Feelings of guilt and shame

Published 19.11.2023 | By Йосиф

Post Views: 5

Feelings of guilt and shame: how something appears in the psyche that shouldn’t be there

Recently, the topic of guilt and shame has been popping up more and more often at work during consultations. And I finally decided to formalize in the form of an article what I often say at my seminars and consultations.
Have you ever met any animal in the wild that feels shame or guilt?
For example, a cat that apologizes to you for its color? Or, say, a horse with an inferiority complex?
I’ve never had a chance. And the person somehow managed to acquire these “wonderful” feelings. However, with prolonged contact with a person, I do not exclude that animals will also become complacent.
How does the feeling of guilt and shame arise?
The fact is that in the natural state we all have unconditional value. That is, we are valuable simply because we exist. Simply so. Without any conditions.
We are all necessary for the life of the whole: nature, the universe, the cosmos (call it what you want). There are no senseless and useless creatures in nature.
If we were born, then the whole needs us. This is a systemic law of existence.
We may not understand our purpose, our role, but this does not make us meaningless. Not understanding something doesn’t mean that it doesn’t make sense.
That is why we react so painfully when they try to suppress and devalue us. They tell us that we are not OK. That something is wrong with us, that we need to be remade (and not revealed), changed (and not given the opportunity to be realized), rebuilt to fit someone else’s framework (and not help us learn how to interact), prove to us that we are wrong (and not try to understand us).
What really happens at such moments
Let’s call a spade a spade: We are being killed as We are. They deny the significance and value of our existence.
Aggression is shown to us, it can be disguised as love, care, best wishes and good intentions, but the essence does not change from this.
Disguised aggression misleads our consciousness and we let these attacks into the unconscious.
And a completely natural reaction to this aggression is not guilt or shame at all.
The natural reaction is fear and anger.
The natural reaction manifests itself as: strike – strike first, kill first, strike first, run – hide, hide, escape, freeze-pretend to be dead so as not to feel pain.
But, we are people. Socialized to the most indecent place of our body. And therefore: it is impossible to be angry, it is impossible to feel fear (to run away). That’s just the freeze reaction (another reaction of the body to fear) – it seems to be socially approved.
By the way, a freezing reaction is dangerous with its consequences (during it, the energy for flight or strike is somehow preserved in the body so that at a convenient moment you can either get away or attack).
So when we exit it, we will still encounter energy to attack or escape. And using it is a social taboo! Ay-ay-ay. You can’t!
Women, when exiting the fading reaction, break into hysteria (the body needs to lose excess energy). Men can start to shake.
And this is no longer possible. Society tells us this indecently. Taboo.
And here our mind obligingly offers us sublimation.
A kind of imp who, with lackeyish helpfulness, tells us: “Would you like to replace socially indecent reactions with quite so-so quiet and peaceful ones?”
And we say, “Yes, yes, of course. We are well-mannered people. People – with a capital letter Liu”
Well, then let’s change your anger (aggression, desire to attack) and fear (desire to run away) into, respectively: a sense of shame, because to be angry and attack is a violation of other people’s borders, it is indecent and a sense of guilt, because to feel fear is to admit that the enemy is stronger than you, to admit that you are weaker, that you couldn’t defend your boundaries. So it’s your fault.
And we agree. The trap was closed. The energy generated to defend its borders (to attack) or to survive (escape) is preserved in the body.
And this introject is called – a sense of guilt or a sense of shame. Often both. Wholesale, so to speak. They sell us these feelings for cheap on credit for many years and at high interest rates.
What to do?
As long as we work with a sense of guilt or shame, we are practically doomed to defeat. They are masks. Masks hiding fear and aggression.
The most difficult thing is to face your fear and accept your aggression.
Fear has many faces. It’s physical. It is associated with a real danger that our unconscious experienced sometime in the past (maybe in childhood, maybe in the ancestral past). Fear is afraid of itself – it blocks our memory so that images that can remind us of the event do not pop up.
Aggression is a force directed there, in the past. Where there was real danger.
