As practitioners, we’re well-acquainted with the fight, flight, freeze response – that automatic response that evolved to protect us from external threats or danger.
But what happens when the threat is internal? When the threat is painful emotions or distress?
Our response can still be automatic, and for many clients it can often be to fight.
But when ‘fight’ is how a client handles difficult emotions, the fight moves to within them. It can get expressed as self-criticism and self-blame – and that can lead to shame.
No longer are they only feeling bad, but they believe they are bad . . . and something’s wrong with them.
As a practitioner, you know how shame can trap clients in unending pain and suffering.
So what if you could give them a quick and simple practice to start them down the path to healing?
Well, check out the video below – Paul Gilbert, PhD shares the practice he uses to help clients understand how the mind works . . . and how that understanding can be transformative.
Take a look – it’s about 5 ½ minutes:
Dr. Gilbert: So, everything that you are has been built for you, you didn’t choose anything. You have two arms and two legs, your genes built those. You might be a woman or a man, you didn’t choose that. You have a head on top of your shoulders, you didn’t choose that. You have a brain, you didn’t choose to have one of those, and in that brain, you’ve got capacities for anger, anxiety, depression, etc., but you didn’t choose any of that. You didn’t choose anything, actually. Your brain has capacities for feeling what you’re feeling, which have all been built for you, not by you. So, this is quite a revelation. The other thing we say to people is, “Look, if I had been kidnapped as a three-day-old baby into a violent drug gang, what would I be like today?” We get our clients to look at us and say, “So what would I be like? Think about it, really think about it.” And they might say, “Well you’d probably be quite violent and you might be into drugs big-time, you might be very wealthy, you might be dead.” All those things are possible. There is a totally different version of Paul Gilbert that would have emerged, had I grown up in a different environment. But I didn’t choose that environment. Not only with that, but that environment would turn genes off in my brain, it would do stuff to my oxytocin gene because we now know that the expression of our genes, called epigenetics, can be affected by our environment.
Who’s the real me, then, this one? Or the drug addict Paul Gilbert? The one with tattoos or the one without tattoos? There is no real “you” – that is an illusion. There are versions, we are just versions of patterns of electrochemical activity. What makes you “you” is this point of consciousness, not content. Content’s all been created for you, not by you. The more enlightened you become, the more aware, then you start not owning this stuff. My job is now not to blame myself for what’s going on in my brain, that isn’t my fault because it’s all been built, I didn’t choose any of it. If I was on Alpha Centauri, maybe I’d have a totally different set of emotions have different colors and so on. So I don’t choose it, but this is my responsibility. My responsibility is to get to know this mind as best I can and try as best I can to be helpful, not harmful. I have to not blame myself of my potential to be harmful, but I don’t want to act that out in the world. So this distinction between helping people not shame and blame but take responsibility because your brain is potentially a very dangerous thing. It’s like driving a car, don’t just get in a car and drive it. Learn how to drive it, otherwise you’re a danger on the road. But that’s unfortunately true for our minds, if we don’t learn about them, we can be a danger because we can be a danger to ourselves, the way we think, and the desire to kill ourselves or drink or cut or criticize, and we can be a danger to others. We lose our temper and we’re horrible to people or whatever it is. These are really important things. What we find is for our clients, just nobody’s ever told them that. I mean, the number of times I’ve had clients say, “Nobody’s told me that. I always just thought there was something bad about me.” One client many years ago said, “I always thought when God made me, he’d run out of the nice bits. I was always told in my family that I was just the black sheep, I was always told that there was something wrong with me. In my last therapy I went to, I was told I had an emotional disorder. I’m screwed up. So we say,
“No, no, no, forget about all that stuff. There are these programs in your brain, which, through no fault of your own, are running. If you’ve grown up in a threatening environment, those are the programs that will run. What we will help you do is to start to be aware of them and then how to switch into a compassionate mental state, which will help you with those systems in your brain.”
Dr. Buczynski: Notice how Paul lays out a map for clients that includes the three points that we just discussed. We don’t choose how our brains think, we don’t choose how and in what context we’re born or how we grow up, and we don’t design what’s happening at the present moment because many of those things are out of our control. “May I be helpful, not harmful” is a precept embodied in the reality check because it helps clients recognize that they don’t have to allow their minds to take them hostage nor to govern their actions.
Dr. Gilbert’s practice is powerful because it can set the stage for de-pathologizing and reducing the shame caused by self-criticism and blame.
We’ll be getting into several other key compassion practices you can use in your work with clients in this week’s session in The Clinical Application of Compassion program.
You can learn more when you sign up right here.
But for now, I’d like to hear from you. How might this or other compassion practices help your clients?
