Between words and beyond the cognitive realm lies another world of imagery and symbol. Helping a client access this nonlinear world can lead the session into the imaginal and the expressive world. Careful drama therapy exercises that gently support this direction with the client's imagination can uncover hidden feelings and help the client move from a place of shame and fear to a place of curiosity, wonder, and self-expression.
Shame, like trauma, is a state of freeze. When in shame, or even talking about a shaming feeling or experience, the client loses contact with his resources. When we work with a client, we need to make sure she is able to be “with” the shame, not in it. We need to establish and keep an optimal distance by helping the client find and hold a resourced state. The most important strategy at the beginning of a session is to resource the client. In fact, resourcing the client and making sure the client stays resourced is the most important strategy throughout the session.
One of our Healing Shame workshop participants recently wrote me a letter. Here are her words:
I sometimes lie awake for several hours during the night, and I experience shame during that time. My mind goes in circles about particular aspects of myself or my life that I feel shame about. It never occurred to me until last night that what I was experiencing wasn't anxiety but shame. It's a shame-induced insomnia, and I've been experiencing it on and off for many years.
I have never heard anyone talk about this so I wanted to ask you if you have seen this as a common phenomenon. I would love to learn imaginal tools to apply countershame during those bouts of insomnia. I think it would be helpful for my client work as well because I'd bet that for a lot of people who experience insomnia it is actually related to shame.
Yes, there is such a thing as shame-induced insomnia. Many people lie awake tossing and turning or just thinking, ruminating, with their minds going over and over.
How much pleasure can your body tolerate? That may seem like a peculiar question, but most of us aren’t used to a great deal of pleasure running through our bodies. In fact, we’ve learned to restrict breathing and tighten muscles so that we don’t feel too much of anything, including pleasure.
We are all born with an enormous capacity for pleasure. A healthy baby can feel pleasure in every part of his or her body. Freud called this capacity “polymorphousperverse infantile sexuality” and suggested that we outgrow it, showing clearly his attitude towards pleasure. What if we don’t have to outgrow this immense capacity for pleasure? What if we can free ourselves to get it back again? And what happens to our sex lives then?
“Why do I feel so bad?” my client asked. “I feel like I have so much potential and I’m not living up to it. I get stuck in the same patterns, the same bad thoughts.”
Sandy* was a puzzle. Clearly bright and capable, and a hard worker, she seemed very uncomfortable in her own skin. A writer and a healer, she clearly had many gifts to share with the world. When she spoke, I could sense a lot of power. Yet she was underemployed and seemed on the verge of going into panic or breaking into tears much of our time together.
My client was a high functioning professional. During our many months of therapy she spoke of numerous times in her life when she felt too awkward or too shy or too depressed when she felt put down by people in her family or at work. She had a part of her that believed that something was wrong with her. And yet there was another part of her from long ago that knew that what was going on in her family was not right. And that part had been frozen in shame. All her emotions and her life forward direction stayed stuck and frozen in that shame/trauma bubble.
Natalie would always come into therapy with a lot of energy and a million things to talk about. Judy, her therapist, was stumped. “How do I get her to stop talking long enough to help her?” she asked. Joan, another client, is different. As soon as she mentions her boyfriend, she starts to sob uncontrollably. Steve, her therapist, feels helpless to help her.
While they are responding in opposite ways, Natalie and Joan both have the same problem: Neither is able to keep an optimal distance from their feelings. Natalie skips from topic to topic to avoid going into her feelings. Joan plunges in too deeply and too quickly.
There’s a subtle or not so subtle expectation of what is supposed to be happening this time of year: images of a loving family gathered around a tree or fireplace, expensive presents, lots of food to eat, the image of love and connection through the generations as people smile at each other. Whether on TV or a holiday card or images on the internet, there is a warm feeling of connection to these images. Whatever each family tradition or circumstance, if there is difference, sometimes even there is shame. And there can be shame between our imagined family on TV or little house on the prairie memories and the remembered unavoidable misattunements, and even horrors in some families, of what showed up growing up.
“I feel so guilty. I always stay with my mother when I visit her. The last time, I decided to stay at a hotel. She fell down during the night and ended up in the hospital.”
“My father drives me crazy, but when I talk back to him, I feel guilty.”
But is “guilt” really what these two people in distress feel?
In almost every workshop that I teach on shame, someone asks me to explain the difference between shame and guilt. There is a common wisdom here, which I basically agree with: Guilt is “I did something bad or wrong,” shame is “I am something bad or wrong.” Guilt is about actions, shame is about your very being. While useful in many ways, there is a basic problem with this distinction. Many people use the word “guilt” when they are really talking about shame.
I developed many of the techniques I use in working with shame as a Somatic and Emotional Mindfulness Trainer from my trauma training with Peter Levine. Shame, like trauma, puts the body in a freeze state and lowers the ability to think and act clearly. Shame feels like a fog or cover, something that is external, that makes it hard to function. I think of shame as developmental trauma. Usually, it is not a single shock to the system, like an accident or a hospitalization, but a series of more subtle shocks, a slow drip, drip, drip that disrupts normal functioning and creates feelings of isolation and powerlessness. The freeze of shame, like the freeze of trauma, has survival value in allowing a person to get through an intolerable situation.
