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Areas › Low mood and hard feelings › Shame
It is not an argument to win, more a fact to keep returning to. When a memory arrives with you cast as the guilty one, try describing the same scene out loud with the ages included: I was seven, he was forty one. The gap usually does more than any reassurance. Some people find it helps to write it down and read it back later, when the feeling has passed and the sentence still stands.
'No one group of men should jeer at another' and 'do not use offensive nicknames for one another' (Quran 49:11). Humiliation is named as the wrongdoing of whoever inflicts it, which is where the weight belongs.
الحجرات
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ لَا يَسۡخَرۡ قَوۡمࣱ مِّن قَوۡمٍ عَسَىٰٓ أَن يَكُونُواْ خَيۡرࣰ ا مِّنۡهُمۡ وَلَا نِسَآءࣱ مِّن نِّسَآءٍ عَسَىٰٓ أَن يَكُنَّ خَيۡرࣰ ا مِّنۡهُنَّۖ وَلَا تَلۡمِزُوٓاْ أَنفُسَكُمۡ وَلَا تَنَابَزُواْ بِٱلۡأَلۡقَٰبِۖ بِئۡسَ ٱلِٱسۡمُ ٱلۡفُسُوقُ بَعۡدَ ٱلۡإِيمَٰنِۚ وَمَن لَّمۡ يَتُبۡ فَأُوْلَٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلظَّٰلِمُونَ
Believers, no one group of men should jeer at another, who may after all be better than them; no one group of women should jeer at another, who may after all be better than them; do not speak ill of one another; do not use offensive nicknames for one another. How bad it is to be called a mischief-maker after accepting faith! Those who do not repent of this behaviour are evildoers
Qur’an 49:11read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A cross sectional study of adults with histories of childhood maltreatment found that self compassion and gratitude partly explained why some had fewer depressive symptoms than others. Everything was measured at one point in time, so it cannot show that becoming gentler with yourself causes the improvement, only that the two go together in this group.
Wu Q, Chi P, Lin X, Du H. (2018). Child maltreatment and adult depressive symptoms: Roles of self-compassion and gratitude.. Child abuse & neglect doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Shame gets the accounting wrong, and stating who was responsible corrects the error instead of arguing with the feeling.
Shame speaks in one flat sentence: I am bad. Notice that it never offers evidence, it just announces a verdict.
With someone deep in shame, your steady presence is not the warm up before the useful part. It is the useful part.
A child facing a frightening parent often reaches for the safer story: I am the bad one and they are fine. It costs the child their sense of worth and buys them a world that still makes sense.