Coming into Community
On Shame, Visibility, and the Slow Path into Community
Some people arrive at the place where help is available, yet remain standing in the hallway.
They have left home. They have found the address, opened the front door, and stepped inside the house. Perhaps they have an appointment. Perhaps it took them a long time to decide to come. Even so, they are unable to move farther into the living room where other people are sitting.
In one of the in-depth interviews that formed part of the foundation for my doctoral dissertation, A Study of Shame, a staff member at a support centre explained that this was not unusual. New users could remain standing in the hallway because it felt safer there. In the living room, they could be seen. In the hallway, they could still remain partly hidden.
They were afraid that others would see how ugly and disgusting they were.
The staff member did not see what they themselves believed was visible. She did not see an ugly or unclean person. But those who arrived could feel as though the body carried the history on its surface—as though others could immediately see what they had been subjected to, what they had done, and therefore who they must be.
The hallway is an ordinary place in a house. It connects one room with another. We pass through it without noticing it. But in these accounts, the hallway becomes something more. It becomes a threshold space between concealment and visibility, between loneliness and community, between silence and the possibility of speech.
The person standing there has arrived—but not yet completely.
Shame as Visibility
Shame is often connected to the gaze. Not only to what others actually see, but to what we imagine they see.
The ashamed person does not necessarily experience herself as someone who has something to hide. She experiences herself as the thing that must be hidden.
Guilt can be connected to an action: I did something wrong. Shame enters more deeply into the relationship with the self: There is something wrong with me. If others truly see me, they will discover it too.
That is why entering a room can feel dangerous.
The others do not need to know anything. They do not need to ask. Even so, the body may feel revealing. The face becomes warm. The eyes turn downward. The hands grow restless. One lets the hair fall across the face, pulls one’s clothes more tightly around the body, or sits in a way that occupies as little space as possible.
A paradox arises. The ashamed person wants to become invisible, yet at the same time feels that the entire body makes her visible.
Blushing, tension, and an evasive gaze become signs she believes the others can read. She sees her own shame through an imagined stranger’s gaze.
It is not certain that anyone else sees what she sees. But that does not make the experience any less real.
The Cushion Between You and Me
When the person eventually enters the counselling room, the threshold has not necessarily been crossed for good. The hiding place may follow her inside.
The staff member explained that some people sat with a cushion held in front of the body or face. Others let their hair fall like a curtain. Some wrapped themselves in a blanket.
At first, the cushion was allowed to remain.
The conversation could take place through it.
It is easy to think that a good conversation requires an open posture and eye contact. The helper may want the person to look up, put the cushion aside, and show herself. But what appears from the outside to be resistance may, from within, be the protection that makes the conversation possible.
The cushion is not only an obstacle between two people. It may also be what makes closeness bearable.
A person who has learned through violation that closeness is dangerous cannot simply meet a new person without protection. Taking the cushion away too soon may feel like being deprived of yet another boundary.
The ethical task, therefore, is not first to remove the protection. It is to create a relationship in which the protection can slowly become less necessary.
The staff member described how the blanket, the hair, and the cushion could gradually disappear. Not because anyone tore them away, but because the person slowly experienced the room as safe enough.
This is a small movement, but it contains a great deal.
The hair is brushed back. The cushion is lowered. The face becomes visible. The gaze is lifted for a moment.
None of these actions can be forced. They must grow out of the experience that the other person is still there.
Can You Bear Being with Me?
Behind the fear of being seen often lies a question that is not asked directly:
Can you bear being with me when you know?
People who carry deep shame may believe that others will react to them as they react to themselves. If I experience myself as disgusting, you must also find me disgusting. If I can barely bear my own history, how could you possibly bear hearing it?
The staff member explained that some people could later say that, in the beginning, they did not understand how she was able to sit with them. They had expected her too to experience them as repulsive.
The helper’s presence therefore becomes more than a professional technique. It becomes an answer to the expectation created by shame.
I am not leaving.
I am not turning away.
I do not see the person you fear I will see.
This does not mean that the helper should remain untouched. A human encounter is not an encounter between a story and a neutral instrument. The other person may be moved, saddened, or angered by what has happened. But these emotions must be carried in such a way that the person telling the story does not once again become responsible for the adult’s reaction.
The survivor must not end up comforting the helper.
Remaining present is therefore a demanding act. It means allowing oneself to be affected without fleeing and without taking over.
The Other Gaze
The gaze of shame says: I can see what you really are.
The recognising gaze does not necessarily say: You are wonderful. It says something simpler and more fundamental:
I see a human being.
Recognition is not the same as praise. Praise may simply slide off, especially when it comes from a helper who is expected to be kind. A person with a deeply negative self-image may interpret kind words as politeness, professional method, or pity.
The other gaze must therefore be experienced over time.
The person returns. The helper is there again. She remembers what was said. She does not meet the survivor with disgust. She tolerates the silence. She does not press for more than the person can bear. She sees the same person before and after the story has been told.
In this way, a new experience can slowly find a place beside the old one:
Perhaps what I think is visible is not visible.
Perhaps she does not see me as I see myself.
