The zombie emotions that kill us
The other day a friend of mine told me about one of the more gruesome ways nature finds to perpetuate life.
In the rainforest of Brazil, there’s a species of ant that — at first glance — seems to have a death wish.
Over the course of a week, these ants separate themselves from their colonies. And one-at-a-time, they climb a nearby plant, crawl to the tip of a drooping leaf, and hang there to their death.
On the surface this looks like some strange suicidal act. But the reality is much darker.
Come back to check on one of these ants a few days later. You’ll find a mushroom sprouting out the top of its head.
It’s not a coincidence. This was a “zombie ant.” Days before it hung itself from the leaf, its body had been taken over by a parasitic strain of fungus.
The fungus turned its body and mind to goo. And the ant’s body became simply a vehicle — its behavior now controlled by the invader.
And that is why you found it hanging from the leaf. The ant didn’t choose to do that. The fungus put it there.
It knew that that leaf, at that height from the ground, at that particular level of humidity, was the perfect place to sprout from the ant’s head and spread down onto the other ants below.
When my friend mentioned this to me I was listening to Pia Mellody’s lectures on shame (which I wrote about here). And I realized these zombie ants were the perfect analogy for something she had just described something that happens between humans on an emotional level — especially between parents and ourselves.
It’s called “carried shame”. And if you’re not careful, it could be running your life right now.
We each have emotions that occur in us naturally. They’re the products of the thoughts, experiences, and feelings that we have on a day-to-day basis. Fear in response to a snake coiled in the grass. Guilt when we break our own values. Shame — embarrassment — when we make a mistake in front of other people. And so on.
These emotions arise in us and go away. They are a response to the moment, helping us navigate our everyday lives, giving us the energy and motivation to keep us alive and get what we need. They happen, we act on them, and we move on.
But sometimes we experience emotions that are too intense for the situation. They aren’t just helpful little feelings anymore. They “trigger” us and send our thoughts spinning.
They reenforce themselves. Thoughts lead to more feeling lead to more thoughts lead to more feeling. And pretty soon you’re stuck. You’re not just embarrassed that you tripped in front of that cute girl — you’re miserable.
You might think “she’ll never like me.” Or “I’m so clumsy.” Or maybe a combination: “I’m so clumsy, she’ll never like me.” And you feel more and more shame until pretty soon you feel depressed, hopeless, unworthy.
This is “carried shame.”
It’s not our own shame. It’s from our parents.
As little kids we’re like sponges. We soak up everything. We’re sensitive. We see, hear, feel everything. We don’t have a lot of ideas yet. We just experience what’s going on around us. And that includes our parents’ emotions.
What a parent feels, a child will feel, whether it’s joy, pain, or shame.
When our parents refuse to acknowledge what they’re feeling — especially if it’s an uncomfortable feeling like shame — we still feel it.
But when our parents don’t acknowledge it, we as kids have no way to make sense of that emotion. We feel it intensely, but our parents say and do nothing to explain why that emotion is occurring. Since they don’t help us, we try to make sense of it ourselves.
We take on our parents emotions. We “carry” them, thinking they are our own. And when we have an experience similar to the one when we first took on that emotion, we re-experience it. We get triggered.
These carried emotions then go on to run our lives. Because they influence our feelings, they shape how we experience the world. They impact how we interpret events and how we see our role in life — as victim, or aggressor, as hero, etc.
And because they influence how we see and feel about our lives, they also influence our decisions and actions. What we choose to do with our lives is shaped by these carried feelings. We’re run by them.
Just like the fungus taking over the ant, our parents emotions have taken over you and me.
And just like the fungus, which kills the ant and positions its body so the fungus can grow and spawn, so do carried emotions.
How we relate to anyone and everyone in our life is affected by the emotions we carry. If we don’t get a hold on them, we project them out onto the people around us.
If we’re not careful, these emotions can eat us up, killing us slowly from the inside. Cancer. Heart disease. Or bad, reckless, self-harming decisions.
And if we have kids?
Then the process happens all over again. If we cannot or will not acknowledge the emotions we feel — whether our own or the emotions we carry from our own parents — we will pass them along to our children just as they were passed on down to us.
It takes work to stop being a zombie.