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Your character’s relationship to shame is the most important psychological relationship to understand. Shame dictates more of our actions than any other emotion—more than rage, more than grief. As Dr. Brené Brown, who’s been researching shame and vulnerability for over a decade, found, “[w]hat 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. Shame demands that we hide our ‘shamed selves’ from others in order to avoid additional shame.”[1] It explains the inexplicable actions people take every day and, when we understand that and understand the source of it, we can harness that to craft powerful, meaningful characters and explain otherwise inexplicable character growth arcs.

So what is it, and what do we need to understand to wield this powerful tool?

Shame is not the same as guilt. Guilt registers when we feel we’ve done something bad—we’ve taken an action and it goes against our moral code, or the code of our community. Shame is the feeling that we are bad—our deepest secret is that we’re unlovable, and if anyone ever really gets to know us, they’ll uncover that awful secret, too. Or, as Dr. Brown puts it, “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.”[2]

When shame is triggered, it influences everything we do, everything we say, the way we move our hands, our heads, the way we smile, what we react to, how we act in crowds or with people we don’t know…you begin to see how it seeps into every single area of our lives.

Shame is a gun used on you every day of your life.

The only people who don’t feel shame, says Dr. Brown, is psychopaths.[3] “[M]ost of us, if not all, have built significant parts of our lives around shame.”[4] It can be stronger or weaker in people, but there is almost no one it does not affect.

What does it look like when a character is coming from a shame reaction? “Even now I talk too much and too loud, claiming ground….I sometimes meet women and recognize in them an instinct to run, to be gone before harm can come again, mixed with a ferocious recklessness because nothing else can be taken. I wonder what they could have done to be paying such a price. [Shame] makes me feel wildly vulnerable. I struggle still to claim a permanent space, an immutable relationship to those around me. It negates forever the ability to have a real friend. To speak in a room with confidence. To walk anyplace without believing that I have no right to be there and that I am in danger.” [5] “The moment when you just want to crawl into a hole and never be seen by the world again[.] You might find yourself defensive like a cornered animal. [I]t triggers a familiar wave of self-doubt. You might be overwhelmed by feelings of self-hatred or even self-harm.”[6] These behaviors are characteristic outer manifestations of shame.

But shame also has an inner voice, and this is a powerful storytelling tool. “‘I knew it—you are just a fraud. You don’t deserve to be here. Nobody likes you—they are just pretending.’ Other shame voices might harp on how lazy or slow or stupid you are.  When the shame voice gets going, it can seem awfully loud.”[7] A character’s inner voice reveals to a reader the truth of what a character is dealing with, even, and especially, if the character is lying.

And that’s the most powerful piece of information for mining this character trait and using it well: when in a shame reaction, characters will do inexplicable things which continue to do them harm. How can we use shame to explain the inexplicable? Here’s Dave Barry: “Your brain cherishes embarrassing memories. It likes to take them out and fondle them. This probably explains a lot of unexplained suicides. A successful man with a nice family and a good career will be out on his patio, cooking hamburgers, seemingly without a care in the world, when his brain, rummaging through its humiliating-incident collection, selects an old favorite, which it replays for a zillionth time, and the man is suddenly so overcome by feelings of shame that he stabs himself in the skull with his barbecue fork.”[8] We, as writers, provide the backstory necessary so if your happy, well-adjusted-seeming character goes for the barbeque fork, the reader nods their head instead of throwing your book across the room and vowing never to read you again. Shame adds weight; it adds depth.

Shame has the power to drag people down like nothing else but depression (which has been described as an offshoot of shame). This phenomenon is so common it has a name: the shame spiral. Here’s one in action: “She messed up a presentation at work; didn’t get an award she was up for; went out and drank too much, ate even more, called her toxic ex and cried on the phone until he agreed that she could come over. The next morning, she woke up sweating, her heart racing. She wanted to throw up, purge herself of the booze and junk food she’d consumed during her nocturnal binge when she was feeling powerless and feral. I keep screwing up, she thought. She wanted to scratch the skin from her body, remove the stench left by her ex, an illogical choice of people to turn to when she was feeling isolated and alone as he had a history of making her feel worse and, right on cue, as they were in the throes of passion, all she kept thinking was: I am such a loser.”[9]

Each decision this woman made led to a further destructive decision and that’s the definition of a shame spiral. It makes no logical sense—there’s no logic to losing control of yourself and continuing to do things that make you feel worthless. The Urban Dictionary says a shame spiral “characterizes the loss of self-control over something that makes one feel worthless and pathetic. Due to these feelings of low self-worth and guilt, the action that triggered the shame spiral is repeated and the degradation of one’s self continues. Example triggers for shame spirals could be excesses of junk food, alcohol, meaningless sex, buying unnecessary gifts for oneself and the like.”[10] A shame spiral could incorporate some or all these actions and more.

