Defense against shame

Defense against shame

Over the years of my psychotherapy practice, I have found that most clients entering treatment struggle with issues of unbearable shame at some level. I would like to address three core defenses against the experience of unbearable shame. While there are others, the most common defensive maneuvers I find are narcissistic flight, blame and contempt.

Narcissism is the primary defense against shame and is often accompanied by the other two defenses. When someone is suffering from unbearable feelings of shame, they will often try to evoke admiration from outside, as if to deny the damage INSIDE. She may try to gain attention for her beautiful exterior in order to deny what feels “ugly” on the inside. As friends or acquaintances, such people strain our patience and burden us emotionally because they constantly have to draw attention to themselves. Their social interactions are rather boring and one-sided. Sometimes recognizing that these people are suffering from unbearable shame helps us feel compassion, but it doesn't make their friendship any more satisfying.

The shame-driven client presents a major therapeutic challenge. If the therapist attempts to discuss their narcissistic behavior as a means of defense, it can easily feel to the client like a narcissistic injury that is unbearably painful. Rather than understanding that the therapist is trying to help them move toward something true that has not yet been realized, such clients may feel humiliated. With one such client, who I will call 'David', as we approached the core of shame in our work together, he would often start screaming when I tried to bring him into contact with the damaged David who was hiding behind his narcissistic defenses and accusing me of completely misunderstanding or intentionally humiliating him. It felt to me like the shame was so unbearably painful that he had to “cry it out” to free himself from that searing pain and project it into me. As his psychotherapist, I also found the experience deeply painful, but at the same time it helped me understand how much he was suffering, the agonizing pain he was constantly trying to stave off.

In these interactions between my client David and I, we also see blame at work, the second defense against shame. In my experience, the pairing of shame and guilt is extremely common. One of my clients, Sarah, relied heavily on this defense, particularly in her relationship with her husband, Dan. Often after one of her fights (which usually began with her hostile and provocative behavior), Sarah would spend hours going over the argument in her head in an extremely accusatory manner, reviewing all of Dan's faults and steadily escalating towards all-out character assassination. Underneath, she was ashamed of the “crazy” way she started these fights. We covered this reason so often and so thoroughly in our meetings together that I eventually developed a shorthand way to point it out. I sighed exaggeratedly, as if I felt deeply hurt like she did, and said, “That Dan!”

Contempt is the third defense, which is terribly difficult to penetrate. Another client, Seth, a young man training to be a therapist, listened intently to my interpretations and often responded with something like, "But how do I know if what you're telling me is really true? You might be right, but maybe another perspective is just as valid." At first glance, these comments seemed neutral; Beneath the surface, they reflected his utter contempt for me. He had a habit of answering my interpretations with one of his own, delivered in a condescending tone with an almost imperceptible grin. I often appeared in his dreams in a degraded or degraded manner - in dirty rags, a street person, or physically disfigured. Seth projected his damaged self into me and then treated it (me) with defensive superiority and contempt.

David and Sarah remained in treatment and managed to overcome their defenses, getting closer to the core of the shame. Seth, on the other hand, stopped psychotherapy and then went through a series of consistently disappointing and inadequate therapists.

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