Brave New Kitty

“I’m the best compared to nobody” is a totally shame-free attitude. This means you live by your own standards of what’s important, your own chosen values. What other people are doing is fine, but it doesn’t really have any effect on your choices. You care about what those close to you think, but it doesn’t alter your fundamental sense of who you are. It sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?

To explain what I mean by “shame-free,” I first have to talk about shame. Shame is the belief that you’re inherently flawed and somehow bad in a way that other people aren’t. It is not an emotion, like guilt, that can serve a useful purpose in letting you know when you’re out of line. Shame is a belief system, and it is a devastatingly inaccurate one. No one is inherently flawed or bad; that just isn’t how the universe works. Yet shame tells us we are.

People who grow up in invalidating environments tend to be shameful adults. An invalidating environment is one in which a child’s emotional needs go largely unmet. I don’t like the term abuse because that implies a specific type of treatment such as verbal, physical, or sexual assaults. While these are certainly invalidating in the most extreme way, they are not the only ways to invalidate. This is a very important idea. I often hear people say some version of “my childhood was fine and my parents were great” when it’s obvious that they’re struggling with deeply-rooted, unresolved issues. People think if there wasn’t overt abuse, they had good parenting. The truth is, children need lots of attention and support and encouragement to grow into shame-free, emotionally healthy adults. Most parents are simply not able to give children enough of these things, often because they didn’t get enough of them themselves as children and are unaware that a problem exists. These are not bad people, and my intent is not to accuse the world at large of bad parenting. It’s just a sad fact of life that most of us grow up without adequate emotional support, and if we want to become fully functioning adults, we have to deal with this difficult truth.

Not meeting his emotional needs sends a message to a child that he isn’t important. The child, lacking skills to objectively examine this message, tends to accept it and believe he is not important. This is how shame is born. The more this happens, the more we tend to believe we lack worth and must be flawed in some major way. As with other skills in our toolbox, shame is a survival mechanism. It allows us to accept the unacceptable. Without the shame mechanism, children would have no way to deal with their unmet needs, and shame thus becomes an internalized belief system. Unfortunately, when it’s no longer needed, it’s very hard to break free of. The grief and negative self-image that must be acknowledged in order to do so is often too overwhelming. It’s an understandable defense mechanism, but one that hinders emotional growth greatly.

How does comparison function as a manifestation of shame? When we are “in our shame,” i.e., feeling inferior and flawed, we compare ourselves to others. We’ve created a hierarchy in our minds to constantly remind ourselves of our place in the world. We see others’ success (more accurately, their perceived success), as a way to affirm our lower standing and inherent badness. Regardless of what we’re comparing—our bodies, our looks, our incomes, our popularity, our abilities—we always fall short. Unless, that is, we compare with the specific intention of feeling superior, which is the flip side of this hierarchy. Some friends of mine used to play a game called, “I’m glad I’m not that guy.” It’s pretty much what it sounds like. When they would see other men—they’re both men—who looked hard up or miserable, they’d point or nod and say, “I’m glad I’m not that guy,” then have a good laugh. It could be anybody: a homeless street person, a man with an overweight wife, someone in a wheelchair, etc. The point was to compare themselves with someone to whom they clearly felt superior; the unconscious motivation was to alleviate their shame.

My mother had a version of this game too. I remember many occasions when she compared herself or me to a stranger she was observing: “My butt isn’t as big as hers” or “You’re a lot prettier than that little girl.” Needless to say, I grew up with a lot of shame issues about my body and believed that self-worth was inexorably tied to one’s personal appearance.

Whether your intent is to affirm your lower or your superior standing in the hierarchy, you are acting out of shame when you do this. The need to compare yourself indicates a self-image based on external standards rather than internal values. Furthermore, the external standards don’t really exist; they are an interpretation based on the faulty belief system that there is a scale by which all people must be measured. Hierarchies do exist, and it is important to acknowledge and understand them. For example, there are physical hierarchies (atoms-molecules-cells-organisms), organizational hierarchies (private-corporal-lieutenant-captain-general), and value hierarchies (goodness and love are better than contempt and hatred). But there is no hierarchy for inherent worth. We are all valuable, we all have inherent worth, we are all creative beings with infinite potential. True, some of us are more actualized than others. But this is not about having more inherent worth. Ironically, shame, the very thing that causes us to compare ourselves with others, is also the thing that holds us back from reaching high levels of achievement. When we’re too focused on our standing (i.e., external standards), we lose sight of what’s really important: figuring out who we really are and what we really want.

There are many other manifestations of shame besides comparison (rage, perfectionism, and control, to name a few), but comparison to others in a self-worth hierarchy is a clear indication of shame issues. If you find yourself doing this, consider exploring shame further. Left unresolved, shame makes for a stagnant existence, one that never really gets out of first gear. It’s essential to educate yourself and get help—exposing shame to safe people is the most expeditious way to break free of it.

For further reading, I recommend two wonderful books: Shame: The Power of Caring by Gershen Kaufman, and Healing the Shame that Binds You by John Bradshaw. These books take very different approaches to the topic, the former being an academic study and the latter being a self-help approach, but both quite good reading on the topic of shame.

“I’m the best compared to nobody” is a freeing, exhilarating, energizing, empowering place to be, recognizing your inherent value while respecting everyone else’s. It’s well worth all the work that might be necessary to get there.