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ADDICTION ¦
EATING | HEROIN
JONATHAN HARDY ¦
LAC HUMANUM | LAC LUPINUM
SPECTRUM OF HOMEOPATHY
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People experiencing shame often feel impotent and powerless.
They therefore submit to others or to prevailing norms – they
conform and fit in. This reaction is reminiscent of the behavior
of many animals who adapt to the pecking order in their group:
the submissive animal curls its tail under and trots away with
bowed head. Shame may have its biological roots in this type
of behavior, found in animal hierarchies.
There is no consensus on what age shame is first found in humans.
Many scientists interpret the turning away of the head seen in
babies of a few months old to be shame. It is fairly certain that
children between the ages of one and two can feel shame:
this is the age when they learn to move away from the other,
becoming independent of her; they can recognize themselves
in a mirror (self-consciousness), react to their childish achieve-
ments with evident pride, and develop inhibitions and shame
when their positive feelings (joy and pride) are insufficiently
recognized or shared by their carers.
People who suffer shame normally have high ideals. When
they realize that they cannot meet these ideals, this triggers
shame. Frequently the feeling of a secure identity is missing.
The origins can be experiences in very early childhood such
as the child’s failure with emotional signals such as smiling or
crying to elicit appropriate behavior or to establish sufficient
contact with their carers.
They have rarely learned to perceive their own feelings or to
trust themselves. We frequently find traumatic experiences in
early childhood in which the emotional experience of child and
chief carer have diverged. Due to such events, many children
seem to subsequently distrust their own feelings, relying in-
stead on the feeling and feedback of others in order to avoid
being hurt again. At the same time, trust and confidence
become the dominant themes in the rest of their lives: if you
cannot trust your own body signals, who else can you possibly
expect to trust? Shame is therefore also the result of a failure
in emotional communication.
Source: Dr Herbert Mück; Praxis für Psychosomatische Medizin
u. Psychotherapie, Coaching, Mediation u. Prävention;
www.dr-mueck.de(German)
HOW DOES SHAME ARISE?
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