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Motherhood, shame and society

An interview with Brené Brown, Ph.D., author of "Women & Shame"

Interview and introduction by Judith Stadtman Tucker

August 2004

What is shame? How does it affect us? How does shame relate to motherhood as a social issue? How can we reduce the harmful effects of shame? Why does it matter? When I started reading Brené Brown’s recent book, Women & Shame: Reaching Out, Speaking Truths and Building Connection (3C Press, 2004), my brain was suddenly burning with a hundred of questions. As with trying to find a clear, simple language to describe the complex intertwining of social, cultural, political and economic conditions that add up to the “motherhood problem,” I realized that describing the nature of shame and the way it shadows our lives is a complicated business.

Brown, who is a member of the research faculty at the University of Houston Graduate School of Social Work, learned early in her career that “you can not shame or belittle people into changing their behaviors.” She wanted to know more about how and why people do change, and the consequences of attempting to use shame to change people. What she found is that “most of us, if not all, have built significant parts of our lives around shame. Individuals, families and communities use shame as a tool to change others and to protect themselves. In doing this, we create a society that fails to recognize how much damage shame does to our spirit and the soul of our families and communities.”

Brown— who takes a special interest in the intersection of private and public issues, particularly how women’s personal experiences are shaped by social, political and economic forces— engaged in a four-year study involving interviews with 200 women to find out more about when and how we encounter shame, how shame affects us and how we try to cope with it. She describes the research process and her findings in her book. But Women & Shame is not an academic treatise or simply a theoretical explanation of how shame hurts us and holds us back. It’s an accessible narrative about the personal and social complexity of shame, and how shame interferes with our ability to accept and express our truest selves. This is information women can use to change their lives. And I believe that once we discover the capacity to change our own lives, we also connect with our power to change society.

I managed to winnow down my hundreds of questions about women, motherhood, shame and society to a mere eight, which Brené Brown graciously agreed to answer for the MMO. Because shame is usually hidden from view— out of sight, but as it turns out, never really out of mind— there are no simple questions, and no simple answers. I encourage you to read on, think it over, learn more.

Brené Brown lives in Texas with her husband and daughter.


MMO: Before reading Women & Shame, I only had an abstract idea about shame and how it functions. I’d always assumed shame was a moral response — something we feel when we’ve violated our most deeply held values. But your research suggests that shame is about who we are rather than what we believe is right or wrong, and that the experience and transmission of shame depends on both an external and internal factors. What is shame, and how does it affect women’s lives?

B Brown: As a researcher, one of my greatest challenges was deconstructing shame — what is it, how do we define it, how does it work and how does it impact women. The definition of shame emerged from the data in two parts. The first part is a very broad conceptualization of shame that is based on the participants’ descriptions and explanations of shame: Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging.

The final definition — the one I use in my work — expands on this first definition to include a second part, the “why & how” of shame: Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging. Women often experience shame when they are entangled in a web of layered, conflicting and competing social-community expectations. Shame leaves women feeling trapped, powerless and isolated.

Women most often experience shame as a web of layered, conflicting and competing expectations. These expectations tell us who we should be, what we should be and how we should be. At their core, these ideals are products of very rigid social and community expectations. They present very narrow interpretations of who women are “supposed to be” based on demographics (i.e., their gender, race, class, sexual orientation, age, religious identity) and/or our roles (i.e., a mother, an employee, a partner, a group member). The expectations are often born in our larger society, then filtered through our various cultures and communities. It is important to note that communities are not just determined by geography. They can be based on race, ethnicity, social class, group membership, ideology, faith, politics, etc.

Many, if not most, of the expectations are impossible to meet. They are ideals and myths that no woman could possibly embody. But more than that, what makes them even less attainable is the way the layers of expectations often conflict and compete with one another. The conflicts happen because the expectations don’t appear out of thin air; they are imposed and enforced by real people—individuals and/or groups of individuals. The social-community expectations can be enforced by our family members, our partners, our friends, co-workers, our children, helping professionals, membership groups and faith communities. Many times we even impose these expectations on ourselves.

These social-community expectations and the way they are enforced by the people in our lives are, in turn, constantly reinforced by a very powerful media culture. The media culture is what we see on television, in advertising and marketing. It’s what we see in movies, what we hear in music and what we read in newspapers and magazines.

