@thesotiris 6 June 2025 more from that month

Free From Shame: Reclaiming your will from manipulative shaming

One of the most manipulable emotions is shame: the twisting and exploitation of your healthy modesty and your noble consideration of others’ feelings toward you. **Introduction** Modesty is healthy; it keeps you grounded and self-aware, considerate of how others may perceive you. However, manipulators use your own good nature — your modesty — against you. They deliberately withhold their approval, and even worse, they relentlessly offer faux disapproval, ridicule, and humiliation to hyperstimulate your modesty and mutate it into toxic shame. The irony is that approval from people who use it as currency is cheap, unimportant, and meaningless. In a state of toxically shame-based mental state, you begin to obsess over what others might think of you more than what you feel about yourself. You place other people’s arbitrary standards for you higher than your own. So, with toxic shame, it doesn’t matter if you know you’re virtuous and innocent, good and pure;**the pretend opinions of others about you matter more to you than your own clear conscience**. You thus become manipulable. Those who wish to exploit you will shame you, or imply shaming from others, to steer your behaviour where it suits them more than it suits you. Manipulators are skilled at identifying individuals who are shame-based. And people who use shame tend to be themselves shame-based, since they understand full well the dynamics of shaming, even on a subconscious level alone. Thus, just as they were conditioned from early childhood to respond to shaming cues, so do they instinctively use shame, or the implied threat of shame, to subtly coerce you into submitting to their will. Shaming works on them too… this is why they use it. **Why we fear shame** We subconsciously associate shame with rejections from society; ostracism and loneliness, things that can threaten our quality of life and even our very survival in an unforgiving, hostile world. Shame, or simply the potential for shame, terrorises us. It is horrific, especially for an innocent child, to be subjected to relentless ridicule, humiliation, and shaming, especially from their parents, the two people on whom they rely the most for safety. In their malleable state, when children are subject to shaming, they become conditioned to be oversensitive to shaming cues; shame-based personalities. **Shaming cues** Shaming communication is anything that suggests ridicule and humiliation coming from the shamer, or the potential to be shamed by others. This last one is more potent, as your manipulator subtly implies that, unless you conform to a desired behaviour, you will be shamed by others, not him. This grants him the alibi of plausible deniability, as you weigh the shaming of imagined “others” to be heavier than shaming from just one person, against whom you can more easily get defensive. Shaming is usually not as direct as verbal abuse, name-calling, and overt ridicule. The rolling of the eyes, an exclamation of faux disbelief in your “undesirable” behaviour, a sarcastic tone, a dismissive/snarky demeanour… even “lol” emojis… all these subtle subcommunications are enough to trigger shame in you, whether you believe you merit it or not. Women and children especially exclaim in faux disbelief at something you did. They overact incredulity as they widen their eyes and open their mouths in feigned shock to suggest that what you do or say is shocking. This is subtle mocking, ridicule, and disrespect. These cues condition you to comply with group dynamics. Recognise these shaming cues as pitifully weak attempts at manipulating you, and you take their power away. **Defining shame** Shame is not the same as guilt. Guilt is the unpleasant feeling from knowing you did something misaligned with your values and principles, whether other people know about it or not. Shame is the unpleasant feeling from being ridiculed, mocked, and humiliated by others, whether you are true to your values and principles or not. Guilt is noble because it requires grace and self-reflection. But shame also has some nobility in that it values the opinions of others; perhaps too much, perhaps of the wrong people. Shame is the twisting of your healthy modesty. Healthy modesty is compassion, empathy, and consideration for others. Children become modest or timid only when they exit their infantile self-centred phase, and enter an age when they consider the feelings of others concerning themselves. You cannot shame a baby or toddler; you can only use fear and intimidation against them because they haven’t yet developed a value for considering other people’s feelings. Modesty is healthy, and the more modest you are, the more compassionate and considerate you are. The problem arises when people deliberately withhold their approval, and even worse, feign disapproval through implied ridicule and humiliation, to twist your healthy modesty into toxic, manipulable shame. They exploit your consideration for other people’s feelings to bend you to their will. You might feel that it’s unfair to be shamed, but you feel shame nonetheless. Remember: Shame is not guilt. You feel shame whether you did something wrong or not. Shame is all about the subjectively arbitrary opinions of others about you, and even if you are completely innocent, you still feel the effects of shame, that social humiliation and marginalisation from being finger-pointed, regardless of reason or fairness. Let’s face it: shaming is psychological violence. You might say that violence is only physical, but if