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Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT - Guest
Sheila Rubin is a marriage and family therapist and a leading authority on Healing Shame. She developed the Healing Shame Therapy work over the last two decades and is the co-director, with Bret Lyon, of the Center for Healing Shame in Berkeley, California. Sheila has delivered talks, presentations and workshops across the country and around the world, at conferences from Canada to Romania. She is a Board Certified Trainer through NADTA and past adjunct faculty for the CIIS Drama Therapy Program and JFK University’s Somatic Psychology Department. Sheila's expertise, teaching, and writing contributions have been featured in numerous publications, including seven books. Her writings on shame include the chapter “Women, Food and Feelings: Drama Therapy with Women Who Have Eating Disorders” in the book The Creative Therapies and Eating Disorders, the chapter “Almost Magic: Working with the Shame that Underlies Depression: Using Drama Therapy in the Imaginal Realm” in the book The Use of Creative Therapies in Treating Depression, and the chapter “Unpacking Shame and Healthy Shame: Therapy on the Phone or Internet” in Combining the Creative Therapies with Technology: Using Social Media and Online Counseling to Treat Clients (all books edited by Stephanie L. Brooke). Sheila offers therapy through her private practice in Berkeley and online via Zoom. She also provides consultations to therapists via Skype and leads workshops in Berkeley, internationally, and online. You can learn more about her workshops, writing, and on demand trainings at www.HealingShame.com |
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W. Keith Sutton, Psy.D. - Host
Dr. Sutton has always had an interest in learning from multiple theoretical perspectives, and keeping up to date on innovations and integrations. He is interested in the development of ideas, and using research to show effectiveness in treatment and refine treatments. In 2009 he started the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy, providing a one-way mirror training in family therapy with James Keim, LCSW. Next, he added a trainer and one-way mirror training in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and an additional trainer and mirror in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy. The participants enjoyed analyzing cases, keeping each other up to date on research, and discussing what they were learning. This focus on integrating and evolving their approaches to helping children, adolescents, families, couples, and individuals lead to the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy's training program for therapists, and its group practice of like-minded clinicians who were dedicated to learning, innovating, and advancing the field of psychotherapy. Our podcast, Therapy on the Cutting Edge, is an extension of this wish to learn, integrate, stay up to date, and share this passion for the advancement of the field with other practitioners. |
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (00:21)
Welcome to Therapy on the Cutting Edge, a podcast for therapists who want to be up-to-date on the latest advancements in the field of psychotherapy. I'm your host, Dr. Keith Sutton, a psychologist in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Director of the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy. Today I'll be speaking with Sheila Rubin, who is a marriage and family therapist, and a leading authority on healing shame. She developed the healing shame therapy work over the last two decades, and is the co-director with Brett Lyon of the Center for Healing Shame in Berkeley, California. Sheila has delivered talks, presentations, and workshops across the country and around the world at conferences from Canada to Romania. She's a board-certified trainer through NADTA and past adjunct faculty for the California Institute of Integral Studies’ Drama Therapy program and JFK University's Somatic Psychology department. Sheila's expertise, teaching, and writing contributions have been featured in numerous publications, including seven books. Sheila offers therapy through her private practice in Berkeley and online via Zoom. She also provides consultations to therapists via Skype and leads workshops in Berkeley, internationally, and online. You can learn more about her workshops, writing, and on-demand trainings at healingshame.com. Let's listen to the interview. Well hi, Sheila. Thank you so much for meeting with me today.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (01:42)
Hi, Keith. It's such an honor to meet you. It feels like a long time, and I'm so honored to be doing this podcast with you.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (01:52)
Yeah, definitely. So I've been seeing your workshops. We're both in the Bay Area, and you do workshops on shame. It's been at the top of my list to come and check one of them out. You know, shame is an interesting topic. When I first got to grad school, I had to do a project and they gave us different theorists, and I had Alfred Adler and the inferiority complex, and that kind of struck me. Shame is a thing that comes up with many of my clients with complex trauma, a lot of my clients with ADHD. So I'm really interested in this topic. I'd love to hear about your thoughts on that and your work with shame. But before we even get into that, I always like to hear about people's progression of their work and how you got to doing what you're doing. Kind of the evolution of your thinking that got you here.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (02:46)
I love that question, and I'm closing my eyes for a minute to just take a breath. It's so precious that we get to spend this time together, and I was so excited I came two weeks early and then I came one week early. It was like, I saw the work that I'm doing as life changing for people, and it has been for me personally. I feel like I have been a researcher of shame since I was very young. I did not know it was shame. I knew that it was like feeling like down here when the other kids were up here, or way down here when the other kids were up there. So initially I worked with my shyness, and I worked with my, you know, I like that word inferiority.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (03:48)
It's like I always had that thought. It's like, “Well, something must be wrong with me, so if I could just do the right thing, then I would get it right.” So I became a magician and started entertaining the kids, and I made kids happy. I noticed that when I was entertaining, the kids were laughing, they were clapping, they were dancing around in circles, and that made me feel like, wow, I can really do something. So between like very young and 18, I was a children's performer and storyteller. And so I learned how to heal my shyness with entertaining people and heal my shyness with making the kids happy. So by the time I became a therapist, which was, you know, many, many years later, I had figured out all these different things.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (04:49)
I had the inner critic. You know, I went to graduate school, I became a drama therapist. I'm like, okay, there's psychodrama and we work with all the different emotions, and there was even shame there. But I didn't know how to isolate shame, and I didn't know how to join with the inner critic, talk to the inner critic. I didn't really know how to have my voice. And so a long story went: I eventually became trained in EFT, and I was the eating disorder specialist at a psychiatric program many years ago, and I noticed my clients – they had this fierce inner critic. And it was like, I know how to talk to their inner critic. And they were like, how do you know about this inner critic?
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (05:46)
And I'm like, I don't know, but I think I have the same inner critic. I don't have an eating disorder, but I have the same inner critic putting me down, saying all these different things. And I had to be friends with the inner critic to be able to work with these women. First it was the women, and I used DBT, CBT, LMNOPQRST [laughter], everything that we were supposed to do. But I was adding my shame component, and I was adding my work with shame back in the hospital. It worked with the women. It worked with people in partial hospitalization. It worked with depressed people. It worked with people who had PTSD. It worked with that little question that I would ask about. We would do DBT, we would do CBT, and I would say, “Are you secretly putting yourself down right now?” And they're like, “Uh…got me!” And I'm like, “Yeah, that's who I want to talk to.”
