15 thoughts on “Apropos of today’s daily post: the nature of shame”
VulnerabilityTed has done it again. I am “guilty” of feeling a lot of “shame” and fear of vulnerability, and every little bit of encouragement is a boost. Thanks for posting this!
Kathleen:
“Shame, is essentially ‘joy (in ourselves) interrupted’. Painful and unnecessary.”
Dead On!
!!!
oo
O
Amanda,
Years ago, while in therapy, this very subject came up for me. I was afraid to disclose certain aspects of coming and going in a relationship that others would consider unhealthy. At some point, my therapist said to me, “I can tell when you go back with him,” starting a wonderful conversation on expectation and trust.
She asked if she may elaborate [which was not something she did very often] and I wanted to know what she saw, rather than just listen to my thoughts. She proceeded to tell me a metaphor that has stuck with me. She saw me in a desert, walking, hot, searching. Behind me “he” comes, like a little cup of water, offering to me, what I think, what I need, a sip, a cool drink. Unknown to me, there behind the next mountain of sand, resides a huge lake. I get so far, in my journey, get thirsty, and take him back, never realizing there is an abundance just beyond if I push through.
She then told me she is with me on this journey, be it I drink from the cup or the lake. She doesn’t judge me. She thinks I should drink from the cup as long as I want, until I do not need it anymore, for when that happens, the cup will disappear on its own. I will be at the lake.
I found this a great help. I could go deeper into my vulnerability and look at my issues in a more honest way. I stayed with this man until I no longer needed to learn what I was there for. When I left, I was strong as I knew myself all the more and it had very little to do with him.
Not unlike Eric’s comment about his experience, she initiated me into womanhood. She stood by me while I tested many theories! As I let go and touched my vulnerability, I watched agendas unfold before my very eyes.
She also taught me, “When you send the boys away, the men will show up.”
Years later, another big leap for me was when I told all my sexual secrets, even ones I could not share with my therapist back then, to someone I trusted. I served them all up, one by one, telling someone that listened and held no judgment. My life changed in that moment. My shame melted. I was free.
Eric, I am guessing people know your heart is sincere making you an excellent “keeper” of secrets. This is one of the largest gifts one can share with our brothers and sisters. Amazing what an open heart and sincere silence can do.
Thank you for this TED. Inspiring and reassuring.
Shamed by others, or shame is descriptive of waste of talent ( – that’s a shame), guilty of something – identification?
Not always psychological concepts, can be factual – guilty of bombing x is fact ie the person actually did it. Alot of junk you just have to junk, but there are real lines there too. I’d say smashing and grabbing rather than finding your own something is a shame and you might decide yourself that it was something that you were guilty of. Will you do it again. No in that case.
Then there is making people/society/life pay. This was very clear to me when I read a Guardian article about the murder of Rachel Nicholls, it wasn’t the slant of the piece but they clearly described that the guy had been on a caravaning holiday with his parents aged 10 or so, and he was badly abused by a friend his parents made. He blamed his mother for not protecting him or finding out and doing something about it. As an adolescent he began raping women, when his mother found out she completely rejected him and then he started killing women (mothers) with small children.
And the question is, when bad things happen to you and especially really really bad things do you react as you want because you don’t have the tools, or do you muddle along even so, looking for a better strategy, a way of taking the bitternees without becoming bitter and returning to the fray having won that light. (that’s Camus)
What is your bottom line. Yours. Are you a murderer, a thief, unprincipled etc etc, if you are are you content with that. No? Then choose again. (Neale Walsch)
In India I met two rickshaw cyclists on my travels, one a very thin, poor, old man – I was more and more ashamed as I sat there in comfort with my heavy ruckack, with him in his poverty with his ruined bike that barely moved. At the end I gave him 500 rupees for a journey of 30) and he wept. I thought at least maybe he can buy a bike that works.
