"On Healing" June 2006

Posted on Mon, Jun. 26, 2006
Exposure causes shame but heals it, too
By Dan Gottlieb

I recently made an error at one of my consulting jobs. Mistakes happen. My supervisor picked up the error and I got criticized. Action followed by reaction. A pretty typical exchange for people who are imperfect and have supervisors.

If only it were that simple.

My first reaction was anxiety, the sudden shock of a harsh reprimand. Fear is a natural reaction to a threat, and I felt my job was being threatened. But then the anxiety quickly morphed into shame, one of the most painful and potentially destructive of all human emotions. That's because I experienced the criticism as an accusation.

In short, the criticism felt as if it was about who I am rather than simply what I did. Shame is about exposure, and it feels isolating.

Philadelphia psychiatrist Donald Nathanson, author of Shame and Pride, says shame is also about helplessness and powerlessness. These emotions are so powerful that they feel unbearable.

So what do we humans do in the face of shame? One option is to simply acknowledge the situation. We could just say that we feel misunderstood, exposed and ashamed and that we are powerless. I don't know about you, but I would need at least another lifetime to achieve that level of clarity and dispassion.

Nathanson thinks most people fall into what he calls the "compass of shame." Because shame is so painful, there are four ways of defending against the pain. We could withdraw and shut down, attack ourselves, attack the other person, or act impulsively to banish the feeling with alcohol or drugs.

In my case, I wrapped myself in righteous indignation, which is thinly veiled aggression: "How dare they! After all of the years of devotion! My mistake was small and they overreacted. What's wrong with them?"

Then righteous indignation turned to murderous rage: "Oh yeah, they can take this job and..." I soon began writing War and Peace in my head, skipping the peace part, enduring several sleepless nights. A mind is not always a gift!

All of us have felt the overwhelming pain that goes with shame, and have landed somewhere on that compass. Several years ago, a young friend of mine asked a boy she had her eye on to go to her junior prom. When he said no, I watched helplessly as she called herself stupid for even thinking she was good enough for him. She went on to say he rejected her because she was ugly, and that no one likes her anyway. Of course, my reassurance didn't make either one of us feel better.

As adults, shame happens when we are publicly reprimanded, rejected for a job, or turned down by our partner to make love. Sometimes the pain of shame is so unbearable that we don't even know we feel it.

Many couples fall into a pattern. Men feel unfairly criticized by their wives and withdraw. This inevitably makes the criticism worse and the men withdraw further. Like my problem at work, the criticism feels like harsh judgment for who they are. But the withdrawal happens so quickly, many of these men are not even aware that they feel shame.

That emotion can be deadly. In street parlance, when someone feels they have been "dissed" - disrespected - the reaction can be violent. Young people feel they must physically attack the other person to reclaim their respect. But what is feeling disrespected other than feeling shame?

Shame also has its positive sides. If it weren't for shame, we would see more people pick their nose in public. We would likely see more of other people's body parts than we would like. And my shame from work will make me more diligent about my performance.

So what's the cure for this unbearable emotion? Love cures shame, Nathanson says. But that's not easy advice. We can't feel loved unless we feel understood. And we can't feel understood when we are withdrawn, attacking another person or ourselves, or acting out.

Shame is caused by exposure, and it is healed by exposure. The only way to find understanding and compassion is to take the risk of exposing the fact that we feel shame in the first place.

So how did I deal with my shame at work? I wrote a column about it!

Posted on Mon, Jun. 12, 2006
Most men learn to hide their feelings
By Dan Gottlieb

A woman really wants to see her man without his mask, a friend once confided. She's not alone. Many women complain that men are not open about their feelings. And children say the same thing about their fathers.

I understand their frustration. Many men act almost as though they have no feelings, seeing feelings as problems to be solved. So for Father's Day, here's a peek behind the male mask.

Ronald Levant, past president of the American Psychological Association, has said that because boys learn early to suppress certain emotions, such as confusion, fear or vulnerability, they can become genuinely unaware of their feelings as adults.

So they don't cry. Some don't even allow themselves to show sadness and anxiety, let alone feel them.

At the earliest stages of life, males and females are pretty much the same in expressing emotions. In the March issue of the journal Science, researchers describe how 18-month-old babies of both sexes exhibit a rudimentary ability to understand when someone else needs help.

Reading that, I thought of my grandson Sam, who as a toddler saw me cry at my father's funeral and insisted on climbing onto my lap. His response - totally spontaneous and instinctive - was that of a young boy who had not yet learned what it means to be a man.

By the time they hit puberty, many boys will no longer climb on a lap to comfort a grieving grandfather. They figure out how to exaggerate their strengths and minimize their vulnerability.

Boys tend to do this in the presence of girls, and especially with one another. It begins as a necessity, but hardens into a mask. We boys grow into manhood convincing ourselves that we are tougher than we really are.

But then, what happens to the tender feelings? Most of us know that they remain inside, yet are inaccessible. Or perhaps as Levant suggests, we lack the words to express them.

We men love deeply. But we have different ways of showing love. In Letters to Sam, a book I wrote for my grandson, I described my father because I wanted Sam to know how he worked at a job he did not like for 38 years. My father was unable to articulate what he felt for his family. But I recognized that his work - however much he disliked it - was his own expression of love. And, being male, Sam and I may show our love in similar ways. Not with articulate expressions of compassion but with the male equivalent - work, devotion, problem-solving, or gestures of concern that only hint at our deepest feelings.

Often men will be sarcastic with one another or playfully competitive. That's how we love other men. It's our way of putting our arms around one another.

But once a man is in a safe, compassionate place, feelings emerge. Men in my office are almost always able to identify their fears and insecurities once they feel cared about and are helped with language.

Trust me, we feel dependency and longing. Like our female counterparts, we wish for love, security and understanding. Despite how it may look, we also have separation anxiety.

On this Father's Day, I suspect many children and spouses will not hear the full expressions of love they'd like from their husbands and fathers.

But trust that the mask is not everything. Underneath, you will find love and insecurity. You will find wisdom and power, clarity and confusion. You will find a wish for understanding. And you will find that our mask is never far away because sometimes we need it.

Happy Father's Day.

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