Therefore, until we realize the origins of our fear (imprint), which marked the beginning of our fear and aggression, we are vulnerable to feelings of guilt and shame.
Having realized this, it is possible to relive the very first imprint that initiated the trauma in psychological work anew and with resources.
Awareness occurs most often in the form of working with metaphorical images – it does not matter how much they relate to reality. It is important that the body responds to these images by recognizing its fear. And then it will be possible to go there again, but already armed with support and resources.
Thus, we give ourselves a chance to look into the eyes of our deepest fears (esotericists would call it in words: corruption, generic curse).
By the way, fear may well be generic. Our past is such that every second has grandparents who survived wars, famine, concentration camps, murders motivated by betrayal, envy, revenge.
Our ancestors acted in different roles: both victims and aggressors. And all this bears an imprint in our DNA, being updated at the first opportunity.
The first opportunity, as a rule, is aggression against us. Even if it is disguised as love and concern for our well-being and is manifested by our parents, husbands-wives, friends and colleagues.
The body instantly remembers fear and anger (hit, run and freeze are often actualized simultaneously and instantly, creating confusion for consciousness. It does not understand what is happening and where it came from). Voluntarily consciousness will not go into those imprints that it wants to forget, hush up, ignore. 9olga Guseva.)
And in a situation of aggression – do not get away from the signals of the body. But even here the consciousness gets out of it: it offers to reassign fear and anger – with guilt and shame.
And it seems like there is no need to remember those first imprints, situations of fright, anger and bewilderment. After all, nothing terrible is happening now. You’re just not OK. You need to remake yourself, then you will stop being ashamed. If you ask for forgiveness and redeem yourself, you will be forgiven and accepted. If you prove your okness, they will recognize you.
In the meantime: work on yourself, change, prove “that you are not a camel”, try to please and please – in general, play by the rules.
A client in psychotherapy will “cherish guilt and shame”, since “monsters from overseas”, “outlandish animals”, terrible fears, unprecedented anger, a life-and-death battle are hiding under them.
In these depths lives unprecedented loneliness, death, betrayal, rejection, helplessness, despair and hopelessness. In this dungeon, the wounded unconscious languishes, as a rule, in the image of a small and helpless child who is faced with a situation that turned out to be frightening and scary for him. When all the defenses failed. When something irreparable happened.
This is how the wounded part of the unconscious sees this situation. But it scares the conscious mind even more, burdened with social stereotypes.
A sense of guilt and shame as something appears in the psyche that should not be there.
If you often experience guilt or shame in your life, then ask yourself:
“What am I really afraid of? What scares me about this relationship, what scares me about this person? What outrages me in this relationship, what exactly causes my anger? What do these relationships remind me of that I would not like to allow into my consciousness? Does this relationship remind me of my own aggression towards someone? Or about my weakness, vulnerability and helplessness in something, fear of something?”
You may notice that relationships in which you feel guilty or ashamed indicate to you some deep fear of yours. Or to some experience in the past, when you yourself behaved like an aggressor, violating other people’s borders.
By closing the imprint, closing the trauma, we are freed from the avoidance of fear and aggression. We no longer need to hide behind masks of guilt and shame. We release our energy, preserved long ago in our body. We gain access to the management of our anger and fear.
In fact, we gain access to inner freedom and flexibility.
We are getting wiser. We accept both our strength and our weakness. We accept our nature and our own level of development.
Yes, somewhere we are stronger, and somewhere we are weaker. Yes, somewhere we are predators, and somewhere we are victims of other predators. Yes, life is unpredictable and we all run around the everyday savannah.
But at the same time, we have contact with both our strength and our fear. They are our two guardian angels. One helps to fight where it is necessary to fight; the second – suggests where it is necessary to evade the battle.
And at the same time – we are something much more. We can become aware of ourselves, grow, develop, become more human. (taken on fB. Archisomatic page).

http://espavo.ning.com/profiles/blogs/3776235:BlogPost:2250907

Leave a Reply Cancel reply