The Art of Manliness - #509： Good Shame; Bad Shame

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.020 In the modern age, shame is often seen as an unmitigated bad. According to this popular

00:00:15.540 review, all shame is negative and toxic and steps should be taken to avoid and rid oneself of it.

00:00:20.440 My guest today, however, makes the contrarian case that some shame is actually necessary to

00:00:24.720 develop a true sense of self. His name is Joseph Bergo. He's a clinical psychologist and the

00:00:28.980 author of the book, Shame, Free Yourself, Find Joy, and Build True Self-Esteem. Today on the show,

00:00:34.020 Joseph and I discuss what exactly shame is, what it feels like, and the difference between toxic

00:00:38.220 shame and productive shame. Joseph then walks us through the sources of shame and how childhood

00:00:42.440 shame can mark us for life. We then discuss tactics we use to mask or avoid feelings of shame, how these

00:00:47.520 masking behaviors can sometimes get in the way of us making progress in our lives in more productive

00:00:51.920 ways to engage with shame. Joseph then digs into the culture of online shaming and the dangers we

00:00:56.740 face as a society when we shame men by pathologizing healthy masculine attributes like assertiveness,

00:01:03.080 risk-taking, and competitiveness. After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is

00:01:07.620 slash shame. Joseph joins me now via clearcast.io.

00:01:11.800 All right, Joseph Bergo, welcome to the show. Thank you. So you are a psychotherapist. You've

00:01:24.800 written several books and your latest is called Shame, Free Yourself, Find Joy, and Build True

00:01:30.380 Self-Esteem. Now, shame is a topic that's gotten a lot of attention lately in the past few years,

00:01:36.140 particularly online shame. Maybe we can get into that too a bit, but before we do, let's say,

00:01:40.560 what is shame exactly? Because I think when people talk about shame, they might be talking

00:01:45.800 about something else than what other people are talking about shame. They're usually talking about

00:01:50.200 one type of shame. Shame turns out to be a whole family of emotions. They have a similar basis in

00:01:56.980 our physiological responses, in our biology, but shame can be a lot of different feelings. They all

00:02:03.620 make us feel bad about ourselves. They make us self-aware in some way that's painful. So shame

00:02:10.460 could be self-consciousness, embarrassment, guilt, mortification, humiliation. You know,

00:02:17.300 it could be extreme or mild. It could be fleeting or it could last for a long time. But all those

00:02:23.240 shame feelings have that painful awareness of self in common.

00:02:27.640 And this is something that even like Darwin noticed that all humans experience, even maybe

00:02:34.020 some animals to a certain extent. Like there's a certain sense of self-consciousness that we share

00:02:38.260 as humans.

00:02:39.860 Well, and if you, if you look at the evolutionary reasons why we might have the ability to feel

00:02:47.060 shame, you know, it has survival value. There's every reason to believe that other animals could

00:02:53.020 experience shame too, even if they're not self-aware in the way that humans are.

00:02:57.840 I mean, so what are those reasons? Why do we have shame? Like why, why is it a, I mean,

00:03:01.600 it feels terrible, but we feel it for a reason from an evolutionary, evolutionary theory would say,

00:03:06.340 well, we have, it's there for a reason. So what's the reason that we think it's there?

00:03:10.760 Well, the most recent studies say that it's there to promote group unity and conformity with

00:03:18.580 tribal values. So it, if you violate the expectations of the tribe and you put everybody

00:03:26.780 at risk by your behavior, you're going to be shunned. You're going to be left out. And evolution

00:03:33.300 gave us the ability to feel shame so that we would want to avoid that pain, right? So nobody wants to

00:03:40.160 feel ashamed. So you're likely to conform to tribal values. You're likely to cooperate with other members

00:03:46.780 of your tribe. And if, if you don't, then you'll be shamed. And that encourages you to behave

00:03:53.880 differently next time. So it does have survival value because it promotes your chances of surviving

00:03:59.800 and it promotes the tribe's chances of surviving and triumph over, triumphing over competing tribes.

00:04:06.600 So shame is just that feeling of, you know, that we did something wrong, right? And it can be like

00:04:11.380 embarrassment, even another types of emotions being left out, et cetera.

00:04:15.180 There's also this talk that there's a, you know, I've, I've read in different books on psychology

00:04:20.060 when they've talked about shame, like there's a difference between shame and guilt. Do you,

00:04:25.240 we're going to start off like, what do you, what do the, what do people typically say the difference

00:04:28.580 between shame and guilt is? And do you think there really is a difference?

00:04:31.780 Well, the, you know, the classic formulation was put forward by John Bradshaw. He wrote that book,

00:04:37.080 Healing the Shame That Binds You. There have been other people who have said the same thing,

00:04:41.700 but he put it pretty succinctly. He said, guilt is about what you do. Shame is about who you are.

00:04:48.980 I think that's true in some limited way. I tend to look at it slightly differently. I see guilt as a

00:04:56.860 member of the shame family and it's, it's about something specific and it's less pervasive than

00:05:03.940 other types of shame, but it still involves that bad feeling about yourself. It just, it's just

00:05:09.580 specifically about something you did rather than something larger.

00:05:13.780 So, and also when people, psychologists write books about shame or guilt, shame is typically

00:05:18.500 framed as something completely negative and you have to like, get rid of, you know, get rid of

00:05:23.640 completely. You make the case that that's not necessarily the case. Shame can actually be useful

00:05:28.160 in developing ourselves as individuals.

