💡 Shame vs. Humiliation: The Emotion Pop Psychology Got Wrong
🦉 Words of Wisdom
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Shame gets a bad rap because we often confuse it with humiliation—and they aren’t even remotely similar.
Shame is self-administered in private and serves as a mechanism to recognize your failure to act in line with your values.
Meanwhile, humiliation is inflicted on you by someone else and, in most cases, is intended to happen in public. When a person’s ability to feel shame is taken away, they basically become a runaway train.
The trouble with pop psychology is that it treats all difficult emotions as a kind of pathology and recommends processing them rather than sitting with them.
Only guilt has survived this trend because it’s neat: Guilt says, “I did a bad thing.”
Shame, however, says, “Am I really the kind of person who could do that?” It’s harder to handle because it’s at odds with your identity and your values, less suitable for marketing pop psychology books, so it gets labeled as toxic instead.
Yet it’s precisely that shame-inspired question that changes a person’s behavior. If you had a reckless youth, this is exactly why you should reflect on it with pleasure rather than fear. Just one tactless remark made yesterday about how you acted as a kid may keep you up until 2 a.m. Old shame turns into a story. New shame still affects you today.
None of this implies self-debasement. An individual constantly steeped in shame is not a sign of virtue but of immobility.
Shame can be effective and healthy, but in order for it to work in a positive way, it has to sting, teach a lesson, and help you continue your journey wiser than before.
If you try to eliminate or overshadow shame with self-esteem, you may be denying yourself one of the few inner guides to morality.
Because not every “something’s wrong with me” feeling is telling the truth
Words of Wisdom
Learn to feel shame in your own eyes much more than before others
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