Shame(d) and the Man

Text written by: Vildana Efendić, Gestalt psychotherapist and psychologist

Republished from the Gracija.ba portal

In psychology and psychotherapy, shame is a deadly emotion. Shame is at its most destructive WHEN it is not spoken, when it is ignored, when it is hidden behind another emotion – ANGER!!!!

“I cover fear with laughter,” said Dino Merlin, and I would say that you cover shame with anger when you don’t know who you are. Because shame tears down what you think of yourself, it destroys your identity if you don’t know what to do with it.

Do you remember the boy from the series Adolescence? Well, that boy, because of shame and the feeling that he is “small,” killed a little girl. So do our men. Out of the feeling that they are small, they kill little girls inside grown women.

The Silent Treatment

Many girls and men in the Balkans grew up with a father who did not know how to cry, did not know how to talk about what was troubling him, did not know how to say he was wrong, did not know how to say he was ashamed, did not know how to say “Sorry, it’s my fault.” What did the father do? He lay down, went outside, drank, gambled, slept; if he felt shame, he would beat someone, or if he didn’t beat anyone, he would stay silent. He practiced the infamous silent treatment, when everyone knew he wouldn’t speak to anyone for days... if he was angry at his boss, his female boss, the neighbour, or Mum, there was only silence. You weren’t allowed to ask him what was wrong. And he himself didn’t know what was wrong with him.

In a society like this, where boys grow up believing that vulnerability is weakness and emotional literacy is pi**y, a paradox arises: shame is everywhere, but its name is never mentioned.

The worst thing for boys is the sentence all the older men around them say: “You’re still small, you can’t do this... you’re still small, you don’t know this.” And so our Balkan boy learns that being small is the worst thing in the world, and that he is allowed to be small only until he starts school.

Balkan boys learn early that shame is dangerous because it takes away their sense of power, and they do best what they learned from their fathers: they erase shame from existence. Shame says, “You’re still small!”, “You have no idea!”, “You’re not good enough yet!”

And anger protects him so beautifully, saying, “Don’t worry about anything. That you are small and not good enough will never be seen, discovered or found out by anyone, because I have a super solution for you.” After years and years of practice, this dialogue becomes routine and becomes part of his identity.

THIS IS WHY TODAY WE HAVE INSTITUTIONS, SYSTEMS AND POLITICIANS WHO NEVER ADMIT SHAME AND GUILT

To avoid shame, we pass shame on to others, create enemies around us, or protect ourselves through domination, control and aggression. The only option for such men is either control or total collapse. And he chooses control. When a woman leaves, says NO, sets a boundary, a man without the capacity for shame hears the narrative “You have no idea” and “You’re still small” and feels a blow to his existence, to his identity. He never learned to regulate shame (because only the shame-carriers know how to do that), and the most familiar emotional regulator, anger, is activated in him.

Suppression

Men here are not bad men, but men who have not learned how to be humane, how to be human, how to be more than shame-carriers. Shame-carriers are ashamed anyway. Far too much.

Shame-carriers learn to feel, men learn to fight. Shame-carriers learn vulnerability and shame, men learn to suppress everything that could expose them as human beings.

To feel shame, we have to sit down for a while with the shame(-carrier) and talk, think, accept the mistake and, most importantly, endure that discomfort in the stomach.

As long as shame and the shame(-carrier) are not given a name, anger will keep speaking in their name.