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (06:56)
So gradually I learned how to isolate the inner critic and support all of the resources that a person had, to challenge the inner critic and all of their psychological devices that got in the way of that. And then eventually, I mean, like, there was nothing available to work with shame, and around the time I met Brett, it's like he wanted to do a workshop on shame. So I'm like, “Sure, I'll assist you in the workshop on shame.” He knew about male shame. I'm like, “Well, I know about female shame and I know about all-pervasive shame.” So we teamed up and you know, we created the Center for Healing Shame based on all of our workshops. We have people from Canada and all over the world come to study with us because they're like, “Yeah, I have this voice in my head that tells me there's something wrong with me.” And I'm like, “That's shame.”
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (08:01)
Yes. Yes.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (08:03)
I went to a – I forget his name – the fellow that created polyvagal theory. I was at an attachment conference several years ago in LA. He was presenting about polyvagal theory and how it runs through the nervous system, what the mind does, what the brain does, and all of these things. And I'm like, “This thing that I have been researching on myself and my clients. Guess what? It's shame.”
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (08:37)
Yeah. Yeah.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (08:38)
Simply, and most profoundly, it's shame. All the ways that shame shows up, all of the automatic thoughts and the sensations. So I was writing my thesis years ago, and my brain went into this freeze of like, you know, “You can’t write. You can't write.” I didn't know at the time that that was a reaction to shame, but I had to figure out every way to get beyond that voice to actually write my thesis, actually do eventually more writing, but that voice… That stopped me and froze me. That was shame. And to be able to say to people, you know, this voice – and it's so different for men, for women, everybody, it's different. So, you know, Brett didn't think he had shame. When we started working together and when we started dating, it was like we had kind of the opposite parts of our teaching.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (09:45)
And we were a really good teaching team because he has the male shame and I have the female shame. Then everything goes out from there because being able to lower the playing field and say to people in the workshop, “You know, we understand enough about our own shame that we can counter shame.” So, you know, we have all these tools and techniques and things that we could teach people. Meanwhile, you know, it starts with that I've been always researching shame, and I always noticed it between my parents. I always noticed it between kids at school. I always noticed it way back before I was a therapist. By the time I was a therapist, it's like, I look for that place that gets in between a person and their creativity.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (10:46)
Yes.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (10:49)
Go figure!
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (10:50)
Yeah. So it's that shame that's kind of getting in the way of that creativity or kind of block.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (10:54)
You got it!
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (10:55)
You're not good enough, or you can't go outside yourself and do that, or so on.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (11:02)
Exactly! That's how the shame would show up. In everybody, it's different. And I would ask these key questions when I start working with people. It's like, “Where are you in your life process?” and you know, “If you could have something in your life that you really wanted, let's talk about what gets in the way of that.” And that's shame. They don't know it's shame.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (11:33)
Sure, sure.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (11:35)
They think it's, you know, something.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (11:38)
Yeah. Yeah. How do you kind of conceptualize shame or define it? Yeah, how we develop that inner critic or how we overcome it.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (11:53)
I love your question.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (11:55)
Talking about the polyvagal theory and Steven Porges' work. We had Deb Dana on the podcast also talking about polyvagal theory. Tell me about that also, how that connected to the shame.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (12:06)
You know, that is the missing piece because once I figured out the polyvagal piece and how it reacted to shame, I was able to go backwards and forwards to all the times that I had frozen before a lecture, frozen before talking to my students. Or back in the olden days when I was a kid and I was too shy and I would just go into this collapse. And so being able to realize that shame is going to affect our brain. It tells us we're stupid, and it affects our brain because it lowers affect. So one of the basic things about shame is like, if a person goes into a shame posture, it's like looking down.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (12:55)
Yeah.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (12:55)
Looking down. And so they're looking down, and it's like, they can't breathe. They're worried about themselves. They can't look out there and see somebody else. And so when a person goes into shame, the whole nervous system starts to collapse. And so part of it is being able to restore breathing, rounding, supporting the attachment through me and the client. Because shame is the breaking of the interpersonal bridge, which is what Gershin Kaufman said. So I say to my clients, “Something happened and we're going to find out how to restart it between you and I right now.” And, you know, “If I missed you or something, you know, if there's a misunderstanding, let me know because I want to fix it. I want to repair it.” And so part of it is that shame is a primary emotion, and it's simply a primary emotion that tells us to stop.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (14:06)
Yeah.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (14:06)
It tells us to stop, pause, wait. It helps us feel uncomfortable. It starts showing up in the nervous system as discomfort. Or on one level it's shyness, discomfort. In the middle there's humiliation. And all the way down here, there's like excommunication and getting kicked out of the tribe. So being able to run up and down that line with people and figure out, where do they get stuck? And how can we get unstuck during the session? Because I always do psycho-ed about shame, and it's like, if you're putting yourself down while we're talking, let me know so we could talk about that. And so part of this is shame in the nervous system. And then when there's shame, there's shame around shame. And so the person goes into their shame around shame, and then they might freeze or they might get quiet or they might completely collapse. And so teaching them that and saying, “That is shame.”
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (15:25)
So the shame kind of takes them into that sympathetic or that dorsal state of collapse or shutdown. You know, kind of that polyvagal theory.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (15:41)
Yeah, absolutely. And it's in that shutdown, and it's like you got the foot on the brake and you got the foot on the gas at the same time. It's very similar to trauma. So when somebody's in shame, if it's severe shame, they can't speak, they can't talk, they can't even think clearly. And their mind is running a mile a minute trying to figure out whatever, whatever, whatever. And so being able to normalize that and say, “I wonder what just happened. Let's slow that one down.”
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (16:20)
Yeah. And the way I think about it too, you're talking about shame as a primary emotion. I do emotionally focused couples therapy, and I will sometimes talk to clients about the secondary emotions – you know, anger, anxiety, helplessness. And then the primary emotions – feeling hurt, sad, fear, alone, and shame. But I kind of say that shame's in the middle because really underneath shame is fear. And I think, like you were talking about, kind of being forced out of the tribe, or if I'm really this bad, who would want to be especially in a couple relationship, that kind of fear. And so sometimes the only option is to collapse or to defend and kind of try to point out, “I'm not so bad.”
