I Thought It Was Just Me: Women Reclaiming Power and Courage in a Culture of Shame

by Brené Brown

gossiping was described as shaming because it was often motivated by their need to belong. It also moved them away from being compassionate people. For others, it was more of a guilt issue.

Being the target of gossip, however, is usually very shaming and extremely painful. What people say behind our backs can mirror our list of unwanted identities.

Reflecting and/or redirecting are very effective ways to “not participate” and provoke thought. Reflecting is a way to infuse a conversation with a probing question or statement. Redirecting is moving the conversation away from blaming and toward empathy.

The participants with high levels of shame resilience around blame relied heavily on their connection networks to understand and combat invisibility and stereotyping.

by researcher and educator Mary Bricker-Jenkins. Dr. Bricker-Jenkins suggests we ask ourselves: 1. Who am I? 2. Who says? 3. Who benefits from these labels? 4. If these labels don’t benefit me, what must change and how?

Disconnection is both the source and consequence of shame, fear and blame. Insulating, judging others, blaming, raging, stereotyping, labeling—these are all forms of disconnection.

It is the feeling of being disconnected from ourselves. We are often so influenced by what other people think and so overwhelmed with trying to be who other people need us to be, that we actually lose touch with our sense of self. We lose our grounding.

We gravitate toward people whom we perceive as honest, real and sincere.

Authenticity is something we revere in others and strive to maintain in our own lives. We don’t feel good about half-truths, disingenuous connection and fearful silence.

Shame often prevents us from presenting our real selves to the people around us—it sabotages our efforts to be authentic.

We cannot share ourselves with others when we see ourselves as flawed and unworthy of connection. It’s impossible to be “real” when we are ashamed of who we are or what we believe.

Shame, or the fear of being shamed, moves us away from our authentic selves.

We simply can’t speak our truths when we are held hostage by what other people think.

Shame makes us feel like we are different—like we are the only ones.

When we can’t get good information because it’s either tainted by marketing spin or the topics are too taboo for public discussion, we become desperate for a measure of normalcy. We want to know what’s normal because “being normal” affords us a greater opportunity for acceptance and belonging.

Many advertisements, however, prey on the vulnerabilities of women by exploiting our need to feel normal. They also exploit our very human need for acceptance and belonging

When the code of silence prevents us from reaching out to others, we feel alone, we feed shame with secrecy and silence, and end up grasping for our shame screens:

When we feel all of the painful and overwhelming feelings associated with shame, we are also not very good at assessing where we are or what we want.

The women who have developed shame resilience around sex and health issues work on all four elements, but they are particularly aware of the vulnerabilities created by the secrecy and silence that shroud these issues.

addiction and shame are inextricably connected. They are also very similar: Both leave us feeling disconnected and powerless.

Addiction can make us feel alone and on the outside. And lastly, there is often a sense of secrecy and silence about addiction.

(Shame equals “I am bad” and Guilt equals “I did something bad”). What exactly do the terms shame-proneness and guilt-proneness mean?

When we refer to shame-proneness and guilt-proneness, we are referring to any given individual’s tendency to experience that emotion. In any given situation, some individuals are more likely to respond with an emotional reaction of shame, whereas others are less likely to experience shame, regardless of the situational triggers.

When I mention static factors, I am referring to things that really can’t be changed.

Dynamic factors, on the other hand, are things that are constantly changing (or have the potential to change).

the tendency to experience shame seems to be associated with negative life consequences, whether those consequences are difficulty managing anger, depressive symptoms, addictive problems, or anything else.

individuals who have a tendency to experience shame need to learn to derail this emotion in favor of the healthier emotional reaction, guilt.

People who are guilt-prone are likely to focus on the behavior in question.

it is much easier to change or fix any given behavior than it is to fix a defective self.

In essence, the shame-prone person gets stuck in the emotion, whereas the guilt-prone person is able to move on.

Getting stuck in these disconnections not only moves us away from authenticity, but the “stuck” part also seems to play a central role in the relationships between shame and addiction.

I believe we must seek outside help to overcome addiction.

Recovering from addiction requires guidance, support and information (and sometimes medical attention) beyond what we can get from even the most supportive connection networks.

We are members of a culture that fosters, then vilifies, addiction.

We turn to food, drugs, alcohol, sex and dependent relationships to temporarily relieve the stress. And as expressed in the opening quote in this section, addiction doesn’t relieve the stress, it only makes us more desperate for relief.

The relationship between spirituality or faith and shame is a complex one. As you see in the illustrations of the shame web and the connection network, spirituality/faith/religion are sources of shame for some women and sources of resilience for others.

It is the relationship that women have with God, their higher power or their spiritual world that often serves as a source of resilience. The essence of resilience, in a spiritual sense, is about relationship, spirit and faith. For many women, spiritual connection is essential to shame resilience.

the belief that faith is about nurturing our best selves and shame moves us away from that purpose.

Given how important relationships are in our faith lives, you can see why it is so critical that we maintain our authenticity around our spiritual beliefs.

To me, this quality of being who you are regardless of who you are with seems to be the very essence of authenticity—the result of being natural, sincere, spontaneous, open and genuine.

authenticity is difficult, if not impossible, to develop without some level of shame resilience.

If we want to build shame resilience and cultivate our authenticity, we must learn how to become members of our own connection network. We must learn how to respond to ourselves with empathy and understanding.

Our ability to be authentic and genuine often depends on our level of self-acceptance, our sense of belonging to ourselves and our ability to express self-empathy.

explore and acknowledge our strengths as well as our problems or limitations.

One effective method for understanding our strengths is to examine the relationship between strengths and limitations. If we examine what we do best and what we want to change the most, we will often find that the two behaviors are varying degrees of the same core behavior.

The purpose of doing this is not to dismiss the issues we’d like to change or invalidate our problems, but to allow us to work on those from a place of self-worth, empathy and connection.

We cannot change and grow when we are in shame and we can’t use shame to change ourselves or others.

It is critical that we catch ourselves doing things well. If we can acknowledge our strengths, they become tools that can help us meet our goals.

Lastly, we can more readily identify our strengths and increase our resilience by adapting the reality-check questions to examine the expectations that attempt to govern how we articulate and act on our beliefs and values. • How realistic are these expectations? • Can I be all these things all of the time? Do I want to be? • Can all of these characteristics exist in one authentic person? • Does meeting the expectations make me more or less authentic? • Am I describing my authentic self or who others want me to be?

“If I can always be myself with someone, they’re in the connection network.”