psychological violence did not affect people, then nobody would be using it to influence people. And influence it does. Ridicule is our earliest experience with shaming from childhood. Small children are shameless because they are innocent, and they have nothing to feel embarrassed about. However, as they grow, they develop a healthy sense of self-conscious modesty, vital for structuring their relationships. Modesty is compassion and consideration for others. As children grow out of their self-centeredness, they consider others and how others perceive their behaviours. This is modesty. It’s healthy to have modesty. Modesty’s twisted, ugly sister is toxic shame. Shame isn’t normal one bit. It is the self-deprecating feeling you get when you are ridiculed and mocked by your peers, whether you have done something wrong or not. Guilt, on the other hand, is the self-deprecating feeling you get when you know you’ve done something wrong, whether others know about it or not. Small children aren’t ready for guilt, before they develop a strong self-accountable value system. While guilt may be healthy in that it is a moral self-correcting mechanism for yourself, shame has no use at all other than to enforce conformity to an arbitrary group-thing, the collective hive mind. While guilt is about holding you accountable to your own individual moral principles and values, shame is about bending your will to the demands of an arbitrary group, whether those demands are aligned with your personal values or not.**Shame can make good people do horrible things by placing conformity to the group over their individual morals.** In essence, shame only matters subjectively, depending on the group you find yourself in. Disassociate from the group, and the shame disappears. Guilt, on the other hand, you cannot outrun because guilt comes from the betrayal of your own value system. Shame is indeed psychological violence, and it is abusive, especially when committed against children whose pure souls are sensitive, impressionable, and malleable. One act of shaming against a child can scar them well into adulthood, determining life choices driven by nothing but needless trauma. Lastly, it is psychotic and evil to demand free will and accountability from traumatised children when we make every excuse in the book for abusive parents whenever they are “tired” or “have a lot on their minds”. Children aren’t self-accountable; parents are accountable for their children. **Your shame-based personality** When you are possessed by the burden of shame, you become oversensitive to people’s subtle shaming cues. You become obsessed with how you’ll be perceived by the faceless masses who care nothing about you, so you create a fake public persona to avoid being shamed. This ignores the opinions of the few people who already approve of the true you. By submitting to shame, you essentially betray the people who value you the most, who approve of you as you are. Allowing shame to hijack your will makes you care about what people (who don’t matter) think of you more than the people who do matter. What a shame... Shame is not real. It’s about societal acceptance, conformity, and the avoidance of being ostracised. It’s about conforming to arbitrary social standards that couldn’t be more subjective. This fear of ostracism is what creates this sensitivity to public perception about us, which, when lost, causes shame.**The more self-reliant you are, the less you give a sh*t about the opinions of people who don’t matter to anyone**. **Liberating yourself from shame** Submitting to shaming denies your self-ownership, and it allows manipulations to override your freedom to will. To keep your ownership of mind, you must be able to identify when you are being shamed, why you are being shamed, and how to resist being shamed. **1. Choose what matters** Make a commitment to yourself to never lose sleep over things that don’t matter. You can never feel bad about yourself for doing something that isn’t misaligned with your values or doesn’t violate your principles. So what if you tripped and fell in front of all your peers? Did you hurt anyone? Did you do anything out of malice? Is it a higher ideal or virtue to “never have a harmless and unfortunate accident”? So what if people mock you for “not punching that guy in the face for calling you names”? Did you keep your composure? Did you stand your ground? Did you show that you don’t need to prove anything? Whenever you are tempted to feel ashamed about anything, first consider whether that anything goes against your values, principles, ideals, and virtues. If it doesn’t, reject shame. Then ask yourself who the people are in whose presence you feel ashamed. Chances are, these people don’t matter to you, and so they don’t merit your shame nor your second thought. If they do matter to you, then**they won’t shame you for things you shouldn’t feel guilty about**. And if they do shame you, they shouldn’t matter to you. **2. Identify** Most attempts to shame you aren’t even direct; they are subtle. Manipulators insinuate that shame will come to you, not from them, but instead, from others. This is a sneaky a devious way to psychologically abuse you while retaining plausible deniability in case you call them out on it. *“It’s not them shaming you… It’s others. They’re just there to warn you of the supposed shaming you’ll receive from others, in case you don’t do what they suggest”.