Shame

Most of us have experienced shame at some point. But what if the problem isn't simply that you feel shame? What if the real issue is the life that gets built around it?

In this episode of Truth + Conversation, Gary responds to an email from a listener who describes knowing what she wants, knowing what she needs to do, and yet feeling unable to move. She describes herself as paralyzed, as though someone has their hands around her throat. She knows better. She wants better. Still, nothing changes.

Rather than looking for another psychological explanation, Gary examines the language itself and the world that language creates.

“I know.”
“I can't.”
“I want better.”
“I'm too paralyzed.”
“I know better.”
“And I still…”

That movement—the high followed by the dip, over and over—is the terrain of shame. Knowledge isn't necessarily the problem. In fact, knowing more can become part of the machinery that keeps you exactly where you are.

The episode challenges one of the assumptions we commonly make about shame: that understanding where it came from will somehow free us from it. There may be value in understanding the past, but at some point the more important question stops being “Why shame?” and becomes “Why shame now?”

Because shame can offer something surprisingly powerful: predictability.

However painful it may be, the familiar world of shame is known. It confirms what you've already decided about yourself, your history and what's possible for your life. Moving beyond it means entering something far less comfortable—the unknown.

That's where the hurdle actually is.

The life on the other side of shame requires action, and action exposes you to uncertainty. It means choosing something before your thoughts, feelings and emotions have agreed to come along. Resistance doesn't necessarily mean you're moving in the wrong direction. Sometimes resistance is simply what happens when you begin moving beyond a life you've become conditioned to recognize.

Gary argues that life changes in the paradigm of action, however small that action might be. Instead of waiting for shame or guilt to disappear, the possibility is to choose action independently of your internal state.

There's an important distinction here. Shame is something you're experiencing. It isn't necessarily who you are.

Gary points to the way the idea can be expressed in Scottish Gaelic: rather than having shame, shame is upon you. There is you—and there is this experience called shame. Once those two things are no longer collapsed together, another possibility becomes available.

You don't have to wait until you feel differently.

You don't have to solve shame before you live.

You don't have to make shame the defining feature of your morning, your week, your relationships or your life.

You can acknowledge it: shame is upon me.

And then ask the question that matters:

Now what?

What do you do right now? Do you continue to organize your life around the shame, or do you take an action that belongs to the life you say you want?

A life defined by shame is a life of the predictable.

The alternative isn't necessarily comfortable. It isn't necessarily easy. But it is available.

And it begins with action.