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How To Work With Shame with Dr. Laurence Heller · The Trauma Therapist

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Therapist podcast. My name is Gaming Person.
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Speaker 1: I interview incredible people who've dedicated their lives to helping
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Speaker 1: those who've been impacted by trauma. A big thank you
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Speaker 1: to our sponsors and our guests who are supporting this show.
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Speaker 1: Five four three two one our folks, welcome back to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. Very excited to have back Doctor Lawrence Heller. Lawrence, welcome,
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Speaker 1: good to be here. Thank you so. Doctor Heller is
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Speaker 1: a clinical psychologist, international trainer, and author with over four
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Speaker 1: decades of experience in the field of trauma healing. He's
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Speaker 1: a creator of the Neural Effective Relational Model or NORM,
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Speaker 1: a clinical approach specifically designed for working with complex and
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Speaker 1: developmental trauma. Doctor Heller hold a PhD in clinical psychology,
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Speaker 1: and after years of working with treatment modalities such as gestalt,
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Speaker 1: somatic experiencing, and psychodynamic psychotherapy, recognize as significant gap in
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Speaker 1: models addressing early developmental trauma, and it was out of
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Speaker 1: this recognition and the growing need in the field that
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Speaker 1: he developed NORM. All right, Lawrence, just a little bit
1:07
Speaker 1: about you before we can go and share with the
1:09
Speaker 1: listeners where you're from, original originally and where you are
1:11
Speaker 1: currently well.
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Speaker 2: I was born in Denver, Colorado, and I'm now in
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Speaker 2: Los Angeles, and I've spent a significant part of my
1:20
Speaker 2: life also teaching in Europe. So at one point I
1:24
Speaker 2: was teaching like almost half time in Europe, but I've
1:28
Speaker 2: that's scaled back, so now I still teach in Europe,
1:31
Speaker 2: but not nearly as much as I watched it. So
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Speaker 2: I've kind of been all over the place in my life.
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Speaker 1: So as we you have a new book coming out,
1:39
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about that, but as a segue
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Speaker 1: in the in the bio, it said you notice a
1:46
Speaker 1: significant gap in the treatment of trauma. Talk a little
1:50
Speaker 1: bit about that.
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Speaker 2: Well, if I could put it into two categories too,
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Speaker 2: I mean, which is an oversimplification always but still is
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Speaker 2: kind of the more psychodynamic orientation and which is more
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Speaker 2: top down, and the more somatically oriented therapies, which tends
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Speaker 2: to be bottom up. And what I found is that
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Speaker 2: there were difficulties in both areaus, things that were really missed.
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Speaker 2: And then that was on a very basic level. I'll
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Speaker 2: elaborate later about maybe some more of the details, but
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Speaker 2: for example, so much of what we deal with with
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Speaker 2: early developmental trauma is a theme We're going to talk
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Speaker 2: about today, which is shame, and I talk about the shame,
2:34
Speaker 2: self hatred, self judgment, self criticism continuum. And you can't
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Speaker 2: address those dynamics by working with dysregulation in the nervous
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Speaker 2: system alone, because you've got to be able to deal
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Speaker 2: with the distorted identifications, the distorted identity sense of self
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Speaker 2: that people develop when they grow up and adapt to
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Speaker 2: traumatic situations, complex traumatic situations. So there is that, and
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Speaker 2: then there was what I you know, my earlier psychodynamic
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Speaker 2: go ahead way, just so.
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Speaker 1: You said, you can't deal with those aspects solely by
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Speaker 1: dealing with the nervous system, right somatic, Yes, yes, okay, okay,
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Speaker 1: I mean very interesting, Okay, well, thank you.
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Speaker 2: And of course there's going to be a process of
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Speaker 2: autonomic and emotional regulation that happens in any effective therapy,
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Speaker 2: and we do focus a lot about that, a lot
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Speaker 2: on that and norm but one of the ways you
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Speaker 2: can't just do it by focusing on the nervous system.
