To acknowledge shameful experiences leads to feeling more shame. Have you ever felt completely stuck in your work with a client and not been able to put your finger on exactly why? Have you ever felt stuck in your own therapy and wondered why you weren't progressing? I can certainly relate to both of these experiences and would offer that perhaps in the obstacle is shame. It is incumbent upon clinicians to recognize shame in ourselves and in our clients. Shame that is not

Pride: “the happy confluence of the affect joy and the experience of personal efficacy” (Nathanson, 1987, p.186). In brief, when we feel adequate within ourselves, we feel pride; when we feel inadequate, we feel shame. Donald L. Nathanson writes: ‘Intrinsic to the experience of pride is a certain tendency to broadcast one’s success to the world, whereas equally true of shame is a wish to conceal (Nathanson,1987, p.184). Pride and shame oscillate “between public and private, b

Shame can be a hindrance or a healing agent in psychotherapy. It is incumbent upon the therapist to recognize shame in the client, but, it is equally important to recognize it in ourselves. While our work might start with the client’s shame, we will inevitably be confronted by our own. Dearing and Price-Tangney (2011) define therapist shame as “an intense and enduring reaction to a threat to the therapist’s sense of identity that consists of an exposure of the therapist’s p

People have developed a fascination with shame- other people's shame. While human beings are curious about their own shame, at the same time, people do not want to feel the pain and vulnerability it causes. It is natural to want to hide shameful feelings due to the fear of being seen differently from how we want to be, and, to want to hide our feelings of failure from others; we even hide our shame from ourselves. The potential for anonymity on the Internet and television p

While viewing other peoples’ stories on the internet and TV from a safe distance fascinates some people, the idea of facing the pain of our own shame presents a very different scenario. The experience of shame "follows a moment of exposure" (Nathanson, 1987, p.4) linked to feelings of failure, self-disdain, and defectiveness. We notice a fear of being seen differently from the way we want to appear, followed by an urge to hide from ourselves and others. The shame we feel a

"At the core of chronic shame is an absence- the absence of connectedness (DeYoung, p.120). Affective interactions between a child and caretaker shape the brain over a lifetime. When the primary caregiver is emotionally attuned and connected, the child feels understood and secure. When the caregiver has a pattern of being absent or intrusive, the child suffers what relational psychotherapist Patricia DeYoung refers to as "profound misattunement to their young affective/emot