I've been seeing a lot of mention recently of how some people mentioned here, or the New Left (whatever the fuck that is), are steeped in shamelessness. As a call to bring shame on them. Which just shows they don't get it, it doesn't work like that, unless you're a [insert slur here].
Perhaps this is why there's been such a backlash against stuff like #metoo from folks unaffected by it: it's not supposed to happen to people ordinarily immune to it, and if it can happen to the powerful, it can happen to *them*. Whether they are conscious of it or not (my money is on not, denial is much more soothing), your average abled, white, cis, straight, middle-class person feels in their bones how precarious their position is. (Not unlike that analogy about bullying in the workplace I think you made some times ago.) Their anxiety over that manifests in a visceral reaction to anything that makes them see things for what they are. Re-establishing the hierarchy of shame by doubling down on those less powerful than them is a tried and true way of soothing that anxiety (not to mention expedient for unscrupulous politician to tap into and whip up). It's no small surprise in that light that the backlash against even the idea of the powerless enacting consequences on the powerful over sexual abuse manifests itself in a big increase in the US in (social, political, physical) violence against black people and trans women. Two demographics vulnerable and (relatively) powerless, and with a long history of standing accused of defiling the purity of the white woman.
(Also, it's like one of those cartoons floating around tumblr, about how trying to ridicule some rich asshole's physical appearance will only hurt vulnerable people. Which people just keep on doing even though Johnny Moneybags will never ever see your mean tweet about him, and wouldn't even care if he did.)
This is such a brilliant distillation of it! And yes, for the curious, here is the piece where I talk about cis women being more likely to bully trans men in the workplace than cis men are -- because the cis women recognize they have power, but that it's tentative and easily lost. I think you're exactly right that this phenomenon drives a lot of aggression between marginalized (but still privilege-holding) groups: https://drdevonprice.substack.com/p/i-dont-feel-safe-around-cis-women
I appreciated the main point in outlined in the header. I have tried to train myself out of this, as follows: When I don't have status or influence, and I then feel bad about my low status and thus frequently feel bad about myself, I remind myself: *I didn't do anything wrong.*. Lack of power, lack of status, is not hurting others or behaving unfairly. If I do unethical actions, that is when I should feel bad about myself.
Even when we’ve done something wrong, I think a healthy reaction is guilt, rather than shame. A quote from Brene Brown:
“Based on my research and the research of other shame researchers, I believe that there is a profound difference between shame and guilt. I believe that guilt is adaptive and helpful—it’s holding something we’ve done or failed to do up against our values and feeling psychological discomfort.
I define shame as the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging—something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection.”
EDIT: see also Devon’s reply to Sharna de Lacy, below, for his opinions on whether the distinction between guilt and shame make sense for neurodivergent and traumatized people.
I think "feeling shame" being similar to "feeling like you lack power" does not necessarily mean "shame = lack of power" nor does it mean "lack of power is the cause of shame". It could just be that the two things frequently dovetail. At a population level, I'd be curious to see whether shame correlates to lack of power; if Population A is oppressed by Population B, I wouldn't necessarily expect Population A to feel widespread shame about that, without some other factors involved. (For example, queer people might feel more shame because they are expected to be Not Queer, whereas other populations don't always have "you are expected to be better than this" embedded in the oppression.)
My partner struggles with shame, and our relationship is more imbalanced in power than I would like it to be because of it—he tries to be too accommodating of me, when I would rather he take up more space for himself and his own needs. He is a cis, straight, white dude with a lucrative career, generally not ticking too many boxes for "lacking power"... but he struggles with severe depression that contributes to the shame. In his case, he withdraws his ability to perceive or exert power in the relationship *because* of the shame... not the other way around. You mention the study looked at "perception of power," not objective holding of power, and I think that's pretty key to some of the complexity on this topic.