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (17:05)
Right. And the amazing thing about shame, what you're saying, is it's there to protect us. We cannot handle shame. It is too painful. The nervous system splits off into attack-self, attack-other, deny, or withdrawal. Yeah. Sometimes all at once. It's like a pinball machine.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (17:27)
Sure.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (17:28)
I get two couples together and they're like, it's your fault, it's your fault, it's your fault, it's your fault. And they're both going off into the pinball machine. But shame goes off in the attack-self that I saw with the women in the eating disorder program. They were attacking themselves through using food. The guys in the hospital at that time, you know, they were attacking others, they were putting everybody else down. There's also the withdrawal, the depression, the pulling away, and then there's the dissociation from the shame – drugs, alcohol, all of that. And so being able to figure out where somebody tends to go and hoping they'll really figure it out. It's so automatic that when people figure it out, often I'll put the map there. Like, where do you usually go? And they're like, this is embarrassing. But once we look at the chart a couple times, it's not as embarrassing because it's like the Rosetta Stone. They're able to see what is actually happening, and it's going to make a lot more sense in the couple.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (18:36)
Sure. Yeah. So they kind of can see the processes that are happening, kind of where they're going and how their nervous system is responding. And tell me, how do you conceptualize shame? How do you talk about shame or explain shame to clients or professionals?
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (18:53)
I think right now, I talk about how there's so many different levels to shame. The first level of shame is like, if a person's going to get up on stage and they have the imposter syndrome, that they can't talk or they're going to freeze up or they might die. You know, that shame. And shame is also kind of like feeling like they're not good enough – you know, all of the different automatic thoughts that can go along with shame. And I like to say that there's an evolutionary purpose to shame. So back when I was working with people in the hospital years and years ago who had an addiction, they would be looking at the addiction and all the different ways that the addiction was…you know, the different direction that the addiction was telling them.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (19:54)
And there was, “What are you thinking? What are you feeling? What is all that?” And they're like, “I hate myself so I'm going to drink.” And I'm like, “Right, okay.” That's going round and round and round. I taught them some mindfulness, which helped a little bit, but they would end up back in it. Eventually I said they needed to work with the shame, because the shame was just going to put them back in an eating disorder, put them back in a drinking situation, put them back, you know, with bad behavior. So I say there's an evolutionary purpose of shame and for me it was to move from my shyness to being able to talk about shame with therapists and teach people all over the world.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (20:40)
Yeah.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (20:41)
And, you know, everybody has an evolutionary purpose to shame. And if they're stuck, in the couple, and they're doing the blame shame game….
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (20:49)
Yeah.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (20:51)
I say, might that be here if there was an evolutionary purpose to shame? If you could change one thing about yourself before you attack yourself or attack your other, you know as a reaction to shame, with the withdrawal or the pull away. If you could change one thing and just be a little different with yourself, maybe something could be a little bit different in the relationship or maybe something could be a little bit different with the person's self-esteem.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (21:28)
So tell me more about the evolutionary purpose. We were talking about how there's three types of shame. There's the stage fright type – kind of freezing shame. And then you were saying about the “not good enough” and thinking about the evolutionary purpose of shame. Can you talk a little bit about that? What is the evolutionary purpose of shame?
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (21:47)
Let's say somebody has all-pervasive shame – and that might be somebody who has low self-esteem, not able to get very far in their life. They have a voracious inner critic that keeps attacking them. And then for them, the evolutionary purpose of shame might be, I might talk to them about what's getting in their way given their family of origin, given their history and all of that. Then I might say, “Well, if you didn't have this voracious inner critic or if you didn't have this part that was putting you down…” – or shame actually freezes; there's a shame freeze that happens in the body – “If that wasn't happening and we could access your creativity, What would you do? Would you become a singer? Would you become a teacher?
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (22:45)
“Would you become a musician? Would you become a…” So the evolutionary purpose of shame for each person is to unlock who they would be if their shame wasn't triggered as much as it is. And because shame exists in the body as much as the mind, to be able to name those words. What if your shame could be evolutionary? What if it could be purposeful? What if it could help you set boundaries if you need to set boundaries? What if it could help you say no if you need to say no? What if it could help you do the next level of your life if that's what you wanted? And what if you could actually have a good relationship with shame instead of, you know, it being this horrible thing that attacks them every night. Does that make sense?
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (23:49)
Well give me, actually, trying to wrap my head around this. So tell me about that. So shame then leading to setting boundaries. Tell me about how that would go.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (24:00)
Well, everybody's different. If it's somebody that's having trouble setting boundaries – let's say it's somebody that wants to go back to school, and she is driving her kids to school, and she's like, “Well I can't go back to school this year because my kids are going to be here for another five years.” And if she goes in like this, she starts pulling like that, I might say, “Oh, I noticed you put your head down when you talk about wishing to go back to school, but you can't do it because you have to drive your kids to school.” And I might say something like, “If you could have that, and if we could have a part of you, instead of putting yourself down that there's something wrong with you, with that part instead, it could come forward like a shield and say, ‘No, I can't drive them to school this week,’ or ‘I can't drive them to school right now. Because I'm going to start a new plan.’” And that would be boundary setting and that would be career development or whatever.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (25:14)
And it's so different for everybody.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (25:16)
So like, rather than kind of reacting to the shame and going to a place of helplessness, taking shame as a signal to then indicate that you might need to set boundaries or something. Or like when somebody touches the stove and they pull their hand away. They're kind of using that as something to help inform them or guide them.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (25:41)
Yes, exactly.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (25:42)
Got it.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (25:43)
That's the boundary thing. And then everybody's different. And for some people it's about boundaries and for some people it's about self-expression. So, you know, some of my clients are secret artists and they've been painting for, you know, 50 years and they’ve never done a show. And I'm like, “Okay, how about this year?” And they're like, “Not yet.” So I say, maybe there's a developmental purpose to shame. Maybe there's an evolutionary purpose to shame that, you know, why didn't you show your paintings? Because your father would've torn up your pictures or whatever. So we go backward and forward in time and then I say, well, if we transfer that shame or we give the shame back imaginably and take back the dignity that she didn't get growing up about her artwork, maybe now as an adult she could actually have a show.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (26:38)
Sure.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (26:39)
And it would be her evolutionary purpose of shame, in her family, in her showing, you know, the bigger world. And it's like really cool.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (26:50)
Yeah. And I've been kind of thinking – we also had Dick Schwartz on the program and I went to a conference of his – of that idea of getting to know these parts. And I think you've talked about that, getting to know the shame. In that situation, sometimes especially in a traumatic situation, the shame is a way to keep the person safe. Kind of not showing your artwork because it'll get ripped up, or something like that, by the parent. Or sometimes I think about too, when somebody grows up in a complex PTSD situation, they do something and the parent reacts and the shame tells them, “Oh, you shouldn't have done that,” or “You should have figured that out.” Where as a child they don't have the abstract thinking to realize it's really not about me; it's really about my parent who's volatile or reactive. I have no control in this situation. So the shame kind of comes in to say like, “You should have not been so loud or you shouldn't have done this,” or whatever. So sometimes it's very scary to not have the shame as an adult because it protected you for so long.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (27:51)
Yeah. Yeah. What you're talking about, it's like when I work with all the different parts I work with because I'm a drama therapist. I have a couple magic wands and I have all these different objects, and so I have people talking to their shame, or I talk to their shame where I talk to the parent. So we can go back in time; we can replay a situation and work with those interjected parts. And instead of the shame part, then the person becomes a hero, and they can bring their hero part forward. Because, you know, shame can be such a debilitating thing. And so to be able to rescue more and more of their parts, counter-shame them, have them live in a forward moving motion. Then good things can happen.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (29:00)
Sure. Definitely. So there's the shame as the like stage fright type freeze shame and the “not good enough” shame. What was the third kind of shame?
