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WEEK 6

MEETING DIFFICULT EMOTIONS

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STAGES OF ACCEPTANCE

Difficult emotions cause us pain, such as anger, fear, and grief.  They inevitably arise from conditions in our personal lives, but also from broader social and cultural conditions.


When we turn toward difficult emotions, even with mindfulness and lovingkindness, our pain may temporarily increase. 


Meditators often wonder how much emotional distress they should allow into their practice. Zen Master, Thich Nhat Hanh, answered this question: “Not much!”


  • Discomfort is necessary for self-compassion to arise. However, we only need to touch emotional pain.

Perhaps a Poem can speak more eloquently to this point that any lecture:

The Guest House by Rumi offers reassurance that human beings have the capacity to be with very difficult emotions, but when given a choice, we should titrate the amount of suffering we allow in our lives to keep from becoming overwhelmed. This is a self-compassionate approach to working with difficult emotions. 

The Guest House

by Rumi


This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Please remember that sometimes we are not ready to have our homes violently swept of its furniture or it wouldn’t be safe to let the visitor in. The art of self-compassion is to incline gradually toward emotional discomfort, and accept emotional discomfort in stated. 


There are five stages of acceptance (Germer, 2009) that can be illustrated using the Rumi metaphor: 


Resisting—struggling against what comes; hiding in the house, blocking the door, or telling the visitor to go away.


Exploring—turning toward discomfort with curiosity; peeking through he peephole in the door to see who has arrivers.

Tolerating—safely enduring, holding steady; inviting the guest in but asking them to remain in the foyer of the house.

Allowing—letting feelings come and go; allowing the guest to go wherever they want to in the house.

Befriending—seeing the value in all experience; sitting down with the guest and listening to what the guest has to say.

Each successive stage corresponds to a gradual release of emotional resistance. 


This model is provided to give permission to close when dealing with difficult emotions.  We do not have to engage with the most difficult emotions in our lives, nor do we want to use self-compassion as a strategy to eliminate difficult emotions

APPROACHES TO DIFFICULT EMOTIONS

There are 3 helpful ways of working with difficult emotions


LABELING EMOTIONS—identifying and validating the emotions. 


FINDING EMOTIONS IN THE BODY—feeling emotions as sensations rather than thinking about them. 


SOFTEN-SOOTHE-ALLOW—Caring and comforting ourselves because we have difficult emotions. 


These practices ARE NOT STRATEGIES to alleviate difficult emotions, but just to meet and be with them. We are establishing a new relationship to emotional suffering that keeps us from feeling overwhelmed and, over time, leads us to feeling better.  Feeling better is a side effect (not the goal) of mindfulness and self-compassion.


LABELING EMOTIONS:


“Name it and you tame it.”

Naming or labeling difficult emptions is an opportunity to honor or bear witness to our pain.  It helps us disentangle or unstick from them. When we say, “This is anger” or “Fear is arising,” we can usually feel some emotional freedom—some space around the feeling. 

David Creswell and colleagues (2007) discovered that when we label difficult emotions, the amygdala—a brain structure that register danger—becomes less active and less likely to trigger a stress reaction in the body. How we label emotions is important, too. There is a difference between using empathy to validate how we feel, as we would for a loved one, and labeling an emotional in a monotone voice. We should try to adopt a warm and an accepting tone to our labels. For example, “Oh, you’re feeling sad” or “I see how frightened you are” or “Fear is here.”  


MINDFULNESS OF EMOTION IN THE BODY:


“If you can feel it, you can heal it.”


Emotions have mental and physical components—thoughts and body reactions.  Research suggests that emotions are associated with distinct, yet culturally universal, parts of the body.  

Emotions activate a broad network of muscular, physiological, hormonal, and neurological components (Damasio, 2004; Scherer, 2005). Body awareness is an important factor in emotion regulation (Fustos et al, 2012). Thoughts move quickly and it is often difficult to linger with them long enough to work with them. In contrast, the body is relatively slow moving. When we locate an emotion in the body and change our relationship to it, the emotion itself can begin to change. 


