Shame
Shame is the feeling that you yourself are bad, wrong or not good enough, beyond having done something wrong. It usually comes with an urge to hide, shrink or disappear, and it lands on who you are rather than on what happened.
- On the wheel: Ashamed, a core feeling
- Feelings inside it: Embarrassed, guilty, inadequate
- Nearby: Exposed, humiliated, insecure
- Often points to: A judgment about who you are, not what you did
Eyes down, then the words
The body can go first: a hot face, eyes on the floor, a wish to be anywhere else. Then the words arrive, and every one of them is about you. "I'm such an idiot." "Of course I ruined it." "Everyone can see what I am."
"I forgot my friend's birthday. I didn't text her for a week afterward because every time I picked up my phone I felt like a terrible person."
Look at what happened there. The mistake was small and fixable, and shame made it harder to fix, because fixing it meant facing her.
Three self-conscious emotions, three different pulls
Researchers group shame, guilt and embarrassment together as the self-conscious emotions.1 They overlap. What they point at, and what they push you to do next, differs.
| Feeling | Focus | Sounds like | Pulls you to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shame | The whole self | "I am bad." | Hide or withdraw |
| Guilt | One action | "I did a bad thing." | Repair or apologize |
| Embarrassment | A slip in front of others | "That was awkward." | Laugh it off, smooth it over |
- Focus:
- The whole self
- Sounds like:
- "I am bad."
- Pulls you to:
- Hide or withdraw
- Focus:
- One action
- Sounds like:
- "I did a bad thing."
- Pulls you to:
- Repair or apologize
- Focus:
- A slip in front of others
- Sounds like:
- "That was awkward."
- Pulls you to:
- Laugh it off, smooth it over
In the research, guilt about a specific act leans toward making amends, while shame about the self leans toward hiding, denial or blaming others.1
"I lied" is guilt; "I'm a liar" is shame, and the first one points to a next step. More on each at guilt and embarrassed.
Whose rule did you break?
Shame can flag a broken rule about who you should be. Sometimes the rule is fair. Plenty of the time it's an old one handed down by someone else: a parent, a school, a culture.
Shame and harsh self-criticism turn up across many kinds of distress. Paul Gilbert built compassion-focused therapy for people high in both, on the idea that their threat system runs the show while the calming, cared-for system is hard to reach.2
Coming out from hiding
- Separate the act from the self. Rewrite "I'm a terrible friend" as "I forgot her birthday." The second one has a next step.
- Talk to yourself the way you would to a friend. People guided to treat a recent wrongdoing with self-compassion felt more motivated to make amends and not repeat it than people given a self-esteem boost, across a set of experiments.3
- Tell one safe person. Hiding is what shame asks for, and saying it out loud to someone who won't judge lets you check your story against another view.
- Bring a constant shame to a therapist. Approaches like compassion-focused therapy were built for it.2
If a friend told you they felt this way about what happened, what would you say to them? Now write it to yourself.
Answer this with JoyQuestions people ask about shame
Is it better to feel shame or guilt?
Neither is pleasant. Research has found guilt the more useful of the two, because it points to an action you can repair.1 Shame is about the whole self, which leaves you nowhere to go.
Why does shame make me want to hide?
Hiding is the action shame pushes toward.1 The cost is that hiding also keeps you away from the repair and the support that would help.
Related
- Guilt: feeling bad about one thing you did.
- Embarrassed: the lighter, social cousin.
- Inadequate: feeling you don't measure up.