“Shame on You!”
Why must you wear the shame?
What do I hope to accomplish with the shame on you?
Why must anyone wear the shame?
Where did the shame come from in the first place?
Who is wearing it now?
“Shame is a soul eating emotion.”
When I declare “shame on you”, I am trying to escape “shame on me”. Shame is a proverbial hot potato of intolerable soul eating emotion so unbearable that it is unwittingly passed on to anyone within immediate range.
In my reassignment of this dreadful burden, I cannot send it away. Nor can I change the “undesirable” quality in you, mirroring undesirability in myself, and rousing a smoldering internal anguish. This banishment will only deny your rescuing comfort and bury this dangerous grievance more inaccessibly within myself. The projected punishment of “shame on you” represents a more critical occupation of “shame on me” crying out to you for desperate relief.
But what if instead of sending you away with my burden of shame on you, I confided to you the shame on me.
“Shame cannot survive being spoken. It cannot survive empathy”