* So they shame you from a position of safety; they imply shame will come to you from somewhere, not them. It’s worth noting that shamers don’t consciously think about these clever tactics; they just use shaming instinctively on a subconscious level. Some are born with this biological programming, others learn it from childhood, usually from shame-abusing parents. They learn the shaming dynamics, the shaming language, and the shaming cues. And since they know shaming works, they use it as if it’s an OK way to treat people. Helicopter parents (especially mothers) use shaming to abuse their children, moulding them into a subservient, obedient frame. Such parents don’t know how to present an incentive to get a desired behaviour from their children. Such parents don’t know how to prove to their children how a desired behaviour already benefits adults, and offer positive examples for the children to want to imitate. They instead use emotional blackmail, the threat of shaming, to coerce a desired behaviour in their children. The irony is that any behaviour learned through coercion is not sustainable or meaningful. Coercion doesn’t teach you why the desired behaviour is good; it teaches you to submit and blindly obey. It teaches you that you need to adopt the desired behaviour only when others are looking. What coercion teaches is that coercion works, so we coerce others when we have the power. And**the cycle of abuse**continues. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-cycle-of-abuse **3. The why** Whenever someone tries to shame you, before you even consider allowing shame to overpower you, think about why they are doing this. They are deliberately withholding their approval or flat-out disapproving of you for some ulterior motive. This puts them in a desperately needy position. Knowing what their ulterior motive is takes away their power. This is because you understand that the shame they imply you must feel is nothing universally objective; it’s just their useless opinion. It might not even be their honest opinion. They might even respect you, but not enough to not pretend to shame you to manipulate you. They are weak because they have no conviction in their self-reliance in life; so they need others (you) to complement their empty lives by giving them what they need. Whatever they ask of you through shame, remember that**they need it more than you need their meaningless approval**. The approval of shamers means nothing. **4. Resisting shame** If you were relentlessly shamed as a child, then shame might involuntarily surface from your subconscious. Here’s how to resist it: Consciously recognise when someone is subtly applying shaming manipulation tactics against you. They may be doing it consciously or subconsciously. But your recognition of this must be conscious. If you pick up on shaming only on a subconscious level, it will be very hard for you to escape it. Consider the motivations behind the shaming. By their act of shaming, shamers prove they are weak but also malicious to you. They want to dominate you in a sly, indirect way, instead of at least respecting you enough to face you head-on. They instead shame you indirectly, so that if you call them out on it, they can have plausible deniability and claim you misunderstood, and that they only wanted what’s best for you. This cowardly and devious behaviour must**take away your remaining respect for them, and with it, the gravitas of their opinion**. Show compassion, and perhaps some condescending pity for them. If they are using shame manipulation against you, then they are likely shame-based themselves. This is not an excuse or exoneration for their deviousness against you, even if they do it on a subconscious level. This is instead an explanation for their evil ways. If you see them as shame-afflicted, then you begin to understand their vulnerability, and thus devalue their opinion of you. If someone who doesn’t matter mocks you, then the mocking doesn’t matter. You won’t lose sleep over an insignificant ant calling you names. Call them out on it, but without ever losing your cool. Stay calm, keep your composure, since lowly people can’t make much of an impact on you.**Don’t give them the respect of allowing them to affect you**. By calling them out on their attempts to shame you, you isolate them from the group, so now*they*become the target of potential shaming, isolation, and ostracism. Say something assertive but also civil: “*It sounds like you’re trying to shame me with your tone, or your facial expression, or your loaded words. Is this what you’re trying to do? And if so, why do you feel the need to do this? Is there a personal issue you have with me? And if so, do you think your issue is somehow my problem to manage?*” Or say something stronger and solid like:*“What was that?” “What did you mean by that, exactly?” “Is there a problem?” “Say that again?” “Say what you mean. I don’t appreciate cowardly innuendos”*. Your demeanour should be that of someone who WILL NOT tolerate shaming, but will not get angry over it either. You’re not that sensitive. If you get angry, you prove you’ve already been shamed. But your problem is not being shamed, because you cannot be shamed by malicious, manipulative people who don’t matter. Your problem here is to first figure out if they are indeed shaming you and why, to assert your position, and to show everyone that you do not tolerate psychological abuse (shame). **Audacity**is key in the face of shame. Even if you find yourself**surrounded by a crowd of laughing hyenas pointing fingers and presuming they are better than you enough to pass judgment on you**, you must have a stance of**unrelenting audacity against shaming**. Appear infuriatingly unabashed, and provocatively defiant of their efforts to shame those without shame. You don’t