No Shame in Shame: True Masculinity and the Power of Love
By Yosi Amram PhD
“Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest essence something helpless that needs our love.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
- OWNING OUR SHAME
- MEN’S DIFFICULTY WITH VULNERABILITY: WE NEED BOTH OUR YIN AND YANG
- MEN’S ENCULTURATION INTO VIOLENCE AND EMOTIONAL DISCONNECTION
- THE WAY OUT IS THROUGH: THE CASE OF DAN
- RECOVERING OUR BELONGING, MATURE MASCULINITY, AND DIGNITY
- THE DARKNESS OF SHAME IS A POWERFUL PORTAL INTO THE LIGHT OF LOVE
1. OWNING OUR SHAME
Once, after the passing of a well-respected elder in my family, I was told a gut-wrenching rumor about him. The claim was that he had behaved in a sexually inappropriate manner to one of our relatives years ago when she was a teenager. The deceased and I were very close, so it shook me to my core — what harm did he inflict exactly? I sought more information directly from the source, but she wouldn’t elaborate further, finding the experience too painful.
I admit, my first impulse was to challenge, deny, or minimize the allegations. If this relative with whom I was so close did in fact cause such injury, what did that say about me? Was I capable of the same?
I feel shame, by association as a blood-relative of this man, and I have felt shame as a fellow member of his gender for all the violence men have done to women over the ages, now more apparent than ever after the #MeToo movement. What does this history of violence imply? Are we men inherently, biologically prone to violence? And, if so, is there nothing we can do about it?
When I ponder these questions, my impulse is to defend men, to recount as many examples as I can of noble, selfless acts that men are capable of, like when a man sacrifices his life by jumping in front of a bullet to save another. I want to reassure myself that we aren’t all bad. I want to distract myself from our bloody history.
But I realize now that it is only by diving into the darkness of our history that we can liberate the light, noble aspects of ourselves. It is only by facing the shame we carry that we can embrace our true masculinity, ending the cycle of violence for good.
2. MEN’S DIFFICULTY WITH VULNERABILITY: WE NEED BOTH OUR YIN AND YANG
We humans are social animals, so connection and belonging are essential to our survival. This is what makes shame — the fear of being judged and cast out — so terrifying to us. Shame evokes the fundamental sense that something is wrong with us: that we are undesirable, unlovable, or unworthy of connection. We feel at risk of being pushed out of our family, our community, or our tribe, which can mean death. And shame itself feels shameful because it reveals our deepest insecurities, presenting weaknesses that are in diametric opposition to society’s ideal of what is “masculine.”
Of course, our conventional notions of what masculinity entails have become deeply distorted over time. For my own definition of the concept, I draw from the Taoist perspective on masculinity as an energetic quality, called “yang.” The masculine yang is an outwardly focused, expansive energy that asserts, initiates, sows seeds, and forges ahead. Complementing yang is the feminine “yin,” which is inwardly oriented, open, receptive, inclusive, and nurturing. Yin and yang exist in all of us, whether we identify as men, women, gender-fluid, or otherwise. In balance, both yin and yang are necessary for life, health, and wholeness. Out of balance, they become twisted, expressing themselves in unhealthy ways.
As men, we need to learn to harness yang: pure, confident masculinity (true masculinity), while ridding ourselves of its shadowy side, which can turn assertiveness into aggression, leadership into dictatorship. Furthermore, in support of the cultivation of healthy manhood — and humanhood — we not only need our masculine yang, but we could also benefit from the development of our yin, so we can open our minds and our hearts with empathy and compassion, without which no mutually satisfying human connections can exist. When yin and yang are harmoniously integrated, we become assertive yet receptive, bold yet nurturing, and autonomous yet inextricably united with others.
3. MEN’S ENCULTURATION INTO VIOLENCE AND EMOTIONAL DISCONNECTION
One of the main contributors to male violence is the enculturation as warriors that our society perpetuates. Since our earliest civilizations, men were trained to hunt, fight, and kill other men in warring tribes. We can still notice the presence of this mindset, from local gang skirmishes to international wars fought in the name of our nation-state.
This enculturation into violence requires that we “toughen up” and disconnect from our emotions. “Manning up” has become synonymous with shutting down our softer emotions and our connection to our sensitivity, and, through it, to others — all in the name of being “independent.” Research shows that, at a young age, boys and girls cry at similar frequency, but by age eleven, boys are much less likely to cry. By age sixteen, they are much less empathic than girls their age, leading to feelings of isolation and alienation,¹ which are at the root of most violence. Unwilling to express their emotions, men will more often release built-up tension by resorting to violence and rage, and when craving human connection will more often turn to sex as their only outlet.
