Shame and Guilt
It may seem like an extreme statement to say that the childhood described in this book would
have done no damage to me, or to my weight and my eating patterns, were it not for the
pathological shaming that accompanied almost every moment of my childhood. Without
shame, the incidents described would have been family challenges that would have stimulated
the development of problem-solving attitudes and skills. But shame, the feeling of badness,
damaged the lives of four people, at least for a time.
It is also important to know that everyone in that generation was using shame to get their way
with children. Sexual shaming was everywhere in the early 1950's. My parents actually thought
that they were attempting to produce "good" children with all that shaming. Most parents
believed that a child who felt ashamed would develop a strong conscience, form useful habits
for living, and eventually become "good" adults. In fact, they produced obsessive-compulsive
qualities mixed with an odd kind of narcissism, the kind that feels perpetually sorry for oneself
and produces depression.
For the record, shame is used to help control a child who is not developmentally old enough to
understand guilt. Until a child is approximately age five, he cannot understand the difference
between knowledge that a particular action is wrong (guilt) and the feeling that oneself is bad
and unworthy of love (shame). It is appropriately used to protect a child's life, or to deter him
from destructive behavior during early childhood. During those years, sexual shame should
not be a part of child-rearing. From the age of five, however, parents must teach a child why
particular actions are hurtful, and this is indeed necessary to the healthy development of
conscience, and thus the capacity for normal, useful guilt.
The problem of unhealthy sexual shame is one reason that Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell and
Sophia Loren were important to American history. They demonstrated unabashed pleasure in
their womanly qualities, their attractiveness and their sexuality. They were among the first ones
to say to the world: "I am woman, and my sexuality is not just for you to exploit; it is for me to
enjoy." They were a healthy turning point in our culture.
But those freedoms have developed to an extreme. Now we bemoan the excessive sexual
freedom, as well as exploitation of human sexuality by the entertainment media. Sometimes I
worry about the unscientific attitudes being circulated about female sexuality, including false
beliefs about sexual pleasure. But nobody tucks a child's skirt into her panties to shame her
anymore. For all our current problems with sexuality, we are far better off than we were.
There are many books that can be obtained on the subject of shame. To summarize a world of
knowledge, shame is that feeling that one is not acceptable as a person. Guilt, by contrast, is
liberating, because it deals with specific wrong-doing, leading to problem-solving, remedy of
error, and a notion that one belongs to human community.
Shame is felt by children, who cognitively are too undeveloped to experience guilt. A two year
old child cannot say to himself, "I have just soiled my pants. I guess I better improve." He says
to himself, while his mother is scolding him for his error, "I am a bad boy."
Shame is meant to be a developmental stepping stone towards the capacity for healthy guilt.
And healthy guilt is the cornerstone of true human completeness, including the development of
both culture and community. Healthy guilt presupposes that human protoplasm is important
enough to reach for fulfillment, important enough to be in relationship with God, important
enough to be creative or scientific, important enough to live together in community, and
important enough to seek improvement and human progress. Without guilt we have no sense
of human community, no sense of the meaning of our actions, only a long series of destructive
or disconnected impulses. Guilt makes us whole. Guilt gives us purpose. Guilt brings us
together. Guilt raises us up as high as the human species can reach. Guilt helps us solve
problems and improve ourselves. Guilt is good.
Shame, by contrast, was meant to be temporary, until a child's brain was well-developed
enough to differentiate between the parts of a picture and the picture as a whole. Guilt is
related to parts of our experience of ourself, parts that can be altered by responsible behavior.
Shame is related to the picture of ourself as a whole, a picture that forms a self-image, and a
self-image that dominates patterns of perception, interpretation and action.
Shame does not have to be taught to young children by their parents. Shame is a normal
outgrowth of the need of the child to be attached to parents, siblings and family. Shame in
adulthood prevents us from acting in grossly destructive ways. We don't have to be taught.
Every human being wants to perceive himself/herself as a fundamentally acceptable person.
Healthy people have enough shame, without help from anyone, to abstain from blowing up
buildings, murder, sadism, pathological lying, and self-humiliation.
But children who are excessively shamed, or who are prevented from feeling normal shame,
may become "shameless". My father had been shamed by a pathological, possibly evil,
mother until he enjoyed degrading others. He was shameless, and he never developed a
capacity for normal guilt, guilt that would have helped him reform his behavior and solve his
problems. My mother had felt shamed throughout her childhood, then later by her own
choices, so she passed that state of being on to both of her children. Many people use
shame-based punishments to maim and disfigure their children's self-images and halt their
normal emotional development.
Shame never stops until someone grows enough humanity to develop the guilt that is
necessary to change thoughts, words and behavior. True guilt is the antidote to shame-based
illnesses, including narcissism, the borderline disorder and paranoia. That is why I celebrate
with my clients those moments when they are finally able to take responsibility for action that
does not work in the real world; that is good, healthy, responsible guilt. It means that shame
can no longer dominate that individual's life, love and productivity.
That is also why the Christian concept of grace is so important. We all have felt like "a
worthless piece of shit". Sometimes our parents make it worse. But there must come a
moment when we know that we are more important to God than we have understood, and that
we as human beings are more important than our inadequacies and errors.
