4 steps to free yourself from shame and fear

Each of us has our own inner guards. These are our internal limiters: conscience, guilt, shame. These feelings/emotions arise in early childhood (2-6 years), thanks to the upbringing of parents and immediate environment. They are necessary for life in society. These emotions slow down our “freedom” so as not to violate the internal freedom of other people for peaceful coexistence with each other.

Shyness, embarrassment is one of the forms of manifestation of the feeling of shame, accompanied by confusion, shyness, awkwardness, and the desire to hide or hide something from other people.

The feeling of shame is one of the earliest acquired emotions. Already at 2 years old, a child is able to experience shame. This is a negative emotion that is associated with the non-acceptance or condemnation by society of an action or quality of a subject.

We are all very dependent on the external assessment of the society in which we live. A sense of belonging/coupleness is important to us. Nature arranges it in such a way that a person cannot live completely alone; he needs communication for self-development. Alone, it is impossible to experience such feelings as love, joy, happiness, tenderness, passion, excitement, jealousy, competition. Without these feelings, we lose the taste of life, the meaning and purpose of existence. One of the reasons for the importance of assessing society is due to the genetic memory of ancestors who were forced to stick to tribes for survival, and those who received a negative assessment, condemnation, and rejection by the tribe were expelled, which was equivalent to death.

In our time, a person can survive, but the feeling of uselessness and rejection are the most powerful and destructive emotions even now. It is very important to remember that all feelings are “good” and they are all necessary, but in our positive action, when we can control them. In negative action, “negative” feelings fill us from the inside and in such cases these emotions are destructive, they begin to control us, guide our thoughts and actions, destroying our lives.

“Good” feeling of shame.

Shame can serve as an important indicator of what is acceptable in relationships between people and what is not. It's like a limiter, morality, good manners. Shame is one of the types of moral consciousness that influences emotional life. In its own way, fear of loss of respect in the eyes of those before whom a person has lost his dignity. To avoid shame, a person strives for perfection and self-development. Shame focuses our attention on those aspects of our personality or our behavior with which we are dissatisfied or ashamed, as a result of which self-knowledge develops, and we strive to change and improve them. On the other hand, shame acts as a regulator of our self-esteem.

How does Western culture teach us to be ashamed?

The fight against shame is not a new invention: already in Antiquity, philosophers disliked this feeling. Aristotle wrote:

“It is not proper to talk about shame as a kind of virtue, because it resembles passion more than a disposition [of the soul]...
This passion is not appropriate for every age, but [only] for the young. We believe that at a certain age one should be bashful, because, living according to passion, young people commit many offenses, and bashfulness prevents them. And we praise shy people among young people, but perhaps no one will praise an older person for shyness...
Shyness, since it arose in connection with bad deeds, is alien to a decent person...
The one who, having committed one of the shameful acts, is embarrassed and thinks that thereby he is a decent person behaves absurdly. Shame, after all, comes from arbitrary actions, but a decent person will never do anything bad of his own free will.”
Aristotle "Nicomachean Ethics"

Thanks to Aristotle, many philosophers viewed shame as an exclusively moral emotion and sometimes even emphasized that it was a kind of moral compass. If you are ashamed, it means you did something wrong.

However, these days, not everyone agrees with this; many scientists are sure that we experience shame in other cases. For example, American philosopher J. David Velleman argues that shame occurs when we cross the line between public and private.

Velleman speculates: What will happen if one day we wake up in a world where there is no shame at all? From the looks of it, we'll end up... in a biblical paradise (maybe that's not such a bad thing).

Velleman examines the story of Adam and Eve, which has certainly influenced the way Western culture views shame, and comes to an interesting conclusion. Adam and Eve experienced shame for the first time not because of a violation of moral standards, but because of the awareness of their nakedness. Thus, shame in Western culture has become closely associated with the body and sexuality. Velleman doesn't like it:

“A well-known version suggests that the knowledge that Adam and Eve acquired was knowledge about sex. What they suddenly realized, according to this interpretation, was the sexuality of the whole situation, which made them feel both lust and shame.
This version is strange because it suggests that God, when creating Adam and Eve, did not want them to use their genitals. But why then did he endow them with them? I do not deny that the knowledge that Adam and Eve acquired was to some extent related to sex, but there is something more hidden behind it.”
J. David Velleman "The Origin of Shame"

According to Velleman, “more” is knowledge about the general and the particular. Having eaten the fruit from the tree of knowledge, Adam and Eve were ashamed not so much of sexuality as of the fact that their privacy was violated: what they would like to hide suddenly became public.

