ABSTRACT
Shame is a relational phenomenon, not an individual phenomenon. This is particularly true of the ground shame that people carry as well as the strategies and behavior that they have developed to attempt to cope with times that we are off-balance without sufficient support. The ground shame and coping strategies are an ongoing relational link to the people and situation from which they came. On a simple level, the creative strategies to deal with the ground shame, emanating from times of insufficient reception, may be nonverbal learnings copied from parents. For example, a child whose parent flies into anger when the parent becomes scared, because the parent was never received during his/her own childhood at such times, might also develop ground shame around being scared and come to have a “temper,” like his/her parent, to camouflage and attempt to deal with times when he/she becomes afraid or uncertain.