ANd another guy more avid, younger, stronger, who cycled me further and even though he hadn’t taken me exactly where I wanted to go I thought I should give him the same (I mostly walked everywhere or took public transport), and a nice young man ran over and asked me if he had asked that as the fare because that couldn’t be right (I think it was 70), and when he found out that I was going to the other end of the mkt he told the guy to take me there – it was a long way round and when we got there the rickshawist flicked his fingers under my nose in the most aggressive way demanding the same sum again. I looked at his bitterness and humiliation and anger, and corruptness really and silently gave him the money – it wouldn’t help he’d still feel that way. And I knew I was closer to him than the man who wept. It has stayed with me and ever since I have tried to move more towards the clarity of soul of the first man. What a gift!
?Junk the guilt and the shame stuff. just live ‘rightly’ (compass bearing towards rightly), feeling whatever you feel but not necessarily acting on it depending where it is going, then none of these things come up
imho! and hoping not to sound like Marie Antoinette
Looking for an opportunity to write mdr (mort de rire – dying with laughter) like the kids…
“I suggest that you have modest expectations on the therapist and high expectations of your own drive to heal. That’s what moves the energy. Ultimately you have to help yourself. A good therapist helps you acquire the tools you need to grow, and gives you feedback. Yet it’s your life; you gain the benefits of trust and transparency, or conversely will pay the price for withholding, and keeping your pain in the dark away from the light of healing.” – EF
like.
definitely appreciate hearing of others’ similar experiences — thank you. and yes, luckydriver — i did bring it up with my therapist at the time & we talked about it. it occurred to me today because i was sensing myself on the verge of feeling (or already feeling) this way again. though i’m not sure if i’d put the person i’m working with under the “therapist” label, it is a counseling situation of sorts.
I think if I ever go to a therapist again (it will not be until I can afford it) I will choose a female one this time. Most have been male (with one leader therapist at a facility being the one exception and she was damn good) and that’s fine but it doesn’t help me get over the issues I have with trusting women (because of my mother).
It always freaks me out when people become friends with their therapists. Mine all said that was unethical and would not ever countenance that. They all said that the counselor-patient relationship must be kept professional; even the transpersonal therapist said that.
Every time the therapy discussion comes up, I hear more of these negative stories.
I have some of my own, though none working with Joe Trusso (rather with a West Coast movement called Hakomi).
My experience with Joe, starting in my late 20s and early 30s, saved my life and was my initiation into manhood. If you think I am able to focus my energy into positive ways and hold up a beacon for others, I account that largely to my working with Joe. I did the work. I learned eagerly. I scraped out my wallet many weeks, paying what little I could, paying for therapy before I bought food. I knew I was growing and I wanted to grow.
Twenty years later Joe remains a dependable mentor and reality checkpoint, and someone to whom I have referred many clients with true success. Joe is of a rare breed, naturally gifted rather than ‘educated’, though mentored by some of the pioneers, including Fritz and Lora Perls.
Therapists have a huge responsibility. As Fritz said, the client brings all of the unfinished business of their past into the therapy room. ALL of it. That unfinished business tends to be the result of neglect and ignorance, and it’s had a long time to fester and ferment.
Therapists are people who are willing to assist and hold the mirror for others; to provide a place or refuge; to accompany people as they go through their deepest pain, again and again for decades. Yet the whole process is collaborative, with you having a majority role.
It takes a special person to do this kind of work and it takes an extremely gifted person to do it well. If you’re seeking therapy you have to either get lucky, be able to network yourself to someone good, or get yourself to the point where you can be discerning and identify someone who can actually help you.
I suggest that you have modest expectations on the therapist and high expectations of your own drive to heal. That’s what moves the energy. Ultimately you have to help yourself. A good therapist helps you acquire the tools you need to grow, and gives you feedback. Yet it’s your life; you gain the benefits of trust and transparency, or conversely will pay the price for withholding, and keeping your pain in the dark away from the light of healing.
