It has been over a week since my latest book, An Insight into Shame, was published and so I felt it was about time I highlighted it in a blog post! Co-written with Heather Churchill, it looks at the difference between shame and guilt, how psychologists believe shame develops in each of us, various approaches to dealing with the threat of shame, understanding our own experiences with shame and finding healing from wounds from the past.
Heather is the Head of Counselling Training at Waverley Abbey College and has years of experience as a trainer, therapist and supervisor. It was a privilege to work on this book with her – I learned a great deal from her that has been so useful already.
We have included lots of real-life stories in the book, including our own. As I sometimes run an ‘unmasked: stories of authenticity’ blog on a Friday, I thought I’d share an extract that reveals how shame affected both of us right back in our childhoods.
There are a wide variety of theories that have been developed about shame, such as Jungian, Cognitive Behavioral, Psychodynamic etc. But, to simplify all their findings, it is probably accurate to say that the emotion of shame is believed by psychologists to be something that is formed early on in childhood. There is now almost universal agreement that the emotion of shame emerges during the toddler stage.[i]
Psychologists believe that shame plays a key role in the development of the self, impacting the way a person views and evaluates themselves. They recognise that children can evaluate from a surprisingly young age and form a ‘picture’ of themselves, which is basically an internalised view of who they are.[ii] Children also develop a view about how others perceive them. In many ways, psychologists would say that the only way a child can begin to know themselves is through the eyes of those who are closest to them – generally their parents or main early care givers.[iii]
Any difficulties in the relationships with care givers will have a huge impact at this stage, as high levels of shame are likely to develop. So we can see that shame is central to a person’s developing sense of self.
Relationships with early care givers are not the only influences on the development of shame. Our early relationships with others can also be influential too, as our own memories of childhood interactions below illustrate.
Claire can still remember two instances at school in which she felt deep shame – just bringing them to mind causes the feelings to resurface. She moved around a lot as a child; having spent some time in America she stood in front of her new class back in England, a few days after a boy from Australia had started. She was greeted with a boy saying ‘not another one’ and felt such shame she wanted the ground to swallow her up. She continued to feel like an outsider much of the time. And, at the same school, she also regularly experienced the dreaded ‘walk of shame’ over to the PE team that had been forced to take her, as she was the only person not to have been picked to be on a team.
Heather also has an early memory of when she was about four years old. Her class teacher was away so the headmaster was in charge of the class. She was asked to write something and Heather remembers trying really hard to write in her best handwriting. The headmaster walked around the class and stopped when he reached Heather’s work. He picked it up, tore it up and put it in the rubbish bin. Heather felt humiliated, embarrassed and ashamed, and picked up a belief that she was not good enough – even at the early age of four.
We go on to look at how these early experiences affect the way that we respond to the threat of shame even today.
An Insight into shame is published by CWR and can be purchased here.
[i]R.L. Mills, ‘Taking stock of the developmental literature on shame’, Developmental Review, Vol 25, Issue 1, 2005, pp26-63
[ii]R. Mills, P. Hastings, L. Serbib, D. Stack, J. Abela, K. Arbeau, and D. Lall, ‘Depressogenic Thinking and Shame Proneness in the Development of Internalisng Problems’, Child Psychiatry and Human Development, Vol 46, Issue 2, 2015, pp194–208
[iii]J. Bradshaw, Healing the Shame that binds you, (Florida: Health Communications, 2005), p8