The Worse I Feel, the Stronger It Gets

I've said before that the shame is what drives the attraction for me. Not the other way round. (Though I suppose I also feel shame for how I feel sometimes. It's a bit of a feedback loop.) But the key point is that the worse I feel about myself, the stronger the same-sex attraction gets.

So I measured the shame.

It's on the Assessments page. Twenty-five questions; it takes about four minutes. You can try it yourself. The assessment isn't what other people think of you — it's what you've concluded about yourself.

I took it and got 51 out of 100. Around the middle. A hair under typical.

I expected higher. But the average number is in some ways more interesting. Shame isn't a fixed quantity. It comes and goes. On good days it's lower. On bad days it's higher. Which means it isn't a personality trait and it isn't something you were born with — it got learned. And learned things can be unlearned, even if not easily.

It also means the number moves, which is why I plan to keep taking it periodically.

Measuring it also means being careful not to blame anyone. We don't get to choose the cards we're dealt. But shame, once it sets in, is hard to root out. It digs in. The good news is that if you can measure something, you're in a better position to do something about it.

Take it here: Shame (ESS)

Andrews, B., Qian, M., & Valentine, J. D. (2002). Predicting depressive symptoms with a new measure of shame: The Experience of Shame Scale. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 41(1), 29–42.