A few days ago I had an experience that has become quite familiar to me. I was reading Brené Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection and she made the following statement: “Shame is universal and one of the most primitive human emotions . . .”
While she quickly moved on to talk more in depth about shame, I was stuck on her initial declaration and immediately wondered “Why? What purpose does shame serve?” I reasoned that if an emotion is actually primal, then it must fulfill some very basic function, and the most basic of our functions is our animal instinct towards survival.
It has always been my belief that people, on some level, make sense. I believe this despite the fact that it appears to be a nearly universal human experience to do things that do not SEEM to make sense. I see it in myself, and I see it in others. We constantly thwart our desires to do what is in our best good (exercise, eat a healthy diet, be more direct, have a less judgmental attitude, etc.) and then label ourselves unmotivated, lazy, or even masochistic when we do not reach our goals. I have always been curious about the underlying motivations that may not be apparent. If we say we want one thing but then do the opposite, surely there must be some reason for this.
In my fifth year of graduate school I finally came across an author who addressed this phenomenon. George Kelly says that humans prefer predictability – or a sense of control over the future – above all else. In protecting this sense of control, we may sabotage our efforts towards positive change to preserve the comfort of what is known. A person with a drinking problem may be well aware that quitting alcohol would help them in many ways (less tension at home, less trouble at work, lower chance of legal problems, feeling like a succ