Brave New Kitty

My friend Darshan, over at DarshanChande.com, is writing some articles on romantic love and has asked me to look them over. I was happy to do so, having put a lot of thought into this topic over the years. I had more to say than I could fit into a comment, so I decided to write my own post in response. We are much on the same page on the topic, but I have a few thoughts to add to his that I hope will be helpful.

Darshan says, “Romantic love is the work of our brain chemistry…Romantic love is a mating drive.” I agree, but would like to make a distinction between romantic love and physical attraction or sexual desire. I think it’s more accurate to say that physical attraction is the work of brain chemistry–a mating drive. Physical attraction is caused by pheromones, “mating” hormones which make certain people appear, smell, taste, and feel better to us than others. Physical attraction is a completely non-rational process. But it is only one component of romantic love; essential, but not sufficient, for romantic love to occur.

Darshan concurs with this, saying that in order to raise offspring together, nature made romantic love more than just sexual attraction; it made it a desire to be together. This makes sense, but in the reading I’ve done, I have found it to not be the case. In Western culture, the idea of romantic love did not appear until the middle ages. Before that, marriages were arranged by families for financial and political reasons, and few people questioned this practice. Thus, romantic love is, to my knowledge, an invented idea. It’s odd to think of it like that now because it is such a large part of our culture. The thought of an arranged marriage is horrifying to most people. Yet romantic love is a fairly new development in the human psyche.

This is not to say that people didn’t have sexual desire. Of course they did. But it was seen as a base desire, something to be overcome and even ashamed of. It wasn’t associated with anything as noble or virtuous as lifelong love.

I think primitive humans solved the problem of raising their young by forming communities in which all members felt responsible for the care and protection of each other, and it was not until religion became a large part of peoples’ lives that men and women married into lifelong sexual relationships–and as I said, these had little to do with romance. At this point, we were still just trying to survive as a species, so I don’t think romantic love had a lot to do with mating. (And I could be entirely wrong about this, but it is how I understand it.)

I would summarize by saying that sexual desire is a real, powerful force rooted in our physical makeup (maybe genetic, maybe something else) and is thus, by definition, not rational, nor will it ever be, nor should we try to make it be. Much like being hungry or tired, physical attraction is a drive of the body, one that we can choose to act on or not. And romantic love is something we use to justify acting on sexual desire.

It’s not that romantic love can’t be felt between two people. It can, and it is even important to a long-term relationship, at least in the beginning; there certainly has to be something to bring two people together. But romantic love, this powerful desire to be with someone, just isn’t very important to the success of a relationship. Being irrational, based on idealistic fantasies, and more often than not a rationalization for physical desire, romantic love alone is a very weak predictor of whether or not two people will stay together. Far more accurate predictors are things like, do they really like each other and enjoy being together? Do they have similar world views? And are they both mature enough to do the work required to make a true, lasting partnership? Without taking these things into consideration–a rational process!–romantic love has little hope of surviving. So when Darshan says that romantic love is not meant to last, I couldn’t agree more.

This is less related, but it is another thought I’ve had about the non-rational nature of physical attraction and romantic love. While it is true that the process itself is irrational, it is also true that our physical attractions can teach us a lot about ourselves. When you look back on the people you’ve gotten involved with, there is always a pattern to be seen, a pattern that, if understood, can help a great deal towards becoming wiser and more discerning about which physical attractions are worth acting on, and which ones aren’t.

My own life provides a perfect example. Every relationship I had was an attempt to work out my unresolved issues with my parents. I tended to go back and forth, from emotionally distant partners I felt passionately in love with (my father), to more present but less interesting partners who I felt “safe” with, but ultimately bored by (my mother). It took years of repeating this pattern to realize what I was doing, and years more to figure out how to stay out of pointless relationships and try to work out my issues on my own. Because of this awareness and the work I was doing, I began to see relationships differently. I realized that I had used relationships to fill my emptiness (and there is nothing more powerful for that than the intensity of romantic love!), and that such an approach would never make me happy. Slowly, I figured out how to fill that emptiness on my own, and base a relationship on something more solid. If I had chalked this all up to the mystery of physical attraction, such growth would probably not have happened.

So while romantic love and sexual desire are not rational processes, we can certainly apply rational thought in dealing with them. Not only can we, but the better we do this, the more likely we’ll be to ignore the attractions that will bring misery, and act on the ones that will bring contentment. This is all somewhat beside the point of Darshan’s article, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

When people say they want love or romance, what they really want is a true partnership, whether they are aware of it or not. People have all sorts of skewed ideas about what love is. Many think it is an all-consuming passion that’s supposed to last forever, or another person who understands you completely, or someone who takes care your every need without you having to ask, or maybe never feeling lonely again. But all of these things are more about attachment than love. Yes, ideally the person you’re with cares about your needs and understands you pretty well, and there should be passion, too. But strong, healthy romantic love is so much more than that. “True love” is, more than anything, about creating a true, equal, caring partnership with another person.

