How to Ease the Pain of Trauma-Induced Shame
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with Bessel van der Kolk, MD;
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with Bessel van der Kolk, MD; Ruth Lanius, MD, PhD; Peter Levine, PhD; Thema Bryant-Davis, PhD; Richard Schwartz, PhD; Pat Ogden, PhD; Janina Fisher, PhD; Kathy Steele, MN, CS; Stephen Porges, PhD; Martha Sweezy, PhD, LICSW; Deb Dana, LCSW; Ruth Buczynski, PhD
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There are so many ways this session has been helpful, it’s hard to narrow it down to just one. Savouring positive emotions while at the same time “checking in with the client’s nervous” system to see if it is dysregulating to also positive things.
Many many thanks for your wonderful offerings which only seem to keep getting better and better!!!
I am a Rosen Method bodywork practitioner and finding it crucial to be as trauma informed as possible.
WOW, I am so shifted in such a positive way from this program and feel so empowered to share with you with the safe and compassionate and bolstering environment you help create with the modules you continue to offer us–THANK YOU!
A few years ago I was watching a presentation by Dr. van der Kolk when he and Dr. Fisher were sharing a case study with a patient they were following up with a year after working with her on her trauma. As the patient was explaining how much better she was doing, I said to my friend also watching “I still see so much shame coming from her, do you see that?”. My friend said she didn’t see it, so knowing how we often see things in others that we need to look at ourselves, I said “Shit, is that something I’m going to need to look at?”.
Well, that night, I remembered a repressed memory of being sexually abused from 35 years ago! The shame associated with that event and what I’ve made that mean since in my relationships to myself and others flooded into my awareness and I wanted to reach out to Dr. Fisher then, but never did.
Fast-forward to watching this module today, and THANK YOU again because so much is making more sense. I did start EMDR therapy a few months ago bc where I thought I was making progress in dealing with that shame over the past years, I had a complete melt-down earlier this year and realized I needed different help to reconnect the neuropathways from that event. I’ve been learning so much about how to regulate my nervous system and especially how to notice and be aware when it’s dysregulated to understand there are many things I can do rather than feel powerless and slide into invisibility. The gifts of awareness and healing paths to discover that come wrapped in trauma, right?!
This module has helped me understand next steps to work with my therapist with this deeper understanding of shame, so thank you so very much! I’m getting the Gold Package right now!
And as a new step to continue breaking old patterns around this shame, I realize now I am worthy enough to reach out to Dr. Fisher and share this with her (unlike 3 yrs ago when I didn’t send the email!) and ALL of you so generously offering your time and expertise to help us help ourselves and live more healed “as within, so without”.
Deepest appreciation,
Debbie Gustafson
This session was so full in the descriptions of shame and examples of witnessing and working together to bring shame out of hiding and help diminish it’s control. The various approaches from IFS to Somatic interventions were insightful. What stood out to me was identifying the role/purpose of shame, its roots in attachment needs and important cautions for a therapist in this work.
Another fantastic session! As I was following along, using the note-taking guide (thank you very much!) I was thinking of specific clients and then applying the suggestions (in my mind) to their treatment. I especially appreciated the idea of titrating the positive emotions because I must admit that when I would introduce this in session, it often ‘backfired’. Now, I know why, positive emotion=danger/not safe. I will ensure that I use the micro-moments approach to titrating the experiences and taking them to the edges of their windows of tolerance. I also am intrigued by the concepts of how to tackle moral injury in session (I work with first responders); by teaching my clients to extend compassion and dialogue with the ‘work self’ to ponder the question of “did I do the right thing?” Much gratitude for this and all the offerings-such insightful and skilled therapists!
Bessel van der Kolk, MD mentioned that clients telling their trauma story is for the therapist’s benefit not the client’s benefit. He doesn’t encourage clients to tell their trauma story. If they do share, it may come a year later. This point that he discussed is validating to me in how I have been working, even through it goes against the grain of common practice of professionals in the country I currently live in. I also appreciated the discussion on being with the client and bringing connection to that place of their moral dilemma, and that it is not about okaying what happened but holding it together. The topics discussed are very relevant. Thank you.
