Compass of Shame

In addition to understanding the events that lead up to the shame experiences, it is important to know the different scripts an individual follows to react and cope with and defend against the triggering stimulus of shame and how the feeling “is reduced, ignored, or magnified, without addressing its source.”²⁹⁹ According to Nathanson,

290 Goldberg 1991, 17-19.

291 Öhman 1999, 327, 334.

292 Everingham 1995, 10.

293 Lewis 1992, 111.

294 Nathanson 1987b, 13.

295 Nathanson 1987a, 23, 27.

296 Tomkins 1963, 185.

297 Nathanson 1992, 317. See also Nathanson 2003.

298 Broucek 1997, 48.

299 Nathanson 1987b, 18-19; Elison, Pulos & Lennon 2006, 162.

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as soon as we recover from the cognitive shock of shame affect and the ensuing swirl of remembered incidents we must make some decision … either we accept what shame has now shown us and adjust our self-image, or we will be forced to defend against this experience by one of four highly scripted methods of behavior called the compass of shame.³⁰⁰

Nathanson named these patterns of coping styles of the aversive feeling of shame as Attack Self, Withdrawal, Attack Other, and Avoidance.³⁰¹ The patterns are grouped as the four poles of a compass (Figure 1).

Withdrawal

Attack Self Attack Other

Avoidance

Figure 1. Nathanson’s Compass of Shame.³⁰²

Drawing on the theory of Nathanson’s Compass of Shame, Elison et al. developed a Compass of Shame Scale (CoSS) to measure individual differences in coping with shame. The scale consists of twelve scenarios which were drawn from Nathanson’s eight categories of potentially shame-inducing situations. Each description of a scenario or script is followed by four responses which represent the reaction characteristics of the four poles in Nathanson’s Compass of Shame. The giving shame-coping script of the Compass of Shame may be viewed from either a state (active briefly, for seconds at a time), or a trait perspective (active over a longer period). Elison et al. described the poles as follows:³⁰³

Withdrawal: … the person acknowledges the experience as negative, accepts shame’s message as valid, and tries to withdraw or hide from the situation. … The phenomenological experience is negative; emotions include shame, sadness, fear, and anxiety. Cognitions include awareness of one’s discomfort with others, and possibly awareness of shameful actions, faults, or characteristics.

Nevertheless, negative feelings and cognitions may not be identified explicitly as shame. The motivation is to limit shameful exposure via the action tendency of withdrawing.

Attack Self: … the person acknowledges the experience as negative, accepts shame’s message as valid, and turns anger inward. … The phenomenological experience is negative; emotions include self-directed anger, contempt, or disgust, which magnify the impact of shame. Cognitions include awareness of one’s shameful actions, faults, or characteristics. As in Withdrawal, negative feelings and cognitions may be acknowledged, but may not be identified explicitly as shame. The motivation is to take control of shame with the ultimate goal being to win acceptance by others. The action

300 Nathanson 1987b, 18-19.

301 Nathanson 1987b, 19-20.

302 Nathanson 1987b, 19.

303 Elison, Lennon & Pulos 2006, 222-224.

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tendency is to criticize the self, prevent reoccurrence of shameful situation through change, conform, show deference to others, or engage in self-deprecating remarks.

Attack Other: … the person may – or may not – acknowledge the negative experience of self, typically does not accept shame’s message, and attempts are made to make someone else to feel worse. … The phenomenological experience is negative; anger is directed outward, perhaps toward the source of the shaming event. The cognitive experience is an awareness of someone else’s actions or faults and may, or may not, involve awareness of shame. The motivation is to bolster one’s own self-image and externalize the shame. The action tendency is to verbally or physically attack someone or something else in order to make someone else feel inferior.

Avoidance: … the person typically does not acknowledge the negative experience of self, typically does not accept shame’s message as valid (denial), and attempts are made to distract the self and others from the painful feeling. … The phenomenological experience becomes neutral or positive;

shame may be disavowed, or overridden with joy or excitement via distractions (e.g., sex).

Cognitions include little awareness of shame or one’s shameful actions, faults, or characteristics. The motivation is to minimize the conscious experience of shame or show oneself as being above shame.