How to recognize feelings of shame?

As we have already found out, the feeling of shame is a social feeling, and it depends on those around you. This means that it can only arise if there are witnesses or we can assume that there may be them.

We feel a sense of shame when we feel: discomfort, confusion, remorse, regret, we feel weak, defenseless, we expect a negative assessment from others, a mocking or contemptuous attitude, rejection and aggression.

We understand the feeling of shame as that “I am wrong”; this feeling is accompanied by a feeling of powerlessness to change the situation, apathy and hopelessness.

What is shame?

If you don’t delve into the psychology of this word, then, according to the dictionary, shame is a very strong feeling with a negative connotation, which is caused by some action or characteristic, and a person’s awareness of himself as wrong and having defects. It is possible to experience this feeling only in the presence of another person; shame does not arise alone. The lexical meaning of the word “shame” does not reveal the complexity of the term itself and its multi-layered nature.

After all, different cultures have their own moral standards, which determine what actions a person should be ashamed of. This is surprising, but the definition of the word “shame” is the same in all languages, in contrast to the range of actions that cause this negative feeling. It is especially common to experience this emotion in cultures where a collective assessment of what is happening is accepted. Such cultures can easily include Russia and China.

The feeling of shame is under control!

Recognizing this feeling . It is very often confused with guilt. But we already know the manifestations of these feelings and their differences. It is important to note here that feelings of shame may be followed by feelings of guilt and resentment. And it is also important to recognize them and prevent their negative influence.
It is important to accept this feeling with dignity. With the understanding that everyone is ashamed, that everyone can find themselves in such a situation.

It is important to look at the situation objectively. You can imagine that another person is in this situation and try to track your feelings for this person in your situation.

Take a sheet of paper and divide it into two parts. On the one hand, you need to write down all your thoughts and feelings regarding why you have a feeling of shame. On the other hand, write your feelings towards another person in the same situation.
At this stage, it is important to track such a feeling as “constructive guilt” - guilt that analyzes mistakes and calls for action (depending on the situation). Or try to share your feelings of shame with a loved one, admitting your mistakes, responsibility or the comicality of the situation.
The next stage will be needed for those who have a feeling of shame arising from an action or personal quality. This feeling is always accompanied by guilt. Here it is necessary to act according to the rules of “constructive guilt”. This is a powerful motivator to action after realizing your mistakes. Actions should be aimed at correcting or mitigating your mistakes/shortcomings. And, of course, you need to understand that everyone makes mistakes and you have the right to make mistakes! It is important to try to fix everything and, after personal experience, not allow them to happen again.

Author Elena Kupriyanova

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8.3. Embarrassment

The essence of the concept.

Embarrassment is defined as confusion, a feeling of awkwardness. In young children, embarrassment arises for no apparent reason when strangers address them. In adults, embarrassment arises as a result of the discrepancy between how a person wants to look and how he actually looks in an unexpected, in addition to his desire, and inappropriate situation when he “loses his face.”

Signs of embarrassment.

When embarrassed, people look away from others or lower their eyes, and babies hide behind their mother's dress or skirt;
at the same time, some of them sneak glances at the person who confused them. Embarrassment is characterized by the presence of a slight smile running across a person’s face, or nervous and stupid laughter (which differs from shame), as well as a violation of the smoothness of movements and speech ( Edelman
,
Hampson
, 1981). A clear sign of embarrassment is redness of the face (an embarrassed person says: “You made me blush”), looking at the floor. If these signs are present, in everyday speech they say “the person is embarrassed.” In adults, embarrassment can be caused either by failure in some business or by success.

Embarrassment has only recently become the subject of systematic research ( Goffman

, 1967;
Modigliani
, 1968). Goffman, not very well, in my view, defines embarrassment as the expression of the opinion that other people will think of us or our actions as inappropriate to the situation. This formulation rather explains the cause of embarrassment (and that occurs more likely in fairly adult people, rather than in small children), but not the essence of embarrassment as an emotional state. Goffman writes that by showing embarrassment, we seem to apologize to others for a real or possible mistake. According to this author, the function of embarrassment is to show the “correctness” of the subject, the ability to deal with him, since he is capable of correcting his own behavior.