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Speaker 2: We've got to focus on the identifications. That the idea is,
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Speaker 2: the belief systems, all those pieces need to be part
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Speaker 2: of it. But particularly important to me and my model
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Speaker 2: is this understanding of identifications, which actually and I address,
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Speaker 2: but and they're really a body mind kind of process,
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Speaker 2: and body mind is even to separate. I talk about
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Speaker 2: the functional unity between the psychological and physiological. So these
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Speaker 2: identifications have a cognitive component, but they're also bodily based,
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Speaker 2: as a lot of us understand. So, and we just
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Speaker 2: can't address the whole dynamic by working bottom up. On
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Speaker 2: the other hand, we've got the analytic psychodynamic approaches where
4:26
Speaker 2: traditionally now that's changed over the years, but traditionally the
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Speaker 2: relational component was not stressed. Now, with intersubjectivity and other
4:36
Speaker 2: kinds of things, there's more of a recognition of that.
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Speaker 2: But what's missing there often is how unprepared individuals with
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Speaker 2: the most extreme kinds of trauma are to have any
4:50
Speaker 2: kind of to be relational. And we have to start
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Speaker 2: with where they are, which is often very shut down,
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Speaker 2: very disconnected from self, very disconnected from their emotions, very
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Speaker 2: disconnected from other people. And if there isn't a way
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Speaker 2: of understanding and approaching that and recognizing the existential fear
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Speaker 2: that these individuals tend to carry with them, traditional analytic
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Speaker 2: and dynamic approaches, from my perspective, weren't sufficient now and
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Speaker 2: I respect both bottom up and top down works of
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Speaker 2: the different kinds. But those were at least some of
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Speaker 2: the elements that I thought were missing.
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Speaker 1: How do you define identifications.
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Speaker 2: Well, a sense of the sense of who we are who,
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Speaker 2: but I prefer to look at it as who we
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Speaker 2: take ourselves to be. And often these this and this
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Speaker 2: sense of self, these identifications are always reflected of reflective
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Speaker 2: of disconnection. So that the way, you know, and I
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Speaker 2: make this very important distinguished distinction, I believe between you know,
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Speaker 2: we have the tendency to believe that it's the trauma
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Speaker 2: itself that creates the suffering and the symptoms that we experienced. Later,
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Speaker 2: of course, there's some truth in that, but enim I
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Speaker 2: emphasize it's not the trauma itself as much as the
6:22
Speaker 2: adaptations that we made to that trauma. And you know,
6:27
Speaker 2: anaphroid developed all of these very important understanding of all
6:31
Speaker 2: the psychological defense mechanisms that human beings can have. You know,
6:35
Speaker 2: maybe it wasn't a complete list, but it was. It
6:37
Speaker 2: was a landmark work at the time. But what I
6:42
Speaker 2: came to see is that the common thread through all
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Speaker 2: of the so called defenses I don't use that word anymore,
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Speaker 2: but through all the so called defenses. Is disconnection. That's
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Speaker 2: what we do as human beings when we're living and
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Speaker 2: particularly in chronically painful, collectful, abusive, or really seriously miss
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Speaker 2: atune kinds of family dynamics, and we disconnect. And this
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Speaker 2: disconnection has many forms and takes many you know, there
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Speaker 2: are many different ways to do it. But we then
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Speaker 2: and part of that disconnection is that we start to
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Speaker 2: distort our sense of self. And it's I'll put it
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Speaker 2: in a very basic way, which is that you know,
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Speaker 2: like you're talking about these identifications. So, for example, a
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Speaker 2: child grows up in a family with parents who just
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Speaker 2: don't have the capacity to welcome them, nurture them, love them,
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Speaker 2: support them well. For the child, it's an impossible situation
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Speaker 2: to you know, to deal with, to have the realization
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Speaker 2: that their parents don't have the capacity for love or
