Hello Constellation Community
It has been interesting reading about shame the whole week - thank you Vinay
for raising this topic. I think it is important to acknowledge not only our
own shame as facilitators but also that we all deal with our shame in different
ways according to our own conditioning and family history. And to notice how
our Western culture holds so much shame which then gets covered up by
addictions or constant striving for perfection or some other coping mechanism.
I have been recently very interested and touched by Dr Mate Gabor’s work on
shame and addiction.
I have copied excerpts from a forum where he posted some comments on this topic
of SHAME which I have shared below. If you want to read the whole forum it is
here:
http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,34415.msg537375.html#msg537375
Gabor writes: We always think that shame is about doing something wrong and
we're ashamed of it. But in fact shame begins long before there's any idea of
doing anything wrong. Shame is not primarily an emotion, it doesn't begin as
an emotion. What it is really is an activation of a certain part of the
nervous system called the [?], which makes everything go slack. So, in a shame
state your neck falls, your head falls, your eyes look away and you're like
this (demonstrates a hunched over position). This is the shame state.
Now you can induce shame in a 9-month old baby who's got no concept of having
done anything wrong. And how do you induce a shame reaction in an infant is
that if the mother and the infant look into each other's eyes and the mother
looks away, the infant goes into a shame state. So shame primarily has to do
with loss of contact with those that you need to be in contact with. Later on,
the concept of 'you're losing contact because you're doing something wrong'
gets grafted into it, because sometimes parents have to shame their kids and
sometimes it's good that the kid goes slack, e.g. when the kid is about to jump
off the kitchen table or do something bad and you yell at them 'Don't do that!'
Then they won't hurt themselves.
But when you've done that you've broken the contact between you and the kid.
(...) If the parent does not rebuild that interpersonal bridge that's just
been broken, then the child begins to feel that there's something wrong with
him inherently. So, sometimes we have to shame our kids in a sense of a quick
breakage of a relationship just in order to stop some unacceptable or dangerous
behaviour. But then if we make the kid believe that there's something wrong
with them, then the shame state becomes ingrained and that shame state is a
state of isolation, which is of course the worst thing a human being can
experience, because contact is the biggest need that we have. So, shame goes
back a really long way into preverbal days and it's toxic.
Although shame is an emotion that is closely related to guilt, it is important
to understand the differences. Shame can be defined as "a painful emotion
caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or impropriety."[3] Others have
distinguished between the two by indicating that "We feel guilty for what we
do. We feel shame for what we are."[4] Shame is often a much stronger and more
profound emotion than guilt. "Shame is when we feel disappointed about
something inside of us, our basic nature."[5] Both shame and guilt can have
intensive implications for our perceptions of self and our behaviour toward
other people, particularly in situations of conflict.
(...)
Shame, on the other hand, emphasizes what is wrong with ourselves. It has a
much more inward focus, and as such, leads shameful parties to feel poorly
about themselves, rather than simply the actions they have taken. The result is
often an inward-turning behaviour -- avoiding others, hiding your face,
removing yourself from social situations.Therefore, shame can be problematic,
as it is often less constructive than guilt. In fact, shame can lead to
withdrawal from social situations and a subsequent defensive, aggressive, and
retaliatory behaviour, which only exacerbates conflict, rather than alleviating
it.[6]
Shame can also lead to other types of behaviour, many of which serve little or
no constructive role. People cope with shame in many ways. However, few get at
the actual source of the emotion. The following is a list of common
shame-driven behaviours:
- Attacking or striking out at other people. In an attempt to feel better
about their shame, people will oftentimes strike out at others in the hopes
that they will be lifted up by bringing others down. While this behaviour may
produce short-tehrm relief from shame, in the long term shame is only
strengthened -- in both parties -- and nothing is done to get at the root of
the problem.
- Seeking power and perfection. Others attempt to overcome their shame by
preventing the possibility of future shame. One way in which they do this is by
aiming for perfection -- a process that inevitably fails and causes more
problems. Another manner in which people cope is by seeking power, which makes
them feel more valuable.
- Diverting blame. By blaming our faults or problems on others, we can avoid
guilt and shame. However, like the previous responses, doing this fails to get
at the core problems and as a result, fails to achieve its purpose.
