Shame is a really impossible emotion. *it takes a lot for me to draw a circle around one emotion and call it out as being good or bad.. because all emotions act as guides to our (unmet) needs, and therefore hold a ton of value as maps. But, shame... is a really shitty emotion. I'm always knocked on my ass by the damage shame does to people and for how much it distorts the world around them. so when we get to dismantling it... its a low velocity process, as in.... one brick at a time. Shame is the improvised explosive device of emotions.
And there's stuff underneath it. Usually some kind of pure affective experience, a lot of it is preverbal... it can't be broken down with words or given a narrative that makes the feelings digestible, or part of a something from which some greater meaning can be found. Shame just comes out in some huge chunks of feeling and it takes some fearless skilled hands to get to it. Getting through the shame is a deep piece of work.
