"Heart attack"

"Heart attack"

Brian Lynch

I was recounting to a patient how when I get the chance, usually on a plane, I like to read through several newspapers; and if I concentrate on it, it will be a pretty sure bet that I can quickly pinpoint an article with a "shame". Shame is always right under our noses. Again and again, why do we ignore this valuable information?

In this case, I was reading, I believe, the "Wall Street Journal," and there was an article about cardiac resuscitation. The long and short of it was that at the end of the article, it was noted that lives could be saved if people were not "embarrassed" about calling 911.

Not "embarrassed" about calling 911? We would rather die than have the paramedics show up or get to the ER and have someone tell us that it is an upset stomach or a panic attack than a heart attack.

So how important is the teaching of shame and humiliation? You can bet your life. Again pointing the finger except at everyone, including myself, as I can see myself doing this very same thing as the patient that does not call 911.

Now the article used the word "embarrassed" instead of "shame" and might well have used "ashamed." Have you ever thought about why we have these words for this similar feeling? I often say in my more than several years of philosophical studies, and I remember, maybe but one conversation about these words. I think that is odd.

Well, it seems to be that shame is a feeling we all must suffer simply because we all want things. It is a message to us that things are not going well. In the sense used here, there is no moral tone whatsoever to it. Ah, but to be embarrassed or ashamed or to feel guilty is a whole other world. I and others think that this is shame gone haywire. In all three cases, it is the sense that not only something has gone wrong, but that somehow I am to blame for it and that I will suffer some consequence.



This is a messy business because all these feelings, versions of shame, just might kill us as they get in the way of our acting on information that is right under our noses, and that terminology should be reserved for "shame." I want my heart to work, and by golly, it just might not be working, so I better fix it. That is "shame" enough for me.

"For one interested in shame, the problem is not that it is difficult to find examples worth studying. Rather, the more significant puzzle is how it has managed to elude us until now. The most common of unpleasant experiences is also the least discussed." Don Nathanson from "Shame and Pride."