Gratitude List

Things I'm grateful for this month:

Imbolg
Clock Tower 3 and Haunting Ground (PS2 games)- been re-playing them.
Buying an iTunes voucher with my Maximiles points
Ariana Grande's new album coming out
The lighter, longer days- spring is coming!
Daffodils
Amy Tan's Where the Past Begins- currently reading it
Sunny days

Feeling Your Emotions- Shame

This is the next post in the Feeling Your Emotions series. You can read the introduction post here: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2017/11/feeling-your-emotions-introduction.html

So far I've covered anger, sadness and depression, and fear and anxiety. Now I'm moving onto shame.

Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor, so if you're having mental/physical issues please seek medical help in addition to reading this. :)

When I first started this series I had a vague order to do it in. I started out with the more "negative" emotions. I think it makes sense to write about shame now because it's something you can also feel along with the other emotions already mentioned. For example you may feel shame for being angry, sad or scared. It's quite a heavy emotion and I felt some resistance to writing this post, but I feel it's an important subject. So let's start by looking more closely at shame. :)


What is shame?

Shame is described as "a painful feeling of humiliation and distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behaviour", and a "regrettable or unfortunate situation or action" (Oxford English dictionary), "a painful feeling that's a mix of regret, self-hate and dishonor" (Vocabulary.com) and "a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming or impropriety" (Merriam Webster). We can feel shame ourselves due to something we've said or done (although this may be more like guilt, see below), or because we feel not good enough. We "shame" others for doing or saying something we believe is wrong, or that goes against the general rules of society and we also use phrases such as "That's a shame" when something doesn't work out as planned.

Shame is not a "core emotion". The basic emotions are said to be happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust and surprise. (They've been grouped further into "joy-sadness", "anger-fear", "trust-distrust" and "surprise-anticipation". In fact some people believe it's not an emotion at all but an experience, like depression and anxiety. (In this context I'll explore it as an emotion, like with depression and anxiety in my earlier posts). Read more about basic emotions here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/hide-and-seek/201601/what-are-basic-emotions