Shame

Shame is an unpleasant self-conscious emotion typically associated with a negative evaluation of the self, withdrawal motivations, and feelings of distress, exposure, mistrust, powerlessness, and worthlessness. Shame is an unpleasant self-conscious emotion typically associated with a negative evaluation of the self, withdrawal motivations, and feelings of distress, exposure, mistrust, powerlessness, and worthlessness. Shame naturally has a negative valence, but it helps to define the boundaries of positive pursuits in some cases. The definition of shame is a discrete, basic emotion, described as a moral or social emotion that drives people to hide or deny their wrongdoings. The focus of shame is on the self or the individual; it is the only emotion that is dysfunctional for the individual and functional at a group level. Shame can also be described as an unpleasant self-conscious emotion that involves negative evaluation of the self. Shame can be a painful emotion that is seen as a '…comparison of the self's action with the self's standards…' but may equally stem from comparison of the self's state of being with the ideal social context's standard. Some scales measure shame to assess emotional states, whereas other shame scales are used to assess emotional traits or dispositions- shame proneness. 'To shame' generally means to actively assign or communicate a state of shame to another person. Behaviors designed to 'uncover' or 'expose' others are sometimes used to place shame on the other person. Whereas, having shame means to maintain a sense of restraint against offending others (as with modesty, humility, and deference). In contrast to having shame is to have no shame; behave without the restraint to offend others, similar to other emotions like pride or hubris. When people feel shame, the focus of their evaluation is on the self or identity. Shame is a self-punishing acknowledgment of something gone wrong. It is associated with 'mental undoing'. Studies of shame showed that when ashamed people feel that their entire self is worthless, powerless, and small, they also feel exposed to an audience—real or imagined—that exists purely for the purpose of confirming that the self is worthless. Shame and the sense of self is stigmatized, or treated unfairly, like being overtly rejected by parents in favor of siblings' needs, and is assigned externally by others regardless of one's own experience or awareness. An individual who is in a state of shame will assign the shame internally from being a victim of the environment, and the same is assigned externally, or assigned by others regardless of one's own experience or awareness. A 'sense of shame' is the feeling known as guilt but 'consciousness' or awareness of 'shame as a state' or condition defines core/toxic shame (Lewis, 1971; Tangney, 1998). The key emotion in all forms of shame is contempt (Miller, 1984; Tomkins, 1967). Two realms in which shame is expressed are the consciousness of self as bad and self as inadequate. People employ negative coping responses to counter deep rooted, associated sense of 'shameworthiness'. The shame cognition may occur as a result of the experience of shame affect or, more generally, in any situation of embarrassment, dishonor, disgrace, inadequacy, humiliation, or chagrin. The root of the word shame is thought to derive from the Old English word hama, a veil or covering that one might wear in order to signal penitence. I.e. a person who has committed an offense need not worry about being punished by an external agent, since he or she is doing plenty of self-punishing. In the sense of shame, hama simply means 'covering' which is literally and figuratively a natural expression of shame. Nineteenth-century scientist Charles Darwin described shame affect in the physical form of blushing, confusion of mind, downward cast eyes, slack posture, and lowered head; Darwin noted these observations of shame affect in human populations worldwide, as mentioned in his book 'The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals'. Darwin also mentions how the sense of warmth or heat, associated with the vasodilation of the face and skin, can result in an even more sense of shame. More commonly, the act of crying can be associated with shame. The boundaries between concepts of shame, guilt, and embarrassment are not easily delineated. According to cultural anthropologist Ruth Benedict, shame is a violation of cultural or social values while guilt feelings arise from violations of one's internal values. Thus shame arises when one's 'defects' are exposed to others, and results from the negative evaluation (whether real or imagined) of others; guilt, on the other hand, comes from one's own negative evaluation of oneself, for instance, when one acts contrary to one's values or idea of one's self. Thus, it might be possible to feel ashamed of thought or behavior that no one actually knows about and conversely, to feel guilty about actions that gain the approval of others. Psychoanalyst Helen B. Lewis argued that, 'The experience of shame is directly about the self, which is the focus of evaluation. In guilt, the self is not the central object of negative evaluation, but rather the thing done is the focus.' Similarly, Fossum and Mason say in their book Facing Shame that 'While guilt is a painful feeling of regret and responsibility for one's actions, shame is a painful feeling about oneself as a person.' Following this line of reasoning, Psychiatrist Judith Lewis Herman concludes that 'Shame is an acutely self-conscious state in which the self is 'split,' imagining the self in the eyes of the other; by contrast, in guilt the self is unified.'