How to manage shame

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1:04Kimberley Wilson:Hello and welcome. I'm Kimberly Wilson. I'm a counselling psychologist and this is Complex. The psychology podcast that helps you steer your way through the foggy and smoggy world of advice that's out there about our mental health. In today's episode, I'm exploring shame. Now shame is one of those so-called self-conscious emotions It belongs in the same family as guilt and embarrassment But it's not very well researched because Ironically, we don't actually like to think or talk about it very much But it is an emotion that nearly all of us feel at one time or another And you might very easily experience the sensation of shame When you don't need to And what I mean by that is that bullying voice inside your head telling you that there's something inherently wrong or bad about you, when actually, and let me be very clear about this, there really isn't.

2:11Kimberley Wilson:It's something that I see all the time in the therapy room, but I don't hear many conversations about shame in everyday life. And so that is exactly what we're going to do in today's episode. Turn and look at shame in the face. Because I and my expert guest are here to hold your hand and face the ghoul of shame. So let me be your guide from the icy pavement of misinformation to the crocus-filled garden path of understanding.

2:47Kimberley Wilson:I am extremely pleased to invite into the Complex studio today clinical psychologist, author and illustrator Dr Emma Hepburn, also known as Psychology Mum on social media. Hi Emma. Hello Kimberly. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your work please? So I'm a clinical psychologist. I've been a psychologist for over 20 years now and have worked with a range of people, children, adults and also people who have had brain injuries so working in the field of neuropsychology. Several years ago I started writing books and illustrating psychology concepts with the idea that we can take what's in the clinic room and make it more accessible and usable for people.

3:28Kimberley Wilson:Thank you for being here and let's get into the complexity.

3:36Kimberley Wilson:okay i love to start with a definition and that feels especially relevant with a topic like shame so emma can you give us its clinical definition so shame is a really painful and difficult emotion and it's really about public perception or self-perception believing that there's something wrong with us or that we have transgressed a social norm in some way. It is really that kind of sinking feel in the stomach. And I think the thing about shame is it is very hidden. I describe it as almost like a network throughout your brain. It's kind of in there. You don't always see it. So it influences you without often being aware it's there.

4:15So unlike guilt, where maybe I have done something wrong, we think I am wrong. There's something fundamentally wrong with me.

4:23Kimberley Wilson:And that's a really important distinction because I think we really do collapse guilt and shame together. But what you're saying is guilt says it's my behaviour that is transgressive. But shame is it's me fundamentally that's transgressive. Is that right? Yeah, absolutely. And we can think of an example about that. If at work, your manager says to you, oh, you shouldn't have done it like that. You can say, okay, guilt might say I've done it wrong. How could I do it differently? Shame would say this means there's something fundamentally wrong with how I operate or fundamentally wrong with me. and I feel like that distinction is really important to how we respond to these two different emotions right so if it's guilt which is about my behavior or an action I can change that I can fix it I can remedy it but if it's shame and it's me that feels much more difficult to address so there's some nice research that shows if we experience guilt we're more likely to look at a situation objectively and think what can I do about this whereas if we experience shame we're going to have a lot more negative emotions about it and we're going to want to hide from it and push it away and try and not show that element of ourselves again because it is fundamentally something wrong with us.

5:38Kimberley Wilson:And I think shame can show up in lots of different ways when someone has been a victim of a crime. The sense that, you know, you were so silly or so foolish or somehow deserving of what happened to you. But then there's that kind of shame that emerges when actually we haven't done anything really terrible or transgressive, but as you say, our self-perception, that internal bully, comes to kind of persecute us and follow us around. We can feel shame about perfectly normal experiences. So for example, many of us will experience poor mental health, but often we shame ourselves for experiencing poor mental health because we think we shouldn't.

6:18We think we should be feeling happy or feeling okay most of the time. and therefore there's a gap between our actual experience and where we think we should be. And that gap leads to shame because we think if we should be like that, how most people are, but we're like this, there's something wrong with us.

6:35Kimberley Wilson:And then of course we hide that. I think that's the type of shame that we're going to really focus on in today's episode. The one that kind of emerges as this harsh inner voice that won't leave you alone, won't give you any inner peace. So let's dig into the complexity.

6:56Kimberley Wilson:so emma we have had a message passed on to us from someone i'm going to call hannah to protect their identity i'm going to read the message and i'd love you to tell me what you think hannah says i was recently asked to manage a project i was especially pleased because i'm freelance and i've found work hard to come by in the last few years first off i had to oversee a team of fellow staff on a remote call. As we were working through what needed to be done, I gradually realised I'd simply forgotten to research a key element of the project. I felt sick and panicky with the shame of it all. The next day I contacted the organisation to tell them I couldn't take on the project.

7:42Kimberley Wilson:They were surprisingly nice about it, but the feeling of shame still lingers. Thank you Hannah for sending us your message. Emma what is your response to that? So it's really interesting because Hannah feels shame about forgetting something. Now forgetting is a perfectly normal behaviour. We all forget things or forget to do things but people perceive her badly and also in a way that will is about her whole kind of personality or work and then she's putting that on herself. It almost sounds like a fear of being found out or people thinking she's incompetent. But then there's something interesting that she did afterwards because she avoided actually interrogating that at all.

8:24She withdrew from it. So she can never find out how people actually perceived her. Did they even notice at all? Could she have never seen how people actually respond to it? So she withdrew because of the shame, which is what people tend to do. They avoid, they suppress, they move away from what they're fearful of. But they never find out if their fear is actually true or not.

8:43Kimberley Wilson:and that's such a powerful example of the impact of shame because so much of what we think is terrible about us is so often just a normal part of the human experience yeah absolutely so thinking about Hannah and her story why is it that we can feel shame about normal things when we don't really need to, when we really haven't done anything terribly wrong? It's the belief and the meaning we take from that. So, you know, for example, a normal everyday event, you know, experiencing difficult emotions. We all experience difficult emotions. But then if we take that to mean there's something different or abnormal about us, we start to apply that we are somehow different, somehow abnormal, somehow not the same as other people.

9:38And if that's how we feel about it, we then need to hide it and tuck it away. We're almost stigmatising ourselves. And in fact, you know, there's a really nice research by Patrick Corrigan that looks at stigma and he classifies two types of stigma. Public stigma, which is negative beliefs about certain traits, characteristics or groups of people. And we can often take this public stigma and internalise it to ourselves. So that becomes personal stigma. We stigmatise ourselves for these public beliefs that people have and think there's something wrong with us. So, for example, there's a lot of stigma around mental health and mental illness.

10:14And this group is stigmatised in society. There's public perceptions, negative public perceptions about mental health. And therefore, we start to apply those to ourselves if we're experiencing poor mental health. We think that we shouldn't be experiencing that and we don't kind of expose it into the open and share it and realise it's a perfectly normal human emotion.

10:31Kimberley Wilson:Yes, thank you. and as you say shame can show up alongside mental health conditions such as depression PTSD and ADHD and it's really important that we're aware of that

10:47Kimberley Wilson:you specialize in parts of your work in neuropsychology the relationship between what's happening in the brain and our emotional experience so what is happening in our brains when we experience shame? Yes, so emotions are really a label we put on that physical sensation we're feeling in the context we're in. So it's likely that we're experiencing a physiological stress response in some way and then because we're perceiving the situation that's doing something wrong we then label it as shame. So we're likely to have an increased kind of stress response, physiological arousal in some way but it's really difficult to pinpoint an part of the brain that's associated with her particular emotion because it's so language linked and experience linked and culturally linked.

11:32Kimberley Wilson:And so we've identified all of these negative, painful experiences associated with shame. Why do we experience it then? What is its purpose? Yeah, absolutely. Shame really is thought to be about transgressing social norms. So if we transgress a social norm, then we're out with what the group should be doing. So we go back and we adapt our behaviour back to the group's normal behaviour. Now that can be helpful because if we do transgress a social norm, then we do want to shift that behaviour. But often we think we transgress social norms when they're not actually social norms. And I think what's interesting about shame, it can be used by people to control behaviour or suppress behaviour as well.

12:14So for example, in work, if somebody's speaking up and you don't want them to speak up, you might make them feel they're doing something wrong or something wrong with them. And then that behaviour is likely to stop. so people do use shame to control behavior as well.