This is an interesting question, but I don’t think they are the same thing. They are definitely very closely related. I think your strongest point here is the one about how people in power are very difficult or impossible to shame. But powerlessness is not the same thing as shame. Shame is certainly a tactic used by the powerful to manipulate and control those with less power. But it’s more complex, and the two experiences are distinct. Take for example the psychological phenomenon of how narcissistic people (not necessarily just people formally diagnosed with NPD) will insist upon being the center of attention and cannot bear negative reactions because they deeply feel insecure and ashamed. Recently when Tim Walz celebrated Elon Musk’s loss of wealth in Tesla, Musk responded with a defensive and emotional tone. It wasn’t that Musk couldn’t feel shame. Musk is deeply ashamed of what matters to him, which is most often his own money. And he’s one of the most powerful people in the world.
This is pertinent to the topic (and also since Devon Price has published on autism), I have an essay arguing that autistic people are less interested in competing for social status. Many in the autism community have written related things (which I review), but there is no academic article on this topic (although I review what exists on the related topics of non-conformity and moral reasoning). I am less confident that this holds for other categories of neurodivergence. ADHDers (especially males) appear to have intact intuitions about the importance of social status.
I have some thoughts on this as someone who has substantial concrete power, but has experienced profound shame as well.
For context, I'm an engineering executive at a large US software company. That career has both given me the means to smooth over most problems in my life, as well as a high degree of social status. People listen to me, they assume I'm competent and I'm respected by default by most groups in power.
I also transitioned a bit less than 2 years ago and have spent the time since then processing profound shame about my personality, body, neurodivergency and queerness.
I don't think I experience shame as a lack of power, because I don't think I lack power. But there's something revealing to me in how I've let go of my own self hatred and shame. I always feel free when I let go of my judgement of others.
Whether around being trans, or age appropriate clothes, or clockiness, or being hyper focused on conversation, or even considering others attractive, I always find that if I can see others with marked traits that I share as inherently valuable, that's the key to losing my internalized shame.
So I think my shame can more appropriately be described as the fear of a loss of power. Even if in the moment I have the status and control, if that's conditional, those traits that condition my power are controlled by shame. It's only by ceasing to regard conventionally disempowered traits as lesser that I can let go of my shame in not perpetually embodying strength.
I was thinking something similar, but in a different way. I don’t know if I have the right words yet, but I will try to express my thoughts on this.
I find that through the therapy and trauma work I have done, but also through transitioning and working on my relationships, I have managed to let go of a lot of shame. However I am in no way more powerful in the big scope of society. If anything, I am more conscious of all the powerlessness I am facing daily. I have gathered more marginalisations and labels and «reasons» to be powerless while discovering being trans, neurodivergent, chronically ill etc than I knew before.
What HAS changed though, is my power over my own life. I have through the internal work I have done, through my relationship work, through my trauma work had new experiences where I have had more agency, met more people who have listened to me, seen the effects of my actions, built a social circle where I feel valued and created a life around myself where I feel powerful. Not powerful in the ways of decision over world situations or being heard by society, because even part of getting my personal power is to let go of trying to influence things I can’t. I have found power in also in avoiding and ignoring. And part of this work has been the same as you are describing, to value others with my own shamed traits.
To me this personal power, to have agency in my own life, is a sort of resistance against the powerlessness the world has put on me. And even when I have held positions of power in a public view of jobs or titles, it has often been accompanied by shame, while NOT being socially powerful but having more agency and personal power over my own life has made the shame crumble.
This is an interesting conversation. I think I'm having a mixed/circular experience here - I did gain social power in the last years, mostly through wealth (after years of being technically homeless etc.). To some degree through age - at least feels that way in my culture.
Being around people who treated me with a kind of respect / deference I never experienced before because they assumed I have wealth and generally mingling in that kind of social class did in a kind of automatic way influence the way I feel about myself. I started feeling more important and respectable (tho nothing about my behaviour or personality changed). My anxiety levels fell. They are still high, but before wealth and relatively more power I was incapacitated by mental issues.
So yes, I think there is something to Devon's point that power removes shame - both for good and probably for bad (because I did notice reduced empathy).