Hi, Amanda-
I’ve had many relationships with therapists where I eventually began to feel ashamed and started withholding information. Your question prompts me consider that pattern, and as I do I see that it has always been *after* we’d developed a trust relationship and actually worked through some big things. It’s weird… I tend to then develop the idea that I’m Momma’s Best Daughter and I want to get everything right, and very quickly. I start wanting to make her (or him) proud of me. Finally. Y’know? That’s the first layer. But underneath, there’s the idea I need to detach from someone once I’ve gotten things right, maybe leave on a high note. So the more I detach, the more I withhold, the more therapy starts to feel expensive and unnecessary. Then I eventually leave and find another one when my personal shit hits the fan. And I start the process over.
Ick. But honestly. That’s what I do. Thanks for helping me think about it like this. 🙂
I too was once in therapy trying to sort out a weird relationship and had the feeling that ‘I was letting my therapist down by not working things out quickly enough. That sensation of feeling like I needed to please my therapist was also at the core of the bad relationship I was in – I was tolerating really absurd behavior from a man because I kept thinking all I needed to do was find a way to please him better, and the problems would disappear. Pretty ridiculous on my part, but therapy got me to figure it out!’
Indeed! As a psychotherapist ‘in training’, this is very true; both from a point of being a therapist with a client, and as myself being a client with my therapist. All the things ‘we’ do in life, unaware, repeating. Speaking for myself, I would have said I did not know shame in my life until I realised, through training and therapy, that it was underpinning much of it – well at least much of the areas in which I was blocked. So, feeling shame at the therapist, is something to share with your therapist.
On another issue, raised earlier – the difference between guilt and shame – this is somewhat simplistic; and so, in part, I apologise for my definitions in advance. I see guilt as ‘the feeling that we have when we do what we want, when it flies in the face of what ‘others’ or society want or expect us to do – we do what we want (and then feel very bad about it).’ Totally pointless.
Shame, is essentially ‘joy (in ourselves) interrupted’. Painful and unnecessary.
Both are taught, and not intrinsic when we are born, we learn early, and it spreads like a virus into almost every area of our life, without our knowing.
This is a theory of mine, and I am not suggesting this is ‘how it is’.
Amanda — you really have to trust your therapist; and the therapist has to be someone who is larger than all of those specific circumstances, and who is good at shifting your point of view. It can be daring, though what point is there if you cannot bring your shadow material to the light?
That said, many therapists don’t quite establish this trust with their clients. I’ve had a lot of clients come to me and say “this is something that I cannot tell my therapist” though they told be because they had already decided that I could encompass what they would say in a way that transcended judgment (and most of these instances involved revealing aspects of their sexuality).
“Going back to the unhealthy lover” should be an easy one to work with, if the therapist is perceptive enough to see the whole dream for what it is. The goal of therapy would be to help you become aware of what you feel, what you’re learning, and what is motivating you, though I accept that this requires a fairly broad perspective.
But I mean, what’s the point of therapy otherwise?
It’s time to write that “finding a therapist” article…
Hi Amanda –
I think your description of how you felt in therapy is an experience shared by many who are participating in a similar process, and – for me at least – it is one of the genuinely enlightening parts of the therapy journey. Did you actually discuss it with your therapist?
Therapists function as blank slates that receive their clients’ projections and other issues. These are random, basic examples, but if someone was abused as a child in some way, they might automatically assume that their therapist would get angry about something that is disclosed in therapy. Or, if someone was raised in an environment where their emotional needs were not met and they received a lot of judgement instead, they might assume that their therapist will also judge them and think they are selfish, etc. What you are describing is one of the core reasons to go into therapy – to figure out what your ideas are about how the world responds to you and to discover if those ideas are actually accurate or based on past conditioning. I think it is progress when you start to transfer those ideas onto your shrink!!
I guess what I am saying is that I think therapy is anything but a “detached, clinical relationship”. If you are seriously addressing your shit, it will rise up in those sessions in a way that includes acting things out on to your therapist. Those are the sign posts that allow you to really work out your belief systems.
