Unshame: Healing Trauma-Based Shame Through Psychotherapy

by Carolyn Spring

I’m not perfect or sorted; I’m not in such a state of numb imperviousness to rejection and hurt that people’s shaming doesn’t affect me. But I carry on regardless; I keep doing what I value; and I keep on being compassionate to myself, especially when I need it most.

To shift shame, we have to change our state before we change our story.

Shame is a two-person emotion.

‘You know, shame drives dissociation,’ says the therapist softly, ‘and the dissociation drives shame. They are both ways of surviving by disconnecting.’

Trauma therapy doesn’t involve talking endlessly about ‘what happened’. For me, in this period at least of the work, it involves talking endlessly about the imprint trauma has left on my automatic reactions.

‘Shame is the sense that we don’t belong,’ the therapist begins to explain. ‘It’s a conviction that we are intrinsically defective, even in a way that we cannot identify. We believe there is something wrong with us, and so we are excluded and unwanted. We are outside the group, with no way in. We don’t belong. It affects the way we view everything about ourselves and other people.’