Not a crying shame …

Feelings of shame don’t always have to lead to tears.

I recently spoke to Dr Joseph Burgo about his new book ‘Shame’, which attempts to demonstrate that shame is not always the negative or toxic emotion we believe it to be and that there are different variants of shame, some which actually offer us an opportunity to grow and learn.

Shame, and our response to it, says Joe, is built into our biology, it is ‘an innate neural process’ that can be viewed on the muscles of our face and felt in our circulatory system. It manifests itself with the same physiological symptoms and reactions across cultures, most often with ‘gaze aversion, mental confusion, a longing to disappear and blushing.’

Shame has evolved. When humans lived in small groups it was necessary for the survival of the group to be a cohesive entity, because if someone wasn’t towing the line it could spell disaster for the group. Those that didn’t conform to the group’s rules were usually punished, either by withholding food or other essentials. This caused what we know as shame. To avoid this uncomfortable feeling, members of the group stepped into line and conformed to the group’s rules.

While the emotions of shame are felt in some way across cultures, what is shameful in one culture isn’t necessarily so in all. Joe uses the analogy of the computer to explain cultural differences in response to shame. While as humans we have the same emotional response, the same physiology – or ‘hardware’ – to shame, the ‘software’, or reaction to shame, varies among cultures and even in different eras. This concept is best explained by the song lyric ‘a glimpse of stocking was quite shocking!’ Like a lot of things, what was once shocking is no more. Similarly, some behaviour, whether in a different culture or time, no longer elicit feelings of shame.

Parents try to shield their children from the discomfort of shame, which is understandable, but sometimes a little discomfort caused by the experience of shame may in fact be a good thing. For instance, if a child gets a bad grade or fails an exam, a parent might say the teacher posed too difficult questions or were not fair in order to protect their child from bad feelings. Rather, Burgo suggests that it is preferable for parents to suggest the child might not have studied quite hard enough and to use this as an opportunity for them to grow in the future.

Burgo says shame is something that is inevitable and should be embraced for what it is, an opportunity to learn and move on.

‘Shame’ by Dr Joseph Burgo is out now published by Pan Macmillan