A true partnership can be a mysterious thing. If it wasn’t modeled to you by your parents (or some other couple close to you, such as grandparents) when you were a child, then you may have little or no idea what it is. You might even be basing your ideas of romantic love on what you don’t want, or worse, on the fantasy you see in movies and romance novels, which paint a vastly incomplete picture. This is sadly all too common, but for good reason. A true partnership is kind of intangible, complex and deeply personal, and there are few ways to understand it other than experience. If you lack such experience, then it’s that much more important to take as much mystery out of it as you can. This is the best way to prepare yourself for the one of the greatest adventures a person can ever have: creating a true partnership with another human being. (Aside, of course, from focusing on your own growth, which is always the source of all good things and happiness.)

It’s a topic that deserves a book, or probably several, but here is a summary of some primary characteristics of a true partnership.

Feeling safe to express yourself without judgment. You must feel comfortable enough with a person to express your thoughts, feelings, and opinions freely. You must be able to be yourself without censorship. Sometimes, we censor ourselves because of self-consciousness, and sometimes, we censor ourselves because of another person’s negative reaction. Neither bodes well for intimacy. Feeling safe doesn’t happen instantly, nor should it, but should build upon a number of positive experiences sharing small aspects of your inner world and allowing the other person to do the same.

Feeling heard. You should feel as though your partner listens to your thoughts and feelings and makes an effort to really understand them, and you, without judgment or agenda but because he’s interested in what you’re thinking and feeling. You should do the same for him.

Being more concerned with truthfulness than with not hurting each other’s feelings. All too often, people who truly care about each other fall into the trap of not saying how they’re feeling because they don’t want to hurt the other person’s feelings. This is poison for a true partnership because, no matter how well-meaning your intentions are, not talking about issues that bother you will create rifts. It can be incredibly difficult to tell someone you care about that you’re angry, disappointed, or hurt, but if you don’t, you will create areas of emotional dishonesty that inhibit closeness. And if you get into the habit of not talking about what’s bothering you, your once great love will fizzle into a distant ease with each other where neither person is getting what he or she really wants. This is incredibly common, perhaps being the most efficient way for people who love each other to grow apart. Some of those honest conversations are excruciating, but they’re excruciating for a reason: because it’s stuff that has to be talked about. Be kind, but be honest.

Respecting each other’s boundaries. Many people think true love means baring all to each other and not having any secrets. This is not intimacy, but enmeshment. Everybody needs space and freedom to breathe; everybody is entitled to private thoughts they shouldn’t feel obligated to share. A true partnership is about two people who come together with common goals and mutual caring, but that doesn’t mean they own each other. Sharing every thought, as good as it sometimes feels early in a relationship, will end up feeling like being in prison. It is an impossible expectation to maintain, and trying to do so will create power struggles, resentments, and other forms of distance, which put intimacy, and thus a true partnership, out of reach.

Having an equal balance of power. Having an equal balance of power means that both people share the same sense of obligation and responsibility for making the relationship work, that both people want the same things from the relationship, and mostly, that both people have the same emotional investment in the relationship. When one person wants more from the relationship than the other one, it is a hopeless situation. The dynamic tends to be one of a chronic power struggle, where one person is always trying to get the other to commit more, want more, love more. It never works. This doesn’t mean that people can’t have differing opinions about what direction the relationship should move in or what that looks like. But if they do, then they should be able to talk about it freely, with a sense that the problem is solvable and without feeling that the relationship itself is threatened.

Having an equal balance of power is very, very important, and also, I think, very poorly understood. I did not understand it except in retrospect, after I’d found it with someone, and I realized that every romantic relationship I’d ever been in had had an unequal balance of power, and that this unequal power, more than anything else, doomed the relationship. If you don’t feel equal to your partner, holding neither more nor less power to dominate or determine the course of the relationship, you will never be happy.

Being an avenue for continued growth rather than a distraction from it. A true partnership should help your personal growth, not hinder it. It should expand you, not contract you. It should further you along your path rather than be an end in itself. In fact, a romantic partnership can be one of the greatest ways to grow emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. This is so for a couple of reasons. First, truly considering another person’s well being takes you out of yourself, which makes you less narcissistic. Second, a romantic relationship tends to bring out all your fears, anxieties, insecurities, character defects, and unresolved issues in a powerful way, and if you want the relationship to work, you’re going to have to deal with them.

If the relationship isn’t a true partnership, then you will stop growing, because you place all your concerns and focus on the relationship. But if the relationship is a true partnership, then it becomes another vehicle, a backdrop, to look more deeply into yourself. And this is a wonderful, wonderful place to be, even though it is, in the words of Joseph Campbell, “an ordeal.”

