I want to put an article up on this site to express what the terms "shame", "shame-based" and "shame-based personhood" mean to me and why I don't like them. In the process, I also offer an alternative to them. I have a bit of editing to do to make this page say what I really want to say more adequately and briefly, but here's something that came to my mind when I was writing my page on humility for this site. 

The subject of humility brings something else to my mind which I'd like to add, a concept I've learned about called "shame". It might not be the same thing as what you're thinking of when you hear the word "shame" though. So, please check this out. What I mean when I use that word "shame" is something very specific, something very hideous and destructive. It is somewhat related to the traditional, obscure usage of the term, but the following meaning of the word goes way beyond that. 
    To help set the stage, I'll first share something about my thoughts that seems to me to be the opposite of shame. Then I'll share some other thoughts that might help draw out some of the specifics of shame to see it in action. 

I choose to count my self and each and every other person as equally valuable. For me, there are no levels of bad person, good person, better person or whatever. There are levels of healthy and unhealthy behavior in my estimation of the world, but not of persons. I do think that it is appropriate to acknowledge people's behavior and deal with them accordingly, but I stop short of equating the person with the behavior. I do still want to thank them and show my appreciation for their healthy behavior and I do still want to hold them accountable for their unhealthy behavior, but I do not want to define a person according to their behavior, good or bad. I choose (for no religious or even philosophical reasons at all) to count people valuable, point blank. Their value to me as persons can't be altered by their performance. 
    This way, when we meet, you can be assured that I am considering you an equally valuable person. You can also be assured that, if you ever make any mistakes in front of me, I'm not going to all-of-a-sudden think of you as less of a person. That's just silliness. Those kinds of things have gotten so entrenched in our psyche as a species that I don't think most of us even realize how nasty we're being to our selves and each other. Why would I look down on you or "cut you down" or "diss" you or call you degrading names when you make a mistake or do something wrong? Most people just think it's "funny" or something like that, but in reality the only reason I would do it is if I were convinced that your value as a person is somehow based on your performance and that the mistake you just made resulted in a slight lowering of your value and since I'm standing right by, I'm gonna point it out. We also do it for selfish motives. If I can point out how you are stupid or klutzy or whatever, then I can stand on that and think of my self as more valuable for that moment. No, we're not necessarily consciously thinking like this and going through all of these logical steps one by one in our minds when it happens, but it's clearly what's going on. We've bought into it and invested in it so deeply that it might seem weird to you that I'm even bringing it up and saying anything about it at all. 

Sometimes understanding this kind of shame can be helped by an explanation of the difference between it and guilt. 
    First, Guilt...
Whether we subscribe to any "official", objective, universal, supernatural, paranormal, historical, cultural or traditional rule-set or code of conduct in life or not (I do not), most of us have our own ideas of what is "right" and "wrong"...not necessarily for others, but certainly for our selves. When we personally choose to think, say or do something which is in violation of our own concept of "right and wrong", we feel guilt. In this interpretation of the word guilt, it is simply the mind's way of calling our conscious attention to the fact that we've violated something which we personally have previously established in our own mind as being important. When this "guilt" comes to our attention, we can do with it what we want. Sometimes we just ignore it. Other times we pay attention to it and change our behavior accordingly to match with that which we our selves have previously established as right or wrong for our own life. Still other times, we may even choose to examine more closely the "right and wrong" area of our world view and decide to change it to more accurately line up with what seems more appropriate to us at this point in life. Nowhere in the whole experience of guilt (when it is purely just the mind's alert feeling guilt) is there any negative evaluation of us as a person, but only a negative evaluation of our thoughts, words and actions. It is simply an acknowledgement of facts. No attitude is employed in guilt at all. 
    Now, with that in mind about "guilt", here's the basics of what I mean when I talk about "shame".... 
Contrary to popular belief, shame is actually not a feeling, but a "thinking". It is not something that is directed at or trying to define thoughts, words or actions, but persons. If you're tracking with me from my comments above about guilt, this might make sense to ya.... 
As I said above, sometimes when we do something that we think is "wrong" (according to our own, personal evaluation of "right and wrong"), the feeling called guilt pops up. Recall that I said that at that point, we can do with that guilt whatever we want to? Well, one of the things we sometimes choose to do when guilt pops up and when we recognize the "bad" thing we've just done is to make an evaluation of our "self" based on the "bad" thought or behavior. It is at this point that we are taking a big (though usually unnoticeable) leap from feeling to thinking. Thinking about our feelings seems to me like a very healthy, helpful thing to do. So, I'm not pointing this out for the sake of there being anything wrong with it. I'm just pointing it out to draw attention to the fact that "thinking" is what we're doing. A decision to count our self as either more or less valuable as a person as a result of and based on our thoughts and actions is not a feeling or an emotion, but a thought. 

