That shame doesn't belong to you.

I really don't think of it as contaminating others, more that it just get off of me.

Not so much contagious - although i have in the past. More embarrassed really. Deeply embarrassed.

Yes, in the recent past and I'm not sure when or how this changed. But I felt that I would literally poison him if I started talking about certain topics.

Sort of. I had a prof once who talked about how he read this novel and felt his life was permanently contaminated from it.

There were things I really didn't want to tell T because I didn't want him to feel that way.

I wish there was some way of gathering it up and giving it back. I would like to do that.

Yeah, that. Me too.

Thank you so much for this thread. It has just helped me voice my feelings to my T. I said: "I feel like I bring so much shame into this room, and I don't know how much of it belongs to me and how much is other people's, but I'm the one who's stuck with it and I wish I could give it back."

He read me the poem Toxic Shame by Leo Booth and John Bradshaw. And he told me a story about something that happened during his training. He said he was in some sort of therapy training group and they were given cards and asked to write, anonymously, their most shameful secret. The thing they felt worst about, the thing they didn't want anyone else to know.

Then the group leader read them out. Nobody seemed to find any of them shameful. Nobody saw any shame in any of them - except their own.

See? Shame is something that we never want to talk about. But it's there. It's really there and it can do damage.

And Brene Brown is absolutely right - the best way to get rid of it is to douse it with a whopping dose of empathy.

Someone saying "me too". " i hear you" "i get you" "it's alright".

Well, listen to me right now.

Me too. I hear it all, I totally get it, AND it's alright.

We can make it through this. SHame can only exist in hiding.

Be comforted that there are place where we CAN be comforted and free of it.

It's always a work in progress, but bit by bit, we can learn that "hey, I'm okay! More than that actually - I might just be good".