On the other hand, there's a limit to how much shame was removed from me "automatically". I still have a lot. And - funny? - what I do to reduce it is actually remind myself that whoever triggered my self doubts holds no actual power over me (and may well be less privileged than me). Which now feels truer in more cases.
And reminding myself of the current reality does work better than many of the psycho self affirmation tools did in the more difficult phase of my life.
So overall, given my experience I stand behind Devon's "materialist" point.
However, I do like to read your points above about how personal autonomy gave you more sense of power than external social status.
However, both of you above mention that you already started out with decent social standing. So I wonder if this is a bit like "money doesn't make you happy" -- indeed, once you have *enough*, more doesn't increase your good feelings in life. But being below the "enough" level affects you no matter how much you work on self-acceptance etc. I wonder if social status might work similarly, with an "enough" level ...
And a "too much" level ... a whole other conversation. It's also possible to feel shame about higher social status or wealth (not just "white liberal guilt", but for example people who didn't grow up that way and realise we're doing some of the idiotic stuff we always blamed rich people for doing ...).
The accepted truism in psychology is that guilt is "I have done something bad," and shame is "I am bad." Guilt supposedly motivates a person to make amends and change their behavior, whereas shame mostly paralyzes. Among neurodivergent and traumatized people, I have my doubts about whether this distinction makes sense.
As an AuDHD person, I find it difficult to distinguish. But also my first language is Polish and I do think emotional concepts might not be perfectly translatable and might vary somewhat across cultures and epochs.
The way I grew up, shame was seen as a positive pro-social emotion that makes you embarrassed when you lie, steal etc. I guess more the way you describe guilt - but still with blushing, shrinking, reduced eye contact and all the physiological markers you describe for shame. Having these physiological markers when you do sth. immoral was seen as good, not having them as a character flaw / risk.
I don't want to get too long-winded but I wonder in how far this kind of shame-guilt can be seen as a quintessential connective / social / community-based emotion in the sense that having it - incl. the physiology - shows you share the standards and values of your reference group (family, village, (sub)culture ...).
Now what these standards are and if they stand up to scrutiny is another question.
I also came across (Karla McLaren) the idea of authentic vs. externally imposed shame/guilt (she may have called it sth. else) - essentially whether the standards that you physiologically react to are your own (stand up to your moral scrutiny) or externally imposed by others - often as a punishment, or power tool in the context of this article. She essentially says the internal one is good, keep it, get rid of the external one.
But again, in this framing too - the physiology is maybe neutral, it's a tool to inhibit us (our energy, behaviours) - the question is just what's being inhibited / what value system the physiology is being trained to / has been trained to.
And in my intuition, very powerful people being shameless because they can't be punished (as you write) - I would wonder if there's more to it than not fearing punishment: if there's also not holding shared community standards (anymore), not having the internalised (physiological) sense of being part of the community that taught you moral behaviour (or perhaps it just didn't ...). Tho of course the two may be linked - feeling part <=> being subject to be held accountable.
No super clear point here, just intuition that it's (also) a community cohesion values emotion => designed to be imprinted by / with the social structure? To be an interface between physiology and society?
Thanks so much for this article. I'm a big fan. I just bought another one of your books today.
If you could, could you flesh this section out more?
> And vulnerable, statistically tiny populations such as Autistics and transgender people become the scapegoats for conditions of mass economic injustice and political disenfranchisement.
Specifically, I'm not sure how Autistic people have been scapegoated for mass economic injustice and political disenfranchisement. Is it that people conflate Elon Musk with super wealthy people in general? I'm not sure.
What I'm referring to here is that the reactionary right has capitalized on how unhappy the average person is about their current economic and political circumstances, and tried to convince them that the solution is for the right to do things like ban trans people from using the bathroom and put every Autistic person's name on a federal registry. In the same way that Jewish people were scapegoated as the cause of economic decline by the Nazis, and continue to be scapegoated today, trans and Autistic people are too.