In addition to defining shame, it was important for me to identify shame’s conceptual home — in research language we use the term “construct.” For example, in your question you ask about the possibility of shame being a “moral construct.” After doing this work, I propose that shame is a psycho-social-cultural construct. The psychological component relates to the participants’ emphasis on the emotions, thoughts and behaviors of self. The social component relates to the way women experience shame in an inter-personal context that is inextricably tied to relationships and connection. The cultural component points to the very prevalent role of cultural expectations and the relationship between shame and the real or perceived failure of meeting cultural expectations. Interestingly, across the interviews, not one participant described experiences or conceptualizations of shame as something that could be considered exclusively psychological, social or cultural.

MMO: You’ve had a longstanding curiosity— both personal and professional— about the nature of shame and its influence on our lives, but you write that becoming a mother heightened your commitment to making a formal study of shame. What was it about the intersection of motherhood and shame that sharpened your interest?

B Brown: When I first started this work, I was reluctant to tell people that motherhood was the experience that had sealed my commitment to studying shame. In academics, we are trained to keep our lives very compartmentalized and certainly to keep the “personal” tucked away and out of sight. As much as I try to debunk the false separation of the personal, political and the professional with my students (graduate students who are 90% female), like most women I still find myself having to fight that separation expectation everyday.

After informally studying shame for almost five years, I looked at motherhood through a very unique lens. I had watched for years as my friends courageously negotiated what I call mother-shame. There are very rigid expectations, which are certainly community specific, around motherhood. There are sets of expectations for every issue you can imagine, ranging from the big issues of wanting or not wanting children, the appropriate age to get pregnant, how many children to have, how to negotiate motherhood with other roles, how to present oneself, how to negotiate partnerships (including the idea of partner as prerequisite) or how to deal with infertility, to the everyday issues about what “good mothers” look like and what “good nurturing” looks like. To me, motherhood certainly felt like a minefield of conflicting and competing expectations.

Surprisingly, my awareness of these expectations combined with the time and energy I had spent trying to understand shame had, at least partially, prepared me for motherhood. I was (and still am) vulnerable to mother-shame; however, I had unexpectedly developed a level of resilience that really allowed me to approach motherhood from a much calmer and more authentic place than I had anticipated. Does that mean that I gracefully traverse the minefield without setting off the big mother-shame bombs? No way! I stumble into them as often as everyone else; however, I’m much more likely to recognize what’s happening and to diffuse the effects by telling my stories and sharing my experiences with the people in my life who I know will respond with kindness and empathy.

In the end, this unexpected shame resilience around motherhood issues motivated me to formally research shame. At the time I couldn’t explain what I knew or why it helped. I’ve since learned that understanding shame, acknowledging our vulnerabilities, developing critical awareness about the expectations that often drive shame and sharing our stories are the four essential elements of shame resilience. With shame resilience, we are far less likely to internalize shame and let it turn into self-blame or self-loathing.

MMO: You believe it’s important for women to recognize shame as both a social and personal issue. Why?

B Brown: What makes shame so powerful is its ability to make us feel trapped, powerless and isolated. What makes it so dangerous is its ability to make us feel like we are the only one— different— on the outside of the group. Many of us actually fall prey to the same sources of shame as other women, and we experience very similar reactions. However, due to the isolating and secretive nature of shame, we feel like it is only happening to us and that we must hide it at all costs. Shame demands that we hide our “shamed selves” from others in order to avoid additional shame. But I’ve learned that when you look at shame and shame-making experiences in a social context, something amazing happens— shame turns into collective vulnerability and people realize that they are not alone.

You can’t look at shame as strictly a social issue, but if you look at it through both a social lens and a personal lens, you strip away most of its power. When we try to understand shame strictly as a “personal issue” we seek only personal and highly individualized solutions, which leaves the layers of competing and conflicting expectations that drive shame intact and unchanged.

MMO: You’ve described shame as an “intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging” that makes women feel “trapped, powerless and isolated.” You argue that shaming is always counterproductive to healthy personal growth, but note that shame is used as “a way to try to change people… every minute of every day.” If shame doesn’t do the things we expect it to do—in other words, change unwanted behaviors and attitudes— why is it so pervasive? Does shaming have other social or psychological functions? Is there a connection between shaming and the desire to restrict the power of a particular individual or group?

B Brown: This is an extremely important question and I want to answer it in pieces. In order to understand shame’s complexities, I need to first explain how shame makes us feel trapped, powerless and isolated. Once we understand these concepts, it’s easier to see why shame is so pervasive and how, regardless of intent, it is very counterproductive to real personal growth and meaningful change.