00:05:30.800 That was the whole reason why I wrote this book because I'm, I'm, well, I'm kind of tired of it,

00:05:37.720 but also troubled by the narrative that shame is this uniformly bad thing. I think we live in a

00:05:42.980 kind of, we've got an anti-shame zeitgeist going on. It's like, you know, nobody is going to make

00:05:48.760 anybody else feel ashamed about anything. And, you know, that's, that's a really useful perspective

00:05:55.240 when it comes to being a more inclusive society, people who have been excluded because they don't

00:06:02.200 conform to social norms and they've been subjected to shame. This is a topic that, that Andrew Solomon

00:06:08.480 deals with in his book, Far From the Tree, outliers. You know, I think we should be less shaming. We need

00:06:14.620 to become more inclusive and, and make room for people who, you know, are hearing impaired or suffer

00:06:21.200 from dwarfism or autistic or handicapped in some other way. But there are times when shame is not

00:06:29.720 a destructive force. It's, it's, it's telling us something about ourselves if we'll listen to it.

00:06:36.020 I think that we often feel shame when we, we disappoint the healthy expectations we hold for

00:06:43.360 ourselves and when we behave in ways that betray our own values. You know, if we do that, I think we

00:06:50.480 ought to feel ashamed. I think shame can be useful in those cases if we, if we don't, you know,

00:06:57.620 defend against it, you know, in just the way that shaming in a tribal setting encourages,

00:07:03.420 you know, you to behave in ways that support tribal values and, and help everybody. If you, if you feel

00:07:11.360 shame in relation to yourself, it might be a way of telling you you're, you're not conforming to your

00:07:17.800 own values and you need to change. Right. And I've, we've written about the concept of honor,

00:07:23.100 right? Sort of, it's a masculine virtue that you can see across cultures and it's sort of

00:07:27.360 an honor we can equate to as like a sense of esteem, a sense of your place in your, your group,

00:07:31.900 whatever it is, but like honor cannot exist without shame because you have to know, like you're not

00:07:36.240 doing the thing that could bring you honor. So you feel a sense of shame and that causes a course

00:07:41.740 correction in your, in your behavior. Exactly. It's, it's interesting that, you know, a traditionally

00:07:47.680 masculine virtue like honor doesn't get a lot of respect these days. It's usually, it's usually linked

00:07:55.840 to a kind of restrictive, vindictive sort of code of behavior that causes men to behave in, you know,

00:08:04.400 in aggressive ways towards other men when they feel that their honor or reputation is challenged. So I,

00:08:10.440 I see honor as a really good thing. That's not the way it's often approached these days.

00:08:15.300 And this whole idea is sort of, so anti-shame zeitgeist you talked about. It's kind of explains

00:08:18.860 all of social media. Like people just, people don't care about doing, I don't know, like looking,

00:08:24.820 like, you know, being honorable, right? All they care about is attention. And oftentimes the way you

00:08:29.000 can get attention is just being as shameless as possible. And you see just, just really, just,

00:08:34.320 you know, just terrible things that people do online just to get that attention.

00:08:37.480 Exactly. And that was, that was the subject of my last book, The Narcissist You Know,

00:08:43.280 writing about the other side of shame, which is narcissistic kind of behavior that often appears

00:08:49.380 shameless.

00:08:50.900 And so another thing, so shame can be good. We'll talk more about how it can, how we can use shame

00:08:55.680 to create a true sense of self, true sense of esteem and honor in our lives. So that's one

00:09:02.000 misconception. But something else that whenever you read books about shame is that there's different

00:09:07.300 types of shame. There's good shame and there's toxic shame. Do you make that distinction in the

00:09:12.100 way you think about shame?

00:09:14.100 I do. I find the idea of toxic shame, that's again, that's John Bradshaw's idea. I find that

00:09:20.120 really useful and it's very much linked to a concept that I use of core shame, which we might talk about.

00:09:26.540 But toxic shame is destructive because it's not about something specific. It's not pointing the

00:09:35.060 way towards, you know, growth and improvement. It's, it's a total indictment of someone's character

00:09:42.020 as being essentially without value and unlovable. So that's, that's the destructive type of shame.

00:09:48.120 So how's that related to your idea of core shame?

00:09:51.680 I've worked with a lot of people over my career who had horrific childhoods and they were left with

00:10:00.300 this feeling inside that there was something defective and ugly about them, unlovable. And that,

00:10:09.880 that can be linked to toxic shame. The difference that I make is that sometimes that sense of core

00:10:19.400 shame is telling you the truth about something. And this is a message nobody wants to hear. And I get

00:10:27.220 a lot of flack for it is that sometimes your childhood can have been so damaging that it's marked you for

00:10:35.280 life. It doesn't mean that you can't grow, doesn't mean you can't build self-esteem, doesn't mean you

00:10:41.480 can't feel good about yourself, but it might place some limits on what you can do, what you're capable

00:10:48.060 of. And that, that sense of being damaged by your past is what I call core shame.

00:10:54.980 Okay. So like toxic shame, an example of that would be like, you feel shame, ashamed because you have some

00:10:59.600 sort of disability, right? Or some handicapped. And like, because you have that, you are, you are 0.99

00:11:04.900 unredeemable. Core shame, you know, you might have had just a horrific childhood where you didn't have

00:11:10.400 a disability, but you, your parents treated you or not even your parents could just be someone

00:11:14.820 treating you in such a way where you just feel defective as just to your being and that there's

00:11:20.020 no value in you as well.

