Shame Is a Deep Sense of Not Belonging

Overcoming the Stigma of Loneliness Towards Care in Community

I'm intimately familiar with the feeling of shame.

It clenches my jaw, flushes my face, and leaves me feeling hollowed out from the inside like a black hole consuming me. In those moments, I just want to disappear from the world around me. It’s a feeling I remember vividly from childhood. Part of it stemmed from the silences at home around tricky topics like feelings, discrimination, or love. 

Maybe this is why I’ve always been attracted to topics and conversations that are considered forbidden, shameful, stigmatized, and therefore are being silenced—like loneliness. 

Similar to loneliness, shame is a social emotion, meaning it’s generated when we perceive or experience ourselves in relation to others, our families, friends, peers, communities, or even countries. 

Shame is defined as “the deep sense of not belonging” connected to our own perception of feeling deficient, and unlovable, and questions our self-worth—and perhaps even existence. 

What struck me in uncovering the experience of shame, isn’t only that loneliness in itself, is accompanied by shame and social stigma, but that in fact, shame and loneliness are deeply interwoven and to a certain extent, synonymous. 

Research on the connection to loneliness shows that shame arises because of: 

• Past negative or unhelpful responses received when sharing feelings;

• Fear of how others might react, including concerns about being judged, pitied or perceived differently;

• Fear of burdening others, particularly for those who identified some form of care and support responsibility (e.g. for family or friends); and

• Lack of opportunity or means to discuss loneliness 

Sounds familiar? It does very much reflect what people have been sharing with me and at the community gatherings I’ve been hosting online and in-person, over the past half year.

(Speaking of, I’m hosting something special for Loneliness Awareness Week next Wednesday, drop in, if you like.)

The paradox is real: while intimately connected to the feeling of loneliness, ourselves, we’re unable to share it with others. So we choose to keep our loneliness to us alone, to live with shame and silence, afraid to be othered, blamed, and called out as weird. (I for one, love weirdness). 

In the world of individualism, markets, and consumers, of course, the fear of being perceived as such is also the fear of being unproductive. We’ve grown to attach our self and self-worth to economic value. We need to keep working at all costs to uphold it and, all of a sudden, shame around loneliness becomes useful for the economy. So loneliness gets further ostracized, stigmatized, and put into a sad, dark corner by itself.

In a fascinating study on stigma and loneliness in relationship to gender and age, researchers found that men tend to assume higher stigma around loneliness in their community, which might be related to the fact that men might be more exposed to this type of stigma because of how the idea of masculinity and being a man is perceived, hegemonically. Compared to men, however, women were more likely to experience shame, when feeling lonely. While comparable research is yet to be conducted for those facing multiple, intersecting forms of marginalization, whether due to race, gender identity, disability, neurodivergence, or other factors, one can only assume that such layers of othering and societal separation will exponentially increase feelings of loneliness and shame.

While the social stigma in collectivistic cultures is higher (it’s what I noticed in Spain, for example), individualistic ones are more clever to blend and therefore diffuse being alone and lonely, glamorizing the idea of the I, self-sufficiency, and independence from others. 

So what might be the way to uncover shame and loneliness— to free up spaces for other deeply human experiences and feelings that we’ve deemed inconvenient? 

Seeing through the shame

If you look just closely enough, you’ll see the effects of what NYU psychology professor Niobe Way calls “the crisis of connection.” Staggering rates of mental illness, burnout, and rises in extremism are unsurprising symptoms of the repressed feelings and conformist pressures to maintain happy, productive, individualistic appearances that have devalued our relationships with each other. Some might be responding by isolating themselves entirely from the world, others might be desperately pushing against biological limits, and many more though, will engage in compensatory behaviors like smoking, overeating, alcohol, and drug use, other forms of addictions like shopping, gambling, porn, and hey, social media.

Plus, let’s not forget the glorious self-care industry that is selling our future flawless fantasy self—for the price of an increased sense of loneliness. In addressing the painful truth of why we have come so far, why so many are feeling truly alone, disconnected, and caught in a rat race they didn’t sign up for, and many more are too ashamed to admit it to themselves, we are seeing through the shame. 

Befriending our difficult emotions 

Instead of pushing ourselves harder at spin class, getting our refill at Drip Drip IV therapy bars (Wtf?), and finding other ways to keep us sane while losing us (and it) inside, we must become curious about our inner experiences again.

What are emotions and feelings? Why are the difficult ones so difficult—like shame? Where does it sit in the body? How can we learn to accept and meet our full emotional range with more resilience rather than withdrawing, reacting, or concealing? The good news is, that these skills and capacities, like being with difficult emotions, can be learned. 

Connecting through shared experiences 

As Patricia DeYoung, who developed therapeutic strategies for shame observed:

“Shame is a relational problem; it has relational origins and it desperately needs relational attention.”

Again, similar to loneliness, and I would argue, other difficult emotions that almost always emerge because of our relation to something or someone, must not be treated silently in isolation, which only perpetuates the cycle of shame and stigma—but healed in community with each other. Recognizing that caring for others is true self-care.

That’s how we might find our way towards each other, through care and compassion as the radical antidote to shame and loneliness. 

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Thank you for reading. As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Coming up next is Loneliness Awareness Week, and I’m inviting you to a special community session: Connection, Third Places, and Democracy on Wednesday, June 12, 19:00-20:30 CET on Zoom. Sign up for free! I’d love to see you there.

June and July community circles will happen on the last Thursday of the month as per usual, and in-person program in Berlin is in the works as well. 

If you like to stay tuned for future activities, subscribe to the event calendar.

Thank you for your trust and support,

Monika