Shame

I was five years old when my bladder was going to burst if I didn’t take care of it immediately. I raced inside the school only to find the boy’s restroom occupied. I had no choice but to use the one reserved for the other gender. Before I was done, the lunch recess was over and there was a line of girls waiting to use their bathroom. Imagine their surprise when I stepped out. The teacher scolded me and told me I should never do that again. I felt shame for the first time in my life because boys don’t use what’s only used by girls.

I was six years old when my mother left me at the door to my first-grade classroom and walked away. All the other classmates were already sitting at their desks waiting for class to start, but I was in the hall balling like a baby. After what seemed to be an eternity, Miss Jackson finally came out to see if I were ready to join the others. I stopped crying and walked to my desk sniffling all the way. I felt shame because boys don’t cry.

At age seven I had to go to summer school after second grade because I hadn’t learned how to read. Imagine that scarlet letter around my neck in a family of college graduates and high achievers. The unspoken explanation seemed to be that either I was mentally slow or just different. I tried hard not to feed the idea I was stupid, but that was a challenge when my friends were outside playing and I was walking to school.

About the same time the only excuse I had for wearing my sister’s dress shoes in the basement with the tile floor was because her shoes made a click-clack noise that mine didn’t. I even tried putting thumbtacks in the heels of my shoes but that didn’t work. Even though I had the feeling that what I was doing was terribly wrong, I still mustered the courage to actually go outside when no one was home and walk up and down the concrete driveway. This shame was palpable because boys don’t wear girl’s shoes.

On a summer vacation at a Minnesota lake my twin brother pushed me off a dock into deep water. I would have drowned if he hadn’t jumped in to save me. Then there was church camp where I didn’t want to shower or undress in front of the other boys. That was followed by an acrophobic breakdown on the Rock-O-Plane ride at the county fair in front of a large group of my peers. The humiliation from these things was penetrating and long-lasting because I had been taught that boys don’t show fear or weakness.

In seventh grade I went out for football, basketball, and track to try to imitate the athletic ability of my father and two brothers. In football I was on the third string and played for a few minutes in one game. In basketball I played in one game for two minutes with the distinction of being the only player on the court wearing black socks. (My mother was mortified as she witnessed such an appalling faux pas.) In track I couldn’t run fast or far so I quit after only a few days. Finally, that same year my mother badgered me to take piano lessons. And why not? Boys who can’t play sports learn to play the piano.

Shame is the painful sensation we feel in response to the consciousness of blame that has degraded our reputation in the sight of others. In other words, shame can result from any situation that causes us to feel shunned by other people. It is not guilt from doing something wrong, but embarrassment from being who we are, or who we are trying to become. Guilt means I did something bad. Shame means I am bad.

Much of the shame I collected was when I was young, when I didn’t know any differently. It was better to use the girl’s restroom than wet my pants. And anyway, the girls only had to wait a minute or two. No big deal! My emotional collapse the first day of first grade was an admission I was unprepared. I didn’t know how to read and I thought that was a prerequisite to be in school. My dress shoes didn’t make any sound when I walked but I found a pair that did. Sure, they belonged to my sister, but so what? My objective was to make that noise and not to become a girl.

Yes, I played in one junior high football game for only a few minutes, but those minutes became etched forever in my father’s memory. I was a defensive end, and when the ball was snatched I chased the runner down the sideline for ninety-five yards and tackled him on the goal line. My father never tired of telling that story. As for the black socks, I was so bad in junior high basketball that I never supposed I’d ever play. Yet, one day the coach told me I’d be playing that day in a game that was starting in an hour. I didn’t have time to go home and get white socks.

Adult shame is different from childhood shame. Childhood shame is imposed while adult shame is acquired. Grown-up shame comes from conscious decisions. When we know better, we still choose actions that will degrade our self-worth, and with enough time and enough acts we can convince ourselves that we are fundamentally rotten.

When a man carries shame from childhood into adulthood it’s like taking extra baggage for a short trip. He knows he’s overpacked but he can’t leave home without all of it. The signs of this baggage of shame can include constant self-criticism, feelings of chronic worthlessness, compulsive people-pleasing, feelings of irrational guilt, defensive behavior, dysfunctional relationships, and imposter syndrome (If people knew who I really was, they would hate me.)