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (29:10)
Oh, there's millions of shames. There's the third kind of shame I talked about, the humiliation shame. It's like if somebody feels humiliated – that might happen if somebody, you know, shows up for work and they found out that somebody has already been hired. They show up to their desk and they're like, “What's going on here? Why can't I go to my desk?” And they're like, “Oh, new company. You're being…” you know, whatever it is, in front of everybody. That happened to one of my clients a couple years ago, and I'm like, “They didn't even tell you?” And they're like, they walked out in front of everybody. You know, it's terrible. So the humiliation that can happen with that. It's like a person, if they have a lot of healthy reserves, if they have a lot of grounding and secure base, they can work with that humiliation and let it go.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (30:13)
But if they don't have a lot of emotional reserves, then the humiliation kind of can take them down for sometimes a couple years, until they go see a therapist and figure out about the shame that got put on them. So the way through that is multilayered and leveled, just kind of like working with the different parts and the humiliation. It's on this continuum of shame, and to be able to understand that it's on the continuum of shame, sometimes for people they're like, “Oh! It makes sense that I would feel this way.” You know, it's on the continuum of shame. And then I might say, “Are there other things? You know, do you ever get stuck? Do you ever feel like you can't think right?” You know, all these other things that are on this continuum of shame, that the person may or may not have talked about to themselves. You know, being able to counter-shame them and get curious. And the key to all of this is being curious.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (31:22)
Mm-hmm. Definitely. Yeah. Being curious and kind of befriending the shame or getting to know it or what it's needing to tell you.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (31:30)
Yeah. Yeah.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (31:32)
Yeah. Well, great. So tell me a little bit about your ideas about what heals shame. For example, like you're talking about with the eating disorders, and I'm working with a client who when she was much younger had eating disorders. She's made very much progress in lots of areas and I've done individual and family work with her and her partner. But there still are so many of those “shoulds”. So many of those, you know, we were even talking about what she wants to do this weekend. She's like, “Well, I should have all these plans or I should plan activities.” Her husband was going out of town, and she was going to be with her daughter. And I said, “But what do you want to do?” And she said, “I just want to relax around the house, maybe make a nice breakfast. You know, like maybe clean up a little.” And so we looked at that, right? Because she felt like that's wrong or lazy, and those “shoulds” kind of are throughout her life. Yeah. Tell me about that. How do you think about that or how do you work through that with the client?
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (32:38)
A brilliant question. Those “shoulds” are actually the perfectionism. There's all different parts of shame and that's the perfectionism part of shame. Yeah. Somebody has a million “shoulds” and if they could just, you know, do the next this, do the next that, whatever it is, then they can relax. But they never get to pleasure and they never get to have fun. And so what I do is, I say, “What if this is a no-should weekend? What if your job this weekend – there's no ‘shoulds’ – what if this weekend all you have to do is have fun? And if you can't have fun for the whole weekend, how about an hour? And if not an hour, how about 10 minutes?”
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (33:23)
Mm-hmm.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (33:24)
And if not 10 minutes, maybe one minute. But for one minute, being able to feel a little bit of pleasure or a little bit of ease or a little bit of comfort and a little bit of, you know, like, good enough. And that's like a way to counter the shame. Because all of those “shoulds” can be really toxic and attack a person and they don't get to really enjoy their life because they're doing the list.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (33:54)
Yeah. Yeah. Very good. And it makes me think about these kind of more stubborn “shoulds”, or exactly what you're talking about with the perfectionism. And the way that I've kind of conceptualized perfection, it's not like everything has to be perfect, like tied with a bow kind of Martha Stewart, you know, perfect and clean and such, but oftentimes it’s a lack of tolerance for any mistakes. Like some of my clients, they might do a hundred things right, but if they do one thing wrong, it's all bad. Or it’s kind of, exactly with the shame, it's like, I screwed up with that, therefore it basically reinforces that I am worthless or bad or something. All that good stuff kind of doesn't count.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (34:38)
That’s shame. That’s shame.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (34:40)
What do you do? And particularly for some clients – especially I do a lot of work with ADHD adults – that perfectionism is kind of the thing that also sometimes helps them be successful. I think about like, almost they're kind of whipping the horse to get it to go, but they're beating it so much it's like passed out, and they're scared to let go of that because then they're just going to do nothing or they're going to…
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (35:06)
Yeah. Well for that I might say there's an evolutionary purpose to your habit, and the reason you've been beating the horse until this point in your life is because it’s how this person gets successful, and that's really wonderful. And then part of being alive is having fun, enjoying things.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (35:26)
Yeah.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (35:28)
Having a good time and all of that. And so saying to those ADHD clients, it's like, you know, one of the benefits of ADHD is that you can have a super hyperfocus. And you can also turn off that super hyperfocus with music or with pleasure, with dance, or with something, and figure out what that client enjoys and help them have two minutes or an hour of something different and let them play. And instead of the part that beats themselves up, having them say, “The way to win this next game is not by doing something right. It's by not doing something.” Which is impossible. And so for them to just notice that's a conundrum. They're like, what?
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (36:28)
Sure.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (36:30)
The shame comes up and tells them it's impossible. And then I'll say it's impossible to do it right. It's impossible to do it wrong. And in that in-between place is this amazing thing called good enough. And that in-between place is that wonderful place called being human. And being good enough. And we get to have a little bit of it some of the time.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (37:01)
And I imagine that's where the compassion comes in. Because I've been really getting interested in compassion-focused therapy and reading more about that, and it seems like it's really also another avenue to address shame. But like you're saying, that good enough and kind of having that compassion to be able to be there rather than that harsh critic of always getting it right or perfect.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (37:26)
Yeah. I love your questions. You know, the compassion – what I say to people is there's an exercise I have them do for compassion. I have them rub their hands and then just kind of put one hand here and breathe in and breathe out and just kind of say, “Breathing in, I'm good enough. Breathing out the shame. Breathing in, good enough. Breathing out the shame.”
