Shame and Anxiety Are Entwined

Shame is a sense of deficit in the self. Feelings of shame and humiliation are emotional states that require considerable self-evaluation. All these processes concern our social nature. We can distinguish between an aggressive social tendency, in which an individual, in striving to achieve his aims, is not concerned about damaging other people (and indeed may tend to damage others); and an adoptive social tendency, in which the individual may seek the approval of and partnership with others.

Humans project various images of themselves, depending what is most useful in particular circumstances, and for whom those images are intended. An image of appeasement and nonaggression toward a possible partner in the act of courtship may be combined with an aggressive or combative image when in the face of a rival or when it is important to mark one’s territory. Within certain limits, the representation of shame, therefore, comes to be a means of communicating an image that influences relations with others.

Shame is about the self, which is the self only by virtue of confirmation, recognition, affirmation, and perhaps empathic understanding from others. The self-conscious awareness that selfhood is contingent on other people’s opinions and the possibility of failure or rejection gives rise to shame.

Shame (and guilt, which may or may not be synonomous) is a state of anxiety. There is a fundamental difference between ordinary emotion and the state of anxiety. While emotions generically supports intellectual activity, anxiety erodes it. Through the environment and our interpretation of it, we create our world in our image of ourselves and ourselves in that image of our world. But the images we create are never completely secure: Anxiety is both a sign and a result of emotional collapse.


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