Daniel Smith

Or dissociation and hiding.

a sort of blanking out of the self.

People who become ashamed often have trouble thinking straight.

The thing that interests me most about shame is the way it transmits between people, usually within families.

You can have overtly shaming parents who keep telling you that you're bad, or you can have

a sort of shame environment.

This is the thing that really interests me about emotions and in particular about shame is the way that you could take them on almost by osmosis.

You could learn from the ways other people, usually your caregivers, the ways that they live and operate emotionally and adopt those ways

Shame, I think that happens most powerfully.

If you have parents who feel powerful shame, you can grow up in an environment where you then will, without knowing why,

Learn that shame is a natural response to normal flaws in your own life or your own way of being, normal difficulties.

There's a psychiatrist who has discussed shame as an implosion of the self.

And that's always resonated with me.

What I want is for people to accept that their emotional lives are not made worse, but in fact enriched by having even the darker and shadowy parts, that they're natural beings.

inextinguishable aspects of what it means to be human.

I believe very deeply that suffering is compounded by the belief that there are wrong parts of the self.

I don't want people to be morbid or always thinking about their quote unquote negative selves.

I just want people, including myself, to be honest.

I feel envy now.

I feel shame.