Balancing an equation, to start
A Monday sort of magic
So I’m starting to feel my feelings again, in the narrow path between shame and blame, where authentic guilt, authentic worth, and authentic possibilities for creative self-expression are actionable and real.
Shame has a sort of fragrance - the nausea-inducing kind - that overlays all other experiences and sensations and blankets them with the same greenish-tinted muck. Aggressively naming it as an entirely disproportionate presence that is both out of place, and also competing for resources with much more helpful feelings, is giving me the same relief as taking a deep breath of fresh air, after exiting a particularly nasty outhouse.
And yes, pain, sorrow, grief, frustration, resignation, and all sorts of other medium-intensity but uncomfortable feelings are not fun, but they do feel so clean. Like a good rainstorm washing across the prairie, or even a nice fresh wind. Weather can be dealt with. A pervasive stench (such as we used to deal with from the pulp mill nearby) is harder to handle.
Nevertheless, shame, I believe, has a role. It has its place in our array of messaging systems. A little bit of shame lets us stay aware of our presence, and our ability to cause effects (our inability not to cause effects!), and so take some care.
As I’ve said, and many other people have said before, and will continue to note: shamelessness is not a good quality. We need a social check and balance. But it’s most properly a guardrail on productive, positive, creative expression, not the land (or slough) we sink into.
I’ve been experimenting with labeling shame as soon as I detect its presence in my internal heart space (an area I’m trying to clean up and make more functional). It comes up so frequently, and so assertively, that I’m a little appalled at its nerve. I mean, really! Who invited so much shame, for so long, and with such intensity, to visit, and then stay?
I did. Or, I let it happen. And here’s the thing I want to write about today.
I think the reason my shame quotient has become and stayed so unbalanced, so incredibly unreasonably large, is that the antagonist to shame - anger - was inversely related. My anger was depressed, or repressed, or made to feel very unwelcome in my Body, while my shame was actively applied - by others, and then by myself, in many “coats” into my Heart. I was afraid, I think, of losing my place in the world, and the only way my Mind could come up with a path to belonging was to agree with the “authorities” in the groups which I hoped to enter. And these authorities leaned heavily on such entrance requirements as:
behaviour
performance
manners
appearance
results
productivity
perfection
pleasing the authority(!)
unrelenting, intense, focused effort on whatever was deemed most important by those authorities
This is an all too familiar storyline. A trope. A clichéd tragedy of superficial relationships and power dynamics and abuse. It’s hardly surprising. I expect there are many of you reading who can think of at least one group you tried to enter, or maybe succeeded in entering, where the price of admission leaned into shaming/blaming territory. It’s hard to fight back, but fight back you must, if you want to remember your own worth, and exit with your morals intact, to boot. Anger is very necessary. Anger will show you the way.
And while I haven’t dug deep down into the Body’s capabilities for both unbalanced and balanced expressions of this primal emotion, it should be immediately obvious that defending, and defining, oneself against those in positions of power requires a great deal of some sort of energy with oomph to it. Drive energy - the ability to push back, to stand strong and stable in a perimeter, to maybe even move forward while keeping that perimeter intact around oneself - this is crucial to combat the inevitable attacks of others who may use shame (or blame) as a weapon.
The same authorities that built up shame as a sort of substrate for my life, have also (predictably, strategically) downplayed anger as a usable or “good” asset. Anger has been portrayed as a dangerous wildfire on the loose, rather than the internal combustion engine (or, to be more organic, the metabolism that burns fuel and creates energy) that can keep me moving, warm, and functional in a harsh climate.
I believe now that too much anger, like too much shame, is an unbalanced, dangerous, and destructive state of affairs. But, like shame, a little anger goes a long way. And one way it goes is combating the spread of shame into places and spaces it has no right to invade.
I’ll take this a little further today. Let’s move to fear, which I’m the most familiar with. I’ve functioned for most of my life absolutely immersed in so much fear that it became meaningless - the air I breathed. Not a message - a medium for all other messages. I was afraid all the time, of everything, and therefore the fear became something I had to disregard, and I tipped over into the other extreme of acting fearless. No less dangerous or terrible than staying a quivering ball of jelly on the other side of this teeter-totter, but I have enough Drive energy that I simply went forward, repressed the hell out of my worry, and did whatever I was told to do (ruled by shame, which existed squarely in my blind spot of my Heart).