I was with my partner for 12 years. I recently discovered I’m autistic and started unmasking and saying no to things I would have just said yes to and ended up in burnout. I’m also going through a failed business and minimum wage job. And I’ve been taking time from hanging with friends too. So my power status level is the lowest it’s ever been. She refuses to see anything from my perspective since my status started lowering further down. Well it turns out she was having an affair for about 9 months now. We also have 1.5 year old. I was home focusing on our child doing everything around the house for her. I was giving my all and she seriously tried to use things I easily feel shame about or guilt from. So that way I broke up with her for feeling like a pos. She kept using anything she could to justify why I should move out of her family owned house. Welp found out she’s been with someone for 9 months or longer. She doesn’t feel shame or guilt about this. Then I looked back and discovered she never really expresses guilt or shame or talk about it at all or relate to it. And it’s funny bc this is how our relationship started. She was married and getting separated but I saw how she was then. She never expressed guilt or shame then either. You know what we call that? Being a sociopath 🙃🫠
I associate shame with failure - trying and failing to accomplish a task or embody a role. Failing is often caused by a lack of power. But failing at something doesn't inherently lead to feeling shame.
I've read that the most stressful jobs are ones where you have no power to control anything but you are also on the hook for anything that goes wrong.
I see shame as arising from being punished for failure by being stripped of power.
I feel like the formula "shame = lack of power" doesn't entirely explain why people enjoy being on the receiving end of humiliation kink. I am open to hearing others' thoughts on this.
I love this theory. I don't think it's a 100% match between powerlessness and shame but it makes good intuitive sense to me now that there is a very, very strong relationship between them. I'd love to see more writing and research about this, as I think it could be very useful for understanding a lot about society and relationships (not just romantic).
Thank you so much for writing and sharing this! You’re texts are so insightfull and thought provoking. Do you think power can be claimed by the person themselves or does it need to be given to them?
I've been seeing a lot of mention recently of how some people mentioned here, or the New Left (whatever the fuck that is), are steeped in shamelessness. As a call to bring shame on them. Which just shows they don't get it, it doesn't work like that, unless you're a [insert slur here].
Perhaps this is why there's been such a backlash against stuff like #metoo from folks unaffected by it: it's not supposed to happen to people ordinarily immune to it, and if it can happen to the powerful, it can happen to *them*. Whether they are conscious of it or not (my money is on not, denial is much more soothing), your average abled, white, cis, straight, middle-class person feels in their bones how precarious their position is. (Not unlike that analogy about bullying in the workplace I think you made some times ago.) Their anxiety over that manifests in a visceral reaction to anything that makes them see things for what they are. Re-establishing the hierarchy of shame by doubling down on those less powerful than them is a tried and true way of soothing that anxiety (not to mention expedient for unscrupulous politician to tap into and whip up). It's no small surprise in that light that the backlash against even the idea of the powerless enacting consequences on the powerful over sexual abuse manifests itself in a big increase in the US in (social, political, physical) violence against black people and trans women. Two demographics vulnerable and (relatively) powerless, and with a long history of standing accused of defiling the purity of the white woman.
(Also, it's like one of those cartoons floating around tumblr, about how trying to ridicule some rich asshole's physical appearance will only hurt vulnerable people. Which people just keep on doing even though Johnny Moneybags will never ever see your mean tweet about him, and wouldn't even care if he did.)
This is such a brilliant distillation of it! And yes, for the curious, here is the piece where I talk about cis women being more likely to bully trans men in the workplace than cis men are -- because the cis women recognize they have power, but that it's tentative and easily lost. I think you're exactly right that this phenomenon drives a lot of aggression between marginalized (but still privilege-holding) groups: https://drdevonprice.substack.com/p/i-dont-feel-safe-around-cis-women
I appreciated the main point in outlined in the header. I have tried to train myself out of this, as follows: When I don't have status or influence, and I then feel bad about my low status and thus frequently feel bad about myself, I remind myself: *I didn't do anything wrong.*. Lack of power, lack of status, is not hurting others or behaving unfairly. If I do unethical actions, that is when I should feel bad about myself.
