Quotes About Shame

According to Dr. Hartling, in order to deal with shame, some of us move away by withdrawing, hiding, silencing ourselves, and keeping secrets. Some of us move toward by seeking to appease and please. And, some of us move against by trying to gain power over others, by being aggressive, and by using shame to fight shame (like sending really mean e-mails).

Shame breeds fear. It crushes our tolerance for vulnerability, thereby killing engagement, innovation, creativity, productivity, and trust.

I think the most important line is "When a person adapts to a loss grief is not over." It doesn't mean that we're sad the rest of our lives, it means that "grief finds a place" in our lives. Imagine a world in which we honor that place in ourselves and others rather than hiding it, ignoring it, or pretending it doesn't exist because of fear or shame.

Disengagement triggers shame and our greatest fears—the fears of being abandoned, unworthy, and unlovable.

Yes, shame is tough to talk about. But the conversation isn't nearly as dangerous as what we're creating with our silence! We all experience shame. We're all afraid to talk about it. And, the less we talk about it, the more we have it.

If we cultivate enough awareness about shame to name it and speak to it, we've basically cut it off at the knees. Just the way exposure to light was deadly for the Gremlins, language and story bring light to shame and destroy it.

When we hear stories about shame that don't fit with our experiences, our first reaction is often to distance ourselves from the experiences—"My mother would never say that" or "I don't get women who don't enjoy sex" or "She's so naïve—her husband's a wacko." The distancing turns very quickly into blame, judgment and separation.

In fact, in my research I found that shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we can change and do better.

When we choose growth over perfection, we immediately increase our shame resilience. Improvement is a far more realistic goal than perfection. Merely letting go of unattainable goals makes us less susceptible to shame. When we believe "we must be this" we ignore who or what we actually are, our capacity and our limitations. We start from the image of perfection, and of course, from perfection there is nowhere to go but down.

There we were, both of us completely engulfed in our shame stories. I was stuck in appearance and body-image fear—the most common shame trigger for women. He was afraid I would think he was weak—the most common shame trigger for men.

When it comes to Theresa's struggle, we need to understand that shame is the voice of perfectionism. Whether we're talking about appearance, work, motherhood, health or family, it's not the quest for perfection that is so painful; it's failing to meet the unattainable expectations that lead to the painful wash of shame.

Shame resilience is key to embracing our vulnerability. We can't let ourselves be seen if we're terrified by what people might think. Often 'not being good at vulnerability' means that we're damn good at shame.

we want to live and love with our whole hearts, and if we want to engage with the world from a place of worthiness, we have to talk about the things that get in the way—especially shame, fear, and vulnerability.

Women most often experience shame as a web of layered, conflicting, and competing social-community expectations. The expectations dictate who we should be, what we should be, how we should be.

We need to learn how to reality-check our goals and the pathways to them, and how to take the shame out of having to start over many, many times when our first plan fails.

if we want freedom from perfectionism, we have to make the long journey from "What will people think?" to "I am enough." That journey begins with shame resilience, self-compassion, and owning our stories.

Shame resilience is the ability to practice authenticity when we experience shame, to move through the experience without sacrificing our values, and to come out on the other side of the shame experience with more courage, compassion, and connection than we had going into it. Ultimately, shame resilience is about moving from shame to empathy—the real antidote to shame.

Last, perfectionism is not a way to avoid shame. Perfectionism is a function of shame.

Here's the crux of the struggle: I want to experience your vulnerability but I don't want to be vulnerable. Vulnerability is courage in you and inadequacy in me. I'm drawn to your vulnerability but repelled by mine. As

Shame becomes fear. Fear leads to risk aversion. Risk aversion kills innovation.

There is that American pastime known as "kidding" - with the result that everyone is ashamed and hangdog about showing the slightest enthusiasm or passion or sincere feeling about anything.

Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.

If we share our shame story with the wrong person, they can easily become one more piece of flying debris in an already dangerous storm.

Shame works like the zoom lens on a camera. When we are feeling shame, the camera is zoomed in tight and all we see is our flawed selves, alone and struggling.(page 68)