Today, Carol the Coach is interviewing Sam Louie who authored Passport to Shame From Asian Immigrant to American Addict. Sam explains that "Asian cultures are rooted in shame. They are known as shame-based societies because the lives, families, and mindsets of these cultures revolve around some aspect of avoiding shame to preserve familial and cultural honor. In Chinese culture alone, there are more than 100 different ways to describe shame. While some of them overlap with English versions of shame, such as a sense of disgrace and humiliation, many others help shed light on why and how shame is so pertinent among Asian cultures. Within the Chinese, some of the shame-related terms and references are: a nation’s humiliation/shame (i.e. bringing shame to yourself also brings shame to your family, ancestors, and community and your entire ethnic background and/or family’s country of origin); the old father-in-law carries the young daughter-in-law on his back to cross a river (in Chinese culture, it is considered inappropriate for a father-in-law to have physical contact with his daughter-in-law, thus equating how taboo it is to be associated with shame); and a person lives by face as much as a tree lives by bark and as much as a light bulb is covered with glass (i.e. stressing the importance of maintaining a positive and good-standing public image)."

Listen as they discuss Asian culture and and how it is so deeply rooted in shame and why.