There are studies that show what happens to couples on Valentine’s Day: the less attachment-avoidant among us fare better, as you might guess, and some of us break up. But what if the relationship is between a person and an emotion?
My shame and I have been strongly-attached for decades. But now we’re breaking up. I know my shame will always lurk in the shadows, but what shame hates is the spotlight, attention, being talked about, kindness, understanding, empathy and love. Shame doesn’t want to have a reasonable, let alone a kind conversation with the person it’s attached to, it only wants the blaming judgemental kinds of conversations. And shame absolutely doesn’t want a public conversation of any kind. Which is why I’m breaking up with my shame in public.
There’s a lot written about shame, but for me the gurus are Nova Reid, Brené Brown and Carl Jung, who said:
I didn’t realise shame and I had such a strong attachment until shame began to detach: until I began to feel more clearly, speak more clearly, hear and see more clearly, without shame blurring my focus and making constantly negative judgements. Until I began, as Nova Reid would say, to get curious about the causes of my shame. But because shame and I have been bedfellows for so long, shame’s detachment has been a long time coming.
I have Nova Reid to thank for my recongition of my relationship with shame: in her life-changing antiracism course, Becoming AntiRacist with Nova Reid, and in her book The Good Ally, she addresses shame, because shame and racism, shame and white supremacy, are inextricably bound together. Nova writes, in The Good Ally, in Chapter 6: ‘Moral Monsters: Racism and Shame’:
The relationship between shame and racism is clear. At the root of racism is fear of the other and fear of social rejection. [And later in the chapter]: Are you [white people like me] personally responsible for slavery and what your [white people’s] ancestors did? Absolutely not. However, it is this barbaric history, these acts of dehumanisation and consciously, wilfully and continuously not challenging these events that maintained white supremacy, which remains a social issue. Which you [white people like me] will, by default, because of what you have inherited, continue to benefit from. Without question, this realisation will lead to deep-rooted feelings of individual and collective shame.
Chapter 6 of The Good Ally is also full of ways to acknowledge and face shame, and ways to build shame resilience, including talking to others on their antiracism journey, but with the caveat that I never try to speak about shame with random strangers, or anyone who isn’t safe because they may, in turn, shame me. And that I will never ever speak – without explicit permission and crystal-clear boundaries – to a Black person or a Person of Colour about the shame I feel because of my racism.
Nova got me recognising and talking about my shame. Thank you, Nova. Beginning to talk about shame is the beginning of releasing shame, the beginning of breaking-up with shame. It sounds obvious, but it isn’t easy to talk about shame because shame makes me feel bad so why on earth would I want to talk openly about feeling bad? Shame’s been banking on my silence for a long time. Just as white supremacy has. But my shame for my silence about racism, which is itself racist, got me recognising how shame has kept me silent in so many aspects of my life. But I won’t be silent any longer.
Shame, Brene Brown tells us, loves secrecy, silence and judgement.
But if, she says, you put shame in a petri dish and dowse it with empathy it can’t survive.
So, on this Valentine’s Day, I’m sending my shame my empathy and my love ? knowing that, for you, my shame, that’s the same as saying, ‘You’ve taught me so much and I thank you for that. And I understand your desire to stay in touch. But ours is a dysfunctional relationship and so, dear shame, I’m breaking up with you. ’
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