Tragically, we men are both the perpetrators of violence, physical and sexual, as well as victims of it. We are seven times as likely as women to commit murder. And our violence is most often directed at other men, as in 2020, eighty percent of murder victims in the US were men, while twenty percent were women. Violence towards men is also frequently sexual. One in six boys will be sexually abused by the age of eighteen,² ³ as compared to one in four girls. Shockingly, about half of the children who are trafficked in the US are male, and the average age at which boys first become victims of prostitution is between eleven and thirteen.⁴ Furthermore, recent research has challenged the stereotypes we hold around victims of sexual assault, seeing men only as the perpetrators and women as the only victims.⁵ ⁶ A 2011 CDC report found that men and women had a similar prevalence of nonconsensual sex in the previous year: 1.270 million women and 1.267 million men — primarily among gay and incarcerated men — though this reality receives little media attention.
When in war, defending ourselves or protecting others in physical combat, we might need to momentarily disconnect from our emotions as a matter of survival. But this should not be the baseline of our human experience. Cutting ourselves off from our feelings of shame — as painful as they are — comes at the same cost as disconnecting from any feeling: it dims the light of our overall awareness. When we sever ourselves from our feelings, we disconnect from ourselves and from our heart and spirit — our true sources of lasting power, love, and fulfillment. And then, shame becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Fearing judgment, rejection, and exclusion by others, we judge, reject, and exclude parts of ourselves. We distance ourselves from others who might see us as who we are. We don’t feel worthy of support, so we hide our shame and the causes of it. Tragically, we bring upon ourselves the very isolation from others that we fear, denying ourselves the sense of belonging we so badly want and need.
The only way to heal and restore this sense of belonging within ourselves and our community is to own our shame. The road out of the dark isolation of shame is through it — first acknowledging it to ourselves, then sharing it with others. Doing so, we reintegrate ourselves, as individuals and with others. No matter how strong and confident we may seem, deep down inside of us is shame waiting to be uncovered, processed, and accepted.
4. THE WAY OUT IS THROUGH: THE CASE OF DAN
I’ve seen this phenomenon occur repeatedly in my many years as a therapist and leadership coach. I once had a client I’ll call “Dan.” Dan was an extremely successful lawyer, though his childhood was plagued by bullying and social isolation. He first came to me hoping to work on his marriage, as though he loved his partner, his desire for her and ability to perform during sex had faltered over the years. He started having rotating affairs with women at his law firm that lasted a few months, at which point both his excitement and his erection would begin to falter. Dan felt embarrassed but unable to stop the cycle.
In one particularly notable session with Dan, I prompted him to explore his bodily experience. (There are many valid ways of working with shame and other so-called negative emotions, but I find focusing on the physical dimension of experience to be particularly effective in helping us access hidden resources and learn to inhabit our bodies: our true home.) I prompted Dan to sense how shame lived in his body. He reported that it felt like his body was deflating and collapsing. His breath was shallow, his shoulders were hunched, and his spine curved forward. It was as if he was trying to “hide and disappear.” As he tuned into these feelings and sensations, he noticed the thoughts, “I am broken. I am small and weak. I am not attractive,” running through his mind. These were the beliefs he took on as a child when the other kids rejected him.
Rather than push away these uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, I invited Dan to allow his body to do what it wanted to do, following its impulses, guided by its wisdom. Dan’s head dropped, and he slowly began to curl up into a ball, hugging his knees to his chest as he lay on the floor in the fetal position. His breathing became shallow, and he mentioned feeling “numb and spacey,” as if he had left his body. He was disassociating, a common protective response when something is overwhelming or traumatic. I invited Dan to stay with the numbness and spaciness, allowing his experience to be what it was, while becoming aware of the weight of his body on the floor. I suggested the experience of gravity was actually the constant hug of Mother Earth pulling him into her center, giving him the support he needed to stay with the shame. I call this method of allowing our emotions and including other sensations in our experience “AI” (allow and include).
As he “allowed” his sense of shame and “included” the pressure of the ground below him, Dan’s breath began to deepen. After a moment, his body started to stretch out until he lay flat on his back. At this point, Dan said he felt peaceful and that his spaciness had transformed into a sense of spaciousness, relaxation, and peace. He felt the pervasive sense of separation that comes when an ego dissolves momentarily.
After another minute of quiet stillness, Dan spontaneously stood up and began shaking, moving, and stretching his body. He reported feeling grounded energy streaming through his body. As he turned his thoughts to his partner, a sense of desire and arousal returned to him. Sitting down he looked confident, secure, and dignified in his presence — masculine in all the right ways.
Dan’s process echoes what I have seen repeatedly — that becoming intimate with our shame is the gateway to reclaiming our strength and potency. Shame does not have to diminish our power. What keeps us from our true masculinity, our authentic selves, and the source of power we long for is our lack of courage and resistance to feeling that shame for fear of becoming overtaken by it.
