This past week I attended (or to be more accurate, zoomed) a training funded by a grant my clinic received for treating people with problem gambling.  It was a really interesting topic for me, as to be honest, I wasn’t very aware of the issues related to this type of addiction. Like many, I had a hard time understanding how people could get themselves into such massive debt and, more importantly, how they could deceive their loved ones so repeatedly in order to continue their habit. As I learned, a foundation to treating people with a gambling disorder is understanding shame.  Once a person drawn to gamble experiences losses, they feel embarrassed, and attempt to right the wrong by gambling even more.   Ashamed to admit they’ve been losing, a problem gambler will lie to themselves as well as to others, irrationally believing they can make everything ok if they just can hit the big one (known as chasing losses).  In this shame avoiding cycle, a gambler is both driven to continue gambling and to hide it from the one they most love.

The role of shame in perpetuating gambling behavior made sense to me.  In my work with many types of problem behavior, shame is often at the root.  But actually, I should clarify, it’s not the shame itself that is the problem, but it’s what we do to avoid feeling shame that’s the problem.  Shame tends to emerge when we feel we are judged negatively and experience humiliation, feel exposed and small, and have that feeling we want to disappear.  As opposed to guilt, in which we recognize we’ve done something wrong and can seek to make amends, with shame, we feel who we are as a person is bad.  Shame makes us direct our focus inward and view our entire self in a negative light, leaving us feeling helpless and unavoidably judged with no chance for redemption.

Research shows that some people are more likely to feel shame, a trait called shame-proneness.  Not surprisingly, people who have low self esteem or who suffer from depression are more likely to experience shame.  Related to this, individuals who have experienced abuse, either in childhood or in a domestic relationship are more prone, as well.  Research supports the notion that, as in gamling disorder, shame is correlated with other psychological disorders, mostly believed to be a way of coping to avoid the experience of shame.  In fact, research shows that people who engage in these avoidant behaviors aren’t actually conscious of the feeling of shame.  It’s only in their efforts to stop the problematic behavior that they uncover the discomfort of the shame that is underlying.

D L Nathanson (1992) developed a model for how people react to shame that often leads to problematic behavior.  These behaviors, while protecting people from feeling the pain, ultimately lead to conflict in relationships.  The model is known as The Compass of Shame and includes four major coping categories that are represented as poles of the compass, each one associated with different feelings, thoughts and, and behaviors.  At the Withdrawal pole, a person acknowledges a negative judgment, accepts the judgment as valid, and tries to withdraw or hide from the situation.  This could include leaving a relationship, isolating, or even dropping out of a class.  At the Attack Self pole, the pattern is to accept the negative judgment as valid and turn the anger inward.  For example, a shamed person might call themselves stupid and do what is needed to gain acceptance by others at the expense of themselves.  In both Withdrawal and Attack the Self poles, the self is found lacking.  At the two other poles, the Attack Others pole and the Avoidance poles, individuals deflect the feeling of shame with no awareness of or acceptance of the negative self judgment or it is seen as not valid.  In Avoidance, people distance themselves through denial or distraction, as in use of substances, gambling, or other numbing behavior.  In the Attack Others pole, people turn their anger outward in blaming others and bolstering their own self esteem by making someone else inferior.

As one might guess, these patterns can be really destructive to healthy relationships.  That’s why it’s so important to identify the underlying discomfort (shame).  Often, working with people who have any sort of addiction or trauma history that leads to destructive patterns involves helping them learn to tolerate the feeling of shame and bring it out into the open.  Once it’s in the light of day, we can work to challenge the assumptions of badness and increase self esteem.  (Research shows those with good self esteem have low shame proneness, not surprising.) 

Being vulnerable is really hard, but especially in a culture such as ours that puts so much value on being successful and not being a “loser.”   It can be so seductive and thrilling to win!  Unfortunately, the odds are forever NOT in our favor (sorry, couldn’t reisist the Hunger Games reference).  Inevitably the house will win in the long run and we will have to face our defeat, both to ourselves and to other people. Yet, the shame can be so powerful, we feel compelled to cover over our shame with lies, risking what is actually most important to us.  As, ultimately, what most people come to find in holding any type of secret, is that the gamble of losing the trust of our loved ones is indeed the worst loss of all!