There is an old adage: live and learn. This is the first half of life experience.
The first half of life is the work of shaping and expression. The infant already has many forces that have
shaped her at birth. There are inherited
traits of her family going back into the distant past. There are the influences from the womb. The infant does not enter the world an
unshaped lump of psychological, physical or spiritual clay. There are many experiences in the womb such
as loud noises or chemicals released by or passed through the mother’s that
shape the growing fetus.
Once born the child’s most important task in the early years is
learning how to fit in. Her humanness
has many needs that are seeking to be fulfilled. There are the obvious ones of protection and
feeding. There are the very important
human ones of nurture, guidance and being important. Her family environment teaches her what she
must do to get those needs met. What she
learns is what things are significant, how that significance effects her, and
how to express what is significant to her.
She also learns the other side of fitting in. In learning to adapt her needs, she may have
to tone down, warp or even hide her young self.
The developing child learns meaning.
She learns meaning so that she can survive. Some of this meaning is fairly straight
forward physical survival information. It is the kind that warns that a fire is
hot. It also teaches what responses her
cries for food, attention, fear, or frustration will get. It is teaching her
how to belong to her family.
Most of us spend the first half of life verifying what we have
learned. We seek and/or create
environments and people that confirm this early shaping.
Learn and live” of the second half of life is not an easy
job. Nor does it every end. As we experience our patterns, we must learn
“how we got to be the way we are”. What
are the many experiences, often mercifully buried, that shaped our young
ego. As we learn how we were molded at
the same time we must learn “how we are”.
This is different than the shaping influences. “How we are” is the expression of our early
adaptations in the first half of life.
It is interesting to note that there are usually three to seven
primary experiences that act as themes for our ego expression. We may have been beaten every day of our life
but there is one beating that is the defining theme of that experience and how
we assimilated it into our self image.
It is each of these three to seven thematic experiences that we must
meet and grieve to learn in the second half of life.
These early shapings are the source of brain chatter. It is the dos and don’ts of adaptation that
keep the human animal within the bounds of acceptable behavior. With illumination we bring to consciousness
the themes and energy behind the patterns of our behaviour. This is a necessary first step.
Illumination is not fault finding in its orientation. It is critical and gentle assessment. For example when assessing anger it is
examined in various ways. How do I display or not display anger? What were my childhood models for anger? Was there a rageful person in the past that
made anger displays a non choice because of a wish to not emulate and/or a fear
of display? Was it a home where anger
(or any emotions) was proscribed? What
happens with angry thoughts? Is there
guilt? Is there shame? If anger does not come out straight how does
it display? Which of my behaviors are
sideways expressions of anger? How has
my anger and other’s anger influenced my relationships? If there was no good role model for anger
what are a my personal, acceptable expressions of anger? How do a I learn to practice these
expressions?
Illumination work encompasses all of our patterns. How do I
control my world? All life needs to have
a sense of control or efficacy. Are
there moods that I use? Do I fail
inorder to succeed or the reverse? How
do I define my territory? All life
defines territory if no other way than occupying a space. What displays do I do
to indicate when my territory is invaded?
How close is intimate, personal, social?
What did I learn about sex, sexuality and sensuality?
How we got the way we are is one component of illumination. We must also learn how we are. This is very difficult to do alone. We need a trusted environment and trusted
others to be mirrors for us. It is the
old trees for the forest problem. If we
can know that the feedback is in the now and not put someone else’s face (for
example a mother) on the person giving the information then we are on our way
to learning our old patterns and beginning new patterns.
This is hard work. We were
shaped at a very young age. The breadth
and depth of awareness and development of the emotions were very immature. As new behaviors are attempted there are
screams of protest and covert sabotage from our early shaping in the name of
survival. The adaptations established were put in place at a very young
immature age and they were design to meet at least minimally the requirements
of the environment that allowed the child to get its needs met.
Energy constantly follows thru and around us. When we are wounded - when our love is
imageless - when our hope is dammed - when our dance is bound then the energy
does not flow. Two birds are hatched in
our chest. The one flies with a broken
wing. The other hides in the nest afraid
to fly.
Hiding in the nest we hold dreams of goodness and fantasies of
loud applause as we would soar. The
broken wing flier goes in circles; so the world always looks and feels the same. We learn to fly this way. This is how flying is done. When flying is not done this way we fear
falling. The world must always look the
same or . . . ! ! ??
The point to the two birds is that our adaptations are the
circling bird. Who essentially maintains
the wounds. We in some ways selectively
live in situations that keep us circling.
Why should the child within (the bird hiding in the nest) trust you the
adult who continues to apply the constraints and “abuses” and continues to
exist in situations that apply these constraints and “abuses.” So we must make friends with ourselves. Learn to trust ourselves.
The true move for healing is switching our feelings of shame to
feelings of guilt. Then we are dealing
with our behavior and not our personhood.
With shame changed to guilt we can do things that atone for the behavior
and begin to have a deeper sense of belonging.
We may also decide that the behavior is not one to feel guilty about;
that the making the behavior negative was someone else’s problem and the
behavior is a natural and acceptable part of ourself. We can learn to accept mistakes, weaknesses,
and inabilities as well as our gifts and abilities.
We do not change. I think
we can face our devils and neutralize them by moving shame to guilt which is
impowering because then it becomes behavior.