00:11:21.740 More or less, that's right. But it's interesting that you bring up the handicap because that's,

00:11:27.860 that's the, the metaphor I use for core shame is let's say you suffered from rickets when you were

00:11:36.740 growing up during the time when your bones, your skeleton was forming. Even if you correct your diet

00:11:43.840 later on as an adult, you can't, you can't change that. You, you know, having had rickets,

00:11:49.940 a vitamin D deficiency as a child growing up, it will mark you physically for life. And I say the

00:11:58.500 same thing about certain kinds of emotional and psychological damage you experience when you're

00:12:03.620 growing up that, that it's going to mark you for life. It doesn't mean you can't do things. It

00:12:08.440 doesn't mean you're completely without value and utterly incapable of anything, but it might place

00:12:14.540 limits on what you can do. So, you know, if I have some sort of physical handicap, that doesn't mean

00:12:22.160 I can't, you know, go on and compete in the special Olympics. Doesn't mean I can't do lots of things,

00:12:28.140 but I might not be able to, you know, compete in the regular Olympics. It is, I know people don't like

00:12:34.980 hearing this. I just think it's, it's better to be honest about the way our paths, pasts,

00:12:41.020 our physiological past, our psychological past can place limits on our, on our future. It's better

00:12:48.300 to take those limitations into account rather than pretending there are no limitations and then

00:12:54.980 failing and feeling more shame. If you see what I mean? No, I get what you're saying. I think I've

00:12:59.360 seen that happen in the lives of a lot of people in my own life, where you don't take into account

00:13:03.520 your own limitations and, you know, you go, you reach for the stars, right? You can be whatever you

00:13:07.700 want to be, but like that can't, sometimes not in the cards for you for whatever reason.

00:13:12.740 It doesn't mean you can't have a good flourishing life, but sometimes you have to, you have to work

00:13:16.320 within those limitations, those confines you've been, you've been given in life and you can have

00:13:20.960 a really, really good life even doing that. You can, and it's hard in this environment,

00:13:27.180 you know, in, in the kind of social media world where everybody is posting about their fabulous

00:13:32.920 lives. And we're bombarded with images of celebrities and wealthy athletes and these

00:13:38.500 people who appear to have it all and don't have any limitations. It's hard to accept your own

00:13:43.960 limitations when the messaging you get is like you're saying, reach for the stars. You can do

00:13:48.800 anything. Have you noticed that issue coming up more and more amongst people you work with this

00:13:54.060 idea of like this increasing sense of there's no limits, like they, they believe that. And so they,

00:13:59.380 they live their lives like that, but they, they, they come to the realization, no, there are limits

00:14:03.500 and they just end up frustrated. Have you, have you noticed that sort of anxiety or frustration

00:14:07.020 because of that sort of idea that's out there that there are no limits in life?

00:14:10.680 I certainly have noticed that in, you know, in the people I know, my acquaintances, my friends,

00:14:16.160 there's the people I come into contact with the, the people who come to me for therapy usually come

00:14:21.700 because they've got a lot of shame. They know that's what I work with. So they're not,

00:14:25.980 they're not in that same, that same group. Although the, you know, the, the creation of

00:14:33.260 this ideal self that you're supposed to attain is, is something that shows up in people that I work

00:14:38.680 with, particularly people who have narcissistic issues. They, they want to believe that they can

00:14:44.600 create this, they can become this ideal person. And that's the antidote to that, that shame they feel

00:14:50.920 at base. Well, let's talk about some of the sources of shame. I guess, I mean, is, are the sources of

00:14:57.880 shame the same for core shame and sort of everyday shame or are there differences between those types?

00:15:03.680 I think they're, they're all the same. And, you know, in the book, I, I came up with these categories

00:15:09.100 of experience to help people understand when and why we might feel shame just to sort of just useful

00:15:16.320 labels. I call them the shame paradigms. So I think they're, they're pretty intuitive. We feel

00:15:23.100 bad about ourselves when our love is unrequited. So whenever we like somebody who doesn't love us

00:15:30.500 back, whenever we want to be friends with somebody who doesn't want to be friends with us, that's a,

00:15:35.240 a one obvious source of shame. We also feel shame when we're left out, when there's some kind of

00:15:42.880 group we want to belong to, but they don't let us in. When we see on Facebook that all of our friends

00:15:50.040 are, you know, are getting together without us, the famous fear of missing out is really about the

00:15:57.080 fear of being excluded and feeling the shame of being on the outside. So unrequited love, exclusion.

00:16:04.760 The third one is unwanted exposure. I think everybody gets that when you embarrass yourself

00:16:10.200 in public, when you make a mistake that's called out, when you appear unfavorably for whatever

00:16:16.660 reason, that makes you feel bad about yourself. And then the final one is one you and I have been

00:16:22.700 talking about a bit already, disappointed expectation. When we have some hope for ourself or

00:16:29.220 ambition or expectation and we fall short of it, that it makes us feel bad about ourselves.

00:16:34.760 That one, as, as we were saying, can also be, you know, a message to us that, well, you know,

00:16:40.460 maybe you didn't try hard enough. Maybe you need to work harder. Maybe you need to rethink your

00:16:45.300 approach. You know, it can be a message rather than just a painful feeling.

00:16:50.160 Can those other sources of shame, like unrequited love, exclusion, unwanted exposure, can those,

00:16:55.920 so, you know, disappointed expectations that can help guide your life and help you improve,

00:16:59.480 but can those other sources of shame sort of change the way you do things so things work out better for you?

00:17:04.760 I think so. If you look at unwanted exposure, you know, sometimes the unwanted exposure that

00:17:12.760 embarrasses us is the result of our own choices. Like maybe, maybe I shouldn't have had that other

00:17:21.360 glass of wine at that party because then I came, became a little too garrulous and said some things

00:17:27.140 I regretted the next day. You know, maybe I need to be more cautious. If you're feeling the shame of

00:17:34.000 exclusion, you know, it might lead you to choose other groups to look elsewhere for a sense of

00:17:40.740 belonging. It's important to belong. We all need to belong somewhere. And if you persistently on the

00:17:46.680 outside of a group, maybe it's because you're choosing the wrong group. Those are some examples.

00:17:52.040 And then unrequited love, it might be something, maybe I'm doing something that's

00:17:56.000 like I'm turning people off for some, for whatever reason.

