Sunday 9th August
I've been looking forward to writing this series (and a bit nervous actually), because shame has become one of those words that is somehow appearing across a multitude of platforms, yet remains surprisingly difficult to define or examine.
We talk about shame around addiction, trauma, parenting, body image, perfectionism and mental illness. Some disciplines encourage people to let go of shame, to release shame, or to heal from shame.
And yet, if someone stopped us mid-sentence and asked,
"What exactly do you mean by shame?"
I suspect many of us would hesitate.
This isn't meant to be a smug or trick question either.
Genuinely, the answer isn't obvious at all.
As I was reading more thoroughly for this series, I realised I had naturally been speaking about shame from one particular perspective - that it is a self-conscious emotion. The more I read, however, the more obvious it became that different disciplines are often describing different facets of the same phenomenon.
Perhaps that's because every discipline defines a concept according to the questions it is trying to answer.
Clinical psychologists ask one set of questions.
Evolutionary psychologists ask another.
Sociologists another again.
Rather than seeing this as disagreement, I've come to think they're often illuminating different parts of the same landscape.
Some understand shame as fundamentally relational: experiencing ourselves through the eyes of another person, whether that person is physically present, remembered, imagined, or gradually internalised until their voice becomes difficult to distinguish from our own.
Others understand shame as a self-conscious emotion: the tendency to become an object of our own evaluation. Something happens, and our attention immediately turns inward.
What does this say about me?
How am I appearing?
Researchers such as June Tangney, Jessica Tracy, and Richard Robins have spent decades exploring this distinction, particularly the ways shame differs from guilt. Their work is considerably more nuanced than the popular "I did something bad" versus "I am bad" distinction. Rather than simply separating behaviour from identity, they examine the different ways people evaluate themselves following mistakes, failures, successes and social transgressions.
Others argue that shame cannot be understood by looking only inside an individual mind.
Families, communities, workplaces and cultures all shape, in both explicit and implicit ways, what is admirable, what is acceptable, what should remain hidden, and sometimes even who gets to belong without explanation.
Sociologist Erving Goffman's work on stigma, alongside more contemporary research on social identity and minority stress, reminds us that some forms of shame are not simply private interpretations. They are predictable responses to living in environments where dignity, acceptance, and credibility are distributed unevenly.
And then there are evolutionary accounts, such as those proposed by Daniel Fessler, which ask a different question altogether. Not what shame feels like, but why we evolved the capacity for shame in the first place.
This series won't be choosing one definition or one process of shame, and I'm resisting the temptation to do so on purpose.
Instead, I'll try to be clear, as best to my own comprehension and knowledge, about which perspective I'm speaking from, while allowing different frameworks to sit alongside one another.
What we do seem to know, collectively, is that shame can be remarkably difficult to recognise. Arguably, that's part of what makes it so effective.
Very few of us walk around thinking,
"I am feeling shame."
Instead we think,
I need to do better.
I shouldn't have said that.
I'm being ridiculous.
I need to pull myself together.
I need to make sure that never happens again.
Sometimes those thoughts are simply responsible and proportionate responses to ordinary mistakes. I am not interested in pathologising every uncomfortable thought, behaviour or out-of-character moment.
But for many people, something else quietly happens.
The event stops being simply an event.
It becomes evidence.
We move from asking:
“What happened?”
To asking:
“What does this reveal about the kind of person I am, deep down?”
One idea I found myself returning to is that shame functions as an extraordinarily efficient form of social regulation.
Once shame has been internalised, very little external enforcement is required.
Communities communicate what is admirable, acceptable or unacceptable over time. Eventually, much of that monitoring becomes internal. We begin anticipating judgement long before anyone has actually judged us.
In that sense, shame can regulate behaviour remarkably efficiently.
The psychological cost, however, is often borne by the individual.
Over the next twelve weeks, we'll move through different ways of understanding and relating to shame.
We'll spend time with psychology and research, certainly, but also with relationships, families, professions, culture and communities. We'll look at shame as an emotion, as a social process, as a protective strategy, and as something that can organise the way we understand ourselves.
For this week, I don't want to leave you with a strategy.
I'd rather leave you with a question.
The next time you notice yourself moving from a difficult moment to a conclusion about who you are, pause for a moment and become curious…
· Whose standard am I measuring myself against right now?
· Where did I learn that this mattered?
· Do I still believe that standard is one I want to live by?
Some standards require protecting, absolutely, and some deserve questioning.
Stay curious,
Shoni
Dr Shoni Marshall-Edwards
Clinical Psychologist · AHPRA PSY0004030165
Alba Psychology · Online · Australia and New Zealand