Just looking different wasn’t so bad at first. But the staring, name-calling, teasing, and being left out by the other kids was agony. The older he got, the more often he got messages that he — and others like him — weren’t very good and certainly weren’t wanted. He became resentful and angry, pushing other people away and hating himself inside. He pulled some risky stunts, pushing himself harder and harder to prove he was somebody good enough to be counted as a real person.
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“When I was a kid, the message from my parents was, You can do anything you set out to do, so get all the way to the top.’ Then my coach told me finishing second was the same as coming in dead last. Now my co-workers act friendly — but getting the sales is cutthroat competition, and the contest for promotion is even worse. The pressure to stay on top is unimaginable.”
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“I thought the church was supposed to help people. But sometimes all I remember are the endless messages that I was bad and would go to hell. The punishments and humiliations of the religious school I went to convinced me that if so many others thought I’d turn out bad, then I probably was bad. I still have trouble with that. Some days I feel worse than guilty — like I don’t really belong on this earth. I feel unclean deep inside myself.”
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As a young waitress working her way through school, she learned she had to put up with a lot of remarks from customers about her body and her sex life. But she graduated from a tough business school with honors and went to work determined to find respect for her decisions and abilities.
Now that she is a supervisor, sometimes she gets respect. But when she has to pull rank and make a tough decision, she knows her employees make resentful jokes about her ’being a bitch.’ She wishes they could consider her as just a boss, instead of always as a “woman boss.”
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Sometimes American society promotes shame without intending to. We promote achievement so highly that many people feel like failures even when they are quite successful. Also, although we state a nonshaming belief that all persons are created equal, we tend to dwell on differences as negative qualities that divide people, instead of positive qualities that can make life richer for all of us. Consequently, people and groups who are “different” are sometimes treated as “bad” or “not good enough,” rather than as potential contributors to a richly diverse community life.
American media tends to focus on image and appearance. Though we praise individuality, our society pressures each person to conform to more homogenized standards of appearance and behavior. When we don’t fully fit those standards, we may discount our value. We may shame ourselves or others for not fitting narrow societal standards of what is appropriate.
Looking clearly at how shame is emphasized and nurtured in our society today may help us to recognize sources of shame within us and in society. By doing so, we can make freer decisions about how we want to function as members of our social community.
We contribute to shame as a society when we expect perfection by confusing “being the best I can” with “being the best of all.” Americans can be called “competitive individualists” because we have learned that personal success is gained primarily through individual exertion rather than through community effort. The predictable result is that some of us feel a relentless pressure to prove that we are better than others, in order to consider ourselves “good enough.”
This is especially damaging when we learn to focus on competing as families, neighbors, friends, lovers, and teammates and then can’t relax and freely appreciate the success of others. When all of us are successful, we become part of a successful community growing in pride. But if we see the success of others only through competitive eyes, we will not experience that pride — we may be envious, or we may feel driven to compete even more, or we may directly shame ourselves for not being as good as others. Thus, we fail to continue our own useful efforts.
Here are ways we may be using society’s achievement-orientation standards to set ourselves up for shaming experiences:
On the other hand, ways that we can enjoy the people we live near are to relax, be ourselves, and care enough for them. We can be “on their side” as well as on our own side.
The pursuit of excellence and competence can provide rich goals and values to a life that has seemed empty and meaningless. It can even be fun, so long as we remember that is our goal is to be competent, not to be a star whose fame and fortune far exceeds that of others. And it can be respectful as long as we remember that to be competitive does not necessarily justify doing whatever we want to get there. Healthy competition involves self-respect, and respect for the rights and abilities of others.
Most of us want to look good in the eyes of our friends, family, and acquaintances. We may gain approval by dressing and behaving “correctly,” or by conforming to the lifestyle of those around us. We may feel shamed when we stand out from the crowd by looking or acting differently — or when a close friend or family member behaves in a way we consider inappropriate or against conventional standards.