Perhaps her gaze is not merely a professional performance.
Perhaps I can be here.
This experience may not immediately change the self-image. The staff member described how her own positive assessments of the person often simply slid away. Shame could not be talked out of existence with a few kind sentences. It had to be met by experiences that, over time, made another understanding possible.
The Right to the Threshold
We often speak of courage as the ability to enter. But perhaps there is also courage in remaining on the threshold without running away.
The person standing in the hallway has already done something significant. She has left home. She has come to the door. She has entered the house. She has not yet sat down in the living room, but she is no longer entirely alone.
The helper may be tempted to complete the movement:
Come in. It is not dangerous. No one here will judge you.
The words may be kindly meant, but they may overlook what the person is actually doing. She is studying the room. She is looking for exits. She is trying to understand who is present. She is listening to the voices. She must discover whether this place resembles other places where trust was broken.
Meeting the person where she is means, here, recognising the hallway as a real place.
Not as a permanent home, but as a necessary place to pause.
It must be possible to say:
You may remain standing for a while.
You do not need to enter before you are ready.
We know that you are here.
In this way, the hallway becomes not only an image of being stuck. It can become the beginning of movement.
From Imposed Concealment to Chosen Visibility
Many people who have been subjected to sexual abuse have lived with an imposed silence. Some were threatened. Others lacked words for what was happening. Some did not understand that the acts were abuse. Others feared that the family would fall apart, or that no one would believe them.
Hiding was not necessarily weakness. It may have been a way of surviving.
Later, the same protection can become a prison. The person continues to hide even when the original threat is no longer present. The body still reacts as though visibility were dangerous.
The way forward therefore does not consist in demanding complete openness. It consists in giving the person control over her own visibility.
She must be allowed to decide:
who may see,
what may be told,
when it may be said,
and how much must remain her own.
Entering the living room does not mean that everything must be laid bare. Showing one’s face does not mean surrendering the right to privacy.
What matters is that concealment can gradually become a choice rather than a compulsion.
The Slow Experience
The staff member explained that repeated visits helped. Each time the person returned, she had to face the fact that people were sitting in the living room. Gradually, what had at first been almost unbearable could become a little less dangerous.
This is an important insight into change.
Human beings do not change only through explanations. They change through new experiences that are repeated.
I entered, and no one laughed.
I sat down, and no one stared.
I told a little, and she did not leave.
I returned, and I was still welcome.
In this way, another kind of knowledge emerges—one that cannot be communicated through arguments alone. The body is given the opportunity to experience something it did not previously trust.
Safety is not first a thought. It is the experience that what one feared did not happen.
Who Must Move?
We often think that the person standing in the hallway must be helped inside. But perhaps the people in the living room must also move.
They must make the room possible to enter.
This requires more than kindness. It requires that the community does not make openness the price of admission. One should not have to tell one’s story in order to deserve a chair. One should not have to show one’s face in order to be met as a human being. One should not have to perform trust before the room has shown itself worthy of trust.
The helper must also tolerate her own impatience. It can be painful to see a person standing outside and not be able to bring her in. But the other person’s pace cannot be replaced by the helper’s good intentions.
Sometimes help consists in holding the door open.
Entering Without Leaving Oneself Behind
What matters is not only that the person eventually enters the living room. She must be able to do so without once again leaving herself behind.
Many people have entered rooms, relationships, and actions throughout their lives by adapting to what others expected. They have participated, but not on their own terms. They have been present in the body while absent from themselves.
The goal therefore cannot simply be social participation.
The goal must be to enter while remaining in contact with one’s own boundaries, needs, and reactions.
I enter because I choose to.
I sit where I want.
I may hold the cushion if I need it.
I may remain silent.
I may leave again.
I may say no.
Only then does the movement from the hallway to the living room also become a movement toward regained self-determination.
The First Movement
One day, the person no longer remains in the hallway quite as long.
Perhaps she enters and sits at the edge of the living room. Perhaps she still holds the cushion close to her body. Perhaps she does not look up. But she is there.
Later, the cushion may rest in her lap instead of covering her face.
On another day, it may remain lying in the chair.
This is what change may look like: not a dramatic breakthrough, but a series of small movements that are almost invisible from the outside.
The hallway becomes a little shorter.
The gaze is lifted a little sooner.
The body takes up a little more space.
The story can be mentioned without the whole person disappearing into it.
There is no simple way out of shame. But perhaps it begins here: not with the demand to reveal oneself, but with the encounter with a room that can tolerate the fact that a person still needs to hide.
The person who remains standing in the hallway has already come a long way.
The first response should therefore not be to pull her inside.
It should be to make it possible for her to discover that the door remains open—and that she herself may decide when to cross the threshold.
There is no simple way out of shame.
But perhaps it begins here:
not with the demand to reveal oneself,
but with the encounter with a room that can tolerate the fact that a person still needs to hide.
This essay was developed through a new reading of the in-depth interviews and focus-group discussions that formed the foundation of my doctoral dissertation, A Study of Shame (2009). The text is part of the series Conversations About Shame and was written in conversation with OpenAI/ChatGPT.
