Exposing And Working With Shame Freedom From Shame

A person’s ideology is influenced by their socialisation, mine was heavily influenced by my family.

What is shame? Shame is a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior. “Shame” written by Dick Gregory, gives the reader an inside look on how shame and poverty can make an impact on someone. In this story, Dick Gregory writes it about a young boy named Richard Gregory. Gregory is a poor boy who also happens to be fatherless. He attends school, but only to see the girl he really likes, Helene. Helene is the opposite of Gregory. She is well taken care of, smart in school, and always has clean clothes. This leaves him feeling as if he needs to compete. Unlike Helene, Gregory melts the ice from the grocery so he could wash his clothes for school the next day. His behavior didn't match the other kids for reasons such as, not having a full meal to function on, and working an after school job shining shoes to get some extra change. When the time came around for children to donate their father's money to the community chest, Richard Gregory wanted to outbid everyone, especially Helene. When the teacher got around the room asking who’d like to pledge money, he offered, but the teacher got upset with him. She stated the charity work is for “Him and his kind” and pointed out that he does not even have a daddy. This brings the shame feeling to Gregory. Shame can come in many different ways. In today's time, one of the biggest forms of shame, is body shame. Body shaming is the practice of making critical, potentially humiliating comments about an individual's size or weight. Body shaming, and every other form of shaming is wrong, and is not suitable for anyone's lifestyle. Although spreading negativity can bring one down, there are pros(as well as cons) to being shamed.

Shame is known as a feeling of embarrassment of one’s actions or behavior. Words you might associate with shame would be: humiliation, regret, guilt, and discomfort. However, shame does not always equal guilt. There are many cases where shame and guilt are two different emotions. Such in the Scarlet Letter, although Hester and Dimmesdale are ashamed of their infidelity they do not necessarily regret their actions.

What are the research questions being investigated? This study looked into the relationship between shame proneness, anticipated shame due to exposure and without exposure with offending intentions in a rational choice model (Tibbetts, 1997). The specific forms of offending investigated were drunk driving and shop-lifting (Tibbetts, 1997).

Dick Gregory’s “Shame” raises two important issues – first unrequited love and experiencing shame. Though both conditions are familiar to me and I can understand the feelings of the author, I would not say that my experience is rather similar to the author’s. Even though my first love was unrequited and there were cases when I felt ashamed in front of my classmates, I have never been exposed to exactly the same situations and have never experienced exactly the same feelings as the author.

I identified two lifespan theories in this video. One is the theory of psychosocial development and second is Shame Resilience theory by Brene Brown. Erik Erikson’s theory of Psychosocial development is a theory that identified eight stages of life cycle development from infancy to early childhood. Such as; Trust verses Mistrust. In this stage infant develops trust towards the caregiver for stability. Autonomy versus shame and Doubt. Here toddlers are learning to be independents by walk and running around by themselves without the caregiver holding them. Initiative versus Guilt. This is pre-school year and playing stage. Children at this stage interact with one another in playing; also, trying to explore their

“We are a community of shame. Shame defines our view of a sexual past that segued into AIDS, confirming to us our worst fears about ourselves and lending the condemnation of bigots a truthful echo. Shame motivates our forward movement as we fearfully suppress images of gay people as sexual beings, encouraging instead non-threatening roles (parent, homeowner, or campy friend) that prove “we’re just like you.” In our community of shame, we believe that by actively forgetting the past we can erase it, and many important parts of our legacy are now being lost or willfully abandoned.” (Patrick Moore, Beyond Shame: Reclaiming the Abandoned History of Gay Sexuality, 2004, p. xxii)

Brown (2006) examined the empirical foundations for shame resilience theory (SRT) that offer the definition of shame and a conceptual identity for shame. This SRT describes the concerns of women experiencing shame of which she identified the strategies and processes of how vulnerable women develop shame resilience. She identified the various processes and strategies women use to develop shame resilience. In this article Brown described theoretically, the understanding of vulnerability, critical awareness and mutually empathetic relationships, including the concept of “speaking shame.” Brown also explored the practiced implications including the importance of psychoeducational group work. From the results of research, she defined shame as “an intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging.”

As soon as the judge ruled and sentenced an adult woman to four years and 394 day of jail, many people outside the court were outraged. The adult lady killed a construction worker, while on her way to a party. The thing is she was driving drunk, and due to her drunkenness, she didn’t notice the “construction ahead” signs. As a result, she ran over a construction worker, who after being severely injured, didn’t survive. So you might be thinking that justice was made and that’s the end of it. Well no. for those people outside the court, justice wasn’t made. Why? Because that woman who killed that worker can buy herself out of jail and out of her responsibility. If she had been given five years, then she would have to serve her sentence in

I watched two TEDtalks related to my book. The first one was called Listening to Shame. In the video Brené Brown, the author, talked about what people thought about shame and how it made them feel. She also explained what the definition of shame is and how it affected people. Brown told stories about shame and how everybody has a little built up inside of them. To help people coping with shame, she said it is good to practice resilience and to talk about it with people you trust. Also, I watched this video called The Power of Vulnerability. In this video Brown talked more on how shame and vulnerability are connected. She said shame is the fear of feeling disconnected and vulnerability

Fontes (2008) gave some good ideas on how to approach situations like this. If I was talking to the parents of a 13-year old who had been molested over a 1-year period, I would tell the parents that the son will need support, acceptance, and love from them. Shame is one of the biggest factors that results from child sexual abuse. The two main components of shame is the lack of self-worth and social worth (Fontes, 2008). Fontes (2008) mentions that “Children will decide what the abuse means to them based in large part on how the adults and children in their families respond” (pg.157). This is why I feel that the parents showing support, acceptance, and love will help their son with his healing and his future. What I say can be greatly

1) In detail, what were your thoughts/ expectations/ beliefs before, during , and after the event?

Tangney, Stuewig, and Mashek (2007) noted that high shame-prone individuals were more vulnerable to practical and significant experiences of shame as compared to their less shame-prone counterparts. These characters were more likely to experience shame as a result of the disappointments they have encountered in the past. The study further argued that those who experienced a lesser amount of shame were less likely to engage in direct, indirect, or displaced aggression when angered. While those who encountered a higher level of shame were more likely to be involved in hostile behavior. And at such, high shame-prone individuals became more vulnerable to peer influences than those who were less exposed to the shame stigma.

Before talking about different ways people go through shame, I’d like to talk about what shame is. The word shame comes from an old English “sceamu”, Dutch “schamen” and German “scham”, according to the dictionary.com, and means a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior. According to the article by Eric Posner called A Terrible Shame: “Shaming is a form of social control. It occurs when a person violates the norms of the community, and other people respond by publicly criticizing, avoiding, or ostracizing him” (2015). In other words,

How did this experience change your perception? Did it change your perception about yourself? About others? About the world? About your purpose as a human being? About the meaning of life?