Brené Brown says the primary shame trigger for women is physical appearance, and for men it’s the fear of being perceived as weak or inadequate. Being weak means to fail, to be soft, to be physically feeble, to be without the force of authority or energy, and to lack full conviction or confidence. Whatever masculinity he claims to have will be drained from him as he sees himself as being less than manly. The fear of failing to live up to the man code and the fear of shame go hand in hand.

I experienced that trigger one day at the Ida County Fair the second year of my marriage. My wife was the 4H & Youth leader for the county and was in charge of all the livestock registrations for the event. For a very legitimate reason she disqualified someone’s sheep from exhibition and the father of the affected 4H member became volcanic in her office. With the provocation of an uncertain level of intoxication, he unleashed a barrage of profane and vitriolic insults that would have made any sailor blush and any bystander run for cover. My wife stood her ground in stoic silence, and her husband stood a few feet away frozen in time. I made no attempt to intervene, neither to challenge his outrage nor to defend my innocent wife. I remained motionless and watched the assault as though I were a child and not a man.

My wife and I still wonder about that incident. She wonders why her husband didn’t step between the two of them and shield her from the possibility of a physical attack, or at least face down the drunk with some fearlessness. For example: You’re not going to talk like that to my wife! Or even better: One more word and your teeth will be in your throat! Her husband wonders if it were a combination of fear, inexperience with hand-to-hand combat, and more fear that prevented him from acting to protect his most precious relationship. When it was over the wife resented feeling defenseless and the husband resented feeling laughably unmanly.

This is the kind of shame that festers in the dark shadows within a man’s soul; its corrosive power creeping incrementally without so much as a whisper to sound an alarm. Eventually, shame spawns so much contagion inside that you wake up one day and realize if anyone saw what you see they justifiably would be repulsed.

Bringing shame into the light is the only way to uncover its true nature and minimize its sway. Exposure means becoming vulnerable to another, but the truth is our culture ridicules male emotional vulnerability. For men weakness is not an option. Men cannot be emotionally vulnerable around other men, and women perceive such men as feeble.

Still, women can have their own double standard. They can criticize men for their lack of vulnerability while simultaneously reject that same vulnerability when it’s revealed. Such rejection can sometimes convey disillusionment or even disgust, reinforcing the notion that expressing vulnerability is shameful. The message is that men should pretend to be vulnerable but never be truly vulnerable.

Regardless, the vulnerability of self-disclosure is the first step in becoming free from the chains of shame and ending the pain of being fragmented in the conceptualization of our essential self. The extent to which I am known is the degree to which I am out from under shame’s influence. The more I reveal my true self the less shame there is in my life to obscure who I really am, and the less inclined I will be to wear a mask.

Choose wisely the person who is invited to know your shame. Above all else, you need to feel safe before you pry open the cellar door and let someone peer into that dank and gloomy space. Your spouse or partner might be a good choice if you know they aren’t of a judgmental nature. Your best friend might be fitting, but only if he can be relied upon to seal up forever what he sees so that no one else will ever know. Your pastor might work if he or she can keep a secret. I told a minister friend of mine of some struggle I was in and it wasn’t long before he told my wife that she needed to pray for me.

In my opinion, the safest outlet for shame disclosure is a licensed counselor who by law (HIPAA) is required to protect your privacy. My own counselor once told me that if he ever encountered me in public with other people nearby he wouldn’t even acknowledge me unless I acknowledged him first. This kind of ear isn’t motivated by anything but listening, while other ears in the world can be energized by darkness – in fact, the darker the better.

Over the years I’ve silenced my accumulated shame. The story of that deliverance is not something suitable for public consumption like it was some kind of spiritual rebirth. Revealing to indifferent onlookers the nature of the shame is of no benefit to the shamed and can only feed in the spectators the curiosity of Oh my god, I wonder what else he’s done that he’s not telling! Uncovering and disarming darkness should be a sheltered process that needs no further exposition other than the terminating declaration It is finished!

While hidden, shamefulness becomes larger than life, outsizing everything else, until it’s exposed and deflated to an insignificant fraction of what it used to be. Shameful memories don’t disappear once they’re disclosed, but they do lose their grip on the consciousness. They lose their power to dominate what you think about yourself. When shame becomes impotent, the soul is unshackled to breathe easier and deeper, and the spirit rises to plateaus never reached before. It can be a liberation that both emancipates and transforms so much that looking back you’d be hard-pressed even to see shame’s residue. It’s here that you’ll know you’ve never been truer; you’ve never been freer.