Many have written about torture so much more intelligently  and factually than I could ever hope too that I will not even try. What I would like to do is talk plainly about another dimension of torture that can exist in each of our lives, in our homes and schools. To do that I will have to expose some embarrassing things about my own self, so be it.

We know that torture uses and causes pain, physical pain. We are all familiar with pain, we can all point to a scar on our body and say ,"that was really painful". We remember from a distance that it was very painful but the real intensity of that moment has faded because the body has the remarkable ability to repair and heal itself. This is the kind of torture that the Spanish Inquisition involved, where men used their creative powers to come up with more and more painful ways to torture. They were like pioneers of torture and we have become the masters of it .

We are masters because we have added a new dimension past physical pain, the dimension of Shame. Like pain, shame is something we have all experienced and have memories of, scars from, and something we all loath. Somewhere along the way we have tasted it .I ask you, are we  so revolted by the pictures of Abu Ghraib because of the physical pain even though most of the worst of it  is hidden from our view, or is the  deeper loathing  because we recognize something even more sinister, the shame the torturers were inflicting on the prisoners there?

The nakedness, the humiliation, the sexual shaming, the very fact that you are being photographed to be seen by others this way, these are all inflicted shame. Pain is an assault on the physical body of a person, but shame is an assault on the personality itself and so I consider it worse. Because it is hidden from view it is difficult to grasp the damage inflicted on the personality caused by shame, how do you detect it and how to you began to heal it?  TheraP may help us with this question? All I can do is to tell you from a personal point of view some of what shame can do.

When I was 3 years old I didnt pick my own toys, others did. My Mama bought me a doll, I didnt know if to was male or female, right or wrong, it was just a baby to me. When my uncles who were living with us,and my brothers saw me pushing this doll around in a cart they began to laugh and shame me. They said, "what are you a little girl, you want to be a sissy?"

A 3 year old doesn't know the nuances of teasing,the wink of the eye, but they feel something, and though they may not know what it is, it hurts, it is the scorching  of shame. All the child  sees is laughing and the tone of voice and just instinctively connect it too shame. All the pictures of me after this day and for a long while show me crying, I think it was because I saw the same grin on  the one taking the picture and mistook it for ridicule, the voice that said "move your hands from your face and smile" sounded in tone as the same voice of  derision as  that from before. You may say thats silly, but why else would a small child cry every time his picture is taken? Shame causes damage to the personality.

Even before this when I was 2 and recently potty trained, I had my own little potty to use. Mama dressed me for sleep in little cotton jump suit pajamas. The next morning when we woke up I waited too long and didn't quite make it in time to get out of those pajamas. So in embarrassment I just lay down on the floor and Mama kept calling me to the breakfast table. I couldn't go in there in front of everybody. When she found me and saw the problem all the boys and men at the table somehow overheard what had happened , the laughing and shaming began. I still cant use the public restroom in a busy place, no it isn't reasonable and no. it doesn't  make any sense, it just is, because an event of shame damaged something in my personality.

Is this the damage done to children, the constant shame of rejection by their piers that builds and builds until at last their personality shatters and they take a gun and shoot others, blind to who is and who is not their persecutors? Then everyone asks, "What happened, whose to blame,what would make a kid do such a thing?"   No, I am not saying that shame is total cause of the shattering, but it is a major major factor involved in it and the driving force.

The damage caused by shame  causes people to hide inside themselves, to be introvert, in an effort to avoid all danger of being exposed to shame. Take no chances, be quite, keep your head down because there is a chance of rejection and shame, and you know how painful that is.

I plead for us to be careful not to humiliate children , be careful how we handle their mistakes that we do not damage them. "First do no harm" The scriptures say ,"Provoke not your children to wrath." wrath comes from being shamed, and if you will look back and  remember times of shaming in your own life,you will see this is true.  We do damage to the personality of any person that we shame and humiliate.Sometimes we even hide it as a joke. I know a lady who says painful things that humiliates and then says,"Oh ,I was only kidding." Really, its too late now.

As pain is torture so shame is too, so if you are angry with someone, take breath pause and think, you would do them less damage to punch them out than to shame them, a black eye is better than wounded personality. One hurts the flesh the other hurts the person inside the flesh. I find that many people,myself included, find methods other than rage to compensate for our shame damage but in the end, those methods are still unhealthy and unproductive to happy life. But that's another story.

For some this post was too simply thought and too plainly spoke, but I honestly say,it's all I can offer, the best I can do. I hope  there  is some simple thought here that you can hold on to and use as you live with your children, friends and strangers?

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