Shame Based Thinking
June 11, 2010
First I offered you the idea of Shame Based Dieting, in which you post every bite of food that you eat on Facebook or Twitter for all to see in the hopes of pre-humiliating yourself into avoiding forbidden foods. Next I invented Shame Based Drinking which is based on the same premise only involving your alcohol consumption which will never work because I now know from conversations with my alcoholically-oriented Facebook friends that no one EVER admits to how much they actually drink and even if they did want to admit it, they could possibly be arrested and certainly have their children taken away from them for the things they consistently do while drinking(like driving) which are illegal in this country. One possibility is to offer Rat Out Your Friends Shame Based Drinking. I’ve noticed that although you may be reluctant to shame yourself by telling on yourself, your friends are not at all reluctant to tell those same shameful stories (only they can tell it better. If you don’t believe me, here’s what I mean- this is what your friends do when you are at your most shameful. 
They take your picture and post it on Facebook. If you ask this girl later what happened she’d say what a nice picnic it was.)You may think you are keeping your drinking private but you can be sure that your drinking buddies are emailing me and telling me stories about YOU!
This might be a bit off topic but since I haven’t exercised in three weeks and talking about workouts almost feels impossible for me and since all I’ve been doing in lieu of sweating is THINKING and since it’s a new week and I’ve done all this thinking and thinking rhymes with drinking I now offer you something that I don’t recommend at all but that I’m really good at: Shame Based Thinking.
Unlike Shame Based Drinking or Dieting, Shame Based Thinking only keeps you stuck. Women are really good at it. Men don’t do it at all, they just occasionally feel guilty which is not to be confused with shame. In my Workout World, Guilt is not as bad as Shame. Guilt is about what I did. Shame is about WHO I AM and that’s worse.
For example, last weekend, my mind was dominated with Shame Based Thinking over something that now sounds silly but at the time mortified me. Our son’s baseball game was rain delayed so we had about an hour to kill and we ended up with several other fellow baseball parents that we knew only slightly. We all went to a nearby Pizza joint. I enjoy this type of spontaneous gathering and immediately forced everyone to play my game Guess the Celebrity where I tape a piece of paper (or lick a napkin in this case) to your forehead and you have to guess with yes/no questions who it is. As the mini-wine bottles flowed (I told you it was a joint. I was just glad they even carried wine) I also continued to party-on by first wolfing my salad then mooching some pizza, then stealing my husband’s crusts (one of the main reasons I love him is that he leaves the bones for me) and dipping them in my left-over Ranch dressing-YUM! Only to be told when we got in the car that the guy sitting beside me owns several of New York City’s premiere 5 star restaurants (they might not technically be 5 stars but for the purpose of my story they might as well be because in my book 3 stars actually IS 5 stars.)
Ruh-Roh. Oh Lord, I’d picked on him the worst: forcing him to hurry up and order (by elbowing him) so we could play Celebrity (he was pretty good by the way) If you don’t believe me, this is his restaurant. And this one.
And this one. I was so embarrassed I spent the rest of the weekend shamefully worrying about him thinking what a hillbilly I am, which is really what I am but I didn’t want him to know it. You know?
My husband, on the other hand, said “Don’t worry about it- He doesn’t care.” And I know it never crossed his mind again. Nor did it probably cross the Celebrity Restauranteer’s mind either, I’m guessing. (Hoping.)
So anyway, I’d really like to stop my Shame Based Thinking. It’s time that we all stop feeling bad about who we are (especially us women). And I was hoping that by telling you all about it I might feel less ashamed but really I don’t. But I did have fun. And that counts for something I guess. Even if it wasn’t a 5 (or a 3) star meal.
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