Brené Brown is Wrong About Shame

“Shame is “I am bad.” Guilt is “I did something bad.” …Guilt: I’m sorry. I made a mistake. Shame: I’m sorry. I am a mistake.”

-Brené Brown, PhD

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan. I sobbed through the end of her Netflix special. Brown has done amazing work bringing the vocabulary of emotions to the masses and demonstrating the power of vulnerability.

But while I find her to be a winning and gifted communicator, I don’t think she’s entirely right about shame, and I worry about how the above definition impacts our ability to form communities.

Brown has described us as living in an “epidemic” of shame. She points out the negative health outcomes associated with people who exhibit high levels of shame, including depression, eating disorders, and suicide.

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In a way, I agree—we’re living in an era defined by shame. But is it an over proliferation of shame? There I’m not so sure. It feels like many good people are feeling too much shame while others (including many in power) are completely shameless.

Speaking for the anti-shame side, let’s look at social media shaming. Sometimes necessary, as in the Weinstein case. But there are a fair number of folks out here catching strays. (Remember that white teen who went to prom in a Chinese-style prom dress?) Public shame is a clumsy cudgel, flattening context and often leveling behaviors several magnitudes apart. Too often it’s cancel first, investigate later.

Shame doesn’t feel good, and so it’s perhaps natural that we don’t want to inflict it on others. That’s very “love your neighbor,” right? Plus, shame can be such an overwhelming emotion that it triggers defensiveness rather than sober reflection.

On the other hand, I have a creeping feeling that our anti-shame movement can be detrimental to community building. That’s because shame has a social aspect. Psychology Today puts it this way:

“Shame makes people behave in ways that allow them to co-exist with others, and it makes people adhere to cultural norms and laws. In that way, occasional shame isn’t always a bad thing. Shame can foster humility and teach people about boundaries; without healthy shame, we would have no way to understand how our behavior affects others and manage it.”

(Emphasis mine.)

Shame is the threat that certain behaviors will lead to social exclusion and ostracization. It’s saying, “This behavior is outside the bounds of our group. You cannot keep doing this and still belong with us.”

I fear that our hyper-individualistic society prioritizes individual comfort over group safety. When working in schools, I’ve seen parents who insist their kids should be able to do things like yell in hallways or run around the classroom if they feel like it, failing to imagine the impact such behavior has on other students or the learning environment as a whole.

And while Trump and his ilk are in a different stratosphere of shamelessness than your average helicopter parent, I do think both come from a worldview that prioritizes the self far above the group as a whole. Trump cheated on each of his wives? Was best friends with a pedophile? Has been convicted of 34 felonies? Who cares? #winning

Don’t get me wrong, shaming others is the nuclear option. There’s something primal about this threat; it triggers some ancient, evolutionary reaction which equates social isolation with death.

But as harsh as it may be, I’m hesitant to label shame as inherently “toxic.” We need some mechanism for enforcing boundaries in a group. Is there a loving way to hold people accountable and avoid triggering shame? What about overcoming our own shame?

So, in this month famous for Valentine’s Day and Seasonal Depression, I want to look at shame. Here are some questions I have. Let me know your thoughts in the comments. I also love to hear your recommendations on things to read, watch, listen to, etc!

* Are we in an epidemic of shame? Or an epidemic of shamelessness?

* What’s the impact of powerful narcissists like Trump on our national shame level?

* Is there a connection, as Brown says, between low-self-worth and shame?

* Does “healthy shame” exist? Is it different than guilt?

* How can we agree on what’s shame-worthy during a time of massive cultural upheaval?

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