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Speaker 2: to love them at least in the world way that
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Speaker 2: they need. So part of the distortion of identifications in
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Speaker 2: identifications or a distortion of identity that takes place, is
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Speaker 2: that the child blames themselves. Oh, this is the distorted
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Speaker 2: process that starts to happen, and it's psychological and emotional
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Speaker 2: and physical. But is that I'm not lovable and all
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Speaker 2: of the various forms that that basic distortion takes. I'm
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Speaker 2: not pretty, I'm not smart. You know, all the shame,
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Speaker 2: the self criticism, all the things that we do to ourselves,
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Speaker 2: and that we're in one way either learn directly from
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Speaker 2: the environment or inferred just by the lack of support
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Speaker 2: and nom I talk about and we part of the
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Speaker 2: reason that we blame ourselves and turn against ourselves it
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Speaker 2: is to protect the attachment relationship. It can't be them,
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Speaker 2: so it's got to be me. And if it's me,
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Speaker 2: then I have hope. I can change myself. I cannot
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Speaker 2: be such a burden, I cannot express my needs. I
9:07
Speaker 2: won't have to stand up for myself. It'd be nice
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Speaker 2: and sweet, I will. You know, the child starts to
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Speaker 2: adapting to their environment, and to do so, they have
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Speaker 2: to to distort what's authentic and most alive and most
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Speaker 2: connected in themselves.
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Speaker 1: Wow, if it's me, there's hope. Right. It's almost like
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Speaker 1: unfathomable that the attachment figure, the parents or whomever, there
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Speaker 1: would be something wrong or God forbid, they did something horrible.
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Speaker 1: That's almost unfathomable.
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Speaker 2: It's true at certain ages of development, it is unfeasable.
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Speaker 2: It's not even the way the very young child's brain works,
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Speaker 2: because they're kind of the center of their own universe.
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Speaker 2: And I don't mean that in a bad way, but
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Speaker 2: everything is personal. I can't see that the parents are
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Speaker 2: dealing with their own unresolved trauma and their own unresolved issues.
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Speaker 2: All they know is what they're experiencing. It doesn't feel good,
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Speaker 2: and the only conclusion that they can draw is it's
10:14
Speaker 2: because of them. I mean, we see how that dynamic
10:18
Speaker 2: works in children. You know how children will blame themselves
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Speaker 2: for their parents' divorce, and you know that's the I
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Speaker 2: use that example because it's generally understood, but this has
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Speaker 2: huge implications for a child's life because they start distorting
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Speaker 2: their sense of self and along with it goes to
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Speaker 2: dysregulation of the nervous system and the disregulation of all
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Speaker 2: the systems of the body. In this process of adapting
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Speaker 2: to an environment that is in some ways, or sometimes
10:47
Speaker 2: very big ways, failing them.
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Speaker 1: You know, listening to you talk, it's pretty amazing. I mean,
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Speaker 1: you can just see and feel your experience. I'm going
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Speaker 1: to ask you a very kind of naive question. O
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Speaker 1: pardon me, but how the hell did you get So
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Speaker 1: did you learn all this? Were you at Were you
11:13
Speaker 1: just reading everything did when you were working? Was it?
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Speaker 1: Were you just registering all of this? Not everyone who's
11:21
Speaker 1: a clinician does what you're doing. Well.
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Speaker 2: I experienced a lot of different approaches. I was curious,
11:31
Speaker 2: and I was interested, and I was doing my own
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Speaker 2: I was interested in doing my own work, and and
11:35
Speaker 2: then I was also interested in translating what I was
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Speaker 2: coming to understand into you know, clinical work with others.
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Speaker 2: And so I learned a lot both from some of
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Speaker 2: the you know, the successes quote unquote, but also I
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Speaker 2: learned a lot from what I saw as the failures
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Speaker 2: of various different approaches, purely somatic approaches or purely analytic approaches.