As Dan embraced his inner child (the one who had been carrying the sense of brokenness since being bullied by other kids all those years ago) and dis-identified from his ego, he let go of his need to be “independent” and instead accessed his playfulness and innocence. Eventually, he learned to become more vulnerable with his partner, which deepened their relationship and love. And, while he continued to be attracted to other women, his need to act out through affairs diminished over time and his difficulty maintaining an erection all but disappeared.
5. RECOVERING OUR BELONGING, MATURE MASCULINITY, AND DIGNITY
Dan’s experience is universal: we all develop insecurities, stemming back to childhood. Preverbal babies as young as fifteen months will enter into the physiological state of shame when their mothers break eye contact with them,⁷ perhaps while doing something as simple as responding to a text message or needing to attend to another child. As much as they may have wanted to, our caregivers were flawed, busy humans who could not attend to our every need. As children, we took this to mean we are somehow unworthy and set out to prove and improve ourselves, to one day attain the love we want and need.
Paradoxically, perhaps tragically, feeling shame and taking on the blame in these situations gives us some sense of control and agency.⁸ But no amount of success, accomplishments, or power could ever heal these primal wounds. Trying to compensate for our sense of deficiency doesn’t work. In fact, it often backfires, leading to harmful behaviors which generate more shame, particularly when it comes to the realm of sexuality. To quote Terry Real, “The defenses one chooses to avoid shame often afford relief while breeding more shame.” Additionally, trying to prove we’re better than others in order to earn love, connection, and belonging puts us in competition with our brothers, leaving us isolated in the long run.
Efforts to prove or earn our worth are like trying to build a house on an unstable foundation. For the house to stand, we need to find and fill the holes in our foundation with loving awareness and presence. We must learn to re-parent those shamed places ourselves and develop true confidence in our inherent value, not our achievements. As Dan did, so can we all, summoning the courage to dive into the darkness of our shame where we can recover the true dignity of authentic masculinity — a masculinity that is heartful, powerful, caring, and potent.
6. THE DARKNESS OF SHAME IS A POWERFUL PORTAL INTO THE LIGHT OF LOVE
Brené Brown tells us that, “Vulnerability is the core of shame and fear and our struggle for worthiness, but it appears that it’s also the birthplace of joy, of creativity, of belonging, of love.” To truly feel loved, we must expose our vulnerabilities, woundedness, and shame. Otherwise, whatever love we receive from ourselves or others will never really touch the deepest parts of us. We will continue to hold ourselves back, refusing to expose ourselves emotionally, still believing that some parts of us are unlovable no matter what.
I cannot hide from what the men in my community, my tribe, and even my family have done, nor what damage I may have caused as one of them. To liberate ourselves from the darkness of shame into the light of love and belonging, we need to open the dark closets of our psyche and stare at what’s hiding there in the eye. Only then can we free ourselves from delusion as we become servants of the truth — for truth can walk the world naked, unarmed, and unharmed.
By delving into our deficiencies, we find our completeness. Shining the light of awareness on the dark, we discover our sacred spark. And, allowing our shame to be, we liberate the true power, potency, and dignity of our essential being — a being that is beyond good or bad, shame or blame. By diving into the shadowed and shameful places of our manhood, we can recover the brilliancy of our divine, true masculinity.
Go to truemasculinity.org for more on shame and masculinity, and go to engendering-love.org to learn more about the upcoming free online summit on healing ourselves through conversations about gender.
References:
(1) Crying During Adolescence: The Role of Gender, Menarche, and Empathy by Van Tilburg, M.A.L., Unterberg, M.L., & Vingerhoets, J.M. (2010). The British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 20(1): 77–87.
(2) Long-term Consequences of Childhood Sexual Abuse by Gender of Victim by Dube, S.R, Anda, R.F., Whitfield, C.L, et al. (2005). American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 28, 430–438.
(3) Prevalence and Psychological Sequelae of Self-reported Childhood Physical and Sexual Abuse in a General Population Sample of Men and Women by Briere, J. & Elliot, D.M. (2003). Child Abuse & Neglect, 27, 1205–1222.
(4) Sexual Abuse of Boys: Definition, Prevalence, Correlates, Sequelae, and Management by Holmes, W.C., & Slap, G.B. (1998.) Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), 280, 1855–1862.
(5) The National Inmate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, 2011 by the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Available for download at: http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/NISV_Report2020-a.pdf
(6) The Sexual Victimization of Men in America: New Data Challenge Old Assumptions by Stemple, Lara, & Meyer, Ilan (2014). American Journal of Public Health, 104.
(7) Masculine Shame: From Succubus to the Eternal Feminine by Mary Ayers (2011). New York, NY: Routledge.
(8) Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality by Ronald Fairbairn (1974). London, UK: Routledge.