Thank you so much for this beautifully comprehensive and sensitive dialogue around trauma induced shame. I have searched for years therapeutically to heal my own trauma induced shame. I am very cognisant of it. Such that I recognise it in my patients and can support them with these feelings. But I recognised that the shame feelings I carried in my own life’s narrative needed extra help as I felt unable to feel deserving of the very great, beautiful love being bestowed upon me and the very great gifts attendant around that and felt unworthy of the very love being given to me. I knew I needed a greatly sensitive therapist to assist me at this stage of my early life and that I searched for one such. After too long a time I am unpacking and acknowledging these gifts within and for my self.
Thank you NICABM team for these tutorials and for the work you do and bring us!
The discussion on moral injury was very helpful. I’ve noticed many older siblings, particularly older sisters, feel an acute guilt if they failed to protect younger siblings, or in some cases, where they “allowed” another sibling to get abused instead of taking the punishment/abuse themselves, or were too scared to act, protect, protest, tell, get help, etc. There’s an interesting book called The Alchemy of Wolves and Sheep: A relational approach to internalized perpetration in complex trauma survivors by Harvey L. Schwartz that addresses some of the same issues as Dr. Nash. This is a tough one- I’ve found it’s almost harder for people to watch a loved one be hurt and fail or be helpless to help than it is to deal with their oand suffering. Somehow, I do think, regardless of the pain and guilt they feel about what they did/failed to do to others, it is imperative to deal with what happened to them, also, and find compassion for themselves.
A second question- some therapists, when a client says I don’t want you to look at me, will ask, do you not want to see me, or do you not want to be seen. That seems confusing to me – would it confuse a client?
This whole series is amazing, but this episode in particular inspires me in my work. I’m not a mental health professional. I’m a love, sex, and relationship coach and also the leader of an online peer-to-peer support group for termination for medical reasons. (endingawantedpregnancy.com). Shame is SUCH a theme in this space. I have come to understand, just by watching it for a decade, that the shame my bereaved mamas feel is not necessarily because they did anything bad or wrong (they may or may not morally identify abortion as wrong — and either way, most still feel deep shame), it’s that they are RESPONSIBLE for something very SAD and very FINAL.
Learning about Moral Injury in this episode, it rings so true, and I loved that the equation is CARE + RESPONSIBILITY = MORAL INJURY. I also love (and find true) that the mortal enemy of moral injury is love. (After all, isn’t love the whole point of a support group?)
I will use this in my work to help bring self-compassion and understanding to my community. I personally have found so much more healing in somatic modalities and IFS than from cognitive approaches, (I use parts all the time!) and I am bringing takeaways for these areas, too. But my biggest takeaway right now is just having more words to describe phenomena that I’m so intimately familiar with already. Even if cognitive work isn’t my favorite kind, sometimes the context of “it’s called moral injury and it’s so so so normal in a situation like ours” can be a very soothing balm. So I’m taking this new vocabulary to babyloss space. Thank you.
I love the concept of being kind to the self critic – loving our little selves to create a positive more competent self instead of the addictive patterns that support shame.
That was excellent! I am a retired school counselor who recently started my own private practice. I will definitely be making some visuals to use with my younger clients for some psychoeducation. The quote ” Love is the mortal enemy of moral injury.” is so powerful! Also, teaching clients who self harm about the one-two punch and the cost-benefit of their self harm is critical and a more in depth explanation for them.
THANK YOU!!! 🙂
great to hear Dr ruth b summarize at the end of session by each expert.
‘check with the Nervous system”.
What not to do to make it worse /the inner critic eg. Art therapy with caricatures of the Judge and Impotent raging self to send them away and Play with others( the neglected Selves).
