Agenda Healing+Shame+Core+Recorded+workshop Final

Healing Shame – The Core Workshop:
Understanding, Transforming and Reducing Shame

Shame is perhaps the most painful of all emotions. It is at the root of both the inner critic and
perfectionism. It binds with other emotions, such as anger and fear, so that is often hard to
detect. Also, revealing shame can be in itself shameful. For many clients who don’t get better in
therapy, shame—unacknowledged and not worked through—is the primary factor.
Due to the special nature of shame, it cannot be worked with in the same way as the other
primary emotions. Special care needs to be taken to work with shame in specific ways.
We have created this workshop to help therapists learn how to avoid getting stuck in the shame
freeze with clients or following them down the endless shame vortex.
“We determine who we are through the eyes of those we love” –Bowlby
Learning Objectives
Participants will be able to:

• Identify the major characteristics of shame.
• Describe the differences between shame and other primary emotions.
• Compare the four basic reactions to shame and the characteristics of each reaction.
• Apply techniques to counter feelings of shame.
• Design strategies to get though shame defenses of over-verbalization, dissociation and
freezing.
• Utilize four realms of human experience—cognitive, somatic-emotional, imaginal and
interpersonal.
• Create optimal distance from shame.
• Analyze the differences between healthy shame and toxic shame.
Copyright © 2011 Healing Shame – Bret Lyon and Sheila Rubin

Course Agenda
Definitions of Shame
• “Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and
therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” (Brown)
• “Shame is the breaking of the interpersonal bridge.” (Kaufman)
• “Shame is being seen in a way you don’t want to be seen—the unbearable exposure of
parts of self one doesn’t like.” (Broucek)
• “Shame is the sudden interruption of pleasure.” (Tompkins)
• Shame is a parasympathetic break on excited states—a fast-track physiological response
that can overwhelm higher cortical functions. (Drawn from Porges)
• “Shame is a combination of an emotion and a freeze state.” (Lyon)
• Shame is feeling like an outsider—not belonging.
• Shame is feeling defective. “There’s something wrong with me.”
• Perfectionism and the inner critic are manifestations of shame.
Physiology of Shame
• Shame is a combination of an emotion and a freeze state. It is designed to lower affect.
• Porges Polyvagal Theory – Shame, like trauma, is a parasympathetic shutdown (freeze),
produced when the sympathetic nervous system is too agitated (hyper-arousal).
• Shame binds with other emotions. (Tompkins)
• Shame is a primary emotion.
Purpose of Shame
• We are born with the capacity to feel shame.
• Shame has a developmental purpose. It is an emergency/survival mechanism wired into
our nervous system to protect us from getting into trouble with the tribe/family.
• Shame is used by every society to socialize.
Healthy vs Toxic Shame

• Appropriate use of shame—depends on degree, repetition and repair of the
interpersonal bridge. Examples:
o A child runs into the street.
o Native Alaskan tribal exile vs US jail sentence.

Shame Can Be Overt or Covert
• Covert shame is bypassed shame that the person is often unaware of.
• Overt shame is often all-pervasive shame where the person sees themselves as flawed.
• Overt and covert shame need to be worked with differently.
Shame and Trauma

• Both involve a state of freeze due to dorsal vagal shutdown.
• Shame can be developmental—many smaller incidents.
• Shame, like trauma, evokes feelings of powerlessness.
• Many incidents of trauma produce shame.
• Slow it way down — Establish proper distance —Touch in, touch out.
WORKING WITH SHAME
Create a Counter-Shaming Environment – Create Safety, Build Rapport

• Therapist needs to work on his or her own shame first.
• Slow things down (Levine, Fosha, Johnson, Gendlin, Kurtz)
• Unconditional positive regard (Rogers)
• Cheerleading (Rubin)
• Focusing – the client leads. (Eugene Gendlin, Ann Cornell)
• Presence, playfulness, attunement, affirmation, compassion, care, curiosity, empathy.
(Fosha)
Resourcing
• Provide somatic exercises to help client learn to ground their energy through the feet
and legs.
• Provide somatic exercises to help client in moving energy down the body through hands
on legs.
• Provide psycho-education to normalize somatic sensations and energy in the body.
• Explain reason to resource somatically when working with shame.
• Help client experience a series of successes.
• Therapist as resource — Help the client see you seeing them. Let them know they are
held in your mind and heart. (Fosha)

Repairing Shame
• Repair the interpersonal bridge.
• Client’s resistance becomes resourcing.
• Resource — physically, emotionally, relationally.
• Normalize — “You are not alone.” “You are not the only one.”
• Educate — Explain cognitively what shame is and how it affects the body. “There are
good reasons you feel this way.”
• Find Optimal Distance between cognitive and embodied states.
• Pendulate gently between cognitive, embodied and imaginal realms.
• Separate shame from other emotions.
• Use objects or processes to externalize shame.
• Help client experience a series of successes.
• Help client share secrets.
• Use the work “shame” instead of the word “guilt” or “fear.”
• Let client know that shame comes from being shamed.

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Healing Shame – The Core Workshop:

Understanding, Transforming and Reducing Shame

Participants will be able to:

Copyright © 2011 Healing Shame – Bret Lyon and Sheila Rubin

Healthy vs Toxic Shame

Copyright © 2011 Healing Shame – Bret Lyon and Sheila Rubin

Shame and Trauma

WORKING WITH SHAME

Create a Counter-Shaming Environment – Create Safety, Build Rapport

Copyright © 2011 Healing Shame – Bret Lyon and Sheila Rubin

Copyright © 2011 Healing Shame – Bret Lyon and Sheila Rubin

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