Shame is a "belief" which leads to an attitude we choose to have toward our self (or toward others, but I'm just dealing with our self at this point). Specifically, it is the attitude that says that the "rightness or wrongness" of our thoughts and actions has the power to determine our worth or that our value as a person is somehow based on our track record. Acknowledging that we are choosing to think something about our self in these situations can help in understanding shame and how it works. 
    Psychology has helped us a great deal in getting under the surface of what goes on in our minds and our lives. Even though bunches of people never want to hear it or ever actually deal with the details of their thought life and even though some reading this are probably thinking that we've already analyzed the human mind to exhaustion, I think that this issue of shame is one of the greatest areas which the sciences have helped us with so far in the entire history of our species. Someone who lives with this concept of shame as their primary way of evaluating them self or others is said to be "shame-based" and is a primary candidate for the kinds of reactions just mentioned. Shame-based is not a derogatory term, as if someone who is shame-based is somehow less valuable of a person (which is actually a shame-based way of thinking) or anything stupid like that. It is simply acknowledging the fact that the person is primarily living within the frame-work of a mindset that says that their value as a person is based on the relative goodness or badness of their thoughts and/or actions. A performance-based evaluation of personhood. 

So how is it manifested in our lives? Well, one way it comes out is in something I've heard described as the "give-up try-hard" cycle. This is where the person either tries really hard to do whatever is necessary for them to measure up in order to achieve that status of a valuable, important or "ok" person....or they get fed up with being "Tired of Trying to Measure Up" and they give up and leave the system and seek an easier life. 

At the risk of being thought of as a religious person (that I'm not should be clear from preceding comments on this page) , I suggest reading a particular short story from the Bible. It is in Luke 15:11-32. Don't worry though, I'm not a religious person. I just appreciate this particular story's ability to illustrate this point about the "give-up try-hard" cycle and how it is based on shame...  i.e. shame-based. 
    In short, the story is about a man and his two sons. Basically, the father loves both of his sons equally and unconditionally. The problem though is that neither of them actually get it. One of them (the younger) gets fed up with what he thinks is required of him and runs off to get away from the system and seek value and meaning in life on his own terms. The other son (the older) sticks around and works his tail off to impress his father and earn whatever he can get out of the whole deal. 
    Though shame manifests very differently in the two sons' lives and they end up living in ways that look totally different from each other, both lifestyles are actually based on the same thing. They both have a faulty core belief about their father and their relationship with him. They believe that in order to gain favor in the family and to earn the status of a "good" son and the way to their father's heart is through a particular kind of behavior. 
    The problem though is the fact that the father already loves them unconditionally and respects and values them both regardless of their behavior. Contrary to traditional commentary, in the story, I don't think Jesus is trying to get the "younger brother" in the crowd to "shape up" and get with the program. Most likely, he is actually trying to point out how both of the brothers' thinking was fundamentally messed up. They both believe the same wrong thing (a faulty core belief about their value as persons and about their relationship with their father), but are each choosing to react in a different way to that belief. 
    In the story, it's not even that it is trying to say that their behavior in the family is not important at all in any kind of way. It's just saying that their behavior has no bearing on their status as a member of the family or their value as persons. 

Now, how about in our lives? Isn't there a proper place for "evaluating" people? Sure there is. Obviously, a man with no arms is not going to be "valuable" as a pitcher to a baseball team. However, his status of having no arms or of not being the pitcher has no bearing what-so-ever on his "value as a person". That's not what I'm talking about here. That is dealing with someone's functional value to a team with regard to their physical or mental capabilities. That kind of evaluating people is not necessarily shame-based in and of it self. It's just a matter of acknowledging the facts in the case. The man with no arms can not throw the ball. So, it wouldn't make any sense for him to be the pitcher on the team. This makes him no less valuable "as a person" than he'd be if he suddenly grew arms and pitched a straight, no hitter game tonight....and though that would make him more valuable to the team as a pitcher, it would not make him any more valuable as a person. 
    What I'm talking about though is the kind of evaluations we make of our selves as persons. Here are some easily recognizable ways we occasionally fall into the trap of shame-based thinking. Whether it is in the context of having done something which we consider to be "bad" or even when we've just made some kind of innocent mistake or blunder of depth perception or spatial reasoning such as "spilt milk", we may think or say things about our selves like "What a dummy" or "What a klutz" or "How could I be such an idiot?". Then, each time after we've chosen to count our self less valuable, other even heavier and darker feelings often follow as a result of those shame thoughts we choose think about our self. All this happens so quickly. Of course these are just little things, but they jab at us with devaluing thoughts and can add up to an underlying attitude in life that really thinks this way about our self and toward others. 

Now back to the thought that prompted me to add this section about shame in the first place...humility. I think that it is because of shame that we have such a problem with being humble. Why? As long as I think that my value as a person is based on my performance, I am not going to be able to be totally open, honest and real with my self or with others. I will strive to out-do you every time in the game of one-upmanship and I will never let you see how many mistakes I really make in this life. 
    Ever since I started to learn about shame many years ago, I've been on a road of recovering from decades of shaming my self and others. In light of how destructive it can be to live in a shame-based mindset, I invite you to consider the issue of shame in your life too and look for ways it is part of your attitude toward your self. Are you tired of trying to measure up? Upon what do you base your sense of value as a person? If it is your performance, I encourage you to consider something different. If you want to, you can make the choice, once and for all, to consider your self (and all others) valuable as a person, apart from your performance. Then instead of trying to earn value through your performance, your performance can be a way in which you can express that value to the world and go about living free from the chains of the give-up try-hard cycle. 
    Free from shame, we can be totally open, honest and real. We can stop avoiding the truth about our lives. We can escape the trap of false humility and genuinely take personal responsibility for our occasional poor performance while leaving behind the destructive tendency to "diss" our selves for it. We can also fully acknowledge, appreciate and even talk about the great, healthy things we do without pumping our selves up with pride. 
 [entry added 2003]