These are extremely helpful and clarify therapist’s muddled emotions an thinking. Thanks
I am encouraging a client to feel and speak about the “bad” desires against her abusers without feeling ashamed. We discovered this part was the adult part wanting to disappear the actual abuser figure so she could stop the fight within her among the adolescent rejecting part and the child claiming love part.
Today’s session was insightful. What stood out for me was that the clients are not looking for someone to remove their trauma or shame, but someone to hold. I think that my prospect and approach have to change since the past cannot be changed. Working with the body’s reactions is something would help me in my session, in processing their experiences. By bringing a different perspective about shame, as something that was their coping strategy, and that protected them. Thank You for this session.
Thank you especially for the part with moral injury, about not trusting yourself or another person. I can work with the body posture Peter Levine was talking about. And create a longer lasting of an positive emtion in the window of tolerance. Also letting de body make a movement it wants to make, perhaps also an arm that wants to say, “leave me alone”. And offcourse being very gentle for the parts that seems destructive to us but has an positive protection intention. Titrating and normalising.
Perhaps there are many takeaways but the one that is sticking in my mind makes me thing of a client who is a mother and not a service member:
At risk groups are
1. People who care and empathise, share pain, emotionally invested
2. Take responsibility. e.g. service members.
I am tending to think that her caring is resulting in wounding. I will now begin to try to notice more about her in this regard.
Thanks again for another wonderful presentation.
Excellent variety of presenters. I appreciated hearing a various approaches in working with clients around issues of trauma and shame. I learned some new ways of dialoguing with “parts” from the IFS practitioners. It was also very helpful to more fully understand people’s resistance to positive experiences and how to slowly help them open up to new ways of being. As a facilitator of a 3 year program in personal healing and spiritual growth, I look forward to applying what I’ve learned here in my work with clients.
All these sessions have been so interesting and informative. They introduce so many skills which would be invaluable for anyone at any time to enrich lives and relationships. Although I don’t work as a therapist, I am enjoying being able to reflect on and implement changes in and around myself. Thank you Ruth and all your colleagues for the work you do – it certainly causes ripples around the world.
Remarkable. Really increases my understanding of the discomfort of Americans with feeling our own bodies and honoring the discomfort of others.
When I lived in Italy I had an American friend who died from cancer there – she was not religious but loved that the nuns would come by on a regular basis, sit and just hold her hand for long periods. So simple!
Muy agradecida por este seminario. Excelente los recursos, los ejemplos y sus sugerencias. Usaré estas ideas para continuar educándome, para integrar la importancia del alertamiento en mis clientes. Tambien para reconcocer la importancia de los detalles y el crear conciencia en el cliente de reconocerlos para su alivio.
Detalles en su cuerpo, en sus manifestaciones, en sus emociones, en sus pensamientos.
I will use the ideas of fear of positive emotions with a very disturbed client. They also have never been able to tell me the content of the their trauma (in fact they deny it ever happened) and it was helpful to hear from Bessel vd Kolk that we do not need to know the story but we can still help them. It will take away a lot of pressure my client feels when the words won’t come out, to know they don’t have to.
I was particularly thankful for the beginning descriptions and the repeated visits to talking to the parts. There was a questions/observation in the first few minutes that in some clients, just as the resolution begins, the shame moves in as a boulder that won’t progress. I have seen this happen 3 times now with the same person. Hearing this talk has helped me move from being frustrated to compassionate and empowered. Thank you
understanding more about moral injury was very helpful. Thank you for this series of webinars. They are so useful. Such a wealth of information.
Thank you! I am a DNP in Healthcare Leadership. I am drawn toward mental health and becoming the best version of myself so that I can show up to people around me. I am drawn to mental health so I can live an enjoyable life and teach others or even just model to others what that looks like. This session on shame helped me realize I have shame from childhood trauma. I have hidden behind my shame by doing things like pulling my hair out and trying to feel invisible. I realize after listening to this, as well, that one reason my recent journey into MBSR has been so successful is because it is teaching me to live in my body and to enjoy life. This session on shame is one additional layer to my own healing, which I can only image will make a greater impact on people around me. Thank You!!!!
