The basis of shame is not some personal mistake of ours, but the ignominy, the humiliation we feel that we must be what we are without any choice in the matter, and that this humiliation is seen by everyone.

Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging.

Now since shame is a mental picture of disgrace, in which we shrink from the disgrace itself and not from its consequences, and we only care what opinion is held of us because of the people who form that opinion, it follows that the people before whom we feel shame are those whose opinion of us matters to us.

Shame derives its power from being unspeakable.

Shame tells us that we are bad, which itself is an incredibly terrible feeling. But Systemic Shame teaches that entire groups of people are bad, and that through our choices and our identities, we constantly signal to other people whether we belong to a redeemable group or to an innately wicked one.

Often the words “privacy” or “boundaries” are used to deflect recognitions of Shame. Privacy, or rather invasion of, is when the government collects data on you without your consent. Shame, to me, is hiding information that reveals common human experiences, contradictions, and mistakes. Sometimes this is imposed from the outside through stigma. For example, being HIV positive is a common human experience, but some people hide it because they fear unjustified cruelties imposed by others. But for many, shame-based hiding is often imposed from within. They want to conceal their experience because they don’t understand that it is widely shared. There is a narcissism in trauma-based shame: a belief that one is special and different and that others can’t possibly feel the same way, understand, or need understanding.

We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.

What's driven by shame, is sustained by shame.

Shame is the fear of being unworthy, and it adversely affects our relationship with God, ourselves, and others. It greatly hinders our ability to receive God’s unconditional love — and share it with others.

Shame is the lie someone told you about yourself.

It’s the tendency, which is unfortunate, for people to want to publicly shame and humiliate people. And it's based on what they say, or what they look like, or what they wear, or who they're hanging out with, or who they agree or disagree with. It's attaching labels to people without really doing any kind of nuance.

The fact of shame is significant. We feel spontaneously ashamed of the body and its activities. That's a sign of the body's absolute and natural inferiority.' 'Absolute and natural rubbish!' said Rampion indignantly.'shame isn't spontaneous, to begin with. It's artificial, it's acquired. You can make people ashamed of anything. Agonizingly ashamed of wearing brown boots with a black coat, or speaking with the wrong sort of accent, or having a drop at the end of their noses. Of absolutely anything, including the body and its functions. But that particular shame's just as artificial as any other. The Christians invented it, just as the tailors in Savile Row invented the shame of wearing brown boots with a black coat. There was precious little of it before Christian times. Look at the Greeks, the Etruscans.

Shame is a secret pride; and pride is an error with regard to one's own worth, and an injustice with regard to what one has a mind to appear to others. (p. 204).

Shame...is a first rate form of social control. Shame is what keeps us in line, what prevents us from discovering not so much who we are, but what we might become.