Borg and colleagues ( Borg et al.

, 1988) consider embarrassment as a type of shame, and Edelman (
1985
) - as a type of social anxiety due to the perceived negative impression of others.

For embarrassment to appear, a public failure in preserving one’s face is necessary, which is perceived as a threat to one’s reputation, the “social self” and negatively assessed by others ( Silver et al.

, 1987;
Crozier, Burnham
, 1990;
Parrot
,
Harre
, 1996).
Therefore, the greatest degree of embarrassment occurs when a person fails in a group. When failure occurs in a solitary situation, embarrassment is mildly expressed due to the perceived absence of others ( Modigliani
, 1971).
Although embarrassment is a social emotion, the relationship between shyness and sociability is either non-existent or very weak ( Crozier
, 1986). True, V. Crozier notes that such people have problems communicating with strangers, which makes the above conclusion of this author questionable.

The experience of embarrassment often occurs against the background of, on the one hand, interest in people, and on the other, fear of social interaction. Therefore, E. Shostrom calls shyness a strange emotion, which simultaneously denotes a tendency to create contact and avoid it. As a result, it interferes with a person, limiting his freedom. On the other hand, embarrassment motivates normative social behavior ( Keltner

,
Buswell
, 1997).
Crozier
( 1990) notes that a person who cannot be embarrassed lacks the important human quality of sensitivity and caring.

We can also feel embarrassed for another person, close or even unfamiliar to us. Thus, a mother may be embarrassed by her baby’s tactless statement towards a guest (“empathic embarrassment”).

There is a point of view that embarrassment is predominantly an adolescent emotion ( Parrot

,
Harre
, 1996), but we must not forget about young children who show shyness when meeting strangers, when they are addressed or when they are talked about.
And even more questionable is the position of Griffin ( Griffin
, 1995), according to which we can talk about embarrassment in children only from the age of 7–8, when they begin to define embarrassment as a perceived violation of social standards in the presence of other people who evaluate these violations. It is unlikely that a 2-3 year old child, shy of strangers, thinks about something like that.

Reasons for embarrassment.

P. Pilkonis and F. Zimbardo (
Pilkonis
,
Zimbardo
, 1979) interviewed young people about the reasons that cause embarrassment and awkwardness. The results they obtained are presented in table. 8.1.

Table 8.1.

Frequency of occurrence of causes of shyness

Percentage of students who noted this

Causes

situation

Situations

When I am the center of attention of a large group 72.6 (for example, when speaking in public) Large company 67.6 Lower status 56.2 Communication situation in general 55.3

End of table. 8.1

Percentage of students who noted this

Causes

situation

Situations

A new situation in general A situation that requires firmness When I am praised When I am the center of attention in a small group A small group Alone with a person of the opposite sex A situation of vulnerability (help needed) A small group task-oriented Alone with a person of the same sex Other people

55,0 54,1 53,2 52,1 48,5 48,5 48,2 28,2 13,8

Strangers Group of people of the opposite sex People superior in knowledge People superior in position Group of people of the same sex Relatives Older people Friends ChildrenParents

69,7 62,9 55,3 39,7 33,5 19,7 12,4 10,9 10,0 8,5

Embarrassment occurs whenever some key element of a transaction is unexpectedly and clearly discredited for at least one participant in the interaction. As a result, the latter turns out to be unable to further fulfill the role. Moreover, embarrassment is contagious. It spreads, depriving other people of their ability to act...

During the content analysis of embarrassment, we classified all examples, keeping them as they were presented to us as much as possible. More than seventy-four categories were identified, including blunders between friends, public blunders, exposing a lie, being caught off guard, using the wrong names, forgetting names, slipping the tongue, nudity, invading others' privacy, uncontrollable laughter, and intoxication. in the presence of sober people (or vice versa), loss of control over physical processes and sudden awareness of humiliation and other offensive actions. Further exploration of these categories revealed that most of them could be included into three main groups: (1) identity incongruence; (2) loss of self-control; (3) violation of people's expectations of each other in social transactions.

Gross E., Stone G.P., 2001, p. 195–197.

Types of embarrassment.

