Is tension the problem?

We can all agree that shame keeps us stuck. We know this to be true, right? That shame does not, by and large, bring about change?

If I look for a theme amongst my clients, it’s not in what I refer to as their primary feelings. People find my theoretical-couch for a myriad of reasons: traumatic pasts, difficult relationships, a desire for deeper understanding of themselves. Instead, the theme is revealed in the secondary feeling. This is the feeling we usually broach in the second half of the session, the feeling that comes up almost immediately following a full expression of the primary feeling.

That secondary feeling, you may ask? Shame.

Think of something you’re having a hard time with right now. Maybe it’s a financial situation, maybe it’s a fight with a family member, maybe it’s your pattern of hyper-vigilance. Now, identify the feeling word associated with it. If you follow that first feeling through to its natural end, is there another feeling after that? Is there a sort of follow-up thought about how this thing is… embarrassing? Wrong?

Even the idea that the feeling is worth seeking therapeutic help over, is an indication of at least some shame and tension with the feeling. 

In my opinion that is the (very small) functional zone for shame. Shame’s best quality is that it reminds us what is important to us. It reminds us how we’d like to behave, and can bring us back to our morals.

Is this thing not in alignment with how I want to carry myself? Was that a mistake I made, one I have to take accountability for? 

And beyond that? Our resistance with the primary feeling is, I think, the very thing reinforcing it. The nature of wrestling with it all. I’m not quite sure how to explain it energetically, (maybe something about the law of attraction), but I’ll get back to you on that.

The crux of these thoughts is: to grow, to enact meaningful change, I almost believe those processes actually require us to welcome and create space for the very thing we’re seeking to shed.