Does Shame Serve a Useful Purpose?

“He shamelessly stole all the credit for the project we’ve been working on together.”

“Just look at how you’re dressed, young lady. Have you no shame?”

“She should be ashamed to have raised her children that way.”

“What? Go to my reunion looking like this, when I used to be so athletic?
Come on, I have some sense of shame.”

Such uses of the word “shame” imply that having none of it is bad, and will lead you to make a fool of yourself or be disliked. Therefore, having shame must be a good thing, right?

Can an occasional dose of shame help us?

Sure, it feels awful. But doesn’t that make shame a deterrent, something that keeps us on the straight and narrow?

If we had no shame at all, what would we feel okay about doing? Wouldn’t we become lazy and indulgent?

Consider Jessica and Maria, two third-graders who get into a fight one day during recess. Each comes home that night with some scrapes and bruises and a note from the teacher.

Jessica’s parents say, “Good girls don’t have fist fights. You should be ashamed of yourself. We never want to hear that you’ve been fighting again, do you understand?”

Maria’s parents say, “You’re such a good girl, why did you get into a fight like that? We’ve taught you better, and we know you can think of other ways to solve your problems with people. We don’t want to hear that you’ve been fighting again, okay?”

How will each girl feel, and which one do you think will be more inspired to avoid fights in the future?

My money would be on Maria. Why?

There is a key difference between guilt and shame.

We use them interchangeably, but as Brené Brown explains in her book I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn’t), guilt is about our behaviors, but shame is about who we are. She says, “…the difference between shame and guilt is best understood as the differences between ‘I am bad’ (shame) and ‘I did something bad’ (guilt).”

Jessica’s parents probably said what they did out of an understandably misguided attempt to change her behavior—after all, we’ve all seen shame applied as a corrective tactic over and over again, so we assume it should work. The idea is that if we can make someone feel terrible enough about what they did, they won’t repeat the behavior.

Or so it’s thought. Wrongly.

Think about it. Isn’t shame one of the most painful, isolating emotions we can experience? When we feel ashamed, we don’t want to charge out and do things differently—we want to hide and hope nobody comes looking for us.

The reason Maria will probably be less inclined to engage in fist fights than Jessica is that her parents discouraged what she did, while reinforcing their belief that she was a good person.

Again, to paraphrase Brené Brown:

Guilt can work as a positive motivator, but shame never, ever can.

With shame, your very sense of self-worth is attacked. This fosters resentment, negative self-judgment, and feelings of defeat and despair.

Guilt, on the other hand, encourages you because of the discrepancy between the kind of person you are and the thing you did. Your action doesn’t match how you want to think of yourself; you know you aren’t walking your talk. So you naturally want to close that gap.

Watch for this difference—and use it to make life better for other people and within yourself. It’s a powerful distinction.