If you’ve never had a true partnership, it can sound like a mysterious and intangible thing. And in a way it is, knowable largely in retrospect. But there are certain aspects, like these, that can be quantified and measured, both as general principles and also against your own happiness and sense of well being within a relationship. Relationships don’t start out as true partnerships; it takes time and effort to know if someone is a good fit for you or not. But the better your ability to measure that potential, the less time you’ll waste on something that won’t work, and the more likely you’ll be to find something that will.

When people have toxic shame issues, they often don’t define them as such until they’ve had some help figuring out what’s really going on. They only know they feel that something is wrong with them, that they are flawed or in some way less lovable or deserving than other people. I’ve talked a lot about the manifestations of such feelings: addiction, depression, and emotional distance being the primary ways people try to cope with shame when they don’t know what it is they’re trying to cope with. But these are more the outcomes of shame than the shame itself. And they are behaviors, not feelings.

What does shame actually feel like? How is it experienced by people psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually? Shame varies, of course, because people have different circumstances, but there are certain characteristics that most shame-based people share, varying only in degree.

Shame-based thoughts. Not to beat this point to death, but shame is a belief, not a feeling. As such, it underlies and permeates all the thoughts, beliefs, and feelings of a shame-based person. (In fact, this is a good definition of being “shame-based.”) All shame-based feelings are based on shame-based beliefs. Shame-based people have a pervasive belief that they’re less-than, undeserving, and unlovable that underlies all that they think, believe, and do. Unless they’ve become aware of their issues with shame, they don’t question these beliefs but rather accept them as “the way things are,” in much the same way that a person who’s lived in the tropics all his life wouldn’t know what snow was (or at least not what it felt like). They only know in a general sense that they’re not happy, which is why they often call what they’re feeling depression, seek relief in addictive behavior, or have trouble with intimacy; usually, there is some combination of all of these. But all feelings of toxic shame are rooted in a shame-based belief system.

Exposure. Maybe the greatest manifestation of shame is a terrible sense of exposure. Triggers don’t have to be about anything big; in fact, they usually aren’t. Teasing, off-the-cuff comments, and personal remarks that seem harmless to other people can put a shame-based person into a tailspin of anxiety about feeling vulnerable, exposed, and unloved. When shame gets triggered, it makes people feel like a raw wound that everybody feels free to rub salt in. They feel utterly open to the judgment of the world and utterly powerless to change it or to take care of themselves while experiencing it. There is a great desire to run away, to be alone, to get away from the “cruel world.” Sometimes this feeling of exposure is so huge that people can even consider dying as preferable.

This awful feeling of exposure probably comes from being shamed by parents as a child and not being able to do anything about it. Thinking about these experiences, trying to remember how they felt, and talking about them is key to overcoming shame.

Isolation. Exposure feels so awful, I think, because shame-based people believe that they are alone with their “flaws.” They truly believe that they are unique (in a bad way), that nobody could possibly understand how they feel, and thus, that they are alone. Even if there is a possibility that someone might understand, the risk of sharing is usually too great to take; the sense of exposure that might occur must be avoided at all costs. This risk can be overcome by repeated experiences of validation and support, but it can take a long time and a lot of work. Until that happens, a sense of isolation is standard for shame-based people.

Humiliation. Shame often feels humiliating, too. Part of the awfulness in feeling exposed is humiliation, that hot, burning embarrassment not about something you’ve done, but about who you are. If you feel less-than other people, as shame tells you you are, and you believe that other people somehow have more rights to feel okay about themselves than you do, then humiliation seems a logical reaction. Again, the triggers are often small things. What doesn’t bother other people can put a shame-based person in a pit of despair for days, sometimes weeks.

Note that humiliation is different from humility, which is more about having a realistic self-image, even though the words originate from the same root, humus, which means soil. Humility means “grounded,” while humiliation means “feeling like dirt.” Ironically, shame-based people lack humility; not because they’re prideful, but because they don’t have a realistic self-image. True, this image is less than what it ought to be, not more, but even so, this tendency toward humiliation stands in the way of healthy humility. (And that is nothing to feel ashamed about, just fodder for understanding.)

Feeling dirty. When shame gets triggered, people can feel “dirty.” This is a metaphor, of course, and most often used in a religious sense, as in sex being dirty or any “base” human desires being dirty. Shame-based people can feel this “dirtiness” about their whole being, which is another reason the risk of exposure feels so awful and the isolation and humiliation so great: they don’t want other people to see how “dirty” they really are.

