Depth Psychology Perspectives on Guilt and Shame Part 5

PART – FIVE

• To clarify the elements of healthy shame within sex offenders.
• To clarify the elements of toxic sex offender shame.

How does healthy shame work within sex offenders?

HEALTHY – SEXUAL VIOLATION OFFENDER – SHAME

While it should be noted that not all sex offenders are capable of shame offenders who do have a conscience may well encounter Healthy Shame. Shame is a powerful feeling of humiliation and despair regarding a specific judgment on one’s self worth. Shame surrounds a conclusive negative judgment on one-self unlike guilt which is a negative judgment on an action that wronged another. This negative judgment that comes with shame has a direct impact on an individual’s sense of human worth, including the worth of one’s soul or character. Shame includes the feeling that you are simply not worthy of goodness or happiness because you are unrighteous and flawed and there is somewhere, somehow, something fundamentally wrong with you.

The primary difference between healthy shame and toxic shame is that toxic shame is a judge while healthy shame is a teacher. Toxic shame holds the individual in an irreparable position of self-loathing and condemnation where Healthy shame seeks to guide the offender on a journey through the valley of remorse. Healthy Shame also acts as a mentor and motivational force designed to move you towards the restoration of the worth that the offender has violated. Healthy Shame accomplishes this brave undertaking by identifying the habits and behaviors that dishonored or marginalized the worth of the soul. Once the acts of worth transgression have been identified Healthy shame leads shamed individuals to the path where they might begin the journey of genuine remorse.

While remorse itself involves the feelings of guilt and shame genuine remorse includes the process of repentance that provides evidence that the remorse is authentic. The process of repentance is conducted by the spirit guides Healthy Shame and Healthy Guilt who teach the individual to complete a series of remorse lessons or stages. The goal of genuine remorse is to restore harmony with one’s internal universe particularly including one’s authentic self in order to restore trust and connection with the external universe. Restoration of worth requires the completion of lessons that impart the existence of worth and the meanings surrounding the worth of the soul or that which is sacred. This work may then lead to the discovery of one’s organic authenticity. This self-discovery milestone is an essential prerequisite to building the self-trust necessary to repair trust with those others who were wronged, injured, or marginalized by the hurtful or wrongful behavior choice.

The completion of the 4- stages of genuine remorse leads the offending souls to the land of restitution where they will discover the possibility of self-forgiveness. The self-forgiveness journey begins with the introduction to a new spirit guide who takes the place of Healthy Shame and Healthy Guilt. The name of this guide who will lead these souls as they climb up to the peak of Mount Redemption is Reverence.

What is toxic sex offender shame?

TOXIC SEXUAL VIOLATION OFFENDER SHAME

Toxic Shame is a powerful feeling of humiliation and despair that occurs when you irrationally perceive that you are worthless and irreparably stained with a mark of unrighteousness that fixes you in a position of out-cast with no hope of redemption. This intense personal conviction that you are hopelessly unworthy leads to overwhelming feelings of self-blame and self-loathing and may lead to acts of self-punishment, self-harm, self-mutilation, and self-destruction. Sex offenders are likely candidates for toxic shame due to the ripple effects of the deep and destructive wounds that they have inflicted upon others. While the healthy shame that permeates the souls of offenders who have experienced a genuine remorse awakening seeks to guide the offender through the valley of remorse toxic shame seeks to pull the offender’s focus towards the despairing judgments of one who has been sentenced to life in a state of desolation and self-loathing. Toxic shame pushes offenders towards a cycle of self-recrimination surrounding an irreparable character flaw that is accompanied by the stereotypical reputation of one who belongs to a group that has been judged to be identified as diseased outcasts. This means that toxic social shame will be accompanying the toxic individual shame. The toxic nature of the shame means that there is no pathway to growth or redemption and in its stead there is only the mark of one is not worthy of hope or life nor of anything at all save desolation and despair.

