The Psychology of Shame
From the work of Gershen Kaufman
Adapted by Michael Mervosh & Irene Tobler
For the PsychoEnergetics Training Program
There are places in me I don’t want you to know
"There are places in me
I simply don’t want to know,
I don't want you to know –
I place a whole lot of energy into making sure
I won't stay aware of them,
you don’t ever become aware of them –
so I don’t expose myself to you,
or get myself exposed by you,
too publicly,
too shamefully,
too red-faced embarrassed,
humiliated.
This would cause me to re-experience
yet again
my self accusations,
my lack of dignity,
my worthlessness
as a human being.
Each time this re-occurs in my life,
(and it re-occurs in my life)
I want to kill myself off,
Or fantasize about killing you off.
Prideful,
I desperately attempt prove to you
(and myself)
how right I am,
how wrong you are;
but secretly I feel
how bad I really am,
I think how no good you really are,
and go into a deeper and deeper spiral
inward, down
to a place where I murder my own life force,
to a place in me I don’t want you to know,
to a place I know,
a prison of own making
that no one else will know,
only me.
My personal hell.”
- Dylan Marshall
The Psychology of Shame
“While terror and distress hurt, they are wounds inflicted from outside which penetrate the smooth surface of the ego; but shame is felt as an inner torment, a sickness of the soul.
It does not matter whether the humiliated one has been shamed by derisive laughter or whether he mocks himself. In either event he feels himself naked, defeated, alienated, lacking in dignity or worth.”
- Sylvan Tomkins
•Shame is the affect of inferiority. No other affect is so central to one’s identity.
•No other affect feels closer to the experienced sense of self, nor more disturbing, than shame.
•To feel shame is to feel seen in a painfully diminished sense.
•The self feels exposed both to one’s own self, and to anyone else present.
•Central to the understanding of the alienating quality of the affect is that shame can be an entirely internal experience.
•Shame is felt as an interruption internally, and a rupture both internally and interpersonally.
• Thus, shame is a strong impediment to communication and contact.
•In the midst of shame, attention turns inward, thereby generating the torment of self-consciousness. Sudden and unexpected exposure, coupled with a binding inner scrutiny, characterize the essential nature of the affect of shame.
The Phenomenology of Shame
•The sense of self lives strongest in the face.
•The shame response is an immediate reduction of facial visibility, by hanging the head or lowering the eyes.
•Shame is also often accompanied by blushing, which can evoke further shame.
•Rage serves as a vital self-protective function by insulating the self against further exposure to shame.
•Variants of shame include discouragement, self-consciousness, embarrassment, shyness, and guilt.
•Humiliation is a particularly strong and damaging experience of intense and public shame.
•The humiliation and the rage often become intertwined, creating fear, confusion and hostile revenge fantasies.
•Shame obscures the capacity for the witness/observer state, and reinforces the judgments of the superego voices.
•A unique feature of shame is its capacity to attach itself to other feelings, and amplify them to the point of unmanageability.
•The wounding of shame is a result of its occurrence between the self and others who matter. Thus, the healing dynamic requires that the other once again matter to the self.
The Healing of Shame
•Healing shame requires the restoration of the of interpersonal bridge, with a person of significance.
•Process work must provide a reparative, security-giving relationship, one that is mutually wanted. This dynamic can heal shame through shared corrective and shared new experiences of identification.
•Healing shame, above all, involves relationship, not a technique or a strategy.
•Techniques and strategies can be useful, but always within the context of a human relationship.
•Shame must be interrupted, and not continuously turned in against the self.
•In the midst of a shameful feeling, one’s eyes must be re-directed from within to without, and focus it’s gaze on a responsive, available, nonjudgmental environment, and take this healing scene inside.
Healing Shame in Process Work
•Shame can only be healed in the context of a real, meaningful interpersonal connection, through authentic relationship.
•Internalized shame must be tracked back and returned to its interpersonal origins. This is where the “we”, the interpersonal relationship, was ruptured, and has gone unrepaired.
The healing occurs in the new experience, the correction to the wounding, the opportunity to open and be exposed to positive experience, which will initially be perceived as unbearable, unbelievable and intensely threatening.
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