I have often felt that body fat can become a method of "dissociation". This is a process by
which a person symbolically removes something felt to be dangerous to the personality to a
place outside of their "self". The fat is something that can be worn externally, like a suit of
armor, like tar and feathers, or sackcloth and ashes. The constant, debilitating messages of
shame can be diverted from the self, by carrying it dissociatively as fat.
The person is then relatively free to live a normal life, afflicted by fat, but able to live and love
creatively. The problem is that if the
fat is removed, then the shame will have to be faced, and either reintegrated or resolved. If the
newly slim person does not understand her own shame-based issues, she may feel happily
"shameless" simply because her body fat is gone. This will backfire. Poor choices will bring
shame back into her experience of herself, like a boomerang returning to its source, creating a
renewed need to protect the consciousness from a sense of "badness", and calling for
immediate desperate remedy. Often this is simply a return to depression, eating, and the
restoration of fatness.
This is accentuated by the fact that shame-based people afflict their own unhealthy attitudes on
the person who has lost weight. The person who has lost weight may have never "acted out",
partly because her felt shame has helped her to place limits on herself, partly because her
fatness decreases her opportunities. In fact, other people may sincerely believe that her
shame and her fat have prevented her from indulging in mischief in her life. Many people give
words to their false beliefs that fat people are sexy people, locked in a cage, just raring to get
out! In other words, as has been noted in previous chapters, fat people are assumed to not
have a normal conscience, that is, a normal sense of restraint related to a healthy capacity for
normal guilt. But now because of weight loss, she suddenly has opportunity for increased
creativity, health, love, satisfaction and fulfillment. And this fact is somehow threatening to
other shame-based people and groups who limit their own happiness and productivity with
shame-based restrictions. They project onto the person who has lost weight all their own
yearnings to be free of a life inhibited by unhealthy shame!
For all of these reasons, the newly slim person needs a strong capacity for normal, healthy
guilt to provide guidance during the turbulent change in self-image that weight change brings.
Only a healthy sense of responsibility can guide personal behavior. A healthy compassion
must simultaneously be extended to the many people who find another person's freedom
frightening and upsetting.
This healthy guilt is exactly what the child growing up in a shame-based family does not have.
It will have to be learned, and perhaps received by grace. It is one of the keys to success in
permanent relief from the madness of the maintenance of body fat.
..
It may seem like an extreme statement to say that the childhood described in this book would
have done no damage to me, or to my weight and my eating patterns, were it not for the
pathological shaming that accompanied almost every moment of my childhood. Without
shame, the incidents described would have been family challenges that would have stimulated
the development of problem-solving attitudes and skills. But shame, the feeling of badness,
damaged the lives of four people, at least for a time.
It is also important to know that everyone in that generation was using shame to get their way
with children. Sexual shaming was everywhere in the early 1950's. My parents actually thought
that they were attempting to produce "good" children with all that shaming. Most parents
believed that a child who felt ashamed would develop a strong conscience, form useful habits
for living, and eventually become "good" adults. In fact, they produced obsessive-compulsive
qualities mixed with an odd kind of narcissism, the kind that feels perpetually sorry for oneself
and produces depression.
For the record, shame is used to help control a child who is not developmentally old enough to
understand guilt. Until a child is approximately age five, he cannot understand the difference
between knowledge that a particular action is wrong (guilt) and the feeling that oneself is bad
and unworthy of love (shame). It is appropriately used to protect a child's life, or to deter him
from destructive behavior during early childhood. During those years, sexual shame should
not be a part of child-rearing. From the age of five, however, parents must teach a child why
particular actions are hurtful, and this is indeed necessary to the healthy development of
conscience, and thus the capacity for normal, useful guilt.
The problem of unhealthy sexual shame is one reason that Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell and
Sophia Loren were important to American history. They demonstrated unabashed pleasure in
their womanly qualities, their attractiveness and their sexuality. They were among the first ones
to say to the world: "I am woman, and my sexuality is not just for you to exploit; it is for me to
enjoy." They were a healthy turning point in our culture.
But those freedoms have developed to an extreme. Now we bemoan the excessive sexual
freedom, as well as exploitation of human sexuality by the entertainment media. Sometimes I
worry about the unscientific attitudes being circulated about female sexuality, including false
beliefs about sexual pleasure. But nobody tucks a child's skirt into her panties to shame her
anymore. For all our current problems with sexuality, we are far better off than we were.
There are many books that can be obtained on the subject of shame. To summarize a world of
knowledge, shame is that feeling that one is not acceptable as a person. Guilt, by contrast, is
liberating, because it deals with specific wrong-doing, leading to problem-solving, remedy of
error, and a notion that one belongs to human community.
Shame is felt by children, who cognitively are too undeveloped to experience guilt. A two year
old child cannot say to himself, "I have just soiled my pants. I guess I better improve." He says
to himself, while his mother is scolding him for his error, "I am a bad boy."
Shame is meant to be a developmental stepping stone towards the capacity for healthy guilt.