I don’t know if this is really answering your question or not! But I can certainly relate to it. I too was once in therapy trying to sort out a weird relationship and had the feeling that I was letting my therapist down by not working things out quickly enough. That sensation of feeling like I needed to please my therapist was also at the core of the bad relationship I was in – I was tolerating really absurd behavior from a man because I kept thinking all I needed to do was find a way to please him better, and the problems would disappear. Pretty ridiculous on my part, but therapy got me to figure it out!
*fabulous* TED talk! really connected in it.
so here’s a question for the peanut gallery: since therapy is a space where you’re supposed to feel free enough to get all this crap out in the open, what do you do when you’re in a situation where you feel ashamed (or is it guilty? i think it felt more like shame) to tell your therapist something?
this happened to me a few years ago. i did finally find a way to tell her (it was a situation where i kept going back to a lover who was *very* unhealthy for me, and i knew it, but i had gotten sucked back in again). but i found it very curious that what had begun as this detached clinical relationship with someone i could open up to had become, at least in my mind, a situation where i felt like i’d be judged. or rather, i feared being judged… by my therapist! like, maybe she’d become more like some sort of friend/parent rather than therapist.
i suppose that speaks to some deep, underlying parental issue or need to be liked/approved of, right? and at this point, i’m learning about some past life stuff that may be at the root (at least partially) of that kind of dynamic.
but has anyone else had that situation?
Hey Eric… I don’t they are even on the same continuum. Guilt *is* situational, I’ll grant you that, but is the reaction to moral (rules of the herd) transgression.
Shame has many colorations, but across the board, I see it as *altogether* distinct from guilt. Rather, it is modesty or self-protectiveness on steroids. In a world where going bra’less can get you raped (in the vast majority of societies), it is very easy for the sense of pudeur to curdle into shame.
In the unconscious itself, shame is heightened self-awareness – specifically of that which *must not* been seen by others. It’s only when it gets dragged out here into the light that it becomes toxic.
M
I was trying to decrypt this question with Joe a few years ago — the distinction between guilt and shame. What I came up with is that guilt is situation specific; shame is existential. What psychologists call “generalized guilt” — imo — is shame.
VulnerabilityTed has done it again. I am “guilty” of feeling a lot of “shame” and fear of vulnerability, and every little bit of encouragement is a boost. Thanks for posting this!
Kathleen:
“Shame, is essentially ‘joy (in ourselves) interrupted’. Painful and unnecessary.”
Dead On!
!!!
oo
O
Amanda,
Years ago, while in therapy, this very subject came up for me. I was afraid to disclose certain aspects of coming and going in a relationship that others would consider unhealthy. At some point, my therapist said to me, “I can tell when you go back with him,” starting a wonderful conversation on expectation and trust.
She asked if she may elaborate [which was not something she did very often] and I wanted to know what she saw, rather than just listen to my thoughts. She proceeded to tell me a metaphor that has stuck with me. She saw me in a desert, walking, hot, searching. Behind me “he” comes, like a little cup of water, offering to me, what I think, what I need, a sip, a cool drink. Unknown to me, there behind the next mountain of sand, resides a huge lake. I get so far, in my journey, get thirsty, and take him back, never realizing there is an abundance just beyond if I push through.
She then told me she is with me on this journey, be it I drink from the cup or the lake. She doesn’t judge me. She thinks I should drink from the cup as long as I want, until I do not need it anymore, for when that happens, the cup will disappear on its own. I will be at the lake.
I found this a great help. I could go deeper into my vulnerability and look at my issues in a more honest way. I stayed with this man until I no longer needed to learn what I was there for. When I left, I was strong as I knew myself all the more and it had very little to do with him.
Not unlike Eric’s comment about his experience, she initiated me into womanhood. She stood by me while I tested many theories! As I let go and touched my vulnerability, I watched agendas unfold before my very eyes.
She also taught me, “When you send the boys away, the men will show up.”
Years later, another big leap for me was when I told all my sexual secrets, even ones I could not share with my therapist back then, to someone I trusted. I served them all up, one by one, telling someone that listened and held no judgment. My life changed in that moment. My shame melted. I was free.
