Can Letting Go Of Our Shame Heal Our Society?
Lessons from Frasier Crane
Source: https://www.tvinsider.com/show/frasier/
I’ve been rewatching Frasier (the original show, not the remake) lately.
For those who don’t know, Frasier is the story of a smart and caring psychotherapist (Frasier Crane) who continually gets in his own way. He has a big heart and a strong moral code, and he can dispense incredible wisdom to the other characters. But he’s also loudmouthed, abrasive, arrogant, and he leaves a string of broken and burned relationships (mostly of the romantic nature) behind him.
It took me a long time to square these two sides of the character. How could a man this smart and this devoted to doing the right thing cause so much harm, both to himself and to others? Finally it clicked: whatever his other virtues, he suffers from an acute sense of shame (by shame, I mean Dr. Brené Brown’s definition: “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging”).
The source of Frasier’s shame is easy to see if you know the characters. Frasier got brutally bullied in prep school. His father was also a stern and generally unloving figure, too focused on his career as a cop and his role as a macho man to show much love to his two nerdy and unathletic boys. Frasier recounts one road trip that he and his father took to his brother Niles, which more or less sums up the father-son relationship at the time: “I remember a car trip we took when I was nine? We drove from Seattle to Spokane. The only thing he [Dad] said to me was, ‘I think we’ve got a problem with your brother Frasier.’”
Frasier’s sense of shame runs deep, and it shows up in all of his worst interactions. He lies to women (and invariably gets found out) because he doesn’t think that he’s good enough to be loved by a woman for who he is. When someone says something that pokes at his pride, he lashes out and hurts them. He’s arrogant and talks as though he’s smarter than anyone else, but the reason he acts this way is simple: it’s a cover to hide from the fact that, deep down, he worries that he might be worse than anyone else. He doesn’t listen because he doesn’t feel listened to.
I think a lot of us are at least a little bit like Frasier Crane. If we’re honest with ourselves, a lot of us feel—at least a little bit—like we are “flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.”
So how can this insight help us to heal our society?
I see at least two ways.
First: it can help us to offer each other a little bit more grace.
When we see someone behaving badly, either towards us or towards our political or religious ‘team’, we can practice seeing them as Frasier Crane: good-hearted, but clearly insecure and acting out. We can see their insults or personal attacks, not as barbs that we have to internalize, but as the defense mechanism of someone who’s feeling hurt and powerless. That’s a powerful way to avoid taking the other person’s words or even actions personally, which can also help us to avoid lashing out at them in return.
Indeed, when we practice seeing the inner pain of people who act arrogant and loud-mouthed, we can even practice ministering to them. We can feel sympathy for the insecurity lurking behind their arrogance, for the feelings of powerlessness underneath their barbs. If it’s true that hurting people hurt people, then this mindset shift can help us tend to a hurting person’s pain instead of reacting ourselves and potentially compounding said pain. When we start tending to the hurting people in our society (which I think is most of us), we start to take the steps that will knit our great society back together.
The second opportunity I see around shame is for us to realize when we ourselves are acting from a place of shame. When we feel weak and powerless, we’re more prone to lash out in order to feel strong. When we’re in a conversation and we feel our core insecurities get poked, we’re more likely to snap at our interlocutor in order to protect our wounded parts.
When we’re in pain, our attention can narrow and constrict so that we don’t even see the harm our actions are causing to other people. Plenty of times in the show, Frasier is blind to the real pain that he’s causing the people in his life.
But when we realize that—like all humans—we experience shame, and that this shame can make us act in ways we wouldn’t normally act, then we can take steps to be better. We can work to heal from our shame, which is a tremendous gift to offer not only ourselves but also the people we care about.
I’ll use myself as an example. As a freelance writer, I’ve had some hard financial seasons, and in those times I felt a lot of shame around my (in)ability to provide for my wife financially. When my wife and I would talk about finances, I would feel poked and I would either shut down or lash out. As a result, those necessary conversations were painful for both of us.
But as I was able to connect more deeply to the divine and to let go of my sense of shame, I stopped taking our financial problems so personally. Money became, not a tender spot in my psyche, but simply a problem that needed to be solved. At that point my wife’s and my financial conversations started to get a lot less painful and a lot more productive.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the notion that we’re our brother’s (or sister’s) keeper. The terminology is Christian, but this idea shows up one way or another in all of the great spiritual traditions. If we truly are our sibling’s keeper, how would that fact inform how we think about shame?
First, we would see through the arrogant or insulting actions of our sibling to the pain underneath. Instead of feeling hurt by them and lashing out in turn, we would feel sympathy for them. Instead of passing judgment on them, we would minister to them. With a new mindset we could use their bad behavior as an opportunity to care for them, rather than as catalysts for yet more conflict between us and them.
Second, we would take seriously our obligation to heal from our sense of shame. We would realize that that “intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging” isn’t just painful for us; it’s also painful for our siblings. And with that in mind, we would take steps to heal.
Heal the West is 100% reader-supported. If you enjoyed this article, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription or becoming a founding member. I greatly appreciate your support.