Too much anger, too much Drive, is going to get a person hurt. Or many persons. Anger doesn’t really notice limits, or practicalities, or moderation in any form. Anger is easily unbalanced into rage. The opposite pole - completely repressed and denied anger - is going to result in a person with no forward motion, no discernible presence in the world, no ability to define a boundary, and therefore no defense against being walked on. That hurts. That’s going to make that person maybe dead, in a short time.
Fear can balance anger by providing the concern for life that allows one to throw one’s awareness out there (and also deep inside) and look for threats. Fear is a necessary brake to otherwise unyielding Drive energy pushing, pushing, pushing. Without fear, I might never stop. With fear, I can pause, look around, consider my options, and perhaps remember that Draw energy is equally available. Creativity, as well as brute force, exists in my team. I can stand still, in that Soaking place between push and pull, and let my awareness grow.
Fear is about reality - about the actual, physical, emotional, and spiritual threats that exist in a perceptible and hierarchical array, all around. Fear, in a balanced person, who is not succumbing to the temptation to ignore its urgency, that is, can signal the necessity of staying within shame’s guardrails. It can temper the anger so the anger can be used to propel me within my values, not all over the map.
If this all is starting to sound like a geo-trig proof, then I’m doing my job. That’s how I think this balancing could work. Like an equation in math, or chemistry, or physics. I didn’t do well in those subjects, because I was always getting lost in the wonder of it all, but I do remember that once in a while I would succeed in making the symbols and numbers and letters work out to a total of 0, or 1 or a triangle’s area, or something. Which was cool, and relatively surprising when it happened. Others, less focused on colour and light and form than I, tended to do very well in these classes, and I could at least look over their shoulders as the logic made sense of what seemed impossible at first, to calculate.
The thing is, I think we’re provided (and if this happened through evolution it is absolutely no less miraculous than the Creation account I’ve alluded to) with all sorts of self-protective tools. I think our Body comes equipped with an impressive array of sensors to gather information, and an equally astounding capacity to grow, heal, develop, adapt, fight for survival, and generally make its presence and continued needs felt.
I think our Mind is capable of flight - it can move forward and backward in space AND time. It can see for miles (kms!) and it can predict, analyze, strategize, sequence, organize, and all sorts of other processes that give us so much more scope than the very next physical step.
I think our Heart is magic. It nurtures seeds into plants into fruit into the next generation (improved, larger, and in a greater quantity). It creates out of whatever is nearby. It connects with others and turns proximity into love. It does the most amazing feats of spirit - of choice - of illogical, but still beautiful expressions that inspire other Hearts to open, or deepen.
Anger is a primal indicator that our Body is working. Similarly, Fear means our Mind is active and alert. Shame suggests our Heart is open, vulnerable, and doing something new and never to be repeated. Too little of any of these qualities, and we suffer predictable losses - because they not only balance us individually, they work together to balance each of us as a triune whole.
Too much of any one, or more than one, and we tip over into rage, or paranoia, or narcissism, or a horrible combination of the three. But the anger, fear, and shame are not to blame (ha!). It’s the lack of balance between and among them that is causing havoc.
A Monday sort of magic
Balance improvement always starts with lots and lots of falling. Practice falling. Practice letting one or more of your inner team “loose.” What happens? Do you feel the difference between a headlong dash for control of all resources by any one of these prime movers, and how you normally experience life?
If there’s no difference, well, then you may have a problem.
If there’s a big difference, then notice how much better balance feels, and see if you can’t find the exact “line” where function ends, and a tipping sensation begins.
The magic is, none of this requires anything of anyone else. It’s entirely internal and private, and therefore achievable for you to control. This is all about you finding the message systems of each one of your inner team, and then being able to separate those messages from background noise. If you can do that, and then you can use some anger at how others have mishandled your “people,” or fear at what damage could come if imbalance continues, or shame at how your balance inevitably affects the balance of others, well, then you have a ballgame, as they say.
Happy Monday. Stay upright. That’s a just right challenge, I bet.