23rd Sep 2006
The Power of Shame
I don’t think about shame very often, but I certainly experience it frequently enough.
On a daily basis, I find errors in my work, which cause a tender blush to rise in my face. But that’s nothing compared to when others find errors in my work and then call me on it. And because I often work quickly, always under deadline, always with multiple clients and multiple projects, and lastly, because I’m human, I make mistakes.
Most recently, Jim and I returned from a relaxing vacation to a bunch of emails, one of which consequently involved a phone call detailing all the errors found in my work while I was gone. (Punishment for a week of vacation, no doubt). And there were a fair amount, some that were my fault, but many that were not.
But the shame! Oh, the shame I felt. It was almost completely paralyzing. I couldn’t stop thinking about how unfair, how unreasonble, how I should have said many other things, but didn’t.
Shame is at its most powerful when it digs at our sense of worth and finds us utterly lacking.
I can remember when I was laid-off from Houghton Mifflin how I felt shame again, this time much more powerfully. It was as if being laid off was my own fault, even though I knew through observation that everyone was laid off. That was the nature of working as an editor. One crop of editors grew older, and had to be paid more, and consequently was laid off.
One of the best descriptions of shame in the workplace is one Barbara Ehrenreich’s blog. This is a lengthy quote, but it’s well worth reading because of the powerful connections she makes between shame, sexual assault, and being laid off.
The ultimate trick is to make people ashamed of the injuries inflicted upon them. In many cultures, rape renders a woman an unmarriageable pariah. In Pakistan today – one of our more embarrassing “allies” – a woman who brings charges of rape can be punished for “adultery.” Even in America, many women’s first response to sexual harassment or assault is to feel soiled and shamed, as if she had brought the unwanted advances on herself.
Something similar goes on in the case of the laid off and unemployed, thanks to the prevailing Calvinist form of Protestantism, according to which productivity and employment are the source of one’s identity as well as one’s income. Not working? Then what are you? And to put the Calvinist message in crude theological terms: go to hell.
In case anyone fails to feel their full measure of shame over unemployment, there is an entire shame industry to whip them into shape: The career coaches, self-help books, motivational speakers and business gurus who preach that whatever happens to you must be a result of your own “attitude.” Laid off and coming up empty on your job search? You must be too “negative,” and hence attracting negative circumstances into your life.
What do you think about shame?
