Sometimes the most interesting lessons come from the most unexpected places. I learned something about shame this weekend—during a work retreat. To be sure, I’m no stranger to the concept. I have made plenty of questionable decisions in my 50 trips around the sun. Although, for many of those questionable decisions, while I don’t necessarily talk about them with a lot of people, that’s mostly because the timing, setting, or chemistry isn’t right. It’s not because I’m deliberately hiding something.
Shame is related to, but also distinct from, a garden-variety bad decision. It’s a feeling that follows and haunts you. And while it might be linked to the embarrassment you might expect after a one-night stand with a nameless guy or the feeling when you realize you walked out of the bathroom with toilet paper stuck to your shoe, it’s much deeper.
I was with two female colleagues I’m proud to call friends. When our work was done for the day, we were grateful to let the conversation drift to other things. We were ready to talk about something other than strategy, budgeting, and mission statements. We were pretty open with one another already, so it wasn’t exactly a shock when one woman, we’ll call her Amelia, tested the waters.
She asked me and Camila (also a pseudonym), “What’s your darkest secret?” I stared vacantly at Amelia as I thought about it. I noticed a similar blank expression on Camila’s face. None of us could think of a single thing that would qualify. And, as we talked about our collective non-response, we recognized that it wasn’t because we’d lived lives beyond reproach. Far from it. It was because we didn’t really have anything we considered secret. Not just from one another—although we hadn’t known each other all that long—but because we all felt like open books. As in, ask me whatever you want, and I’ll answer in the most honest way I know how.
So, we tried a different question. This one was, “What’s your biggest regret?” But we noted that this too posed an interesting challenge. How could we think about regret when the choices we’d made throughout our lives had led us to where we are now? Whether it was the significant other we were involved with, our children, or the work we were doing, all our previous decisions in life had brought us here. So, what would it mean to regret them?
While Amelia and Camila cooked dinner, I lazily waved my two cats off the kitchen table. And I thought of a different question. “What are you most ashamed of?” I knew right away what my answer would be. Amelia knew hers too. “That’s an easy one,” she said. She told the story of an experience she’d had as an exchange student in high school when she’d lived with a host family in Ecuador. By the time she completed the program, they’d grown so close that the host family viewed her as another daughter, and she viewed them as family as well.
Not long afterwards, Amelia’s host father planned a trip to the US to visit her and her family. However, at the last minute, it turned out to be a time that Amelia’s mother felt would be too difficult to host guests. Amelia’s mother wanted her to tell the family to cancel their already-planned-and-paid-for trip. Amelia was ashamed that she went along with her mother’s wish. Sure, it was in part that she was honoring to her mother’s preference, but she knew that there was more to it. She knew that there was a part of her that felt, it’ll make my life easier to not have them come. So, the Ecuadorian host family cancelled the trip. They moved on, of course, but Amelia’s relationship with them never recovered. And Amelia has never forgotten the fact that she didn’t object to her mother’s request.
Camila spoke up next. “Are you ready for my most shameful moment?” she said, looking down at the table. “Yep,” I replied. “Go ahead,” Amelia said. Camila cleared her throat. She said that a few years back, she had started a business with a then-boyfriend. We’ll call him Alan. Alan had substance abuse problems. There were times when he was spending as much as $400 a week on cocaine. What’s more, when Alan was high, he was functional and productive and, when he wasn’t, he was unable to accomplish basic tasks. As the relationship soured and financial ruin seemed perilously close, Camila found herself repeatedly faced with what felt like an impossible choice: blinding debt if Alan stayed sober or financial solvency if he got high. She chose financial solvency. So, while not exactly plying him with cocaine, she neither supported nor encouraged his sobriety. The shame of that choice haunts her.
It was my turn. My most shameful moment was easy to name. When I was in my 20s, I had a friend I’ll call Macy. Macy and I had met when we were both teaching English in Orizaba, Mexico. It was through long conversations with Macy that the seed was planted in my mind to join the Peace Corps, which I did a few years later. Macy and I both loved to travel and, after we worked in Mexico for a few months, we arranged to teach English together in Inchon, South Korea. Macy introduced me to TV shows I’d never heard of—a new one called “Friends” and another called “The X-Files.” In any event, time passed, and a few short years later Macy and I both lived in Boston.
I should say here that, in my early and mid-20s, I was not emotionally healthy. I can’t imagine I’m unique in that respect. I had various obsessive tendencies, was deeply lonely, and longed to feel in control of my life. And that was just the beginning. As people often do when feeling this way, I tried to control what I could. Sometimes that meant focusing my attention on food. And sometimes that meant obsessing about my routine—whatever it was. In any event, Macy didn’t live that way. Whatever her issues may have been, to my eyes, she seemed more able to go with the flow and experience life on its terms. She deserved a friend who wasn’t so bogged down with and wrapped up in her own baggage.
After all our travels together and all our deep conversations, I came to treat any request she made of me as though it were some kind of burden or chore. I didn’t have time, I was too busy, or I just didn’t feel like it. “It” could have been to help her move, go with her to do X, Y, or Z, or even just be a good listener. To this day, I am ashamed of how I treated her. While I imagine she’s long since moved on—this was 25 years ago—I am mortified by what my behavior then says about me as a person, even now.
This was the story I recounted to Amelia and Camila. And, as I did, I realized I’d never told anyone about it before. It was that shameful. More than the time I hit “reply” instead of “forward” on an email in graduate school. That was when I accidentally let a professor know, in insulting and profane language meant for my then-boyfriend’s eyes, exactly what I thought of her. More than getting turned down for promotion. And far more than the many, many rejections I’ve had for writing I’ve submitted to various places.
And I realized, after I had the chance to think about my, Amelia’s, and Camila’s most shameful stories, that they each told of a time when we knew we’d behaved selfishly. More specifically, we knew it and we did it anyway. And while, in none of our cases, were these examples the most lurid, the most dramatic, or most traumatic moments of our lives thus far, we can’t hide from the knowledge they gave us of our own capacity for selfishness. Once you see that capacity, you can’t unsee it. Nor can you take it back. You can commit to doing better, of course. And in certain circumstances, you can make apologies, but you can’t undo it.
In all the talk about shame that I’ve heard, I’ve never heard this particular point come out before. And I figure that, if it is true for the three of us, chances are that it’s true more broadly as well. It’s possible it’s a gendered thing—perhaps a group of men would answer the question differently. But, for me, the conversation was both remarkable, unexpected, and important. As Camila commented the following morning on the uniqueness of the conversation, “I listen to Brene Brown, and I’ve never heard her mention this particular aspect of shame.”
If the guru of all things compassion-related hasn’t yet talked about this, perhaps it’s time we named it. Here’s to owning our mistakes, trying to do better, and not feeling quite so alone.
Thought-provoking piece.
I believe men are also more ashamed of having behaved selfishly than anything else. But for myself, not spending too much time focused on it.
Shame is an effective motivator to avoid a repeat. Or as a parent, useful in thinking through how to correct your children's mistakes before they have real consequences.
I do wonder if the nature of shame is changing though. Through the wonders of social media, shame is now permanent and broadcast widely. Does this increase alienation or injure our ability to take risks?