Shame Protects: Shame and love in an age of shamelessness

The fact is that the surface is the easiest to see, this does not mean that it is all there is or that it should define the deeper layers and hidden depths. Don’t judge a book by it’s cover, a thief by his crime alone, or an action only by the outcome.

Shame protects in the absence of love
Many therapy modalities and superficial views on human behavior are only seeing the crime of shame, the outcome of shame, the symptoms and the top layer pain, and therefore wish to banish shame altogether, thinking it is hurtful and unnecessary to modern day (wo)man.

But shame is not the problem. Shame protects in the absence of love.
What happens if we try to take away shame and is left with the absence?
Shamelessness happens, violence happens, boundaries overstepped and a felt sense of death inside and out happens.

When we try to banish shame we are banishing the protector instead of the attacker that has become part of the everyday myth of normal: Shamelessness.

What is shame?
Where anger is the teller and keeper of our boundaries (if only we listen instead of suppress or act/rage it out), shame is what keeps distance and creates separation to the parts and places inside of us that we don’t want others to see or that have not been seen with loving eyes.
In the world of relationships, shame is the veil that hides what we do not want the world to see. We naturally hide what is private and precious to us from the intrusive (ie shameless) eyes of others, be it thoughts, feelings, beliefs or body parts. Putting a veil around my romantic partner and I protects and presserves moments, intimacy and deep connection that is meant exclusively for us. Likewise the love that I feel, the deepest memories and most vulnerable feelings I have, are kept in the secret chambers of my heart. And just so, true beauty, spirituality and holiness is wrapped in veils of poetry and mystery to remain pure, untainted and true.
When intruded upon by the shameless microscope of modern day science, any beauty of romance and spirituality is broken apart and destroyed.

Just as our parts are not their burdens, shame is not the feelings and burdens — of being unlovable, not good enough, bad, unworthy — that it protects. And shame is not just the cold freeze response and shut down that makes us want to disappear from the face of the earth never to be seen again. As the poem “Red and White” by Swedish Else-Britt Kjellqvist shows beautifully, the softer shapes of shame holds bushing openness, intimacy and even invitation to be seen.

The poem below is my translation from the book “Red and White. About shame and shamelessness” (In Danish: “Rødt og hvidt. Om skam og skamløshed”) by Else-Britt Kjellqvist.

RED is the color of shame and love.
Earlier it happened that the young girl
with blushing cheeks
shyly lowered her gaze
for her lover’s glance.
And never is one more open
to life
than when one blushes.

THE RED SHAME is full of heat and throbbing with life
It helps us to protect
that which is most private and intimate.

WHITE is the color of innocence and death.
But white is also the stiffened face
paralysed by shame.
It is deathly pale
because it is struck by a shame
so destructive
that it annihilates
all life.

THE WHITE SHAME destroys and paralyzes
It is in alliance with death
And penetrates
that which is most private and intimate.

Shame protects our childhood wounds
In the beginning of life the walls; the boundaries, between the inner world of parts — with their vulnerability — and the outer world, are more unclear and permeable, because outside the walls is love; parent; caregiver; lifeline (that which surrounded me before birth) in the form of mom, dad, parent.

When mom is there I am secure, when dad looks at me with love I am lovable, when mom picks me up and holds me close I am safe, I am worthy, I am good, I am all I need to be and can lean out into the secure physical and emotional embrace.

Outer secure attachment and co-regulation leads to inner secure attachment and Self-regulation.
When we can lean out, we learn to lean in.

When mom is not there I am not safe, when mom does not look at me with love in my sadness, in my anger, in my need for comfort, in my fear, then love does not reach those parts of me and I learn to shut them down, to hide them away, distanced and separated from mySelf by shame to protect me from being unlovable, and veiled behind an other disconnect when these parts of me are triggered and seen by other human beings of the world of relationships.

Shame is the distance, the separation, the veil, the wish to hide, to seek privacy, the blush and shyness, the embarrassment for ourselves or each other, the one who protects what is sacred and what is deemed unlovable. What others are not invited to see and what was looked upon with unloving eyes.

Shame is not the problem but the solution.

And like any other protective function, if the problem, the lack of love, is too much to bear, so will the solution, the shame, become deadly.

