Verified by 
Key points
- Cultural trends have made shame the enemy, but it can be useful.
- Cognitive distortions make negative emotions less useful and more painful.
- Negative emotions like shame are best experienced in moderation.
Why do we avoid shame?
Previously, I discused shame here. Part of what prompted me to write about this topic was a personal memory from when I was a kid. I remember that I showed poor sportsmanship during games and sports. I misbehaved a few times, and the other kids (and adults) judged me for it. They were right, and when I realized that, I felt ashamed. That motivated me to change. I became a better person, specifically because I felt shame.
In hindsight, I’m glad to have had that experience. Life is filled with emotionally painful, yet beneficial episodes, and we should not avoid them. Yet, I sense the popular understanding of shame is that it is to be shunned–that it’s not part of healthy psychological development. But why? Why do we avoid shame?
The simplest possibility is that we avoid shame because it’s aversive, like any other negative emotion. It’s also possible that we view shame as part of a destructive moralizing culture, and so rebelling against shame is a form of justice. Perhaps people view shame as uniquely damaging. If adults feel distress because of childhood shame, they may view this as evidence that shame causes developmental damage.
Too little of a good thing
But shame, like anxiety, anger, or any other negative emotional state, is much less useful to us when we feel it chronically and without good reason. It’s proper to feel anxiety when you’re in serious danger, like coming face-to-face with a lion in the wild). But if you feel anxiety all the time and in every situation, then not only is it not useful, it becomes destructive.
The same logic applies to shame. When people feel shame only as a response to their own bad behavior, and when this motivates people to do better, then shame is good. But if people feel ashamed of themselves all the time and in many situations regardless of their behavior, that’s when shame can be self-destructive. Shame can also be problematic when we overgeneralize. Thinking that there’s an aspect of yourself that needs improvement (i.e., being more punctual) is very reasonable and quite different from global labeling, or thinking that in general you’re a bad person.
This can explain why some pop psychology influencers talk about reducing or even eliminating shame, because sometimes (especially in clinical contexts) people have too much shame in their lives. But we shouldn’t risk throwing it all away. In moderation and when situationally appropriate, shame can be beneficial. It seems like influencers are striving for too little shame, when they should be focusing on the optimal amount of it.
It’s also important to note that people often criticize themselves more harshly than others do. This is a problem. Emotional intelligence means also remembering that you’re not the most important person in the world, and that’s a good thing for your own mental health. Feeling empathy for others means understanding that they’re probably not going to obsess over your every move. The spotlight effect is a cognitive distortion that makes us feel as if the whole world is watching us (even though they’re not) which makes us feel more self-conscious and can also produce more intense embarrassment, guilt, and shame. Rather than avoiding shame, a healthy response would be to embrace humility and remember that most of the time, people aren’t thinking about you, or judging you. What a relief!
Conclusion
Research suggests that shame can be a powerful motivating force for positive change, so long as it is experienced in moderation and in situationally appropriate ways. I’m not the first to notice the potentially beneficial aspects of feeling shame. But too often, pop psychologists describe shame as unequivocally terrible. This seems to have coincided with cultural shifts toward an unhealthy level of positive self-regard and gentle parenting methods to ensure that kids avoid feeling any kind of negative emotions associated with their own behaviors. For all the pain that this cultural trend has brought us, I don’t hear much reflection on the benefits of emotions like shame from those claiming to be experts on developmental psychology.
