While the felt experience of shame is the same for men and women (Brene Brown calls it the \u201cwarm wash of shame\u201d), what triggers shame is different for men and women. Let\u2019s break it down:<\/p>\n
Women<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n The number one trigger is around our appearance and body image: we\u2019re not thin enough, young enough, beautiful enough. It doesn\u2019t matter that I\u2019ve given birth to three children, I should still be able to get rid of that bulge around my tummy. Why should I care? Because I\u2019ll look \u201cbetter\u201d and right now I don\u2019t look quite good \u201cenough\u201d. It\u2019s crazy and I\u2019m as susceptible to it as any other woman.<\/p>\n Coming in at a close 2nd<\/sup> is motherhood. And it isn\u2019t just mothers who get hammered on this one. How many times has a single woman been asked when she\u2019s going to get married and for the married woman, \u201cwhen are you going to start having children\u201d? So much of our identity as women is wrapped up in this. And it sucks. How many times have I compared myself to other mothers and felt I didn’t measure up? How many times have I felt like a crappy mother because of what my children did? And in the midst of those crappy feelings I\u2019ve snapped at my children instead of offering understanding and empathy, which is what they really needed.<\/p>\n According to Brene Brown in Daring Greatly<\/em>, there are 12 shame categories<\/em>: appearance & body image, money & work, motherhood\/fatherhood, family, parenting, mental & physical health, addiction, sex, aging, religion, surviving trauma, and being stereotyped or labeled. But undergirding them all for women is the expectation to be perfect<\/u> and on top of that, it should be effortless. Our culture has handed us a list of conflicting, competing expectations of who \/ what \/ how we \u201cshould\u201d be. And we can\u2019t possibly meet all those expectations so we\u2019re inundated with messages of shame.<\/p>\n Men<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n For men, there is only one trigger: do not be perceived as weak. It happens in all the shame categories but the message is still the same \u2013 don\u2019t be weak. I think this is a tragedy. It puts men in a straight-jacket and makes it extremely difficult for them to work their way out from under shame. Because most of the time, being vulnerable and showing empathy are considered \u201cweak\u201d in our culture. These are the very things that help people process their shame and develop resiliency to it.<\/p>\n I’m only scratching the surface on this topic. Brene Brown talks about it in her TED Talk: “Listening to Shame”<\/a>. She also writes about it in chapter 3 of her book\u00a0Daring Greatly (Brown, B. (2012). Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead<\/em>. New York, New York: Gotham Books.)<\/em><\/p>\n Emma Watson gave a speech to the United Nations launching the \u201cHeForShe<\/a>\u201d campaign in September 2014. In it she highlights the ways in which our gender stereotypes harm men as well as women. I believe it does a good job illustrating what I\u2019ve been talking about in this post. It’s well worth taking the 12 minutes to watch.<\/p>\n