shame Archives - Jamie English

June 21, 2019 by Jamie English Leave a Comment

One-Hundred Percent

Ever notice a stranger looking at you a bit odd and start making up stories about what they must think about you? You glance down at what you are wearing, everything buttoned up and zipped? Toilet paper stuck to your shoe? Nope, you are good. Well, it must be something inherently wrong with the way I look or what I am buying, or they think I am a bad person…. If the thoughts get crazy out of control, we start to think they can read our minds or know our deepest secrets. Don’t believe everything you think, because this can spiral out of control. What we don’t know is the stranger is frustrated in their job, or maybe they are constipated. They may just be looking off into space but that happens to be in your direction. Now…sometimes they are judging us or because people continue to amaze me with their rudeness, they say something directly to our faces.

Earlier this week I was discussing this with one of my teen clients. I made the statement that when other people make judgments, it is 100% about them. She’s precocious and said, “How can we know something 100%?” And she’s right. Most of the time, I would avoid absolutes like this. But over the years, I have concluded that what other people think about us is all about them. I asked her if we could test it out for a second. Think about when you are in public and you notice strangers…what do you notice about them? Since I work so much with body image concerns, what shows up in my office often has to do with bodies. And honestly, I suspect most everyone, if we are honest, we might be comparing whatever body part we are most self-conscious of at the moment. Or if we are judging what a person is doing or saying, it often reflects thoughts we are struggling with, maybe even parts of us we don’t want to admit is there. I mentioned the book Judgment Detox a few weeks back, and one of the ideas that she discussed in the book is when we judge others, it comes from a place of woundedness within us.

So….my made-up percentages are as follows—if someone else thinks bad thoughts about us (or even shares them with us), it is 96.5% about something they are insecure about. The rest comes from a place of woundedness they are afraid to face and/or want so desperately to distract from. It is with a fair amount of confidence that I say 100% of the time, someone else’s thoughts about us are more about them. If they share it with us, they are actually revealing something about themselves. A take away for ourselves is to notice our own thoughts and judgments to learn about ourselves.

May 31, 2019 by Jamie English Leave a Comment

Do You Lie to Your Therapist?

I like to think one of my superpowers as a therapist is creating an environment that makes it safe to share anything. I recently read an article that said that 83 to 93% of clients lie to their therapist, with 61% citing a reason of embarrassment or shame. Even if I do a fairly good job of creating a safe, therapeutic space, I am reminded of the blinding power of shame.

Once again, I am humbled by the superpowers of my clients, who show up and share anyway. Shame is a sneaky and manipulative supervillain. As a therapist, I am simply a sidekick (if that) in the quest to destroy shame. The client is the superhero of the story.

If you lie to your therapist, you are not alone. Check out this article and see for yourself where you might fit. And if it is that devious and underhanded villain shame, remember you are the hero of this story. Brené Brown says shame needs three things to survive: silence, secrecy, and judgment. She also says it cannot survive empathy. Sometimes the villain knocks the hero down for a count. But they get back up and keep fighting. Find your sidekick, be it a therapist or a trusted friend. Use the formula for destroying shame, douse that shame with empathy. First, you have to break the silence.

May 24, 2019 by Jamie English 1 Comment

Use Your Judgment

I’m currently reading Judgment Detox by Gabrielle Bernstein. I haven’t finished it, and I would like to acknowledge that she may not be everyone’s “cup of tea,” but I am liking what I am reading. She’s outlining a 6-step process (because we love to have practical steps, right?) to be judgment-free. I am only on the second step, but it seems like she has some solid and psychologically sound information she is sharing. The first step is to start noticing times you are judging. Notice without judgment. I am struck by how she encourages you to take that judgment and get curious about what’s behind that and where it comes from.

Reading this got me to thinking about a phrase you might have heard: “You spot it, you got it.” Sometimes these catchy little one-liners are fun and memorable for several reasons, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have strong, deep meaning as you reflect on it. As you might guess, as you dig deeper on your judgments of others, it often comes back to your own stuff. What we are judging in others is reflecting on parts of ourselves we avoid or try to deny having. It usually boils down to shame…our own internal shame. We have shame within ourselves and start pushing it on to others. Think about it, when we are judging others, aren’t we basically saying, “you should be ashamed of yourself,” in one way or another. I’m not going to lie, looking at your judgment can sting a bit. If I spot it, I got it. So, if I spot pettiness, I’ve got pettiness. If I spot entitlement, I’ve got entitlement. If I spot close mindedness…. You get the picture.

Deep breaths. The good news is that on the other side of spotting our judgment is a path to learning about ourselves and finding healing for our shame. Another side note within the book, she talks about EFT (emotional freedom technique), also known as tapping. I was trained in Clinical EFT about 5 years ago. It can certainly be a good tool within the therapy space, as well as a self-help tool you can do by yourself. I was happy to be reminded of this powerful tool and hope to revisit it more for myself and maybe some clients. I may write more about this in future blogs. I do want to do the “Judgment Detox” for myself, so what I learn may also show up in future posts.

May 11, 2018 by Jamie English 1 Comment

Shame

We all know the feeling. It’s utter yuck! Shame! I know that Brené Brown talks about it and has helped us to look at our shame and vulnerability. And yes, that has been a huge shift for me over the last few years! I’ve talked about being a bit of a fan girl of Brené Brown here and here.

And I didn’t even realize there was more to learn from shame. But i just attended an EMDR advanced training and learned something I found aha-mazing. (Is that a word, it should be, right?) Shame is a defense mechanism. We will come back to that, but first…

We all have defense mechanisms. It’s our brain’s way of dealing with difficult emotions that come up. You know when talking about something in your life stirs up emotions….and maybe even we get that lump in our throat and our eyes well up with tears? Our brain’s develop ways to make those experiences less uncomfortable. Enter defense mechanisms. They are usually quite automatic and with little awareness that they are happening.

Some common defenses include avoidance, intellectualization, and projection. I feel like avoidance will be self-explanatory. It can take many forms….change the subject, answering a question with a question, etcetera. Intellectualization is the thinking and often overthinking of something instead of allowing the feelings to surface. And then projection is when we put our thoughts, feelings, and judgments on someone else that deep down we think or feel about ourselves.

Now….back to shame as a defense mechanism. Hang with me here. It seems illogical that feeling shame would be a defense. I mean, if you change the subject….that doesn’t feel bad for the most part. Or intellectualizing doesn’t feel bad. Shame feels bad, though. Right?

BUT….it gives us a twisted sense of control. If we feel shame about a situation, maybe someone said or did something that hurt us emotionally or otherwise…. If we give ourselves the message that we somehow deserve that action toward us, we have the power back. “I need to work extra hard to not be bad and nobody will say or do anything mean.” That is easier to accept than that someone or life would just hurt us, undeserving and out of nowhere.

I may be oversimplifying. And…I don’t know that it is always a defense. I do think it is worth looking at, gently. Notice when you feel shame and see if you can see what would it be like without the shame? If the shame wasn’t there, what would be in its place? Maybe overwhelming pain, hurt, sadness…. Maybe the feelings that surface are the feelings that need to arise. Keep in mind that defenses have a good reason for being there. Proceed with kindness and self-compassion.

One-Hundred Percent

Do You Lie to Your Therapist?

Use Your Judgment

Shame

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