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (37:53)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (37:54)
Of course the shame is going to attack them. So then I say we might need a second hand to do this. “Breathing in with compassion and breathing out the shame.” And just kind of like normalizing that we're human and we're not supposed to work 24 hours a day. We're human and we're supposed to rest. We're supposed to have fun. And part of healing the shame is being kind to ourselves. And so with a lot of my clients, it's like I'm trying to explain to them: Just on that list of a million things to do, have another page that just has one thing to do, which is love yourself.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (38:57)
Yeah. Yeah. So it sounds like kind of the one piece is the psychoeducation that this is even shame and that this is the physiological response to shame. And even like you're saying, kind of breaking out the parts of the inner critic and so on, and then kind of having them do small bits of the alternative. I was hearing you saying just a couple minutes of doing this, or so on, that kind of other side, of letting go, or relaxing, or something like that. So it sounds like there's some parts work in here, there's some psychoeducation, there's some mindfulness, and then kind of listening to it and seeing what it needs to tell you in order to go in a different direction. Like setting the boundaries or whatever it might be, to be curious and present with it.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (39:55)
Exactly. Exactly. And that's a beautiful summary of the first level of the work. It's like yeah, all of that.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (40:06)
Mm-hmm.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (40:08)
And when a person starts to have a little bit of mindfulness and a little bit of self-compassion, and when a client is able to notice when they're going into shame, and instead of going into shame, put a hand on their heart or take some breaths or you know, maybe write something down instead of beating themself up. When they start to do a little bit of the vehement attack that has been going on for a lifetime, then something different starts to happen, which is the kindness and the compassion. It's like, people wake up. They start to wake up. The opera singer that came to our workshop started singing opera after like, I don't know how many years. And then, you know, a lot of people are scared artists and they take our workshops and they start painting again or doing this or that again.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (41:08)
And so part of this is the creativity. You know, there's a shame fear bind and there's a shame anger bind. And our theory is that shame and anger bind to protect the person from, you know, hurting a parent if they're in a shame situation growing up. The anger would come up and they would get angry at the parent, and the shame comes in to protect them and says, “Don't get mad at the parent. They could hurt you or stop feeding you or something.” So on a very core level, when somebody starts to move out of these habitual shame states, their creativity comes back and they start remembering what they wanted in their life and they start having little things. And it's just like, people say, you know, “I take your workshop and my life is changing as a therapist, and my client's life – they're changing. I just thought I came for CEs, but it's like so much more than that.”
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (42:17)
Well and that shame and anger also makes me think of, sometimes, especially with a lot of my clients – I do a lot of work with couples and complex PTSD – and where it's a very, sometimes black-and-white kind of all-or-none. And it seems like the flip side of shame is blame because, and I was just working with a client the other day, and she said, you know, “He's been great and I feel bad because I yelled at him, but I can't forgive him for what he did.” And I said, “If you did forgive him, what then?” She said, “Well then I'm the bad one. I'm horrible.”
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (42:51)
Right.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (42:52)
So she even cognitively got that he was wonderful, and he screwed up and upset her, but he repaired. But then she had a hard time letting that go because it either goes back to, they’re bad or I'm bad.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (43:07)
That is the catch-22. And that is the rules many families are set up with. There has to be a bad guy.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (43:19)
Like that perpetrator-victim kind of…
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (43:21)
Right! You got it. Perpetrator-victim, either they’re the bad guy or I'm the bad guy. And this is a different world. This is a different world where when there's blame, there's shame, and when there's shame, there's blame. It goes back-and-forth and back-and-forth, and there's a new possibility with the evolutionary purpose of shame: What if nobody was the bad guy?
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (43:50)
Yeah! Right?
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (43:52)
And what if your client, instead of saying, “He is the bad guy or she is the bad guy,” what if like – you know, Sue Johnson talks about it – maybe it's the cycle that is the bad guy, and nobody's a bad guy and it's kind of projected out front. So I say maybe it's shame that's a bad guy. Maybe it's shame itself. You blame shame, and we could work with all these different ways of working with shame over time so that there's not a bad guy.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (44:25)
Yeah. And I found too, particularly sometimes in my couples when anybody's kind of talking about, “Oh, this thing hurt me that you did,” sometimes the reaction is, “Well let me explain why it wasn't my intent to do that,” or something so you don't feel bad, or “Well I was justified because of this or that,” or “Well you're being too sensitive,” or you know, “Well you do it too,” or something like that. So essentially, “I'm not that bad guy.” Because usually we're not intending to hurt the other person or doing it out of malice. So hearing that, again that shame of like, well if I really am that hurtful person, who's going to be with that person? And so I have to defend against it. But I also find too that the shame kind of gets in the way of the empathy.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (45:13)
Again, sometimes in my clients where there is more of that black-and-white or structural dissociation, where when the one partner is talking about their hurt, the other one will sometimes react with frustration or anger to kind of get away from that shame. And the shame kind of blocks the empathy because if they actually connect with the part of themselves that has felt what it's felt like to be hurt in that way, also kind of then they are the perpetrator, like they're the abusive parent or something like that. So they get way away from that. And so it gets in the way of also the connection and being with their partner.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (45:52)
It's just so tender. It's so tender what you're describing. It's like yeah, you're seeing the shame. You're seeing it come up in your couples. You're seeing it come up to try and protect somebody. And the problem is when shame comes up, there's either attack-self: “What's wrong with me? It's my fault.” Attack-other: “He's a bad guy.” Or deny: “I didn't do it.” Or withdraw: Just kind of pulling away. I pause in those moments. I'm like, “Okay, let's pause here. Let's figure out, of these four reactions to shame, which one is coming up and can we counter-shame that?” The key to my work is to counter the shame and say we're all imperfect beings. We're all doing the best we can, and what can you learn from that? Rather than going into the shame again, it's like is there something that could be learned from this?
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (46:55)
And you just said the four kinds of reactions. Can you go over those again?
