Sunday 30th August
For the first three weeks of this series, we’ve spent quite a lot of time trying to understand what shame is, what function it might serve, and what it can look like when it doesn’t particularly feel like shame at all.
As we move into part II of the series, I want to shift the question slightly.
What do we actually do about it?
I’m not suggesting we plan a 12-step strategy to ensure we reduce the experience of shame and its impact on us. We don’t need to turn shame into an optimisation project, nor do we need to be a ‘work in progress’ all the time (there, I said it).
But we can learn over time.
Before we get into it, there is an important limitation to the particular form of shame I’m going to focus on this week. Much of this letter is about what happens when social evaluation becomes increasingly self-managed: we anticipate judgement, monitor ourselves, correct ourselves, and develop ways of reducing the possibility of being seen in a particular way, or having needs altogether.
But we know that this is not the whole story of shame.
Sometimes the threat of judgement is not primarily an internal appraisal problem. People can live within families, communities, or cultures where being different, or departing from accepted norms, carries very real consequences. In those environments, monitoring what you say, concealing parts of yourself or becoming highly alert to how you are perceived may be a response to genuine risks to acceptance, belonging, and safety. Describing this only as “self-consciousness” would locate the problem too neatly inside the individual.
That distinction will matter increasingly as this series moves into the social and cultural life of shame. For now, I’m narrowing the lens and deliberately relating to the types of shame that most people catch snippets of online. Shame as a self-conscious emotion, with some social-evaluation references.
Therefore, I want to look at one particular process: what happens when the possibility of shame becomes something we start trying to manage ourselves.
For example, if being criticised feels particularly exposing, we might become very good at anticipating criticism.
If getting something wrong quickly becomes a story about incompetence, we might check our work considerably more carefully than everybody else seems to, or avoid trying altogether.
If being perceived as selfish or ‘dramatic’ (I see this often in the therapy room) is especially difficult to tolerate, we might become highly attentive to whether we have taken too much, asked for too much, spoken for too long, or failed to consider somebody else.
If rejection tells a particularly painful story about us, we might learn to read other people extremely well or overcompensate to secure and maintain particular relationships.
And interestingly, these behaviours quite often look like strengths.
Conscientiousness. Thoughtfulness. High standards. Self-awareness. Being easy to work with. Being exceptionally considerate of other people.
And sometimes that is exactly what they are. Again, we care about function of behaviour in this corner of psychology. What ‘goods’ are we trying to secure through these actions? Shame tries to do many things, but here it might be that we trying to achieve regulation, norm-adherence, and social survival. Importantly, this often isn’t a conscious or deliberate method. Nonetheless, there is often an enormous amount of work happening underneath them.
One way of thinking about this comes from the broader literature on shame and self-conscious emotion. If shame involves becoming painfully aware of ourselves as an object of evaluation (and possible social rejection), it makes sense that one response would be to become better at managing the conditions under which that evaluation happens.
My very best friend and godmother to my daughter describes this as being in ‘selfie-mode’, and I repeatedly use this terminology with my clients when discussing this concept.
Did I say too much?
Was that email too blunt?
Did I look defensive then?
Have I contributed enough?
Did I ask them enough questions?
Am I being annoying?
Was that selfish?
Should I explain myself?
Sometimes the monitoring is retrospective. We replay something afterwards and work out what should have happened differently.
And sometimes it becomes anticipatory. We prepare what we’re going to say, imagine how it could be interpreted, adjust it, soften it, add a disclaimer, or decide it would be easier not to say it at all.
A person who has spent their developmental years monitoring other people’s reactions may genuinely have sharp social acuity. Someone terrified of appearing incompetent may produce consistently excellent work. Someone highly sensitive to being selfish may become exceptionally considerate.
This is one of the reasons I’m reluctant to describe these patterns simply as dysfunctional. Take perfectionism for example: not all perfectionism is ‘dysfunctional’ (despite what these Instagram infographics pitch). Perfectionism driven by enjoyment for excellence and growth is positively associated with greater satisfaction and discipline. Perfectionism driven by fear of failure, distress, or identity protection is more closely linked to anxiety and depression, and burnout.
Therefore, the better question is what maintaining our behaviours has started to cost us. Once avoiding a particular shame experience becomes reinforced, the baseline of what’s considered acceptable can shift and our standards may become increasingly difficult to satisfy.
It’s no longer enough to be reasonably competent. Absolutely not. I need to make sure there is actually no evidence that I’m incompetent.
It’s not enough to generally be a considerate friend. I need to monitor whether anything I’ve done could be interpreted as selfish.
It’s not enough to communicate clearly. I need to make sure I haven’t been misunderstood (not even a little bit).
But actually, I think what takes the pressure off is assuming (call this an exposure exercise) that other people will sometimes think we are selfish. Other people will misunderstand us. And actually, maybe sometimes we are just being a bit meh.
We will dominate a conversation, miss something obvious, become defensive, disappoint somebody, or discover that feedback about us is accurate.
Some of that discomfort is probably useful. As we discussed earlier in this series, I don’t think the goal is to become completely indifferent to what other people think of us.
But shame management can gradually become an attempt to make social appraisals about us impossible.
This brings us back to something from the first letter: shame can be an extraordinarily efficient form of regulation once the monitoring has moved inside. But there is a difference between having standards and living under constant surveillance from them.
The aim isn’t to stop reflecting on ourselves, lower every standard, stop caring what anybody thinks, or interpret every conscientious behaviour as evidence of hidden shame.
So this week, rather than asking yourself whether you are monitoring too much, people-pleasing too much, perfectionistic, or any other label we could add to the mounting pile, I think there is another way we can approach ourselves this week:
What am I trying to make less likely by doing this?
Sometimes, underneath all of our careful management, there is a particular conclusion about ourselves that we have become very good at preventing other people (and ourselves) from reaching.
As always, stay curious.
Shoni
Dr Shoni Marshall-Edwards
Clinical Psychologist · AHPRA PSY0004030165
Alba Psychology · Online · Australia and New Zealand