From both personal and professional experience, I'm pretty convinced that shame is one of the two most painful human emotions. Shame is the feeling that there is something wrong with us or that we are not good enough or, to put it more strongly and the way clients often do, that we are worthless and unlovable. Shame is usually installed by early personal history (e.g., parental neglect, childhood sexual abuse, growing up with a disability) and, later, becomes a habitual internal process in which part of the adult mind harshly criticizes another part. Viscerally, when shame is triggered, the experience is of a punch in the gut or a knife in the heart. That is why people experiencing shame often visibly cringe.
One problem with shame, aside from how painful it is, is that it stops us from being willing to engage in relationships in an authentic and vulnerable way (who who feels worthless would want to be truly seen?) and therefore people who suffer from shame also suffer from loneliness. Additionally, shame can often lead either to paralysis with regard to life goals (I'm worthless, so why even try?; I'm bound to fail) or unrealistic and exhausting perfectionism (I must ceaselessly prove that I am worthwhile). Paradoxically, despite their intense pain, people who suffer from shame often have very little compassion for themselves, wrongly assuming that their suffering must all be the result of their inherent worthlessness and, therefore, deserved.
Here is a link to an excellent TED talk by Brene Brown that touches on many of these issues:
http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html
I have been consciously working with my own shame for about 20 years and I'm happy to report that I am much less pained by "shame attacks" than I used to be, both because I am less frequently triggered and because I have much more compassion for myself when I do feel shame. Additionally, I'm no longer a perfectionist and my internal critic has softened considerably. This is how I know there is hope for fellow sufferers!
When working with clients on their shame, I (very tenderly) use Emotion Focused Therapy techniques, both to help clients see how their internalized shaming process works so that they can start to dismantle it, and to re-experience with them in a healing way the specific history that installed the shame in the first place. Ultimately, the goal is for clients to start to know and feel that they are lovable and worthwhile in all their imperfection, just the way they are.Labels: counseling, EFT, emotion focused therapy, psychotherapy, shame, therapy