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (46:59)
Yeah, yeah. This is like a Rosetta Stone of shame. Attack-self, attack-other, deny, and withdraw.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (47:10)
Hmm. Other, deny, or withdraw.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (47:14)
And then these are from Donald Nathanson's book Shame and Pride. He says that in every moment, we're balancing between shame and pride, and that these reactions to shame… A person is not going to know what they're doing. It's automatic. To be able to slow a couple down or a person down, and just say, “Wait a minute, what happened?” You know, and just say, “I noticed something and I wonder if maybe, you know, you're mad at me because I said this,” or “You're mad at your partner because they said this,” and “You're putting yourself down,” or “You're putting them down.” Maybe what's in the middle of all this is the uncomfortable and pretty terrible shame that's too difficult to handle.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (48:08)
And what if I hold the shame for this session? So nobody has to hold the shame. I can hold it. I can put it over there. I have lots of objects that can hold the shame for me so that I don't have to, you know, get exhausted. But I explain to people that they've been holding shame for a lifetime. Put it down for a little bit in the session. And I can interview the shame and find out why it is putting them down, or I can just kind of like put it aside for a little bit and find out what is the message that was put on this person that they no longer need, and we can work with that.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (48:51)
Yeah.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (48:52)
Sometimes change helps.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (48:54)
Hmm. So kind of by externalizing the part and kind of getting to know it and kind of shifting the relationship. Rather than just being something that's in me, something that I've got a relationship with kind of helps to shift that.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (49:09)
That's exactly what we're doing. Yes. Yeah.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (49:12)
Great. Wonderful. And yeah, any pieces that we've missed that you think are really important for me to know or the listeners to know about shame?
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (49:25)
Uh-huh. Are there any pieces we're missing?
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (49:28)
Yeah, yeah. Any pieces that are…because I love hearing all these different aspects. I just want to make sure we get to all the…
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (49:37)
I guess I will say some pieces, and I also want to say we have some free webinars about shame on our website, www.healingshame.com, as well as workshops for therapists on our website. But, you know, reading about shame – there's so many levels in the complexity of shame. That's why we have these free articles so people can read them and download them. “Oh, I thought that was her fault, and it's my fault.” Or, “I thought that was this, and it’s shame.” And so what I would say in closing is just that shame is a multi-headed hydro, and just when we think that we have figured out the shame with a couple or with an individual, the shame is going to come up in a different way. And so to be able to be ready for all the different ways that shame can come up.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (50:38)
Yeah. Yeah. So kind of being able to detect it or kind of get to know how it appears or what triggered it. Sometimes with clients, we're kind of almost like a shame detector, like seeing where it is. One last piece that I wanted to kind of throw out and get your thoughts on too is that, oftentimes one of the things I talk with my clients – I do a lot of work with ADHD with kids and adolescents and families and adults – and I talk about the way I think about the antidote to shame is integrity.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (51:15)
Yes.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (51:17)
By taking responsibility for what happens, making amends or trying to learn from the situation, and then taking the next step in the direction of your values. That we oftentimes can feel better. Because even though yesterday – and again, my clients with ADHD, they're going to screw up one and a half standard deviations more than the average person due to the definition of ADHD – but even if they messed up yesterday and were late to work, whatever, at least the only thing they can do about it today is try to make amends, figure out a new system or something, you know, and take the next right step. Although what I've found too is, particularly when there's a lot of trauma and the person doesn't have a good sense of their self, that they have a hard time with that integrity to kind of measure, am I doing the right thing to do the next right thing?
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (52:02)
Or sometimes I think about growing up in an invalidating environment, like the parent hits the child and then the child's crying and they say, “Why are you crying?” It’s hard to develop your sense of self because your understanding and your knowledge of reality is so thrown off. So many of these clients, and Pete Walker talks about how toxic shame is the core piece of complex PTSD, but also it's hard to have that integrity if you don't have a measure of what is good enough or what is right. And so oftentimes just going back to that shame and not what's wrong.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (52:41)
You know, I think it's so important, and I help my clients find an inner compass. I help them kind of like talk about imagining that there's an inner compass inside themselves that's going to point north and I help them through gut visualizations, you know, to find true north. I tell people that anytime there's shame or anytime there's difference – racial difference, sexual difference, difference in age, difference in whatever – anytime there's a slightest difference at all, there's shame. So to be aware that people could be going into shame without even knowing it and just being a word to counter shame.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (53:29)
Yeah.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (53:29)
That it's normal.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (53:33)
Yeah. Yeah. Everybody has it. Even somebody that's very confident, they still have the part of them that's like, “Oh, you're no good,” or “You can't do it,” but that other part of them comes in and it's compassion or acceptance or support or so on. Definitely. Well great. Thank you so much for your time today and I love talking about the subject with you. I think it's such an important piece and so many clients struggle with it, and there's so many different ways to look at it and approach and think about shame. Sounds like you're doing wonderful work, and I'll also link to the website where you have the workshops for clients and the workshops for therapists. Thank you so much. I appreciate you taking the time.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (54:12)
Thank you for having me, and I feel like we're just starting this conversation of shame.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (54:19)
I know. There's so much.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (54:23)
Levels and levels and levels. Take good care.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (54:26)
Okay. Take care. Bye-bye.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (54:28)
Bye-bye.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (54:30)
Thank you for joining us. If you're wanting to use this podcast to earn continuing education credits, please go to our website at therapyonthecuttingedge.com. Our podcast is brought to you by the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy, providing in-person and remote therapy in the San Francisco Bay Area. IAP provides screening for licensed clinicians through our in-person and online programs, as well as our treatment for children, adolescents, families, couples, and individual adults. For more information, go to sfiap.com or call (415) 617-5932. Also, we really appreciate feedback and if you have something you're interested in, something that's on the cutting edge of the field of therapy and think clinicians should know about it, send us an email or call us. We're always looking for the advancements in the field of psychotherapy to help in creating lasting changes for our clients.
