Bret Lyon, PhD, SEP

Shame, Resourcing, and Optimal Distance

Shame, Resourcing, and Optimal Distance

Shame, like trauma, is a state of freeze. When in shame, or even talking about a shaming feeling or experience, the client loses contact with his resources. When we work with a client, we need to make sure she is able to be “with” the shame, not in it. We need to establish and keep an optimal distance by helping the client find and hold a resourced state. The most important strategy at the beginning of a session is to resource the client. In fact, resourcing the client and making sure the client stays resourced is the most important strategy throughout the session.

Sex and Pleasure: As Much As You Can Stand

Sex and Pleasure: As Much As You Can Stand

How much pleasure can your body tolerate? That may seem like a peculiar question, but most of us aren’t used to a great deal of pleasure running through our bodies. In fact, we’ve learned to restrict breathing and tighten muscles so that we don’t feel too much of anything, including pleasure.

We are all born with an enormous capacity for pleasure. A healthy baby can feel pleasure in every part of his or her body. Freud called this capacity “polymorphousperverse infantile sexuality” and suggested that we outgrow it, showing clearly his attitude towards pleasure. What if we don’t have to outgrow this immense capacity for pleasure? What if we can free ourselves to get it back again? And what happens to our sex lives then?

Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost: Shame, Transformance and Tolkien

Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost: Shame, Transformance and Tolkien

“Why do I feel so bad?” my client asked. “I feel like I have so much potential and I’m not living up to it. I get stuck in the same patterns, the same bad thoughts.”

Sandy* was a puzzle. Clearly bright and capable, and a hard worker, she seemed very uncomfortable in her own skin. A writer and a healer, she clearly had many gifts to share with the world. When she spoke, I could sense a lot of power. Yet she was underemployed and seemed on the verge of going into panic or breaking into tears much of our time together.

Co-Creating the Session: Guiding the Client’s Attention – Establishing Optimal Distance – Leading From Behind

Co-Creating the Session: Guiding the Client’s Attention – Establishing Optimal Distance – Leading From Behind

Natalie would always come into therapy with a lot of energy and a million things to talk about. Judy, her therapist, was stumped. “How do I get her to stop talking long enough to help her?” she asked. Joan, another client, is different. As soon as she mentions her boyfriend, she starts to sob uncontrollably. Steve, her therapist, feels helpless to help her.

While they are responding in opposite ways, Natalie and Joan both have the same problem: Neither is able to keep an optimal distance from their feelings. Natalie skips from topic to topic to avoid going into her feelings. Joan plunges in too deeply and too quickly.

Is It Shame or Guilt?

Is It Shame or Guilt?

“I feel so guilty. I always stay with my mother when I visit her. The last time, I decided to stay at a hotel. She fell down during the night and ended up in the hospital.”

“My father drives me crazy, but when I talk back to him, I feel guilty.”

But is “guilt” really what these two people in distress feel?

In almost every workshop that I teach on shame, someone asks me to explain the difference between shame and guilt. There is a common wisdom here, which I basically agree with: Guilt is “I did something bad or wrong,” shame is “I am something bad or wrong.” Guilt is about actions, shame is about your very being. While useful in many ways, there is a basic problem with this distinction. Many people use the word “guilt” when they are really talking about shame.

Shame and Trauma

Shame and Trauma

I developed many of the techniques I use in working with shame as a Somatic and Emotional Mindfulness Trainer from my trauma training with Peter Levine. Shame, like trauma, puts the body in a freeze state and lowers the ability to think and act clearly. Shame feels like a fog or cover, something that is external, that makes it hard to function. I think of shame as developmental trauma. Usually, it is not a single shock to the system, like an accident or a hospitalization, but a series of more subtle shocks, a slow drip, drip, drip that disrupts normal functioning and creates feelings of isolation and powerlessness. The freeze of shame, like the freeze of trauma, has survival value in allowing a person to get through an intolerable situation.

Unbinding Shame

Unbinding Shame

The session was not going well. I was demonstrating to the group how to work with a mother suffering because her son had been left back in school. Nothing I did seemed to work. After an excruciating 30 minutes, I gave up. “I don’t think I’m really helping you right now. I’m truly sorry.” She politely agreed that it hadn’t helped much. “It did help a little, I guess,” she said, trying to soften my embarrassment. She had calmed down a bit, benefitting from simply being able to talk about the situation. But the kind of calm and peacefulness I had hoped to help her achieve was far away.

Barking Loudly

Barking Loudly

My pleasant, meditative mood was shattered, once again, by sudden hysterical, loud barking. I live near the top of a hill in what in Berkeley qualifies as a semi-rural area—lots of trees around, near Sibley Regional Park. The hills, which seemed a drawback to me at first, have become incredibly useful in combating high blood pressure. Every day, I can step out my door and feel like I’m in the country. As I walk down my street, with fresh air and lots of green, my mind quickly goes happily blank. Then, suddenly, I am jarred out of my reverie by my neighbor’s two dogs, who fill the air with thunder as I absentmindedly pass their house. While it happens almost every day, it always startles me and throws me, for a moment, into primitive fear. Over time, I have grown to hate those dogs—two little Scotties who have a false sense of their size and ownership.

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Melting the Shame Freeze in Disney’s “Frozen”

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Melting the Shame Freeze in Disney’s “Frozen”

Recently, Walt Disney Productions has returned to its roots, making amazing movies for children that are powerful and profound enough to be essential viewing for adults as well. While “Inside Out” examined how emotions work in the brain in a truly brilliant way, it had one major flaw: It had no character to represent Shame, which many consider the master emotion—an emotion that affects all the others. There is no such problem with Disney’s “Frozen,” which deals with shame in such a full and precise way that the entire movie can be seen as a parable of healing shame. “Frozen” is a parable of creating and finally melting the shame freeze.

Empathy, Compassion and Optimal Distance

Empathy, Compassion and Optimal Distance

At the age of four, Barry* had been forced to do something very much against his nature by his father, something about which he still felt great shame, and which was affecting his current relationships. Having done years of somatic work, he was ready and eager to feel into that painful memory in order to overcome it. I kept him in the present for quite a while, drawing him out and complimenting him about his competence and strength in the present, his successful career, his love of nature. Then I suggested that he could feel into that past memory. But, I cautioned, “Go back to it as you are now—a competent, resourceful adult, keeping all of your resources with you. You can be with that child that was so hurt and shamed. You can have compassion for that child.”