Why this Guide exists Here’s where it began: During my postdoctoral training year, a faculty supervisor pulled me aside one February afternoon and told me, essentially, that I didn’t hold on to clients. He wasn’t sure I’d make it in private practice. I remember a burn behind my eyes and
Recently, I was finishing the excellent memoir What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo, who writes about her journey to healing as someone with complex posttraumatic stress disorder. In the final section of the book, her psychologist introduces the concept of the important distinction between pain and suffering. I am
During my recent Shame Bite with Erica Liebman, Psy.D. MA, MEd, on Men, Shame and Vulnerability, I had a humbling realization about my own clinical framework. In my clinical practice and consultation groups, I talk about shame as the ultimate relational disrupter. It is an evolutionary survival mechanism—a biological alarm
When we talk about grief, we focus on sadness, longing, and loss. But there is a silent, often crippling emotion that hides beneath the surface: shame. If shame is, as the theorist Gershan Kaufman articulated, the breaking of the interpersonal bridge, then the death of a loved one may be
We’ve all been there: sharing space with someone we care about, working to tune in to their experience fully…and we find what we think are the perfect words to capture those painful deep feelings. Suddenly we see a flash of anger, annoyance, rejection. We know we tripped a wire but are
Shame is often disparaged as an outcast emotion—something to be gotten rid of at the slightest hint of its presence. Yet, we can’t seem to cast off our own shame in its entirety, and attempts to talk others out of it always fail. It keeps reappearing, especially when we try
