Sources Of Shame

Sources of Shame Our susceptibility to shame is directly related to the fact that we are vulnerable human beings with a wide range of needs and are dependent on other human beings. When our needs are acknowledged and honoured, we feel worthy and effective; when they are ignored or dishonoured, we feel powerless and ashamed. Theories of shame suggest that our propensity to feel shame, our shameproneness, is developed early in life from a complex mixture of personal and social conditions. How prone we are to shame throughout our lives is largely determined by the intertwining of each of our unique temperaments at birth and the shaming experiences we endure during our formative years. What follows is an overview of common factors that give rise to shame: Childhood Deprivation: Child psychologists have long known that early life conditions have lasting effects on a child’s emotional and physical health. Young children are not only totally dependent on their parents for all their needs, but also highly sensitive to the feeling quality of the care they receive. It is not enough to take care of their physical needs; they must also experience unconditional love in order to develop into emotionally mature adults. What do we mean by unconditional love? Unconditional love is shown in the way a parent holds, touches, and soothes an infant; it is shown in the loving gaze in the parent’s eyes that acts as a mirror reflecting back that the child is precious and worthy; and it is shown in consistent care and attention that the infant can count on. Since infants and young children cannot communicate verbally, parents must figure out what they need and provide it. Parents who are well-attuned and emotionally bonded to a child learn how to detect what is needed and make the appropriate response. Eye contact, facial expression, holding, and verbal soothing are important aspects of unconditional love. When children are deprived of consistent and attentive care, they feel abandoned and become ashamed of having needs. Parents do not intend to deprive or neglect their children. They are imperfect human beings who do the best they can with the resources they have. Psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott pointed the term “good enough mother” to dispel the notion that parents must be perfect in order to raise healthy children. Rather, there is a continuum between adequate (good enough) parenting and inadequate (traumatic) parenting. Children can tolerate a certain amount of need frustration and still feel nurtured and loved, When the scale tips in the negative direction, deep feelings of shame and unworthiness

can overshadow a child’s self-identity, causing a life-long proneness to shame. Emotional deprivation in childhood can result from a variety of factors. Parents who were themselves emotionally wounded may be unable to give what they did not get. Depression and other serious illnesses can make the demands of parenthood overwhelming. Financial worries, the death of one’s spouse, persistent marital strain, or divorce can divert parental attention from the child. Parents can also be incapacitated by alcohol or drug addiction or by fatigue from overwork. Any of these conditions can overshadow one’s childhood., creating an environment that is focused on the needs of the parents rather than the needs of the child. No matter what the cause, when children are deprived of what they need, they blame themselves for being unworthy of their parents’ attention and love. Not measuring up to parental expectations: When parents’ expectations are age-appropriate and based on the child’s own unique capabilities, children can feel successful and proud of their accomplishments because their parents are proud of them. But sometimes parents have unrealistic expectations that a child be like someone else — a sibling, perhaps, or a neighbour’s child — and when the child fails to measure up to these expectations, they can feel ashamed. Parental expectations are couched in such statements as “You should be more like your brother — he always got A’s”, “Why can’t you behave the way that Mary does — her mother never has to tell her how to act?”; and “Other boys your age like to play football, why don’t you?” Messages like these make a child feel inadequate. Parental Over Control: Appropriate parental control involves setting ageappropriate rules and enforcing them with consistency. The younger the children, the more limits are necessary to protect them from harm. Excessive parental control, however, involves manipulating a child’s emotions and independence to satisfy some need of the parent. Some overly controlling parents are perfectionists who want to micro-manage their children’s lives. Some are authoritarians, who believe that it is their role to dictate and the child’s role to obey. Others need to keep their children dependent on them, so that they feel important and needed,. Whatever the underlying motivation, overly controlling parents foster shame in their children by making them feel weak, incapable, needy, and dependent. Children of overly controlling parents tend to grow up with feelings of anxiety, incompetency, and worthlessness.

