Shame behind the mask of anxiety: why being embarrassed is not a virtue

Fear of others' judgment and chronic embarrassment are often hidden under a sacred label such as modesty — a cognitive error that presents a psychological flaw as a noble virtue and delays treatment.

Missionary - Lifestyle Service: Many people face social situations, when speaking in front of the crowd or at the moment of defending their right, they experience verbal blockage, heart palpitations and unpleasant shame. In many traditional and religious contexts, this inability to interact and avoid being seen is praised not as a growth barrier, but mistakenly in the name of modesty and decency. A person who does not have the ability to respond to a simple greeting or ask a scientific question is praised by those around him as cool, while what is going on inside him is not a value inhibition, but a kind of behavioral paralysis caused by fear.

In explaining this phenomenon, contemporary psychology distinguishes between shyness, social anxiety and the general concept of shame. Social anxiety, known in psychiatric diagnostic texts as social anxiety disorder or social phobia, is a reaction in which a person experiences a constant, exaggerated and irrational fear of being under the microscope, being judged negatively by others, or being ridiculed. The cognitive model of David Clarke and Adrian Wells, one of the most well-known explanatory frameworks of this disorder, finds its roots in excessive attention to oneself and fundamental conditioned beliefs about personal inadequacy. An anxious person always imagines that others will quickly discover his flaws and reject him. Such an experience not only brings a heavy burden of mental exhaustion, but also blocks the horizons of learning, personal development, and even doing social and family tasks. Clinical research has also shown that cognitive-behavioral therapy and courage training are among the most effective ways to deal with this disorder; Solutions that would never have started if one thought of this situation as a moral perfection.

On the contrary, modesty in the strict moral sense is never born from a position of weakness, incapacity and self-deprecation. Modesty is a conscious contraction from the position of human dignity against ugliness, insolence and sin. A Baha'i person is not someone who doesn't know how to speak or doesn't defend his rights out of fear; He is the one who knows the high moral boundaries and restrains his sensual desires. Interestingly, Western philosophical thought has also come close to this point. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle considers shame more than a virtue, an emotional reaction appropriate to young age, which is valuable only when it is under the supervision of reason. Kant also defines human dignity in the metaphysical foundations of ethics in such a way that a person should not lower his value even in front of himself; A person who despises himself from the position of fear has damaged his dignity.

If we look more closely at the clinical psychological literature, dysfunctional shame is rooted in internalized childhood judgments. Parents who have controlled the child with constant humiliation and reprimands have planted a seed of fear in his psyche, which later appears in the society as a mask of oppression and modesty. This modesty prevents questioning, prevents discovering the truth, and prevents making demands. A young person who does not raise his hand in the classroom for the fear of laughing at others, has neither performed a moral act nor acquired virtue; He is a victim of anxiety that needs to be healed and rehabilitated. While modesty, like a strong barrier, stands tall only against moral slippage and trampling on the privacy of others, not against knowledge and healthy social interactions.

The separation of these two areas is exactly what is formulated in the most transparent language in the heritage of religious thought. Religious leaders have explicitly warned the society that every shyness should not be attributed to modesty. In the hadiths of the innocents, a line has been drawn between two types of modesty: one is the modesty that is born of reason and deep understanding and originates from knowledge, and the other is the modesty that is caused by stupidity and ignorance. That is, recognition is the criterion of distinction; When a person knows what is ugly, his shame is valuable, and when he is ashamed of his ignorance and inability, this shame itself is a sign of failure. When shame prevents a person from learning a skill, or forces him to remain silent in the face of oppression, or takes away the courage to say no to the risky behaviors of his peers, he has left the realm of morality and is directly in the realm of ego weakness. The teachers of ethics in our religious tradition have even spoken of reprehensible modesty, which hinders the delivery of justice to its owner; Modesty that is not heavy if it is accompanied by oppression and denial of rights.

A person who lacks the skill of daring, because of embarrassment, gives in to any request, is easily abused financially, emotionally, and at work, and then presents himself as a shamed person to justify this inner failure. Such coverage is dangerous; Because as long as a person considers a communication disorder or skill weakness as a moral perfection, he will never take a step to treat and change it. The fundamental difference is in the source of this behavior: in social anxiety, the source of the behavior is the fear of being looked at by others; However, in Mamdouh's modesty, the source of behavior is respect for the right and upholding the high position of a human being before God. A man of Bahia enters the social arena with authority, speaks bravely, demands the truth and protects human rights with full dignity, but at the same time, his behavior, look and words are decorated with the boundaries of chastity and dignity. A selection of the narratives and wisdom of Ahl al-Bayt, which is the basis of the analysis of this report, presents us with the same knowledge-oriented criterion to separate rational embarrassment from psychological helplessness.

The concepts and themes of this report about the duality of rational modesty and foolish modesty, the criterion of science in distinguishing embarrassments, and warning against shame that hinders learning and doing justice, are taken from these sources:

1. The division of modesty into two types: the modesty of the wise and the modesty of the fool:

The Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, said:

Modesty is the modesty of the intellect and the modesty of the fool. The modesty of the intellect is knowledge and the modesty of the fool is ignorance.

(There are two types of modesty: the modesty of reason, which is knowledge, and the modesty of stupidity, which is ignorance.)

Address: Al-Kafi, Shiqah al-Islam Kilini, Volume 2, Book of Faith and Disbelief, Chapter Al-Hiya, Hadith 1, page 106

2. Differentiation of dignity from weakness in narrative texts:

Mullah Saleh Mazandarani explains in the explanation of this hadith that modesty sometimes arises from dignity and dignity, and sometimes it is the result of weakness and inability of the self; A separation that reveals the border between modesty and social anxiety.

Address: Sharh Usul al-Kafi, Mulla Saleh Mazandarani, volume 1, page 274

3. No shame in learning and admitting ignorance:

Amirul Momineen Ali (peace be upon him) said:

If someone is asked about something he does not know, he should say, "I do not know" and if he does not know something, he should learn

(None of you should be ashamed to say "I don't know" when asked about something you don't know, and no one should be ashamed to learn what you don't know.)

Address: Nahjul Balagha, Hekmat 82 (Explanation by Faizul Islam / Sobhi Saleh)