Spiritual direction: Shame, shamed, embarrassed

It is important that people become more clear about concepts involving shame that have become dangerously blurred. I'll start with a true story from my childhood.

When I was in elementary school one day I had a cold. (I had not yet developed allergies, which would be a burden for a lot of my youth). Four of us were sitting around a children's art table in the art part of class, two of us on each side. I suddenly sneezed and to my horror found I had gobbed into the skirt of my dress, since I could not get a tissue fast enough. The two girls across from me could not see my lap and thus did not see what I had happened, and they just said "Bless you" and continued with their art work. But as luck would have it, the "mean girl" was sitting next to me and I saw her cruel smile as her eyes traveled from looking me in the face, down to my lap, and back up again, smirking. I whispered, mortified, "Please don't say anything" and I could see her think about it, weighing whether to torture me or not. Finally she just smirked and said nothing, so I was able to surreptitiously clean myself off. I think I was around 8 or 9 years old at the time.

Now, here's where I'm not your average person. Just about every child is scarred by bullying and teasing, especially in households where there are fewer and fewer fathers to teach them to be strong, and handle bullying on behalf of their children if it got out of hand. Nowadays kids suffer from more things to be bullied about (societal) and have less resources for resilience and defense (fractured and poor parenting). However, I remember thinking, oh no, I'm not ever going to let something like that have control over me. You can't be embarrassed if you do not feel shame in something that you should not be ashamed about, like a messy sneeze. So during the years after that and to this day, when I've tripped and fallen, had food stuck in the front of my teeth, looked unattractive when picking at something on my face, or known that people have secretly photographed me in undressed or otherwise exploited positions, if someone had threatened to tell someone or try to embarrass me, I'd have laughed in their face. Too bad no one ever asked ha ha.

But the serious point is that parents and other caregiver adults need to set the example that I instinctively knew from the first incident. Adults need to teach children to not let bullies get the upper hand by making them ashamed or embarrassed over bodily function, appearance, and behavior, and to laugh it off or ignore it. Nothing inoculates you from a bully more than them realizing you genuinely don't give a rat's ass if you globbed into your lap while sneezing. But far from setting a good example for kids to have some resilience and defense against bullying (and therefore reducing bullying by reducing its perverse satisfaction supply and demand) parents actually increase kid's social sensitivity by buying into the extreme fashion, body image, and behavior propaganda that society now shovels down every one's throat. So I recommend that everyone teach their children and set examples of laughing off potential bullying scenarios by not buying into the embarrassment potential of these kinds of scenarios.

This example that I just gave is what "embarrassed" really means. To be embarrassed is to be disconcerted and feel put at a disadvantage at a socially marginal event, such as the wind blowing up your skirt, or like I said, being caught picking at a spot on your face ha ha.

Now to be more serious. The concept of shame is different than embarrassment. Shame used to be recognized as a virtue. Shame used to be closely associated with modesty. Shame is the feeling that comes from doing something you know was inappropriate, illegal or ungenerous. So shame is like the nerve endings sending pain signals to your brain when your body is being harmed; it is a protective warning. When you cheat your neighbor you should feel shame. When you gossip or harm someone, especially behind their back, you should feel shame. Unfortunately those who advocate a valueless life style successfully linked the idea of shame to feeling constraint in self gratification, so shame became "old fashioned" and "limiting in one's potential." One should not feel shame no matter how one behaves or what one does is the modern message. But as a result, just like the pain of bodily injury, humans have lost an important guide to healthier and safer behavior when they lose their sense of shame. Again, adults need to encourage children to feel appropriate shame, in other words, to recognize the seedlings of shame when they have done something wrong (or point it out to them when you see an example in real life) rather than teach your child to ignore legitimate shame signals and feelings.

Now we have to look at the really dysfunctional aspect, which is to "be shamed" by a situation or person. Remember, being embarrassed is something that can be recognized and managed, while a sense of appropriate shame is something that should be recognized as a healthy signal. But being ashamed by a person or situation is an act of aggression, I would say the big step up from bullying, and we have a serious problem and misunderstanding about people who shame others for recreational or professional reasons.

Here is a very sad example. Today I read an article about a young woman who committed suicide after being raped, since she blamed herself and could not get over feeling ashamed. Again, notice this is not appropriate shame, which is what presumably the rapist should feel, but she had being ashamed thrust upon her. She had put herself in a potentially unsafe position by drinking in a bar and then allowing herself to be separated from her friends, and so she was raped. She could not describe an attacker due to her diminished capacity and so she told her mother but did not try to report it to the authorities. But as a result her joy in life was diminished because she was ashamed as a result of a situation that was unjustly thrust upon her. If she had received good therapy (and there's not enough of that around) she could have been helped to realize that even if she had put herself in a riskier situation than was wise to do, humans are humans and they cannot be on guard their entire lives with every step they take. Mistakes are made and bad things happen, sometimes due to error but sometimes due to happenstance of "wrong place, wrong time" of the randomness of life and human interactions.

