David Krueger MD

The topic of shame appeared recently in my New Wellness Story® Coaching Group, with a couple of individual clients, and in a training seminar. These stimulating discussions have prompted me to revisit some ideas and earlier writing about shame that are rooted in my former profession of Psychoanalysis, but require new consideration in Mentor Coaching. I am interested in any responses, resonances, and ideas that you have as a reader of the notions that follow.

Self-esteem vs. Shame
Ideals and needs are at the core of identity, part of the foundation of self. Ideals are internal standards of excellence. Ideals serve as a personal model of value – an internal guide to purpose. Living up to a personal, attainable ideal generates a sense of worth and esteem. Failure to live up to an internal ideal results in the feeling of shame. Shame can be pervasive over a lifetime, while remaining masked to its creator.

There are two major detours from self-esteem to arrive at shame:

• In childhood, the ideal offered by parents of what is “good enough” is never attained, and shame results. Parents neither resonate with expansiveness, nor praise talents and achievements. Or even offer shaming remarks to make someone smaller: “Who do you think you are?”

• The ideal presented by parents is that females should be loving, kind, giving, and not have or act on her own needs; when she lives up to this ideal, she fails at her own growth. However, if she grows successfully, she fails to live up to this ideal. By adulthood, this internal model is a shadow that she can’t escape, one that can darken the joy of any success.

Shame is one of the most primitive human emotions we have – the most painful and difficult to deal with. It drives the sense of “never good enough.” The birthplace of shame is the fear of disconnection. In childhood, failure to live up to the ideals of parents threatens disruption of that bond. In adulthood, failure to live up to one’s own internal ideal as an adult threatens self-alienation along with shame. Since shame is the perpetual shadow story, behavior to counter this shame must persist.

Gender Expression
The message of shame and shame-based dynamics are partly gender-related, especially in their expression. Perfectionism is a common adaptation to shame. “If I can do it perfectly, I can avoid shame, judgment, and blame.” An unspoken causal explanation is, “If I had just been more perfect, I could have avoided this.” And perfectionism looks different for males and females.

Some gender-specific expressions of attempts to counter shame:

• For females: be perfect, pretty, thin, quiet, helpful, loving and giving to others. Or the desire to spend and shop to counter the unconscious whispers of “You need to look better.”
  
  
• For males: be stoic, strong, unemotional, do more, and make more. Or the desire to compete physically or by expensive acquisitions to counter the unconscious whispers of “You have evidence of worth.”

Your Money Story
I work with many individuals in developing their money stories who need to understand the old story that contains a storyline of shame, to create new storylines of worth, belonging, and “good enough.” The new story defines attainable ideals—including growth and success—so that self-esteem can be generated internally.
Consider these questions:

• Are you writing your money story from a totally current model that allows abundance, gratitude, and fulfillment by attaining all that you are capable of doing and being?
  
  
• Do you have an end point of “good enough.”?

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Dave

David Krueger MD

You can fulfill a desire you didn’t know you had by spending money you don’t have.  You can define yourself by acquisitions not paid for.  You can borrow based on how much money you will be lended rather than by how much money you can pay back.  

Spending money generates the perception, both by the spender and observer, of having money.  Fulfilling a wish creates the desire.  When desires define identity, they can become unrelenting.  Many people who fall heavily into debt do not necessarily have psychological problems, but because their spending takes on a life of its own.  

Spending money is addictive; it changes a state of mind.  

Elastic boundaries distance the obligation of debt.  A credit card segments the pleasure of purchase from the pain of future payment.  Our optimism bias then makes rainy days and repayment an abstraction.

Four stages of a debt cycle can occur:

Compulsion->Shame->Disavowal->Compulsion

• Compulsion
  A debt cycle begins with an urge to buy something that cannot be afforded; yet we feel compelled to buy because of how we believe it will make us feel.  Spending is emotional, prompting an output of dopamine, the same brain chemical that creates the high of drug use.
  
  
• Shame
  Shame, the recognition of not living up to one’s internal ideal, sets in with the recognition of spending money that we do not have.
  
  
• Disavowal
  Lawrence Ausubel, an economist at the University of Maryland, found that cardholders admit to only four of every $10 they owe.  Intelligent people willfully disavow 60% of their debt for the same reason that alcoholics underreport the number of drinks they have.  People mentally wipe off their fingerprints to wish they hadn’t done what they did, pretending that they actually didn’t do it.  Disavowal tactics may include not opening bills when they come in, paying the minimum on credit card statements, hiding bills or statements from a partner, or lying about bills owed or balances due. 
  
  
• Compulsion
  Compulsion continues, now to also remedy the discomfort of shame, as well as to counter the initial feelings and desires that set the cycle in motion.  An addiction is anything—or any process—that you feel you can’t do without.
  

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