The Crippling Effects of Shame
And how to free yourself of the most destructive of all feelings
If the headline above grabbed your attention, you know the feeling.
Like a sudden rainstorm, it washes over you, soaking you to the bone. It’s a feeling that stays with you. It’s a feeling like no other. It makes you want to disappear.
Shame is described by Google as “a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior.”
Carl Jung talked about shame as being “a soul-eating emotion” and called it “the swampland of the soul.” A fitting image, don’t you think?
Because shame lands deeper than embarrassment. And deeper than guilt. Guilt can be good. Guilt is an acknowledgment of wrongdoing. It’s a learned lesson not to be repeated. Shame, on the other hand, is less about a specific behavior or a specific action and more about a deep-seated feeling.
Brené Brown — the expert on shame, talks about guilt as being good in the right amount and shame as being bad. Why? Because shame, she says, “corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change”.
Marilyn J. Sorensen (founder of the Self-Esteem Institute) describes the two feelings this way:
