Quotes About Shame

In shame-prone cultures, where parents, leaders, and administrators consciously or unconsciously encourage people to connect their self-worth to what they produce, I see disengagement, blame, gossip, stagnation, favoritism, and a total dearth of creativity and innovation.

When we are experiencing shame, we are steeped in the fear of being ridiculed, diminished or seen as flawed. We are afraid that we've exposed or revealed a part of us that jeopardizes our connection and our worthiness of acceptance.

When I think about my self-esteem, I think about who I am in relation to who I want to be, where I come from, what I've overcome and what I've accomplished. When I feel shame, I'm taken back to this place of smallness where I lose that sense of context. I'm returned to a small place—I can't see

As a shame researcher, I understand our reluctance to talk about it—shame is so powerful that we sometimes feel shame just talking about shame.

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Shame comes from outside of us—from the messages and expectations of our culture.

As we think about shame and love, the most pressing question is this: Are we practicing love? Yes, most of us are really good at professing it--sometimes ten times a day. But are we walking the talk? Are we being our most vulnerable selves? Are we showing trust, kindness, affection, and respect to our partners? It's not the lack of professing that gets us in trouble in our relationships; it's the failing to practice love that leads to hurt.

When you hold someone accountable for hurtful behaviors and they feel shame, thats not the same as shaming someone. I am responsible for holding you accountable in a respectful and productive way. I am not responsible for your emotional reaction to that accountability.

We can never become completely resistant to shame; however, we can develop the resilience we need to recognize shame, move through it constructively and grow from our experiences.

We disengage to protect ourselves from vulnerability, shame, and feeling lost and without purpose. We also disengage when we feel like the people who are leading us--our boss, our teachers, or principal, our clergy, our parents, our politicians--aren't living up to their end of the social contract.

by-products of shame—fear, blame and disconnection—and move toward the courage, compassion and connection we need to live our best, authentic lives.

When we dig past the surface, we find that shame is often what drives us to hate our bodies, fear rejection, stop taking risks or hide the experiences and parts of our lives that we fear others might judge. This same dynamic applies to feeling attacked as a mother or feeling too stupid or uneducated to voice our opinions.

You cannot shame or belittle people into changing their behaviors." When

Shame and love are grounded in vulnerability and tenderness.

Shame is the birthplace of perfectionism. Perfectionism is not striving to be our best or working toward excellence. Healthy striving is internally driven. Perfectionism is externally driven by a simple but potentially all-consuming question: What will people think?

the difference between shame and guilt is best understood as the differences between "I am bad" and "I did something bad." Guilt = I did something bad. Shame = I am bad. Shame is about who we are, and guilt is about our behaviors.

We use shame as a tool to parent, teach and discipline our children.

Rather than judgment (which exacerbates shame), empathy conveys a simple acknowledgment, "You're not alone.

shame is highly correlated with violence, aggression, depression, addiction, eating disorders, and bullying.

Shame and self-esteem are very different issues. We feel shame. We think self-esteem. Our self-esteem is based on how we see ourselves—our strengths and limitations—over time. It is how and what we think of ourselves. Shame is an emotion. It is how we feel when we have certain experiences. When we are in shame, we don't see the big picture; we don't accurately think about our strengths and limitations. We just feel alone, exposed and deeply flawed.

For most of us, being an "easy mark" has come to mean being a chump or a sucker or a pushover—shaming identities that are associated with weakness and a lack of street smarts. For the strangers who broke bread at my grandmother's house, the mark was a sign of courage and compassion.

If we understand how larger systems are contributing to our shame and we choose only to change ourselves, we become as negligent as the person who says, "I'm not changing myself, because the system is bad." Context is not the enemy of personal responsibility. Individualism is the enemy of personal responsibility.

Shame: Is fear of ridicule and belittling used to manage people and/or to keep people in line? Is self-worth tied to achievement, productivity, or compliance? Are blaming and finger-pointing norms? Are put-downs and name-calling rampant? What about favoritism? Is perfectionism an issue?

With disconnection it's a similar story. We may have a couple of hundred friends on Facebook, plus a slew of colleagues, real-life friends, and neighbors, but we feel alone and unseen. Because we are hardwired for connection, disconnection always creates pain. Feeling disconnected can be a normal part of life and relationships, but when coupled with the shame of believing that we're disconnected because we're not worthy of connection, it creates a pain that we want to numb.