deserve shame, so you choose not to feel shame, despite what they feel. Shame does not concern you; only guilt does. Guilt is more honest than shame. You feel**shame**only when others withhold their approval of you, even if you’ve done nothing wrong. You feel**guilt**only when you disapprove of yourself, even if no one else knows you’ve done something wrong; because*you*know you’ve done something wrong. Guilt is more noble and authentic that way. Shame is just putting people’s opinions of you over your own. Yet the wrong opinions of the worst people (people who are willing to shame others) truly shouldn’t matter to anyone, let alone you who understands the nobility of self-reflection. Manage the aftermath. If they are gracious enough to explain themselves humbly, that they didn’t mean to shame you, taking responsibility for how poorly they communicated, then perhaps they are worth a second chance. You still remain cautious and suspicious of them, because shamers tend to be liars. If they get defensive and accuse you of misunderstanding when it’s them who initiated bad communication in the first place, then you can bet they were trying to shame you, and they’re doubling down. So what do you do? Do you respond with aggression? No. Aggression is weakness. Always. Aggression comes from a place of weakness, that desperate need to prove yourself. Instead, you simply do to them what shame does without the needless act of shaming: you isolate them… from yourself. Show them that they are no longer in your cool book. You can’t respect them anymore, nor will you make an effort to be their friend. Keep your contact with them to a minimum. Sure, they can be redeemable, and you can give them as many chances as you want to redeem themselves. And what would count as redemption? Perhaps something as small but significant as a respectful remark spoken with a tone of humility, self-reflection, and remorse for trying to shame you. That’s all. That could be worth more than any**apology**. But remember: people need to earn and keep your pardon and respect. Don’t hand them out lightly, otherwise, they lose their value.**Your respect in ample supply becomes cheapened**. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/how-to-apologize By handing your forgiveness and respect sparingly, you set boundaries: “*If you try to shame me, we’re going to have a problem, because I don’t tolerate shaming. I will then have to reevaluate my relationship with you*”. Setting boundaries is not a threat; it’s a warning. A threat involves taking something that others already own. Your acceptance is never something they are entitled to. So, when you warn them about taking away a privilege, you’re just providing an incentive for them to be good to you. This is not a threat. Besides, you wouldn’t want people to be around you because they fear you or because they desperately need you. Be self-reliant emotionally, socially, and economically. Remember that shame is instinctively horrifying because it implies social isolation. And social isolation for social beings means gruesome death. The more self-reliant you are, the less you need the approval of an arbitrarily defined social group or tribe. Sure, we are social beings, and we need others to connect with. But being self-reliant means having the ability to freely navigate the people and the groups or subgroups you choose. It means freedom from being passively allocated to a group. It means initiative to take charge and choose for yourself where you fit in and with whom you connect or disassociate. Having this self-reliant mindset will make you impervious to shaming manipulation. Just choose to connect with good people, not losers who make you feel like a king by comparison. These people will drag you down. Better to be alone than with the wrong crowd. If they keep shaming, you can shame them back. Shaming is emotional/psychological violence. You are morally allowed to use it in self-defence. You can shame the shamers. Let them know that their shaming, their funny tones and eye-rolls and mocking facial expressions, and the silly things they say to shame you, are kind of pathetic and embarrassing, and they only advertise their immaturity. Tell them, whatever embarrassment they think you should feel, there is no greater embarrassment than being them. They are shamers, abusers, and manipulators. You’d be more ashamed to be them than to be anyone else, so you’re sticking to being yourself, at least. If you see abusers for the needy-for-validation weakling they are, you devalue their opinion of you. Their wrong opinion doesn’t matter.*They*don’t matter… to anyone. **Mindset** You are immune to shame because you are OK with who you are and with your faithful adherence to your principles. Thus, if your opinion about yourself is good, then absolutely no one can make you feel bad about yourself just because they imply social isolation through shaming. Such an implied threat to “isolate” you from society is rarely real — no one has so much power. The only isolation from shaming you’ll experience is when you decide to isolate yourself out of embarrassment. **Key takeaways** Resisting shaming manipulation does not mean being shameless. Healthy modesty is good since it means you value how you are perceived by others; it’s good manners. But shame is toxic and manipulative since it’s not about appearing to be pleasant; it’s about conforming to arbitrary social dictates via the implied threat of ostracism. **It is insulting to yourself when you value the opinions of trash people so much that you are willing to hate yourself over them**. Why they are trash people? Because they use psychological violence of the worst kind (shaming) to coerce you and make you fall in line according to their preferences. Shaming is the most devious kind of abuse because it always retains the easy way out of plausible deniability when you call them out on it. It’s cowardly. Shamers don’t even respect you (or themselves) enough to admit to you when they are being abusive to you. So what if you are ridiculed and humiliated? So what?