Unshame: Healing Trauma-Based Shame Through Psychotherapy

by Carolyn Spring

Shame. Everyone has it. No-one wants to talk about it. But the less we talk about it, the more we have of it. — Brené Brown

unremitting,

supercilious

imperviousness

To shift shame, we have to change our state before we change our story. Shame affects us deeply, at a neurobiological level. It puts us into the red zone, the freeze response of trauma. And we get stuck there, because the purpose of shame is to be a brake on behaviours that would otherwise threaten our survival in the group. It’s hard to live life moving forwards when you’ve got the handbrake on.

ineffable

inscrutable.

She will smell my rankness.

the familiar unfamiliarity of being here is also drawing her in:

lancet

unabating.

How could anyone be ashamed of this? the therapist thinks. It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t cause it. She’s a victim. That’s all. It’s not her shame.

Is it even possible not to be ashamed of your parts?

‘I’m negative... because then I’m safe,’

The words sit poisonously between us, accusing her, accusing me, fizzing with their bitterness and rage, like fajitas spitting in a pan.

Her voice is like buttercream icing.

‘You don’t need to let go of negativity,’ she says. ‘You can use it, if it helps you. Just be conscious of whether it is actually helping. And make that choice, rather than doing it as a habit.’

‘I don’t think people know how to cope with me, and I understand that,’

immanent

‘Often when people feel that they are ‘too much’, it’s because that’s how they were treated by their very first caregivers,’

‘And that’s often because that primary caregiver can’t cope with emotion and closeness. It comes across in their attachment style and what’s called insecure-avoidant attachment. But the child—the baby, the infant—gets the message that they are wrong for having feelings and for wanting to be close.

They don’t see that it’s a problem that the adult has, rather than them. They just know that if they express their emotions or their needs, they don’t get a positive response. So they learn that the only way to keep that person close is to suppress their feelings. They grow up believing that it’s wrong...

I hate the way that therapy is full of new experiences. And I love it too.

‘But no-one ever cries forever,’

‘Emotions have motion. They don’t stay the same. So if I let them come, they might feel overwhelming for a while. But then they’ll pass.

‘Infanticidal

coalesce.

brusquely.

vacuous.

I am ashamed at the visibility of my shame.

‘I don’t want to hate myself so much...’

‘If I didn’t have shame, then who knows what I’d be capable of?’

proffer.

I don’t need to be ashamed of wanting to be loved.

Beliefs that sit like too much treacle in my guts and refuse to budge or be digested.

I don’t know how I know what I know. I just know it.

‘Anger is the energy not to act powerless any more,’ she says. ‘You just need to harness it and point it in the right direction.’

dubious.

‘When x did x to me, it made me feel x. It caused me x. But I now forgive x for the hurt and consequences I have suffered, and I discharge all debts and I choose not to seek revenge or recompense.’

‘Forgiveness is too easy,’ I say, and I’m not quite sure what I mean, so I wait for more words to come to explain it to myself. ‘It’s easy to forgive when you haven’t really acknowledged what happened. I’ve spent my whole life forgiving them. I wanted to forgive them. I did forgive them. You get abused, and you don’t want to cause a fuss. You don’t hit back. You don’t lash out. You just take it. You blame yourself, rather than them. You don’t want to hate them. At the end of the day, you just want them to stop hurting you. And you want them to love you...’

‘Forgiving them is easy, because it’s not real forgiveness,’ I explain. ‘Because you’re not really blaming them. You’re blaming yourself. Forgiving yourself is so much harder. That’s

surly

‘I don’t want to be on their level. I want to be better than that.’

It’s the trauma that traumatised me, not my response to it.’

‘It’s the bullet in the arm, not your anger at it.’

We have to be angry about what happened to us because it’s wrong. Anger is our way of saying no. If we’re not angry about it, maybe they’ll do it again?’

I don’t want to be angry forever,’ I add. ‘I just want to be angry long enough for it to count.

I hate being angry. I hate what it does to your body. I don’t want to live like that...’

I just want to get better. I want to heal the damage. And then I want to help other people get better. That’s what I want to do with my anger.’

exultant