When we wound others, creating either minor or gaping ruptures, it is necessary to repair them. This requires the admission of responsibility for our role in the rupture. Shame is the emotional energy behind our resistance to this. It does so by fueling our anticipation of being forsaken upon our admission of guilt. As we recall, one of shame’s features is as a harbinger of abandonment, of catastrophic collapse of relationship. Even in small doses, when my left brain knows that my wife is not going to leave me when I admit to her that I have not done something I promised I would do, there
...more
