How have you worked in T to deal with Shame?

I have begun to realise over the last couple of months that shame is a constant for me and is probably one of the biggest things I need to work on. I discussed this briefly with my T this week, my realisation, and I got to understand perhaps where my shame began......sigh....and that it is shame that is keeping me believing that I am worthless and stopping me being able to like or love myself. (this seems like an impossible task)

But I was wondering how anybody here has been able to work through intense and long standing feelings of shame? What techniques or ways has your T helped you with this? Or how have you helped yourself?

My T says self compassion, kindness and curiosity. These have also been shown in studies to help the brain rewire itself....... I have a million more questions after my initial.... "you have got to be kidding me, it can not be that simple!" (although having compassion and kindness for myself is not something I find easy, so yeah)

Love to hear your responses, please

Hi jane. Hope you are well and keeping warm! I have not addressed shame with T yet so I'm interested in others posts on this. My T has raised shame, jealousy and envy with me, all of course I avoided talking about - but maybe T was spot on.
Hope you get some clarity

Hey lc. I am freezing my bits off over here! haha. Hope you are keeping warmer where you are. I hope I get some great feedback here too.

My T seemed very 'pleased' when I brought the shame thing up.....haha, he even jumped up and had to write something on his blimmin board, which he has refrained from doing for a loooooooong time as he knows it doesn't work for me! I let him have it this week as he has been so incredibly supportive even though I have been a HUGE pain in his a s s recently. He disagrees on that.

I really don't know how to get rid of the shame though......it has been constant for most of my life......

Hey Jane, shame is a huge issue for me it coincides with my disability, and can pretty much rule my life sometimes. My therapist noticed this early on. We haven't talked about it a lot, but we are working towards starting some EMDR treatment. I'm planing on asking her if we can use the EMDR to help me deal with some of the instance that caused me to have shame about my disability. I'll have to let you know what she says. Shame really is a terrible monster.

Thanks for sharing Depletion,I'd be really interested to hear what your T has to say.

I'm also trying my best to avoid EMDR but my T has been talking about it on and off for months. I tried a relaxation cd with bi-lateral stimulation based on emdr principles....I had a big reaction that I did not like....so it scared me. lol. But I'd be interested to hear how you get on with that too, if you wouldn't mind sharing?

Yes, my therapist and I are just now starting to work on it ... I think it's going to take a while ... I hadn't really given it much thought, nor the topic even brought up by previous therapists I've seen over the past 20 years ... I'm kinda glad this one did because even though it's a rather deep and painful thing for me, I believe it's going to be important to really work on healing this in order for everything else to be able to heal as well ...

Experiencing being accepted as is, is the cure for shame.

I think this may be true for me also. But there are so many things I am ashamed of, even down to the simple thing like needing my T to support me. I feel ashamed for needing things. Ashamed for having emotions...... ugh so much.

I am sorry to hear others struggle with this also, but at the same time feel a tiny bit less.....broken?

Hmm, thanks Mouse. Accepted by others? Does this lead to self acceptance also? That has me thinking....thanks

Within therapy for me. Friends have their own unconscious agendas

I have worked on shame a lot in group therapy. Sharing what I consider shameful with 8 people is amazingly difficult for me but the more I share around people who are supportive and non-judgemental the less shame I feel. It hasn't been easy and when a new shame comes up I know I need to share it to work through it but again the more I share the less shame I feel.

The woman mentioned it a couple of times and I read some books on it. I have no idea what else to do about it. And it does not appear as if the therapist does either.

My T introduced me to affect theory, which is a model that explains emotions in terms of affect (or rather reactions to affect). It has been very helpful for me to think in those terms.

Talking about shameful things with others, outside therapy, has only been destructive for me, so from my point of view it's not something I can recommend. (I've never been in group therapy and maybe that is completely different.)

Primer of Affect Psychology (pdf file)

Brene Brown is a shame researcher and has a degree in social work. She is wonderful and has several books as well as two TED talks you could watch. Basically she says shame grows like crazy when you hide it, but when exposed it dies. She says to share your shame, but to share carefully--with those who have earned the right to hear it and who won't use it against you. If you have no one like that in your life yet, start with your T. Good luck, shame is debilitating but we all have it. But we need to share it so it loses its power over us.

