Shame

by Steve Andreas
There are basically three ways that cultures maintain and enforce their group values.
One is overt coercion, the threat or use of physical force, incarceration, punishment, or
death to limit those who might transgress the values of a group of people. Knowledge of
the rules, and the resulting punishment, keep people behaving in accordance with the
groups values. The other two kinds of coercion are a bit less direct.
Another way is to teach the group values to members so thoroughly that the person
feels guilt when they transgress their own values. Someone can feel guilty about
something they did, even if no one else knows about it, because the cultures values are
internalized, a part of themselves. Many churches, and some societies use guilt as a
primary method of social control.
Yet another way is shame, suffering the public disapproval of others when someone
transgresses cultural values. Shame is often called the secret emotion, because most
people who are ashamed are also ashamed of feeling ashamed, so they seldom discuss it
with others, or bring it up as a problem to be solved. In cultures in which shame is the
principal method of social control, the ultimate punishment is to be separated and
banished from the group. In the past, in most tribal cultures, this was usually equivalent
to death, since other neighboring tribes were unlikely to accept someone who was
banished, and survival alone was extremely difficult or impossible.
Many people do not understand this crucial difference between guilt and shame.
Shame is an experience of not meeting the values of other people, whereas guilt is an
experience of not meeting your own values. Guilt may be private or public, but shame is
always public. Knowing this essential distinction indicates how we need to work with
guilt and shame in somewhat different ways, and we first wrote about this in 1989.
(Heart of the Mind, Chapter 14) )
There is another useful distinction between shame about a behavior, and shame about
the self. Shame about a behavior is less harmful, because the person can usually decide to
change the behavior to conform to the groups values. Shame about the entire person is
much more difficult, because how can a person change who they are? You should be
ashamed of what you did, can be remedied, but You should be ashamed of yourself is
a trap that has only one escape--to comment on the language trap that the shamer has

created for them both. However, most people who are shamed by others are not likely to
be experts in communication, so this escape is not available to them.