It was wonderful to hear about the subtle pacing of positive feelings with not feeling safe ideas on how to slowly shift this. Can see how to apply this… thank you
WOW so much condensed useful information!!!! Even applying to self!
No just about convincing my wife the gold package is worth the purchase 🙂
This has been so insightful and it helps me develop better relationships with my own family, children, and friends. Thank you for this webinar!
Considering shame in a child client who was a victim of internet exploitation and insists that he is fine but is in a freeze state whenever discussion occurs.
Considering increased somatic awareness and postures for an adult client having difficulties in relationships because of prosocial stress and wanting to take care of everyone all the time.
Considering IFS in my own personal journey with my inner critic.
Wonderful session. Thank you for this
I am drowning in shame! This session will really help my therapist and me heal me. Thank you!
Excellent and applicable content.
Question, the DSM-5 refers to NSSI as the clinically appropriate term but self-harm was the term being used by the presenters. I was wondering why?
This was great. It emboldens me to stay with my clients and not to rush them to what I perceive to be a better place, remembering that my ‘better’ might not be theirs. Thank you.
Thank you so much for this series. It has been invaluable The Moral Injury part let off a few lightbulb moments for me for clients that felt moral injury for not intervening in situations at home or school when they were young and i knew instantly that the 2 risk factors were caring and responsable individuals. Thank you once again I cam now revisit this with with different language.
Listening to discussion of moral injury, made me think that it is important to go back some years before the first episode of moral injury, to a time when the person was living with moral consistency, when they had self-esteem based on doing what they thought was right and taking responsibility, whatever their age. They could have been a child on a bike route delivering newspapers and helping elderly neighbors. Or a time when their family was whole. And ask them to describe what was happening, what the setting was, how they were in that setting and as they talk let them be the person they were then by re-membering it. Then perhaps note and ask them how their body feels when they’re remembering that time of personal power and compassion, and how their body feels now …. to link that somatic bridge …. and then perhaps grieve for the loss of who they were. I didn’t hear anyone speak of the healing of moral injury by integrating the imploded grief for the loss of the person they once had been. And I don’t know enough to know how most effectively to do that, but I know there needs to be some way of making a bridge so that their original self can cross over it and come into the present moment to restore the soul and take the hand of the injured … Because this is necessary in order to have the courage to go forth and show care and compassion and responsibility in the future.
I am very grateful for new knowledg given in this master class
One thing that really stood out for me is patience on my part
Thanks so much for all the insight I have learned here
All the very best
Elaine
Than you so much. I loved the importance of always helping the client check in with themselves- tracking their nervous system.
Moral injury was new to me and so informative . Thank you
Very helpful, so much appreciated, thank you all
This dichotomy is new to me and I’m going to notice it during my sessions with trauma survivors.
All session so far have been great. Session 4 was absolutely brilliant !
Another enlightening session – thank you for all your hard work!
Invition to savour the moment, and tracking what is happening in the moment.
Holding the past, not changing it.
Ruth Buczynsky is leading the flow of explanations and clinical examples with a profound clinical understanding and a very good capacity to summarize and make everything understandable.
The lens “check with your patient’s nervous system” is becoming clearer and clearer to me.
A sincere thank you for the opportunity to listen directly to therapists who are also serious researchers in various approaches and fields.
Moral injury, somatic addiction to self harm and intolerance to positive feelings are all useful concept and ” frames” for understanding and act therapeutically
Thank you for this rich & powerful session. I work as an art therapist, combining art-making with somatic awareness & authentic movement & this session filled in some subtle but crucial gaps in my learning/experience. I appreciate the tone of humility, sharing expertise & ongoing co-learning all your presenters embody. I feel there is more for me to explore in the statement that some nervous systems ‘have developed to be more in a state of protection than connection’ – this gives dignity to this situation & honours its slow, adaptive nature. I was grateful to hear more therapists speak about how they work with shame & clarify some of my questions about self-harm. In art therapy workshops people are often initially terrified of ‘art’, fending off inner critics, recalling school humiliations for lack of talent etc. I sometimes suggest we all paint or draw cariacatures of our inner critics, imagining them in an appropriate outfit & pose, & send them out for a coffee while we make art. This is a trick really as people get really creative depicting characters from thier past – harsh critical teachers, bullies of all kinds, often with some humour. At the end we invite them back & imagine them seeing what’s been made. They are often surprised, impressed. Some creative power has been demonstrated by a presumed ‘weak’ part. It can be the beginning of working at a deeper level with this issue.