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Speaker 2: And so I learned from those mistakes what I at
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Speaker 2: least consider mistakes anyway, But and tried, you know, as
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Speaker 2: I was developing norm tried to avoid the pitfalls that
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Speaker 2: I was seeing in the field. Generally, this tendency to pathologize,
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Speaker 2: this tendency that we have to put a name on
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Speaker 2: something and believe we've explained it, This tendency to to
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Speaker 2: you know, to believe that we don't have any agency
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Speaker 2: to see that everything is from outside, whereas as children,
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Speaker 2: we didn't have any agency. But one of the things
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Speaker 2: that's really important in my clinical work is to see
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Speaker 2: that we we have agency in areas that we didn't
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Speaker 2: realize when we were coming from what I talk about
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Speaker 2: as child consciousness. We don't because we're experiencing the world
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Speaker 2: from the same helpless position as adults that we experienced
12:52
Speaker 2: as children. And so it was a combination of things,
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Speaker 2: a lot of a lot of personal work, trying a
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Speaker 2: lot of different things, seeing what was most helpful, what
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Speaker 2: was not, but not you know, I spent significant periods
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Speaker 2: in different approaches. It wasn't like I just was, you know,
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Speaker 2: like a butterfly flying around tasting different flowers. I really,
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Speaker 2: you know, I've been doing this for a long time.
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Speaker 1: I did.
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Speaker 2: I did a lot of my own personal work at
13:17
Speaker 2: the beginning, and then as I started to develop this
13:22
Speaker 2: model and I started seeing people respond more quickly, more
13:27
Speaker 2: effect you know, it felt like my work was more
13:29
Speaker 2: effective than some of the As I was integrating these
13:33
Speaker 2: pieces and you know, synthesizing some of these elements, and
13:36
Speaker 2: I saw just what was useful for the client and
13:41
Speaker 2: what tended to lead to a kind of a dead end,
13:43
Speaker 2: or it wasn't so helpful or useful for them. So
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Speaker 2: it's a combination of all these things.
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Speaker 1: Just plus for a second, remind every when I'm speaking
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Speaker 1: with doctor Lawrence Heller, he has a new book coming
13:53
Speaker 1: out on the topic of shame. Let's talk about the
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Speaker 1: new book as this it is not yet out. When
14:02
Speaker 1: do you have an estimate on what the publishing date
14:06
Speaker 1: will be.
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Speaker 2: It's supposed to be late fall, so I'm assuming November
14:11
Speaker 2: December is probably the day.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, so how does the book come about? Well?
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Speaker 2: Interesting again, is like talking about shame and shame based
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Speaker 2: identifications and pride based counter identifications has been part of
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Speaker 2: my work for a long time. But one of the
14:31
Speaker 2: things that I saw is that I don't I don't
14:33
Speaker 2: do this anymore. But when earlier in my career, I
14:37
Speaker 2: would offer like three or four day workshops, and one
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Speaker 2: of the things that I noticed is anytime I offered
14:43
Speaker 2: a workshop on shame and guilt, it sold out immediately,
14:47
Speaker 2: so there was like clear interest and and that kind
14:52
Speaker 2: of you know, And then teaching these you know, these
14:55
Speaker 2: shorter term webinars, I started seeing just how central an
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Speaker 2: issue this is in people's lives. All the unresolved shame,
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Speaker 2: unresolved self hatred, and so on.
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Speaker 1: So let's start at the bottom here. How do you
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Speaker 1: define shame?
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Speaker 2: Well, shame has to do is feeling that something basic
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Speaker 2: about who we are is bad or wrong or unacceptable
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Speaker 2: or and it takes different ugly or insufficient or a
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Speaker 2: burden or you know, all the things that we've we
15:36
Speaker 2: as human beings. Can you know, those of us who
15:40
Speaker 2: are fortunate don't live there, but some people live there
15:44
Speaker 2: pretty much their whole life until they and hopefully they
15:47
Speaker 2: get some personal work that can help them move from
15:50
Speaker 2: this health self hating, self shaming, self blaming kind of perspective.
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Speaker 1: And talking more specific about the book, how is it
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Speaker 1: laid out? What did you want to do with it?
