When you’re a child trapped in a situation of physical or psychological deprivation, you learn shame as an efficient, elegant mechanism of survival: Shame at once shields you from the reality that danger is out of your control (since the problem is not that you’re unloved and deprived, it’s that you’re Bad) and simultaneously prevents you from doing or saying anything challenging that might provoke a threat.

As adults, shame makes us curl away from the intensity and potential danger of authentic, compassionate relationships. It tells us to run away from ambiguity and to either submit or lash out at those whom we think might threaten us.