Sibling Favouritism and Sibling Rivalry: Children have a built-in radar that picks up signals that parents are playing favourites. Favouritism, whether imagined or real, causes shame because it makes a child feel unloved and inadequate. The two most important ways parents can show their love are through the attention and affirmation they provide. Ideally, parents love their children equally, but in reality, parents often feel more naturally connected to one child over another, based on such things as personality preferences and shared interests. Parental preference may also be the result of gender (favouring the same-sex or opposite-sex child), birth order, or how easy or difficult a child’s temperament may be. Sometimes, parents feel the need to give more time and attention to a child with special needs. A parent’s preferential treatment, real or imagined, can create jealousy, comparisons, and sibling rivalry. In addition, the natural differences between siblings can engender shame. How easy it is to feel “less than” when growing up with siblings who differ from oneself in natural endowments and gifts, and with parents who try to love all of their children equally while, at the same time, being sensitive to individual differences and needs. Shame is pervasive in our culture, but is frequently unrecognised, misunderstood, and misinterpreted. Furthermore, shame is considered to be the “master emotion,” because it regulates our expression, even our recognition, of all other emotions, including shame itself. If, for example, we feel ashamed of emotions like anger, hurt, fear, or love, we are not likely to express them. If hurt feelings are shameful, but anger is acceptable, we tend to substitute anger when feeling hurt, If all emotions are shameful, they all will be almost completely repressed. Shame also plays a central role in conscience development and social morality and is used by society to enforce acceptable behaviour. As the master emotion, shame hovers over all our social interactions so that much of our life experience is coloured by shame — anticipating it, experiencing it, and managing it. In the work of therapist and spiritual directors, they have come to believe that shame is at the heart of most emotional and spiritual struggles. If shame is the real culprit underlying much of human suffering — which we think it is — then it is important that we discover how shame affects our lives, keeping us from realising our full potential and inhibiting our relationships with others, including God. Shame — the feeling that we are unworthy — seeps into everyone’s life. All of us have feelings of inadequacy and secretly fear that there is something wrong with us, that we are not smart enough , not successful enough, not rich enough, not interesting enough, not good-looking enough, not good enough

to be loved for who we are. Our goal is to help people free themselves from shame by embracing their true identities as God’s beloved, The healing and transformation of shame begin when we come to see ourselves through the lens of God’s unconditional love rather than through the lens of shame. “Look to [God], and be radiant”, encourages the psalmist, “so your faces shall never be ashamed” (Ps 34:5). We need to reflect on our images of God. Do you see God gazing at you with love? Or is your image of God such that you expect to see a shaming God, whose look is one of disappointment or disapproval? Perhaps you think that God is indifferent to you and ignores you. We also note that people often have two very different images of God: one that they verbally profess , and a second one that operates unconsciously and determines their feelings about God. The professed image is the one we were taught, for example, God is good, kind, and loving; the operative image is formed by our early relationships with God-figures in our lives, usually our parent and close relatives. It is important to become conscious of the images of God that are operative in our lives, because these images powerfully affect our sense of self and our relationship to God. How can we take in God’s gaze in such a way that our faces do not blush with shame? The image of God we present shows a God who loves us unconditionally and desires that we be healed of crippling emotions such as shame. Using biblical stories, such as the bent-over woman in Luke’s Gospel (13:10-13) and Woman caught in adultery in John’s Gospel (8:3-11), shows how God’s compassionate love flowed through the person of Jesus into the lives of people burdened with shame. Scripture provides more than enough evidence that Jesus’ mission was to be the healing presence of God to everyone, particularly those who were outcasts, or feeling rejected, etc. What was true for people of Jesus’ time is still true today. God’s compassionate love is ours to relish if we but open ourselves to experience it. Joy and healing come, as the psalmist proclaims, when we can take in God’s loving gaze and realise that we are good and worthy of love just as we are. (taken from “God’s Unconditional Love - Healing Our Shame, by Wilkie Au and Noreen Cannon Au)