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Shame response:

"What happens in your body?"

And they say, "Oh, it's this flush. It's like a whoosh, and it's so painful. I can't speak, and I just want to hide my eyes and creep away."

Then say "Yes, exactly. How did that help you survive in school?"

And they say, "Well, it was better not to say anything, and not to be seen. So, I guess it helped me to be better at being invisible."

Then they begin to understand, and they say, "Yeah, being invisible was a really good idea."

Then I say, “Yes, you were too little to think, ‘I better be invisible. I better shut up.’ So, the shame did it for you. You did survive, and here we are right now. You're here.”

just to go back to that simple example of a child who had an exuberant part that was shamed in school. If that's just one part of you, and not all of you, then you're not shameful. That shifts the whole dynamic for people.

A “Parts” Approach to Working with Shame

The shame is a part people develop in order to protect themselves from future harm. It's an important defensive piece, but they exile that shame piece of themselves.

Then I ’ll say, "How do you feel toward this part who's doing the shaming?" The typical response is, "Well, I hate it. I wish it would go away."

Ask the parts who are having strong feelings about this critic to relax, because we need to be curious about this critic. It's not going to be very responsive, as you and I wouldn't be very responsive if someone hated us and was in our face. So, you put the critic in a room by itself because physical separation often helps.

Then you say, "How do you feel toward that part now?" The client will start to become curious, “I wonder why it's doing this. Why is it doing this to me?" Put the violin in a sound proof room, so you can’t here it by you can see through the glass.

Then you say, "Is it okay with your other parts if you go in the room with the critic and have a chat about that?" So, the client then goes into the room and they ask their critic, “What compels you to do this behavior?" And the critic may say, "Well, it's because you're so stupid." If I hear that, I’ll interrupt and say to the critic directly, "We know you're really good at your job, but right now be direct with us about what you're worried would happen if you stop doing it. Why do you do this job?"

+++ When the critic starts talking about its fears, it'll say, "Remember when X, Y, and Z happened? I'm trying to make sure that never happens again. I don't want you to be hurt. Those things are too dangerous, we have to be careful." +++

+++ That's an eye-opener for people because all they've heard is insults, and they believe them because the part often uses the voice of someone who was externally critical. The minute you get the curiosity in there and find out about the critic’s underlying motives, the whole thing changes.

+++ At that point, you can say, "Well, how about if we could do something different and better? How about if there was a Christine who's not a part," which would be “the Self” in IFS, "who could help out with this, and make sure that the part who is loud and exuberant is safe to be loud and exuberant in the right places and doesn't get into trouble in other places? What if we could fix this by having somebody who loves her take care of her?" That's a revelatory idea for the critic +++

Somatic Approaches to Working with Shame

Have the person very slowly – just the smallest amount – go towards the posture of shame, and then very slowly come out and rest.

Then once again, go very, very slowly into the posture of shame, maybe just a little bit more this time, and then vertebra by vertebra come back out of the shame.

Then have them feel what they ’re sensing in their body. Very frequently, the client will then begin, in a productive way, to talk about the shame and where it came from.

You might notice a small movement of the head, hand, or foot. Those are usually the places I tend to look: feet, hands, head. A client in dorsal shame is usually looking away, eyes down.

You might simply notice them very subtly looking up and down. You can check with the client, “Are you there, is somebody there?” You might hear the client respond with something as simple as a small sound. You might hear a, "Hmm." All these are subtle signs that energy is beginning to move in the system again.

As soon as you hear, see, or feel one of those things happening, then you want to name it. So, I will name to my client, "I just noticed that small movement of your hand, that's your nervous system letting us know that it's beginning to move out of this place that's so dark and despairing," or, "I noticed that you peeked at my eyes, and I just wanted to let you know my eyes are here for you."

What I wanted to find was a part of her that could protect and defend herself. So, I asked her, "Is there any part of you that wants to make a different action?" She said, "There's tension in my right arm," so focused on that because tension is a precursor to action. As we focused on that, she felt the impulse to push away her abuser. Her whole body then ignited as it often does when you're restoring an instinctive response that had been abandoned because it wasn't effective. So that mitigated the shame for her, being able to make that action and feeling her power to defend herself.

Shame definitely lives in the body, so our body is a great resource. With all my clients, it's +++ important to me that they have a new experience, and then find the new meaning. +++ That new meaning is the antidote for shame, and it comes from a new bodily experience.

Two Strategies to Help Clients Understand the Function of Their Shame=

Slow down the pace of the session before asking a specific question…

People worry about the timing, but I am not watching the clock to time it. I don’t ask a question of the client that I don’t ask of myself at the same moment. It takes me a minute to land on the question, and that helps.

You start an inquiry that really slows down, and ask, “What would happen if you didn’t do that behavior?”

Then, keep following up, “And then what would happen? And then what would happen?”

Eventually, you’ll find the client saying, “Then they would see what I am, and they’d leave.”

Even when clients know their shame, they only know it fractionally. The don’t see its richness, and are rarely called to pause around that in their ordinary day-to-day interactions.

How Psychoeducation Can Help Reduce Isolation for Clients Who Feel Shame

Feelings of shame can lead clients to isolate themselves. Here, Usha shares the language she uses with clients to help combat that urge to isolate.

I think it's important to think of psychoeducation as a way of reducing the isolation that comes from experiences of shame. You can share with a client, “You're not alone. I know the way you feel is unique to you, but there are other people who have these types of experiences,” and +++help them connect to that, whether by joining a group, or reading an article or an essay or something that moves them into considering that they're not alone.+++ That's a critical part of psychoeducation for me.

How to Help Clients Safely Experience Positive Emotions Again

Techniques to help clients begin to safely experience positive emotions again:

+++ With positive emotion, it's really helpful to go to the edges of the window of tolerance, with both high -arousal emotion as well as low. Traumatized clients have trouble at both ends because those extremes are coupled with fear and dysregulation. The more they can go there and reregulate, at both ends of the window of tolerance, the more capacity they’ll build for positive emotion.+++

+++ I would talk to a client about the experience of savoring.

To stop and notice it for five or ten seconds. It's a simple, quick practice.

+++ When working with clients who really struggle to feel safe in feeling good, we want them to just notice those micro - moments. Then we let them know that as the micro -moments begin to build up, it's going to be easier to feel good, and feel safe in feeling good. +++ - use the team video and ask her to tell me about a fond memory she has about helping someone on the video. Also tell me about a fond memory from one of the images she has on the image.

+++ We want to relieve distress, but we also want heightened feelings of pleasure and wellbeing. I have to often restrain myself from trying to increase the connection to positive affect too fast. I have to understate by saying, “So, just feel this feeling of warmth and calm. Is it pleasurable or unpleasurable?”

If clients say it's uncomfortable, I’ll say, "Yeah, it's uncomfortable because it's so new, and it was so dangerous when you were a kid. So just notice the discomfort, notice the feeling, notice both together.” Over time, if my client notices both, “I like this feeling of warmth,” and “I'm aware of the discomfort,” the discomfort decreases.+++