Other ways a character can act when in a shame spiral: “‘[S]hame [is] highly correlated with addiction, depression, eating disorders, violence, bullying and aggression,’ which can all serve as masks or so-called armor we don to keep ourselves from dealing with, simply put, the reality of ourselves.”[11] Perfectionism is another way shame spirals can manifest. In a shame spiral, a character will do a destructive behavior, then continue to behave in this way more and more, unable to stop. For instance, if a character is addicted to sweets, he will binge on chocolates, then feel awful and use it as proof he’s a terrible person, then binge on donuts. This will happen again and again, as his mindset spirals down into darker and darker places and his self-talk becomes more and more hateful.

What triggers shame? “There are no universal triggers. There are no events or situations that make all of us feel or experience shame.”[12] So you can use anything in a character’s past about which they’ve been shamed by others to explain their present shame reactions.

In Part 2 of this article, I’ll explore how to use shame to chart character growth and regression.

And by the way, this is a tough article. Unlike most writing on our craft, this has the potential for you to recognize much of what I’ve written about in yourself, as well. I know it was hard for me to research and write. Please know that, wherever you are in relation to this subject, YOU ARE NOT ALONE. As Dr. Brown says, if you are able, grab those people you trust the most and “reach out and tell your story. You’ve got to speak your shame.” If you are struggling, please—help is both available and necessary. Take good care of yourself.

[1] Dr. Brené Brown, Motherhood, Shame, and Society, www.mothersmovement.org, August, 2004.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Dr. Brené Brown, The Power of Vulnerability, www.ted.com, March 2012.

[4] Dr. Brené Brown, Motherhood, Shame, and Society, www.mothersmovement.org, August, 2004.

[5] Meredith Hall, “Shunned,” Creative Nonfiction, Issue #20, 2003.

[6] Sarah Beaulieu, “The Shame Spiral: A Primer in Shame Monsters,” www.theenlivenproject.com, April 29, 2013

[7] Sarah Beaulieu, “The Shame Spiral: A Primer in Shame Monsters,” www.theenlivenproject.com, April 29, 2013.

[8] Dave Barry, “The Embarrassing Truth,” Dave Barry’s Greatest Hits: Ballantine, 1988: p.140-141.

[9] Jill Di Donato, author, Beautiful Garbage, in “The Shame Spiral,” Huffington Post, 4/21/2014.

[10] www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shame+spiral

[11] Jill Di Donato, author, Beautiful Garbage, in “The Shame Spiral,” Huffington Post, 4/21/2014. Internal quote from Dr. Brené Brown.

[12] Dr. Brené Brown, Motherhood, Shame, and Society, www.mothersmovement.org, August, 2004.

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In my October 1st article, I defined shame and described how it shows up. I outlined the shame spiral, which makes explicable characters acting in inexplicable ways. Now we move on to how to use this tool to craft character arcs.

Shame is a powerful way to show character growth. Dr. Brené Brown, who’s been researching shame and vulnerability for over a decade, outlines three steps to follow to break the cycle of shame. Starting with a character lost in shame (as outlined in Part 1), chart a character’s recognition and use of them to chart growth:

1. Talk to yourself like you talk to someone you love. “I would say to myself, ‘God, you’re so stupid, Brené,’” Brown says. “I would never talk to my kids that way.” Show a character’s self-talk shifting.
2. Reach out to someone you trust. Show a character moving from isolation to increasing levels of vulnerability with others.
3. Tell your story. “Shame cannot survive being spoken,” Brown says. The ultimate level of vulnerability is sharing a shame story. This could complete a growth arc as a character finally shares her/his deepest secrets.
4. Secrecy, silence and judgment: those are the three things shame needs to grow exponentially in our lives. The antidote? Empathy. [Shame] cannot survive being spoken and being met with empathy.” [1]Your character will need to find someone who has empathy for them in order for these steps to be possible. [Italicized comments mine.

These are not easy steps to follow, so don’t show them as easy in your story. It’s a hard truth that “the greater the humiliation, the more strength of character will be required to overcome it.”[2] Please don’t show a character overcoming such a challenge alone. It’s unrealistic, and it sends the shaming message that asking for help is weak. As someone who has suffered from a crippling level of shame her whole life, I can tell you with authority and from personal experience that it’s not until you ask for help that anything can really begin to shift. But asking for help is as difficult as living in the prison of shame.

