The Purpose of Emotion and the Role of Shame

Imagine you and I are walking down the street. We walk past somebody who comments on your shoes. "I like your shoes," they say.

 

"Thank you," you reply. All of a sudden the individual hurriedly pushes you down and immediately unties and takes your shoes. 

 

How would you feel?

 

What would you do?

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How would you WANT me to feel? 

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What would you WANT me to do?

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Imagine I just stand there. In amusement. And do nothing. With curiosity I smile and comment, "Oh, you're taking my friend's shoes. They are nice shoes. They would look good on you. Oh, you are putting them on. You're leaving with my friend's shoes." As they run off, I yell, "Have a good day! NICE TO MEET YOU!"

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Emotion has a purpose

Emotion has a purpose. There is a valid reason for what you feel when you feel. You might not understand or realize in the moment what the purpose is, but underneath everything you feel is a valid reason. A quick study of the etymology of the word emotion, you will come to find that it means "to move" or "to move out."

 

Emotion is neither good or bad. Emotion is simply information to tell us how to move. Different emotions may feel better than some. Happiness feels better than sadness. Feeling accepted by friends feels better than humiliation. Yet, there is nothing inherently bad or wrong about the emotions we feel. Each emotion we feel is information for our bodies to tell us how to move in order to meet a need. 

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Sadness tells us that we need comfort or to grieve. 

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Fear tells us that we need safety. 

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Anger tells us that something that just happened is not okay and needs to be made right. In other words we need justice. 

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In the scenario above where someone pushes you down and takes your shoes, you would certainly feel anger. I would also feel anger for you. You would want me to feel angry, too! It's not okay for someone to push another person and take their shoes. My hands would clench. My heart would race. My breathing would get more shallow and become slightly erratic. My pupils would dilate, focusing on only the immediate threat in front of me, possibly even to exclusion of you laying on the ground, and the blood in my body would funnel to my organs in order to prepare me to fight. My body is telling me "you need justice and an immediate threat is at hand...fight!"

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Fear is information for our bodies to tell us our livelihood is being threatened and we need safety. In the middle part of our brain is a structure called the amygdala, which acts as a sort of smoke alarm alerting us to threat. The amygdala communicates with another part of our brain called the hippocampus, which deals with memory, and like a database, scans for past memories associated with what threat is at hand to see if what we are seeing should be a threat. If what we are seeing is something we have experienced before, our hippocampus affirms the threat and sends a message to another structure in our brain called the hypothalamus, triggering the cascade of neurochemicals, namely adrenaline and cortisol, throughout our body stimulating our body to move. Our hands might shake. Our legs might shake. We might hold our breath. In turn we may then feel an urgent sense to run. In the same sense we run inside at the sound of thunder and the sight of lightning in the midst of an oncoming thunderstorm, we run towards shelter and away from threat. 

 

Sadness tells us that we have experienced a loss, we feel hurt and we need comfort.  The loss can be big or it can be small. A big loss of course can be the loss of a loved one, or moving away from a friend, or a breakup with a romantic partner. Naturally, other losses we feel can seem big but not equate to the same category of a loss of a loved one, such as our favorite pair of jeans no longer fitting or having suddenly developed a rip. We experience small losses as well that trigger a sad response. Our spouse talks to us sharply and we feel criticized. A friend chooses to spend time with another friend instead of us and we feel rejected. What we expect and anticipate falls through and disappointment ensues. Silly as it may seem compared to a big loss, small losses are those where something important to us has been taken away and symbolize significant value. Our self-esteem, our dignity, our confidence, feeling heard, feeling acknowledged, feeling cared for, feeling accepted and embraced are all emotional needs or constructs that we hold important and keep close. What we hold important and keep close, we also aim to protect. When what we hold important is taken away, we feel hurt and sad, leading our bodies to communicate the need for comfort. 

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Emotion has a cycle

Emotion has a cycle and will come and go if we allow ourselves to feel it, listen to its message and fulfill the need it aims to meet.. If you've ever stood and looked over an ocean, far out in the distance waves will appear to slowly build up movement as it moves toward land. As it moves closer and closer, the waves will grow bigger and bigger until they reach a natural rise and peak only to fall, crash and dissipate back into the ocean. Emotions are like waves out in an ocean. They, too, have a natural build-up, rise and peak, and will fall and dissipate...as long as we allow ourselves to feel the emotion and satisfy the emotional need our body is telling us that needs met. 

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What happens when we choose not to feel or we choose not to listen to the emotion's message? The emotion has to go somewhere. If we choose not to feel or if we choose to dismiss meeting the emotional need, the emotion can get stuck in our body, or it may come out sideways in maladaptive ways that can feel disrespectful towards others or even ourselves. 

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Shame's Response

When you buy a new vehicle, that vehicle has a valuation that states how much the vehicle is worth according to its market. Once you buy the vehicle, the moment you begin to drive it, the vehicle begins to "depreciate," meaning it begins losing value. Dings, scratches, hail damage, rips, tears, broken parts all depreciate the value of a vehicle, leading to a lower resale value. This is the notion of shame. 