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Speaker 1: What was a purpose?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just asked that question because it's the first
16:12
Speaker 2: time that I've done a book very specifically in the way.
16:14
Speaker 2: And I have a co writer, German, who was very
16:19
Speaker 2: advanced assistant in an armwork and a good writer in
16:23
Speaker 2: his own right, and so he and I have put
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Speaker 2: this book together. But in this book there's a part
16:31
Speaker 2: that is specifically for lay people, not that therapists shouldn't
16:36
Speaker 2: read it, but it's you know, it was more My
16:39
Speaker 2: other books have been oriented towards therapists and people who
16:45
Speaker 2: are very interested in psychotherapy, which turned out to be
16:48
Speaker 2: a much and personal growth and health and all that
16:51
Speaker 2: turned out to be a much bigger number than I've
16:53
Speaker 2: ever anticipated. The first book that was out fifteen or
16:58
Speaker 2: sixteen years ago sells or books every year because people
17:01
Speaker 2: are getting more interested in this theme. It's in social
17:04
Speaker 2: media and all this stuff. So, but that was for
17:08
Speaker 2: this kind of unified audience of a certain spectrum where
17:11
Speaker 2: they were either therapists or very interested, you know, in
17:17
Speaker 2: personal growth themselves. Whereas this book on shame and Guilt
17:22
Speaker 2: is it's got a section that is specifically for the
17:26
Speaker 2: lay person, and it's got another section that is specifically
17:29
Speaker 2: for clinicians. Now I'm assuming that many I'm hoping at
17:33
Speaker 2: least that many clinicians will will read the first part
17:36
Speaker 2: because there are some exercises or some things for people
17:39
Speaker 2: to reflect on. And I'm assuming too that a lot
17:43
Speaker 2: of the people will read about the clinical interventions that
17:46
Speaker 2: we use and what's behind them, what the understanding is.
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Speaker 2: So in that way, the structure of the book is
17:54
Speaker 2: unique given the few books that I've done previously talk.
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Speaker 1: About complex trauma or into personal trauma and shame the relationship.
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Speaker 2: Well, it goes back to what we touched on, and
18:12
Speaker 2: there's a process called splitting which comes from psychodynamic and
18:19
Speaker 2: psychoanalytic understanding, where the child splits the when they were
18:25
Speaker 2: coming from a different place than I'm coming from. I'm
18:27
Speaker 2: coming from a very relational place. But when I'm saying
18:31
Speaker 2: is that when a child is in an impossible situation,
18:33
Speaker 2: getting inadequate parenting, my environmental failure of all kinds, and
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Speaker 2: particularly when it's relationally driven the parents, you know, acting
18:44
Speaker 2: out or not seeing the child, or not treating the
18:46
Speaker 2: child well, all the different kinds of things that can
18:48
Speaker 2: happen to us. Is that we can experience as human beings.
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Speaker 2: Is that the splitting is literally and this was not
18:56
Speaker 2: my concept. This is when I've adapted from analytic work.
18:59
Speaker 2: But we split the image of the parent into the
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Speaker 2: good parent and the bad parent, two separate images some
19:06
Speaker 2: people believe actually like two different existing independently, and the
19:11
Speaker 2: good self and the bad self. And now this relates
19:15
Speaker 2: to what we talked about before. If we identify as
19:20
Speaker 2: the bad self, we protect the image of the good parent,
19:25
Speaker 2: because if you know, if we see the parent as
19:28
Speaker 2: bad and adequate, incapable, for example, talking in human terms,
19:32
Speaker 2: incapable of loving us in the way that we need,
19:35
Speaker 2: that's catastrophic for a child. It means because the parents
19:39
Speaker 2: are the child's whole universe, and if they don't feel
19:45
Speaker 2: loved by their parents, for them, it means there's no
19:48
Speaker 2: love in the universe. So it's it's the attachment relationship,
19:51
Speaker 2: but it's also the love relationship, and I like to
19:54
Speaker 2: emphasize both because of course they're very closely connected.
