Shanghai Shame

I just got back from a 10 day trip to eastern China with the Culver City Chamber of Commerce. Before our plane of 207 people got there, we experienced the effects of shame.

We were to leave on China East Airlines. The ticket counter was to open at 10:30 am Friday. At 10:45 we were told that it would be another ½ hour before it opened. At the ½ hour, we were told that it would be another 45 minutes. Our Chinese guide/trip organizer told us that in fact it would be longer. “I’m your advocate,” he said. He explained that the time the airline quotes is in order to save face.

Little by little the story unfolded. First it was that there was a slight engine leak, and that it would be fixed soon. Then it was that a new engine had to be flown in to LAX from China. The final story was that a plane had to fly to China, pick up a new engine then fly back with it and get it installed. To make a long and grueling story short, 36 hours after our scheduled flight we took off.

The problem with shame is that it makes us want to hide. Some lie, some disappear, some do all manner of things to escape the painful feeling of shame. One reaction is to feel a need to be superior, or “glorify” oneself. I was struck with the tagline for the China East Airlines: “Performance, glory, achievement.”

In China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power, the author, Rob Gifford, makes the point that ever since 1842 when China was soundly and humiliatingly defeated in the First Opium War and forced to sign the Nanjing treaty, “everything the Chinese did after 1842…was about restoring China’s greatness.”

Getting Clear: Recognizing Confused Submission & Loss of Identity

It often occurs in family shame patterns, that the child is required to adapt the views of the parent. In this unfortunate dynamic, the parent feels attacked if the child disagrees with the parental viewpoint, and either attacks the child, or withdraws. Either caretaker behavior is intolerable to the child who needs to feel safely connected. So the child submits to the parental viewpoint to keep the sense of connection.

The growing person learns to dismiss his/her own point of view and feels out of contact with him/herself, foggy, and confused, never knowing what is happening or why. This mental paralysis may then be used by the caretaker to expand his or her control.

For some people, submitting to another’s viewpoint occurs only in the presence of the parent. For others the submission is more comprehensive and continues both in relation to the pressures of the real parent and to the negative inner parent.

Waking up to this dynamic is the first step to clearing the fog.