Secrecy. Secrecy and careful guarding of their true beliefs about themselves is also common. Often, shame-based people saddle themselves with a “no-talk rule,” likely learned in their family but serving to keep their shame a secret from the world. Secrecy is perhaps the most insidious enemy of overcoming shame. The effort to overcome secrecy can feel like death itself, not only because it is a powerful self-protection mechanism, but also because it breaks the pivotal family rule which, if done as a child, felt very literally like it could result in death. But sharing thoughts, feelings and experiences is the best way to heal from the sting of shame and change shame-based beliefs; it may be the only way.

Unlovability. What does “unlovable” feel like? It’s more of a belief, really, a belief that you are somehow less lovable or less deserving of love than other people. People who feel unlovable can be needy and clingy, searching frantically for a “true love” that makes them feel lovable, or they can be distant and aloof, or even abusive, always keeping others at a distance because they can’t risk feeling exposed and vulnerable. (This is not meant to excuse cruelty, only to understand one source of it.) This is more of a description of a behavior than of how unlovable people feel, but they behave in these ways because they feel bad, afraid, angry, frustrated, and powerless. Unlovability is a terrible lie. People do unlovable things, but nobody is inherently unlovable. If you doubt this, try to picture the most unlovable person you can think of (Hitler, for example), as a child who wants simply to be loved and accepted. Almost universally, unlovable actions are rooted in beliefs of unlovability, which are rooted in a childhood that lacked love and acceptance. I believe that most of the violence in the world is a misguided attempt to come to terms with feelings of unlovability. (Again, not an excuse, merely an effort to understand.)

The overarching answer to “What does shame feel like?” is that shame feels bad. Whether it’s exposure, isolation, humiliation, unlovability, or some other way shame-based people feel like they don’t belong equally in the world with other people, shame feels bad. And because it feels bad, shame-based people spend a lot of time trying not to feel how they feel, trying to get out of their own skin, run away from their issues, and distract themselves from their pain. In this way, shame feels more than anything like a vicious cycle, and one that people feel powerless to break free of. And until they stop running and start addressing the root cause–shame–rather than its manifestations, this is largely true.

Sometimes shame is hard to identify. If we have shame issues, they can be so pervasive and all-encompassing that it never occurs to us that there might be a different way to see ourselves and the world. If you’ve identified some shame traits in yourself–like feeling unlovable, undeserving, and less-than other people–but are still uncertain whether they are enough to constitute serious shame issues, it might help to look deeper. (And such uncertainty is normal and common, by the way, because shame causes us to doubt ourselves.) A good place to start, as is always the case with developing more self-awareness, is with your family of origin. If you can determine whether the family you grew up in was shame-based, and if so, the extent to which this was true, then you’ll have a good idea whether or not shame is a concern.

Shame-Based Family Characteristics
Characteristics of the shame-based family vary widely, and similar ones can look very different in different families. This is far from an exhaustive list, but it should be enough to raise awareness in anybody who suspects she might have shame issues to contend with.

Rigidity. Perhaps more than anything, a shame-based family is emotionally rigid. Each family member has certain roles and expectations that must be adhered to in order to hold the family together. This doesn’t so much mean the obvious roles like “parent” and “child” but rather, it is about how the family relates to each other emotionally. For example, it might be the oldest child’s role to be the “peacekeeper” in the family, or the father’s role to be the “scapegoat” in the family. In non-shame based families, such roles are fluid and dependent on the circumstances, with no single person expected to take on any one role permanently; furthermore, children are rarely expected to take on such stressful, adult roles as “peacekeeper” or “caregiver.” But in shame-based families, these roles are often identified implicitly as belonging to solely to one member, and that member knows what her role is and that it is somehow imperative to the family dynamic that she fulfill that role. These rigid roles are rarely discussed or overtly identified, but everyone in the family feels pressure and anxiety to fulfill them nevertheless. And if someone tries to step out of the role, the result can be quite unpleasant: anger, guilt trips, and countless other manipulations to maneuver the person back into her role and restore the family balance, so everybody can relax, or at least alleviate their anxiety. If you’ve ever heard of family roles such as “hero,” “scapegoat,” “lost child,” “clown,” etc., these refer to emotional roles in shame-based families.

Emotional repression and invalidation. Having and expressing emotions is usually taboo in a shame-based family, too. Being too happy or too sad or too angry is cause for being chastised, or told to “buck up,” or reminded that it’s “unladylike” or “low class” to show too much feeling. Since feelings are how we most express who we are, especially as children, learning that our feelings are not okay, or that they are an annoyance to the people who claim to love us, is a terribly invalidating message. Not all discouragement of emotional displays is equivalent to emotional repression; parents can encourage, or at least be neutral about, having feelings without encouraging their display. Shame-based families, however, tend to be uncomfortable with the feelings themselves, to the point of making the child afraid to express herself and internalize the message that her basic self-sense is somehow flawed.