Lewis
( 1995) writes about two types of embarrassment: one associated with awareness of oneself and one's behavior, and the other also with evaluation of oneself against social norms and rules. The result is an experience of embarrassment similar to shame. From the fact that researchers of embarrassment have identified its different manifestations, K. Izard deduces two types of embarrassment - social and personal. The first is associated with a person’s concern about the impression he makes on people, how much he can meet their expectations. In the second type, the main problem is the subjective feeling of discomfort, the very experience of embarrassment. This division seems to me somewhat artificial: after all, the first does not exclude the second.

The state of embarrassment caused by the awareness of one's own inadequacy was studied in an interesting experiment conducted by A. Modigliani. He held a series of different “competitions”, some of the participants of which, without knowing it, were expected to perform poorly and thus let the entire team down. Those who experienced the bitterness of failure in front of others were very embarrassed, much more than those who were lucky enough to fail in public. The latter did not worry too much, and even then mainly because others were soon to learn about their failure. Those who were very embarrassed made great efforts to restore their self-esteem and regain the respect of other team members. Modigliani noted six tactics used for this:

The desire to shift attention to something else (“How long do I have to wait, I have an appointment soon?”).

The desire to make excuses (“Fluorescent lamps make it difficult for me to concentrate”).

The desire to show others one’s merits (“Actually, tennis is not my strong point; I love chess”).

The desire to reject the very idea of competition (“What is the use of eating with chopsticks when there is a fork nearby”).

Denial of defeat (“Try to please her”).

Desire to find support (“I hope I didn’t let you guys down too much?”).

Thus, the key characteristic of embarrassment is a person’s concern about his external image, caused by increased attention to it in a situation of real action. The idea of Self-Concept helps explain the cause of embarrassment: the concept of self includes not only “what I think about myself,” but also “what I think others think about me.” If I feel that the respect of others for me is falling, it worries me. However, the threat to a person's self-concept can be minimized if those who observed the stressful situation make it known that what happened will not affect their attitude towards the “victim”. To help your partner overcome embarrassment, you can use certain communication techniques. In our example, such assistance could take the following forms:

reducing the importance of what happened: “Don’t worry, nothing happened, spilled coffee is such a small thing compared to what we are discussing”;

indication of mitigating circumstances: “It is difficult to hold the cup while sitting on such a rickety chair”;

recollection of one’s own experience of similar situations: “Don’t worry, something similar happens to me too when I’m carried away by an idea.”

For his part, to restore the status quo, an embarrassed person can either turn the incident into a joke, or resort to an apology or some other methods, for example, those described above.

Kunitsyna V.N., Kazarinova N.V., Pogolsha V.M., 2001, p. 224–225.

The ease of embarrassment is characterized by an emotional personality trait called shyness (see section 4.6).

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Everyone feels shame

It is worth understanding that, despite the harmful effects, everyone experiences shame, regardless of personal factors. Research has shown that men and women experience shame in exactly the same way, but the reasons are always different.

The first reason for women's shame is appearance. Many representatives of the fair sex feel that they are not young, slim, or attractive enough. This is not surprising, given the canons of beauty imposed on society. In addition, in a conflict situation, a woman will always be insulted based on her appearance, which only aggravates the situation.

“Good” advice doesn’t make it any better, such as: “You should touch up your eyelashes and lips, then you’ll be beautiful,” “You should lose a couple of kilograms,” “How about changing your wardrobe? This blouse looks terrible!”

The second reason is motherhood, which is directly related to femininity. Many women feel inadequate if they are not married and are not mothers. At the same time, they are also forced to endure daily uncomfortable questions from outsiders, which also only bring discomfort. It is this attitude of society towards women that makes them feel ashamed of themselves, their lives and their choices.

The main cause of male shame is weakness. Physical or not is not so important. The fact of weakness undermines masculinity, which is why a man feels insufficiently strong, powerful and, as a result, successful. Coping with this feeling is just as difficult for them as it is for women.

Burn with shame: the meaning of phraseological units

Almost all of us have heard this phrase, and at least once in our lives we have used it ourselves as an assessment of our own or others’ actions. Therefore, many people intuitively understand the meaning of this phrase. In Russian language dictionaries, the well-known saying is interpreted in this way: to burn with shame means to be very ashamed of any action you have done. Moreover, you can only burn with shame when other people discover the wrongdoing. This fact is mandatory in this process.

