Mike Marino, PhD

 Shame on You! – How Shame Affects your Relationships

Shame is very powerful and it affects all our relationships – with others, with ourselves, and with God.  Shame is about our defectiveness.  It’s not, “you did something bad,” rather it’s “you are bad.”

Shame is initially put on us by others, but in the long run we begin to put it on ourselves.  It’s a learned behavior and thinking pattern that becomes automatic.  We ultimately begin to believe what we’ve been told about us is true – especially when it’s coming from someone who has authority in our lives … parent, priest, pastor, coach, teacher. 

How you perceive and treat yourself teaches others how to perceive and treat you.  If you perceive yourself as valuable and establish clear boundaries about what works for you and what doesn’t, people will notice and respect that.  But, if your automatic thought is “I must have done something wrong” or “there’s something wrong with me,” you’ll get defensive or disengage, and healthy people will back away.

The truth is, there is something wrong with you – we all have good parts and bad parts.  1 John 1:8 says – If we claim to be without sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  The bad does not negate the good, they just co-exist.  But if shame has infected your life, one bad wipes out all the goods.  People who have shame-based thinking cannot tolerate any badness in themselves, so they always shift the spotlight to someone or something else.  People respond to shame in different ways…

• Perfectionism.  Any mistake advertises your defectiveness to the world.  There’s a sense that everyone’s watching, waiting for you to screw up.

• Isolation and withdrawal.  Rather than facing the criticism of others, you pull back from doing anything, believing you will be painfully humiliated for even trying.

•  Exhibitionism.  You flaunt your bad parts to create the rejection you’ve come to expect.  You self-destruct rather than letting someone else hurt you.

When it comes to relationships, shame produces a lot of emotional pain.  Critical words directed at someone’s personhood leave a mark that’s hard to erase.  There’s a difference between, “that was a stupid move,” and “you must be stupid.”  Proverbs 15:4 says – Kind words bring life, but cruel words crush your spirit.

If shame has affected your life, it has affected your relationships.  You may over-react to what others do, and under-react to what’s going on inside of you.  You may not feel worthy of self-care or consideration – like you don’t deserve it.

You may project the shaming you’ve experienced from others and become very critical of others.  It sounds kind of odd but, being critical of others often makes you feel you are not alone in your defectiveness.  Like, “yeah, I’m bad but look at what they did…”

If you’ve received shaming input in your life, embrace the impact it has had.  Recognize when you’re going down that automatic thought process that assumes you are defective, and challenge it for accuracy.  The shaming voices in your past no longer deserve a place of honor in your emotions, you don’t have to believe them.  If there are shaming voices in your life now, it’s time to begin to exercise your adult voice and adult choices.

Adults use “I” statements. “I like that, I don’t like that, that works for me or that doesn’t work for me.”  It’s OK to take care of, and stand up for yourself.  Self-care, treating your self with dignity, is not selfish.  It will impact all your relationships for the good.

If, for whatever reason, you find yourself the dispenser of shaming comments, you have the power to stop.  If you’re consistently critical of your spouse, it’s hurting your marriage.  If you criticize your kids, they won’t stop loving you – they’ll stop loving themselves.  If you tend to find fault in everything and everyone, that’s making you sick more than hurting them.

You are not perfect, but you’re no more defective than anyone else.  We all know people whose opinion of themselves is over-inflated – which I often find is a mask for their hidden insecurities.  But, more often than not, in struggling relationships I see one side or the other (or both) have an under-inflated opinion of themselves.  Humility is a good thing, but seeing yourself as defective and unworthy of dignity is not. 

Perhaps the accurate place to land our opinion of ourselves begins with a view from the top.  In Psalm 139:13-14, the Psalmist speaks this to God – You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb.  Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!  Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.

Do you perceive yourself as a unique creation that’s wonderfully complex and marvelous?  Do you treat others as if they were?  If you can shift gears toward that – every relationship in your life will be better.  With others, with yourself, and with your Creator.