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Speaker 1: With shame. You know, I, when I was younger, I
20:05
Speaker 1: was bullied twelve, thirteen, fourteen, and you know that seemingly,
20:16
Speaker 1: I say, seemingly little experience really altered the trajectory of
20:27
Speaker 1: how I showed up, how I thought about myself, how
20:30
Speaker 1: I showed up in relationships, self esteem. And there was
20:34
Speaker 1: a lot of shame about disclosing that, talking about that,
20:39
Speaker 1: admitting that to myself that I had allowed that to happen.
20:50
Speaker 1: Why does this become this? Why does shame? What does
20:54
Speaker 1: shame do to us? Obviously it's going to be different
20:57
Speaker 1: for different people, but talk a little bit.
20:59
Speaker 2: Of well, the experience of shame is probably most people
21:02
Speaker 2: can relate to. It feels dark, it feels contracted, we
21:07
Speaker 2: feel bad about ourselves. It's their pain. Shame based identifications
21:12
Speaker 2: are painful and the shame process is painful. And I
21:17
Speaker 2: do talk about in the clinical model that for clinicians
21:21
Speaker 2: it's important to look in terms of adults that it's
21:25
Speaker 2: actually a self shaming dynamic. Now that wasn't always the
21:29
Speaker 2: case in childhood. You know, it's it's something that we
21:37
Speaker 2: were not in control of. But I heard you say something.
21:40
Speaker 2: If I may reflect it back to you, that you
21:44
Speaker 2: said something about you allowed yourself to be. Now, I
21:48
Speaker 2: don't that in itself to me, if I may sounded
21:52
Speaker 2: a little self shaming, yeah, because I don't think at
21:56
Speaker 2: the time. I'm sure in retrospect you could see things
21:59
Speaker 2: that you could have done differently. But at the time,
22:03
Speaker 2: my guess is you did the best that you could
22:05
Speaker 2: in a difficult situation that you were in. So that's
22:09
Speaker 2: the kinds of those are the kind of dynamics that
22:11
Speaker 2: I address with people. Why when they're holding blaming themselves
22:16
Speaker 2: or shaming themselves, they're very closely related obviously, so that
22:21
Speaker 2: for things that were outside their control or you know,
22:27
Speaker 2: like environmental failure of all kinds that I touched on
22:31
Speaker 2: you know so far. So it's not so much that
22:37
Speaker 2: shame has a grip on us, but we have a
22:39
Speaker 2: grip on shame, meaning that we we take it, we
22:44
Speaker 2: run with it. We don't realize that we're doing it.
22:46
Speaker 2: I don't think anybody is born with having bad intentions
22:49
Speaker 2: towards themselves, but it still feels like it's important to
22:54
Speaker 2: survival to be able to feel bad about ourselves. Now
22:58
Speaker 2: that I know that may sound strange listeners.
23:00
Speaker 1: But it sounds strange. Why, why, how and why is
23:05
Speaker 1: that important to well?
23:06
Speaker 2: Think about it? If shame being the bad one, being
23:12
Speaker 2: the bad self, feeling shame about yourself is the way
23:16
Speaker 2: to hold on to the love and attachment relationship, which
23:20
Speaker 2: for a child is existential both of those. Then we
23:25
Speaker 2: continue that pattern into adulthood where we don't we're not
23:29
Speaker 2: one hundred percent dependent on significant others unless we're ill
23:34
Speaker 2: or something, but under normal circumstances, we're not emotionally one
23:37
Speaker 2: hundred percent dependent on the other like we were as children,
23:41
Speaker 2: and so we but we carry the same charge and
23:44
Speaker 2: the same meaning that if we can fill in the blanks,
23:48
Speaker 2: if I really show up and express my needs, I'll
23:52
Speaker 2: be rejected and I won't be loved, and so then
23:54
Speaker 2: we develop strategies. Well, the way I'll deal with that
23:58
Speaker 2: is I want I don't know how to address the shame,
24:01
Speaker 2: So I'll be the caretaker and I'll take care of
24:03
Speaker 2: everybody else's needs and then they'll love me, and then
24:07
Speaker 2: you know we can And I'm going actually touching on
24:10
Speaker 2: a couple of different adaptive survival styles that I use
24:12
Speaker 2: and in my model. But let's say too with boundaries,
24:18
Speaker 2: feeling is like I don't have the right to say no,
24:22
Speaker 2: I don't have the right to stand up for myself.
