I don't think I understand the concept of shame

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Like in I don’t think I’ve ever experienced it, I understand regret and guilt kind of if I feel stupid for making a mistake I personally regret. But feeling shame because of what others think of me AKA strangers no, I do care what a select small group of people think just because I like them personally and want to please them think.

This all kind of stems from me getting free fruits and veggies from a outdoors produce market, the vendors when they leave for the day stack cardboard boxes of unsold produce by the street. I pass by it on my way home at night so I have got in the habit of looking through the boxes for free food for the night, shit I still have avocado pulp in the freezer from the time I found a box of ripe ones ready for guacamole. But I mean I’ve found everything you can imagine, usually just because the vendors don’t want it but it is highly edible.

This horrifies my wife, like mortifying levels of embarrassment that I am digging through the “trash” like a vagrant, and I will be connected with her and that is terrifying. I see it as a fun grab bag mystery dinner amusement on my way home, hey some kind of tuber I cannot identify! Woo dinner adventure!

She is like don’t people see you doing this, and I am like yes but who cares? This is where we disconnect.

So what is shame anyway exactly? If I was teleported nude on a public street I would’t feel ashamed I’d just cover up with clothes at the nearest opportunity to reduce the discomfort and freakout of others.

EDIT:Before someone asks I stopped the free produce surprise every night for dinner because of my wife’s feelings because she is one of the few people I care about. I do understand the concept of faking to get what you want you have to do with jobs etc.

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Guilt is when you feel bad about doing something you did or didn’t do.

Shame is when others make you feel bad about something you’ve done or haven’t done. In the absence of their wagging fingers and clucking tongues, you wouldn’t care.

Shame can be taught. Prior to starting college, I always felt like my mistakes only reflected on me and my personal flaws, not anyone else. But right before I started college, I attended a six-week orientation program for minority students. And much the training was shame-based.

“If you arrive late to class, you make all the black students look bad.”

“If you don’t ask questions, you make all the black students look bad.”

“If you don’t ask intelligent questions, you make all the black students look bad.”

“If you sit in the back of the lecture hall, you make all the black students look bad.”

“If you fail a test, you make all the black students look bad.”

“If you don’t visit the professor during his or her office hours, you make all the black students look bad.”

“If you don’t graduate with anything higher than a 3.5 GPA, you’ll make all the black students look bad.”

I’d never heard rhetoric like this in all of my life and it stressed me the fuck out. Because even though the individualist in me thought it was a load of BS, the realist in me knew it was all true. All my personal flaws would be magnified just because I was a black person, and they would only serve to perpetuate the negative stereotypes that we were already up against.

One of my black classmates was a guy named Calvin. He was proudly individualistic and nonconformist…a tiny bit full of himself. We were in orchestra–he played the cello. The conductor didn’t want to bother with chair auditions so he assigned us to seats randomly. He put Calvin in the very back of his section. Since cellos sit on the outside, he was very noticeable.

It pissed him off. Not just because he, the Awesome One, was in the “worst player” seat for no good reason (because he was a pretty good player). But because it made “us” look bad. And because we were fresh out of that boot camp orientation program, I was inclined to agree with him.

I don’t feel shame nowadays. But it’s because I don’t have someone barking at me, reminding me who I am supposed to represent. And also, in my maturity, I see people everyday screwing up and not giving a flying fuck about it. I’d like to be that carefree.

3

Shame is the sense of being harmed by other people’s awareness of something that involves you. It’s similar to guilt, but public-facing.

Guilt would be if you took that abandoned fruit/veg and then said to yourself, “Someone who cannot afford fresh fruit could have taken that, and I deprived then of the opportunity. I’ll leave some for others next time.” Shame (as your wife knows) is, “Other people will think badly of me if they find out I took the surplus fruit.”

It’s analogous to the difference between pride (how you feel) and honor (what others feel about you).

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I know that not only do psychologists distinguish between shame and guilt (google for more info), but anthropologists distinguish between shame-based cultures and guilt-based cultures.

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Guilt and shame are similar, but there are subtle distinctions. I feel guilty if I wrong others, shame if I wrong myself. If I do something stupid I might feel shame, but not guilt if I’ve only hurt myself. I would feel guilt if I have hurt someone else. Sometimes I’ll feel both, people can feel both guilt and shame for the same act. I think most people feel shame in the eyes of others, but guilt seems to come from their own conscience. So one can feel guilty for committing a wrongful act, and shame that people know that they have done that. I’m sure it’s more complex than that with all the different kinds of emotional mindsets that people have. Often I wish I would feel more shame and less guilt.

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Basically, you feel guilt if you do something you shouldn’t be doing. You feel shame if other people know you did something you shouldn’t be doing.

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Guilt is when you feel bad because of something you did. When you feel guilt, you say to yourself, “I really shouldn’t have done x.”
Shame is when you feel bad because of who you are. When you feel shame, you say to yourself, “I did x because I am a bad person.”

It’s easier to atone for guilt than shame is because it’s easier to separate yourself from your actions than from your core self. This is why “shaming” cultures tend to be more accepting of suicide in response to bad actions. If you do something bad, there is often something that you can do to undo or otherwise repent for that bad thing. It’s a lot harder, even impossible, to fix a fundamentally bad person.

So, if there’s nothing that you’ve done that leads you to think of yourself in terms of being a bad person, then you will feel no shame. This, though, on the whole is fairly rare, for better or worse.