Defense against shame

Defense against shame

Over the years of my psychotherapy practice, I found that most clients who are treated have to struggle with problems with unbearable shame at a certain level. I would like to address three core defenses against the experience of unbearable shame. While there are others, I find the most common defense maneuvers: narcissistic escape, blame and contempt.

narcissism is primary defense against shame and is often accompanied by the other two defenses. If someone suffers from intolerable feelings of shame, they will often try to give up admiration from the outside as if they wanted to deny the interior damage. She can try to attract attention for her beautiful appearance to deny what feels "ugly" inside. As friends or acquaintances, such people burden our patience and strain them emotionally because they have to constantly draw attention to themselves. Your social interactions are rather boring and one -sided. Sometimes it helps us to realize that these people suffer from unbearable shame, to feel compassion, but it does not make their friendship more satisfactory.

The sham -driven client is a great therapeutic challenge. If the therapist tries to discuss his narcissistic behavior as a means of defense, the client can easily feel like a narcissistic injury that is unbearably painful. Instead of understanding that the therapist wants to help you approach something true that has not yet been recognized, such clients may feel humiliated. With such a client that I would call 'David' when we approached the core of shame in our joint work, he often started screaming when I tried to get him in touch with the damaged David, who hid behind his narcissistic defense and accused me of being completely misunderstood or deliberately humiliating. It felt to me that the shame was so unbearably painful that he had to "shout it out" to free himself from this burning pain and project it into me. As his psychotherapist, I also found the experience to be deeply painful, but at the same time it helped me to understand how much he suffered, what painful pain he wanted to ward off.

In these interactions between my client David and me, we also see blame at work, the second defense against shame. In my experience, the mating of shame and guilt is extremely common. One of my clients, Sarah, rely heavily on this defense, especially in her relationship with her husband Dan. Sarah often spent hours after one of her fights (normally began through her hostile and provocative behavior) hours to go through the argument in the head in an extremely accusing way, to check all the mistakes of Dan and to constantly escalate towards the character in the direction of a total assassination. Below, she was ashamed of the "crazy" way that she started. In our joint sessions we treated this reason so often and so thoroughly that I finally developed a short form to point out this. I sighed exaggerated as if I felt like you feel deeply injured and said: "This Dan!"

contempt is the third defense attitude that is terribly difficult to penetrate. Another client, Seth, a young man in training as a therapist, listened to my interpretations carefully and often replied with something like: "But where should I know whether what you say to me is really true? You could be right, but maybe a different view is just as valid." At first glance, these comments appeared neutral; Under the surface, they reflected its complete contempt for me. He had the habit of answering my interpretations with one of his own that were delivered in a condescending tone with an almost imperceptible grin. I often appeared in his dreams in a devalued or humiliated way - in dirty rags, a street person or physically disfigured. Seth projected his damaged self and then (me) treated it with defensive superiority and contempt.

David and Sarah remained treatment and managed to overcome their defenses, approaching the core of the shame. Seth, on the other hand, broke psychotherapy and then ran a number of consistently disappointing and inadequate therapists.

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