Question 1

Since I start to work more with emdr I came to notice how much early abuse and shame are related and with self sabotage keep the client almost imprissoned. How can we educate our clients about this?

Mary Lamia · Accepted Answer

Some caregivers use shame and attack as their primary methods of socializing their children. The children learn to put themselves down to help blunt their caregiver’s attacks. Victims of childhood abuse, whose shame-induced feelings of helplessness from others controlling their minds and bodies, are further reduced by assuming the position that it is all their fault. The behaviors indicative of attack self responses to shame include self-recrimination, sexual masochism, self-mutilation as in cutting, burning and other reckless behaviors, and, the most extreme form, suicide. In so many situations where psychopathology involves shame, I have found that simply acknowledging the emotion, and then educating patients regarding the coping responses to the emotion, is illuminating and life-changing.

Question 2

In my practice, shame seems to drive so many destructive behaviors like substance abuse and self harm.  How would you use the upside of shame to intervene in those cases?

Mary Lamia · Accepted Answer

Shame reduction may be the most common motivator of addictive behaviors. Whether the addiction has to do with alcohol, substances, food, hyper-sexuality, or the conspicuous consumption of goods, shame avoidance is likely at its core. Avoidance as a defensive and coping response to shame involves behaviors that hide ones own feelings from oneself. Avoidance responses relieve shame, fear, and distress. Many therapists view the avoidance maneuvers of their patients as simply being a maladaptive component of their personality. The upside of shame in dealing with addiction and knowing that shame is both the initial motivation for the addiction and the result of it is that it permits the therapist much more room for empathy and eventual reduction of the shame.The voluntary exposure of shame-based vulnerabilities is one of the most effective methods of reducing its negative impact. The success of 12-step programs involves an important upside to shame: individuals are able to expose their experiences of shame and, as a result, receive acceptance and support from the community. All addictive behaviors create a difficult-to-break cycle of shame that creates further shame unless explored in a way that allows learning to take place. Self-harming behaviors may involve avoidance, but they are primarily associated with attack-self coping responses to shame. Attack-self responses involve hurting oneself in a psychologically or physically self-injurious way, such as in cutting or suicide.

Question 3

What is the function of shame from an evolutionary perspective?

Mary Lamia · Accepted Answer

Humans are endowed with a central nervous system that affords information about their feelings. The innate affect shame is an integral component of this system. Shame is “wired” into the human brain as a program that reacts immediately when positive affects—things we are enjoying and want more of—are interfered with by something or someone. At the same time, shame affect also involves the sense that good feelings can possibly be restored. This function of shame provides critical relational information beyond the felt experience when, through cognition, shame becomes linked with a diminished sense of self. Given its disruption of good feelings, shame not only draws attention to a partial impediment to positive affect, but also to what impeded it in the first place. Thus, evolution produced an affect that felt bad enough to make us notice that there was interference with what had been feeling good. Hence, shame affect emerged with the sole purpose of informing us, by making us feel bad, that our happiness is at risk. Both in spite of and because of how bad shame feels it is nonetheless the affect that signals the need for and then motives the behaviors of reconnection and reconciliation. It is potentially a powerful motivator of change for the better.

Question 4

How is shame different from guilt?

Mary Lamia · Accepted Answer

Shame and guilt feel different emotionally, yet both involve situations where good feelings have turned bad. These emotions  arise when something we do or say interferes with our interest in being seen by ourselves and others as competent, morally sound, or intelligent. In general, the experience of  shame involves a more intense turning inward to focus on defects within the self, while the emotion guilt involves a focus on the harm we have caused others combined with fear of punishment for our deeds.

Question 5

What do people mean when they say toxic shame?

Mary Lamia · Accepted Answer

Shame feels toxic, in any form! Shame is part of the experience of jealousy, regret, and envy, among other situations that can seem unbearable. Shame feels toxic because when we experience it our whole self seems bad, defective, or inadequate. Evolution has given us an emotion that makes us pay close attention to whatever is going on that has interfered with our positive feelings, particularly in our relationships with others. .

Question 6

Why do so many people have shame around sex?

Mary Lamia · Accepted Answer

Even today, parents seem to have a difficult time with the sexual interests of their children. Children who are shamed regarding their sexual curiosities , or who experience shame for a variety of reasons including being victims of sexual abuse, seem to develop a heightened interest in sexuality that is linked with shame. The manifestations of shame around sex are varied. For example, the excitement of intimacy can be longed for and, at the same time, dreaded when it is linked with a shame experience.

Question 7

What is the opposite of shame?

Mary Lamia · Accepted Answer

Erroneously, we might consider pride to be the opposite of shame. The experience of pride (a combination of positive emotion and memories) arises with the thought that we have succeeded in some way.  Alongside shame and guilt, pride provides us with internal feedback about meeting or violating our expectations, goals, or standards. Although pride leads to good feelings about the self and shame results in feeling bad, they are opposite only in terms of valence. Shame is activated when there is a partial disruption or obstacle to continued interest or excitement; when someone or something interferes with good feelings we were having at a given moment. The emotion motivates us to retreat or hide since cognitively it is experienced as a sense of inadequacy, unworthiness, or as being inherently flawed. However, it also motivates us to restore a broken bond, lost connection, or good feeling. Thus, technically  interest or enjoyment would be the opposite of shame.

Question 8

Danny Kahneman concluded that shame leads to a state of tension, which leads to avoidance and no resolution of the problem. How does this fit with there being a positive element to shame?

Mary Lamia · Accepted Answer

Shame promotes learning and a desire to change the self. The positive side of shame is that when it is experienced there is always a motivation to restore a broken bond or resolve the impediment to what was previously interesting or enjoyable prior to experiencing the emotion. Some people may call it "hope." With shame, there is always  a lingering interest to resolve the problem.

Question 9

What are the positive aspects of shame? Can it motivate us to take action like other negative emotions?

Mary Lamia · Accepted Answer

Shame continually influences the way we care in our relationships. This is as true in our family, school, workplace and community relationships, as it is in our most intimate relationship with a significant other. When shame can be exposed in an atmosphere of safety, it’s primary upside—that it exists to inform and protect the self—can be recognized. The anticipation of a painful emotional state—as well as images of loss of self‑value that accompany the physiological sensations involved in shame—make shame anxiety a powerful motivational tool for humans. In essence, people are highly motivated throughout their lives to “save face.” The affect theorist, Donald Nathanson, noted that "Shame is a teacher, often drawing us within ourselves to think deeply about the self" (1992, p.211). The shame emotion motivates learning, growth, and a desire to change. Consider everyday examples where shame or shame based anxiety draws attention to characteristics or behaviors a person may want to change, such as losing weight, overcoming an addiction, or washing an accumulation of dirty dishes before guests arrive.

Question 10

Does you work explain why we generally don't like shameless people?

Mary Lamia · Accepted Answer

Indirectly, yes. One aspect of shame is that it maintains the social order. Imagine all the behaviors the typical person avoids doing because they know their actions would trigger some level of shame—from mild embarrassment to deep humiliation—in both the self and others. A disregard of shame can lead people to engage in “shameless acts.” Thus, experiencing shame and responding to the information it provides enables us to get along with others.

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