Welcome to Therapy on the Cutting Edge, a podcast for therapists who want to be up-to-date on the latest advancements in the field of psychotherapy. I'm your host, Dr. Keith Sutton, a psychologist in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Director of the Institute for the Advancement of Psychotherapy. Today I'll be speaking with Sheila Rubin, who is a marriage and family therapist, and a leading authority on healing shame. She developed the healing shame therapy work over the last two decades, and is the co-director with Brett Lyon of the Center for Healing Shame in Berkeley, California. Sheila has delivered talks, presentations, and workshops across the country and around the world at conferences from Canada to Romania. She's a board-certified trainer through NADTA and past adjunct faculty for the California Institute of Integral Studies’ Drama Therapy program and JFK University's Somatic Psychology department. Sheila's expertise, teaching, and writing contributions have been featured in numerous publications, including seven books. Sheila offers therapy through her private practice in Berkeley and online via Zoom. She also provides consultations to therapists via Skype and leads workshops in Berkeley, internationally, and online. You can learn more about her workshops, writing, and on-demand trainings at healingshame.com. Let's listen to the interview. Well hi, Sheila. Thank you so much for meeting with me today.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (01:42)
Hi, Keith. It's such an honor to meet you. It feels like a long time, and I'm so honored to be doing this podcast with you.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (01:52)
Yeah, definitely. So I've been seeing your workshops. We're both in the Bay Area, and you do workshops on shame. It's been at the top of my list to come and check one of them out. You know, shame is an interesting topic. When I first got to grad school, I had to do a project and they gave us different theorists, and I had Alfred Adler and the inferiority complex, and that kind of struck me. Shame is a thing that comes up with many of my clients with complex trauma, a lot of my clients with ADHD. So I'm really interested in this topic. I'd love to hear about your thoughts on that and your work with shame. But before we even get into that, I always like to hear about people's progression of their work and how you got to doing what you're doing. Kind of the evolution of your thinking that got you here.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (02:46)
I love that question, and I'm closing my eyes for a minute to just take a breath. It's so precious that we get to spend this time together, and I was so excited I came two weeks early and then I came one week early. It was like, I saw the work that I'm doing as life changing for people, and it has been for me personally. I feel like I have been a researcher of shame since I was very young. I did not know it was shame. I knew that it was like feeling like down here when the other kids were up here, or way down here when the other kids were up there. So initially I worked with my shyness, and I worked with my, you know, I like that word inferiority.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (03:48)
It's like I always had that thought. It's like, “Well, something must be wrong with me, so if I could just do the right thing, then I would get it right.” So I became a magician and started entertaining the kids, and I made kids happy. I noticed that when I was entertaining, the kids were laughing, they were clapping, they were dancing around in circles, and that made me feel like, wow, I can really do something. So between like very young and 18, I was a children's performer and storyteller. And so I learned how to heal my shyness with entertaining people and heal my shyness with making the kids happy. So by the time I became a therapist, which was, you know, many, many years later, I had figured out all these different things.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (04:49)
I had the inner critic. You know, I went to graduate school, I became a drama therapist. I'm like, okay, there's psychodrama and we work with all the different emotions, and there was even shame there. But I didn't know how to isolate shame, and I didn't know how to join with the inner critic, talk to the inner critic. I didn't really know how to have my voice. And so a long story went: I eventually became trained in EFT, and I was the eating disorder specialist at a psychiatric program many years ago, and I noticed my clients – they had this fierce inner critic. And it was like, I know how to talk to their inner critic. And they were like, how do you know about this inner critic?
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (05:46)
And I'm like, I don't know, but I think I have the same inner critic. I don't have an eating disorder, but I have the same inner critic putting me down, saying all these different things. And I had to be friends with the inner critic to be able to work with these women. First it was the women, and I used DBT, CBT, LMNOPQRST [laughter], everything that we were supposed to do. But I was adding my shame component, and I was adding my work with shame back in the hospital. It worked with the women. It worked with people in partial hospitalization. It worked with depressed people. It worked with people who had PTSD. It worked with that little question that I would ask about. We would do DBT, we would do CBT, and I would say, “Are you secretly putting yourself down right now?” And they're like, “Uh…got me!” And I'm like, “Yeah, that's who I want to talk to.”
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (06:56)
So gradually I learned how to isolate the inner critic and support all of the resources that a person had, to challenge the inner critic and all of their psychological devices that got in the way of that. And then eventually, I mean, like, there was nothing available to work with shame, and around the time I met Brett, it's like he wanted to do a workshop on shame. So I'm like, “Sure, I'll assist you in the workshop on shame.” He knew about male shame. I'm like, “Well, I know about female shame and I know about all-pervasive shame.” So we teamed up and you know, we created the Center for Healing Shame based on all of our workshops. We have people from Canada and all over the world come to study with us because they're like, “Yeah, I have this voice in my head that tells me there's something wrong with me.” And I'm like, “That's shame.”
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (08:01)
Yes. Yes.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (08:03)
I went to a – I forget his name – the fellow that created polyvagal theory. I was at an attachment conference several years ago in LA. He was presenting about polyvagal theory and how it runs through the nervous system, what the mind does, what the brain does, and all of these things. And I'm like, “This thing that I have been researching on myself and my clients. Guess what? It's shame.”
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (08:37)
Yeah. Yeah.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (08:38)
Simply, and most profoundly, it's shame. All the ways that shame shows up, all of the automatic thoughts and the sensations. So I was writing my thesis years ago, and my brain went into this freeze of like, you know, “You can’t write. You can't write.” I didn't know at the time that that was a reaction to shame, but I had to figure out every way to get beyond that voice to actually write my thesis, actually do eventually more writing, but that voice… That stopped me and froze me. That was shame. And to be able to say to people, you know, this voice – and it's so different for men, for women, everybody, it's different. So, you know, Brett didn't think he had shame. When we started working together and when we started dating, it was like we had kind of the opposite parts of our teaching.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (09:45)
And we were a really good teaching team because he has the male shame and I have the female shame. Then everything goes out from there because being able to lower the playing field and say to people in the workshop, “You know, we understand enough about our own shame that we can counter shame.” So, you know, we have all these tools and techniques and things that we could teach people. Meanwhile, you know, it starts with that I've been always researching shame, and I always noticed it between my parents. I always noticed it between kids at school. I always noticed it way back before I was a therapist. By the time I was a therapist, it's like, I look for that place that gets in between a person and their creativity.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (10:46)
Yes.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (10:49)
Go figure!
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (10:50)
Yeah. So it's that shame that's kind of getting in the way of that creativity or kind of block.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (10:54)
You got it!