- Being overly nice or self-sacrificing. People sometimes compensate for
feelings of shame or unworthiness by attempting to be exceptionally nice to
others. By pleasing everyone else, we hope to prove our worth. However, this
inevitably involves covering up our true feelings, which is, once again,
self-defeating.
- Withdrawal. By withdrawing from the real world, we can essentially numb
ourselves to the feelings of guilt and shame so that we are no longer upset by
these sorts of things. Again, nothing has been done to address the core issues
of the problem.[7]
While each of these actions may provide temporary relief, the long term effects
are often negative, and the result is the passing on of guilt or shame to
others.[8]
Maria Dolenc
0425 277 279
mariadolenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
www.mariadolenc.com.au
On 16 Mar 2016, at 6:44 pm, Steve Vinay Gunther spirited@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[ConstellationTalk] <ConstellationTalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I am pleased at the discussion that has ensued, and think there are many
important things here to explore.
To clarify, one of my originating concerns is the use of shame by
constellation facilitators - for instance, in response to a student asking
about something in the discussion afterwards about a constellation, being
told emphatically that it was a ‘stupid question’.
And yes, there is much shame that emerges in people’s trauma, and that can
therefore get processed in constellations in a healing way.
And, there are also issues of the way constellations are done, and taught.
This overlaps with a wider issue of the practice of psychotherapy. One of the
things that has been learned over the last 50 years is that confrontative
styles of therapy can result in clients experiencing shame. Constellation
facilitators have a range of styles, some of these lean towards the more
confrontative. And because constellation facilitators often assume some
degree of interpretive authority, this can lead to clients/students feeling
exposed in ways which can evoke shame.
The educational consensus these days is that shame not good for learning, yet
some philosophies of experiential learning (including those held by some
constellation facilitators) see that students need to be ‘woken up’ in some
way, and that at times doing that sharply is in service of helping them break
through limited identities or stuck ways of thinking.
In some ways this references contrasting philosophical positions in the field
- such as say that of differentiation and attachment theory. The latter is
more focused on people’s context, their limited circumstances, and their
needs, while the former is more focused on autonomy, choice, self support and
the painfulness needed sometimes for growth. You can see some of these
philosophical threads in constellation theory and practice.
Robert Lee has some particularly good writing on shame - e.g. The Voice of
Shame
(http://www.amazon.com/Voice-Shame-Connection-Psychotherapy-Institute/dp/0881632821/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1458113440&sr=8-2&keywords=robert+lee+shame
<http://www.amazon.com/Voice-Shame-Connection-Psychotherapy-Institute/dp/0881632821/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1458113440&sr=8-2&keywords=robert+lee+shame>).
His orientation is that shame monitors and results from a spectrum, from
isolation and exposure on one hand, and community and support on the other.
Growth often requires exposure, but too much can lead to the emergence of
shame - which is a social indicator to pull back. In that sense only shame is
simply a source of information. But of course, repeated experiences of shame,
especially when accompanied by abuse, entanglements etc, lead to shame
becoming a completely toxic experience - a sense that ‘something is wrong
with me’. Mild forms are experienced as embarrassment, which of course is not
necessarily toxic, but this easily escalates with the degree of exposure or
isolation into full blown shame.
I think one thing that is significant is the need for facilitators to be
aware of shame dynamics, in the process of clients exposure. There is much
about the constellation process which reduces this, including the use of
representatives and the resulting collectivity of the process. However, its
something to watch out for certainly, as it can shut things down very quickly.
Chris’ view of shame as having appropriate and potentially ‘dampening’
qualities I think is fraught. If I think back to instances where I have
experienced shame in my life, including with other professionals (the very
well taken point about the fraughtness of peer supervision for instance that
was made), they are always instances of some degree of trauma, and
unfortunately they tend to be passed on. So if a therapist does something
that triggers a client’s shame, its easy for the therapist to feel shame
themselves (even if nothing is said), and then displace that in unconscious
ways back onto the client, leading to what Lee refers to as a shame spiral.
This also happens in couples relationships.
This is also what is potentially fraught about any exericise of authority.
Doctors and mental health professionals - for instance those who perform
assessments - who maintain a very vertical stance can often inadvertently
shame clients. So to the degree to which constellation works moves away from
the safety of the phenomenological, towards for instance interpretive
authority, this can become a danger.
I certainly think that awareness of these dynamics at all levels is
important, and good to talk about with each other.
Vinay
