Jewel Jones
branded, devalued, degraded, diminished, disrespected, dumb, diseased, defective, exposed, inept, empty, embarrassed, flawed, helpless, humiliated, humbled, insignificant, inadequate, incompetent, inept, idiotic, mortified, overlooked, pathetic, powerless, ridiculous, stupid, shy, seen, small, stupid, silly, trivialised, undignified, uncomfortable, unimportant, worthless. (Note that these words may be markers of shame in a session.) Why start with us therapists? I suggest we need to be desensitised to the affect of shame so we can bear it more readily. Shame can be an overwhelming experience. Talking about shame is inherently shaming, so it is important to be in it, feel it, recognise and breathe through it. Only when we are able to self regulate our own shame will we feel ready to work with client shame; at least, that is my experience. Shame involves the ‘other’: a perception or experience as if there is a negative evaluation from another. Therefore, the therapeutic space, the counselling room, has an important place in the healing of shame. Therapy is about relationship. Shame is created within interpersonal relationships; therefore it needs an interpersonal relationship to heal and transform it (Greenberg & Iwakabe in Dearing & Tangney 2011:74). As I am writing this, I am struggling to acquire the word count needed to submit my column. This is a more difficult task than usual. What a surprise! The topic is shame. It’s not even popular with me! Let me give you a bit of background. I used to be a high school English and Drama teacher. At my last school, I had a particularly difficult Year 9 class—a double-period every Wednesday with recess in the middle. The classroom, on ground level, had large windows directly opposite the science department, which was full of creative, energetic staff with whom I shared a passion for producing school musicals on a grand scale. We knew each other well and spent a lot of time out of school hours, planning and rehearsing for these productions. These staff members knew about my BLUSHES. My blushes had the heat and colour of a large rural bonfire. I went red from here to there and in places you couldn’t see. In addition, the staff knew I was highly reactive, extraverted and a bit colourful. They also knew that this class were a pretty
rough lot and had seen more of the world than most. They were loveable but rough and street-wise. They were a handful! The science department set me up, sending multiple packages marked ‘Urgent for Mrs Jones’ via a naive Year 7 student. I sniffed trouble and kept returning them. After recess, though, the phallic-looking pea-shooter they had tried to send, now appeared unwrapped and prominently taped to the whiteboard with a huge scrawled note: “Ask Mrs Jones what this is.” When I turned to face the class, the entire science department was lined-up at the window to watch THE BLUSH. I felt exposed ... shamed. I had strategies by this time to deal with my blushes. All my students knew they could make me blush easily and, as a consequence, I had had lots of practice, so I sailed through the experience relatively unscathed. It was a familiar place, and I was already working in therapy to manage it. I was in a place where I could join in on the joke, find my feet (after lunch!) and not feel too battered by the experience. Yet, this event illustrates how vulnerable I was to feeling completely naked and every other word on the list above. It would still be years before my struggles were named as shame and dealt with at depth in my therapy. I rarely blush now, yet I had once been famous amongst staff and students at two schools, over many years for my blushing. The healing took place in the space between the therapist and me—the client. The therapist had dealt with his shame; he wasn’t afraid of mine. When I dropped into shame, he knew. I had another therapist who had been non-shaming, but this was qualitatively different. He put shame out there where it could be named, examined, discussed, tolerated and accepted. It was as if a landmine removal specialist entered my sensitive internal world and carefully de-activated each trigger, one by one. It was repetitive, slow and arduous work. Once the mines were removed, we could plant new affects, experiences and beliefs, heavily fertilised by humour and pride in my strengths. We regularly added extra nourishment by cultivating ecstasy, joy and spirituality. I have a term I use when training: “And then you tread on a stick”, and the client jumps. What I mean by this expression is that clients are watchful, waiting for the therapist or worker to put a foot wrong, to prove the counsellor or process is not safe. They are sitting in a silent forest and when we tread on a twig, they run. Shame is like that. When we tread on a stick, clients believe they have proof that they are perceived by the therapist (continued on Page 33)
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