There are three reasons overcoming shame so difficult to do. “We change from a place of self-worth, not a place of shame, powerlessness and isolation.”[3] So first a character must deal with powerlessness and isolation; only then can they shift their self-worth.

Powerlessness: “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.”[4]

A character is powerless to change in the face of shame because they can’t necessarily recognize it’s in control. The first step is to recognize what is making them feel powerless—the secret they can’t bear to share with anyone for fear of the isolation threatened if they do.

Isolation: 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.”[5] As awful as this feeling of isolation is, because of the secretive nature of shame, sufferers feel trapped in it. Why? Because it is combined with powerlessness.

by Andrew Vasiliev

Then they must deal with the issue of self-worth. “It’s no easy feat to admit to flaws, because that means they’re real and we have to confront them. Accepting our mistakes or shortcomings—choices that may not have served us well, unflattering ways others may perceive us, or subtle imperfections that gnaw away at us—is uncomfortable….”[6] To put it mildly. Empathy from another character is both how your character develops trust and a big part in how they begin to change their self-talk, which reveals self-worth. “[S]elf-talk is essential in breaking free from the shame spiral.”[7] When a shamed person recognizes another’s empathy, the hold shame has on them begins to lessen, and there is room for their self-talk to shift, as well. Showing our character’s inner voice is how we chart this shift.

These reasons are why it is so terribly difficult to move beyond shame. To do it, a character must reveal the very thing they believe will make them isolated outcasts forever. The arc must follow a) recognition of the secret being kept and/or the power of fear it has over them; b) the ability to develop a trusting relationship with someone based on empathy; and c) the ability to overcome the fear inherent in revealing that very secret, which can’t be done until the character’s self-worth is stronger than their fear. This happens when the character realizes a very important distinction: “[W]ho she is [is] distinct from the things she’s done.”[8] Again, this cannot be done alone. Please don’t show it being done in isolation.

You can also use the reverse of this process of moving closer to show setbacks in your character’s growth arc. The reverse involves moving away, moving toward, and moving against. “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.”[9]

The back-and-forth nature of this struggle is tailor-made for the romance genre, or any genre which features a relationship. We add power to our stories when we understand the underlying reasons why we’re adding events to a character’s arc. Shame, and the ways I’ve shown we can use it as writers, makes our job easier and adds such depth and sympathy to our characters—and draws empathy from our readers.

There is so much more I could write about this very important subject and its connection to deep characterization and growth. Please, if you’re interested, start by reading Brené Brown’s Women & Shame: Reaching Out, Speaking Truths and Building Connection (3C Press, 2004).

As I said at the end of Part 1, this is a tough article. Unlike most writing on our craft, this has the potential for you to recognize much of what I’ve written about in yourself, as well. I know it was hard for me to research and write. Please know that, wherever you are in relation to this subject, YOU ARE NOT ALONE. As Dr. Brown says, if you are able, grab those people you trust the most and “reach out and tell your story. You’ve got to speak your shame.” If you are struggling, please—help is both available and necessary. Take good care of yourself.

[1] Brené Brown’s 3 Steps to Break the Cycle of Shame, www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/08/brene-brown-shame-oprah_n_4059675.html.

[2] David Corbett, The Art of Character, Penguin Books, 2013, p.148. This book has several excellent discussions on shame and exercises to explore it in a character.

[3] Dr. Brené Brown, Motherhood, Shame, and Society, www.mothersmovement.org, August, 2004.

[4] Dr. Brené Brown, Motherhood, Shame, and Society, www.mothersmovement.org, August, 2004.

[5] Jean Baker Miller and Irene Stiver, Motherhood, Shame, and Society, www.mothersmovement.org, August, 2004.

[6] Jill Di Donato, author, Beautiful Garbage, in “The Shame Spiral,” Huffington Post, 4/21/2014.

[7] Dr. Brené Brown quoted by Jill Di Donato, author, Beautiful Garbage, in “The Shame Spiral,” Huffington Post, 4/21/2014

[8] Jill Di Donato, author, Beautiful Garbage, in “The Shame Spiral,” Huffington Post, 4/21/2014

[9] Karen Horney (pioneering psychologist who disputed Freud and explained the differences between men and women through culture and society instead of through inherent differences) via Dr. Brené Brown, Motherhood, Shame, and Society, www.mothersmovement.org, August, 2004.

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