Sources of Shame

Our susceptibility to shame is directly related to the fact that we are

vulnerable human beings with a wide range of needs and are dependent on
other human beings. When our needs are acknowledged and honoured, we
feel worthy and effective; when they are ignored or dishonoured, we feel
powerless and ashamed.
Theories of shame suggest that our propensity to feel shame, our shame-
proneness, is developed early in life from a complex mixture of personal and
social conditions. How prone we are to shame throughout our lives is largely
determined by the intertwining of each of our unique temperaments at birth
and the shaming experiences we endure during our formative years. What
follows is an overview of common factors that give rise to shame:

Childhood Deprivation: Child psychologists have long known that early life
conditions have lasting effects on a childs emotional and physical health.
Young children are not only totally dependent on their parents for all their
needs, but also highly sensitive to the feeling quality of the care they receive.
It is not enough to take care of their physical needs; they must also
experience unconditional love in order to develop into emotionally mature
adults.

What do we mean by unconditional love? Unconditional love is shown in

the way a parent holds, touches, and soothes an infant; it is shown in the
loving gaze in the parents eyes that acts as a mirror reflecting back that the
child is precious and worthy; and it is shown in consistent care and attention
that the infant can count on. Since infants and young children cannot
communicate verbally, parents must figure out what they need and provide it.
Parents who are well-attuned and emotionally bonded to a child learn how to
detect what is needed and make the appropriate response. Eye contact,
facial expression, holding, and verbal soothing are important aspects of
unconditional love. When children are deprived of consistent and attentive
care, they feel abandoned and become ashamed of having needs.

Parents do not intend to deprive or neglect their children. They are imperfect
human beings who do the best they can with the resources they have.
Psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott pointed the term good enough mother to
dispel the notion that parents must be perfect in order to raise healthy
children. Rather, there is a continuum between adequate (good enough)
parenting and inadequate (traumatic) parenting. Children can tolerate a
certain amount of need frustration and still feel nurtured and loved, When the
scale tips in the negative direction, deep feelings of shame and unworthiness
can overshadow a childs self-identity, causing a life-long proneness to
shame.

Emotional deprivation in childhood can result from a variety of factors.

Parents who were themselves emotionally wounded may be unable to give
what they did not get. Depression and other serious illnesses can make the
demands of parenthood overwhelming. Financial worries, the death of ones
spouse, persistent marital strain, or divorce can divert parental attention from
the child. Parents can also be incapacitated by alcohol or drug addiction or
by fatigue from overwork. Any of these conditions can overshadow ones
childhood., creating an environment that is focused on the needs of the
parents rather than the needs of the child. No matter what the cause, when
children are deprived of what they need, they blame themselves for being
unworthy of their parents attention and love.

Not measuring up to parental expectations: When parents expectations

are age-appropriate and based on the childs own unique capabilities,
children can feel successful and proud of their accomplishments because
their parents are proud of them. But sometimes parents have unrealistic
expectations that a child be like someone else a sibling, perhaps, or a
neighbours child and when the child fails to measure up to these
expectations, they can feel ashamed. Parental expectations are couched in
such statements as You should be more like your brother he always got
As, Why cant you behave the way that Mary does her mother never has
to tell her how to act?; and Other boys your age like to play football, why
dont you? Messages like these make a child feel inadequate.