Even when we’ve done something wrong, I think a healthy reaction is guilt, rather than shame. A quote from Brene Brown:
“Based on my research and the research of other shame researchers, I believe that there is a profound difference between shame and guilt. I believe that guilt is adaptive and helpful—it’s holding something we’ve done or failed to do up against our values and feeling psychological discomfort.
I define shame as the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging—something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection.”
EDIT: see also Devon’s reply to Sharna de Lacy, below, for his opinions on whether the distinction between guilt and shame make sense for neurodivergent and traumatized people.
I think "feeling shame" being similar to "feeling like you lack power" does not necessarily mean "shame = lack of power" nor does it mean "lack of power is the cause of shame". It could just be that the two things frequently dovetail. At a population level, I'd be curious to see whether shame correlates to lack of power; if Population A is oppressed by Population B, I wouldn't necessarily expect Population A to feel widespread shame about that, without some other factors involved. (For example, queer people might feel more shame because they are expected to be Not Queer, whereas other populations don't always have "you are expected to be better than this" embedded in the oppression.)
My partner struggles with shame, and our relationship is more imbalanced in power than I would like it to be because of it—he tries to be too accommodating of me, when I would rather he take up more space for himself and his own needs. He is a cis, straight, white dude with a lucrative career, generally not ticking too many boxes for "lacking power"... but he struggles with severe depression that contributes to the shame. In his case, he withdraws his ability to perceive or exert power in the relationship *because* of the shame... not the other way around. You mention the study looked at "perception of power," not objective holding of power, and I think that's pretty key to some of the complexity on this topic.
This is an interesting question, but I don’t think they are the same thing. They are definitely very closely related. I think your strongest point here is the one about how people in power are very difficult or impossible to shame. But powerlessness is not the same thing as shame. Shame is certainly a tactic used by the powerful to manipulate and control those with less power. But it’s more complex, and the two experiences are distinct. Take for example the psychological phenomenon of how narcissistic people (not necessarily just people formally diagnosed with NPD) will insist upon being the center of attention and cannot bear negative reactions because they deeply feel insecure and ashamed. Recently when Tim Walz celebrated Elon Musk’s loss of wealth in Tesla, Musk responded with a defensive and emotional tone. It wasn’t that Musk couldn’t feel shame. Musk is deeply ashamed of what matters to him, which is most often his own money. And he’s one of the most powerful people in the world.
This is pertinent to the topic (and also since Devon Price has published on autism), I have an essay arguing that autistic people are less interested in competing for social status. Many in the autism community have written related things (which I review), but there is no academic article on this topic (although I review what exists on the related topics of non-conformity and moral reasoning). I am less confident that this holds for other categories of neurodivergence. ADHDers (especially males) appear to have intact intuitions about the importance of social status.
https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/ought/vol5/iss1/12/
I have some thoughts on this as someone who has substantial concrete power, but has experienced profound shame as well.
For context, I'm an engineering executive at a large US software company. That career has both given me the means to smooth over most problems in my life, as well as a high degree of social status. People listen to me, they assume I'm competent and I'm respected by default by most groups in power.
I also transitioned a bit less than 2 years ago and have spent the time since then processing profound shame about my personality, body, neurodivergency and queerness.
I don't think I experience shame as a lack of power, because I don't think I lack power. But there's something revealing to me in how I've let go of my own self hatred and shame. I always feel free when I let go of my judgement of others.
Whether around being trans, or age appropriate clothes, or clockiness, or being hyper focused on conversation, or even considering others attractive, I always find that if I can see others with marked traits that I share as inherently valuable, that's the key to losing my internalized shame.
So I think my shame can more appropriately be described as the fear of a loss of power. Even if in the moment I have the status and control, if that's conditional, those traits that condition my power are controlled by shame. It's only by ceasing to regard conventionally disempowered traits as lesser that I can let go of my shame in not perpetually embodying strength.
