When I was a Dale Carnegie instructor, I once heard a student who, as part of her speaking assignment about a childhood experience, told the class that her father removed all doors from their house including the bathroom.

What a dramatic reminder of the power of shame.

But shame isn’t limited to bizarre situations like removing the doors in a house.  Shame happens every day even in subtle ways.

Sometimes we are the shamers who tell another: “you should be ashamed of yourself” and sometimes we are the recipients of shame.

Marilyn Sorenson, author of Breaking the Chain of Low Self-Esteem says “unlike guilt – which is the feeling of doing something wrong, shame is the feeling of being something wrong”.

There are four effective ways to deal with shame:

1. Accept your faults as long as you can name an equal number of good virtues.  The French poet Jean de La Fontaine said:  “Everyone has the faults which he continually repeats, neither fear nor shame can cure them”.  We are less vulnerable to shame when we feel good about ourselves.
2. Avoid becoming codependent to another person because codependent people rely on others to validate them and they are subject to shameful feelings.
3. No one – like in no one – gets your permission to act in an abusive way.
4. Love in self is the antidote for shame. 

Shame kills self-esteem.

But love of self kills shame.

Subscribe   • Read Jerry’s book • More stories  • Talk to Jerry