Parental Over Control: Appropriate parental control involves setting age-

appropriate rules and enforcing them with consistency. The younger the
children, the more limits are necessary to protect them from harm. Excessive
parental control, however, involves manipulating a childs emotions and
independence to satisfy some need of the parent. Some overly controlling
parents are perfectionists who want to micro-manage their childrens lives.
Some are authoritarians, who believe that it is their role to dictate and the
childs role to obey. Others need to keep their children dependent on them,
so that they feel important and needed,. Whatever the underlying motivation,
overly controlling parents foster shame in their children by making them feel
weak, incapable, needy, and dependent. Children of overly controlling
parents tend to grow up with feelings of anxiety, incompetency, and
worthlessness.
Sibling Favouritism and Sibling Rivalry: Children have a built-in radar that
picks up signals that parents are playing favourites. Favouritism, whether
imagined or real, causes shame because it makes a child feel unloved and
inadequate. The two most important ways parents can show their love are
through the attention and affirmation they provide. Ideally, parents love their
children equally, but in reality, parents often feel more naturally connected to
one child over another, based on such things as personality preferences and
shared interests. Parental preference may also be the result of gender
(favouring the same-sex or opposite-sex child), birth order, or how easy or
difficult a childs temperament may be. Sometimes, parents feel the need to
give more time and attention to a child with special needs. A parents
preferential treatment, real or imagined, can create jealousy, comparisons,
and sibling rivalry. In addition, the natural differences between siblings can
engender shame. How easy it is to feel less than when growing up with
siblings who differ from oneself in natural endowments and gifts, and with
parents who try to love all of their children equally while, at the same time,
being sensitive to individual differences and needs.

Shame is pervasive in our culture, but is frequently unrecognised,

misunderstood, and misinterpreted. Furthermore, shame is considered to be
the master emotion, because it regulates our expression, even our
recognition, of all other emotions, including shame itself. If, for example, we
feel ashamed of emotions like anger, hurt, fear, or love, we are not likely to
express them. If hurt feelings are shameful, but anger is acceptable, we tend
to substitute anger when feeling hurt, If all emotions are shameful, they all
will be almost completely repressed. Shame also plays a central role in
conscience development and social morality and is used by society to enforce
acceptable behaviour. As the master emotion, shame hovers over all our
social interactions so that much of our life experience is coloured by shame
anticipating it, experiencing it, and managing it.

In the work of therapist and spiritual directors, they have come to believe that
shame is at the heart of most emotional and spiritual struggles. If shame is
the real culprit underlying much of human suffering which we think it is
then it is important that we discover how shame affects our lives, keeping us
from realising our full potential and inhibiting our relationships with others,
including God.

Shame the feeling that we are unworthy seeps into everyones life. All
of us have feelings of inadequacy and secretly fear that there is something
wrong with us, that we are not smart enough , not successful enough, not rich
enough, not interesting enough, not good-looking enough, not good enough
to be loved for who we are. Our goal is to help people free themselves from
shame by embracing their true identities as Gods beloved, The healing and
transformation of shame begin when we come to see ourselves through the
lens of Gods unconditional love rather than through the lens of shame.

Look to [God], and be radiant, encourages the psalmist, so your faces shall
never be ashamed (Ps 34:5). We need to reflect on our images of God. Do
you see God gazing at you with love? Or is your image of God such that you
expect to see a shaming God, whose look is one of disappointment or
disapproval? Perhaps you think that God is indifferent to you and ignores
you. We also note that people often have two very different images of God:
one that they verbally profess , and a second one that operates
unconsciously and determines their feelings about God. The professed image
is the one we were taught, for example, God is good, kind, and loving; the
operative image is formed by our early relationships with God-figures in our
lives, usually our parent and close relatives. It is important to become
conscious of the images of God that are operative in our lives, because these
images powerfully affect our sense of self and our relationship to God.

How can we take in Gods gaze in such a way that our faces do not blush
with shame? The image of God we present shows a God who loves us
unconditionally and desires that we be healed of crippling emotions such as
shame. Using biblical stories, such as the bent-over woman in Lukes Gospel
(13:10-13) and Woman caught in adultery in Johns Gospel (8:3-11), shows
how Gods compassionate love flowed through the person of Jesus into the
lives of people burdened with shame. Scripture provides more than enough
evidence that Jesus mission was to be the healing presence of God to
everyone, particularly those who were outcasts, or feeling rejected, etc. What
was true for people of Jesus time is still true today. Gods compassionate
love is ours to relish if we but open ourselves to experience it. Joy and
healing come, as the psalmist proclaims, when we can take in Gods loving
gaze and realise that we are good and worthy of love just as we are.

(taken from Gods Unconditional Love - Healing Our Shame, by Wilkie Au

and Noreen Cannon Au)