I'm starting to think that despite all the feeling work in meditation circles, guilt and shame are really underutilized as focus objects.
I'm probably missing some big work on this, but I've only seen them come up much in some Buddhist disparagements of the feelings themselves.
Conversation
If so, it's a real lost opportunity. Most forms of meditation on feelings are about cultivating introspective honesty - however limited it may be.
And few emotions cause as much introspective dishonesty as shame, or are quite as unpleasant to look at as guilt.
1
3
And yet it is perfectly appropriate to feel these things.
Most lives will have accretions of guilt and shame, especially around difficult periods and areas of relative immaturity.
Often, it's the residue left by anger problems, anxiety issues, forgetfulness, fear...
1
1
2
Now, you can meditate with clarity on *those* feelings and memories and learn a great deal from it, but anything touched by too much shame can be hard to spot.
It can leave you with little more than a vague discomfort, the feeling that something isn't quite right, but...
1
2
But it rarely captures all of what's wrong, even if you find some strands to tug at.
In fairness, this is probably an area where a (good) therapist can be a bigger help, but I digress.
Let's assume that's off the table. Costs or accessibility or institutional overreach, maybe.
Replying to
Digression here for a second. It will make sense in a moment.
I was having a conversation with my grandmother, who is sick and increasingly frail. This is a recent thing, so hadn't entirely caught up with me.
It was a hard conversation, the kind that exhausts both parties.
1
In the middle of the conversation, she says very matter of factly: "I'd like to help, but I can't handle as much as I used to do before I got ill."
Since I was already engaged and have trained this sense a lot, I noticed a shard of runaway guilt form right as it did.
1
As is common with these things, a thought trails that guilt and bounces off others, forming images and thoughts as well.
That one bit of guilt goes through a whole bunch of emotional systems like shrapnel, shredding everything, releasing more feelings that go their own paths.
1
2
The feelings and emotions themselves aren't important. The important part is that I shut down completely for several minutes, then, uh, reboot.
Those emotional systems have disentangled, and the feelings they held in place are running free. I feel lighter, clearer.
1
2
Even now I have very little internal self-talk, very few thoughts appearing afterwards.
And that to me is the value of working with shame: these are tightly bundled systems, and they can hold up a *lot* of internal traffic.
1
2
You want to ideally be able to feel your feelings in the moment, let them do their thing, and then dissolve.
Feelings like guilt are tremendously useful. Emotional accretions like shame often block feelings from going where they should, or triggering appropriately.
1
1
You become over- or underreactive to feelings entangled in emotional feedback loops, or have entirely inappropriate affect around them, and this causes behavioural distortions like:
Conceitedness,
Overaggression,
Learned helplessness,
Anxiety,
Etc.
1
1
Unfortunately, I don't know any good method for breaking into heavily entangled systems like shame on demand. It's difficult work.
But I do know you can slip opportunistically into those spaces by developing your present-moment awareness of your feelings.
1
2