00:17:59.820 Or, or maybe you're, you're going after people who are inappropriate for you. You know, maybe you

00:18:06.840 have some idealized view of yourself that doesn't comport with the way other people see you. I'm not

00:18:13.160 sure, but, but, you know, people do fall in love with people who are just aren't right for them.

00:18:18.500 Oh yeah. That happens all the time. It's a source of frustration for a lot of people.

00:18:21.520 So we talked a little bit about, you know, early childhood and you have this, you believe that,

00:18:25.200 you know, sometimes things can happen in your early childhood that can just affect you for the

00:18:30.460 rest of your life. And you can, you know, you're never gonna be able to get rid of it, but you can

00:18:34.380 work with those limitations. I imagine like the shame of unrequited love, right? Just having a

00:18:39.480 parent that as a little, as a child just doesn't really love you, that can be a big source of core

00:18:45.000 shame in a person's life. Absolutely. And the, the, the sad science shows that children who grow up

00:18:55.800 with parents who don't love them, their brains are different. There's interesting MRI studies out of

00:19:03.120 UCLA, a guy named Alan Shore. And he, he talks about and shows the brain scans of children who grew up in

00:19:13.320 normal, relatively normal environments, and those who grew up in, in really deficient ones. And,

00:19:19.000 and they show that their brains are smaller. They have fewer neural connections between the neurons.

00:19:26.580 They're just visibly different. And because brains have critical periods for formation,

00:19:35.500 meaning that there's a, there's a critical period when you need certain conditions for

00:19:39.780 a brain to develop normally. If you go through that critical period and you don't get the conditions

00:19:47.060 you need, like that kind of loving devotion in the first year of life, you can't make up for it

00:19:53.760 entirely in later life. There's a lot of talk about neuroplasticity these days, and the brain is

00:20:01.660 capable of rewiring itself and, and making new connections and growing to some degree. But, but if

00:20:09.840 neuroplasticity were infinite, then, you know, having a traumatic brain injury wouldn't matter,

00:20:15.680 right? You, you just reheal. And it's kind of the same way when, when I, when I talk about the,

00:20:21.720 the neural deficits of people who grew up in grossly deficient environments with parents who

00:20:28.480 did not bond with them in a loving way that, you know, that they, they are likely to be marked

00:20:35.200 by that for life. It doesn't mean that they can't grow and compensate, but it's going to be within the

00:20:42.520 limits, you know, imposed by their early experience. We're going to take a quick break for a word from

00:20:48.120 our sponsors. And now back to the show. How does that early experience manifest itself later on

00:20:54.880 as adults? Well, all sorts of ways. If you, if you grow up with this sense of core defect or

00:21:05.720 unworthiness, it's often an unbearable experience. I mean, it's just too painful to feel that way,

00:21:14.200 to acknowledge that you, you feel that way. So you tend to develop a set of defenses against

00:21:21.660 recognizing that truth about yourself. And a lot of them are narcissistic in nature,

00:21:27.980 rather than feeling that you're damaged or defective in some way. You instead insist to the,

00:21:35.760 to the people that you know, to the world at large, that you're in fact a superior person. You're better

00:21:42.100 than other people. So you become, you know, you become a narcissist. That, that's a very common 0.53

00:21:47.640 way that it shows up. So we, that was, we're talking about core shame, but I think, you know,

00:21:52.600 some people who are listening probably have experienced that core shame. They just weren't

00:21:55.520 loved as a kid. They had some sort of traumatic experience where they just feel defective,

00:21:58.520 but we can experience these types of shame on a day-to-day basis. In fact, we probably do

00:22:03.240 multiple times a day, right? We've all probably today already had some moment of unwanted exposure.

00:22:09.600 Maybe you passed gas when you didn't, when it wasn't really a good time to pass gas.

00:22:15.360 Maybe a friend turned you down, you know, when you want to go hang out. Do we, are there defenses

00:22:20.640 that we put up on just for this day-to-day shame that kind of get in the way of us progressing as,

00:22:26.800 as people? Absolutely. It's one of the major messages in this book that the strategies for

00:22:35.600 dealing with shame that I describe in my clients who suffered more from core shame are just a more

00:22:42.780 intense version of strategies that we all use for coping with inevitable shame that comes up really

00:22:50.100 every day in our life. So the, the, the clinical cases in the middle of the book are divided into

00:22:57.260 these three strategies, the strategies for avoiding shame, strategies for denying shame and strategies

00:23:05.080 for controlling shame. And, and I get, there are chapters in the book that, that describe those

00:23:11.680 in everyday life. So avoiding shame in everyday life. Well, if I don't want to feel the shame of being

00:23:20.900 excluded, I might avoid going to a party where I don't know anybody. And that's kind of understandable.

00:23:28.600 I mean, that's not pathological. That's sort of like, why expose yourself to something potentially

00:23:34.020 painful if you don't have to, I mean, you might also want to go because you could meet some new

00:23:39.060 people, but it isn't pathological to want to avoid it. Another example I give is, you know, lots of

00:23:46.120 people do not like to be on stage because they're concerned about embarrassing themselves or, you

00:23:52.500 know, appearing unfavorable in some way. And there's nothing wrong with saying, you know what, you know,

00:23:57.420 I, I don't want to be an actor. You know, I don't want to be on stage. I'd rather, I'd rather not do

00:24:02.360 that. You know, we, we think about whether or not we know it, we think about the potential for a shame

00:24:09.500 experience all the time. We're, we're, we're anticipating it. So say there's somebody new that

00:24:17.160 you'd like to invite out a potential new friend or a possible date. So you're likely to be concerned

00:24:25.080 with whether or not you're going to be rejected, right? Your, your love will be unrequited. So you,

00:24:30.420 you think about how to approach that person. You, you might try and put it forward casually,

00:24:36.160 like it's no big deal, or you just thought about it. Oh, Hey, you know, you want to want to get

00:24:40.760 together for lunch next week, whatever you, you don't want to feel the shame of, of unrequited love

00:24:49.360 or, or exclusion. That's normal. Everybody does that. I think we, we're all doing it all the time.

