The Role of Healthy Shame in Resolving Eating Problems

Although shame is a universal, natural, necessary feeling that is constructive when used appropriately, most people with eating problems have no idea how to make it work for them. To become more comfortable with shame,you first have tounderstandits necessity to your well-being; only then can you begin to cultivatea more accepting attitude toward it.Although doing so may seem a stretch—a very long stretch—until and unless you become skilled in using shame in a healthy way, it will continue to plague and distress you, rather than guide your life effectively.

Here’s what happens when you don’t have the skills to modulate shame. Say someone walks into the room as you’re gorging on leftovers or throwing away food you promised to eat to gain weight—and you flood with shame. The emotion is so intense that you may automatically distance yourself from it by falling into denial, minimizing, rationalizing, or blaming that person for spying on you or even for causing your self-destructive behavior. These reactions are so unconscious that you might not realize you’re using them to prevent yourself from feeling ashamed. Or you feel so awful about what you’ve done (in addition to being caught at it) that you burst into tears and show no mercy in emotionally beating yourself up. Of course, a healthy response in this situation would be to acknowledge that you feel seriously uncomfortable with your self-harming behavior, reflect on whether abusing food (gorging or refusing to eat) is in your long-term best interest, and consider how to behave more healthily in the future.

The Purpose of Shame

Let’s talk about what shame is and how it affects you. Quoting from my Food and Feelings Workbook, shame is “…a ferocious, overwhelming, debilitating emotion that implies gravest wrongdoing and transgression beyond redemption” that occurs “when you can’t shake the feeling that you’ve done something horribly, unforgivably, unequivocally wrong.” Unlike guilt or embarrassment (which could be called “shame-lite”) shame isn’t about what you do, but about the incorrigible person you believe you are based on the perceived wrong you’ve done or, worse, on deep certainty of your inherent badness.

The purpose of shame is to let you know you haven’t lived up to your or society’s expectations so that you can reflect and problem-solve about doing things differently. The emotion is painful precisely because it needs to grab your attention. If it were less distressing, you—all of us—would simply go along your merry way operating in a mindless manner that might prevent or eventually destroy your long-term happiness or feelings of well-being. Shame gives you a visceral jolt so that you’ll listen up, and through listening up, wise up. It’s a signal that you need to stop dead in your tracks, consider your actions, and correct course. When shame is used in a healthy manner, it does its work—sending you a bulletin about a transgression—and moves on.

However, most disregulated eaters don’t use shame healthily, effectively, or appropriately. Instead, they either experience too much shame or too little. They over- or under-do the same way they respond to food, exercise, or other activities. Like medication, you must get shame’s dosage exactly right for it to be curative—too little and you’ll fail to get well, too much and the “remedy” can be worse than the problem. Employing the correct dosage of shame can set you on a healthier course not only around food, but in other life areas as well.

Experiencing Too Much Shame

The first way you may misuse shame is to allow it to overwhelm you. Some people mire themselves in shame and let it linger far too long. Unable to modulate the feeling, it spreads through their psyche like a virus. Instead of feeling badly about one thing you did, you think about all the awful things you’ve ever done and end up believing there is nothing good or worthwhile about yourself. Allowing yourself to become overcome with shame is generally an unconscious reaction—one transgression leads to another which leads to another. Feeling suffused with shame, you become depressed.

Experiencing Too Little Shame

The second way that shame can be misused is when you don’t feel enough of it (or any) when you’ve misbehaved. This usually happens because you’re afraid you’ll be overwhelmed if you open the door to shame even a tiny bit. However, shame is a fitting emotion when you do something that is unhealthy and will harm you physically or emotionally—

• Refusing to take off a day from exercise although your muscles are strained,
• Avoiding social activities because you feel fat
• Eating until you’re sick
• Forcing yourself to throw up when you’ve overeaten
• Lying about your weight to yourself or others
• Blaming loved ones for your eating problems
• Denying that weighing too much or too little could be hazardous to your health

Each time you don’t feel shame when you should, you miss an opportunity to take stock of and reflect on your behavior. How will you change if you don’t recognize you’re hurting yourself and never feel badly about your actions? Change comes from being aware of discomfort, in this case, shame. Without it, you are doomed to remain the same. Denial, minimizing, and rationalizing are enemies of change because they prevent you from experiencing the sting of wrong-doing. The goal is to feel just enough shame to alter behavior—no more, no less—then let it go.

Building Your Capacity for Shame

You can learn to build your capacity for shame as well as acquire skills to contain and control it. The first step is to identify your beliefs about shame. Here are some possibilities:

• Shame is unbearable; I shouldn’t feel it.
• Shame will overwhelm me.
• I can’t stand to feel ashamed.
• Feeling shame means I’m a bad person.
• Once I feel shame, I’ll sink into a depression and never come out.

The next step is to reframe irrational beliefs (all of the above!) into rational ones:

• Shame is bearable and I can handle feeling it appropriately.
• I need to feel shame in small doses to become emotionally healthy.
• I can learn to tolerate shame.
• Feeling ashamed appropriately is natural and helpful.
• I can contain shame without it overwhelming and depressing me.

Once you construct a belief system that supports healthy shame (that which is short-lived and purposeful), you can start to practice experiencing it. For over-doers, that means not raking yourself over the coals after a binge or a purge and, instead, showering yourself with compassion and recognizing that you’re unhappy with your behavior and are trying to do something about it. For under-doers, that means tolerating small doses of shame without letting it recede from consciousness or shooing it away, such as experiencing its zap after purging because you know the behavior is harmful and doesn’t support your life goals of health and happiness.

The practice of using shame effectively takes time, practice, and patience and requires the development of emotional management skills. Be compassionate and curious and allow yourself to explore your beliefs and feelings about shame. If you’re afraid of it and consider it the enemy, your work is to make it an ally. If you’ve been hanging out with shame far too long, your goal is to find and keep company with healthier emotions, especially the opposite of shame—pride. You’ll know you’re moving in the right direction when shame becomes less toxic and more integrated into your emotional repertoire, when it neither scares you to death nor suffuses most waking moments. This doesn’t mean you’ll never try to avoid it or that you won’t wallow in it from time to time, but that you’ll have a greater consciousness about shame and develop an ability to make it work for you.