Thanks Chris,
I guess I just wanted to make the more general point that in our culture
common usage of all the "negative" emotions is associated with the toxic
forms rather than the biologically useful forms. And that it seems arose
from the cartesian split of mind /body. I recently read that the mind and
body are both two and one. I can't recall who wrote that, I think it might
have been the Dalai Lama. I will,however, look it up sometime and give the
reference. I like that it signifies the organicity or biology of the
brain/body and emotion/reason.
Kind Regards
Anne Marie
-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Walsh [mailto:chrisjwalsh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] ;
Sent: Thursday, 3 June 2004 7:24 AM
To: ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ConstellationTalk] Forgiving versus Bowing
Thankyou Anne Marie,
your post reminds me to clarirfy. I
am not saying that to be humble that we need to feel ashamed all the time. I
am simply saying that humility is a natural consequence of a healthy
relationship with shame.
I once had a client who would either go into rage when shamed or become
depressed for a week and take to his bed oversleeping. When the latter
happened it was extremely diffficult for him to even remember the trigger of
this toxic shame. Once he identified the trigger he could deal with that
trigger and with support he could deal with the shame. He would often
recover from days of depression right in front of me in the therapy session.
Later this client began to develop healthy responses to shame:
One day he was driving with his 2 year old son as a passenger. He got
righteously angry at the inconsiderate driving of another driver and began
shouting vigorously, even though the situation had resolved. This upset his
little son who began crying. This shamed my client. The shame took all the
wind out of his anger. He was then able to redirect his energy to calming
his son.
On another occasion he was very happy and playful when his wife came home
from work. She was not in a good mood and accused him of trying to annoy
her. Again the shame took the wind out of him. He withdrew for a few minutes
and then returned to his wife and stated calmly that he hadn't been trying
to annoy her, In fact he was in a good and playful mood. She then was able
to agree that she had returned home in a rotten mood. Shame not only helped
him to come up with a good response in terms of content, but also in terms
of a calm tone of voice and in terms of timing i.e. It made him wait.
On both of these occasions a healthy response to shame allowed my client to
bow to the fate of the moment and to respond skilfully. This is how humility
can arise spontaneously out of a healthy response to shame.
hasta la vista
Chris Walsh
An Australian Constellation Website:
www.constellationflow.com
----- Original Message -----
From: Anne <mailto:amc_118@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Marie Field
To: ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, 2 June 2004 10:04 PM
Subject: RE: [ConstellationTalk] Forgiving versus Bowing
Dear Chris and Sarah,
Having read both posts and also Donald Nathanson's works, I understood what
what you (Chris) were saying in making the distinction about toxic shame and
for want of a better descriptor, " clean " shame. My issue is more with the
term humility. Does it not mean from it's root, feet on the ground or
grounded in reality or knowing ones strengths and limitations? Maybe that is
associated with shame as described by Nathanson. The head dropping and eyes
lowering of the infant when he first sees and recognises his own image in
the mirror. The shame is meant to be about a recognition of himself as seen
by others, and of whihc until the first moment he recognises himself he was
not aware. Maybe humility is that too. A kind of self conscious recognition
of or limitaions especially as perceived by others.I suppose in the case of
the constellations you speak about the bowing may signify both????? I do not
really get how it signifies humility though. As you point out Chris common
usage of the word shame is toxic shame. Is that not so true about all the
so-called negative emotions? Does it not stem from the Descartian error to
which Domasio refers?
Regards
Anne Marie
-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Walsh [mailto:chrisjwalsh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] ;
Sent: Tuesday, 1 June 2004 7:25 PM
To: ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ConstellationTalk] Forgiving versus Bowing
Dear Sarah,
the way you talk about shame suggests you are
talking about toxic shame. ("she has been .... ignored, scrubbed out,
deleted") That is common usage, but it removes us from the biology of the
emotion. It creates an articificial boundary between shame, discernment and
humility. That artificial boundary then actually keeps us bound in toxic
shame, by not allowing us to take what is good and useful from it. In fact
our concept of shame is so embedded in toxicity that it is actually painful
and shameful for most of us to admit that we feel ashamed or even
embarrassed about something. That means that much of the time our shame
remains outside of our awareness, which makes it even more difficult to deal
with. That is a terrible position as toxic shame is debilitating.
I believe that the understanding of shame is the key to discovering genuine
humility and with that the ability to fully receive support when it is
offered. This includes the ability to fully receive the gift of our life
from our parents. It is can free us from the elements of toxic shame that
most of us have embedded in our personalities, at least to some degree.
The understanding I present here is based on the works of Sylvan Tomkins and
Donald Nathanson. They describe the biology of emotions which can be
observed in preverbal infants. These early emotional responses, which they
call "affects" include anger, fear, distress, joy, excitement, disgust,
surprise and shame. They are all brief like Hellinger's primary emotions and
they all have recognisable biological responses. They all have biological
survival value. So to recapitulate my prior post:
Shame arises when there is an interruption to something that interests or
excites us. Remember the sense of deflation when you mistime trying to join
in an interesting conversation. That feeling is what I am talking about
here. It has the survival value of forcing us to withdraw our energy and
then hopefully to reassess the situation skilfully.
So shame has recognizable physical manifestations, some of which we can see
when they appear both in constellations and in life in general. Most
obviously when we are in the grip of shame we slump our head and shoulders
and find it difficult to make eye contact. This slumping is caused by an
involuntary loss of muscle tone. This same loss of tone makes us
uncoordinated and clumsy. Often we go red in the face. All these physical
components can be observed in infants.
