The Should Within Shame

In Karen Horney’s work on anxiety and depression she explored what she termed the “tyranny of the should.” She posited that our internalization of social demands is part and parcel to what  traditional psychoanalysts referred to as the super ego. Her work helped psychotherapist from all disciplines and traditions to begin to consider the mechanisms by which the self encounters the other in regard to experiencing shame.

Horney’s work has had an important influence on the development of various systems of cognitive behavioral therapy, including Albert Ellis’s Rational Emotive Therapy (now referred to as Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy). Ellis believed that at the core of all irrational thinking lies an oft-hidden, unrelenting-difficult-to-change “should” or “must.” He coined the term “musterbation” to refer to this type of thinking.

We often do not recognize or “hear” our thinking easily at first, until we develop the ability to “think about our thinking” but when we do, this type of thinking often sounds like “I must do this.” I should have done that.”  The internal experience is shame.

The shame that many academics feel about their careers is very much linked to this phenomenon. Shame is very much musterbation, or the internalization of should, about that which we should or should have not done or accomplished in the past. Some shame is highly pro-social, and keeps us from doing harm to others. 

When applied to one’s careers, the internalization of this demandingness often sounds like:

By now, I should have….

I should have been a great scholar by now..

I should have published X books….

I should have a citation count of x…..

I should be more cited than X (insert internalized competitor)….

What is most insidious about these "shoulds" is that there is usually a secondary evaluation.

Since I should have done X by now, and I have not, I am therefore X (harsh evaluation)

The last X can be filled in by some pretty hard judgments: unworthy, not smart, not good enough, useless, worthless, or perhaps less harsh but often still-debilitating variations: not as really as smart as people think, not as competent as people think,  not as good a writer as, etc.

It is hard for me to know how to end this post—I usually like to end with a nice pithy statement of hope. However, when it comes to such “shoulds,” it often takes hard work with someone well-trained to help you reprogram yourself. You deserve it.