12:28Kimberley Wilson:And I think it's so important for us to interrogate those social norms because we're social animals. We're born into networks. It's really important for our well-being to have a sense of belonging and so we do try to find our way back to what is socially expected of us which is fine as long as those norms are healthy and normal and real. For example, the idea that there is one ideal body shape is a social norm. It's an expectation that completely ignores biological, genetic difference, history with food. So everybody trying to conform to that social norm is dysfunctional. Yet people feel huge amounts of shame if their body doesn't fit that prescribed way of looking.

13:20and the other example I can think of is in blame or toxic cultures at work where that's the norm and if we try to conform to that norm then actually it's unhelpful we want people speaking up and changing things but often shame and blame is part of that culture and when people do speak up they're blamed and then they feel shame so they kind of shut down and we maintain that culture by doing that. Yes. I always want people to question whenever someone says to them, you should be

13:50Kimberley Wilson:ashamed about that. Aren't you ashamed of that? Because that mobilisation of shame is so powerful and it is really the mechanics of control. And I think from clinical experience, I think most people feel shame when they shouldn't experience shame. So they haven't actually transgressed a social norm or done something wrong. They just believe they have. So we do need to question, what am I telling myself? And what standards am I living by? Whose standards are these? And are they the standards I actually believe in? Or do I actually believe something else? Yes. And if we think about Hannah, she experienced really intense shame about this forgetting.

14:28Kimberley Wilson:And we might be able to think of people who feel absolutely fine about forgetting, and they would happily admit to it and it would be okay. What makes one person more vulnerable to shame than someone else. As psychologists we'd be looking at multiple factors. One of those is self-esteem and beliefs about ourselves. So what do we believe about ourselves? Do we believe that we are competent? Do we think highly of ourselves or just good enough about ourselves? So that's one of them. But obviously our experiences as well are critical and that might be childhood experiences, messages you've been given about yourself or messages you've been given about what societal norms are, which you think you're transgressing.

15:06Kimberley Wilson:You know, in childhood, were you allowed to make mistakes? Were you kept to incredibly high standards? Were you shamed or compared to other people when you made mistakes? And not just with mistakes, with emotions as well. Were you allowed to show difficult emotions? Were you allowed to be sad? Were you told you had to suppress those emotions and they weren't normal? We also know that shame is particularly intense during adolescence. research tells us that one in three teenagers reported feeling ashamed of their bodies for example do you have any thoughts on why shame might be particularly intense at this period of life research does show that shame increases and is at a peak at adolescence and then decreases up to about the age of 50 so we become more confident and less shameful about ourselves but then starts to increase again actually as we get older as well so when we think about adolescence they're starting to form their self-belief and find out who they are as people, it's also a time when social norms are really important and you're also highly acutely aware of other people's perceptions and how people respond to you.

16:12Also, teenagers can quite often comment on things that are different because of this. So it might have been brought to their attention and they might have experienced bullying or just comments about being different.

16:22Kimberley Wilson:Yes, and so they start to be much more aware of social expectations are slightly moving away from the family norms and more into kind of what the world is telling them they should and shouldn't be like. And do we have any data on potentially the role of social media in shaping those norms or affecting shame in any way? Not specifically on shame, but we do know quite a lot about how social media impacts on how people feel and the comparisons people make. So social media is full of kind of highlight reels as we We know it's full of people trying to look their best. And if we look upwards to them and think we're doing worse than them, so it becomes a gap between where we think we should be and where we are, then that can lead to feeling worse.

17:04Kimberley Wilson:So there's this big gap between my reality and this idealised, perfected vision of what I could or should be. Yeah, exactly. What you should be. We come back to should again. And of course, social media also has an element of, it lends itself very easily to bullying and criticism as well and that can come through you know kind of direct comments on what people put out there, criticism about their appearance, criticism about them as a person and of course that leads to shame as well.

17:38Kimberley Wilson:Okay I feel like we're really kind of pulling shame apart and dressing it down which is fantastic. I wonder whether we can look at shame on a scale. What would utter shamelessness look like, Emma? And is it desirable? Should we aspire to it? No, is the simple answer. You know, I think we all require a degree of self-reflection and to recognise when we do transgress a norm, we hurt somebody, we do something wrong. There are things in life to be shameful about and we need to adapt our behaviour, apologise or recognise that what we're doing is not helpful for us or other people. Okay, so if I were utterly shameless I might be a slightly problematic person.