24:24
Speaker 2: I don't have the right to set limits. And then
24:27
Speaker 2: feeling shame if we believe we've disappointed somebody.
24:34
Speaker 1: As you're talking, I'm saying in my mind, yes, yes, yes,
24:42
Speaker 1: it feels like as a result of that experience, I've
24:51
Speaker 1: made these decisions in my life as a result of that,
24:55
Speaker 1: you can feel that and don't and can feel almost
25:00
Speaker 1: the maladaptive qualities of them.
25:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you mentioned another important thing, which is that
25:09
Speaker 2: shame kind of thrives in the dark, because when we
25:13
Speaker 2: bring it to the light of day to conscious awareness.
25:16
Speaker 2: In other words, and we can start to see the
25:19
Speaker 2: self shaming process that we were, the shame we experience,
25:23
Speaker 2: and then the self shaming process that we continued. We
25:26
Speaker 2: can look at it through not through a child's eyes,
25:29
Speaker 2: but through an adult size. So but there's so much
25:32
Speaker 2: pain around and heard around revealing our shame because it
25:37
Speaker 2: feels like deep, dirty, dark secrets about ourselves that we
25:40
Speaker 2: don't want people to know, and that keeps it going.
25:43
Speaker 2: So bringing it to light the light of conscious awareness
25:47
Speaker 2: is so helpful and clearly you're able to talk about it.
25:51
Speaker 2: So you've done some of that work, and you know,
25:54
Speaker 2: I'm assuming that you found significant relief from that process
25:58
Speaker 2: through whatever work which you've done. And that is how
26:01
Speaker 2: it works. And what I find for clinicians is that
26:06
Speaker 2: because I think every clinician has some awareness of shame,
26:10
Speaker 2: I'm hoping that they do anyway, but I think one
26:14
Speaker 2: of the things that they find in the normal trainings
26:17
Speaker 2: is more are more precise techniques and interventions and even
26:22
Speaker 2: awareness of how subtle the shaming process is. And let
26:27
Speaker 2: me just while we're talking about this, let me give
26:29
Speaker 2: you another kind of hidden example of sham that I
26:33
Speaker 2: do talk about it. We do talk about in the book,
26:36
Speaker 2: which is all of the things that we don't do,
26:40
Speaker 2: all the things that we don't say. How we narrow
26:44
Speaker 2: our lives in order to avoid the experience of shame.
26:48
Speaker 2: And this is not always bad things. For example, we
26:52
Speaker 2: might avoid telling somebody that we're interested in them, you know, romantically,
26:58
Speaker 2: because we're afraid that if they reject us, will feel shame,
27:01
Speaker 2: and so we don't do that. Or we're in a
27:04
Speaker 2: relationship with somebody, but we're afraid to just tell them
27:08
Speaker 2: how much we love them because we feel vulnerable when
27:10
Speaker 2: we do. And what we're really vulnerable to, you know,
27:14
Speaker 2: consciously or unconsciously, is shame that they won't accept it
27:19
Speaker 2: or they won't take it in, and then I'll feel
27:21
Speaker 2: ashamed myself and I'll feel hurt. So we narrow our
27:25
Speaker 2: lives in order to avoid the shame and the self
27:29
Speaker 2: shaming that results when we take risks, when we put
27:34
Speaker 2: ourselves out there, when we try something new that we've
27:37
Speaker 2: never tried before. Some people won't try anything new, or
27:41
Speaker 2: they won't try anything that they feel that they might
27:43
Speaker 2: not immediately be good at. Why shame. They're afraid that
27:49
Speaker 2: they won't look good or they'll look dumb or they'll
27:51
Speaker 2: look stupid or they'll look clumsy, or whatever it is.