Eric, I am guessing people know your heart is sincere making you an excellent “keeper” of secrets. This is one of the largest gifts one can share with our brothers and sisters. Amazing what an open heart and sincere silence can do.
Thank you for this TED. Inspiring and reassuring.
Shamed by others, or shame is descriptive of waste of talent ( – that’s a shame), guilty of something – identification?
Not always psychological concepts, can be factual – guilty of bombing x is fact ie the person actually did it. Alot of junk you just have to junk, but there are real lines there too. I’d say smashing and grabbing rather than finding your own something is a shame and you might decide yourself that it was something that you were guilty of. Will you do it again. No in that case.
Then there is making people/society/life pay. This was very clear to me when I read a Guardian article about the murder of Rachel Nicholls, it wasn’t the slant of the piece but they clearly described that the guy had been on a caravaning holiday with his parents aged 10 or so, and he was badly abused by a friend his parents made. He blamed his mother for not protecting him or finding out and doing something about it. As an adolescent he began raping women, when his mother found out she completely rejected him and then he started killing women (mothers) with small children.
And the question is, when bad things happen to you and especially really really bad things do you react as you want because you don’t have the tools, or do you muddle along even so, looking for a better strategy, a way of taking the bitternees without becoming bitter and returning to the fray having won that light. (that’s Camus)
What is your bottom line. Yours. Are you a murderer, a thief, unprincipled etc etc, if you are are you content with that. No? Then choose again. (Neale Walsch)
In India I met two rickshaw cyclists on my travels, one a very thin, poor, old man – I was more and more ashamed as I sat there in comfort with my heavy ruckack, with him in his poverty with his ruined bike that barely moved. At the end I gave him 500 rupees for a journey of 30) and he wept. I thought at least maybe he can buy a bike that works.
ANd another guy more avid, younger, stronger, who cycled me further and even though he hadn’t taken me exactly where I wanted to go I thought I should give him the same (I mostly walked everywhere or took public transport), and a nice young man ran over and asked me if he had asked that as the fare because that couldn’t be right (I think it was 70), and when he found out that I was going to the other end of the mkt he told the guy to take me there – it was a long way round and when we got there the rickshawist flicked his fingers under my nose in the most aggressive way demanding the same sum again. I looked at his bitterness and humiliation and anger, and corruptness really and silently gave him the money – it wouldn’t help he’d still feel that way. And I knew I was closer to him than the man who wept. It has stayed with me and ever since I have tried to move more towards the clarity of soul of the first man. What a gift!
?Junk the guilt and the shame stuff. just live ‘rightly’ (compass bearing towards rightly), feeling whatever you feel but not necessarily acting on it depending where it is going, then none of these things come up
imho! and hoping not to sound like Marie Antoinette
Looking for an opportunity to write mdr (mort de rire – dying with laughter) like the kids…
“I suggest that you have modest expectations on the therapist and high expectations of your own drive to heal. That’s what moves the energy. Ultimately you have to help yourself. A good therapist helps you acquire the tools you need to grow, and gives you feedback. Yet it’s your life; you gain the benefits of trust and transparency, or conversely will pay the price for withholding, and keeping your pain in the dark away from the light of healing.” – EF
like.
definitely appreciate hearing of others’ similar experiences — thank you. and yes, luckydriver — i did bring it up with my therapist at the time & we talked about it. it occurred to me today because i was sensing myself on the verge of feeling (or already feeling) this way again. though i’m not sure if i’d put the person i’m working with under the “therapist” label, it is a counseling situation of sorts.
I think if I ever go to a therapist again (it will not be until I can afford it) I will choose a female one this time. Most have been male (with one leader therapist at a facility being the one exception and she was damn good) and that’s fine but it doesn’t help me get over the issues I have with trusting women (because of my mother).
It always freaks me out when people become friends with their therapists. Mine all said that was unethical and would not ever countenance that. They all said that the counselor-patient relationship must be kept professional; even the transpersonal therapist said that.