And healthy guilt is the cornerstone of true human completeness, including the development of
both culture and community. Healthy guilt presupposes that human protoplasm is important
enough to reach for fulfillment, important enough to be in relationship with God, important
enough to be creative or scientific, important enough to live together in community, and
important enough to seek improvement and human progress. Without guilt we have no sense
of human community, no sense of the meaning of our actions, only a long series of destructive
or disconnected impulses. Guilt makes us whole. Guilt gives us purpose. Guilt brings us
together. Guilt raises us up as high as the human species can reach. Guilt helps us solve
problems and improve ourselves. Guilt is good.
Shame, by contrast, was meant to be temporary, until a child's brain was well-developed
enough to differentiate between the parts of a picture and the picture as a whole. Guilt is
related to parts of our experience of ourself, parts that can be altered by responsible behavior.
Shame is related to the picture of ourself as a whole, a picture that forms a self-image, and a
self-image that dominates patterns of perception, interpretation and action.
Shame does not have to be taught to young children by their parents. Shame is a normal
outgrowth of the need of the child to be attached to parents, siblings and family. Shame in
adulthood prevents us from acting in grossly destructive ways. We don't have to be taught.
Every human being wants to perceive himself/herself as a fundamentally acceptable person.
Healthy people have enough shame, without help from anyone, to abstain from blowing up
buildings, murder, sadism, pathological lying, and self-humiliation.
But children who are excessively shamed, or who are prevented from feeling normal shame,
may become "shameless". My father had been shamed by a pathological, possibly evil,
mother until he enjoyed degrading others. He was shameless, and he never developed a
capacity for normal guilt, guilt that would have helped him reform his behavior and solve his
problems. My mother had felt shamed throughout her childhood, then later by her own
choices, so she passed that state of being on to both of her children. Many people use
shame-based punishments to maim and disfigure their children's self-images and halt their
normal emotional development.
Shame never stops until someone grows enough humanity to develop the guilt that is
necessary to change thoughts, words and behavior. True guilt is the antidote to shame-based
illnesses, including narcissism, the borderline disorder and paranoia. That is why I celebrate
with my clients those moments when they are finally able to take responsibility for action that
does not work in the real world; that is good, healthy, responsible guilt. It means that shame
can no longer dominate that individual's life, love and productivity.
That is also why the Christian concept of grace is so important. We all have felt like "a
worthless piece of shit". Sometimes our parents make it worse. But there must come a
moment when we know that we are more important to God than we have understood, and that
we as human beings are more important than our inadequacies and errors.
I have often felt that body fat can become a method of "dissociation". This is a process by
which a person symbolically removes something felt to be dangerous to the personality to a
place outside of their "self". The fat is something that can be worn externally, like a suit of
armor, like tar and feathers, or sackcloth and ashes. The constant, debilitating messages of
shame can be diverted from the self, by carrying it dissociatively as fat.
The person is then relatively free to live a normal life, afflicted by fat, but able to live and love
creatively. The problem is that if the
fat is removed, then the shame will have to be faced, and either reintegrated or resolved. If the
newly slim person does not understand her own shame-based issues, she may feel happily
"shameless" simply because her body fat is gone. This will backfire. Poor choices will bring
shame back into her experience of herself, like a boomerang returning to its source, creating a
renewed need to protect the consciousness from a sense of "badness", and calling for
immediate desperate remedy. Often this is simply a return to depression, eating, and the
restoration of fatness.
This is accentuated by the fact that shame-based people afflict their own unhealthy attitudes on
the person who has lost weight. The person who has lost weight may have never "acted out",
partly because her felt shame has helped her to place limits on herself, partly because her
fatness decreases her opportunities. In fact, other people may sincerely believe that her
shame and her fat have prevented her from indulging in mischief in her life. Many people give
words to their false beliefs that fat people are sexy people, locked in a cage, just raring to get
out! In other words, as has been noted in previous chapters, fat people are assumed to not
have a normal conscience, that is, a normal sense of restraint related to a healthy capacity for
normal guilt. But now because of weight loss, she suddenly has opportunity for increased
creativity, health, love, satisfaction and fulfillment. And this fact is somehow threatening to
other shame-based people and groups who limit their own happiness and productivity with
shame-based restrictions. They project onto the person who has lost weight all their own
yearnings to be free of a life inhibited by unhealthy shame!
For all of these reasons, the newly slim person needs a strong capacity for normal, healthy
guilt to provide guidance during the turbulent change in self-image that weight change brings.
Only a healthy sense of responsibility can guide personal behavior. A healthy compassion
must simultaneously be extended to the many people who find another person's freedom
frightening and upsetting.
This healthy guilt is exactly what the child growing up in a shame-based family does not have.
It will have to be learned, and perhaps received by grace. It is one of the keys to success in
permanent relief from the madness of the maintenance of body fat.
..
| .The fathers eat sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.... Ezekiel 18:2b NIV You will have plenty to eat, until you are full, and you will praise the name of the Lord your God, who has worked wonders for you; never again will my people be shamed. Joel 2:26 NIV Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame. Psalm 34:5 NIV |
© Copyright by Nancy Carter, LCSW, ACSW
Shame and Guilt
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