I have watched a couple of her talks online. Her style really grates at me, and I do not agree with her when it comes to sharing shame. I'm sure it works like that for many people (especially people who share BB's cultural framework, unlike me), but not for everybody. What really works for me is observing my own physical reactions and then discussing those reactions and what caused them with my T, not with anybody else. "Sharing" this kind of thing with other people only makes the shame grow into overwhelming proportions, for me - its power increases rather than disappears. We're all different, and one of the things that make me a little suspicious of BB is how she sometimes talks as if all people function in identical ways.

I don't mind her style - it is very much my culture- but I do find her content a bit over simplified.

Thank you for bringing this post up. "Shame" was brought up for the first time, and quite a lot, at my last session on Thursday. Before that it was guilt. Hate to say, my T has her hands full with me. I just don't see that my feelings will ever change. I know that's not the right attitude to have.... but it's been so long...I just don't see how one person can help me undo three decades of a certain mindset. We shall see. She's optimistic.

So we are going to be working a great deal on shame.

She has tried to approach the topic once or twice, but we haven't gotten so far as to really discuss it because I refuse to explore that particular neighborhood in my brain. Very shady place, that suburb. I would not recommend the real estate.

Thank you all for your replies.....lots to think about.

Thanks TheWell, it seems that important piece here is that the people you share your shame with need to be supportive and non-judgemental. I have ahd the experience that I have shared with people that I thought were this in the past, and it ends up not being the case in the long run. I struggle to trust. Perhaps my T is where I must start.

Thanks for this Mastodon, I'm going to go check out the link. I also think that I don't have enough trust of people outside my therapy to share all my shame with.

I have watched both of her talks, and I was really interested in what she had to say. I like her view on the power of vulnerability for forming connections. I struggle to get there. Maybe I need to listen again to her talk on shame. I also, like stopdog, find her ideas a little over simplified and for me not really providing concrete ways of dealing with this horrid shame.

Like everything it probably comes down to talking about all of the things I am ashamed of, which is what I have been carefully avoiding doing!

I'm not really sure that I buy all this sharing helps with shame stuff, it still feels just as bad to me.

Maybe shame works differently with things like disability???

No, I haven't found it all that useful either.

Eat your own shadow. When you can stop projecting it out, and own it and digest, you can be universally compassionate which means compassionate to yourself. It isnt easy. It takes a long time. But Its better than fleeing shame or flinging shame which is what shame drenched people do. It makes them very destructive to others.

At this point you are the one shaming you. Often enough this is the mind split off from the body refusing to accept very human and natural and evolutionarily beneficial instincts, traits, etc, because of religion or other enculturation.

But you know, Mouse said it best.

I have worked through some of it but have a long way to go. It's often helpful for me to step out of myself for a minute and think about how I'd react to someone else with the same experience or the same issue. Almost invariably when I take myself out of the equation it really doesn't seem like a very big deal. Having an intellectual appreciation of that can be helpful. If I don't think it's such a big deal in a generic context, my T, who does this stuff all the time probably won't either. Knowing that makes it jut a little easier to talk about.

This rings true to me. I often say to T that if it were someone else I would have oodles of compassion for them. I would react kindly and with empathy, and understanding that an experience so difficult could be the reason for x,y or z behaviour or emotion.

I can not have this same compassion for myself, my shame seems so entrenched.....and like others, so far, talking about things with others has not helped.

Maybe if I have courage and do so with my T, it will be different?

I find brene browns ideas to be good in theory, but the reality is that there are few people that are shackled by shame that can just 'snap out of it' by having coffee with a friend after their kids soccer practice. Sometimes it is just more complicated than that.

However, one of the things she claims is that shame can't survive being spoken. So one of the things I am working on with T is just speaking the words that label my shame. Just to her. Sometimes just to myself. But keeping it locked inside hasn't helped so on trying this route.

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