In the modern world, it seems that we can live outside the group, that there is no external danger. However, our brains are millions of years old, we can convince ourselves as much as we like, but there is a clear connection in our subconscious: belonging to a group is life, exclusion is death. So shame is a social emotion that is always associated with comparing yourself and other people.
We call the sense of affiliation in ordinary life love. When we love someone, he is very close, valuable, exceptional to us, we want to devote time to him, our attention is always directed to the object of love, we want to take care of him, we are ready to sacrifice for him. Being loved is a successful strategy for life. We need to have the same attitude to ourselves in order to take care of ourselves, in order to give ourselves priority over others, in order to be happy.
Self-love is a criterion of belonging to the family
If you accept yourself, take care of yourself, pay attention to yourself, like yourself this means that you accept your ancestors, you are a part of them, because everything that is in you has come from them. When we love ourselves, we know that we are a part of something larger, ourselves among ourselves. When we do not love ourselves, do not recognize our strong qualities, our resources, and consider ourselves insufficiently attractive, it means that we exclude ourselves from our system and look for another group, we want to be liked to this group in order to feel belonging.
If a person is often met with excessive shame, this situation means that he does not feel his belonging, does not accept some of his qualities, constantly compares himself with others and loses in this comparison. There is a good cartoon from our childhood The Ugly Duckling, about how a little swan suddenly, being in a birds yard, tried to attach itself to hens, then to ducks, to geese and nowhere felt like his own. Shame, melancholy, loneliness filled his life, danger waited for him around every corner. His life changed radically when he found his own group of swans and flew with them to distant lands. So we, having claims to our parents and family, are looking for a better place among other people, but there is no better place like your family for you. When you understand this, you begin to appreciate, a lot of strength and energy appear, and suddenly you become attractive to the whole outside world.
Ironically, the mission of shame
is to take care of love
A little later we will talk about tenderness, as a criterion of belonging and communication, and shame is a criterion of disconnection. Shame reports that now you do not fit in the environment you want to fit in, now you feel that you do not meet the expectations of those observers with whom you would like to be together as one.
Thus, shame takes care of love, of communication, of belonging. The law of belonging is very important in systems. We want to receive a message from the society in which we live: You are as you should be. You are ours. You are like us. You are with us. If we receive this message, we feel safe, we feel accepted (we receive love), so we experience a lot of positive emotions.
But if we do not receive such a message from society, we immediately have an inner feeling that we are doing something wrong. You feel that you are a little bit different in order to fit into your important environment. It is shame that gives us such a clue.
Of course, someone can say that shame appears without people. But in fact, if you are ashamed, and there is nobody around, it means that inside your head are observers, witnesses, they are looking at you. Perhaps, the ideal you look at the imperfect you, if there is a certain image inside that you would like to match. Perhaps, you look at yourself with the eyes of your parents, with their expectations and hopes, which you would like to meet and be good, to receive love.
That is why we say that shame is a social emotion, and it is worth looking for the eyes of observers, even if it is obvious that there arent any witnesses around you. If there is shame, the eyes of the observers are always there.
Shame is an emotion that is generally not discussed about at all. People talk about their fears, show their anger, joy, sadness, but about shame everything is as quite as a lamb. We are usually silent about things that are associated with shame, we hide them, so that no one knows as much as possible. And if there are witnesses (those who know), then they must somehow be bribed or destroyed, or hidden from their eyes. As soon as witnesses disappear, shame will diminish. Because shame is a social emotion, a person who is ashamed always wants to hide his eyes, and he always feels the eyes of strangers.
Shame helps to tell us what is not worth doing, what qualities are not worth cultivating. If you cultivate qualities that are not accepted in society, it will push you away. This often happens in the first grades of the school, when children still do not have the ability to hide their feelings, they can sometimes be cruel, too forthright. At some time, society begins to give feedback about your unacceptable behavior, for example, when a child lags behind at school in comparison with other pupils, they do not want to be friends with him, even to sit down at one desk. As a result of it, important people will be further from a child, the distance between them will increase. Lets see how it works.