In the four years I spent immersed in this research, one of the most difficult questions to answer was, “What do women’s shame experiences have in common?” Clearly, what triggers shame in some of us has no impact on others. What some of us experience as devastating may feel mildly upsetting for others. Yet, when you read the descriptions and hear the stories of 200 women, it’s very clear that there is something central, something core, in everyone’s experience of shame. For me the primary struggle was to locate and name what fuels and lies beneath all of these incredibly different stories.

Here’s what I found. There are no universal shame triggers. There are no events or situations that make all of us feel or experience shame. I discovered that there are, however, categories that are meaningful. Without exception, all of the participants’ shame experiences fit in one of these categories: identity, appearance, sexuality, family, motherhood, parenting, health (mental and physical), aging, religion and a woman’s ability to stand up and speak out for herself. These are the categories in which women struggle the most with feelings of shame. Given our personal diversity and how differently we experience shame, is there a way to explain its impacts that actually includes all of us and is meaningful for all? Surprisingly, the answer is yes. When we experience shame we feel trapped, powerless and isolated.

Regardless of who, what, why or how, when women experience shame they feel trapped, powerless and isolated. I think it’s safe to say that each of these concepts is frightening. No one wants to feel trapped, no one wants to feel powerless and most of us dread feeling isolated. But if we understand these three concepts as intricately woven together to create shame, it becomes very clear why shame is so powerful, complex and difficult to overcome. Let’s look at each of these concepts:

Trapped: The concept of trapped emerged with two properties: expectations and options. It’s really about the ratio of expectations to options. Think about motherhood. There are hundreds of expectations, but very few realistic options for meeting those expectations available to us. Being trapped is very similar to what Marilyn Frye describes as the “double-bind” – “situations in which options are reduced to a very few and all of them expose one to penalty, censure or deprivation.” The concept of being trapped expands the “double-bind” concept by combining limited and punitive options with layers of competing expectations to form a complex web that traps women.

Powerless: Given how most of us are socialized to think about power, I think it’s important to start by defining the concept. When I talk about power in this book, I mean real power. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines power as “the ability to act or produce an effect.” Power is basically the ability to change something if you want to change it. It’s the ability to make change happen. Real power is not finite—there is plenty to go around. And the great thing about real power is our ability to create it. Real power doesn’t force us to take it away from others—it’s something we create and build with others. It doesn’t force us to pawn the things that are important to us—our families, our womanhood, our identities—it allows us to create those things.

When we talk about shame and powerlessness, we’re really talking about three specific components of power: consciousness, choice and change. For women experiencing shame, the ability to produce an effect that could counter shame is very difficult because most of us are unconscious of what we’re feeling and why we’re feeling it. Shame often produces overwhelming and painful feelings of confusion, fear, anger, judgment and/or the need to escape or hide from the situation. It’s difficult to identify shame as the core issue when we’re trying to manage all these very intense feelings. It would be highly unusual to be in the middle of a shaming experience and think, “Oh, I’m aware of what’s happening—this is shame. What are my choices and how can I change this?” Even when we recognize it, the silencing and secret nature of shame makes it very difficult for us to identify and act on the choices that could actually facilitate change or free us from the shame trap. This is what I mean by powerlessness.

Isolation: Isolation is the product of being trapped and powerless. When I talk about isolation I don’t mean feeling lonely or alone. Jean Baker Miller and Irene Stiver, Relational-Cultural theorists from the Stone Center at Wellesley College, have beautifully captured the overwhelming nature of isolation. They write, “We believe that the most terrifying and destructive feeling that a person can experience is psychological isolation. This is not the same as being alone. It is a feeling that one is locked out of the possibility of human connection and of being powerless to change the situation. In the extreme, psychological isolation can lead to a sense of hopelessness and desperation. People will do almost anything to escape this combination of condemned isolation and powerlessness.”

Given how shame often makes us feel trapped, powerless and isolated, it does not make sense to think of shame as an effective agent for positive, lasting change. Meaningful, healthy change requires us to assess both our strengths and limitations. We change from a place of self-worth, not a place of shame, powerlessness and isolation. Real change requires awareness, insight and thoughtful decision-making – these are rarely present when we are experiencing shame.

