Shame and sex

Shame is considered an annoying topic. Berlin therapist Stephan Konrad Niederwieser argues why it makes sense to deal with shame, especially for people who fall outside the social norm.

You don't need to be ashamed of the fact that you're gay

In everyday discourse, shame is understood as a feeling for which a cognitive approach is suggested: "You don't need to be ashamed of the fact that you are gay." Of course, there is no one shame and therefore no one way of dealing with it. But from my many years of therapeutic experience, trying to deal with shame using cognitive means is not enough. And that starts with the fact that I don't consider shame to be a feeling. Shame is much more than that; it could best be understood as a psychobiological process. But slowly. The mistake starts with the fact that you can be ashamed without feeling anything at all. You can dissociate and feel nothing at all, except perhaps a little muscular or emotional tension. How shame is perceived is highly individual. And to say it straight away: most people don't even realise that they are ashamed.

Shame is not a feeling

If shame is not a feeling, what is it? In my book Never be ashamed again. How to free ourselves from paralysing feelings, I guide readers step by step to recognise that shame is actually a mechanism. A tool, a clamp that serves to cut us off from our healthy capacities, to no longer recognise them or even to deny, condemn and hate them.

A simple example: neediness. It's interesting that the otherwise so eloquent German language only has one term for this most natural of all human needs, and it has such a negative connotation. We are needy. Neediness is completely natural. If our needs were not met, we would die. As children anyway, but this would also have consequences for adults. Human contact is so important that isolation not only has emotional consequences, but can even cause massive physical symptoms.

Sensitivity to shame is often rooted in early experiences. If children have their needs met, they experience themselves in a world of abundance where they get what they need. And they need a lot. Someone who cares for them, nurtures them, recognises them, mirrors them, plays with them, looks after them, offers them security, enjoys them and much more. If they grow up in such an environment, they learn that it is natural to need and that they are allowed to ask for it. Because of the abundance they experience, it doesn't matter if they don't get something. Because they are sure that their need will be fulfilled later or elsewhere or by another person.

Unfortunately, few people grow up under such conditions. Until not so long ago, it was common practice to let children scream in order not to spoil them, to break their will and so on. In the former GDR, children were often placed in crèches at an early age, even as young as 14 days. There were even weekly crèches. Everywhere in Germany, children were fed according to the clock, potty-trained, and children were expected to crawl, walk, speak, read, write and speak their first foreign language. According to our own observations, today's toddlers often have the problem of having to compete with social media, because many parents feel that their mobile phone is more important than contact with their child.

How shame manifests itself

Shame finds expression in a variety of ways: on a sensory level, it can be perceived as a burning sensation, for some it is accompanied by physical pain, a sudden loss of strength ("My knees are going through"), even a feeling of destruction. Shame has an effect on posture: Shoulders rolled forwards, kink in the neck, knees turned inwards, emptiness in the chest. Entire muscle groups are involved. It is not uncommon for people to feel "paralysed". Those who feel ashamed interrupt impulses to act, often very vital impulses, such as breathing long and deep. Those who feel ashamed withdraw into themselves and thus withdraw from contact with the other person. People outside the heterosexual norm often feel attracted to their own kind. Understandably so. It is (safer) there. This withdrawal is often accompanied by feelings of loneliness and isolation. Shame often manifests itself most clearly in self-judgement - other schools of psychology like to talk about the "inner critic" or the "superego". There is as little such thing as shame itself. Passing off this self-judgement as the "superego" only serves to delude people into believing that there is a separate entity within them that criticises them. But it is actually them.

Because people are ashamed of their shame, they find it difficult to talk about it - which poses a major conundrum for many therapists, especially in content-focussed (talking) therapies. At best, they realise that nothing changes in the client despite the best advice.

How to deal with shame

To cope with all this, you can use a number of "survival strategies": You dress like others to feel like you belong. You work out to make yourself more attractive. You use vacuum pumps or other devices to enlarge your genitals, or you take drugs to dull all those awful feelings. You have a lot of sex in the hope of getting the closeness you actually crave - and thus hollow yourself out more and more. Or you resort to the antidote of shame and think you are better and more intelligent. And often you do what you have experienced yourself: You marginalise others without restraint. Of course, all of this sometimes has a major impact on the relationships people have or the sex they have.

