Shame - 1

Shame is an emotion which is easy to overlook, something that was brought home to me recently when it suddenly 'clicked' that several clients who had been baffling me, who should have been improving but weren't, were actually suffering from an excess of shame instead of the anxiety I had been treating them for.

So what exactly is shame? Experts argue about this, so my definition may not be totally accurate, but I link it with feeling inferior, small, bad, worthless, weak, useless, unlovable. If guilt is feeling bad because of the things I've done, then shame is feeling bad because of who I am. When I'm feeling ashamed I might blush, hang my head, lower my eyes to the floor. I might want the earth to open up and swallow me. I could feel naked, exposed, and intensely aware of people looking at me. Hiding away and withdrawing from the world are the things I want to do. If I can't hide I might get irritable and defensive, or lash out at people close to me, attempting to drive them away so that they can't see me in my shameful state.

Shame can be learned early on in childhood, and can persist for a lifetime if not dealt with. It comes from many experiences, but the most basic of these is the feeling of being unloved. To feel loved by close family members is a fundamental need, and if it isn't met the young child assumes that it is him or herself that is unlovable. Other common sources may be criticism, sarcasm, teasing. More severe shaming can come from physical punishment or sexual abuse.

If family life doesn't shame us, then there are plenty of opportunities at school, or in later life. Being humiliated by the teacher, having a learning difficulty that makes you look stupid, being the one no-one wants on their side in sport, being rejected by the girl or boy you fell in love with - all can add to the burden of shame we carry with us.

What can be done about it? In my experience the most effective way to overcome shame is to allow yourself re-experience it in the presence of a trusted person who is totally accepting. That way your brain slowly replaces the old patterns of feeling bad, worthless and unlovable with other, more positive feelings of being accepted and loved.

OK, so what has all this got to do with BDSM? I think it might be interesting to list some of the practices that D/s players describe that could be linked to shame:

· Enforced nudity - exposure of parts of the body normally kept private such as breasts, buttocks, genitals, anus

· Humiliation - being told one is bad, useless, a "slut", a "whore"

· Being forced to adopt an inferior position, such as kneeling, grovelling, bending over.

· Punishment - often accompanied by humiliating rituals such as being made to ask for punishment, count the strokes, thank the punisher, say things such as "I've been a bad girl".

· Being made to perform sexual acts in front of others, such as masturbation.

· Forced display of bodily functions that are normally hidden, such as urination, defecation.

· Being out of control, by being tied up, gagged, blindfolded, etc.

· Being denied something, such as food, drink, sleep, the right to orgasm.

· Being penetrated, having objects inserted in the body

· Being infantilised, treated as a baby, a schoolchild, forced to wear child or baby clothes.

I have a feeling I could keep going on with this list, but it makes the point. While not everyone who adopts the submissive role in BDSM is necessarily shamed by all of these activities, they do seem calculated to provoke shame in a large proportion of people. There are too many links to shame for it to be a coincidence.

So why do shame-provoking activities figure so strongly in BDSM? I can think of a number of possibilities:

1. A repetition compulsion - the shame is repeated over and over again, but it doesn’t get resolved. This is a Freudian idea, which is unsatisfying in that it doesn't really explain anything, it merely describes an observation about human nature. It doesn't explain how to get out of the loop.

2. A re-enactment of old patterns of shame in a safe environment, enabling one to gain mastery of and eventually overcome the shame. This is similar to the repetition compulsion, but this time there is more awareness of what is needed for healing to take place, so the right conditions can be chosen. BDSM becomes a form of therapy for the shame.

3. Alternatively the re-enactment described above may be attempted, but this time because conditions are not right the healing doesn't happen. Perhaps the shaming is too intense or the Dominant is not sufficiently attuned or experienced - the end result being that shaming is increased rather than reduced.

4. Another possibility is that the shame becomes sexualised, thereby turning an unpleasant feeling into a pleasurable one. Effectively the brain plays a clever trick with the negative feelings, and by binding them together with sexual arousal converts them into pleasure. The result is masochism, and there is now no wish for the shame to end, because it has become a source of pleasure. In fact it may be impossible to achieve sexual arousal without the shameful trigger. This is not necessarily a problem, but it can become rather limiting if the only way of getting sexual pleasure is through a very specific ritual, which other people may tire of re-enacting.

There may be other possibilities, but these are the main patterns that spring to mind. Note that only the second one leads to movement and change - the others will tend to leave the submissive person in an endless loop of repetition.

It is also worthwhile mentioning the Dominant position with respect to shame, because one of the ways of temporarily reducing the negative feelings can be to pass them on to others. For a Dom who carries shame, the D/s ritual might be a way of expressing those feelings through shaming the submissive. I say "temporarily" because this is not a permanent solution, and a better way is to permamently resolve these feelings by working through them.