Unshame: Healing Trauma-Based Shame Through Psychotherapy

by Carolyn Spring

‘Vulnerability isn’t weakness,’

harrumph

meandered

‘It keeps me safe,’ I explain. ‘If I hate me, then I’m ready. I’m ready for you hating me. I won’t be taken by surprise. It feels safe. It feels comfortable. It’s the way it’s always been.

‘It’s like... that’s who I am. I am someone who is hated. That’s what I think, when I think of my mother. She created me. She made me. And it’s like she’s declared that I’m hateable. That’s who I am.’

it feels delicious to ‘talk back’.

siloed.

stymied

wantonness

Unshame. It smells nice. But how do I get there?

‘What would it be like if in life nobody told you off?’

It’s a constant conflict. I want things to be different. I want to live in ‘unshame’. But I’m also convinced that my place is in shame, and that I am its prisoner. That there is nothing at all that I can do about it—I

‘The first step is simply to notice the reaction,’

by focusing your attention on the reaction itself, it will begin to interrupt that reaction so that it won’t be so habitual or automatic any more.

‘What would it be like if you didn’t have any shame, and you were just able to notice the way you react to trauma without judgement or condemnation?’

what would reacting out of unshame be like?

inchoate

labile,

Just noticing every time I’m reacting out of shame, and then drawing myself back to a position of unshame. That I’m okay just as I am. Being kind towards myself. A bit like in mindfulness meditation when you notice that your attention has wandered from your breath.

mindread

People are dangerous; a smile is dangerous.

‘Unshame,’ I say to myself, as a mantra, and focus on my breathing—because

In with the unshame; out with the shame.

‘Unshame is where you belong,’

Unshame. That’s where she lives. And that’s where she says I can live too. It is a delicious thought and I want to lick my lips in anticipation of it.