Shamelessness
Shamelessness is the modern day disease of normality. We pry into each others private spheres. We expose. We objectify. We undress and consume with our eyes. We cut open secrets, animals, relationships. We use and deplete the ground the holds us. We demand the truth no matter what. We declare war on the others. We rape and plunder. We want all the juicy details of the misdeeds of neighbors or celebrities. Porn is just a click away. We objectify children, women, others. “We know what the other person is like!” and “WE HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW!”
We overstep boundaries in our parenting, in our relationships, in our jobs. We scold, we rage, we yell, we threaten, we define, we reprimand, we (mis)use our power-over. Shameless is the attack and the intrusion. But it is normal now. We don’t see that we see it:
We are not surprised and appalled when politicians lie and cheat and steal. We are surprised when they don’t. The very people we “trust” to to protect us, to keep us safe and to have our best interest ind mind. The people we as citizens should be able to look up to as rolemodels and servants of our nations, model shamelessness instead. It is normal.

Scientists objectify and pry. They look closer and closer at their chosen objectified subjects. Just like much of the above, this is not bad in itself, but easily unbalanced when not seen for what it is.
The field of psychotherapy and the therapeutic relationship itself started out as a science — as we see it in the words of Freud and other early scientists of the mind — and so easily becomes one of objectifying, of boundaries overstepped and clients exposing themselves “to get help” or feeling exposed by the professionel who is curious from their heads instead of from their hearts.

Whereas back in the early days of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis shame was the social norm, now shamelessness has become so normal that we don’t see it. In this way both client and therapist (or practitioner) is often not aware of the subtleties of boundaries and need for shame in the form of slowing down, noticing, giving space both mentally, energetic and physically in the room where my boundaries as a therapist might be quite different than yours as a client, and where the feeling of finally being, seen, heard and understood will often both connect us to inner relief and love but also to shame and even strong fear when being seen in childhood was not safe or simply and devastatingly not part of our experience and therefore unknown and not safe yet to our parts and nervous system.

What shamelessness does is it oversteps boundaries, which is an attack on the human system. Shamelessness is shut off to the other person (because we are shut of from ourselves) as a human being, as a subject (as opposed to an object; at thing), and therefore it looks without love; It exposes. Disgust and repulsion is a natural reaction to being “seen” — or rather unseen — like that. To being looked at. Looked in. It is not just boundaries threatened, but boundaries overstepped.

But a mixup happens in our understanding of shame: Shaming and shame becomes confused because they are so intertwined and interconnected, but at the same time they are in fact opposites. Where shame is a protective function, shaming is an attack coming from shamelessness. It is shamelessness that shames.

What is shamelessness?
Shamelessness is not the lack of shame, because shame does not disappear as it is not a burden to be released. It is in fact a natural and innate function of the human system and of our living and surviving in this world. Only with respect and with love can it soften.
Shamelessness is the not feeling our own natural and healthy shame because it has become too much to bear or because we have learned not to be with it or that it had to be pushed away instead of being regulated by our caregivers.

When our boundaries and private spheres are severely and violently (ie shamelessly) overstepped and unseen again and again and again, because this is the norms of today, because we have been exposed and bullied at home, exposed and bullied at school, exposed and bullied at work, online and out in our societies; When we are seen unlovingly or not seen at all by parents, shut off because of all of these societal burdens of normal and their own personal burdens and trauma; When we are seen unlovingly or not seen at all, not loved, not safe; we shut off, shame happens inside and out to protect and when there is no softness and no love from the outside to see, to meet and to melt our shame, and the pain is too much to bear, we stop feeling it, we defend against it so strongly and start pushing it outwards: We project, we hate, we become better than, more worthy, above, we overstep boundaries, we don’t care, we attack and we SHAME others. Only the outside is tolerable to feel and know. Inside is a closed land. The most gruesome examples of this can be found in the excellent and horrific book “Violence” by James Gilligan.
And like most other things in the world this not black and white and there are millions of nuances, variations and subtleties and overlaps on the continuum between shame and shamelessness, between you and me, between relation and isolation, between self-harm and harming others, between shame and love, between boundaries and symbiosis, between symbiosis in the beginning of life and death at the end of it.
Shame is in many ways the protector of love and therefore a deeply important part of life and of Self in the world.

As parents we have the power and the responsibility to help and allow our children to feel safe and open with us and thereby with themselves in the way we parent. Shaming our children and not respecting their boundaries and integrity is an attack, and shame in all its nuances protects as a response to that. Shame is not the problem but the solution and when it becomes too much to bear, we pass it on and harden it.
Because shamelessness in many ways is part of the air we breathe in the normality of our modern societies, we often don’t see that we are passing on pain that yearns to be healed, we are bypassing and leaving behind parts of ourselves that LONGS to be seen, finally seen, with the loving eyes that they deserve.

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