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Areas › Low mood and hard feelings › Shame
Because the claim covers all of you, no good day can disprove it. That is what makes it different from ordinary regret, which points at one thing you did and can be put right. When you catch the flat sentence, put a question after it. Bad at what, when, according to whom? The specifics are almost always smaller and far more workable than the verdict.
'We create man in the finest state' (Quran 95:4). It is said of human beings as such, not handed out as a reward for having behaved well.
التين
لَقَدۡ خَلَقۡنَا ٱلۡإِنسَٰنَ فِيٓ أَحۡسَنِ تَقۡوِيمࣲ
We create man in the finest state
Qur’an 95:4read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A latent variable analysis found that shame proneness and self criticism each related to depressive symptoms partly independently of general self esteem, suggesting they are not simply low self worth wearing another name. The design is correlational, so it maps how these things sit together rather than showing what causes what.
Porter AC, Zelkowitz RL, Gist DC, Cole DA. (2019). Self-Evaluation and Depressive Symptoms: A Latent Variable Analysis of Self-esteem, Shame-proneness, and Self-criticism.. Journal of psychopathology and behavioral assessment doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A judgement about your whole self cannot be tested, so nothing you do ever counts against it.
When a child cannot stop what is happening, the mind often settles on the one explanation that leaves some control: it must be me. Being powerless and being at fault are not the same thing, though they can feel identical.
Shame is visible before it is spoken. Shallow breath, eyes down, shoulders curling in, a voice gone small: the body says it first.
When someone's shame fills the room, check your own state before you say anything. If you start to shrink, or to worry that you are handling this badly, they will feel it.