Can Shame Be Useful?

In the article Can Shame Be Useful? by SALLY L. SATEL and SCOTT O. LILIENFELD, the authors raised the question, “under what conditions does shame end up prodding people into correcting their course? ”

“An important influence appears to be whether people buy into the notion that a habit is under or out of their control. In a meta-analysis — a mathematical synthesis of previous studies — just published in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the University of Connecticut psychologist Colin Leach and one of his doctoral students, Atilla Cidam, examined the links between shame and “constructive approach behaviors,” such as helping or cooperating with others, apologizing and making amends for one’s failures.

They found that study participants who were vulnerable to experiencing shame were less inclined to engage in corrective actions when they believed their mistakes were not fixable, such as when they had no opportunity to apologize to someone they’d offended. In contrast, participants were more inclined to engage in positive behaviors when they thought their errors could be repaired.”

I believe these findings can be extrapolated to one of the primary tenets in DEFT practice. This involves the types of interventions that sustain hope when facing those actions or defensive habits that have harmed others or have caused us to feel we have fallen short of our ideals. When we attempt to dismantle harmful defenses, we need to be simultaneously building the sense that something new can take its place. When we are working with an interplay of guilt and shame, the aforementioned meta-analysis validates that hope is essential to the change process. I find that hope is often built upon direct experiences of having an impact on others, and this may begin with impacting our therapist’s emotions and perspectives. And it is also built on the sense that we can build a new relationship to ourselves that is kinder, more compassionate and offers greater freedom.

Here are a few of the factors that come to mind that can generate hope during the therapeutic process:

1) A direct experience of one’s capacity to repair.

• We can consider that repair in our relationships to others begins with repair in relationship to ourselves.
• When we help our client to develop capacity to extend forgiveness and compassion towards one’s own shortcomings and failings, it is often only then that he can find the strength to admit them to others.
• Self condemnation precludes reparative action.

“Can we extend compassion to you because you were taught to withdraw from others, that this became automatic, and that you have not had alternatives at your disposal, as you are discovering them now.” “From this place of compassion for yourself and caring for your friend, would you want to express your remorse to your friend for having withdrawn from him?”

2) Therapeutic reminders of evidence of one’s capacity to impact self and others.

Therapists do well to refer frequently to instances when the the client has been kinder or more attuned in interactions with others. “I like how you said that.” “That was very generous of you.” Or “It’s great to see you extending more acceptance and tenderness to yourself.”

3) Knowledge of what constitutes repair, in cases of injury to another. Therapists can explain that this involves:

1. Saying I’m sorry while feeling genuine remorse, a painful visceral sensation.
2. Dropping all qualifiers
3. Stating the injury as accurately and forthrightly as possible
4. Leaving space for the other to express hurt and angry feelings without interruption.
5. If the injured person is not accessible, making one’s best attempt to behave differently in future relationships. Therapists often need to help people to see the value in breaking cycles of traumatization. Even when someone we’ve injured had died or is unavailable, our efforts to change hurtful patterns are reparative in terms of the human family.
6. Differentiating attempts at repair from the ultimate outcome of the attempt.

Therapists can help their clients to appreciate attempts at repair, regardless of success. True relationship repair requires an exchange of energies between two people and we can only be responsible for our personal role. Any attempt to be vulnerable and genuinely apologetic is to be recognized.

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