The Opposite of Shame

Yesterday's discussion about help(lessness) takes me directly into thoughts about shame.  It was meditation on male shame and my shame that really provided a key to moving forward for me.  I love the TED talks available online (www.ted.com) .  Love of learning is one of my signature strengths, and I try to feed that strength every day.  TED talks were designed with me in mind.

One day the featured talk was a presentation by shame researcher, Brene Brown.  It was called "The Power of Vulnerability" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4Qm9cGRub0).  Brown's research and writing is chiefly focused on women and shame.  However, she said some things that made sense to me.

According to Brown, the reasons for women to feel shame are legion in this culture--body image, mothering, friendship, among others.  For men, there is really only one source of shame--failure.  As my spouse sometimes points out, men are simple creatures.  I know what makes men the angriest--feelings of inadequacy, impotence and inferiority.  That rage comes from a deep sense of shame.

In her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, Brown says, "Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging" (page 39).  For us men, that fear is rooted in a sense of failure.  But it is a profound and existential sense.  Shame is not about having failed at some particular thing.  Shame is about being a failure.

I lived through the "should have's" in the wake of Anne's death.  I suspect I will always wrestle with things I could have done to change the course of events.  But I know that such ruminations can only do damage and will do nothing to restore her to life.  The shame I'm describing goes deeper.  There was no longer anything I could do.  I was helpless in the face of her death.  Not only had I failed.  I was a failure.

Brown's insights opened a door for me into myself.  Yes!  This was the name for my experience: shame--not sadness or anger or even grief.  I was ashamed.  This was why I had anxiety attacks for a while when I went out in public.  What if someone realized that I was still alive, she was dead, and I had failed her and everyone who loved her?

This was why time with family was so painful, even though wonderful.  Somehow I had let them all down.  It was my fault that they were motherless, daughter-less, sister-less, friendless.  They were all just too nice to make the accusations (well, for the most part).

I wasn't fit for human company and I wasn't worthy of attention.  Brown writes, "Shame keeps worthiness away by convincing us that owning our stories will lead to people thinking less of us.  Shame is all about fear."  Naming the condition was well over half the battle for me.  Once I identified what was really happening to me, I could begin to combat that way of thinking and feeling.

As I have talked with other widowers, I have tested out this shame diagnosis.  While it is a part of the experience of widows, it does not seem to be as fundamental or as powerful for women who have lost husbands.  We men invest so much of ourselves in the identity of protector/provider that the death of a spouse "de-bones" our spirits and leaves us with not much more than a shell of shame.

Of course, this shame dynamic extends for men beyond the widower experience.  I have used this paradigm to talk with men who suffer chronic and debilitating illness.  At the root of the anger and fear is the sense of shame at having failed, the experience of no longer being a "real" man.  If you are dealing with an angry man in the throes of some sort of debilitating loss, consider the role of shame in that man's emotional life and response.

The chief reason that Brown's shame research was so important for me is that it opened up some pathways for constructive change in my thinking, feeling and behavior.  I could begin to find ways of living that might replace shame with something more constructive and life-giving.  That something is hope.

In a real sense hope is the opposite of shame.