Longing - Search - Addiction

What are vital capacities? Basic trust, feeling safe, feeling valuable, feeling welcome in this world, feeling seen, being allowed to develop into who you are, being allowed to follow your own impulses, being allowed to live love and sexuality with a person. Anyone who has cut themselves off from this cannot help but search for it. But often in the wrong place, on the outside. They look to others (lovers, sex partners, therapists) to give them what they are denying themselves. And that's the crux of the matter: even if they get what they (secretly) want, they can't accept it because of the shame. Because that also goes hand in hand with it: you close yourself off from yourself, you close your heart, you cut off (self-)compassion.

What is shame good for?

A little excursion: Why are we actually ashamed? Do a little experiment: stand in front of a friend, stretch out your arms towards them and say "I need you. Please take me in your arms" without approaching him/her. What do you experience when you think about doing this? For most people, this will trigger very unpleasant feelings. But you are already an adult. How is a small child supposed to cope with that? A child who can't even speak. Who lies there helplessly and is dependent on someone realising that they want to be picked up. But no one comes. Not just once, but several times. Many times. Perhaps even his entire childhood.

What feels safer for this child? To be told that the parents don't have all the cups in the cupboard? Or to believe that there is something wrong with them?

There is no question that it will relate the failure of its environment to itself. It can't do anything else.

When I write that parents don't have all their wits about them, I don't mean it as an accusation. There are many reasons why parents may be incapable of understanding their children's needs. They are single parents, overwhelmed, (mentally) ill, alcoholics or otherwise addicted to drugs, have experienced so little attunement themselves that they have been unable to develop this ability. Or they have not come to terms with bad experiences: the early death of important attachment figures, violence or abuse. Our war-traumatised ancestors are ideally placed to impose hardship on future generations.

How does shame enter us?

The quick answer: not at all. If you look closely, you realise that there is no such thing as shame. In other words, this thing that is labelled with this term. It only exists: that we are ashamed. This is an ongoing process. It is not an object that has been implanted in us and therefore cannot simply be taken out again like spoilt food. But that already puts us on the path to liberation. Before that, let's take a look at the circumstances that can cause us to feel ashamed.

How is it that we feel ashamed?

So let's talk about attitude to life instead

Just as there is no such thing as shame, terms such as homosexuality are very vague (because they are reductionist) headings about individual people (groups). Most of the time we are preoccupied with all sorts of things, but not with sexuality. But that's a different discourse. So let's rather talk about feelings about life without implying that these different feelings can be changed. Many LGBTIQ people feel something early on that they cannot reconcile with their environment. They look at the world differently, they have different interests, they occupy themselves with other things. At least in the past, children never thought to associate these feelings with a different sexual orientation or gender identity. They feel different and that is the first hurdle. With enough support (from parents, for example), some can use this feeling of being different to find themselves, to individualise themselves. Most, however, feel rather strange, not belonging, weird, different in an uncomfortable way. When addressed about this otherness, the former may feel seen, recognised, encouraged, proud. The latter, on the other hand, are more afraid of not belonging. Depending on their environment, they think they have to be like their friends, classmates, children from the neighbourhood.

While older generations had already suffered severe wounds as a result of coming out, the circumstances surrounding the AIDS pandemic did the rest: stigmatisation, blame and religiously fanatical images of atonement have become deeply engraved in the souls of relatives. And even today, LGBTIQ people continue to be shamed by politicians, find reservations in all religions, doctors and therapists offer special treatment and the public media still show caricatures far too often.

Those who are not resilient enough swallow the "bitter pill of shame", they consider themselves inferior, leprous, harmful, etc.

Freed from shame

Of course you can turn your energy outwards and demand that all people are treated equally, that all people should have the same rights. Doing this is good and important. But as you have understood by now, shame is not a thing. If you are ashamed, then it is you who is ashamed. People who have been ashamed of being who they are for 20, 40 or 60 years may feel protected by laws, but this does little to change their inner attitude towards themselves. Only one thing can shame you: Yourself! This is easy to write down, but often quite challenging to put into practice, precisely because mere negotiation on a cognitive level usually falls short.