00:24:55.740 I think that strategies for denying shame are also pretty common. I talk about them more in terms of,

00:25:02.480 you know, narcissistic traits in the, in the case studies, but you know, think back on a,

00:25:09.100 a fight you might've had with a romantic partner, say he or she criticized you for something or

00:25:16.160 faulted you for something. I think most people have a tendency to react defensively when they're

00:25:24.460 criticized in that case. And at least initially they might, they might say, well, what about what you

00:25:31.300 did? You know, you, you, you might blame the other person or try and turn tables or make excuses

00:25:37.920 for themselves, or even become indignant that you dared to criticize me for forgetting, you know,

00:25:44.240 the dry cleaning when you never empty the dishwasher. You know, these, these are kinds of things that we

00:25:49.860 all do. And hopefully we, you know, we cool down and we are able to say, oh yeah, you know,

00:25:57.540 you had a point. I'm really sorry about that. Those are kind of normal, normal strategies,

00:26:04.620 controlling shame strategies, self-deprecating humor. I mean, it somehow feels a lot better to

00:26:13.060 make a joke at our own expense than to hear somebody else make that joke or to expose something

00:26:19.140 about us. I think that's a healthy thing in a way. I think we all, we all like, I think it's a

00:26:25.080 healthy sign to be able to laugh at yourself as long as it doesn't, you know, verge into, you know,

00:26:30.720 kind of savage self-hatred, which is more what I talk about in the case studies. So, so those are

00:26:36.120 ways that we all avoid, deny, and control shame in our everyday life. They're healthy, normal, and not

00:26:43.380 pathological, as long as they're sort of temporary strategies. Yeah. The, the avoid shame, I think that's

00:26:49.120 where you had the case study of how a shame coping strategy can become detrimental of the, the young

00:26:55.680 man basically just wasn't doing anything. He's basically just checked out of life. Didn't, wasn't

00:27:01.120 going to college, just living at home. He was, you know, seeing you because his parents were making

00:27:05.640 him. We've had other psychologists on the show talking about this tendency of, for young men to

00:27:12.960 check out. And a lot of it, it's like the reason they check out because they just want to avoid the

00:27:16.880 shame of failure. So there's like, it's, I mean, especially in this world where it's hyper

00:27:21.620 competitive, right? If you don't get the right SAT score, you don't go to the right college. Like

00:27:26.300 you basically, the idea is out there, you're ho, like your life is just ruined. Well, it's not the 0.79

00:27:29.640 case, but they think that. And so to avoid that shame, they just like, ah, I'm just going to stay

00:27:33.940 home and play video games. Right. I mean, so that the so-called slacker personality is, is basically

00:27:39.160 organized around avoiding shame. It doesn't look that way. It looks like they just don't have any

00:27:43.640 ambition, but that's not really the issue. And then that idea of, of controlling shame,

00:27:48.680 you know, self-deprecating humor can be healthy, but then it can sort of, it converge into

00:27:52.640 an extreme form of like just self-pity where you just, instead of letting other people say where

00:27:58.120 you're, you're falling short, you just, you go ahead and you just lay it on. Well, I'm such a

00:28:01.580 terrible this, I'm a failure, I'm this, and that's just self-pity. Right. Right. And it's, and it's

00:28:06.700 very, it's very destructive, but what isn't obvious about it is that it's a, it's a strategy

00:28:14.140 for dealing with shame. It just, you're, you're in control of it. You're never going to allow

00:28:18.800 anybody else the opportunity to shame you because you're there first.

00:28:22.960 But then it holds you back because, I don't know, people don't like being around, you know,

00:28:26.740 like people don't like being around Eeyores, right? They're just like, nobody.

00:28:30.360 They do not.

00:28:31.000 And so it actually just sort of, it's like a vicious, vicious cycle where people just

00:28:36.540 continue to exclude you because you're just not pleasant to be around.

00:28:40.920 Leading you to feel even more sorry for yourself.

00:28:43.640 Right. Right. That's, that's what I noticed with a lot of these case studies. There are,

00:28:47.700 there are just tons and tons of vicious cycles that are going on with these individuals.

00:28:52.340 Well, the, you know, as they, as they often say in, in psychoanalytic therapy, it's, it's not

00:28:59.940 the original problem that's causing you trouble. It's, it's your defenses against it. That's what's

00:29:06.960 in your way. And in my work with my clients, I'm, I'm always trying to help them see their

00:29:14.000 defensive strategies for coping with shame and how they're getting in the way of them

00:29:19.240 doing the very things that would make them feel better about themselves.

00:29:23.940 Well, let's talk about shame in men. Cause you talk about this a bit in the book.

00:29:27.160 I thought it was interesting. You started off or you mentioned somewhere in the book that when

00:29:30.720 before you, right, you, right now you do video online video sessions, right? So you're someone's

00:29:36.120 out at the computer, they're at their computer. But before that you did in person, right? Where

00:29:40.300 someone would like, you know, lay on a couch and you guys would talk when you were doing the in

00:29:43.760 person, you mentioned that it was like 60% women, 40% men. But then when you started doing the

00:29:49.800 online, it flipped. Now 60% of your clients are men and 40% of the clients are women. And you kind of

00:29:56.640 made an observation that might be related to a man's sense of shame. What do you think is going

00:30:00.260 on there?

