The Problem of Shame

one of the great problems in the world is also one of the most invisible because by its nature it asks to be hidden and saps our ability to spot its symptoms but to generalize grossly few things so undermine human wellbeing as the sickness of shame the guilty feel bad for something specific they have done if ashamed feel wretched simply for being the affliction lacks borders ashamed people we don't connect the myriad ways in which our behavior and feelings are driven by a base conviction of our own up Horan's we just take it as a given that we are disgusting we lack the capacity to imagine that our shame as a history and therefore perhaps a future that could be curtailed a first step in untangling ourselves is to get enough distance to spot and name the problem we might make use of a little questionnaire out of 10 rate how true the following statements feel I don't deserve to exist I am defective I am unworthy of being known and loved I am a mistake I deserve to be abandoned I should not be anything over an 8 starts to indicate the problem but if there were an option most of us in the shamed camp would want to award ourselves a hundred or more this is the windswept barren land of shame where many of us have been living all our lives often without enough mental well-being to know that this is where we've been relegated we should probe but wear our shame collapse take the outline of a human figure what are we ashamed of our mind facial appearance physique genitals anus we were not born ashamed we should summon up the voices that gave us our legacy and which we have then internalized and blended with our own you'll never amount to anything you're the family idiot you disgust me may wonder why people around us behaved this way the answer is clear enough to the shamed because we deserved it we wouldn't be truly shamed people if all it took was a few simple questions to shake us from our conviction of our detestable identity we were shamed because we were an are defective our caregivers weren't mean they were above anything else perceptive even brilliant they could spot things that later kind of people cannot they had the true measure of us shamed children don't blame their Guardians we protect them for a weird but logical reason so as not to feel entirely alone we prefer to think well of our caregivers than to take on board how badly we've been let down with all the convulsive rage and sadness that would entail the consequences of shame are written across our lives we don't allow other people to get too close to us they would only be appalled if they knew the true us we're not so good on physical intimacy we get scared all the time bad things happen to bad people we don't like parties why would anyone be pleased to see us we have a lot of secrets for most of what we are is unacceptable to other eyes we go in for addictive behavior to escape our self-hatred then feel even more ashamed of ourselves for the unholy things we've done what is the way out of shame the same popular answer is to tell ourselves that we are beautiful and good but that when easily convinced us there may be a better more oblique strategy to bypass the defenses of the shamed we should stress not that we are wonderful but that every human being who has ever walked the planet is in their own way radically imperfect and broken when observed from close up we may be a bit wrong but so blessedly is everyone else who is and has ever been we can be stupid perverted and uncouth but that is wholly normal rather than implicitly upholding an ideal of goodness by telling ourselves that we do after all measure to it far better to throw away ideals and all notions of achievable purity and goodness that's where the problems started better to accept that we are as a group entirely crazy and ill-tempered wicked and odd but then to stress just how much this is a reason for mercy and kindness rather than censure and condemnation let's stop judging ourselves and others by unreal standards that's how we made ourselves ill that's laughs and comfort each other for the absurdity and horror of existing in human form the primary sin of those who made us feel ashamed was not so much that they spotted our flaws it's that they forgot their own awfulness and then had the gall to blame us for our own we should give up on fascistic perfectionism in order to make a generous home for our cracked reality in our own and in the collective imagination that'll be the start of our way out of the problem of shame at the school of life we believe that confidence is a skill we can all learn click now to learn more you

Channel: The School of Life

Views: 394,181

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Keywords: the school of life, schooloflife, education, relationships, alain de botton, philosophy, talk, self, improvement, big questions, love, wellness, mindfullness, psychology, how, to, hack, shame, social shame, social media shaming, shaming social experiment, body shaming social experiment, confidence, public shaming kids, public shaming dishonored, PL-SELF, 羞耻的问题, o problema da vergonha, le problème de la honte, das Problem der Scham, el problema de la vergüenza, शर्म की समस्या है

Id: PTXWVKhcXRI

Length: 5min 43sec (343 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 09 2018