27:54
Speaker 2: We can talk about bigger fears like public speaking. It's shame,
27:58
Speaker 2: the fear of plumb speaking, which at one point was
28:01
Speaker 2: at the top of the list of people's fears. Interestingly enough,
28:05
Speaker 2: it's all about shame. I'm going to go out there
28:08
Speaker 2: and I'm going to make a fool of myself or
28:10
Speaker 2: these are the catastrophic, you know, thoughts that people tend
28:13
Speaker 2: to have, and then I'll feel ashamed, and I'll feel
28:16
Speaker 2: unloved and I'll feel unwelcome. And so this is how
28:19
Speaker 2: these dynamics some about how they started and how we
28:24
Speaker 2: continue them into adult.
28:28
Speaker 1: Are those based on an earlier original shaming experience.
28:35
Speaker 3: It's always always my experience, yeah, yeah, because otherwise, if
28:45
Speaker 3: if somebody says something bad about us, you know, like
28:48
Speaker 3: they insult us in some way, it only really hurts
28:52
Speaker 3: us on some level.
28:53
Speaker 2: We don't believe something like that about ourselves. Like if
28:56
Speaker 2: somebody were to call you a communist, let's say, just
29:01
Speaker 2: pulling something out of the air, probably wouldn't hurt your
29:03
Speaker 2: feelings because it's so ridiculous. But if somebody says to
29:09
Speaker 2: somebody or even implies. You know, I think you're you
29:13
Speaker 2: have kind of funny ears. I'm not talking to you now,
29:16
Speaker 2: I'm not going to just in general. But if we
29:18
Speaker 2: believe that our ears are a little funny, or our
29:20
Speaker 2: nose or our hips or whatever, we take that in
29:23
Speaker 2: because there were already predisposed to feel shame about that part.
29:28
Speaker 2: So if somebody and we may be perceiving it correctly
29:32
Speaker 2: or incorrectly, because sometimes we're that's where the sensitivity comes.
29:36
Speaker 2: We're defensive and sensitive because it touches shame points and
29:40
Speaker 2: pain points in us.
29:44
Speaker 1: Doctor Heller. Fascinating, super inspiring. Do we have a title
29:50
Speaker 1: of the book.
29:51
Speaker 2: Yes, freeing Yourself from Shame and Kilt. And there's a
29:54
Speaker 2: subtitle of which actually we've modified a number of times
29:58
Speaker 2: and I don't the exact subtitle for it, but it's
30:02
Speaker 2: freeing Yourself from from Shaming Guild's the main title, all right?
30:07
Speaker 1: And how can people learn more about you and the
30:10
Speaker 1: trainings and NORM et cetera.
30:12
Speaker 2: Well, you can, you know, if you can always google
30:16
Speaker 2: me and the NORM Training Institute, which is what we
30:20
Speaker 2: have here in the States, but we you know, we
30:24
Speaker 2: do webinars internationally, so you can look me up there
30:29
Speaker 2: or you know, just me personally, or the non training institute.
30:33
Speaker 2: We have a lot of different programs at different levels
30:36
Speaker 2: of training. We have online trainings and live trainings and
30:39
Speaker 2: a whole variety of ways of getting trained, and other
30:45
Speaker 2: programs as well that are you know, basically about various
30:49
Speaker 2: elements of norm.
30:51
Speaker 1: Okay, we'll have all that linked up here at the
30:53
Speaker 1: show notes page at the Trauma Therapist podcast dot com.
30:57
Speaker 1: Doctor Heller, awesome, appreciate you so inspiring. Thank you for
31:02
Speaker 1: being here again.
31:03
Speaker 2: Bes such got great to be here with you again.
31:05
Speaker 2: Thank you all right, take care, bye bye,