A short conversational excerpt from the video 'Rise Above the Weight of Shame' (Connor Beaton). The clip captures an interaction where Connor (as interviewer) prompts a speaker to reflect on feelings of shame during relationship conflict. The speaker describes experiencing deep shame, agitation, a desire to "solve" or make the feeling go away, and a tendency to avoid problems they feel unable to fix (e.g., logistics of living together with children).
Chapters
I'm doing something wrong. I can see I'm doing something wrong. How come I can't action this? How come I can't do this? And so the pressure builds and builds and builds. Then at some point, she says something. She points it out, she's had enough. And so she brings it forward. I'm disappointed in you. How come you're not doing this? And she points out what you've already been aware of, that you're not expressing your needs, you're not taking responsibility for something. When she points that out and she gets frustrated and she's disappointed with you, what happens inside of you?
Shame. Deep shame. I feel agitated and I want to solve it there. And then there's a tingling inside me where I just want it to go away. The best way to explain it, it's like having a bunch of tabs open on your laptop and you want to close those tabs down. And that's the bit where I struggle. We both want to be in this relationship. What I shy away from is things that I feel I can't solve. I'll say I want to live together with all the children. And her point is, how the fuck are you going to do that, given our situation? And I then go, fuck, I can't. How do I solve this? And so I just then ignore it.