I think we can learn that what was our onus is also our gift and learn
to use it as such. I think we can
release some of the early energy tied up in wounds so we are can be more
childlike and not childish. But I don't
think our essence or the early shaping of it can change. We become aware. We move from the powerful shapings of
self-talk and shame to the choices of mature self reflection.
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SHAME
Shame
is a critical part of our humanness.
Shame can be looked at as a feeling of not belonging, of exclusion from
the group. For a highly and
imperatively social animal, our lifelong development of attachment/bonding is
pivotal to belonging. We have a
genetically based need to find structure, process and meaning within a social
context that arises from both our evolutionary path and the very composition of
our information processing. It is an
interplay of biology, language, family, society, culture, and cosmology. It is a dynamic, ongoing, relational process
within ourselves and with others.
It is
important to understand the core of shame is not belonging. As a totally social animal, not belonging is
a powerful motivator. As example,
shame arises when we, as children, have no socially acceptable release for our
natural frustration/anger. Or where our
natural feelings of flight manifest as fear or terror are condemned. Shame is the feeling that arises when a
behavior that is manifesting a naturally occurring internal state invokes the
social response of disgust; of being cast out; of not belonging.
With the social response
imprinted very early on our basic survival patterns, self- consciousness acts
to maintain a sense of shame whenever the disallowed internal experience
occurs. This is often below awareness
because recognition of this aspect of our self is a threat to belonging; hence
to survival.
Shame’s
counterpart is guilt. Guilt arises from the disapproval of our behavior as
opposed to rejection of our personhood.
When guilt occurs, a way is taught for rectifying our error and for the
acceptable expression (no matter how convoluted) of our experience within the
social context. Guilt provides a process
for continued membership in the group.
In this way it provides continued support for the “traditional” patterns
of socially accepted behavior.
Shame and guilt are decidedly
different experiences. Guilt offers
continued membership while shame banishes. The pathway to human belonging is
channeled and powered by these two emotions of reference that arise through the
functioning of self-consciousness. I
believe these two emotions of reference are primary in the processes of
personal and social change.
(The
concept of emotions of reference comes from Lewis, Michael. 1992. Shame-The
Exposed Self. The Free Press. N.Y.)
A few readings:
Gilbert, Paul and Andrews,
B. 1998.
Shame: Interperson Behavior, Psycholpathology, and Culture. Oxford U. Press. Oxford.
Lewis, H.B. 1987. The
Role of Shame in Symptom Formation.
Eribaum Ass. Hillsdale, N.J.
Lewis, H.B. 1971. Shame
and Guilt in Neurosis. International
University Press. N.Y.
Lewis, Michael. 1992. Shame-The
Exposed Self. The Free Press. N.Y.
Lynd, Helen Merrell. 1965. On
Shame and the Search for Identity.
Science Editions. N.Y.
Peristiany, J. G. 1966. Honour
and Shame. University of Chicago
Press. Chicago.
Scheff, T. and Retzinger,
S. 1991. Emotions and Violence: Shame
and Rage in Destructive Conflicts. Lexington Books. Massachusetts>
Schieffelin, C. 1985.
"Anger, Grief, and Shame: Toward a Kaluli
Ethnopsychology." In Person,
Self, and Experience. Edited by G.
M. White and J. Kirkpatrick. Univ. of
California Press. Berkeley.
Schneider, Carl. 1977. Shame,
Exposure, Privacy. Beacon. Boston.
Sroufe, L. Alan. 1995. Emotional
development: the organization of emotional life in the early years. Cambridge U.
N.Y. Page 68 for 18 month old
shame.
Tangney, June and Fischer,
Kurt; editors. 1995. Self-Conscious Emotions: The Psychology of
Shame, Guilt, Embarrassment, and Pride.
Guilford. N.Y.
On the bioeconomics of shame and guilt
Klaus Jaffe, Astrid Flórez, Marcos Manzanares, Rodolfo Jaffe, Cristina M. Gomes, Daniel Rodríguez, Carla Achury
http://atta.labb.usb.ve/Klaus/art202.pdf
Abstract
Shame has biological
roots, possibly enhancing trust, favoring social cohesion. We studied
bioeconomic aspects of shame and guilt using three approaches:
1—Anthropo-linguistic studies of Guilt and Shame among the Yanomami, a culturally isolated
traditional tribal society; 2—Estimates of the importance different languages
assign to the concepts Shame, Guilt, Pain, Embarrassment, Fear and Trust, counting the number of synonyms listed by
Google Translate; 3—Quantitative correlations between this linguistic data with
socioeconomic indexes. Results showed that Yanomami is unique in having
overlapping synonyms for Shame, Fear and Embarrassment. No
language had overlapping synonyms for Shame andGuilt. Societies previously described as “Guilt Societies” have more synonyms for Guilt than for Shame. A large majority of languages, including
those from societies previously described as “Shame Societies”, have more words
for Shame than for Guilt. The number of synonyms for Guilt and Shame strongly
correlated with estimates of corruption, ease of doing business and governance,
but not with levels of interpersonal trust. We propose that cultural evolution
of shame has continued the work of biological evolution, but its adaptive
advantageto society is still unclear. Results suggest that recent
cultural evolution must be responsible for the relationship between the levels
of corruption of a society and the number of synonyms for Guilt and Shame in its language. This opens a novel window for
the study of complex interactions between biological and cultural evolution of
cognition and emotions, which might help broaden our insight into bioeconomics.
