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Shame is a primary emotion and therefore is something that we will all be familiar with experiencing it. Shame has an adaptive pro-social function so its not about eliminating all experiences of shame, but identifying if and where we experience toxic/chronic shame.

Q. What was your earliest experience of shame? and how do you feel you adapted your future behaviours as a result of this? Often compensatory behaviour occurs as a result of shame – for example if you can’t read and write, but have physicality then you may compensate with violence  Or if you feel a lot of shame about your body or sexuality you may disguise this by being hypersexual. Can you think of any compensatory behaviour that you may display born out of shame?

Parents use adaptive shame, but if this is too extreme then it can develop into chronic shame. Q. How do your parents use shame?

Some examples that shame-based families will experience are: disapproval of spontaneity, rigid expectations of behaviours, shame linked to curiosity (for asking questions etc), fault-blame focused families (most vulnerable child is scapegoated and carries all the fault and blame of the whole family), suppression and invalidation of feelings and needs, constant comparisons to others, lack of affect regulation (told how you should be feeling and sex, drugs, food, alcohol relied on to manage feelings with expression of feelings being deemed as too needy, involved, wet etc), objectification (where children are an accessory for image of family, not accepted in their own unique being), lies and reality invalidated and unrealistic expectations.

Q. What kind of shame is in your family? Has shame linked to certain areas been passed down your family tree? Does your culture instill shame over certain behaviours/values/experiences?

Shame is often a feeling of being less than an ideal/norm and linked to feelings of inclusion/exclusion. Where do you transgress social norms that you feel self-conscious about?

Q. What defences against shame do you use, with whom and in what situations? For example you may withdraw, become self-reliant, become appeasing, perfectionistic, or be grandiose or attach other. You may self-shame and blame or split off certain aspects of yourself and develop social v private self.

Q. What is your non-verbal communication when you experience shame? How does your posture change?

Exercise – write down the word ‘SHAME’ and then write down every word, experience, visual image, person, sensation that comes to mind when you think of ‘shame’.

Exercise – make a pie chart and identify the key areas that you hold shame. Here are some examples to get you started:

Cognition – Shame around lack of academic achievement, reading, bizarre ways of thinking, presenting, game playing, memory games

Body – disability, physique and how fits the norm, weight – thin shaming – depends on cultures and friends, shape of body with current norm (neutral or curvy or muscular)

Sense of self – vulnerability not acceptable, emotions not acceptable, shyness, posture, handshake/wave, what emotions are deemed acceptable or not

Sexuality – orientation, performance, STIs, virginity, puberty, mutilation, termination, circumcision or not, submission/dominance, promiscuity, preferences like BDSM/fetishes  How was your sexual script formed?

Relationship – dependence v independence, fear of abandonment and shame if have been left, parenting with emphasis to be perfect

Beliefs – religious, values – Brexit and potential beliefs (eg. Academic seen as non-Brexit and uneducated as Brexit)

Ageing – loss of potency, agency, less sharp, physical change, increasingly invisible especially as a woman, hair loss

As i searched for these images linked to shame it made me realise how particular emotions can also be very linked to shame and particular images and colours are attached to it. What image from your own life, or more generally would encapsulate your understanding of or the core of  the shame you feel?

Consultant psychiatrist Sami Timini wrote an interesting piece that questions whether there is a massive increase in mental health problems among young people requiring CAMHS involvement, or whether as a society we are increasingly unable to tolerate our children’s expressions of distress and are too quick to want to hand them over to ‘experts’, who then medicalise, diagnose and prescribe. While there are clearly unique pressures impacting children today with social media, he makes a really valuable point that if we popularise the idea that there is an epidemic of mental health issues among young people and they all need expert help, the young people, parents, teachers and others who care for them will start to think that any display of emotion that concerns them, feels painful or annoys them or causes problems to themselves or others is a sign of mental disorder and not part of what it is to have the full range of human emotions – distress or certain idiosyncrasies become far too quickly pathologised. He argues “We are becoming afraid of our children’s emotions and behaviours. We are not allowing space for the ordinariness of unhappiness, anger, pain and suffering”. It’s best to promote caregivers and parents to be with difficult emotions, feel empowered to offer ordinary, relational ways to help and not feel an expert needs to be involved for fear of incompetency. There are of course those that greatly need expert intervention, but far too many children who are presenting with normal dilemmas, emotions and difficulties in living are being pathologised and medicalised, which will inevitably significantly shape their future.

“The impediment to action advances action, what stands in the way becomes the way”

“Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging….Shame erodes the part of ourselves that believes we are capable of change. We cannot change and grow when we are in shame, and we can’t use shame to change ourselves.” (Brene Brown)

A short clip on the BBC describes how the terms ‘therapist’ and ‘counsellor’ are not protected and therefore you get many people offering therapy with sometimes as little as a few months or a year of training.

While you still need to thoroughly consider all therapists that you contact, it is important to find therapists through an accrediting body. These include the BPS and HCPC for counselling psychologists and clinical psychologists, and the UKCP and BACP for psychotherapists and counsellors, among others. It is also important to look for someone that is ‘accredited’, as individuals can be ‘registered’ with the BACP after only completing 150 supervised client hours. Accreditation requires the submission of case studies, a thorough demonstration of ethics and 450 supervised client hours which is still not a huge amount, but then you can look at what other experience they have gained, in what settings and with which client groups and you can even ask how many client hours they have done. I think it is important to find a therapist that has experienced their own personal therapy, so that they are acutely aware of their own worldview, values, biases, assumptions etc and work through their own unresolved issues and blindspots, so that these do not cloud the therapy and encounter and also continued supervision and CPD is a necessity.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/video_and_audio/headlines/51273607/can-anyone-call-themself-a-therapist-or-a-counsellor