Of all the poles, Avoidance scripts are most likely to operate outside of consciousness.

Elison et al. argued that the poles of the compass are not necessarily independent: “the poles of the compass can be ordered according to the degree to which they involve consciousness and internalization of shame: Withdrawal and Attack Self are equal, both being greater than Attack Other, which is in turn greater than Avoidance.” Regardless of their recognition and consciousness of shame feelings, individuals who use Withdrawal and Attack Self scripts

“may not explicitly identify the experience or feeling as shame per se.” Although individuals using Withdrawal and Attack Self scripts share two important characteristics, recognition of a negative experience (e.g., “I feel bad”) and conscious acceptance (internalization) of a shame message (e.g., “I’m worthless,” “I hate myself”), they differ in their motivations to act . Individuals who use Withdrawal scripts “pull away from others in order to reduce their discomfort and shame experiences,” while those who use Attack Self scripts “endure shame in order to maintain relationships with others.”³⁰⁴ The study of Gilbert and Miles showed that self-blame is particularly highly correlated with shame whereas blaming others is inversely correlated with shame. Gilbert and Miles assumed that individuals “who seem themselves as relatively down rank do blame themselves more for criticism and being socially put-down while those who see themselves as relative up rank tend to blame others for criticism and put-down.” Thus, it appears as if blaming others offers limited protection from the feelings of shame.³⁰⁵ According to Nathanson, an individual using a Withdrawal script does not deal with shame and is “by definition very much alone.” The extreme form of withdrawal behavior is pathological depression. Individuals using an Attack Self script “avoid helplessness at the expense of a variable degree of damage to their self esteem and often their physical being.”

They do this “by demeaning themselves, by placing themselves in a dependent relationship with another person.” The extreme form of Attack Self script is masochistic behavior.³⁰⁶ Nathanson emphasized the reasons individuals use Avoidance as an escaping strategy. He argued that alcohol and drugs are often used to reduce the toxicity of moments of shame. As acts of avoidance, individuals also engage in compulsive, sexual, competitive and

304 Elison, Lennon & Pulos 2006, 223-224, 232.

305 Gilbert & Miles 2000b, 764-765, 768-769.

306 Nathanson 2003.

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seeking behaviors. In addition to an Avoidance script, an Attack Other script is another way to prevent feelings of shame from getting into the consciousness. Individuals using an Attack Other script “can do nothing by their own mind or hand to raise their own self esteem when shame hits, there is the attack other library of scripts through which they can work to reduce the self esteem of anyone else who happens to be available.” Attacks can involve “insults, verbal or physical attack, bullying of any kind, sexual sadism, or anything that seems to prevent the momentary sense of inferiority by (for only that moment) feeling bigger and better than the other guy.”³⁰⁷ Thus, an individual may tend to employ more than one script.³⁰⁸ Nathanson posits “people who can’t deal with shame tend to cluster at two loci of the Compass of Shame: the Withdrawal and Attack Self poles, or the Avoidance and Attack Other poles.”³⁰⁹

The study of Elison et al. did not indicate any clear signs of some shame-coping scripts as healthier, more effective or adaptive than other ones.³¹⁰ Such shame-coping scripts as Withdrawal and Attack Self are close to the strategies that self-handicappers³¹¹ often employ.

The study of Zuckerman et al. showed that compared to low handicappers high self-handicappers use more emotion-focused strategies like withdrawal (denial, mental disengagement, and behavioral disengagement) and negative focus (rumination). The scores of high self-handicappers were higher than low self-handicappers in a coping scale that included the items such as “I refuse to believe that it has happened” (denial), “I blame myself” (self-blame), and “I relieve the problem by dwelling on it all the time” (self-focused rumination).³¹² Nathanson stated that “although actions taken at each pole of the Compass of Shame vary over a range from mild and quite ordinary to severe and quite pathological/dangerous, the more skill one develops in the techniques associated with any of these libraries of defensive behavior, the more one is limited in emotional growth.”

Nathanson contended “to the extent that any individual hones the skills associated with Attack Other behavior, severe limitations are placed on the ability to negotiate, moderate, love, and nurture.”³¹³