Kaufman Shame Spiral

Author James Gilligan wrote “Shame” to show the relation of shame and violence. His motive is to achieve a better understanding of why people are violent. He creates an authoritative mood

Profoundly interpersonal, the experience of shame is also therefore social and cultural. Shame is the result of feeling deficient, whether in relation to a parent, an admired friend, or a more powerful social group (39).

Esperanza’s situation is a reminder that shame can have a positive effect on people’s lives by being a source of motivation and inspiration.

When studying shame, Brené Brown (2006) found that many people brought up feelings of being trapped. These same people felt as though others had the same feelings of being trapped but still had difficulty sharing these feelings. The areas that most women had shame about were their body image, sexuality, parenting, their job, religion, aging, speaking out, surviving trauma, family, and motherhood (Brown, 2006) These same topics were the most common in the sessions I sat in on and in group. Many counselors at Mindful Soul specialized in areas such a trauma, parenting, and family due to how often they are the root causes of a clients visit.

Research was conducted by Wiklander, Samuelsson, Jokinen, Nilsonne, Wilczek, Rylander, and Asberg (2012) on the relationship between shame-proneness and suicide attempt. The introduction mentions that the researchers wanted to explore whether or not shame proneness was a stable tendency for attempted suicide. According to Wiklander, et al. (2012), when individuals encounter situations of failure, they typically experience shame. The researchers define shame as "an aversive affective state paired with a negative evaluation of the entire self" (Lewis, 1971; Tangney, Stuewig, & Mashek, 2007; Lindsay-Hatz, 1984 as cited by Wiklander, et al., 2012).

Have you ever felt so ashamed that you have become ashamed of who you are becoming? Shame is always reminding people it is a soul eating disease. For instance, in the book The Kite Runner Baba and Amir are so caught up in their shame they can hardly stand each other. In the beginning of the novel Baba pays no attention to Amir and by the end of the novel Amir realizes why his father paid no attention to him. We can become a changed person by facing our shame and allowing it to remain in the past while we move on to our future.

The next element of shame is global. In Black women it can cause feelings of weakness or being inadequate as a person as a whole. According to Harris-Perry, global shame extends beyond a single incident and becomes an evaluation of self (104). The third element of shame is withdrawal, both psychologically and physically. Out of the three, withdrawal can be more insidious than the other two elements of shame because it can be debilitating. Physical withdrawal can cause Black women make themselves smaller for example, by not speaking up, and withdrawing into themselves by isolating themselves from others. Psychological withdrawal can cause lack of self-esteem, social disorders, and substance abuse to self-medicate in order to cope with feelings of shame.

Shame is unspoken, it is the main secret behind different forms of broken behaviors. The aspiring researcher Brene Brown, in her earlier talk, “The Power of Vulnerability”, which became a viral hit and the most favored TED Talk video, explores what the possibilities are when people confront their shame. Along with her most recent video “Listening to Shame”, Brown speaks of both shame and vulnerability throughout the presentation. She digs into the uncomfortable, unacceptable, and human emotions that we keep deep within us and dares us to show our authentic selves. The presentation includes the rhetorical appeals of ethos, logos and pathos to build the fundamental objectives of the talk. In which throughout her talk, Brown portrays great credibility

Dr. Sandra D. Wilson (2001) asks, “Have you ever felt as if you were the only caterpillar in a butterfly world? Do you often feel as if you have to do twice as much to be half as good as other” (p. 16)? If you answered, yes, then that is what Wilson (2001) calls binding shame. “Shame is the soul-deep belief that something is horribly wrong with me that is not wrong with anyone else in the entire world. If I am bound by shame, I feel hopelessly, distinguishingly different and worthless (p. 16).

Shame can lead to protecting oneself through anger and control.  When these strategies do not work or are inappropriate one withdraws themselves and avoids.

“Shame” penned by entrepreneur “Dick” Gregory tells of a story that scarred him. A event that scarred him bad enough to haunt him until he was “twenty-one years old and married and making money.” He depicts the story of “Shame” using feelings such as love, isolation, and anger.

Stories sometimes start with the main character making a change to their lives because they have a feeling of shame towards either themselves or their surroundings. A certain story may also changed completely or reach their climax because of someone’s shame. A story is at times driven by shame from the start, like in The Great Gatsby, where Jay Gatsby changed his life completely because of the shame he had for his original life. Having shame be a main motivation for a character is also common, Doodle in The Scarlet Ibis is strained constantly by his brother’s shame of his brothers’, (Doodle), deformity, or in The Scarlet Letter as well, where Hester Prynne lives her life surrounded by shame and must grow accustomed to it and live on with it.

Moíses Kaufman was born on November 21, 1963 in Caracas, Venezuela. He was born to his parents who were survivors of the Holocaust in Rumania and then immigrated to Venezuela where Moíses was born. Growing up his parents sent him to a school called Yeshiva where he could be taught religion and academics all in one. Even though Moíses would eventually cease to practice Orthodox Judaism, he valued its lessons on Talmudic scholarship, especially taking a sentence from the Bible and analyzing it twenty different ways. He used those skills to help write his plays later on in his life. Kaufman realized at a very young age that he was gay making him feel more like an outsider as it was.

Shame, in depression, is usually aimed inward toward the victim, or depressed person. When self-pity, another depression mode, is thought of, it usually brings up the feelings of being sad or angry for mistakes that happened in the past. Depressed adolescents frequently communicate their despair before they act out in this final act of desperation. Teens tend to reflect their dysphoria with

“Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change”(Brené Brown). In The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a woman is publicly shamed for having a child with a man who is not her husband. Another example of public shame can be seen in modern day articles “Florida ‘Scarlet Letter’ Law is Repealed by Gov. Bush,” by Dana Canedy, and “Houston Couple Gets ‘The Scarlet Letter’ Treatment.” Both talk of public shame that people have had to endure in the present day. Public shaming is not an effective punishment because it is a cruel and unusual punishment, it does not deter crime, and it can emotionally traumatize the one being shamed.