Pressure to conform. Pressure to conform is similar to rigidity, but has a wider scope. Rigidity is about how family members relate to each other, while pressure to conform can be about almost anything. Parents in shame-based families will often pressure their children into sports, academics, college majors, relationships, careers, marriages, and even “giving them grandchildren” without regard for what the child wants or what would make her happy. This is so common it’s considered normal. In fact, shame is a powerful tactic used by conventional society to coerce people into conforming. In some ways, this is even a positive, for example, when it comes to paying bills and not intruding on the rights of others. But when it comes to what a person wants to do with his life, he should be expected to conform only to his own dreams and passions. While parenting certainly calls for suggesting and advising, shame-free parenting requires that the parents swallow their own wants, however hard it can be at times, and allow the child the freedom to pursue his own interests, not only in the family, but in all areas of his life.

An Uneven Balance of Power. Of course parents are going to have more power than children. This is as it should be. But in shame-based families, that power is usually skewed in one of two directions: either parents abuse their power, using fear and intimidation to manipulate their children, or children have the upper hand, either because parents are passive and afraid to be disciplinarians, or because the parents are children themselves, so undeveloped emotionally that the children learn to take care of themselves by first taking care of their parent(s). Power distribution can get complicated, e.g., if one parent abuses power and one is passive, if siblings take on different roles, if power is up for grabs depending on the mood or condition of the parent, and countless other iterations of this dynamic. It is problematic because whenever power is uneven or abused, a win/lose situation results, and children are inevitably on the losing end, regardless of the specific circumstances. This can result not only in shame, but in grave confusion about parent/child roles, self-doubt, and troubles in interpersonal relationships.

Examples of Shame-Based Families
Many families seem “normal” by all outside measurements but are nevertheless shame-based; conversely, not all typical likely situations result in shame-based families. That is, you can’t automatically assume that because your father was an alcoholic or your mother was very religious that your family was pathologically shame-based; you also cannot assume that because your family has no external trappings of shame that there was none. Every situation is different, sometimes even within a family (different siblings having different experiences, for example), and requires careful analysis and evaluation. That said, here are some examples of common themes of shame-based families.

Addiction. Addiction is how people deal with painful emotions when they haven’t developed better means. This almost automatically ensures that an addictive parent will provide poor emotional support for his children. This can range from chronic remorse and maudlin apologies to extreme abuse. Regardless of the degree, the dynamic usually follows a “no-talk” rule, where certain topics are off limits and rigidity is a given. Children learn that their thoughts and feelings are less important than pretending all is well and working around the parent’s emotional distance.

Religion. In some circumstances, religion can be a good thing for children, but sometimes it’s used as a weapon of shame to control them. In shame-based religious families, there are very, very rigid rules about right and wrong and good and bad, and they almost always involve squelching children’s independent thoughts and feelings. Sometimes there is overt abuse in the name of god, and always, always fear of what will happen if you step out of line. Children learn that they aren’t valued unless they behave “properly,” and self-esteem becomes tied to conforming. (This can happen in many other family systems as well, where adherence to rules takes precedence over all else; religion is just one example.)

“Niceness.” I include “niceness” because it can be one of the hardest shame-based systems to pinpoint as an adult. Your mother was so sweet and nice and gentle, you think, how could there have been any shame?? But sometimes parents, especially moms, use their niceness to make their children feel guilty and control them. When I was a kid, I had a friend with the sweetest mom in the world; I was envious of how nice and kind this lady was. But as I got older, I knew there was something wrong in that family, even though I couldn’t figure out what it was. Even though this lady was the exact opposite of my mom, and the family seemed so much more normal than mine, the evidence of problems was obvious. All three of the kids had drug problems, for example. One of them was getting into a lot of trouble, too, vandalizing, stealing, and flunking out of school. And when I went to dinner at their house, everybody was nice, but nobody really talked; there was this sense of stiffness and formality that was very uncomfortable. It wasn’t until years later that I realized what was going on. As nice as that woman was, it caused problems for her kids. Why? Because her niceness was a way to squelch any personal expression that displeased her. Any unpleasant topic was immediately met with “Oh, now, we don’t want to talk about that, do we?” So the kids never felt free to express themselves, and even less free to be honest. Like normal teenagers, they weren’t about to stop doing things that displeased their mother, so they learned to be secretive about it. Because the mom was more concerned with keeping her cocoon intact than she was with her children’s true thoughts and feelings, her children felt invalidated and unheard. The end result is shame: feeling unlovable.

Shame comes in many forms, some rather benign, but some extremely malignant. Unraveling it from all the other strings of childhood that dangle over the present can be hard, but the effort is worthwhile.