Shame is formed in childhood. In the kindergarten, children first begin to be interested in their genitals, in their characteristics, and differences. Then interest arises towards each other, a self-demonstration arises: Now, look, I have something that you dont have. But then comes the period of strong, bright, exaggerated constraint, when the children begin to hide from other children. When a girl, for example, gets dressed in three blouses, she needs to take off the top, and she is shy and hides behind a locker, goes to the toilet or somewhere else. In other words excessive shyness appears. For some time, the child did not know what shame was and could swim or walk naked and didnt even think about it. But at some point the question of shyness, excessive shame, sharply arises. If you notice this behavior in your child, be calm, it is very good. This suggests that the child begins to enter the age when social instincts appear, there is a desire to fit into meaningful communities, groups and not to do what is not accepted in these groups.
For instance, there is an idea to put a carton box on a head and go to school looking like that. But you cant do that. You know for sure what will be told: you are a stupid, narrow-minded person. You are not fitted in the group.
There are societies in which there are special norms of social behavior. Aborigines can walk only in beads on any island and this is normal for them, they are not shy. They are shy about something else, for example, going out without beads.
In situations where you do not fit in, shame comes first. Of course, then fear arises, the fear of punishment and consequences.
Shame helps us not to forget to put on a skirt or pants when you go to work, to zip up your trousers when you leave the toilet. We dont even think about these things, because we are uncomfortable when some very personal things come out and become obvious to others.
In the same way, we estimate our skills, knowledge and character traits. We are ashamed to not know anything, we are ashamed to demonstrate qualities of character that are socially unacceptable. No matter how we want to be individuals, to be different from others, we experience a huge, sometimes unconscious desire to belong to a significant group, society as a whole, in order to receive love and protection.
Shame helps us not to forget to put on a skirt or pants when you go to work, to zip up your trousers when you leave the toilet. We dont even think about these things, because we are uncomfortable when some very personal things come out and become obvious to others.
In the same way, we estimate our skills, knowledge and character traits. We are ashamed to not know anything, we are ashamed to demonstrate qualities of character that are socially unacceptable. No matter how we want to be individuals, to be different from others, we experience a huge, sometimes unconscious desire to belong to a significant group, society as a whole, in order to receive love and protection.
Of course, if there was only shame in us, it would be difficult to cultivate individuality and go beyond certain norms. But other emotions and complex feelings: tenderness, desire, courage, determination will already be responsible for this.
Literally at the level of instincts, shame aims at observing important norms of behavior, cultivating certain qualities in ourselves, looking in a certain way in order to fit in, being a part of the group that is important to us. What is the main group? Of course, it is your family. When you do something that your loved ones do not accept, it becomes a big problem right up to the desire to exclude you from the family system. For example, to go to another country and not communicate at all, as if you dont know each other. In such cases, the family tells: You are not ours. You are not like us. You are a stranger now and such messages may be heard You are not our son now, you are not my father and so on. Of course, no one can be expelled from the family; this can only be done at the level of consciousness, thoughts. At the level of the patrimonial system, we cannot exclude anyone, we can only think that we have done it.
We can say that shame is a social fear, because at the hormonal level, adrenaline is also produced when shame appears. Its very difficult for people with a basic need for security to distinguish their shame from their fear. When such a person experiences shame, fear is immediately connected, and because they have the same hormonal expression, the body processes a more familiar emotion fear. Thus, shame is disguised as fear.
Shame cannot be ignored; it is a very vivid emotion. How does shame arise in our bodies?
Shame. How does it Show up in the body?