When we think about “why” we use shame as a change agent even though it is damaging and its long-term impact can often be very destructive to both the person being shamed and the person doing the shaming – parenting serves as a good example. (The further I got into this work the more convinced I became about the need to write something on shame and parenting. At first I was going to write an article, but I have so much data at this point that I’m working on a book). We can actually use shame to turn a child’s behavior on a dime. It is both effective and efficient in the short-term. When we are stressed or run out of parenting tools, it is easy to turn to shame as a way to stop a behavior or force a child to comply with a demand. Once we’ve used shame a couple of times, there appears to be a residual effect. We merely have to threaten to use it or look as if we are going to use it and the child complies.

The problem is that the messages we send to the child are often messages that can follow the child for a lifetime. Shaming is not like “guilting.” Guilt says: “you’ve done something bad” or “you’ve made a bad choice.” Shame says: “you are bad.” There is a big difference between “you made a mistake” and “you are a mistake.” Guilt can often inspire us to change a behavior, make amends, apologize or rethink our priorities. When we feel shame, our self-worth is so low that there is little possibility for change. Harriet Lerner writes, “How do we apologize for something we are rather than something we did?” Additionally, the “residual effect” is more accurately a “decaying effect.” When we repeatedly use shame to change people, their self-worth and self-confidence can slowly erode.

So, the long answer is that shame is used as a change agent all the time. It’s used in our “here and now” society because you can actually see a swift behavior change when you use shame. The consequences, however, are very serious. Shame promotes change by using fear of rejection, fear of not being accepted and fear of disconnection. Ultimately, shame is very destructive to both the person doing the shaming and the person being shamed. When you talk to 200 women about shame (and now some men as well), you quickly learn how many of our deepest scars are from being shamed and many of our most profound regrets can be traced back to experiences when we shamed others.

MMO: “Mother guilt”— the self-doubt and anxiety mothers experience when conflicting social expectations make it impossible to be an “ideal” worker and an “ideal” mother at the same time— is now recognized as a cultural phenomenon. And we’ve all felt embarrassed when we’ve done something clumsy or thoughtless when other people are around. Is there a relationship between shame, guilt and embarrassment?

B Brown: I touched on this in the previous question, but let me go into a little more detail. We often use the terms shame, guilt and embarrassment interchangeably. In fact, there are interesting debates about the relationship between shame, guilt and embarrassment. Some researchers believe that all three of these emotions are related and represent varying degrees of the same core emotion. Other researchers believe that the three are separate, distinct experiences. My research clearly supports the argument that shame, guilt and embarrassment are three completely different responses. Here’s how the women in my study distinguished shame and guilt:

Guilt = I did something bad.
Shame = I am bad.

Guilt = That was a flawed decision.
Shame = I am flawed.

Guilt = That is a bad thought.
Shame = I am a bad person for having that thought.

In the simplest terms, shame is about who we are, not what we’ve done. Unlike the paralyzing effects of shame, guilt often prompts us to make amends or change our behavior. Feeling guilty doesn’t produce the same feelings of being trapped, powerless and isolated. Women described “embarrassing situations” as much less serious than either guilt or shame. Embarrassment is, by definition, something that is fleeting, often eventually funny and very normal (e.g., tripping, misspeaking, etc.). Regardless of how embarrassing a situation might be, we know (or at least have heard) that it happens to other people and we know it will go away. On the other hand, shame is often lasting, devastating and makes us feel very abnormal and alone.

MMO: Shame seems to be the weapon of choice in the so-called “mommy wars.” Comments tossed off in casual conversation— such as an at-home mom declaring “I could never let someone else raise my children,” or an employed mom remarking “I would go crazy if I had to spend all day at home with the kids,” or any mother saying “I’ve never felt (conflicted, ambivalent, depressed, angry) about being a mother… I guess motherhood is not for everyone”— are, knowingly or unknowingly, calibrated to provoke tremendous pain and rage in women who are vulnerable. It’s always dangerous to generalize, but my sense is that some mothers self-righteously (or, at least unselfconsciously) demean other mothers in an effort to avoid coming into contact with their own vulnerability. Do we wield shame to stop ourselves from feeling shame? Is shame used to enforce ideology?