Recommendations:
I’m the Best Compared to Nobody
Getting Little

If you grew up in a dysfunctional family, and maybe even if you didn’t, it’s important to understand the difference between shame and guilt. Informally, the terms are often used interchangeably. In formal psychological terms, though, the words have vastly different meanings.

Guilt is an emotion and as such, is neither good or bad. It simply indicates when you’ve done something you feel bad about and thus helps you stay on track. If we didn’t have guilt, we wouldn’t know, for example, when we’ve hurt people, when we’ve done less than our best, or when we’ve made a decision that wasn’t in our best interest. Guilt is always about something specific, and always offers an opportunity to reconsider our actions. Therefore, guilt, like all other emotions, has a specific purpose and serves a useful function. Usually, when somebody says, “I’m so ashamed,” they’re referring to a specific action, and are really talking about guilt.

Shame, on the other hand, is not an emotion. Shame is a belief system. It is the belief system that you are flawed, less-than other people, undeserving of good things, and unlovable. It is usually so deeply-rooted and insidious that people with a lot of shame can have a very difficult time even realizing that it’s there, much less that it’s a terrible lie that they can learn to stop believing. Because it is so much a part of who we are, people rarely say “I’m so ashamed” when talking about their shame. Rather, they never dare to voice their awful true feelings, which are “I am bad,” “I am undeserving,” and “I am unlovable.”

Shame is the logical result of being invalidated as a child. If a child is taught in her formative years that her needs are secondary to those of her parents and that her parents are indifferent to her feelings, she is bound to grow up believing that she is less-than and unlovable. Invalidation can take many forms, from emotional manipulation to overt abuse; the worse the invalidation, the greater the shame. Everyone, having come from imperfect families, has some level of shame, but for some of us, shame can be debilitating, controlling our thoughts and coloring all aspects of our lives with its dark strokes. If you secretly harbor beliefs of unworthiness that have had a negative impact on your life, this is shame.

Guilt is a normal and healthy emotion when it’s related to specific actions or behavior. For example, if a person is perpetually drinking too much or not spending enough time with their kids or slacking off in their job, the guilt is there for a reason, and will remain there until the person changes her behavior. However, if a person feels guilt-ridden about non-specific things, or if feelings of guilt can be easily evoked by the opinions of others or the thought that somebody disapproves of her, or if she just spends a lot of time feeling bad about herself in general, then she’s really talking about shame. (And yes, low self-esteem, too, as this is shame’s closest friend.) Problems with compulsive behavior and interpersonal relationships can also be indications of shame.

Being overly shameful is an awful way to go through life. It is a lie, dark and insidious, that anyone is less-than anyone else, undeserving, or unlovable. Certainly, as adults we must earn the respect we get, but when childhood trauma inhibits us from knowing self-respect and self-love, this can be very, very difficult to figure out. So difficult, in fact, that many give up and bury themselves in un-meaningful work and pastimes that serve only to distract them from what they can’t seem to fix–thus perpetuating the shame. Sadly, any children introduced into this picture are likely to adopt the same beliefs about themselves.

Shame requires a basic overhaul of fundamental beliefs about who we are, what we want and deserve, and how possible it is to achieve these things. Usually, in uncovering the patterns and causes of shame, there is much sadness and anger, much confusion to clear up, and much grief to contend with. The process can take a long time, too, and sometimes seem bottomless. As arduous and unpleasant as all this may sound, the true tragedy is shame going unaddressed. If you have a lot of shame, freeing yourself from it should be the primary purpose in your life. Nobody deserves to live that way.

The answer is: everybody.

Actually, whether we need philosophy is kind of a moot point. We all have a philosophy, whether we are consciously aware of it or not. Man is a conceptual thinker. His means of survival is to develop a set of ideas and strategies about how to approach life and solve problems, what he likes and dislikes, what he deems important, and so on. The summation of how we do these things is our worldview or personal philosophy. It is something we can choose deliberately, or something we can fall into by avoiding that choice, but it is not something we can avoid having altogether.

An incident that happened a couple of weeks ago got me thinking about this. I was having a conversation with someone I don’t know very well, and the topic turned to politics. I am usually very careful in this area and prefer to avoid it altogether, but this time, I engaged. The specifics aren’t really important as this is not an an article about politics. But I said something about the Constitution (of the United States), and this person’s response was, “Well, I don’t know that going all the way back to the Constitution is necessary. What about simple practicality?”

This stopped me cold. I saw no reason to continue. Whenever somebody argues against principles for the sake of practicality, I know I am not dealing with a critical thinker. Principles are the very essence of a philosophy, personal, political, or otherwise. Having a rational conversation with someone who does not understand this is nearly impossible.

You may think this is overstating the point, that abstractions don’t apply to solving real-life problems. But abstractions are precisely how we solve real-life problems, and the better a person is at applying abstract ideas (that is, principles) to real-life problems, the better will be the solutions he comes up with.