Excessive shame grows in a climate in which appearance means everything. Here the threat of immediate disgrace pushes individuals to conform (or to pretend to conform) to public expectations. Once we saw a woman, whose daughter had a temperature of 104 degrees, stop to put her child in her best dress before taking her to the doctor, in order to keep up her image as being a good mother. Some people are terrified that others will see their home in a less-than-perfect state. Others serve alcoholic beverages because it is expected, even though they dislike drinking themselves. Some people who seem to “have it all together” are really confused and in pain, but refuse to allow anyone to see inside the mask they wear. Perhaps they fear being ashamed if anyone finds out they are not perfect as society expects them to be. Other people are happy with themselves, but wish they could hide family members who don’t fit the proper image.
Excessive shame also grows in a world where an appropriate sense of privacy is being lost. Newscasts regularly feature stories on people in great emotional pain; a grieving person’s feelings are displayed for all to view. There is a clear danger that our more private acts will suddenly be exposed to scrutiny. Shame is bound to accompany this danger.
Many of us, wanting to be accepted, may overconform to society’s demands. We learn to smile when we are expected to smile, tell others we feel fine instead of asking for help, carefully act like everyone else, and sometimes even begin to think like everyone else! We concentrate on maintaining our images to avoid the threat of humiliation. We may also insist that our friends and family look and act just like everybody else, instead of accepting their eccentricities or allowing them to explore the world of healthy differences as they grow. We become so afraid they will reflect badly on us that we cannot recognize their freedom they need to discover who they really are.
We’re not saying conformity is bad. But those of us who concentrate too hard on avoiding any possible shame through lack of conformity may lose touch with ourselves. When we wear a mask too long, we sometimes forget that we can take it off. The danger is that we will forget that people, being human, are unique and sometimes “messy.” We may forget that most families have problems and that we can learn to solve our problems and live more happily by trusting and sharing with others. One way to reduce our shame is by sharing our problems in a safe environment. To be always worried about one’s image only increases shame.
Shame occurs whenever people believe that they are not inherently as good as another. Societal shame happens when a group as a whole treats some individuals as less worthy than the majority. Members of groups discriminated against may try to fight off shameful feelings, but many will conclude that they don’t or can’t completely belong.
Prejudice and discrimination are often supported by societal beliefs that many people see as “right” or “logical,” even if they are not true. At times, the poor economic conditions of stigmatized groups may make those beliefs appear to be more accurate than they really are. The boss who fails to hire someone from such a group because “those people are just lazy” may be ensuring that the person looks lazy. If the person discriminated against loses hope, he may fall into despair and depression and lose the motivation he needs to continue to maintain his wholeness and respectability. He may even come to believe that there is something wrong with him and then begins shaming himself.
Many of us fit into groups that are discriminated against to some degree. Some groups that often receive messages that they are defective and inferior compared to others are:
Certainly, some of these groups face far greater discrimination than others. Nevertheless, shame may be part of the life experience of individuals who belong to any of them.
Societal shaming can come in the form of taunting, teasing, and intimidating. Or it may be more subtle — put-down jokes, continually pointing out of how people fall short, and an assumption that someone from a stigmatized group cannot perform as well as others. The shaming experience can create rage when a person or group is shamed for something that cannot be altered.
We can partly counteract societal shaming by refusing to do it ourselves, and by taking the risk of providing support for those who are being shamed. We can learn to appreciate differences, and let others know that we want to find out who they are, instead of judging them on appearances or preconceived myths. We can speak up against the shaming we see. In addition, we can better understand how we may fit into stigmatized groups, and come to terms with the effect that societal shaming has had on us. We can teach ourselves and our children to recognize, and not be a part of, societal shaming.
Institutions such as the workplace, churches, and schools are responsible for giving order to life. Institutions can be structured to ensure the dignity of people. They can also contribute to a person’s shame when, instead of providing strong goals and appropriate boundaries, they are organized in a way that treats the individual with contempt.