I was thinking something similar, but in a different way. I don’t know if I have the right words yet, but I will try to express my thoughts on this.
I find that through the therapy and trauma work I have done, but also through transitioning and working on my relationships, I have managed to let go of a lot of shame. However I am in no way more powerful in the big scope of society. If anything, I am more conscious of all the powerlessness I am facing daily. I have gathered more marginalisations and labels and «reasons» to be powerless while discovering being trans, neurodivergent, chronically ill etc than I knew before.
What HAS changed though, is my power over my own life. I have through the internal work I have done, through my relationship work, through my trauma work had new experiences where I have had more agency, met more people who have listened to me, seen the effects of my actions, built a social circle where I feel valued and created a life around myself where I feel powerful. Not powerful in the ways of decision over world situations or being heard by society, because even part of getting my personal power is to let go of trying to influence things I can’t. I have found power in also in avoiding and ignoring. And part of this work has been the same as you are describing, to value others with my own shamed traits.
To me this personal power, to have agency in my own life, is a sort of resistance against the powerlessness the world has put on me. And even when I have held positions of power in a public view of jobs or titles, it has often been accompanied by shame, while NOT being socially powerful but having more agency and personal power over my own life has made the shame crumble.
This is an interesting conversation. I think I'm having a mixed/circular experience here - I did gain social power in the last years, mostly through wealth (after years of being technically homeless etc.). To some degree through age - at least feels that way in my culture.
Being around people who treated me with a kind of respect / deference I never experienced before because they assumed I have wealth and generally mingling in that kind of social class did in a kind of automatic way influence the way I feel about myself. I started feeling more important and respectable (tho nothing about my behaviour or personality changed). My anxiety levels fell. They are still high, but before wealth and relatively more power I was incapacitated by mental issues.
So yes, I think there is something to Devon's point that power removes shame - both for good and probably for bad (because I did notice reduced empathy).
On the other hand, there's a limit to how much shame was removed from me "automatically". I still have a lot. And - funny? - what I do to reduce it is actually remind myself that whoever triggered my self doubts holds no actual power over me (and may well be less privileged than me). Which now feels truer in more cases.
And reminding myself of the current reality does work better than many of the psycho self affirmation tools did in the more difficult phase of my life.
So overall, given my experience I stand behind Devon's "materialist" point.
However, I do like to read your points above about how personal autonomy gave you more sense of power than external social status.
However, both of you above mention that you already started out with decent social standing. So I wonder if this is a bit like "money doesn't make you happy" -- indeed, once you have *enough*, more doesn't increase your good feelings in life. But being below the "enough" level affects you no matter how much you work on self-acceptance etc. I wonder if social status might work similarly, with an "enough" level ...
And a "too much" level ... a whole other conversation. It's also possible to feel shame about higher social status or wealth (not just "white liberal guilt", but for example people who didn't grow up that way and realise we're doing some of the idiotic stuff we always blamed rich people for doing ...).
This makes me wonder what is the relationship between shame and guilt? If only the powerlessness experience shame, can anyone feel guilt?
The accepted truism in psychology is that guilt is "I have done something bad," and shame is "I am bad." Guilt supposedly motivates a person to make amends and change their behavior, whereas shame mostly paralyzes. Among neurodivergent and traumatized people, I have my doubts about whether this distinction makes sense.
As an AuDHD person, I find it difficult to distinguish. But also my first language is Polish and I do think emotional concepts might not be perfectly translatable and might vary somewhat across cultures and epochs.
The way I grew up, shame was seen as a positive pro-social emotion that makes you embarrassed when you lie, steal etc. I guess more the way you describe guilt - but still with blushing, shrinking, reduced eye contact and all the physiological markers you describe for shame. Having these physiological markers when you do sth. immoral was seen as good, not having them as a character flaw / risk.