Every time the therapy discussion comes up, I hear more of these negative stories.
I have some of my own, though none working with Joe Trusso (rather with a West Coast movement called Hakomi).
My experience with Joe, starting in my late 20s and early 30s, saved my life and was my initiation into manhood. If you think I am able to focus my energy into positive ways and hold up a beacon for others, I account that largely to my working with Joe. I did the work. I learned eagerly. I scraped out my wallet many weeks, paying what little I could, paying for therapy before I bought food. I knew I was growing and I wanted to grow.
Twenty years later Joe remains a dependable mentor and reality checkpoint, and someone to whom I have referred many clients with true success. Joe is of a rare breed, naturally gifted rather than ‘educated’, though mentored by some of the pioneers, including Fritz and Lora Perls.
Therapists have a huge responsibility. As Fritz said, the client brings all of the unfinished business of their past into the therapy room. ALL of it. That unfinished business tends to be the result of neglect and ignorance, and it’s had a long time to fester and ferment.
Therapists are people who are willing to assist and hold the mirror for others; to provide a place or refuge; to accompany people as they go through their deepest pain, again and again for decades. Yet the whole process is collaborative, with you having a majority role.
It takes a special person to do this kind of work and it takes an extremely gifted person to do it well. If you’re seeking therapy you have to either get lucky, be able to network yourself to someone good, or get yourself to the point where you can be discerning and identify someone who can actually help you.
I suggest that you have modest expectations on the therapist and high expectations of your own drive to heal. That’s what moves the energy. Ultimately you have to help yourself. A good therapist helps you acquire the tools you need to grow, and gives you feedback. Yet it’s your life; you gain the benefits of trust and transparency, or conversely will pay the price for withholding, and keeping your pain in the dark away from the light of healing.
Hi, Amanda-
I’ve had many relationships with therapists where I eventually began to feel ashamed and started withholding information. Your question prompts me consider that pattern, and as I do I see that it has always been *after* we’d developed a trust relationship and actually worked through some big things. It’s weird… I tend to then develop the idea that I’m Momma’s Best Daughter and I want to get everything right, and very quickly. I start wanting to make her (or him) proud of me. Finally. Y’know? That’s the first layer. But underneath, there’s the idea I need to detach from someone once I’ve gotten things right, maybe leave on a high note. So the more I detach, the more I withhold, the more therapy starts to feel expensive and unnecessary. Then I eventually leave and find another one when my personal shit hits the fan. And I start the process over.
Ick. But honestly. That’s what I do. Thanks for helping me think about it like this. 🙂
I too was once in therapy trying to sort out a weird relationship and had the feeling that ‘I was letting my therapist down by not working things out quickly enough. That sensation of feeling like I needed to please my therapist was also at the core of the bad relationship I was in – I was tolerating really absurd behavior from a man because I kept thinking all I needed to do was find a way to please him better, and the problems would disappear. Pretty ridiculous on my part, but therapy got me to figure it out!’
Indeed! As a psychotherapist ‘in training’, this is very true; both from a point of being a therapist with a client, and as myself being a client with my therapist. All the things ‘we’ do in life, unaware, repeating. Speaking for myself, I would have said I did not know shame in my life until I realised, through training and therapy, that it was underpinning much of it – well at least much of the areas in which I was blocked. So, feeling shame at the therapist, is something to share with your therapist.
On another issue, raised earlier – the difference between guilt and shame – this is somewhat simplistic; and so, in part, I apologise for my definitions in advance. I see guilt as ‘the feeling that we have when we do what we want, when it flies in the face of what ‘others’ or society want or expect us to do – we do what we want (and then feel very bad about it).’ Totally pointless.
Shame, is essentially ‘joy (in ourselves) interrupted’. Painful and unnecessary.
Both are taught, and not intrinsic when we are born, we learn early, and it spreads like a virus into almost every area of our life, without our knowing.
This is a theory of mine, and I am not suggesting this is ‘how it is’.
