I have been grateful for the work of Dr. Brené Brown and personal experiences with emotional intelligence skills for my understanding of shame. I heard something on the topic recently that just did not sit right with me, and I could not find the words in the moment to express why. After reflecting on it, I felt it important enough to publish my thoughts here. First, the statement centers around the idea of "healthy shame"; I heard this explained in the context of society v. individual. Supposedly, the idea seems to be that shame is healthy when it is used to keep people from doing harmful things in public or social settings. We will come back to why I had an immediate sense of how wrong this is, but first I need to explain a few basics so the conclusion is clear.
My understanding is that the central difference between shame and guilt is the locus of responsibility or fault. This is often expressed as "Guilt is 'I did something wrong', and shame is 'I am something wrong'". Either I am separate from my choices or I am my choices; it is external or internal. This is an important distinction because actions can be changed more easily than selves. When I believe that I made an error in judgement and have learned that lesson, I want to change my behaviour to have better outcomes in future. My healthy self-image is not tied up with my choices, and I have a number of comparable paths to choose from. However, when I believe I made that choice because of who or how I am, it has a couple impacts. One is that the feeling of shame is reinforced, making it apparent that 'I always screw things up'. The other is that because it is who I am, I would have to be willing to change myself fundamentally to stop these mistakes in future. Furthermore, there is the learned helplessness of individuals with shame; nothing they have ever done was good enough, and no matter how hard they tried they could never change it-they likely will have given up hope that change is possible. To a person who is shame-filled, there are 'right' and 'wrong' choices, and every choice carries the weight of being the wrong one. This indicates that shame is intimately related to thinking in absolutes-often referred to as "black-or-white" and "either-or" thinking. Shame can come from a child hearing things like "you're such a screw up [no one else would do that]" instead of "oh, we all make mistakes-you'll do better next time." The former is being uniquely separate from 'normal people' and inherently a "screw up". The latter is being the same as everyone else and able to change. Incidentally, this is a good argument for using "people-centered" language, for example: "a person who has X" rather than "an X person". Now that these things are more clear, we can return to the original issue.
If shame is about the "who" someone is that they cannot change and locks them into "being" their choices, then how could that ever be "healthy"? Especially when the idea seems to be that this would change problematic social behaviours. I will suggest that the idea is more closely related to other 'feelings' that Dr. Brown has talked about: embarrassment and humiliation. These, again, can be divided into "internal/external" and "healthy/unhealthy", but also don't quite explain what is really expressed by the notion. For that, we would look to social constructs: pressure, norms, and mores (the last is said "more-AYs"). These are essentially the social controls which keep people "in line" and from acting outrageously in public. When people talk about "pro-social" and "anti-social" behaviours, they are based off the aforementioned social constructs. They are what we learn without being told and what we fear to breach lest we are ostracized. Finally, this is where we encounter what "healthy [social] shame" actually is: the threat or action of casting out a member perceived as non-conforming. I think this exposes the intolerance and impracticality of the idea, which I hope leads us to healthier methods of encouraging pro-social attitudes and actions.
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