Humiliation is another word that we often confuse with shame.4 Donald Klein captures the difference between shame and humiliation when he writes, “People believe they deserve their shame; they do not believe they deserve their humiliation.” If John is in a meeting with his colleagues and his boss, and his boss calls him a loser because of his inability to close a sale, John will probably experience that as either shame or humiliation. If John’s self-talk is “God, I am a loser. I’m a failure”—that’s shame. If his self-talk is “Man, my boss is so out of control. This is ridiculous. I don’t
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