Possibly, the single greatest source of toxic shame is social stigma. Tracing the vagaries of stigmatic social shame to its core we find an array of interesting elements. These elements include fear, ignorance, obedience, righteousness, justice, superiority, power, and control. The Healthy Shame that comes with the commission of a sexual offense is frequently blurred by the lens of social stigma. The word stigma originates from the Greek work stig meaning stick as the pointed end of a stick was used to mark the slaves and criminals in that era. Thus, stigma is a prescribed social judgment placed in stereotypical fashion on a discredited physical appearance, a group identity, or a flawed character. The real power of stigmatic shame however comes from a hidden psychological source. This power is found within the universal human conflict of good vs evil going on within each and every human soul. Public shaming offers a way for us to cleanse our souls of evil by projecting said evil onto a monster or a witch. This deep psychological need to expel evil is a force to be reckoned with. This strange trend of achieving righteousness and superiority over the evil within suggests that we need to see our shame personified and we then need to see it crucified. Ironically this purging process turns out to be an act of evil in and of itself. This suggests that public shaming serves the public far more than it serves the notion of justice or rehabilitation for the criminal. This also suggests that society at large will always need a witch. This means that from the beginning of time to the end of time witches must exist, they must be identified and the human projection of that which is bad within must be gratified. Considering the many witches over time such as intelligent women in the 1600’s including the actual witch trials in Salem to the last Witch burning in 1811 to the scapegoating of the black man in the 1800’s to the witch hunt for gay men and women in the 1950’s then serial killers in the 1980’s, and now to sex offenders in the new millennium. This suggests that toxic shame is toxic because it neither addresses nor works to solve the problem. Toxic shame projects blame, places judgment marking individuals as pariahs and imposes the sentence of life-long self-loathing.

The public shaming of sex offenders while understandable also does little to help those directly impacted to find clarity and some semblance of understanding about the force and the mechanisms within the mind that designed the horrific crime. The impact of social shame on sex offenders serves mostly to derail the problem solving process. Thus, many sex offenders have difficulty seeing their behavior for what it is because they are so busy clarifying for the masses what it is not. This is a noted in the response of a rapist who would say, “well at least I didn’t rape a child.” This toxic shaming leads many sex offenders to measure themselves with the harsh one-size-fits-all stigmatic ruler of society directing them to sit in judgment on their souls rather than solve the problem in their mind. The notion of questioning the shaming of sex offenders will to many appear to be a support of sex offenders at large, however in truth this questioning attempts to clarify the true nature of the sex offender problem. Public shaming while human in its nature muddies the water of the sex-offender problem. Sex offenders who have the capacity for shame are already accompanied by their own shame which is trying to direct them down a remorse pathway. Public shaming diverts the offenders down a toxic dead-end pathway that sits in judgment rather than directing these offenders towards a learning pathway that solves the complexities of the sex offender problem. Shaming crystallizes the problem as shaming is not designed to look under the hood at the mechanics of the problem but rather labels the individual as outcast to be placed in a warehouse for desolation or disposal. This shaming generally leaves the problem untouched and woefully unclear. On the other hand offenders who have no conscience are not even bothered by the shame and many of these conscience in-absentia offenders find this shaming more entertaining than motivational.

Toxic Shame at its roots is not about a good person who did something bad it is about people who feel they are bad even while they are doing good. The Toxic nature of this Shame is the sense that one has a fundamental flaw that cannot be repaired like a stain that you were born with that cannot be scrubbed clean. Wrong doings are viewed as evidence that the flaw is real and true, its a damned if you do, damned if you don’t, way of life. If we are what we do why does it seem that no matter how much good one does the feeling that I am not deserving and somehow not good enough never goes away? Why do the bad people who commit grievous wrongs still seem to believe that they are a good person and even able to sleep through the night like a baby.

Contrary to popular belief the sentient being cannot be defined by what we do as the complexity of our souls is far larger and more complex than the sum of our actions and behaviors. One truth however that does appear to be universal surrounding the wrongs and injurious behaviors that do lead us to invoke the presence of Healthy Shame is entitlement. The notion of entitlement seems to be a foundational wrong turn for those who find themselves in the gloomy and self-recriminating company of shame. We do know that the presence of entitlement seems to go hand in hand with the absence of empathy. It seems logical that if we are able to justify having what we want or need at the expense of another then it is far more difficult to genuinely feel the marginalization and suffering of the party whom we have wronged. While the absence of empathy seems to encourage entitlement the presence of entitlement seems to diminish empathy. This is the primary lesson to be learned by sex offenders, which is to deconstruct their entitlement and take the remorse journey to discover the secrets of reverence. The one thing of which we can be certain of is that toxic shame has never walked the peaks and valleys on the pathways of Remorse and has never seen the look of hope shining like a light from the eyes of Reverence.