If this weren’t true, then it would mean that every single moment of life is un-relateable to the moments that have come before it; that no conclusions can be drawn from them, no lessons can be learned, that no wisdom can be banked for future use. Essentially, it would mean that the world is a random, chaotic, unknowable place, and that our minds are of no value. (Or, that we are amoeba.) There is vast evidence to the contrary. Most natural phenomena are ordered and predictable, and our minds are capable of knowing and using this information. Otherwise, man would have died out long ago, having been one too many dinners for creatures bigger, stronger, and faster than him. Instead, we have not only risen to the top of the food chain, but we have created cultures, philosophies, arts, and sciences as testaments to the power and superiority of abstract thinking.

And what is abstract thinking? Dictionary.com defines abstraction as “the act of considering something as a general idea or term.” In other words, abstractions are a set of principles, a set of principles by which you identify and classify real-life occurrences. For example, say you’ve only seen one kind of chair in your entire life. Until, one day, you come upon a different kind of chair. You’ve never seen one like it before; the chair you’re familiar with is small, hard and made of wood, while this chair is big, soft and made of leather. But because your mind grasps the abstract concept of what constitutes a chair, you know that it is a chair.

A chair is a simple example of what we do with ideas–abstractions–nearly every waking moment of our lives. Our minds are constantly assessing, comparing, and classifying information, constantly trying to fit new information into familiar frameworks so we can know what we’re up against. Whenever we enter a new situation, there is always a sense of caution as our minds analyze it: Is it safe? Is it not safe? What do I recognize? What’s expected of me? How do I proceed? Usually this process is so automatic that it happens in the background while in the foreground we consider other factors. But it happens, and it happens all the time. And the better we are at making these assessments, the better we will be at dealing with real-life situations.

Being able to apply abstract ideas is essential to getting along in the world, but even more important is the ability to fit those abstractions into a kind of meta-abstract framework. That is, we need to have a hierarchical category structure that allows us to assign value and meaning. In other words, principles or values–a philosophy.

I think this quote, from Ayn Rand’s essay of the same name, best describes the point I’m trying to make: “Your subconscious is like a computer — more complex a computer than men can build — and its main function is the integration of your ideas. Who programs it? Your conscious mind. If you default, if you don’t reach any firm convictions, your subconscious is programmed by chance — and you deliver yourself into the power of ideas you do not know you have accepted. But one way or the other, your computer gives you print-outs, daily and hourly, in the form of emotions — which are lightning-like estimates of the things around you, calculated according to your values. If you programmed your computer by conscious thinking, you know the nature of your values and emotions. If you didn’t, you don’t.”

An argument from practicality is an argument from a subconscious programmed by chance. What “practical” really means is that a person has no guiding principles and no abstract ideas to back up his beliefs; he just likes the idea or “feels” that it’s right. In the case of the political argument above, this person may disagree with the Constitutional principle I was stating, which is fine, but in order to be taken seriously, he would have to refute the principle with a different one, one that could be examined and researched and discussed. “Practicality” is not such a principle but rather, an idea that’s used in lieu of having principles. It is the antithesis of having a guiding philosophy.

All too often, I see people making decisions and holding opinions on important issues when they clearly lack a personal guiding philosophy about those issues. Not only politics (although it is a stellar example), but personal issues, issues that really affect how much a person can achieve in life. People choose romantic partners on the weakest of premises, for example, or end up in careers they detest, or live in places they don’t really like, or have hobbies that don’t re-vitalize their spirit, and on and on. All because they have defaulted on the thing that is most necessary and most useful in life: their personal philosophy.

Without a consciously chosen philosophy, we are like plants swaying in the breeze, with no real purpose and no real sense of what matters to us. We are whisked in any direction by whim; we are the mall shoppers, the trend followers, the swing voters of the world. Again, I think Ayn Rand said it best: “As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define you philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation — or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt, like a ball and chain in the place where your mind’s wings should have grown.”

Source: Rand, Ayn, 1974: Philosophy: Who Needs It? Or read it in its entirety at http://fare.tunes.org/liberty/library/pwni.html

Only the truly humble learn through love; the rest of us have to learn through pain. — Speaker at Alcoholics Anonymous meeting

This saying, “pain is the touchstone of all spiritual progress,” comes from Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (They probably borrowed from somewhere else, but I couldn’t say where.) It’s in Step 11, which is about spiritual growth (“Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for his will for us and the power to carry that out”). I’ve been away from 12 Step groups for a number of years now, and I certainly don’t take god literally as a him (or her, for that matter), but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some good ideas to be found here. And I’m not sure if pain is the only thing that moves us forward spiritually, but it can certainly have a big impact.

