The Self-perpetuating Cycle of Shame and Self-injury

Nina Veetnisha Gunnarsson

doi:10.1177/0160597620904475

Abstract

Although previous studies have considered shame to be a significant emotion in making sense of self-injury, the connection is still not fully understood. Drawing on sociological ideas on shame, this communication contributes to a theoretical understanding of actions of self-injury by demonstrating how shame operates and unfolds in social interaction. It argues for how shame and self-injury may reproduce and amplify each other, hence turning into a self-perpetuating cycle of shame and self-injury. It shows how shame is triggered in social interaction, how shame leads to self-injury, and how self-injury may turn into more shame. Self-injury is used to fend off shame by upholding social and cultural commitments and maintaining social bonds with others. However, self-injury may also threaten social order and social bonds and, consequently, trigger more shame. The most important reason that self-injury does not fully work as emotion work, and internalized social control, lies in the interactive cycle of shame, that is, you feel shame and cut, you cut again and are (a)shamed, you are shamed and cut, and so on. It is proposed that people who self-injure do not necessarily lack the ability to self-soothe or regulate emotions or that they suffer from a clinical psychopathology.

Highlights

Previous studies have considered shame to be a significant emotion in making sense of self-injury, the connection is still not fully understood
Shame is typically studied as one of many other possible variables involved in self-injury, or indirectly, for example, through self-hatred, low self-esteem, self-punishment, and self-dissatisfaction (e.g., Gilbert et al, 2010; Ivanhoff, Linehan, and Brown 2001; Victor and Klonsky 2013)
Just as using skin cutting may make it possible for the individual to reconnect with the self and others and to engage in social and cultural activities, the cutting may be the very thing that challenges and threatens the social order and social bonds, and this may in turn trigger more shame

Summary

A Social Definition of Shame

Shame is considered a repressed emotion, which may result in a collective denial and silence that renders shame almost entirely hidden in interactions and relationships (Elias 1991; Scheff 2000). The overt shame reactions may be experienced and expressed, in terms of other kinds of emotional experiences (e.g., anxiety, anger, and numbness) and mental/bodily states, which people who self-injure say is the reason for why they feel the urge to physically injure their bodies (e.g., Chandler 2016; Huey, Hryniewicz, and Fthenos 2014; Le Breton 2018). Situations and interactions may generate shame, for example, anytime one may have become as Gilbert (2007) states “an unattractive social agent” in the eye of the other It may be real or it may be as simple as one anticipates or imagines the others’ view of the self (Scheff 2000). If a person imagines that the other thinks badly about him or her, shame reactions will be triggered

A Shame-ridden Self

A Threat to the Social Order and Social Bonds

Conclusion