid? How could you have missed that? What is wrong with you?
I feel it now, a churning in the belly, a tightness in the chest.
Sigh. How quickly “I screwed up” wants to go to “I am a screw up”. How swiftly this decade-long practice of self-compassion goes out the window when I’m not being vigilant.
Guilt Versus Shame
Brene Brown explained it best in her iconic TedTalk on shame:
“Shame is a focus on self, guilt is a focus on behavior. Shame is “I am bad.” Guilt is “I did something bad.”
Too many of us focus on self when we screw up as opposed to our behaviour. While guilt allows for corrective action (e.g., I screwed up, how can I do better next time?), shame is a one-way ticket down a dark and cruel abyss of self-admonishment and loathing.
I try to consciously choose door number one, these days, though the habit of plunging into door number two like Alice after the white rabbit is hard to break.
Why is that? Why does shame exist? Why do so many of us insist on behaving like Cinderella’s evil stepmother to ourselves?
Shame: What is it Good for?
Shame is a terrible feeling that’s arguably at the root of all that sucks in this world: would we have wars, domestic violence, drug addiction, etc. if it weren’t for Shame? But like wasps whose vital role is to keep other insect populations small by being total dicks and eating them all, Shame also has a purpose, though severely misguided: to keep us small in the face of the terrifying uncertainty of existence.
And small, according to Shame, is safe.
Shame is our inner wasp.
Because, let’s face it—living, truly living— is terrifying. It means you might fail. You might find out that you’re not the person you thought you were. That you were not as smart, or funny, or good-looking or loved the way you thought you were, the way you deserved to be, the way you so longed for. It means that you might get your heart handed back to you on a platter with a side of betrayal and derision. Your loved ones will die. Your children will leave. You may get fired or fall for an investment scam and lose all your savings. Or you may do everything right—eat well, exercise, do everything in moderation, give to charity, volunteer at the food bank and still get cancer or have a heart attack.
Life is scary and unpredictable. Shame believes that if we keep ourselves small, if we don’t expect too much, if we put ourselves down enough and start to believe we don’t deserve anything good, we won’t be so disappointed or heart broken when life hands us a whole sack of rotten lemons and a shit sandwich. It is so much easier to tell ourselves that we are not good at relationships, or school, or art (even though we long to be good at it) than actually try and fail. We choose the certainty of despair over the terrifying uncertainty of life.
Shame seeks to protect us from this uncertainty by limiting our engagement with the world and—most importantly—engagement with the fluid complexity of our Selves. Some of us have lived so long with this strategy, that we’ve begun to identify as Shame: we really believe that living in the hard, certain shell of our own awfulness is better than having to confront the uncertainty from without but also from within. Because like most things in this universe, we are ever-changing, ever-moving and multi-faceted. We have the capacity to take the joy and the suffering and everything in between and weave it into a meaningful narrative. In the words of John O’Donohue:
“The way you see things makes them what they are…When your thinking is locked in false certainty or negativity, it puts so many interesting and vital areas of life out of your reach. You live impoverished and hungry in the midst of your own abundance.” Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong, pp.118, 120.
The Long Journey from Shame to Guilt
False certainty. False negativity. Please pay attention to these words because the bars of our internal prison are welded out of these limiting beliefs about ourselves. We have imprisoned those vital parts of us that contain our hope, our joy, our awkwardness because somewhere along the way they were perceived as unacceptable.
For many of us, Shame is a strategy we learned in childhood. It may have been modelled inadvertently (or, unfortunately, sometimes advertently) by our parents, teachers, coaches, even peers. With questions like “what’s wrong with you?” or “how could you be so stupid?” Or maybe you were bullied or shunned on the playground, a devastating and confusing experience. The point is, you came by it honestly—it was imposed on you. The people around you told you to make yourself small because the whole of you was unacceptable.
While the fact that you have internalized this shame is absolutely not your fault, it is, alas, still your responsibility. Because you are responsible for you. You get to choose what you carry forward in this life, and what you decide to return to sender. You have had the keys to your own prison all this time — all you have to do is make the monumental decision to unlock the door.
Check-in
How has shame protected you in the past?
Where did that part of you that shames learn this strategy? Whose voice do you hear when you are being harsh with yourself?
What parts of you has Shame kept locked away, too scared to let them out?
What are you afraid may happen if you free these parts of yourself?
Replacing the Armour of Shame with Self-Compassion
Even then, stepping out of that prison is going to take some time and some practice. It will also take a whole lot of courage: shame is an armour and when we first take it off it will feel very naked and vulnerable. We will feel exposed and that may feel unbearable at first. That is where self-compassion comes in.
1. Mindfulness (what is happening right now): I feel inadequate and insignificant.
2. Common humanity (how do I understand what is happening as part of the human condition and not me, the lone, isolated idiot): I am not the only one who sometimes feel inadequate and insignificant. I am not alone in being afraid that I’m not good enough.
3. Self-kindness (how can I be a good a parent to myself?): May I give myself some grace so that I can use the energy I’d normally expend on beating myself up in more productive and creative ways.
Here’s the thing about change—it is very, very hard. It will always be a practice, not perfection. But in the words of lovely Viktor Frankl:
“When we are no longer able to change a situation—we are challenged to change ourselves.”
There is much out of our control in this world. From natural disasters to how our spouse leaves their dirty socks on every piece of furniture in the house. However, what is in our control is so rarely acknowledged and proportionately vast: we get to choose how much joy, and love and beauty we allow ourselves to feel. We can choose how much we learn from the inevitable suffering that accompanies this human experience. We can choose to nurture our inner life with self-compassion and accountability instead of life-sucking harshness and vitriol. Though the world is uncertain, we can grow our certainty in our own ability to respond to ourselves with compassion.
I don’t know about you, but that feels immensely empowering.
In this much maligned yet necessary month of November(just like wasps and shame, November weather is an important part of our ecosystem), may you treat yourself with grace.
If you stumble and fall, take a breath. Give yourself a hug. Pick yourself up.
Then take one tiny, compassionate step and another out of the prison of your shame and into a larger, brighter, more variegated world.