00:30:01.800 Well, you know, the whole cultural comfort conversation about expectations for men,

00:30:06.800 that they're supposed to be self-reliant, stoic. They're supposed to be able to solve their own

00:30:12.820 problems. They're not supposed to need help. So admitting that you have psychological issues

00:30:20.520 and you need help from somebody else is looked down upon. It's considered unmanly, even more so

00:30:28.900 in other cultures than our own. I mean, we're relatively liberal minded in that respect. But

00:30:34.060 if you look at, you know, other cultures, I think it's much more intense. And it's interesting that I've

00:30:42.000 had a number of men in my practice from other cultures. They were English speaking, but they were,

00:30:48.000 you know, perhaps from, you know, India, the country, India, where getting help, you know,

00:30:55.960 from a psychotherapist would be, you know, admitting that would be suicide in a way.

00:31:02.600 And in your experience in work with men, where do you see the biggest source of shame for men?

00:31:10.280 Like, is it unrequited love, unwanted exposure, disappointed expectations, or is it just all over

00:31:15.060 the place? It is all over the place. And I think that's, I think that's borne out by the distribution

00:31:22.860 of the cases I talk about in the book. There's men in each section. There are men who have problems

00:31:29.140 avoiding shame. There are, you know, men who deny shame and there are men who control shame. So I think

00:31:35.900 it pretty much runs the gamut these days. So yeah, so men are also handling shame in pretty much all

00:31:42.940 the different ways, either avoiding it. We just talked about an example of a lot of young men

00:31:46.900 dropping out simply as a way to avoid it. How do you see men trying to deny shame? Where do you see

00:31:53.720 that? How does that manifest itself? Well, you know, it, it shows up in narcissistic kind of

00:32:00.000 behaviors, but also ones that can be like hyper-masculinized, if you know what I mean. Like

00:32:06.800 there are, you know, normal traits that are associated with masculinity, you know, throughout

00:32:14.980 our history, you know, assertiveness, aggressiveness, competitiveness, those can be hyper-masculinized.

00:32:22.120 Like somebody who's like too competitive, somebody who has to constantly win at everything and is bent

00:32:29.500 on destroying the competition, that, that's a very narcissistic strategy for denying shame.

00:32:36.520 and inflicting it on other people. And how do you see men controlling shame? How do they

00:32:41.340 tend to do that? You know, those are the less obvious examples because, you know, self-deprecation,

00:32:49.200 self-pity, and self-hatred are not really socially acceptable for men to be, you know, men aren't

00:32:57.580 supposed to behave that way. So you don't see that very much. Those are the people who would probably

00:33:02.580 come to me. The, the hyper-competitive, narcissistic type of men who are denying shame are the ones

00:33:09.340 who would never come for therapy. Um, and, you know, avoiding shame, you know, I think that's

00:33:15.840 pretty much everywhere.

00:33:17.120 No. Yeah, for sure. Well, and so we talked, I mentioned earlier that, uh, there's been a lot

00:33:22.240 of talk about shame lately, particularly online shaming. You see this happening a lot where people

00:33:28.580 are basically just eviscerated on Twitter or Facebook or social media, and they're just

00:33:34.240 shamed. And some people say that's, well, that's a good thing because, you know, people

00:33:37.640 are changing their behavior and it's helping them sort of steer, course direct them. But

00:33:42.920 you mentioned earlier, you wrote earlier in an article in the Washington Post that actually,

00:33:46.540 you know, yes, it can be, but also you're seeing a trend where shame is becoming weaponized

00:33:51.620 and it's actually becoming more destructive as opposed to helpful. Talk a little bit about that.

00:33:56.920 So there's actually a long history of the use of shame to promote social values that are shared.

00:34:07.180 So, you know, being put in the stocks, for instance, or, you know, the scarlet letter,

00:34:12.420 there are, there are many, many examples from the Greeks onward of, of cultures using shame as a way

00:34:19.200 of enforcing their values. That, that can be a bad thing, but it can be a good thing if it promotes

00:34:25.720 more socially acceptable behavior. In order to do that, it has to hold out the possibility of

00:34:34.100 redemption. It has to be, you should feel ashamed of this and your shaming experience is going to have

00:34:42.860 this duration and we expect you to make amends and then change your behavior. That's the only way

00:34:49.980 shame is ever effective. The problem nowadays is that shame isn't used in that way. Shame is used for

00:34:58.060 a vindictive kind of revenge and there's, there's no chance of redemption and reintegration back into

00:35:04.880 society. Now, sometimes that's, that's, that's appropriate. I mean, like for, for Harvey Weinstein,

00:35:11.760 let's say that's probably really appropriate. He's beyond redemption. He shows no remorse and no,

00:35:18.840 you know, no sense that he has anything to make up for, but other people, their, their careers have been

00:35:25.280 destroyed, their lives ruined, and, and they really weren't given a chance to try and make up for it.

00:35:32.600 I think that's destructive. I think we've gone too far, but that's the way things work, isn't it? I mean,

00:35:38.920 there's all this behavior being described as toxic masculinity and it was toxic in a lot of ways and

00:35:46.280 it's being called out now and men are being publicly shamed. That's a good thing, but it's also

00:35:53.520 been excessive and the pendulum will probably swing back at some point and, and, you know, land somewhere

00:36:01.020 in the middle. It's interesting. There's, there's been a big debate about Al Franken and the way he

00:36:05.720 was shamed and forced to resign and people are now starting to express some regret about that. You know,

00:36:11.980 even, even people who shamed him at that time and thought he needed to resign. There's, there's a sense

00:36:17.560 that, well, you know, maybe the punishment exceeded the crime. So, you know, public shaming is a good

00:36:23.700 thing as long as the punishment does fit the crime. And it's not about, you know, character assassination