18:32Kimberley Wilson:Potentially. Potentially. Okay, and if we look at the other end, someone who experiences is intense shame. What might that look like and what might the consequences be for that individual? So if we experience shame about fundamentally who we are as people and everything we do, shame leads us to want to hide and mask that and avoid it. So we'll be feeling difficult emotions a lot of the time. And we do know that increased shame is linked to poorer mental health and wellbeing. So if you're experiencing shame all the time, you're more likely to experience depression, anxiety potentially as well other mental health difficulties so it really is important to deal with that and target it and look at and pull apart and think about where that comes from.

19:18Kimberley Wilson:Yes thank you for saying that because we also see shame as one of the big risk factors from someone moving from depressive thoughts to suicidal ideation and so really addressing shame and looking at it is really important for someone's safety. Absolutely. And so it sounds like either extreme is not great for us or other people. Is there a healthy level of shame or should we just banish shame altogether? What's the kind of healthy medium? So I think it's recognising if you do feel shame, is it justified? Should I actually be experiencing shame about this? Have I actually done something fundamentally wrong?

19:57So for example, if you get angry all the time and that's impacting on your family, then maybe it's correct to feel shame, but then what can you do about it? Move on to think what can I do about this? And rather than seeing it's fundamentally something wrong with you thinking I get angry and that's unhelpful how can I shift that?

20:14Kimberley Wilson:That's a lovely point because the shame along with the withdrawal adds a kind of paralysis you know you get stuck in shame, you can't move and what you're saying is now what? What should I do? What is the shift that I can make? Yeah absolutely Shame doesn't actually lead to changing behaviours in the same way that guilt does shame is more likely to lead to paralysis and getting stuck in the behaviour. So if we can move that on and say, OK, I'm feeling shameful. What is I'm feeling shameful about? Define it rather than a kind of intrinsic characteristic or personality factor. So we're moving away from this general kind of belief that that's who we are as people to targeting the behaviour and recognising the behaviour and its implications and then thinking, how can I change that?

20:56Kimberley Wilson:That's really lovely because it feels fundamentally optimistic. Yeah, absolutely.

21:05Kimberley Wilson:Lovely. And this feels like we're moving into practical application solutions for the listener. So for anyone who's listening and they can kind of identify aspects of their story in this episode, what would you say are some of the first steps that people can start to take to just begin to unburden themselves of shame? So the very first step, I'd say, is very, very simple. it's recognise and notice that shame is there. Shame is a really creepy insidious emotion it gets into your brain and you don't even notice it speaking to you so notice that shame is there and you might notice that because of how you're speaking to yourself you might be telling yourself that you're doing something wrong or you shouldn't be feeling that way or you might notice that because of how you're feeling so first of all spot shame then we can start to interrogate it so what am I feeling shameful about what am I telling myself about this what's my inner critic saying I'm going to give you an example about this from my own experience so I recently experienced burnout and I noticed that I was telling myself I shouldn't be feeling this way and that's an indication that shame's speaking we know that most people at some point experience burnout it's very high prevalence and that there's nothing abnormal or weird about that it's just a reaction to what's going on in your life.

22:25But I was saying there was something wrong with me. So I pulled shame out and saying, what does it tell me? Then you've got to say, why am I telling myself that? And that's because of societal beliefs around emotions. Even as a psychologist, I don't really believe that.

22:37Kimberley Wilson:Well, even more so though, because you're the expert. You've had years of training. You should know how to manage your feelings. Exactly. So that's what shame's telling me. Can I really speak about this? If I'm experiencing it, of course you can. But what is shame telling you? and do I really believe that? So of course I don't really believe that people should experience burnout or that it's a failure to experience burnout or that you shouldn't be doing things in the way you're doing it. It's an experience to learn from. That's what I truly believe. But the other thing that we do as well is we blame ourselves for things that aren't our fault.

23:08So we might be saying, putting the blame on ourselves for a particular situation that's occurred and that can be something really difficult. So then we need to step back and say, is this really my fault and responsibility? there's always things we could do differently every single one of us but actually it's not usually your fault if you get ill or if you've you know if something's happened to you and in fact some events we blame ourselves like you know childhood abuse is definitely not our fault so are we blaming ourselves for things that are not our fault it's so often the case and thank you for