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In life we experience hundreds of events in a single day. Some events are big. Some events are small. We wake up and in turning off our alarm we accidentally drop our phone on the floor. In walking from the kitchen to the living room we slightly trip and run into the wall. Our crush walks by us in the hallway of our school and smiles. A friend tells us they hate us and no longer want to be our friend. We read into a text message a different message than what was intended. We find out the gender of our firstborn child. Or we find out that our friends are expecting despite last year we ourselves miscarried. Each event no matter the significance communicates a message to us about who we are...whether we have value or we don't. 

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When we experience events that communicate that we don't have value, shame naturally occurs. Events can include...

• trauma, abuse, misuse, and neglect

• discipline or correction

• conflicts

• separations

• misattunement

• misinterpretations or misreadings of facial expression, intentions, social cues, body language

• misunderstandings

• feeling overlooked or dismissed

• not being seen, heard, noticed, acknowledged, known, embraced

• rejection

• criticism

• blame

• ridicule

• evaluation

• judgement

• feeling alone and isolated

• abandonment

• betrayals

• differences in goals, wishes, affective states, interests

 

​Most of us know what it feels like to feel "too much" or "not enough."  We've been told that we are "too loud" or "too quiet," "too sensitive," or "too dramatic." Shame is a neurobiological response that we physiologically experience all throughout our body when events communicate that we are "less than." Shame says...

• I am bad

• I am not good

• I have no worth or value (or little worth or value)

• I am unlovable

• I am someone no one likes

• I am not good enough

• I am not enough

• I can’t

• I am ineffective

• Something is wrong with me

• I am defective

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In a sense shame depreciates. Yet, we are not built to feel "less than," and when we do, it produces an emotional response that includes not only shame but also sadness that needs grieving, anger that acts to protect, and fear that works to seek safety and security. However, shame defends, shame protects, shame hides behind a shield that we shelter behind. 

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It feels too vulnerable to tell our spouse the way they talked to us felt too critical. How do you risk letting yourself be hurt again after feeling rejected by an ex-boyfriend? How do you tell your parents that you feel overwhelmed by their pressure to perform at school when you already don't feel good enough? 

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Acknowledging wrongs. Accepting hard truths about ourselves. Initiating relational repair. Owning mistakes. Working through misunderstandings. 

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All require vulnerability.

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When risk appears too great when we already feel less than, shame creates a block that keeps emotion from completing its cycle. Nevertheless, emotion must go somewhere. When we don't allow the emotion to run its course and allow it "to move out," the emotion either turns inward, reinforcing even more shame, deepening our shame core, or we develop maladaptive behaviors that run the risk of hurting others or even ourselves.

We...

• Rage

• Get big

• Get small

• Blow up

• Shrink

• Hide

• Attack

• Criticize

• Blame

• Deflect

• Lie

• Steal

• Conceal

• Deceive

• Control

• Distract

• Avoid

• Isolate

  ...whatever will protect while simultaneously attempting to meet our need, albeit physical or emotional or relational, with little to no risk of exposure or vulnerability.

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We learn early on what is safe and what is unsafe, as well as how to protect ourselves. Each experience teaches us to either approach or avoid vulnerability. To work through conflict or to sweep it under the rug. Will we be met with embrace or will we be rejected? Will you look down on me with judgment if we disagree, or will you listen and try to understand my perspective? If we disagree, how will I know you will still be there for me? Will you leave if things get too hard? Our experiences in relationships past and present create the climate in which vulnerability can grow and flourish or shame deepens, causing even greater blockage.

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Small doses of shame is a good thing, however. When we feel shame, we feel what others feel when we hurt them. We need to feel what others feel in order to avoid harming others or putting ourselves above "other." Hidden deep in our limbic system are brain structures called mirror neurons, which act as...you guessed it...mirrors if you will. It is what allows us to see ourselves in others, to learn from others and to feel what others feel. Healthy amounts of shame teach us what others feel and lead to feelings of guilt. Guilt pushes us towards others, while shame pushes us away from others. Shame says "I am something bad," while guilt says, "I did something bad." Healthy amounts of shame leading to feelings of guilt results in relational repair...to acknowledge what we did, the effect it had on the other person, and to making a commitment to doing things differently in order to ensure connection. Simply because we, too, know what it feels like to feel hurt.

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How to Unblock

Rare it is to grow up having parents who modulated our feelings of shame in such a way that lead to guilt without creating a deeper shame core. Parenting is a hard balance between pushing our kids towards working through hard things without breaking them. Even good parents miss cues their children signal prompting proper attunement. In the 1950's pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott coined the phrase "good enough mother," meaning parents don't have to be perfect...just "good enough." Good enough parents are just that...good enough. We don't have to be perfect. We don't have to make everything elaborate or buy all the things. Not everything has to be ornamented or fancy or garnished. There will be times you mess up. There will be times you miss a cue from your child. "Good enough" parents, however, recognize the missed signal, seek out the child and initiate repair, attuning to the child's needs. When parents or trusted adults can do this for their children, shame is decreased, children feel safe both internally and relationally to feel emotions, and emotions are then coregulated, resulting in the child being able to tolerate what is being felt. Parents can then seek to understand with curiosity what the child's experience of the event happens to be, and in turn properly teach the child how to allow the emotion "to move out" and meet the respective emotional need.

 

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