Sunday 7th June
I want to name something precisely this week, because I think it often gets collapsed into the presenting problem when it is actually a separate problem entirely.
When capacity drops, two things happen.
The first is the drop itself: flat energy, reduced sharpness, the loss of whatever the person usually experiences as their normal operating state. This is temporary. It has a natural course. Left largely alone, it tends to pass.
The second thing is the meaning assigned to the drop. The internal audit that begins almost immediately: why is this happening now, how long has it been going on, what does it say about capacity, what would happen if it didn't lift, whether the people around me can already tell.
It is a second event running alongside it, and more often running on top of it, loading additional weight onto something that was already temporary.
I describe this as Second Wave Shame.
It is a second event, involving shame as its primary mechanism. It functions like a wave: it builds, reaches a peak, and then recedes. The critical observation is that Second Wave Shame is often more damaging than the original drop. The flat week passes. The meaning assigned to it tends to linger in ways the flat week did not.
Paul Gilbert's compassion-focused work provides useful scaffolding here. Gilbert's central observation, developed and refined across decades of clinical research and consolidated in his 2009 work on compassionate mind training, is that shame and threat tend to operate on the same system.
The person who falls short of their own standard does not simply register disappointment. They register a threat, and the threat-detection system responds accordingly. The audit begins not as helpful reflection, but as threat detection turned inward.
What this means in practice is that the second wave can keep the threat-response system active long after the first wave has resolved. The flat week is over. The body has recovered. Yet the audit is still running, still filing conclusions, still treating last Tuesday's dip as current intelligence about who you are.
The reason it matters is that Second Wave Shame requires a different response to the primary drop.
It calls for distance to observe the meaning-making machinery without becoming governed by it. To notice the audit activating without treating its conclusions as verdicts.
This is not a cognitive exercise, nor is it about finding counter-evidence or constructing a more balanced reading of the week. It is closer to building a different relationship with what the audit produces entirely.
One thing worth paying attention to this week:
When the audit activates, notice what it tries to recruit you into doing next. There is usually a move it wants to make.
To keep analysing the week.
To revisit the interaction.
To gather more evidence.
To delay the thing you were about to do until you feel more certain.
When you notice the Shame Wave arriving, see what happens if you continue with the next meaningful thing anyway.
Not because the verdict is wrong, but because it may be less informative than it appears. The goal is not to stop the audit, it is to become a little less governed by it. That small distinction can create a surprising amount of room.
As always, hold it lightly: the audit is almost always more confident than the situation warrants.
Shoni
P.S. If you know someone who tends to sit in the second wave longer than the first, this week's letter is worth sharing. Subscribe link: albapsych.com
Dr Shoni Marshall-Edwards
Clinical Psychologist · AHPRA PSY0004030165
Alba Psychology · Online · Australia and New Zealand