I have to disagree with the “we haven’t chosen any of it” POV. I appreciate the interplay between DNA, circumstances, and neurophysiology, and I agree that some things are completely out of my (or a client’s) control. But a very big part of healing is growing in our capacities to choose and to create the self we can be in spite of the circumstances. Content IS important because abused persons also make brilliantly courageous and caring/compassionate choices in the face of abuse. They become someone (they create content) in light of these choices. Perhaps hyperbole in the idea that “we didn’t choose any of it”, is necessary at some points in therapy but to continue this line as foundational and extensive seems to me to be counterproductive, victim mindset-producing, and even a potentially prime source of shame. Saying something like: “there’s so very much we don’t choose/never chose and so much we are still free to learn to choose” is an approach I would prefer. What seems necessary is to give clients a sense that with healing (and healthy inner and outer contexts or milieus) new choices and patterns of choices (and so, changing content or becoming the self one CAN become) are possible and important.
This is a starting point to help alleviate shame not to just give up and say there’s nothing I can do. I find many of the “metaphysical” ideas to be victim-blaming and shame inducing. The idea that you create everything that has happened to you. It’s an idea that appeals to privileged people because it alleviates responsibility for others. This video does not eliminate choice but invites compassion for where you are now so that you then can make choices from a better place.
Neat explanation of the interplay between the power of every human being’s genetic, environmental and historical inheritance of brain development and function, and our ultimate conscious choice and responsibility by virtue of our frontal lobes
What a wonderful way to look at our actions and the way our brains work. So much about the brain seems so complicated and this is such an “ah ha!” thought. And one I can accept on a conscious level.
Paul Gilbert’s explanation allowed me to take a deep satisfying breath of relief. I have badgered myself over incidents in my life that I’ve initiated or of which I became a victim: a narrative of shame and incongruity for the icon I had been taught to emulate as a Catholic. No explanation of God’s forgiveness wiped clean the incessant feeling of guilt and recrimination for my errors. Thank you, Ruth and Paul, for this opening to freedom.
I read your message, and I can not stop thinking how a person can carry so much guilt. Is it another person’s guilt that you take upon yourself? This is twice too much of “usefulness” even for a child to bear. Sadly said, so much shame!
Thank you Dr. Buczynski for the statement I am in awe to see the pride in you and that keeps the profession strong and supported. Danke sehr!
Spot on – a really useful way of describing a common problem in terms clients can understand. Thank you.
Totally mind blowing… this is the first time I hear about this stuff…very new to me
simple but profound Truth/Concept that Dr.Gilbert puts forward.
Obsession with “Control” is the disease of modern man generating enormous amount of Angst.
Real word generating this state by Mind is ‘Dukkha’ in Budhist Psychology .
Total acceptance of of it may be called ? ‘Surrendering ‘ without judgement or Blaming or Shaming . Just As Is. (=Reality )
Only then one can proceed forward.
Thanks Immensely
I have a client who would benefit from this approach. He has a very fixed idea of who he is and that It cannot be changed. We have looked at his attachment history which has revealed a lot but Dr Gilbert’s idea of how a different background would result in a different person is liberating. However I often come across clients who understand the concept but are unable to ‘own’ it. Is this comon?
Absolutely , i agree
I’m here to learn to help disentangle the anger, sadness and resentment I see in people, making their suffering perpetual. Dr. Gilbert was excellent, he was so concise and helpful in the understanding of how we are not the separate absolute selves that we often insist upon feeling we are. We can end the blame and self blame and open up, to become aware, and fully able to take responsibility for what we do and can do in our lives.
Very clear and helpful! Thank you!
I love the way Dr. Gilbert talkes . So human, so smiling, and what he says reminds me of Eckhart Tolle. We are COnsciouness, the rest is chosen “for us” and we have to find back to this nonjudging, non blaming, inner Observer of our lifestory .. being aware that we are LIFE itself, not the momentary, always changing lifestory . Merci beaucoup; INdeed .. one is eager to hear more .
Very refreshing conceptualization! Thank you for sharing. I think quite a few of my clients will find this approach very liberating! Will definitely incorporate in my sessions this week!
This is so helpful. I love how Dr Gilbert speaks. Can’t wait to hear more.
I am gaining such important knowledge about identifying compassionate skills in myself and tapping in to my client’s compassion and helping them identify and work with themselves. Shame work is so important, what a powerful way to explain to clients!! I wonder if clients get stuck in “yes but look what happened to me…” and is it the “responsibility piece as well as other concepts like neuroplasticity, “Teflon brain” and mindfulness practices that help clients get out of their story when stuck in it? Thank you for the terrific webinars …I learn so much that’s helpful with my work!!
Dr. Gilbert has shown this idea to be so simple everybody can get it. While at the same time simply accepting that so many people don’t. It is simple but profound.
Rather than analyzing why this knowable fact has eluded the person, (why they bought into the blame game), he just educates the person on the simple truth and it changes there whole perspective.
All I would add is that although I have learned this idea before, every time I hear it again it makes me feel good. More loving, more happy, more free.
Simple but profound truths need to be remembered over and over regularly in order for the brain to learn them and the person to live them.
Yes , that was helpful!!
Thank you for that – simple and clear and shifts from blame to awareness and possibilities!
Very helpful! Dr. Gilbert explains this very well.