Recently I wrote a piece arguing that we should befriend and welcome shame. I described the insights of wise teachers–those who teach us that there is such a thing as healthy shame and that weirdly healthy shame is being negatively shamed nearly out of existence. The basic argument was that there’s a lack of differentiation and understanding of healthy versus unhealthy shame–how to welcome the first into our lives and not enact the latter. I talked in particular about the gifts healthy shame has brought to my life of late–in particularly feelings I’ve been having of shame around trying to build my business and not being very good at certain key portions of it.
Since writing that piece, my ears are much more attuned to language around shame. In particular, I’m more cognizant to sensitive language around shame in relation to personal development, politics, and spirituality, the areas of my interest.
In particular, I’ve been noticing a whole lot of teachings describing themselves as promoting X Without Shame. X there could be Sex, Wealth, Happiness, Authentic Power, whatever.
Once we take the distinction between healthy and unhealthy shame into account, we can see why, for example, the push for having X Without Shame is so very problematic (if you need to learn what that distinction is, read this piece).
This “without shame” trend is really dominant right now. Shame has become the new pariah. Of course this push towards no shame can of course engender a lot of (negative) shame in someone for having or feeling shame. They’d be made to feel inferior for having shame (the very definition of negative shame btw). Maybe even healthy shame, which they should rightly have (e.g. feelings of proper remorse).
When someone says they are teaching say Owning Your Power Without Shame what they (hopefully) mean is they are teaching how to release negative shame in relationship to accessing and expressing our inherent capacities and gifts. But if they don’t hold the distinction between healthy and unhealthy shame in clear view, they may well be pushing down the very real need we all for healthy shame.
Since healthy shame is so closely connected to (healthy) remorse, empathy, and moral conscience, sending all forms of shame into the abyss–both healthy and unhealthy–leaves the door wide open to serious unethical behavior. As an example, consider a teaching about Owning Wealth Without Shame (there are plenty of these out there whether they use that exact wording or not). Let’s imagine in this not-entirely-hypothetical teaching there isn’t clarity between healthy and unhealthy shame. In such a case, we should not be surprised that the teaching would led to a view that we should all become ridiculously wealthy (in explicitly financial terms) and have no shame about it. And that any potential critiques of such a view would immediately be shamed be being labeled “Poverty Consciousness.”
Continuing with the wealth example, healthy shame might say that yes it’s very valid to let go of all kinds of negative shame. Speaking about money is a taboo in our society and there is all kinds of destructive, negative shame that results from never talking about money in a conscious, intentional way. Healthy shame might also suggest however that there are proper limits, that we should be as equally concerned about personal wealth/abundance as we should be about social and collective health and justice.
Or consider sex.
Healthy shame would certainly recognize the deep pain and destruction that has been caused by negative shame around sex: pervasive sexual abuse and rape, slut shaming (there’s that word again), closeted unhealthy sexuality, people being unable to led healthy, joyous sexual lives, the list goes on and on. Obviously we want to work against all those forms of death and destruction. They are legion, nearly infinite in nature.
But I think healthy shame would advocate as well for proper ethical containers of safety, trust, and exploration. Perhaps having large-scale events where strangers touch each other’s genitals, for example, wouldn’t be the best context for such exploration. At least not for everybody. (And yes that does exist).
Part of what’s behind all this, I think, is far too much naivete about shame and its relationship to repression. I’m talking about English-speaking North America here now. There’s a very simplistic notion that I think essentially equates shame with repression. Therefore to be liberated we have to overcome repression, which means overcoming shame. We take the lid off repression and whatever flows out of that eruption is inherently liberated. Michel Foucault knew better. He knew that many of the so-called forms of liberated sexuality were actually subtler forms of repression–harder to realize as such since they were officially so aimed at liberation and de-repression.
To put it most bluntly, we could easily turn the language of X Without Shame into an equivalent linguistic form–shameless. Without shame and shameless are the same thing right?
So, here’s a question: Would anyone market a class on Shameless Wealth? Shameless Sex? Shameless Power?
Probably not because the word shameless still hits a warning in our conscience (at least I feel it should). We still realize somewhere deep down shameless is wrong but somehow without shame sounds better. But really are they all that different? For example, shameless is usually followed by exploitation (“shameless exploitation”) or manipulation (“shameless manipulation”). Maybe we should take more seriously what those linguistic terms are pointing to–maybe advocating being totally without shame is actually heading down a potential road of exploitation and dehumanization?
The most interesting example I can think is when someone prefaces a work of self-promotion by saying, “Here’s a piece of shameless self-promotion.” By doing that, they are actually incorporating healthy shame. It’s in fact not shameless because they are in a good-natured way teasing themselves, showing a sense of humility and self-perspective (i.e. healthy shame).
Conversely, if a person was ok with a notion of titling something they are doing as Shameless X (Power, Sex, Money) I would raise a flag. (Unless again they were doing it as a joke or self-parody). Shameless is not a good way to go. Neither is being without shame. Being without loads of negative, destructive shame yes. Being without shame altogether no. This distinction is really not that difficult and yet it’s radically missing and profoundly needed nowadays.