Mind Matters: Our shame culture

An awful lot of awful events have occurred since my last column where I said I would tackle parental shaming in the next. My plan was to discuss how our society shames and stigmatizes parents like the mother whose toddler son slipped into the cage of the gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo. Since then, a child has been killed by an alligator in a lake at Disney World.

The social media again buzzed with the societal shaming of the parents who “let this happen” just like society blamed the mother at the zoo for being negligent, bad, and on and on. I know from experience with my own children how easily a curious and quick child can take off. I remember when my toddler daughter, in the blink of an eye, ran away and hid in the clothes rack of a department store, while I held my infant son in panic. Was I a careful and watchful mother? Absolutely. Car seats were always used, when in those days many eschewed that safety practice. Safety ruled!

My kids were under my scrutiny at every turn, nevertheless my adventurer gave me a scare in a split second. Yes, we found her soon after, with some women standing by her and staring at me like I was a neglectful mother. Another story of societal shaming comes from the grief group that I facilitate. Here, parents, whose son was killed by a motorist while the boy was bicycling, also report being blamed in the social media. “Well it’s your fault, you shouldn’t have let your 13-year-old ride his bike there.”

Why do we blame and shame the innocent victims? One reason may be that it helps us feel safe. “Well, it happened to them but it would never happen to me, because I wouldn’t do… ”

What makes societal shaming even easier than in the days of the scarlet letter is how the media hypes the stories, giving half-truths if any truth at all, and how the social media of the internet explodes the shaming exponentially.

Yes, there are abusive parents and we should never be complacent about the reality of physical and sexual abuse. Unfortunately, true abuse can get lost in the noise of inane shaming of the innocent.

Note also how societal shaming is a way for a group to distance itself from the “other.” The shamed other becomes ostracized and scapegoated and considered defective in some way. In the book “American Shame,” Myra Mendible says, “as an instrument of power, stigmatizing shame legitimizes and facilitates the dehumanizing or devaluing of certain …[others], setting the stage for a range of punitive policies, discriminatory gestures, and even violent confrontations.”

Mendible warns us that while our national self-image is based on the values of individual freedom, inalienable rights, and tolerance, we collectively can get fearful in the face of crisis. In a post 9/11 world with a fragile economy, inclusivity and openness are trumped by fear that leads to xenophobia and rigidity. A perfect storm for scapegoating and shaming the “others,” the refugees, Muslims, Blacks, Latinos, gays, even “certain” parents.

Where does this all fit in with the murdering of 49 mostly Latino people in a gay club in Orlando? Was societal shame involved in this horrific tragedy? My hunch is that it was. That Omar Mateen was conflicted about his own homosexuality, and felt societal shame for it. By all reports, he was an angry and violent young man who seemed alienated in society for his sexuality and his religion. He chose to kill people who were mostly his age who may also have been ostracized for their sexuality and their Latino heritage. Ironic or purposeful that, in his self-hatred, he murdered those similar to himself.

There are many variables that set the stage for such horrendous acts of violence, accessibility to automatic weapons being one of them. The focus here, however, is the fomenting of societal, stigmatizing shame.

In this election time, it is all the more important to reflect on stigmatizing shame. Dictators and demagogues thrive on fomenting fear and take us down the low road of our limbic systems. Translation: drumming up fear about the “other” as enemy, alien, disturbed, defective, taps into our base instincts, bypassing our thinking brain and dumbing us down. When politicians set up divides by creating an us and them universe, beware. This is the setting for societal shaming.

Listen for the euphemisms — the subtle buzzwords of collective shaming — and step away from the quick and unconscious shaming judgments these words engender. (Just two examples, “welfare queen” and “anchor baby”). From witch burnings to lynchings, from homophobia to the treatment of refugees and immigrants, there is societal shaming.

There is a choice here, to reconsider what we hear and see and ask ourselves, is this another incident of stigmatizing shame where the other is made an outcast rather than understood as one of us?

For more see “American Shame: Stigma and the Body Politic,” edited by Myra Mendible.

* Kayta Curzie Gajdos holds a doctorate in counseling psychology and is in private practice in Chadds Ford. She welcomes comments at MindMatters@DrGajdos.com or 610-388-2888. Past columns are posted to www.drgajdos.com. See book.quietwisdom-loudtimes.com for information about her book, “Quiet Wisdom in Loud Times: The Rise of the Wounded Feminine.”

** The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the ownership or management of Chadds Ford Live. We welcome opposing viewpoints. Readers may comment in the comments section or they may submit a Letter to the Editor to: editor@chaddsfordlive.com

About Kayta Gajdos

Dr. Kathleen Curzie Gajdos ("Kayta") is a licensed psychologist (Pennsylvania and Delaware) who has worked with individuals, couples, and families with a spectrum of problems. She has experience and training in the fields of alcohol and drug addictions, hypnosis, family therapy, Jungian theory, Gestalt therapy, EMDR, and bereavement. Dr. Gajdos developed a private practice in the Pittsburgh area, and was affiliated with the Family Therapy Institute of Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, having written numerous articles for the Family Therapy Newsletter there. She has published in the American Psychological Association Bulletin, the Family Psychologist, and in the Swedenborgian publications, Chrysalis and The Messenger. Dr. Gajdos has taught at the college level, most recently for West Chester University and Wilmington College, and has served as field faculty for Vermont College of Norwich University the Union Institute's Center for Distance Learning, Cincinnati, Ohio. She has also served as consulting psychologist to the Irene Stacy Community MH/MR Center in Western Pennsylvania where she supervised psychologists in training. Currently active in disaster relief, Dr. Gajdos serves with the American Red Cross and participated in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts as a member of teams from the Department of Health and Human Services' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.Now living in Chadds Ford, in the Brandywine Valley of eastern Pennsylvania, Dr. Gajdos combines her private practice working with individuals, couples and families, with leading workshops on such topics as grief and healing, the impact of multigenerational grief and trauma shame, the shadow and self, Women Who Run with the Wolves, motherless daughters, and mediation and relaxation. Each year at Temenos Retreat Center in West Chester, PA she leads a griefs of birthing ritual for those who have suffered losses of procreation (abortions, miscarriages, infertility, etc.); she also holds yearly A Day of Re-Collection at Temenos.Dr. Gajdos holds Master's degrees in both philosophy and clinical psychology and received her Ph.D. in counseling at the University of Pittsburgh. Among her professional affiliations, she includes having been a founding member and board member of the C.G. Jung Educational Center of Pittsburgh, as well as being listed in Who's Who of American Women. Currently, she is a member of the American Psychological Association, The Pennsylvania Psychological Association, the Delaware Psychological Association, the American Family Therapy Academy, The Association for Death Education and Counseling, and the Delaware County Mental Health and Mental Retardation Board. Woven into her professional career are Dr. Gajdos' pursuits of dancing, singing, and writing poetry.