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Old Sep 16, 2009, 06:10 AM
multipixie9's Avatar
multipixie9 multipixie9 is offline
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Member Since: Jul 2008
Location: east of the sun, west of the moon
Posts: 2,259
Wpowers,

No one in this mixed-up world avoids experiencing humiliation or shame.

The proper experience of guilt is society's way of enforcing core beliefs and monitoring large grups of people who must share food, medical suplies and all other amenities.

Shame and humiliation are often used in wrong ways to control and dominate others. Society has to have rules and penalties for breaking them or chaos would cause civilization to break down into anarchy. History has given plenty of examples of this. Just look up the word dictator in wikipedia and you have enough material to prove what I'm saying. It is morally wrong to coerce people through domination, humiliation and shame. It is equally wrong to allow society to break down into a hedonistic place whose motto is "If it feels good, do it".Without some kind of moral compass and ethical boundaries life will devolve back into barbarism. Look around, read independant news sources and it will send a chill up your spine at how close we are coming to anarchy.

I did not intend to turn this into some kind of school lecture when you are asking for personal insight and experience. As a child I often experienced adults and other children use shaming techniques to get their own way or dominate in a group.

I believe we are built with the capacity to learn our society's rules and the consequences for breaking them. Children who are treated cruelly and broken down by abuse have intense feelings of shame and humiliation somewhere inside. Different parts may express these feelings differently and some may rigidly suppres them to avoid re-experiencing unfair treatment, cruelty and degredation from multiple kinds of abuse.

When I was little I stole 15 cents from a friend and I felt guilt because I was old enough to know stealing is wrong. Only a year or so later I left the schoolroom before school started, believing it was ok as I saw someone else do so. When I got back the teacher verbally humiliated me, sent me to stand in the corner and subjected me to some weird mind game that I won't bore you with. Unless a person is mentally impaired and can't grasp the concepts of right and wrong we all know when we are "guilty" and feel personal shame. Humiliation and harsh shaming are weapons used to intimidate and control people wrongly.

I think it can be harder to deal with these issues when a person has dissociation. It means that one has to survive early cruelty or trauma or personal tragedy. I'm not saying that gives one an "out" concerning one's life or behavior. It just makes it harder to sort through all that has happened and figure out how to survive.
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Last edited by multipixie9; Sep 16, 2009 at 06:33 AM.