Cultivating Shame Resilience

Embracing your actual, instead of your ideal self is one way to build your shame resilience. Guest author Lee Jia Ying shows us how.

Shame: The Unpleasant Experience of Feeling Flawed

Joanne was up early today. It was just 8am – far earlier than the 9:30am starts she was used to. She walked to her desk; nervous, gripped by an unsettling dread of what she was about to find out. At precisely 8:30am, she took a deep breath, trembling hands holding her phone while typing her student ID and password in the system. She gathered her courage to eventually click “ENTER” on the screen.

“B –”

An emotionless alphabet appeared right in front of her eyes, a sudden disappointment stroked her and deeply. Tears started streaming down her cheeks. Drowning in her failure, a familiar yet critical inner voice emerged from the bottom of her heart: “Useless, as expected. No matter how hard you try, you just can’t get things right. You’re such a failure.”

You might have experienced an event like Joanne’s. You may have criticized, blamed, and evaluated yourself negatively whenever you encountered your own wrongdoings, imperfections, or limitations. The tendency to attribute those unacceptable flaws to one’s own personal characteristics can lead to a sense of unworthiness and powerlessness. This is more so since such feelings affect us to their core – our personal qualities are seen as unchangeable or nonmodifiable, but worse of all, ‘flawed’ [1]. Over time, this view of ourselves as deficient can trigger the need to escape, hide, and even detach from others. The emotion typically experienced from such incidents is shame. Shame is defined as the unbearably painful experience of seeing oneself as flawed and can cause one to feel detached and estranged from both oneself and the world [2].

It is important to deal with these deep-rooted, unhelpful beliefs that one is flawed and undeserving of others’ acceptance. Failing to manage feelings of shame can be detrimental to our well-being. Fortunately, we can take steps to heal ourselves from our struggles; to be courageous in spite of our vulnerabilities. The researcher Brené Brown quotes: “true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world; our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance” [2]. If you struggle with feelings of shame, here are four things you do to help you better cope with this unpleasant, challenging emotion and develop resilience towards shame.

Step 1: Accept your Vulnerabilities and Flaws in a Self-Compassionate Way

Building resilience to shame starts, perhaps, counter-intuitively, with the need to accept those feelings. It helps to start this process of acceptance by say sincerely to yourself: “Yes, I am vulnerable and that’s totally fine.” Being able to acknowledge and accept your weaknesses is the first step in preventing yourself from being overwhelmed by your inner critic. This acceptance can also encourage greater willingness to understand the causes and reasons for your shame more deeply. Acceptance also discourages us from trying to hide or escape from the objectionable self – behaviours that shame typically prompts. The recognition of one’s vulnerabilities can also encourage one to be more self-compassionate. Psychologist Kristen Neff, who first coined the term, says that self-compassion comprises self-kindness, encouraging openness towards oneself and to one’s difficult circumstances [3]. Studies also found that individuals with greater levels of self-compassionate tend to be less ruminative over their self-criticizing thoughts [4] Researchers further suggest that self-compassion encourages individuals to disengage from negative emotional stimuli, which then mitigate one’s shame feelings [5]. Hence, to avoid internalizing the failure as being a permanent, integral part of oneself, it is important to unconditionally accept your past experiences while also recognizing that there is always a possibility to improve from them. Acceptance is the first step to self-compassion. Only when we accept the flaws, imperfections and weaknesses of our past can we move forward and treat ourselves kindly. And with that kindness comes the opportunity for growth.

Step 2: Recognize How Societal and Cultural Pressures Breeds Shame

It also helps to acknowledge how societal or cultural expectations have influenced – or rather, have skewed our perceptions of ideals and what we should aspire to be [6]. Shame may be felt from the failure to meet standards we perceive as essential to our self – standards which are at times, shaped by society and culture. As internalizing faults or failures into oneself is the main antecedent of feeling shame, we then can look to the possible external factors that contribute to our so-called “failures”. These could lead to revelations to why we struggle with shame – our standards and expectations are derived from sources external, rather than internal to ourselves.

The society, groups, and teams we belong to shape expectations – and unfortunately, not living up to these expectations can lead to feelings of shame. Students, for instance, are expected to achieve the perfect scores on their exams, women are expected to fit into an “s” size dress, and men are expected to be mentally “strong” or emotionally stoic even when experiencing overwhelming stress at home and at work. These societal and cultural expectations can both elicit and strengthen the feeling of shame when we failed to meet the ideals [7]. So, rather than finding inadequacies in ourselves, it helps try to acknowledge how societal standards have shaped unrealistic expectations we place on ourselves. We might need to realize that we may have internalized society’s standards (i.e., must achieve perfect scores) on ourselves. Studies show that maladaptive perfectionism is positively associated with internalizing the failures of not living up to societal expectations, which then leads to self-blaming [8]. When we recognize how common these pressures of expectations are, we can move forward towards seeking the support we need from others.