I don't want to get too long-winded but I wonder in how far this kind of shame-guilt can be seen as a quintessential connective / social / community-based emotion in the sense that having it - incl. the physiology - shows you share the standards and values of your reference group (family, village, (sub)culture ...).
Now what these standards are and if they stand up to scrutiny is another question.
I also came across (Karla McLaren) the idea of authentic vs. externally imposed shame/guilt (she may have called it sth. else) - essentially whether the standards that you physiologically react to are your own (stand up to your moral scrutiny) or externally imposed by others - often as a punishment, or power tool in the context of this article. She essentially says the internal one is good, keep it, get rid of the external one.
But again, in this framing too - the physiology is maybe neutral, it's a tool to inhibit us (our energy, behaviours) - the question is just what's being inhibited / what value system the physiology is being trained to / has been trained to.
And in my intuition, very powerful people being shameless because they can't be punished (as you write) - I would wonder if there's more to it than not fearing punishment: if there's also not holding shared community standards (anymore), not having the internalised (physiological) sense of being part of the community that taught you moral behaviour (or perhaps it just didn't ...). Tho of course the two may be linked - feeling part <=> being subject to be held accountable.
No super clear point here, just intuition that it's (also) a community cohesion values emotion => designed to be imprinted by / with the social structure? To be an interface between physiology and society?
Hey @Devon,
Thanks so much for this article. I'm a big fan. I just bought another one of your books today.
If you could, could you flesh this section out more?
> And vulnerable, statistically tiny populations such as Autistics and transgender people become the scapegoats for conditions of mass economic injustice and political disenfranchisement.
Specifically, I'm not sure how Autistic people have been scapegoated for mass economic injustice and political disenfranchisement. Is it that people conflate Elon Musk with super wealthy people in general? I'm not sure.
Thanks!!!
What I'm referring to here is that the reactionary right has capitalized on how unhappy the average person is about their current economic and political circumstances, and tried to convince them that the solution is for the right to do things like ban trans people from using the bathroom and put every Autistic person's name on a federal registry. In the same way that Jewish people were scapegoated as the cause of economic decline by the Nazis, and continue to be scapegoated today, trans and Autistic people are too.
Thanks!!
I was with my partner for 12 years. I recently discovered I’m autistic and started unmasking and saying no to things I would have just said yes to and ended up in burnout. I’m also going through a failed business and minimum wage job. And I’ve been taking time from hanging with friends too. So my power status level is the lowest it’s ever been. She refuses to see anything from my perspective since my status started lowering further down. Well it turns out she was having an affair for about 9 months now. We also have 1.5 year old. I was home focusing on our child doing everything around the house for her. I was giving my all and she seriously tried to use things I easily feel shame about or guilt from. So that way I broke up with her for feeling like a pos. She kept using anything she could to justify why I should move out of her family owned house. Welp found out she’s been with someone for 9 months or longer. She doesn’t feel shame or guilt about this. Then I looked back and discovered she never really expresses guilt or shame or talk about it at all or relate to it. And it’s funny bc this is how our relationship started. She was married and getting separated but I saw how she was then. She never expressed guilt or shame then either. You know what we call that? Being a sociopath 🙃🫠
I associate shame with failure - trying and failing to accomplish a task or embody a role. Failing is often caused by a lack of power. But failing at something doesn't inherently lead to feeling shame.
I've read that the most stressful jobs are ones where you have no power to control anything but you are also on the hook for anything that goes wrong.
I see shame as arising from being punished for failure by being stripped of power.
I feel like the formula "shame = lack of power" doesn't entirely explain why people enjoy being on the receiving end of humiliation kink. I am open to hearing others' thoughts on this.
I love this theory. I don't think it's a 100% match between powerlessness and shame but it makes good intuitive sense to me now that there is a very, very strong relationship between them. I'd love to see more writing and research about this, as I think it could be very useful for understanding a lot about society and relationships (not just romantic).
Thank you so much for writing and sharing this! You’re texts are so insightfull and thought provoking. Do you think power can be claimed by the person themselves or does it need to be given to them?