First of all, let’s define terms. The pain referred to here is emotional pain, of course; specifically, emotional pain which has no external cause but seems to live inside us for reasons we struggle to understand. It is something addicts know a lot about, especially in the later stages, when they have to deal with remorse, self-loathing, and shame on a regular basis.  After struggling with this stuff for years, it can be a huge relief to just say enough. I don’t want to do this anymore; such emotional surrender can be the beginning of real change, even if you are not an addict. “Spiritual progress,” although specifics change from person to person and religion to religion, is generally about becoming less narcissistic (more honest, more self-aware, more circumspect, more tolerant, more empathetic, etc.).

Emotional pain isn’t something to seek out (nor do we have to, as it is quite good at finding us), but it can be a gift nevertheless in that it truly does bring us to a crossroads where we are forced to make crucial decisions about the directions of our lives. In fact, I would submit that this is the primary purpose of emotional pain: it is a cry for help from within, telling us there’s something we desperately need to address. As I’ve said elsewhere, it is the “check engine light” of the soul; if we ignore it, we do so at great risk. But if we pay attention to it, we open ourselves up to potential and possibility most of us never knew we had.

What does opening ourselves up to it look like? Mainly, it looks like not running anymore. We stop trying to numb it away, we stop trying to avoid it, we stop trying to distract ourselves or pretend it isn’t there. Instead, we get very quiet and try to listen to it. We try to hear what it’s telling us because we finally understand that this is the only way we can actually do something about it; it is the only way we can truly feel better.

Listening to the pain is not easy to do, especially after a lifetime of experience trying not to listen to it. So sometimes, we enlist help in the form of a therapist or self-help group; basically, someone who knows what we’re up against and has experience dealing with it. Someone who can help us stay present and feel strong enough and safe enough to withstand the process. Although not impossible to do alone, it can be very, very difficult and can take much longer than it needs to; gaining insight without feedback is hard, particularly in such a sensitive area. Having an objective voice helping us along can make all the difference.

Also, asking for help is itself an indication of willingness to do things differently. If you find yourself seeking help after a lifetime of shouldering your burdens alone, consider this a sea change. Something terribly big has shifted. You have opened yourself up in a new way, which can only result in new directions. A great adventure has begun; the great adventure, actually. So congratulate yourself: you have already begun to make spiritual progress.

Aside from the obvious benefit of facing our emotional pain–healing from it–there are a number of others. One is that we feel less alone. When our pain pushes us to reach out, we inevitably find a whole world of people who’ve had, or are having, similar experiences. We break our isolation, and we have a greater sense of connection to other people and to the world in general; this is another form of spiritual progress.

Another benefit is that letting ourselves feel our pain enables us to feel all our emotions more fully. When we avoid our full range of feelings, we can never really have our full range of feelings. This is how people learn to mistake relief, like distractions or getting high, for happiness: if you’ve never had it, how can you know what it is? But if you allow your pain to wash over you and through you and tell you whatever it is it’s trying to say, you will discover that all your feelings will be more saturated, more intense, and more satisfying. This, also, is spiritual progress, because being more in touch with ourselves allows us to be more present in the world, even if sometimes that presence means being in touch with our suffering.

The other side of this is equally important to consider. If we don’t allow ourselves to feel our emotional pain, it hardens us, withering us into bitter, cynical, unhappy people. If you’ve ever wondered why some old people seem so miserable and emotionally blank, with lifeless eyes and an expressionless face and lackluster interest in much of anything beyond the minutia of daily life, this is likely what’s behind it. A lifetime of ignoring such a huge part of ourselves that so desperately needs attention leaves us empty shells, caricatures, almost, of what being human is all about. Feeling our emotional pain isn’t fun, but the alternative is, in my opinion, far worse–and about as far away from spiritual progress as a person can get.

Finally, as tough as being present with our emotional pain can be, I have found that as you get familiar with the process, like anything else, it gets easier. Once we get a little practice listening to our inner voice, we don’t need to work quite so hard to hear what it’s saying. After awhile, it becomes natural to consult what once had to work so hard to get our attention. We become more sensitive to it, so the level of pain required to get us to go there becomes less and less, until one day, a vague uneasiness can be all it takes to make us stop, assess what’s going on, and figure out what adjustments we need to make. Thus, even as we address buried hurts and griefs, we are paving the way for easier going ahead, teaching ourselves to be attuned to our inner world, which in turn makes us more attuned to the external world; again, spiritual progress. When we become happier and more whole, the whole world benefits; that’s just how it seems to work.

Not everybody has a huge amount of buried, unresolved emotional pain. But suffering is part of the human condition, so we all have some. Even if your level is small, there isn’t a person on the planet who couldn’t benefit from cultivating habits of introspection and self-awareness. Without these things, spiritual progress is not possible.