Not a therapist. Understanding shame, fear of positive emotions, holding not ridding of past trauma, and trust betrayal from myself and others. Now I understand more fully why I am moved by some of my art.
Oh, I so like your strategy in your art therapy workshops. It sounds so good and effective, it really made me smile. Thanks.
Fantastic as always. So much application to real life clients and situations. I follow, watch, read all the experts theories and try to apply to clients. I find these sessions bring the theory alive, simplify the complex. You cover so much and yet give so many useful interventions. I consistently gain new practical skills. I am a trauma psychotherapist and a 10 ACE trauma survivor, so I practise most things on myself first. Over the years I have become more confident using sensorimotor and somatic therapy. I have in the last year really began to increase my use of polyvagal applications. I think from this session (shame) I am going to take away shame as a protective survival response, Peter Levine’s shame posture and Janine Fisher’s “How long does the relief last?” Thank-you as always
Excellent session and very applicable to myself and my clients. Very true how many learn to hold experiences as inner unacknowledged shame in order to remain part of the family. Session also showed me how much more I need to learn and/or not do!
Thanks so much for this series!
This has been a great series; I appreciate the focused, precise presentation of the teaching. Each week I learn something practical I can apply immediately. This week it’s the understanding that the core experience of moral injury is the loss of ability to trust others and/or the self.
I found this webinar extremely useful and relevant to my clients and had the opportunity to use what I had learned when counselling clients today. I used the concept of the self critic and its’ role as well as the discomfort a person will experience feeling positive feelings. Thank you for a very informative webinar.
This is an excellent program that has been and continues to resonate with me on many levels. in situations that are familiar to me from many years of working with clients, disentangling many skeins and levels of action and reaction, of feelings and thoughts, but above all working with the nervous system of the client, respecting where they are (the protective, survival aspect of the traumatic symptom) and following the micro impulses and movements of body and nervous system (which with my Jungian training I would see as the unconscious). Approaches in dealing with difficult emotional states, that are so respectful, collaborative, positive and hopeful, avoiding so often diagnoses that are so imprisoning and unhelpful for the client. I will certainly be making use of these suggested ways with my clients. Terence McBride, Sydney, Australia.
This presentation was EXACTLY what I’ve been looking for. I had no idea how to work with shame. Especially moral shame. Thank you so much for your excellent presentation!
The session today on Trauma-Induced shame was extremely helpful especially the discussion on how to respond to a client’s self-blame belief that they did something wrong. Especially helping the client to understand that what they did/ did not do was a way to survive and self-preserve so they can think and understand their beliefs differently and less negatively.
Thank you for organizing and making it possible to learn from so many skillful and dedicated professionals. This is a wonderful opportunity to hear about different techniques and to apply them to benefit treatment with clients. Thank you NICABM for enabling this learning to happen.
This session has been invaluable to me, not only for my clients but is has triggered awareness about parts of myself that are stuck in shame and need to be freed. I am getting so much more out of this course than I could have imagined. I offer deep appreciation to all for your time, expertise and compassion in producing this excellent program.
Thank you. That was brilliant in how it was orchestrated and seamlessly delivered. I have a new sense of confidence in holding what has been a difficult process for some many of the people I work with.
Thank you very much. This session was very powerful. Working with shame is so difficult and you provided explanations and guidelines in a clear concise manner. I am looking forward to applying these techniques.