When it comes to dealing with our flaws and frailties that can lead to or result in compulsive overconsumption, shame can be a tricky concept. Shame can provide the impetus to stop the behavior but also the means for perpetuating it. How do we reconcile this paradox?

Let's start with a look at shame. What is it? The psychological literature today identifies it as an emotion distinct from guilt. The thinking is that shame makes us feel bad about ourselves as people, whereas guilt makes us feel bad about our actions while preserving a positive sense of self. So a distinct line is drawn between shame as a maladaptive emotion and guilt as an adaptive emotion.

However, the shame-guilt dichotomy seems to come up lacking since experientially, shame and guilt are almost identical. Yes, I might be able to distinguish self-loathing from "being a good person who did something wrong," but in that moment of realization that I've blown it, all I feel is one emotion: regret mixed with fear of punishment that may take the form of abandonment as in being scorned, cast out, shunned, canceled. So there is a coalescing of shame and guilt that delivers a one-two gut punch that can lay us out. We've all experienced this at some level, haven't we?

Yet the shame-guilt dichotomy does tap into something real. It could be that the difference is not how we experience the emotion, but how others respond to our fall. If others respond by condemning, rejecting, or casting us out, we may enter into a cycle that intensifies the emotional experience of shame that can set the stage for us to continue, and perhaps at an intensified level, the behavior that led to feeling shame in the first place. Dr. Anna Lembke, professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic as well as author of the bestseller, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence, calls this destructive shame.

To the contrary, if others respond by holding us closer by expressing compassion, mercy, and empathy, and then attempt to help by providing guidance or simply offering the gift of non-judgmental presence, we enter a very different cycle. Dr. Lembke refers to this cycle as prosocial shame. Prosocial shame mitigates the grueling emotional experience of shame and can help us stop or reduce the flawed behavior.

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Attributions:

Lembke, Anna. Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence. Dutton, 2021.

"Bori" from the album "Wakare" by Michiru Aoyama.

https://lemongrass.bandcamp.com/

https://soundcloud.com/michiru-aoyama