The phrase sounds different in different interpretations. Which is correct: “burn with shame” or “burn with shame”? This does not change the meaning of the phraseological unit, and, according to the rules of the Russian language, both options are correct. Although the second one belongs to the common conversational genre, it does not contradict the rules.

The phrase has very real physical manifestations of shame. After all, a person caught in something begins to sweat profusely and blush. It’s as if something is burning him from the inside and he feels uneasy. In addition to the symptoms already listed, suffocation and the desire to hide are added.

Afterword

Quite often, it is not possible to overcome destructive experiences on your own, since the feeling of shame has become the dominant feeling that controls thinking and behavior. In such a situation, there is only one way out - to seek help from a qualified, experienced psychologist. A competent specialist knows exactly how to overcome illogical, hypertrophied pangs of conscience.

Contact the Irakli Pozharisky Center for Psychology and Rehabilitation, understand your true essence, accept your unique personality and learn steps aimed at achieving a harmonious state of inner peace. With the help of a psychologist, it will be possible to identify the sources of painful feelings and take the path of liberation from shame.

“Shame and disgrace”: when is the phrase used?

In Russian, the word “shame” has several meanings. In the first, it is used to designate intimate parts of the body, and in the second, shame refers to bad deeds that are condemned by society. In some sources, the authors put the words “shame” and “disgrace” on the same level and speak of them as synonyms.

When is the phrase “shame and disgrace” used? The meaning of a phraseological unit is interpreted as censure; it is used when addressing a specific person or group of people, appealing to their conscience and giving an extremely negative assessment of their actions.

This phrase is often found in Russian literature and was quite often used in popular speech. Now the intensity of use of phraseological units is not monitored, but according to linguists and sociologists, we can conclude that the phrase is gradually losing its former frequency of use even in everyday life.

The human psyche is still largely a mystery to scientists, so great discoveries await us ahead, which can bring a lot of new information about feelings and emotions that have long been familiar to people.

Why is pathological shyness dangerous?

Shame is a contagious feeling. It is especially dangerous for children because it is a hidden experience, especially among victims of violence and abuse. The expectation of being shamed by peers makes the child anxious and vulnerable, and he is often the target of bullying.

Shame can be experienced as an intense negative emotion of self-hatred. In an effort to repress this feeling, a person will act like a bully and encourage those around him to engage in similar illegal behavior. In fact, he wants to minimize his painful experiences by causing embarrassment and shame in others. Children who are regularly bullied and teased can easily understand what makes other kids feel ashamed. They are very skilled at inducing feelings of shame among their peers. And this makes shame a contagious feeling.

Children are also susceptible to taking on feelings of shame for another person when they are associated with someone who behaves shamefully and unworthily. When children are mentally abandoned by their parents, exposed to physical abuse, or feel neglected by their relatives, they often take on the shame that belongs to the adult who caused the pain, because they believe that they themselves are “bad.” Some children behave this way, considering themselves to blame for the embarrassment that really belongs to their parents.

On the other hand, parents may also feel intense shame about their children's behavior. Since many adults dream of the ideal child who will make Herculean efforts to gain honor from society, a child or teenager who cannot achieve the standard desired by his parents, or whose behavior causes embarrassment, will form a shame reaction in them. Some parents deny any personal blame for their children's bad behavior in an attempt to renounce social shame. Other adults, on the contrary, take on too much responsibility and feel shame for any misdeeds of the child.

Any situation that devalues the individual and causes remorse can also foster anger or even rage. This includes circumstances that provoke envy, require comparison of oneself with others, cause fear of being ostracized from society, or evoke fantasies of a rival's misfortune. The anger experienced by a subject who is ashamed is like a poison that destroys positive conscious thoughts. But even if a person who is consumed by shame manages to transfer shame to another, he will still experience the overwhelming effects of intoxication. Shame, when taken on by a work partner, loved one, close friend or stranger, can make the bearer physically and emotionally sick.

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“How to get rid of shame on your own? "

The pitfalls of the “inner critic”

Even in this exercise, a person may begin to scold, criticize, belittle and shame himself. For example, saying that he won’t succeed anyway.

This is also one of the manifestations of the inner critic. Then you can try to imagine what you could answer him.

It often helps to tell yourself:

“I won’t always be able to notice how I scold myself. I won't always be able to help but believe bad words about myself. But I can do it sometimes. That's for sure."

