Unshame: healing trauma-based shame through psychotherapy

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Great book– Read this inspiring book a few months ago and bought another copy to gift to someone else. The most helpful and insightful book on how to help someone who has experienced trauma I have ever read.” Now that I've finished, feel... emotionally flayed, but also grateful, seen, vindicated. I admire very much how she's able to be so intensely vulnerable in the hope of helping others. I mean, this woman gets me, down to the marrow without exception.

The author, Carolyn Spring, writes about her 9 years experience of psychotherapy. She focuses on her insights into her shame. Carolyn experienced extreme traumatic abuse during her childhood and has used her recovery and the knowledge she has acquired during and since this to support others. She tours with her training seminars supporting therapists, like myself and has researched, created and designed ‘psycho-educational tools’, books and on-line resources which help survivors of abuse. I tore through it in twenty four hours, sobbed several times, nodded in agreement, squared up defensively, and heartily applauded her all at the same time.My new book ‘ Unshame’ really looks at shame in the context of the therapy room. Because I really wanted to write a book about shame, but it’s difficult to write one head-on, so to speak. The danger is that if we talk directly about shame, then even at an unconscious level, we think, ‘I don’t want to know about this. It’s too uncomfortable.’ And shame just doesn’t operate in a left-brain, words-based, concepts-based way. Shame is a relational thing. It’s a right-brain, body-based, neurobiological feeling type thing. So the challenge is how to write a book about shame whilst tapping into the right brain. Because, as I explore at length on my course, shame doesn’t respond well to words. We don’t tend to resolve shame by just changing our mind about it. Very rarely do we just realise that we have nothing to be ashamed of, and then hey presto the shame is gone. Because shame is far more rooted in our bodies than it is in our brains. Captivating– I was captivated by this book. I’m amazed by how Carolyn so clearly explains such difficult subject matter and ultimately this is a story of hope that I believe will help many people.”

As a psychotherapist I benefited most from reading how Carolyn grappled with her thoughts, and the insights that arose. I did a lot of reflecting regarding the therapy I offer my clients, reaffirming that trusting process is both important for therapist and client. It is not a book which adds to knowledge that is already available, such as the work of Babette Rothschild in particular, but it does demonstrate it working in practice. And that’s what this book is all about for me. Lots of survivors have commented that I’ve put words to their experience. And lots of therapists have too. It always strikes me what a lonely place providing therapy is. There’s only you and the client. There’s no-one else there to say whether you’re getting it right or saying or doing the right thing. It’s a vulnerable place to be, especially with your own shame gremlins on your shoulders telling you that you’re getting it wrong. And so I was really pleased to have therapists say, having read certain chapters in particular, that they’re relieved to know that it’s not just them either. To really have that glimpse into someone else’s therapy room. In Unshame Carolyn neatly condenses years of therapy into discrete learning experiences, ranging from managing her dissociation to learning to trust present day experience. Review I think shame is principally shifted via right-brain mechanisms – compassionate presence, empathy, attunement. But we’re not just right-brain people. We have both hemispheres for a reason, and they support each other. So when we use psychoeducation, which is principally focused on the left side of our brain, when we learn about shame, about the three zones of the trauma traffic light and how shame resides principally in the red zone … when we learn the strategies of abusers, who are acting ‘shamelessly’ to transfer the shame and responsibility of their abuse to their victims … when we understand these concepts, it can really support us to be open to right-brain experiences. But I think that’s shame speaking, and that one of the ways out of shame is to really fall in love with who you are. To really know who you are. Because shame says, ‘You’re not enough. You’re not good enough. You’re bad. You’re unacceptable. You won’t be liked as you are.’ And unshame says, ‘I’m okay just as I am. I AM good enough. I AM acceptable. I am me, and it’s okay to be me.’

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It’s a very vulnerable book and that in itself is part of the journey to ‘unshame’. Shame tries to keep us safe, but a large part of the antidote to shame is courage. Courage to be who we are, and to be seen. Courage to be despised or criticised or rejected, if that’s what happens. But although we risk that, the reward, when it goes right, is connection – connection with the right people. The reward for me, writing this book, is all the people who have commented and said that it’s like I’m inside their head, that it could be a transcript of their therapy session, that they thought it was just them, and that as a result of reading it they feel less alone and actually less ashamed. The VIA Strengths assessment tool is available at: www.viacharacter.org Transcript: ‘Shame, unshame and who you really are’

Awesome– People you need to read this book! A fantastic insight into trauma shame and the therapy room. The honesty of this book hits you straight in the heart.” And so, when we have the courage to be vulnerable, although there is always the risk of being hurt, there is also the reward of connecting with others and realising that we’re not alone. In this podcast, I talk about the crippling isolation of shame, and how to move beyond it. I talk about how shame is a survival strategy which tries to keep us from being hurt. But in moving towards ‘Unshame’ – the title of my new book – we need to find out who we really are and live from that place of deep self-compassion. Also in the book Carolyn covers forgiveness, self compassion and vulnerability. It is humbling being allowed to witness her thinking and movement towards these states. SummaryBut neither is DID who I am, because that is defining myself by the trauma I have experienced, and that’s not right either. The abuse is something that happened to me, but it does not define who I am. DID is how my brain automatically and naturally responded to that abuse, but it does not define who I am. I am – I always have been – more than my trauma, and more than my response to that trauma. I’m a human being. In my course ‘ Working with Shame’ I talk about how empathy and compassion are the antidote to shame, and that’s what I really try to evoke in the book. There’s a chapter called ‘ I see suffering’ all about the power of compassionate presence. And it was really difficult to write, because how do you put into words this invisible, silent power – of compassion? How do you explain what it’s like to be on the receiving end of empathy, especially when you’ve grown up on the receiving end of abuse? It’s beyond words. But that’s the nature, really, of therapy – I think, when we dig down into it, we want to parcel therapy up and file it and label it and know what’s going on. But a lot of the time we can’t. Therapy theory tries to put into words what is wordless, what is ineffable. Because it’s two human beings sitting together in a place of pain and suffering, and where the compassion, empathy and attunement of the therapist shifts something in the nervous system and the neural networks of the client. But we can’t see what it is. We can’t see how it is. You just know if you’ve been on the receiving end of it that something has changed. But you don’t even know what. And so shame steps in to keep us safe from it. Shame says, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know enough to write this book or deliver this course or record this podcast. You’re not interesting enough or original enough or clever enough or qualified enough. Who do you think you are? Brené Brown? Better not get too big for your boots. Better not get out of your box. You’re not good enough.’

It feels intrinsically wrong to rate or review something like this, but I'm going to try and articulate how important this book is to me.I cannot write from the clients or survivor’s perspective. I feel all peoples experiences will be different. One message to take home is as a survivor you have not done anything wrong. Nothing, absolutely nothing. Resources