00:36:29.100 and the vindictive destruction of someone's life. And you also talked about, you know,

00:36:34.180 particularly shame towards men. Okay. Certain behaviors from men probably should be shamed,

00:36:38.960 but there are certain behaviors that are just innate in men, right? Sort of aggressiveness,

00:36:42.700 assertiveness, that's sort of hardwired in a lot of men. And when you shame them for that,

00:36:48.480 like there's no possibility for redemption. That's like part of who they are, right? So they're just

00:36:52.140 like, why are you shaming me for just, just being me? Well, well, right. That, that is, well, there are

00:36:59.240 people who will argue that shaming men for being that way is a good thing because by using shame in

00:37:06.820 that way, we're going to change them. Essentially, we're going to change their nature so that they will

00:37:14.040 become more empathic, more emotionally sensitive, more in fact, like women. And there, there has been 0.86

00:37:22.120 a trend, you know, over the, since the 1960s and second wave feminism, that's trying to create a 1.00

00:37:30.140 gender neutral society. And this, this expectation is everywhere that men and women should express the

00:37:38.660 same set of positive character traits. Everything is culturally mediated. And there's no basic

00:37:45.040 difference. I don't believe that's true. And the science doesn't bear that out. You know, the, the, the

00:37:53.540 traits, the, the classically masculine and feminine traits were selected over millennia by, by evolutionary

00:38:02.300 pressures to lead to certain traits being encoded in our DNA, ones that led to greater sexual

00:38:12.340 reproduction and survival. And, you know, those, those traits evolved over, you know, hundreds of

00:38:19.400 thousands of years. And they are expressed in our DNA, particularly in the operation of our hormonal system. And

00:38:28.400 you, you can't, you can't shame that out of existence. All you can do by expecting men and women to be the

00:38:36.100 same is you can make men feel even more shame and, and either go into hiding or, as one writer I like

00:38:44.100 put it, you know, it, it goes underground, masculinity goes underground, and then comes out in even uglier

00:38:52.200 kinds of expression, kind of twisted by the shame and resentment about, you know, being humiliated for being

00:39:00.360 who one is. I think that says something about our current political and cultural moment.

00:39:05.880 No, I think that was Camille Paglia that said something, something, the last thing. Yeah, masculinity goes underground 1.00

00:39:11.420 and it sort of manifests itself in uglier, uglier fashions than, than what we, what we had originally.

00:39:17.140 Yeah. The, the person I was thinking of at that moment is, is the conservative writer, Andrew

00:39:22.600 Sullivan. Okay. Yeah. He wrote a, he really wrote a really great article, oh, 16 or 17 years ago,

00:39:29.840 called The He Hormone. He suffers from low testosterone from having been on antiretrovirals for

00:39:37.400 many, many years. So he has to self-inject with synthetic testosterone and he talks about what it does

00:39:44.740 to him and links it up to the whole evolutionary history of men and why these are innate masculine

00:39:51.720 traits that you can't change by societal expectation. What, what I, what I say and what I'm, I'm arguing in,

00:40:00.700 in the next book I'm writing is that it's like, it's like a computer, you know, evolution has bequeathed

00:40:08.380 to us this computer with pre-installed operating system that's in our DNA, it's in our hormones and

00:40:15.480 we can't change that quickly. But there's also the, the cultural software that is able to inhibit,

00:40:25.780 encourage, or redirect the expression of these traits. And we have some flexibility there. So

00:40:31.940 I think a lot of what's going on now in the, in the, the conversation about toxic masculinity

00:40:37.460 is a very positive thing. If we view it as how can we, how can we inhibit certain really destructive

00:40:46.360 expressions of masculinity while encouraging other positive expressions of masculinity rather than

00:40:52.820 trying to make everybody gender neutral? Yeah. The analogy that I like is that masculinity is sort

00:40:58.420 of a, it's like an, it's like electricity and we cultures create cultures of manhood that sort of

00:41:04.660 harness that energy for, if you, there's no like, like electricity, there's no like conduit for it.

00:41:09.780 It becomes very destructive, right? And just kind of goes all over the place. But if you provide it

00:41:13.700 some sort of wire and direct it, it can actually be really powerful. That's, I like that analogy.

00:41:20.200 Right. And so I think that what's going on now is people just want to get rid of that difference 0.92

00:41:24.760 completely between men and women instead of, okay, look, accepting, okay, here's how men are

00:41:30.260 because of biology. How can we shape that energy that they have and direct it towards something

00:41:35.200 more positive? That'd be a more useful way to use shame instead of just trying to eliminate men 0.99

00:41:42.020 completely or masculinity completely. I couldn't have said it any better. That's exactly what I think.

00:41:47.940 Okay. Well, I'm glad we're on the same page. Well, so like let's, so we've talked about sources of

00:41:52.600 shame and we've talked about ways that we manage shame on a day-to-day basis, but like, how can we,

00:41:59.340 how can we make sure that we're getting the message that shame is trying to send us, right? So that we 0.97

00:42:05.900 can use that to become better because that's, that can be hard, right? You're feeling bad about yourself

00:42:11.580 because you, you got excluded or you didn't get the job you wanted. It's very easy to say, well,

00:42:17.540 they're a bunch of bums. They're missing out on something great instead of saying, well, 0.99

00:42:22.640 is there something that I did that, you know, excludes it? How do you, how, how can you, I guess,

00:42:27.940 listen to the message shame is trying to send you? Well, it for sure depends on the nature of that

00:42:35.780 shaming message. It's pretty hard to listen to a shaming message that's, you know, cruel, you know,

00:42:43.240 or that makes you feel completely worthless. So it depends on how people deliver the shaming message

00:42:50.060 or how it comes across. But then I think, and what I'm, what I'm trying to help people do with this

00:42:56.640 book is to, to look at the ways you, you tend to defend against shame because we all do it, right?

