The Phenomenology of Shame: A Qualitative Study

Shame is one of the emotions that a person experiences in a variety of everyday situations and many cases it is annoying. Shame is known as a moral emotion, yet its role in psychopathology has been emphasized. This study aimed to examine the lived experience of shame in individuals. This research is a qualitative study with a phenomenological approach. This research describes in-depth what shame is and how it is experienced from the perspective of individuals. The participants included eight men and seven women who contributed to an in-depth unstructured interview. A seven-step Colaizzi method was used to analyze the data. Data were analyzed using MAXQDA (2018) software.Based on our findings, the eight themes of "physical reactions", "accompanying emotions", "making mistakes", "vicarious shame", "gaze of others", "being subject to judgment", " preoccupation" and three sub-themes of "worry", "rumination" and "blame", "existential shame" with the sub-themes of "inadequacy" and "feeling different" are the most common ones in people's experience of shame. Results are discussed regarding the existing literature. In general, the study of people's experience of shame shows that there are common themes in the description of different people from what they have experienced. The use of shame as a concept in psychotherapy may improve our understanding of the nature of some psychological problems.