The gift of shame
When you feel shame — and it’s your own shame (as opposed to “carried shame”) — it feels like mild-to-moderate embarrassment.
It comes about when your brain is thinking one of two things…
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“I’ve made a mistake.”
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“Somebody else is looking at me as I’ve made this mistake.”
Shame is a public emotion. It’s different than guilt. Shame is about embarrassment. Guilt is that gnawing feeling in your gut when you break your own values.
You can feel guilt all by yourself as you think about how you’ve operated outside your values and broken your own rules. But you cannot feel shame all by yourself.
It’s only when people see your fallibility, your imperfection, that you feel shame.
As you’re feeling your own shame, you do not have a drop in your own sense of worth, or your own sense of value, or your own sense of esteem. Your own sense of worth-whileness does not take a plunge when you feel your own shame.
Shame tells you your poop smells. And what does that do for you, when you know your poop smells? What does it allow to you know about everybody else? That theirs does too. And that’s wonderful to know, because it helps you deal with your perfect imperfection. The only thing perfect about you is your imperfection.
When you know your poop smells, and you know everybody else’s does too, you realize that it’s a leveler.
It tells you that everybody else is perfectly imperfect too, and you don’t need to worry about it. In other words, everybody makes mistakes.
Shame brings us a gift. It tells us our poop smells and everybody else’s does too. And that gets us comfortable with our perfect imperfection. It allows us to own ourselves as perfectly imperfect, which allows us to be accountable for who we are.
What does accountability mean? Accountability means that we have the ability to note the impact of our behavior on other people.
Shame is what alerts a person to how their reality is impacting others. A shameless person doesn’t give a rat’s ass about how they are affecting others. They think they have a right to go out and be and do whatever they want to do. That they have a right to take from and use other people.
It’s your shame that enables you to hear others tell you about the adverse impact you’ve had on them.
NOTE: Everything above is quoted almost verbatim from Pia Mellody’s tape on Shame