Amanda — you really have to trust your therapist; and the therapist has to be someone who is larger than all of those specific circumstances, and who is good at shifting your point of view. It can be daring, though what point is there if you cannot bring your shadow material to the light?
That said, many therapists don’t quite establish this trust with their clients. I’ve had a lot of clients come to me and say “this is something that I cannot tell my therapist” though they told be because they had already decided that I could encompass what they would say in a way that transcended judgment (and most of these instances involved revealing aspects of their sexuality).
“Going back to the unhealthy lover” should be an easy one to work with, if the therapist is perceptive enough to see the whole dream for what it is. The goal of therapy would be to help you become aware of what you feel, what you’re learning, and what is motivating you, though I accept that this requires a fairly broad perspective.
But I mean, what’s the point of therapy otherwise?
It’s time to write that “finding a therapist” article…
Hi Amanda –
I think your description of how you felt in therapy is an experience shared by many who are participating in a similar process, and – for me at least – it is one of the genuinely enlightening parts of the therapy journey. Did you actually discuss it with your therapist?
Therapists function as blank slates that receive their clients’ projections and other issues. These are random, basic examples, but if someone was abused as a child in some way, they might automatically assume that their therapist would get angry about something that is disclosed in therapy. Or, if someone was raised in an environment where their emotional needs were not met and they received a lot of judgement instead, they might assume that their therapist will also judge them and think they are selfish, etc. What you are describing is one of the core reasons to go into therapy – to figure out what your ideas are about how the world responds to you and to discover if those ideas are actually accurate or based on past conditioning. I think it is progress when you start to transfer those ideas onto your shrink!!
I guess what I am saying is that I think therapy is anything but a “detached, clinical relationship”. If you are seriously addressing your shit, it will rise up in those sessions in a way that includes acting things out on to your therapist. Those are the sign posts that allow you to really work out your belief systems.
I don’t know if this is really answering your question or not! But I can certainly relate to it. I too was once in therapy trying to sort out a weird relationship and had the feeling that I was letting my therapist down by not working things out quickly enough. That sensation of feeling like I needed to please my therapist was also at the core of the bad relationship I was in – I was tolerating really absurd behavior from a man because I kept thinking all I needed to do was find a way to please him better, and the problems would disappear. Pretty ridiculous on my part, but therapy got me to figure it out!
*fabulous* TED talk! really connected in it.
so here’s a question for the peanut gallery: since therapy is a space where you’re supposed to feel free enough to get all this crap out in the open, what do you do when you’re in a situation where you feel ashamed (or is it guilty? i think it felt more like shame) to tell your therapist something?
this happened to me a few years ago. i did finally find a way to tell her (it was a situation where i kept going back to a lover who was *very* unhealthy for me, and i knew it, but i had gotten sucked back in again). but i found it very curious that what had begun as this detached clinical relationship with someone i could open up to had become, at least in my mind, a situation where i felt like i’d be judged. or rather, i feared being judged… by my therapist! like, maybe she’d become more like some sort of friend/parent rather than therapist.
i suppose that speaks to some deep, underlying parental issue or need to be liked/approved of, right? and at this point, i’m learning about some past life stuff that may be at the root (at least partially) of that kind of dynamic.
but has anyone else had that situation?
Hey Eric… I don’t they are even on the same continuum. Guilt *is* situational, I’ll grant you that, but is the reaction to moral (rules of the herd) transgression.
Shame has many colorations, but across the board, I see it as *altogether* distinct from guilt. Rather, it is modesty or self-protectiveness on steroids. In a world where going bra’less can get you raped (in the vast majority of societies), it is very easy for the sense of pudeur to curdle into shame.
In the unconscious itself, shame is heightened self-awareness – specifically of that which *must not* been seen by others. It’s only when it gets dragged out here into the light that it becomes toxic.
M
I was trying to decrypt this question with Joe a few years ago — the distinction between guilt and shame. What I came up with is that guilt is situation specific; shame is existential. What psychologists call “generalized guilt” — imo — is shame.