B Brown: Well, clearly, as your examples demonstrate, shame is an effective and piercing weapon. This is especially true in high vulnerability areas like motherhood and parenting. In fact, parenting emerged as one of the most divisive issues among women. I think there are three primary reasons that motherhood and parenting are such vulnerable areas: First, there are so many unattainable and conflicting expectations that many of us often feel like we are drowning and taking our families down with us. It is easy to lash out when we are overwhelmed with feelings of confusion, judgment, fear and anger. Second, most of us are absolutely committed to doing the best we can, and it is easy to perceive someone else’s decision to do things differently as a criticism of our choice rather than seeing it as simply another path. Just like when we are feeling judged, fearful and angry, feeling criticized makes it very difficult to respond to someone with empathy and understanding. Third, and this goes back to your suggestion that we may use shame to stop shame; we have all developed what the Relational/Cultural theorists from the Stone Center at Wellesley call “strategies of disconnection.” Using shame to fight shame is certainly one of them.

Let me say a little bit about empathy and strategies of disconnection—both of these concepts are critically important pieces in building our understanding of shame. Building shame resilience is about reaching out to others and building connection. When we do this with people in our support systems, we often develop relationships that are built on a foundation of empathy. This is incredibly important because, based on this research, I found that the opposite of experiencing shame is experiencing empathy. When we tell our stories or share an experience with someone and they respond with empathy, most of our shame loses its power. Expressing empathy or being empathic is not easy. It requires us to be able to see the world as others see it, to be non-judgmental, to understand another person’s feelings and to communicate your understanding of that person’s feelings (Wiseman, 1996).

When we talk about high vulnerability areas like motherhood because it is exchanges within these areas where our hopes of finding connection and empathy are often dashed and we find ourselves instead feeling attacked, shamed and disconnected. Many of us have developed strategies for dealing with shame and our unmet need for empathy. Some of these strategies are rooted in connection, but many others are what Relational Cultural theorists call “strategies of disconnection.” Dr. Linda Hartling uses Karen Horney’s work on moving toward, moving against and moving away from to outline the strategies of disconnection we use to deal with shame.

In order to deal with shame, we have learned to move away by withdrawing, hiding, silencing ourselves and secret-keeping. We have also learned the strategy of moving toward. This can be seen when we attempt to earn connection by appeasing and pleasing. Last, we develop ways to move against. These include trying to gain power over others, using shame to fight shame and aggression.

Often, we can find ourselves engaging in these strategies of disconnection when it comes to the mommy-wars. If you think about issues like work and motherhood, labor and delivery options, breastfeeding, disciplining and sleep strategies, we often stay quiet when we disagree or have alternative ideas or opinions and/or we say what we think we are supposed to say in order to not jeopardize our connection with other mothers and/or sometimes, we use shame in response to our own threatened feelings.

Unfortunately, these strategies often move us deeper into shame. It is so important that we find support systems, even one or two friends or family members with whom we can share our experiences and know that they will listen with empathy and understanding. Both reaching out for empathy and offering empathy are key to building shame resilience.

To answer your question about how shame can be used to reinforce ideology, I definitely found evidence of this in my research. In fact, I have two sections in the book that specifically explore the concepts of “membership” and what I term, “fundamentalism.” The idea of membership is very important to us. Shame is often associated with the feeling of “not belonging” or being rejected from a valued group or community. I call this type of shame “membership shame.” Membership shame is not restricted to official clubs or groups with card-carrying members. Membership shame is based on the desire to belong to any group, large or small, with whom we want to be associated. We can desire association because we share the group’s circumstances, beliefs or values; or, we can desire association because we look up to the members and want to belong as a way to “be like them.”

Some of the “membership groups” identified by women include families, neighborhood play groups, political affiliation groups, treatment/recovery groups, sororities, profession-specific groups, faith communities/churches, identity groups like feminists, liberals, conservatives, fitness/health groups, intellectuals and mother’s groups. While we resist being labeled and put in categories, we also find security in belonging and identifying with a group of like-minded or like-spirited people.

It’s not uncommon to find that we share a membership category (formal or informal, spoken or unspoken) with our closest friends. If we are politically conservative, we might have politically diverse friends; however, we probably also have a subset of friends or family that share those political values. Membership in the subset holds importance for us, especially when we feel criticized or ostracized by people with different opinions.

Some membership groups keep group members “in line” by using very fundamentalist tactics. I define fundamentalist groups as any group espousing a belief system that holds itself so right and true that it discourages or even punishes questioning. Although we often associate fundamentalism with religion, fundamentalist thinking can be seen across all types of membership groups. While the research participants did talk about religious fundamentalism, they also gave a wide variety of examples like motherhood fundamentalism, political fundamentalism, therapy fundamentalism and parenting fundamentalism. These groups often support one ideal or one approach to various subjects.

