If hyperactivity expresses anxiety, lethargy and underarousal express shame. Shame, like anxiety, is an attachment emotion. “Whenever someone becomes significant to us, whenever another’s caring, respect or valuing matters, the possibility for generating shame emerges,” writes the psychologist Gershen Kaufman.2 The origin of shame is the feeling of having been cut off from the parent, of having lost the connection, if only momentarily. It cannot be helped, it occurs unavoidably as part of maturing.