Her family is shattered and I'm very sad for them, for she sounded like a lovely girl with a joy in life, with college to attend and a purpose in life. She was robbed, and I don't mean the obvious sexual assault. She was robbed of peace of mind by having being ashamed thrust upon her unjustly.

Here is my larger point. Just as society is supposedly so modern and advanced and sophisticated, it actually has become less sympathetic and understanding toward the frailties of humanity. While on the one hand the police tout being more "sensitive to victims of sexual assault" (and I don't doubt that they are) on the other hand society has trained people to be extremely self critical and judgmental. This poor girl judged herself harsher than anyone and totally out of proportion to the realities of human frailties. People make mistakes and there are just enough bad people and circumstances out there that there can be a coming together of an error or a bit of a risk and a sad or dreadful consequence. But there is some strange propaganda in the air that even if society is supposed to be sympathetic toward victims that somehow the victims themselves should critique themselves in an almost "perfect human" way. This brings me back to people who work at shaming others for recreational or business purposes. While this girl did nothing wrong except allow herself to get into a vulnerable position, look around us at the vitriol of political and religious conflicts. Virtually every political campaign is now based on trying to "catch the other candidate at something wrong" and then shaming him or her. The celebrity stalking circuit is also infamous for this. When I worked in corporations, "gotcha," was used as often as the spreadsheet. And of course, touching back on the bullying, how are "less attractive" men and women made to feel? Or those with less money or power? Shamed and castrated!

So I invite any who might be reading my blog to think about what I have explained today and the profound effects misunderstanding and misusing embarrassment, personal shame and shaming someone have on society's physical and spiritual health, and most important of all, the mental balance which is lacking in so much of day to day thoughts and experiences.

Let me now also add the Catholic perspective to this. One reason people have such trouble with these concepts is that they do not go to Confession enough or at all. One reason the sacrament of Confession (mostly known nowadays as Penance and Reconciliation) exists is to help in discerning what people ought to feel personal shame about (a sin) and to bolster confidence as defense against unjust shaming or embarrassment. Catholics learn that they can tell the priest anything and the priest cannot share what he is told, even if threatened with his life. This is a healthy thing, both spiritually and mentally. When one cannot confess to someone with power to absolve one starts to have unhealthy coping mechanisms, such as projection on others of one's sins or denial. When a Catholic confesses he or she is in the presence of the priest but also Jesus Christ, who the priest is representing, for lack of better words. The priest actually is more like a coach, to use one of my favorite analogies. Some Christians think they should not have to tell a priest their sins and that "Jesus knows and forgives them." That may be true, but by not involving a sanctified human in the process you miss the most important safety net of having perspective about what is a sin, and what is not. What is something you should feel natural shame about and what can you do about it to move forward? What is something that is unjustly being put upon you, and how do you have confidence to accept what is your liability but to recognize and reject the rest? A good Confession priest is a treasure.

When I was a child I had not so much to confess and I usually had to give thought to what I could say when I had to go to Confession as a holy obligation. I'd usually say that I had unkind thoughts about someone. I also confessed when I took food or toys that weren't mine (being in a very poor family there were times I took food and the only way to get a doll at all, for example, was to take one). But otherwise I had nothing to confess. But that does not mean I do not value Confession enormously. When I would tell the priest that I had a bad thought about someone a good priest would take the time to ask and assess the circumstances. In the Confessional a priest can teach a child the difference between having a mean thought and having a righteous disapproving thought. People who do not go to Confession try to answer their own questions and dilemmas and we know how successful and honest people are in that attempt, LOL.

Thinking back to this poor girl who committed suicide after the rape. While counseling is necessary faith is also necessary. If she had been Catholic and had access to a "good Confession priest" she might well have confessed making mistakes that put her at risk, only to hear in return from the priest that she should not blame herself. Priests do more than absolve from sin; they help the person to understand and discern sin from the errors and risks of everyday life. Priests provide hope to those who have lost hope because if they can absolve even the most heinous sin that is sincerely repented, how much more can they do to absolve a person of an unjust burden of regret and despair? This is why even the Popes who trust me, have very little to confess (maybe they stole dolls and candy too ha ha) go to frequent Confession. It is not so much the litany of sins as it is the safe place to discuss in the presence of the priest empowered by Jesus Christ himself the boundaries between sin and the risks of life and human behavior. People come out of Confession feeling renewed (even if the priest gave them a whopper of a long list of prayers to say as penance!) They do not come out feeling like a worse sinner or fool when they come out, unless they have been seriously deluding themselves all along and the priest had to throw some cold water on them. In this case again, like shame being as nerve endings and pain, those feelings are necessary as signals for where one must improve in order to live better and have the fullness of hope in eternal life.

I hope this helps and God bless and support all who are grappling with these very messed up times and these types of issues in their families or individually...