The Implications of Shame

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When I was a sophomore in college I took an elective class called the Sociology of Violence, and we spent all semester reading one book that couldn’t have been more than 300 pages. I wish I could remember the name of the book now, but the name isn’t so important. What was important though, was that it was almost entirely about shame; how the most violent criminals were born into environments that caused them great shame at a very young age (trauma, abuse, poverty, hopelessness, et cetera). And how the worst criminals, the best criminals, don’t feel that sense of shame. We went on a class trip to a state prison where criminals were kept in concrete cages, and many were kept in isolation. One of the security guards told us there was never a moment of silence because the prisoners scream all night and all day. “They’re going crazy,” he said. I wondered how he didn’t also.

I’ve thought about that professor, that class, and that field trip a million times over. Shame has been called our “most dreaded emotional experience.” Brené Brown defines shame as “believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging — something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection.” We have all probably felt this depth of shame at some point, even if it was fleeting. Shame in small doses can be…