A person’s work can be a source of profound dignity and pride. But some work organizations treat employees as dispensable objects. Others function as tyrannical, shaming families, or faceless bureaucracies. An executive can be dismissed at sixty so that his firm does not have to pay retirement. A blue collar worker can be displaced, and then be offered the chance to return at half the pay in a nonunion shop. Supervisors can sometimes frighten and harass employees abusively, threatening to take away their jobs if they dare to disagree with them. A heavily entrenched union can demand its workers do less than their best to lower competitive standards.
People who are treated as objects often become deeply embittered; they may begin to feel that their whole lives have been useless. Some take their shame and rage home to their families; others give up. Shame-based work situations can and should be addressed, just like shame-based relationships. Occasionally, people who are continually shamed in their jobs may have to find another work environment for their own mental and emotional health.
Shame involves a sense of spiritual despair. The deeply shamed person often feels totally alone, isolated from God as well as from people. Organized religion can help heal these wounds by comforting the shamed person and by guiding him back into spiritual communion. Unfortunately, churches may instead add to someone’s shame.
Organized religion has at times contributed to the sexual shame of many men and women. When children are told that they are dirty and that all sexual thoughts are sinful, they may, as adults, despise their own bodies. They may not be able to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy sexuality, because they encounter their shame whenever they notice their sexual desires. A person’s sexuality can be damaged when she cannot take pride in herself as a whole person.
Many workplaces, schools, and churches are not shaming. But because institutions are so powerful in our lives, setting certain standards for us and structuring much of our time, we need to be aware of the dangers of shaming within them. The healthiest businesses, schools, and churches work to respect those who participate in them, knowing that respecting a person’s dignity pays off in increased attendance, loyalty, and work. Perhaps we can find more ways to encourage mutual respect and honor in these settings.
We have described four aspects of American society that can contribute to a person’s shame. They are (1) the unrelenting pressure to succeed, (2) too strong a focus on image and appearance, (3) prejudice and discrimination, and (4) institutional shaming.
We believe that each person can influence society by the choices he makes. We can help society become less shaming in one major way: by regularly and consistently treating each other with respect. We can also learn to understand more clearly that people and things that are different are not necessarily bad. We can take the risk of being who we are.
The late Green Bay Packers football coach Vince Lombardi said, “Winning is not the most important thing. It is the only thing.” This attitude implies that those who are not winners are losers and failures. This type of competitively focused achievement also implies that we must be the best at everything — the best worker, scholar, parent, spouse, child, lover, looker, drinker, athlete, and so on. Just being an ordinary human being who is good at some things and not so good at others is to fail. How does Lombardi’s statement apply to you?
When image and appearance become most important, we learn to mask who we are and how we really feel. Some of us wear one standard mask. Others change masks more often. Find paper and a pack of crayons or Magic Markers. Put two pieces of paper on top of one another on your desk or table. On the top piece of paper, draw a mask that you are wearing now, or wore with someone very recently. When you have completed drawing your mask, take the second piece of paper and draw what it feels like underneath the mask. Don’t worry about drawing well — this exercise is just to help you experience yourself differently.
Here is a list of some groups who are labeled, discriminated against, and ridiculed. Add any additional groups you think of. Check any that you belong to. Circle any that you might have prejudiced opinions about. Be honest.
If you are a member of any of these groups, how has this affected you? Do you feel you have been treated disrespectfully or with discrimination? How? How did you feel about yourself?
Choose one group toward which you have prejudice. Make a resolution to treat these people with respect, equality, and patience until you understand them better. Choose a group with members that you come in contact with, so you can practice this new behavior.
On a separate sheet of paper, list any experiences of being shamed that have happened to you:
A. The world of education.
How would you change your education to make it less shaming?
B. The world of work.
How would you change your work to make it less shaming?
C. The world of religion.
How would you change your religion to make it less shaming?