The recognition that society shapes our expectations dictates what is ideal, and causes shame if we fail to live up to these expectations is something we all experience. Neff argues that suffering is part of the human condition – the shame that comes from trying to but failing to meet society’s expectations is part of our common humanity [3]. Through appropriately contextualizing and normalizing our shame experience, we can reduce the psychological burden that leads us to internalize our faults. It might even lead to us realize that others suffer too – and that it is “okay to be not okay.”

Step 3: Seek Empathic Relationships

Lingering on painful self-condemnation can increase the tendency to hide or distance ourselves from others. This can lead to isolation and disconnection from those who are genuinely concerned for us. One study showed that the fear of receiving empathy and compassion from others can be an obstacle towards self-compassion [9]. As such, one way to silence – at least quieten our critical inner voice, is to reach to others that we share a mutually empathic relationship. Rather than suppressing our shame or suffering in silence, sharing our inner struggles with significant others allows us to feel supported with empathic responses. Brown suggests that when we are comfortable being vulnerable to others, we build meaningful connections with them [6]. We might realize that we are not alone as everyone might share the same inner struggles (i.e., coping with the flawed self). Instead, we will feel reassured and empowered again from simply realizing that we can be comfortable with our own vulnerability in our most meaningful of relationships.

Step 4: Cultivate an Emotionally Intelligent Approach to Shame

To cultivate shame resilience, it helps to be able to distinguish shame from other self-conscious emotions. Being emotionally intelligent also allows us to healthily process shame experiences, which is important for how we then cope and healthily manage this challenging emotion. Individuals high on emotional intelligence tend to be more accurate in perceiving and expressing their own emotions, understanding the emotion’s antecedents and consequences, while also being able to regulate emotions for their well-being [10]. Studies also suggest that when we are willing to attend to and value our own shame feelings with openness, there will be greater tendency for us to adopt effective strategies that diminish rumination on negative emotions [11]. One emotionally-intelligent way to cultivate resilience towards shame is to first acknowledge the shame with openness, admitting to the pain brought about by shame and then write about the shame experience in a self-compassionate manner. Framing one’s shameful experience as a normal part of life can reduce our overidentification with negative events [12]. To start building on shame resilience, try paying attention to your inner voice – but do so in more self-accepting and non-judgmental tone.

Reference:

[1] Bynum, W.E., Varpio, L., Lagoo, J., & Teunissen, P.W. (2020). ‘I’m unworthy of being in this space’: The origins of shame in medical students. Medical Education, 55(2), 185-197. https://doi.org/10.1111/medu.14354

[2] Brown, B. (2012). Daring Greatly: How the courage to be vulnerable transforms the way we live, love, parent, and lead. Avery.

[3] Neff, K. D. (2003). Self-compassion: An alternative conceptualization of a healthy attitude toward oneself. Self and Identity, 2(2), 85–102. https://doi.org/10.1080/15298860390129863

[4] Johnson, E. A., & O’Brien, K. A. (2013). Self-compassion soothes the savage ego-threat system: effects on negative affect, shame, rumination, and depressive symptoms. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 32(9), 939–963. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.2013.32. 9.939

[5] Yip, V. T., & Tong M. W., E. (2020). Self-compassion and attention: self-compassion facilitates disengagement from negative stimuli. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2020.1778060

[6] Brown, B. (2006). Shame Resilience Theory: A Grounded Theory Study on Women and Shame. Families in Society. The Journal of Contemporary Social Services, 87(1), 43–52. https://doi.org/10.1606/1044-3894.3483

[7] Dayal, H., Weaver, K., & Domene, J. F. (2014). From shame to shame resilience. Qualitative Health Research, 25(2), 153–167. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732314551988

[8] Schalkwijk, F., Someren, E. J. W., & Wassing, R. (2019). A clinical interpretation of shame regulation in maladaptive perfectionism. Personality and Individual Difference, 138, 19-23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2018.09.001

[9] Ferreira, C., Dias, B., & Oliveira, S. (2018). Behind women’s body image-focused shame: Exploring the role of fears of compassion and self-criticism. Eating Behaviors, 32, 12-17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eatbeh.2018.11.002

[10] Mayer, J. D., Caruso, D. R., & Salovey, P. (2016). The ability model of emotional intelligence: Principles and updates. Emotion Review, 8, 290-300.

[11] Castilho, P., Carvalho, S. A., Marques, S., & Pinto-Gouveia, J. (2017). Self-compassion and emotional intelligence in shame memories and depressive symptoms. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 26(3), 759-768. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-016-0613-4

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