00:43:03.780 We all try to defend against shame because we don't want to feel it. And if you can, if you can

00:43:09.780 know yourself well, if you can recognize the ways that you tend to make excuses for yourself,

00:43:16.500 blame other people, get indignant when someone shames you, then, then, you know, you can say,

00:43:22.740 okay, well, wait a minute, wait a minute. All right. That's, that's defensive. Take a step back.

00:43:27.840 You know, what's the truth here? You know, what is, what is valuable? What, what can I take out of

00:43:35.580 that shaming experience that, that can work to my advantage? Because, because often it points the way

00:43:41.100 towards building self-esteem in a better way. It's like, it's saying, you know, you, you wanted to

00:43:47.340 succeed, but you, you didn't do it in the best way possible. You feel ashamed of, of the way you

00:43:55.500 behaved. So maybe you need to think about that. And it will tell you, oh, you didn't work hard

00:44:01.940 enough, or you, you didn't focus enough on this particular idea, or you, you need to develop

00:44:07.580 strengths in this area if you really want to succeed. And that way you have a better chance

00:44:14.400 of doing the very things that will build self-esteem and make you feel better about yourself. If you're

00:44:20.820 constantly warding off shame or denying it or defending against it, you tend to make the same

00:44:26.140 mistakes over and over and over again, because you haven't learned the, you haven't learned the lesson.

00:44:31.340 Is the hardest part recognizing how you deny shame?

00:44:34.560 Oh, I think so. I mean, how many people, how many people really know themselves and, and the ways that

00:44:41.420 they defend against all sorts of things? I mean, you know, one of the, one of the things that seems to be

00:44:47.380 true is that we're much better at observing, you know, defensiveness in other people than we are

00:44:53.180 at recognizing it in our own selves. Don't you think?

00:44:56.940 Oh yeah. No, I, I, I'm terrible at it. I recognize it in myself, but then I catch myself and I feel like

00:45:02.640 an idiot. 1.00

00:45:04.420 Well, there you go. Don't, don't, don't feel too much like an idiot. Just say, oh, you know, 1.00

00:45:09.800 there I am. That's what I do. I typically do that. You know, I tend to get defensive about something,

00:45:14.760 or I tend to behave in this way. I'm going to be on the lookout for that now.

00:45:18.900 And what do you do? Like, so instead of getting defensive, like what would be a better response

00:45:25.180 to like that feeling of shame, right? Okay. I messed up. You caught yourself. Okay. I'm not gonna,

00:45:31.160 I'm not going to go down that path where I get started getting defensive. What would be the better

00:45:36.380 step?

00:45:36.900 Well, it's to view it as a learning experience. And there, even though they don't use this particular

00:45:44.740 word, there is a lot of conversation about failure experiences, the value of failure experiences and

00:45:52.280 learning from failures. The, you know, the whole startup culture, you know, accepts that failure

00:45:57.120 is, is to be expected. And the only real shame is in not learning from it. They, I look at failure

00:46:04.820 as a shame experience, makes you feel bad about yourself because you've disappointed an expectation

00:46:10.720 you hold for yourself. So it's, that's the whole way I'm trying to, to reframe the conversation about

00:46:18.980 shame in my book is rather than looking at shame as this bad thing that we need to get rid of,

00:46:25.180 it's to look at it as, as an opportunity to learn.

00:46:29.160 Well, Joseph, where can people go to learn more about the book in your work?

00:46:31.680 The book is available everywhere. It's available on Amazon. I don't know where your audience is,

00:46:37.740 but it's, it has a publisher in England and it'll be available in other languages as well,

00:46:44.740 but it's pretty much everywhere. I think Amazon is the easiest place to find it because, you know,

00:46:49.320 newly published books have a short shelf life and they have to go away to make room for other new

00:46:54.080 books coming out. I have a website called After Psychotherapy, which I've been blogging about shame

00:47:01.080 and narcissism for years. And I also have a blog on psychology today called coincidentally shame in

00:47:09.980 which I, I blog about shame lately more on the, uh, on the broader cultural level in politics and

00:47:17.800 what's going on in our culture. So there, there's a lot of stuff out there. Google my name and you'll

00:47:22.460 find it.

00:47:23.140 Fantastic. Well, Joseph Bergo, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:47:25.320 It was a pleasure. Thank you.

00:47:27.360 My guest today was Joseph Bergo. He's the author of the book, Shame, Free Yourself,

00:47:30.760 Find Joy and Build True Self-Esteem. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.

00:47:34.740 You can find more information about Joseph's work at his website at josephbergo.com. Also check out

00:47:39.720 our show notes at aom.is slash shame, where you can find links to resources, where you can delve deeper

00:47:44.900 into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. If you'd like to

00:47:55.960 listen to ad-free new episodes of the Art of Manliness, you can do so on Stitcher Premium.

00:48:00.720 You can sign up for Stitcher Premium and get a free trial by going to stitcherpremium.com,

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00:48:16.640 And if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend

00:48:20.020 or family member who you think would get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued

00:48:23.800 support. Until next time, this is Brett McKay reminding you to not only listen to the AOM podcast,

00:48:27.660 but put what you've heard into action.

00:48:43.140 All right.

00:48:44.140 Thank you for listening.

00:48:45.640 Bye.

00:48:46.640 Bye.

00:48:48.640 Bye.

00:48:49.820 Bye.

00:48:50.640 Bye.

00:48:51.820 Bye.

00:48:57.980 Bye.

00:49:02.980 Bye.

00:49:04.480 Bye.

00:49:06.780 Bye.

The Art of Manliness - May 20, 2019

#509： Good Shame; Bad Shame

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