Fundamentalist groups often provide “ideology-reinforcing” answers to every imaginable question and reject answers or explanations outside of the accepted “ideology.” These groups can also encourage members to be ideologues versus critical thinkers and discourage questioning by labeling members or threatening them with expulsion from the group. Unfortunately, shame is often used to threaten members. Fundamentalist groups can also seem appealing because they often offer members a place to hide from people who disagree with them by supplying members ready-made, pre-packaged rebuttals and strategies for dealing with critics. Fundamentalist groups are often effective at convincing members that they can’t succeed or survive without membership in the group.

There are over 100 stories and examples in the book. One example of “membership” shame that comes to mind is a woman who spoke about her mother’s group decision to adopt a specific “sleep strategy” book:

Every mom in my play group loves this one guy who writes books about how to get your baby to sleep through the night and books about how to discipline your children. I hate his books. I can’t stand him or his advice. I think he’s terrible and I don’t like the way these women treat their kids. It’s completely opposite from what I want to do. The shaming thing is that I don’t say anything. I don’t agree or disagree when they’re talking about it. I just walk over to the swing set or pretend I’m busy doing something. I know if I said something they’d give me the cold shoulder. This sounds overly-dramatic, but I know there was one mom who said she thought they were wrong and she pretty much got kicked out of the play group. That’s a bigger deal than you think. When you stay home alone with kids, neighborhood play groups are a big deal.

Membership and belonging are, unquestionably, an important part of our lives. This is especially true in high vulnerability areas like motherhood and parenting. When we feel rejected or even threatened with rejection by a group we value, we are very vulnerable to shame. If we want to belong to groups that offer us connection, power and a sense of freedom, we must choose our groups with some level of acknowledged vulnerability and critical awareness. We need to understand why group membership is important to us (acknowledging vulnerability) and how the groups really work (critical awareness).

MMO: Based on your research, you conclude that it’s impossible to get rid of shame or repair it, but we can build resilience to it by cultivating empathy, discovering and acknowledging the sites of our personal vulnerability, practicing critical awareness, and reaching out to others for validation of shared experiences. But because shame “demands that we hide our ‘shamed selves’ from others in order to avoid additional shame,” doesn’t shame work against forming the empowering connections we need to build resilience? How can women get started on developing shame resilience? What can they expect as they go through the process?

B Brown: First, I would say that we can repair shame, or at least repair its effects. Repairing the effects of shame is very much a part of the healing process. Developing shame resilience, this ability to move toward empathy in the face of shame, is not an easy process. If it were, shame would not be such a prevalent and destructive force in our lives. As your question suggests, the greatest challenge to developing shame resilience is the way shame actually makes us less open to giving or receiving empathy. Shame protects itself by making it very difficult for us to access its antidote. When we are in shame, reaching out for empathy feels very dangerous and risky. And, when we are in shame and someone reaches out to us, it is unlikely that we will be willing to dig deep and find anything besides fear, anger, blame and confusion.

The primary purpose of the book is to help readers explore and define shame and to share information, ideas and strategies for building shame resilience. This is not an easy process, and for every strategy there are potential barriers. But fortunately, the amazing group of women who participated in the research really talked openly about these barriers and about how they moved past them and, in some cases, right through them. If we learn from their wisdom and anticipate those barriers and understand how they work, the process can be much more effective. In fact, I think the single most hopeful piece of this work is the fact that shame resilience can indeed be learned. It is not inherent—it is about skills and information. Shame resilience is something we can all work toward and something we can share with other women.

MMO: Do you think men and women experience shame differently?

B Brown: I’ve just finished the initial research pilot on men and shame so I’m not ready to talk in terms of “findings” or a theory of men and shame. I will say that I’m starting to believe that we are more alike than we are different. The purpose of the pilot was to determine if I would need to develop a new theory of shame resilience or if the theory that emerged from the study on women and shame would fit and I could interview around it. I’m still analyzing data; however, I believe that in almost every important way, the model fits. While women are faced with a web of many layered, competing and conflicting expectations, there seems to be one major expectation for men—do NOT appear weak. There definitely appears to be a relationship between the perception of weakness and how men experience shame. While the web is the best metaphor for describing how women get trapped by shame, I’m starting to see a “very small box” for men. I’ll keep you posted!

mmo : august 2004

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