Body. The head goes down and to the side (most often to the left). The look goes down after the head and a person looks at the left heel, as if he wants to look away as much as possible, but his legs are standing still. The body twists, as if it wants to run away and hide. The shoulders are twisted as far as possible, the chest is pressed inward as much as possible. As if a person wants to shrink to occupy a minimum amount of space. All gestures are very close to the body, hugging themselves. Hands often cover his face, he wants to hide his eyes with his hands. Sometimes we can rub our nose or scratch an eyebrow to be able to hide behind our hand. The knees and legs are soft. As we have said, a persons cheeks turn red, this reaction almost always appears.
Hormones. At the hormonal level, adrenaline is also produced when shame appears. Under the action of adrenaline, blood rushes to the head so that a person can quickly make a decision. Under adrenaline, our face gets red in shame.
Body language. When the intensity of shame is not still high (shyness), the first thing that appears on the face is a stupid smile and the person begins to giggle. He lowers his head down and giggles. When the intensity of shame grows, the lips tighten and the person begins to prim them.
Breathing. A person holds his breath when he exhales. When exhaling, he physically becomes smaller, so he wants to exhale and hold his breath.
Look. The look goes inside, although it is physically visible that a person is looking at the floor. As shame is a social emotion, from time to time a person looks at witnesses: How are they? Are they still there? Do they still hate me? Did they somehow change their attitude towards me? Are they gone? It means that a glance from time to time furtively looks at the observers.
Inner sensations. The inner feelings of shame are very bright. A person feels one point the solar plexus (the upper abdomen part between the ribs, where they begin to diverge). There is a very strong burning sensation in it, it burns there.
Direction. There is no direction either forward or backward, neither upward nor downward, the body wants to roll in place, as if a person wants to run away from himself, but you cant run away from yourself. Like a dog who wants to catch its tail and runs in a circle. And while a person is so running, inside he feels a collapse, he wants to shrink to the point of the solar plexus and disappear go bright red with shame.
Speech. At the moment of shame, blood rushes to the head, and then goes to the legs. So a person, as in fear, becomes speechless, his speech becomes tongue-tied, speech defects and stuttering appear, a person cannot formulate what he wants to say.
Shame. Processing
Shame is felt only in the moment. If the situation has passed, and you feel shame, it means that you reshape the situation inside yourself in secondary emotions. For example, you were at the school board and said some nonsense, the whole class laughed at you, the teacher looked down on you, you wanted to melt into the ground, run out of the classroom, forget about everything. When you were at the blackboard, you burned with shame, but when you came home, you no longer felt shame. If you remember a story and again burn with shame, it happens already in secondary feelings. Most often, the repeated shame that occurs in the memories, and not here and now, will be much higher in intensity than it was in the moment, because you wind it up. In the moment, we always live primary emotions (shame in this example), and at home, outside the situation, we process secondary feelings based on our beliefs, and it will be a completely different story.
Shame is actually an aversion to oneself; you dont like yourself. You say to yourself: You are not worthy expressing yourself, to be as you are, you must be some other. This is the key issue. You can feel shame, as an emotion born in the moment in the current situation this is a completely normal situation. But if you feel shame at the level of feeling that often haunts you in life, if it hurts you at the level of your inner convictions, it means that you have a problem, there is no love for yourself, you feel disgust with yourself.
When we see an object outside, towards which we are disgusted, we want to move away as far as possible, distance ourselves from it. How does this mechanism work with shame?
If you want to belong to a significant group (i.e., to reduce the distance as much as possible), you yourself move away from it because you feel shame and disgust with yourself. You do not push others aside You are not worthy, but push yourself aside I am not worthy. It means that you distance from society on the basis of your inner beliefs that something is wrong with you. And that can be a big problem. A person in need of love, with a basic need for acceptance and attention, distance himself and does not allow other people as he is afraid of feeling shame.
If there is no reason for shame in adequate reality (you are smart, well-read, you look decent and everything is fine with you), and you are too shy, afraid to show the products of your creativity to the world, you cannot convey your thought because of shyness, there is a high probability that you do not love, do not accept yourself, do not consider yourself worthy to belong to the group with which you are currently interacting.