To End Our Cycle of Violence, We First Need to Heal Our Shame
The recent protests for racial equality have shown us plentiful examples of violence by police, looters, and instigators. And what we are seeing desperately argues for the need to teach people about shame and shame resilience. Without doing this, we leave intact the roots of racism and dehumanization that are fueling our country’s cycle of violence.
The experience of shame is universal, but few people know much beyond what it feels like. Moreover, most people shy away from exploring this topic, as it can be rather uncomfortable. Yet, once people know what to look for, they start realizing how prevalent shame often is in our lives. Fortunately, the study of shame over the past 40 years has given us a lot of clues on what to look for.
Recognizing shame as a core issue
Shame is triggered by a perceived message that there’s something flawed with us as a person, not just with our words or actions. To recognize shame, we can look for that “shaming message.” We can also look for the reaction that occurs once the message “lands.” The dynamics can be complex, but shame researcher, D.L. Nathanson provides one framework by identifying four common “cardinal reactions” to shame: i) attack oneself; ii) attack others; iii) withdraw; or iv) avoid the shaming message.
Through this framework, the violence we’re seeing in these protests would fall under the “attack others” reaction. We usually think of anger when we see violence, but the research — and an examination of our own lives –bears out the idea that shame is often lurking beneath our anger and violence. In fact, Nathanson asserts that “the attack other response to shame is responsible for the proliferation of violence in modern life.”
In other words, if we don’t address the core issue of shame, the root causes of the violence we are seeing will remain. The implication is that even if we reshape our institutions, we may simply be replacing one dysfunctional institution with another: Institutions are shaped by the people within them; and if these people have significant unhealed shame (as most of us do), they will create institutions reflecting that.
Moreover, if we don’t address the issue of shame, we’ll still have segments of the population with “hidden” shame waiting to come to power so they can tear down any institutional changes we put in place. I believe the election of Donald Trump is a result of just such a dynamic.
Shame resilience, on the other hand, is the ability to choose something healthier than one of the 4 “cardinal reactions” — something that allows us to preserve self-esteem while avoiding or de-escalating conflict. Shame resilience results in healthier people who are less inclined to dehumanize others so they can feel better about themselves, and who can create the functionally healthier institutions we need.
How shame can make individuals more dangerous
By exploring how shame may be shaping the reactions of some police officers to protesters, we can begin to understand the roots of police violence. This is only one factor among many, and I’m in no way trying to excuse anyone’s behavior or minimize how other groups feel. However, the shame carried by our police officers is arguably dangerous. After all, we give the police a mandate to use force responsibly, and it is the police’s duty to de-escalate conflict. But in some very visible cases, individual officers are failing to do either.
A passage from a recent article in The New York Times about police use of force caught my eye [emphasis is mine]:
Many people complained that police officers across the country treated the crowds protesting racist policing with far less respect than they did the right-wing demonstrations in recent weeks against public health lockdown orders.
Experts agreed, saying research shows that the police are more likely to respond with force when they are the subject of protest, and that they respond more aggressively toward younger crowds and people of color than they do toward white and older people.
‘There’s deep resentment on the part of the police that so many people are angry at them, and they’re lashing out,” said Alex Vitale, a sociologist at Brooklyn College who studies the police response to protest and coordinates the Policing and Social Justice Project. “Look at what we saw — people sitting on their own stoops getting hit with pepper balls. Anyone who looks at them funny, they’re attacking them.’
So what might be behind officers’ heightened resentment and inclination to use force when they are the target of protests? The reaction of “attacking others” suggests that one likely factor is shame. Below are a few possible “shaming messages” that might be involved. (This is an attempt to distill “self-talk” down to its core messages. Details can vary from one individual to another, so feel free to play around with the wording of the “messages” until you find words that really resonate with you.)
First, it is likely that police, as the target of the protests, are hearing a shaming message such as: “There’s something wrong with you that you are part of a force that is abusing its power and unjustly murdering people of color.” No one likes to think of themselves as abusive, unjust, or a murderer. These labels are all negative in our society (for good reasons), and most people would feel ashamed to even imagine there was any grain of truth to these accusations. Even if an individual hasn’t done anything fitting these labels, the shaming message can still land. If an individual’s identity is strongly tied to an institution, they may see the labeling of an institution as abusive or unjust as an attack on themselves.