**It’s not how much you are shamed; it’s how you take shame**. If you take public humiliation with a shameful response, then guess what, you are humiliated. But if you take anything potentially embarrassing like it’s nothing, then guess what… people will wonder how come you are so cool. If your composure is unwavering, and your self-esteem unshakable, then whatever shaming you are subjected to won’t last and won’t matter. Remember, shaming is externally sourced: shaming is devious people deliberately withholding their approval to traumatise you, and to then submit you to their will. Only guilt can actually shatter your self-esteem, which occurs when you yourself betray your values and principles. Guilt is another matter. Shame exists only in relation to other people, whether you have done something shameful or not. So, as long as you’re OK with who you are, as long as you are true to your values and principles, then you can’t be shamed. **Share** https://lessonsfromregret.substack.com/p/free-from-shame?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&action=share&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo1ODc5NzQ2MSwicG9zdF9pZCI6MTY0NTM2NTExLCJpYXQiOjE3NDkyMjc2ODMsImV4cCI6MTc1MTgxOTY4MywiaXNzIjoicHViLTUxMDMxNzEiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.LwwIkZ4B_pbWSul6Zuy417Sr__tPMTwmr7zlXDIMGps **References** **Shaming Is An Aggressive Act - Shaming can guide us toward social norms or impair our self-worth** https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/overcoming-destructive-anger/202301/shaming-is-an-aggressive-act **‘Healing the Shame that Binds You’ by John Bradshaw** https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Shame-Binds-Recovery-Classics/dp/0757303234 **‘Bradshaw on: The Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem’ by John Bradshaw** https://www.amazon.com/Bradshaw-Family-Creating-Solid-Self-Esteem/dp/1558744274/ **‘Home Coming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child’ by John Bradshaw** https://www.amazon.com/Homecoming-Reclaiming-Championing-Inner-Child/dp/0553353896/ **‘Silently Seduced: When Parents Make Their Children Partners’ by Kenneth M. Adams** https://www.amazon.com/Silently-Seduced-Parents-Children-Partners/dp/0757315879 **Shame-culture and Guilt-culture** https://www.doceo.co.uk/background/shame_guilt.htm **Understanding Guilt, Shame, and Fear Cultures** https://honorshame.com/understanding-guilt-shame-fear-cultures/ **The Data on Global Culture Types** https://honorshame.com/data-global-culture-types/ **Guilt-shame-fear Spectrum of Cultures** https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/32983 **Guilt–shame–fear spectrum of cultures**(Wikipedia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilt%E2%80%93shame%E2%80%93fear_spectrum_of_cultures **‘The origins of war in child abuse’ by Lloyd DeMause** https://psychohistory.com/books/the-origins-of-war-in-child-abuse/ **‘How to Manipulate Anyone: 27 ways you are being manipulated right now’ by Sotiris Rex** https://www.amazon.com/How-Manipulate-Anyone-being-manipulated-ebook/dp/B0CBW33944/ **Bonds of Prometheus** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-shaming-fallacy-part-1?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web **The shaming fallacy [Part 1]** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-shaming-fallacy-part-1?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web There’s a recent prevalence of Eastern-style shaming in the world, and particularly towards Westerners. Just observe the social media chatter from (in)organic influencers: “If you don’t do X then you are Y” - infantile schoolyard shaming… https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-shaming-fallacy-part-1?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web **Read more** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-shaming-fallacy-part-1?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web a year ago · 15 likes · 19 comments · Sotiris Rex https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-shaming-fallacy-part-1?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web **Bonds of Prometheus** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-shaming-fallacy-part-2?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web **The shaming fallacy [Part 2]** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-shaming-fallacy-part-2?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web Sanctimonious moralists and smug pontificators take to the internet to promote shaming as a “last stand for morality,” or - more accurately - a desperate attempt to push their brand of desired behaviour as if theirs were the one and only… https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-shaming-fallacy-part-2?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web **Read more** https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-shaming-fallacy-part-2?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web 2 months ago · 16 likes · 15 comments · Sotiris Rex https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-shaming-fallacy-part-2?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web