05 February 2013

Aboriginal pride, Black pride, Gay pride...

...silly me... I was under the impression there was no such thing as shame anymore. I guess it was only a matter of time before we started to recognise, well... "Addict pride"...
"People form addictions that MAY come from shame, it’s a painful emotion and drugs help to alleviate their pain. It COULD BE that feeling shame in general in other events in their life causes this problematic cycle to occur and reoccur."
Yup... you can almost smell the science. Is it just me, or is the media chock full of people, on a daily basis, no less... celebrating their victimisation? Hang on... isn't that, uh... pride?

Here's the best part...
"A parent may say to a child: “You should feel bad about that” as a method of discouraging that behaviour from being repeated, according to Kazdin. But there now needs to be a reconsideration of how to identify people who experience shame and how they adapt to coping with it."
How exactly would that work? Now, now Billy... setting cats on fire may not be the best way to build up your self-esteem... oh, well... if you insist.

I guess I've always thought that feeling bad (i.e. shame) about destructive or anti-social behaviour was a good thing. Especially for children.

Apparently, though... I've just been enabling addiction. Who knew?