SOFTEN-SOOTHE-ALLOW:


Soften, soothe, and allow (SSA) constitutes a kind and compassionate relationship to difficult emotions and to ourselves:

Softening is Physical self-compassion

Soothing is Emotional self-compassion

Allowing is Mental self-compassion

SSA allow us to stop resisting difficult emotions and giving up resistance means we suffer less from difficult emotions.  (The sequence of SSA can be changed according to personal preference).  The first two steps, labeling and finding emotions in the body help us disentangle from difficult emotions and SSA helps us warm up our experience.  

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Wild Geese 

Mary Oliver


You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountain and the rivers.

Meanwhile, the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

SHAME

Shame is a "complex combination of emotions, physiological responses, and imagery associated with real or imagine rupture of relational ties" (Hanh, 2000). At its core, shame is a social emotion.


Shame vs. Guilt


There is a difference between guilt and shame. Guilt refers to feeling bad about something we did. Shame is associated with feeling bad about something we are. Brene Brown beautifully captured this difference in the following quote:


“Guilt says, ‘I made a mistake', and shame says, ‘I am a mistake.’"


How do we know when we are feeling shame? Reactions may include looking away, hanging your head, fidgeting blushing, biting your lips, faking a smile, laughing tensely, getting angry, feeling confused, mumbling, talking too much or going silent, or spacing out.


How does shame make you feel? Possibilities may include: Foolish, dumb, silly, stupid, helpless, weak, inept, dependent, small, inferior, unworthy, unlovable, shy, vulnerable, uncomfortable, or embarrassed.

There is also a difference between adaptive and maladaptive shame (Greenberg & Iwakabe, 2011). Adaptive shame enhances functioning whereas maladaptive shame reduces our functioning. Adaptive shame says, “I feel bad about myself and I will take steps to correct the situation” whereas maladaptive shame just says, “I’m bad.” 

The Good News: Self-Compassion can help us move from maladaptive shame to adaptive shame.

It is important to note that shame underlies many difficult emotions such as anger, fear, and despair. It is often at the root of anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and relational conflict. When difficult emotions become “sticky” and we can’t let them go, there might be a vein of shame running through them. Emotions and behaviors associated with shame are difficult to manage unless we directly address their root cause.


Three Paradoxes of Shame 

Seen through the eyes of compassion, there are three paradoxes that can take the sting out of shame. These paradoxes are also insights that correspond to the three components of self-compassion (i.e., self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness). When we are in the grips of shame, shame becomes workable when we remember these three insights. 


  1. Shame feels blameworthy, but it is an innocent emotion.


In using the word innocent, we are not denying that shame may not have tragic consequences such as violence to self and others. We are merely suggesting that shame arises from the universal wish to be loved. Shame and the wish to be loved are two sides of the same coin. Reminding ourselves that shame arises from the wish to be loved opens the door to exploring and managing shame. 

We are all born with the wish to be loved. Infants are incapable of doing much for themselves, but when an infant manages to be loved by an adult, their needs can be met (e.g., food, clothing, shelter, touch).

As adults, we also need to be loved and accepted by others to survive and to raise children and to protect them from danger. The wish to be loved never stops. The poem below exemplifies that lifelong wish:


With that Moon Language 

Hafiz (14th century Persian mystic)


Admit something: 

Everyone you see, you say to them, "Love me."

Of course, you do not do this out loud, 

otherwise someone would call the cops.

Still though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect. 

Why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye that is always saying, with that sweet moon language, 

what every other eye in this world is dying to hear?

We wake up every morning with the wish to be loved and go through the entire day with the wish, although we may never realize or admit it. When we recognize our universal wish to be loved, we can see the same wish in others and can never feel quite so alone or afraid. Shame is the belief that something is wrong with us that makes us unlovable—that we are too flawed to be accepted by others. 


  2.  Shame feels isolating, but it is a universal emotion.


In addition to remembering that shame is an innocent emotion, shame becomes workable when we realize that we are not alone when we feel shame. That is, remembering that shame is an universal emotion that is experienced by all human beings around the world. 

  3.  Shame feels permanent, but it is transitory, like all emotions.

When we remember that shame is a burden carried by only part of ourselves for a limited period of time, not a permanent characteristic of who we are, it makes it easier to work with it.

