Unshame: Healing trauma-based shame through psychotherapy

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Deeply therapeutic– Carolyn Spring uncovers shame and its workings very gently, holding the shamed heart tenderly and with respect. A deeply therapeutic and healing experience to read this book and being taken on a journey to uncover shame and discovering hope, self worth and a way out from under. Thank you so much for this fantastic book.” Probably my main insight, at least for myself, is that shame isn’t all bad. It’s something that we think of as debilitating and ugly and just destructive, and it is those things, but it’s those things for a reason. Really, shame is just trying to protect us and keep us safe. It’s beating us up for a reason. It lies to us to try to keep us from being hurt.

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. Introducing the concept of ‘neuroception’ and shame as a response to unsafety in terms of relational threat. So it’s been a really busy few months, mainly focused around launching a new course ‘Working with Shame’ and also, connected to that, my new book ‘Unshame: healing trauma-based shame through psychotherapy‘. So really I’ve spent the last six months immersed in the shame research, and immersed in my own process of figuring out what shame is, how it’s affected me, its links with trauma, and how we can move out of the crippling isolation of shame: How can we overcome the self-hatred and self-loathing which really gets in the way of us doing anything, enjoying anything, being anything. Beautiful book – I’ve never read anything like this that lays open the experience of the person in the client’s chair so vividly, plainly, bravely and I’d dare say unashamedly. With particular attention paid to dissociation and what did and really didn’t work for Carolyn in supporting her. It is quite incredible.”

Review

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.” 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.” 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.

My journey out of shame therefore has mirrored my journey out of trauma, and actually I’d say that largely they are the same thing. Trauma sends us out of the green zone into amber or red. Shame likewise sends out of the green zone, usually into red. They are both ways in which our nervous system is dysregulated. The answer to both is regulation – someone who’s in the green zone and able to stay in the green zone, coming alongside us and using their ‘regulated-ness’ to help to regulate our nervous system – so that we can integrate what’s happened to us; so that we can have an integrated sense of self. And not every chapter is explicitly about shame, because that’s exactly what therapy is like. Shame was our constant companion, as it were – the third person in the room, every single session. But I didn’t always identify it as shame, and we didn’t actually talk about shame directly all that often, because to do so just tended to trigger me into more shame. Instead, shame is in the dynamic between the client and the therapist. It’s the need to not be seen, not be heard, not be noticed. To not cause a fuss. To not get into trouble. And at the same time there’s this unquantifiable need to be seen and heard and noticed and connected with.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. Introducing the concept of shame’s impacts on relationships via a shutdown of the ‘social engagement system’. Applying this understanding to the therapist’s need to communicate safety to a client at both a conscious and unconscious level. And so in writing about shame, which is a relational emotion, I wanted to write about it in the context of relationship. And I wanted to evoke characters and setting and narrative and the things that we’d normally associate with creative writing, with fiction. I wanted to paint a picture of shame rather than just cite ten research studies.

Understanding the evolutionary survival advantage of shame as a brake on behaviours that risk our exclusion from the tribe. I found this course to be comprehensive in all aspects of mind, body, emotions. I have worked with clients for years on toxic shame and this course taught me things I had no idea about before and which have transformed the quality of the therapy I now provide to clients suffering with toxic/unhealthy shame.” 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.Examining different instinctive physiological responses to connection bids (e.g. smiling) based on prior experience. Introducing a roadmap for the course content based on a non-triggering approach to shame (state, stance, story).

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.”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.” 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. 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.