Also our thought processes become foggy. Donald Nathanson calls this
cognitive shock. We usually feel like we want to disappear down a hole as
opposed to the desire to run away that can occur with the emotion of fear.
These cognitive components are reported consistently by adults. It is easy
to see how these biological responses put a break on our interest. One way
shame becomes toxic, is the shame compounds itself when we feel inadequate
because of the physical clumsiness and the inability to think. Realising we
are in the grip of shame is one way out of this downward spiral.
Sometimes we can elicit the emotions of anger or contempt in ourselves, as a
way of reenergizing ourselves and resisting surrendering to the shame. This
makes us feel less vulnerable but leave us with a lot of tension in our
bodies, especially around the jaw and back of the neck. It also stops the
primary emotion of shame from resolving naturally.
So shame is an unpleasant emotion. It makes us smaller. It makes us bow.
It makes us withdraw energy from something that we may have been overexcited
about. In relation to the recent discussion about forgiveness, we may be
overexcited about looking after our parents or with the false pride that
fills us when we forgive our parents from a position of arrogance. So when
we have a healthy relationship with shame it helps us to slow down when we
are overexcited, it helps us to be more skilful and it helps us to be
appropriately humble.
hasta la vista
Chris Walsh
An Australian Constellation Website:
www.constellationflow.com
----- Original Message -----
From: Sarah Moore <mailto:sarahmoore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, 1 June 2004 9:47 AM
Subject: Re: [ConstellationTalk] Forgiving versus Bowing
dear chris,
not sure i totally agree with you about your definition of shame here,
although a lot of what you say about it from this definition rings true adn
wise.
for me i understand shame as occurring when there is a percieved ignoring of
the human subjectivity of the person. as a subject a languaged living
breathing subject he or she has been (in 'objective' reality or in
'subjective' perception (psychological reality)) ignored, scrubbed out,
deleted. it may have survival value in that it is percieved as threatening
to the very existence of the subject and therefore cause so much
psychological pain that efforts to reestablish being are made with varying
success.
i feel this is different here from what you describe occurs with bowing to
one's elders or those that precede one in a lineage. far from inducing an
experience which threaten's to wipe out the subject, it affirms through
language as well as through bodily action, his or her place his or her
subjectivity and humanity within the love lineage of the family or system.
it actually contributes to subjectivity rather than detractiing from it.
humility thus is not shame, humility acknowledges other's and ourselves in
relation to them, in love and in place within the family. humility is
inclusive of our humanity as well as of others. hence it is very different
imho from shame.
perhaps semantics but i think there is an important distinction here between
what is life and living affirming (humbleness) versus what is life and
living squashing (shame). between what is protective and enhancing of our
subjectivity and place in the world and what is annihalating and dismissive
of it.
best regards to you chris and thanks for the discussion on an important
point. i'm not trying to argue for the sake of it with you over words and
meanings , i feel this is quite vital distinctions here. so please forgive
me if i disagree with you slightly, just on some language rather than the
overall gist of your meaning and intent, which i do indeed agree with.
love to all
sarah
Chris Walsh wrote:
Recently there was a discussion about forgiveness that helped me to
understand this important and difficult issue a little better. Most
contributors agreed that when someone says "I forgive" from a position of
feeling morally superior it is not helpful. As Otteline Lamet pointed out
this is often an attempt to avoid unpleasant feelings, such as rage and deep
hurt.
I am very interested in the role of shame in this process. I assume that
Otteline might include shame, among other things, under the heading of the
deep hurt which she states that people are often trying to avoid feeling
when they forgive. This has made me think about how shame is related to the
bowing we often see in constellations. These are some of my initial thoughts
on the subject. I am sure it can be explored much further.
To make myself clear here, I am not talking about the toxic shame that is a
secondary emotion and paralyses people. Rather I am talking about the much
briefer primary emotion. Shame like guilt is not really about being morally
good or bad. It seems this way, because like guilt, shame is used as a means
of socially controlling people's behaviour. In fact shame arises when there
is an interruption to something that interests or excites us. Remember the
sense of deflation when you mistime trying to join in an interesting
conversation. That feeling is what I am talking about here. It has the
survival value of forcing us to withdraw our energy and then hopefully to
reassess the situation skilfully. When it is mild, it feels like discretion.
When it is severe it feels like disgrace. When it is part of a complicated
secondary emotion it can become positively toxic
A key step in dealing with difficulties with parents is the one of
acknowledging parents' fates and maybe bowing in respect to that fate. That
puts parents' behaviour in context. Then we can become aware of the real
forces, the entanglements, that drive our blind love in these situations.
This forgiving in a state of blind love may have been the best we could do
until now. Nonetheless, we realise that our attempt to carry our parents'
pain and fate has really been misguided and inflated. So we feel embarrassed
or ashamed. We become humble So our heads spontaneously start to bow. This
is genuine humility not the humility that any intelligent person can fake if
they want to. Sometimes we can see a bow spontaneously beginning like this
in a representative in a constellation.
As we accept the shame and surrender to it, we can become open to receiving
support. It is then the tender connection with another human being that
allows us to rise out of the bow and out of the shame and reengage with
the world, & with ourselves in a new way. So then the shame has done the
job that it has meant to do. We have now become disentangled from the toxic
dance of blind love. Shame/humility has created space for grace to enter,
for love to enter and for life itself to enter.
hasta la vista
Chris Walsh
An Australian Constellation Website:
www.constellationflow.com
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