Sources of Shame

Shame is a more difficult emotion for some people than others. For example, people are more likely to struggle with shame when they have histories of childhood neglect or abuse, grew up in a critical household, have identities that are marginalized or oppressed by mainstream culture (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, etc.), and who experience any source of intersectionality that makes you the “other” by the dominant group. In addition, many of us suffer from intergenerational shame, based on wounds from previous generations.

Paul Gilbert (2014) notes that the experience of shame is multi-determined like much of our lives. And that shame may not be our fault but it is our responsibility to take care of it.


Shame is likely to emerge in any of us when life becomes too difficult. For example, when we lose our health, wealth, love, or work, or suffer bias and discrimination due to our identities. Then we ask, why me? Intense and disturbing emotions are likely to trigger the following chain reaction:

“I feel bad.”

“I don’t like this feeling.”

“I don’t want this feeling.”

“I shouldn’t have this feeling.”

“Something is wrong with me to have this feeling.”

“I am bad!”


We move quickly from “I feel bad” to “I am bad.”

There are specific, repetitive thoughts that go through each of our minds when life becomes difficult—lingering self-doubts, often originating in childhood, that seem patently clear and true in our most vulnerable moments. These are our negative core beliefs. 

What are some examples of negative core beliefs that we carry throughout our lives? I am defective; I am unlovable; I am helpless; I am inadequate; I am a failure.

A negative core belief is the mental component of the emotion of shame, just as all emotions have mental and physical components.

Actually, the main negative core beliefs that human being have about themselves are limited in number, perhaps as few as 10-15. Since there are over 7 billion people on the planet, we can conclude that whatever imperfection we think separates us from the rest of humanity may actually be shared by at least half a billion people.


Self-Compassion and Shame

Self-compassion is an antidote and healthy response to shame. 

Compassion addresses the experiencer—the suffering person’s sense of “self.” Therefore, when the sense of self is under attack, we need self-compassion. Kindness counters the self-judgment of shame, common humanity counters the feelings of isolation in shame, and mindfulness counters the tendency to over identify with our behavior (i.e., "I am bad").

Self-compassion is an internal mechanism that restores self-worth through self-kindness, rather than depending on external, social approval. 


Shame and Silence 

What sustains shame? Shame is maintained by silence: “You are only as unlovable as your secrets.” We fear most that our unlovable qualities will be exposed—our negative core beliefs—and we will be rejected if they become known. 


The challenge is first to admit to ourselves that we have these beliefs, then bring compassion to ourselves for suffering in this way, and then to share our self-doubts with others when we feel safe enough to do so.


Compassion for the Whole Self 


As human beings, we have many aspects, or parts. We have lovable parts and unlovable parts, wounded parts and compassionate parts, old parts and young parts, female and male parts, the list is endless. We are unimaginably complex.

As the saying goes, “I am not perfect, but some parts of me are excellent.” When we are engulfed in shame and are convinced that we are fatally flawed, it simply means that we are absorbed in a part and can’t see the rest of ourselves. Self-compassion embraces all the parts of oneself. 

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Allow

Danna Faulds


There is no controlling life.

Try corralling a lightning bolt,

containing a tornado.  Dam a

stream and it will create a new

channel.  Resist, and the tide

will sweep you off your feet.


Allow, and grace will carry

you to higher ground.  The only

safety lies in letting it all in –

the wild and the weak; fear,

fantasies, failures and success.


When loss rips off the doors of

the heart, or sadness veils your

vision with despair, practice

becomes simply bearing the truth.


In the choice to let go of your

known way of being, the whole

world is revealed to your new eyes.

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HOME PRACTICE

The practices from this session are: 


Being with Difficult Emotions 

-Labeling Emotions

-Mindfulness of Emotions in the Body​


Workbook: Chapters 16-17


Practice being with difficult emotions in your daily life using labeling, mindfulness of emotions in the body and soften-soothe-allow. However, do not practice this altogether as a formal home practice.

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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Guilt Versus Shame Infographic

Listening to Shame by Brene Brown

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