At this point, a person comes out of merging with his inner critic.

When looking for an answer to the question of how to get rid of shame, attempts to negotiate with the inner critic often do not have a positive effect. This happens because the critical part treats the criticized part with contempt, arrogance, and sees it as insignificance.

Negotiations with such a person are impossible. Therefore, here we need to pay attention to the form in which the inner critic “speaks,” and not to the content. Then we begin to defend ourselves, to protest against the way we treat ourselves. A person should have the feeling: “This can’t happen to me. No matter what I’ve done in life, I don’t deserve this kind of treatment.”

However, stopping a bad habit is not enough. You still need to “grow” a new form of behavior to replace the bad habit. Next time we will talk about what else you can do instead of scolding and belittling yourself.

In the meantime, if you have questions on this topic, you can schedule a consultation with me.

Shame is not smoke, it won’t eat your eyes out: what does it mean?

Have you heard the following phrase: “Shame is not smoke, it won’t eat your eyes away”? The meaning of this phraseological unit is quite clear; it is appropriate to mention it when a person wants to tell someone something shameful, but is afraid of condemnation. Therefore, they tell him this phrase, which means that it is necessary to reveal the truth and endure shame, which will not cause significant harm to the human body.

It is worth noting that in the culture of the Russian people, modesty and conscientiousness are highly valued. It is difficult to imagine what an unscrupulous person is capable of, which is why lack of shame was considered at the time to be the most severe deformity of the soul. If a person is able to feel shame for his actions, then he is able to grow spiritually and can overcome any situation, even one created by himself.

After all, in fact, shame will not eat away at the eye; the meaning and purpose of this feeling is a limitation and a warning against bad deeds. And shame in this case is just an emotion designed to motivate and cultivate a worthy human personality.

Signs of a shy person

It is easiest to identify a person in your environment with the type of blue thief from the novel “The Twelve Chairs”.
Blushing and embarrassed, he did whatever he pleased. It is much more difficult to identify a person for whom a heightened sense of shame has become a kind of life credo. However, psychologists have been able to find “traps” that clearly identify people with a similar position in life:

The desire to be invisible
. Modesty is a wonderful feeling that especially adorns graduates of the boarding school for noble maidens. No one claims that arrogance is a worthy human quality. However, the passion to get lost in the crowd cannot be an adequate desire of a self-sufficient person.
Frequent mood changes
. This manifestation of the essence is also typical for melancholic people, who are subject to not strong, but long-lasting outbursts of anger. Such people are ready to destroy the offender, wipe him off the face of the earth, and at the same time turn it around its axis. The plans described are grandiose in scale, but only a revenge developer with a chronic sense of shame knows about them.
Suicidal tendencies
. If we do not take into account mentally ill people who simply cherish the dream of a beautiful death from life, then this desire clearly reveals the owner of a chronic guilt complex. Among people who want to commit suicide, the largest percentage are representatives of the club of active self-torturers.
Irrational behavior
. Violation of adaptation in this case makes a person an explorer of his own soul. He is so immersed in his complexes that he does not care about analyzing the life of his neighbor, who is a chronic alcoholic. Such a person has only one thought in his head: I am the worst, period.

Psychologists say that there are more and more people with chronic feelings of shame. Based on the characteristics described, it is possible to identify them in your environment. There is no need to help tyrants and cynics (they do not need support), but those familiar with a similar problem need advice and friendly support.

The Other Side of Shame

Psychologists actively studying the phenomenon of shame have come to the conclusion that excessive shyness is the cause of numerous problems in the human psyche. The term “the other side of shame” is known. It is used when shame, or rather its false manifestations, become the cause of complexes or the cultivation of certain character traits in an overly exaggerated form.

For example, a person dreams of achieving success and actively expresses himself in public, but he is told that this is shameful. As a result, contradictions arise between needs and pangs of conscience, and a person begins to feel like an insignificance. He drives himself into a situation where any decision will be wrong - pangs of conscience make him feel wrong, and the inability to realize himself leads to an even stronger feeling of uselessness. The body cannot withstand such pressure and turns on a defense mechanism - pride. This, in turn, leads to another set of problems.

This example is just one of many; psychotherapists are currently actively studying how shame affects the formation of personality as a whole.