This could connect with another possible shaming message: “Hey, you’re labeling me as if I was one of the bad guys, and that’s not fair — you’re not seeing me for who I am. I must not be worthy of being seen as an individual.” In fact, the all too ironic words of Mike O’Meara, president of the New York Police Benevolent Association, reflect such a message:
“Our legislators are failing us. Our press is vilifying us…. Stop treating us like animals and thugs and start treating us with some respect…. I am not Derek Chauvin,” He killed someone. We didn’t.”
As the Slate article quoted above also points out, the irony is that this is exactly one of the things protestors are upset about. The author of the article writes, “…it doesn’t really matter what I, or any black or brown person, has done as an individual. It’s about how other people see us as a group.” To distill it to its essence: People of color are protesting partly over decades of not being fairly seen and treated as individuals by the police!
Unfortunately, without training around shame dynamics, many police officers are unlikely to see the common experience of shame they share with protesters, or to develop empathy for the citizens they are policing. The completely tone-deaf statement by O’Meara demonstrates that point.
While there are likely other shaming messages at work, the two suggested above may be sufficient to understand the role shame may be playing.
The last step in the cycle is then pretty straightforward: Officers who perceive a shaming message, but who don’t have sufficient shame resilience skills, are attacking those seen as the source of the message. Again, this is the “cardinal reaction” to shame identified by Nathanson of attacking others.
Reacting to shame isn’t evil, just human
I would suggest that this reaction to shame of attacking others does not automatically make such police officers evil — just as the reactions of any of us to shame does not automatically make us evil. It makes us all human. As shame researcher John Everingham points out, reacting to shame is as natural for humans as reacting to being slapped in the face. All actors in the protest violence may thus have more in common than they realize — specifically, an experience of shame.
The hope is, however, that if we understand our shame and develop healthy shame resilience, then we can choose different reactions and interrupt the cycle of shame-to-anger-to-violence. We can interrupt the cycle of police brutality, and even alter the tendency of some people toward racist behavior. The desire to dehumanize others to feel better about ourselves is, after all, generally shame-driven and another type of violence involved in the cycle.
And there’s little doubt that the protests are in reaction to a history of dehumanization and shame directed at people of color. As pointed out above, the shaming message about not being fairly seen as an individual is likely involved. And as a white man, I can only speculate on what shaming messages people of color are experiencing. However, I imagine that another deeply painful message, distilled down to its core, might be, “If we were really ‘good enough,’ then white people and their institutions would listen to our cries of pain and injustice and treat us like they treat other white people — like valued human beings; like we matter.” The phrase “Black Lives Matter” obviously resonates within the context of this message.
And what about the shame that may be motivating instigators? Reports indicate that at least some instigators are white supremacists taking advantage of the protests to heighten racial hostilities and even start a race war. If that’s the case, then my question is: What happened in their lives that they don’t feel “good enough” in the first place and want to instigate a race war? Because generally, it’s only when we don’t feel “good enough” that we might seek a movement to help us feel “supreme.” The clue that there may be toxic shame at work in these peoples’ lives is in the name of the movement they’ve joined!
We can thus reform our institutions, but if we don’t address the root cause, white supremacists won’t disappear. They will instead hide in the wings, waiting for a chance to instigate more violence in our country.
Ending the shame-to-anger-to-violence cycle
So, as I see it, our society is caught in a cycle of shame and dehumanization, anger, and violence that all leads to more of the same. It’s not just one group, but “all of us together” — experiencing shame, sometimes being grievously wounded by it, and reacting in the only ways we know how. It is clear to me that if we don’t teach people better ways to deal with shame, then we are just setting ourselves up for more cycles of dehumanization and violence.
As a society, there are things we can do to help individuals break this cycle. We can, for instance, devote resources to teach people healthy shame resilience skills. We can better protect and counsel those who are experiencing physical or verbal abuse to help minimize the toxic shame they might otherwise carry.
Moreover, a lot of societal ills could be cured if people were carrying less toxic shame. There would be fewer people walking around wanting to dehumanize others in order to feel better. Fewer people would be driven to create unjust institutions that satisfy one group’s desire to feel superior at the expense of others. There would also be fewer people vulnerable to the manipulations of “bad actors” who prey on those that feel “less than.”
Potentially, teaching about shame and healthy shame resilience can vastly improve both individual lives and society as a whole. The main question is: Are we willing to recognize this opportunity and devote the resources needed to start the process?
