On Shame
What Is Shame?
‘Shame is a feeling of embarrassment or humiliation that arises from the perception of having done something dishonourable, improper or immoral. When shame is chronic, it can involve the feeling that you are fundamentally flawed. People who experience shame usually try to hide the thing they feel ashamed of.’[1]
Different Types of Shame
In The Psychology of Shame, Arlin Cuncin speaks about the different types of shame. Chronic Shame is with you all of the time, and makes you feel that you are not good enough. Humiliation is the most intense form of shame and comes about when we are critically embarrassed about something. Shame about the Self is a feeling that you are an inferior person. This is chronic and can have long lasting effects. Defeat. We feel shame when we experience failure or defeat. Internalized Shame is shame that we turn inward and involves feeling unworthy. Lastly, Toxic Shame involves the belief that there is something inherently wrong with you.
‘Shame derives its power from being unspeakable. If we speak shame, it begins to wither. Just the way exposure to light was deadly for the gremlins, language and story bring light to shame and destroy it.’
Brené Brown; Daring Greatly; How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way we Live, Love, Parent and Lead.
My Shame
It’s a hard one to admit. For many years now, I have experienced a deep sense of shame about the way that I have been treated by the medical fraternity in the UK. I feel dismissed, humiliated and patronised – humoured, in fact. I also feel a sense of failure. Over this last decade, I have watched friends and peers raise kids, become top-shot barristers and wade through mortgages, whilst my forties have been lost, pleading with doctors.
My forties are a dead decade. There is little to show for them, aside from meeting a lot of Head and Neck Surgeons. I was excited about starting my forties and pursuing a vocation as a writer. My forties opened with me beginning a Master’s Degree in Writing. I was full of optimism about entering the new decade. In just one month, I turn fifty years old. I look back at the decade behind me, and feel enormous sadness about the time that I have lost, trying to get my facial pain diagnosed and treated. I could have built a school, a road, or written ten novels, with the energy that I have used trying to get the medical profession to listen to me.
Shame and Inferiority
‘Frequent experiences of shame may eventually crystallize into trait-like shame proneness. Trait shame, involves a particularly painful, and often incapacitating, negative feeling involving a sense of inferiority.’[2]
My feelings of humiliation are definitely intertwined with a feeling of inferiority. I struggle to understand why this has happened to me. I ask myself if this would have happened to friends, colleagues, or even well-known celebrities? Probably not. I think about mothers who have children. If this was a child of theirs, they would not have stood by, and watched their child live with debilitating pain for ten years. They would have walked over burning hot coals to get their child sorted. I feel that I have failed to self-advocate.
The fact that these consultants won’t give me the time of day, leaves me feeling like I have no worth. Each morning, when I wake up, the first thing that I feel is my left cheek burning. I feel a gnarly, heavy weight, that presses around my left eye. My temple throbs. The fullness and pressure in my ear, muffles my hearing, and the stern pain around the left side of my head dulls me. My body tells me that it is not well. Yet, I cannot get it the medical help that it needs. Therein lies my shame.
‘Shame can be problematic when it becomes internalized and results in an overly harsh evaluation of oneself as a whole person. The inner critic might tell you that you are a bad person or have no value. The truth is, how deeply you feel ashamed has little to do with your worth or what you have done wrong.’
Arlin Cuncic, The Psychology of Shame.
It’s Not About You
My intellect knows that what has happened to me is not personal. It is not to do with what I have done. What has been happening is endemic. The resistance that I have faced from medical professionals about my facial pain is out of my control. It is entrenched within the machinery of these large institutions. I cannot stop medical consultants influencing one another’s opinion of me. Nor can I influence the wheels of corruption that turn behind the four walls. I have been a victim of institutional bullying. One woman, alone, cannot stop fifteen NHS Trusts from behaving in this way.
On Comparison
My feelings of shame intensify when I compare myself to others. It sucks to suffer with a chronic illness in a social media era, where self-promotion and perfection prevails. Bring back the days of The Yellow Pages and curly wire phones. Comparison is the new blight on our culture. Instagram reels are full of picture-perfect lives, which I feel I am limping one hundred miles behind. It is impossible to airbrush being in constant pain.
The core of the humiliation that I feel is that I do not understand why have I been consistently mistreated by so many medical professionals. I blame myself. Is it my fault? Did I do something to elicit this response? No. Has the abuse that I suffered as a child created an open invitation for everyone to give me a beating? Maybe. Or is it an unforgiving system that does whatever it needs to do to protect itself, even at the expense of a patient’s quality of life? Most certainly, yes.
Shame Resilience Theory (SRT)
US Writer and Professor, Brené Brown has been researching shame for two decades. She says that we can move through shame towards empathy by building resilience. We can do this if we learn to develop; 1) Our capacity to recognize shame, 2) Maintain our authenticity and grow from our experiences and 3) Develop stronger, more meaningful connections with people in our lives. Through her research, Brown identified that those able to move through shame, all shared the following elements of shame resilience;
- Recognizing shame and understanding it’s triggers
- Practicing Critical Awareness
- Reaching Out
- Speaking Shame; Keeping quiet and keeping are shame secret are fanning the flame.
Healing From Shame
The Psychology of Shame, explains how shame can make you feel flawed. Shame leads to social withdrawal, to depression and sadness, and can cause other physical problems. Shame can cause lowered self-esteem, anxiety and loneliness, and it can make it harder to trust other people.
Empathy is a hostile environment for shame.
Brene Brown, 2021
Brené Brown speaks about the need to practice self-compassion and self-forgiveness in overcoming shame. Developing self-understanding and being kind to ourselves is a vital component in this healing journey. She speaks about the importance of not being too over critical of ourselves, and she identifies that mindfulness is a useful tool to begin practicing this. My journey to heal from my feelings of shame are going to take a long time. Whilst I am still living with unbearable facial pain, it is difficult to do this, as my facial pain and my feelings of embarrassment are so closely interlinked. I think, if I can find a doctor, who will level with me, and begin treatment for my condition, then the humiliation that I feel about what has happened to me will organically thaw.
My Healing
In order to begin to heal, I must separate the system from the personal. This is not about me, or my failings, or what I have done, or not done. My story is a tragic indictment of our unforgiving system, that fails to see the person beneath the symptoms. The system is broken. It needs rebuilding from the ground up, using care and compassion as cement.
I am a shadow of the woman I was ten years ago. The kicks that the system has given me have scarred me. However, one thing that I do know, is that I have remained dignified throughout this battle. I have never sworn, or been rude to any of the professionals who I have dealt with. I have presented rational arguments to all of the medical professionals who I have seen, and I have been truthful every step of the way. For that, I know I can stand proud.
[1] Cuncin, A; The Psychology of Shame, VeryWellMind.com, June, 2023
[2] Velotti, P, Garofalo C, Bottazzi F & Caretti V; Faces of Shame: Implications for Self-Esteem, Emotion Regulation, Aggression, and Well Being. The Journal of Psychology, June, 2016
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