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (10:55)
You're not good enough, or you can't go outside yourself and do that, or so on.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (11:02)
Exactly! That's how the shame would show up. In everybody, it's different. And I would ask these key questions when I start working with people. It's like, “Where are you in your life process?” and you know, “If you could have something in your life that you really wanted, let's talk about what gets in the way of that.” And that's shame. They don't know it's shame.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (11:33)
Sure, sure.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (11:35)
They think it's, you know, something.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (11:38)
Yeah. Yeah. How do you kind of conceptualize shame or define it? Yeah, how we develop that inner critic or how we overcome it.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (11:53)
I love your question.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (11:55)
Talking about the polyvagal theory and Steven Porges' work. We had Deb Dana on the podcast also talking about polyvagal theory. Tell me about that also, how that connected to the shame.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (12:06)
You know, that is the missing piece because once I figured out the polyvagal piece and how it reacted to shame, I was able to go backwards and forwards to all the times that I had frozen before a lecture, frozen before talking to my students. Or back in the olden days when I was a kid and I was too shy and I would just go into this collapse. And so being able to realize that shame is going to affect our brain. It tells us we're stupid, and it affects our brain because it lowers affect. So one of the basic things about shame is like, if a person goes into a shame posture, it's like looking down.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (12:55)
Yeah.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (12:55)
Looking down. And so they're looking down, and it's like, they can't breathe. They're worried about themselves. They can't look out there and see somebody else. And so when a person goes into shame, the whole nervous system starts to collapse. And so part of it is being able to restore breathing, rounding, supporting the attachment through me and the client. Because shame is the breaking of the interpersonal bridge, which is what Gershin Kaufman said. So I say to my clients, “Something happened and we're going to find out how to restart it between you and I right now.” And, you know, “If I missed you or something, you know, if there's a misunderstanding, let me know because I want to fix it. I want to repair it.” And so part of it is that shame is a primary emotion, and it's simply a primary emotion that tells us to stop.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (14:06)
Yeah.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (14:06)
It tells us to stop, pause, wait. It helps us feel uncomfortable. It starts showing up in the nervous system as discomfort. Or on one level it's shyness, discomfort. In the middle there's humiliation. And all the way down here, there's like excommunication and getting kicked out of the tribe. So being able to run up and down that line with people and figure out, where do they get stuck? And how can we get unstuck during the session? Because I always do psycho-ed about shame, and it's like, if you're putting yourself down while we're talking, let me know so we could talk about that. And so part of this is shame in the nervous system. And then when there's shame, there's shame around shame. And so the person goes into their shame around shame, and then they might freeze or they might get quiet or they might completely collapse. And so teaching them that and saying, “That is shame.”
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (15:25)
So the shame kind of takes them into that sympathetic or that dorsal state of collapse or shutdown. You know, kind of that polyvagal theory.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (15:41)
Yeah, absolutely. And it's in that shutdown, and it's like you got the foot on the brake and you got the foot on the gas at the same time. It's very similar to trauma. So when somebody's in shame, if it's severe shame, they can't speak, they can't talk, they can't even think clearly. And their mind is running a mile a minute trying to figure out whatever, whatever, whatever. And so being able to normalize that and say, “I wonder what just happened. Let's slow that one down.”
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (16:20)
Yeah. And the way I think about it too, you're talking about shame as a primary emotion. I do emotionally focused couples therapy, and I will sometimes talk to clients about the secondary emotions – you know, anger, anxiety, helplessness. And then the primary emotions – feeling hurt, sad, fear, alone, and shame. But I kind of say that shame's in the middle because really underneath shame is fear. And I think, like you were talking about, kind of being forced out of the tribe, or if I'm really this bad, who would want to be especially in a couple relationship, that kind of fear. And so sometimes the only option is to collapse or to defend and kind of try to point out, “I'm not so bad.”
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (17:05)
Right. And the amazing thing about shame, what you're saying, is it's there to protect us. We cannot handle shame. It is too painful. The nervous system splits off into attack-self, attack-other, deny, or withdrawal. Yeah. Sometimes all at once. It's like a pinball machine.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (17:27)
Sure.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (17:28)
I get two couples together and they're like, it's your fault, it's your fault, it's your fault, it's your fault. And they're both going off into the pinball machine. But shame goes off in the attack-self that I saw with the women in the eating disorder program. They were attacking themselves through using food. The guys in the hospital at that time, you know, they were attacking others, they were putting everybody else down. There's also the withdrawal, the depression, the pulling away, and then there's the dissociation from the shame – drugs, alcohol, all of that. And so being able to figure out where somebody tends to go and hoping they'll really figure it out. It's so automatic that when people figure it out, often I'll put the map there. Like, where do you usually go? And they're like, this is embarrassing. But once we look at the chart a couple times, it's not as embarrassing because it's like the Rosetta Stone. They're able to see what is actually happening, and it's going to make a lot more sense in the couple.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (18:36)
Sure. Yeah. So they kind of can see the processes that are happening, kind of where they're going and how their nervous system is responding. And tell me, how do you conceptualize shame? How do you talk about shame or explain shame to clients or professionals?
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (18:53)
I think right now, I talk about how there's so many different levels to shame. The first level of shame is like, if a person's going to get up on stage and they have the imposter syndrome, that they can't talk or they're going to freeze up or they might die. You know, that shame. And shame is also kind of like feeling like they're not good enough – you know, all of the different automatic thoughts that can go along with shame. And I like to say that there's an evolutionary purpose to shame. So back when I was working with people in the hospital years and years ago who had an addiction, they would be looking at the addiction and all the different ways that the addiction was…you know, the different direction that the addiction was telling them.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (19:54)
And there was, “What are you thinking? What are you feeling? What is all that?” And they're like, “I hate myself so I'm going to drink.” And I'm like, “Right, okay.” That's going round and round and round. I taught them some mindfulness, which helped a little bit, but they would end up back in it. Eventually I said they needed to work with the shame, because the shame was just going to put them back in an eating disorder, put them back in a drinking situation, put them back, you know, with bad behavior. So I say there's an evolutionary purpose of shame and for me it was to move from my shyness to being able to talk about shame with therapists and teach people all over the world.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (20:40)
Yeah.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (20:41)
And, you know, everybody has an evolutionary purpose to shame. And if they're stuck, in the couple, and they're doing the blame shame game….
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (20:49)
Yeah.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (20:51)
I say, might that be here if there was an evolutionary purpose to shame? If you could change one thing about yourself before you attack yourself or attack your other, you know as a reaction to shame, with the withdrawal or the pull away. If you could change one thing and just be a little different with yourself, maybe something could be a little bit different in the relationship or maybe something could be a little bit different with the person's self-esteem.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (21:28)
So tell me more about the evolutionary purpose. We were talking about how there's three types of shame. There's the stage fright type – kind of freezing shame. And then you were saying about the “not good enough” and thinking about the evolutionary purpose of shame. Can you talk a little bit about that? What is the evolutionary purpose of shame?
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (21:47)
Let's say somebody has all-pervasive shame – and that might be somebody who has low self-esteem, not able to get very far in their life. They have a voracious inner critic that keeps attacking them. And then for them, the evolutionary purpose of shame might be, I might talk to them about what's getting in their way given their family of origin, given their history and all of that. Then I might say, “Well, if you didn't have this voracious inner critic or if you didn't have this part that was putting you down…” – or shame actually freezes; there's a shame freeze that happens in the body – “If that wasn't happening and we could access your creativity, What would you do? Would you become a singer? Would you become a teacher?
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (22:45)
“Would you become a musician? Would you become a…” So the evolutionary purpose of shame for each person is to unlock who they would be if their shame wasn't triggered as much as it is. And because shame exists in the body as much as the mind, to be able to name those words. What if your shame could be evolutionary? What if it could be purposeful? What if it could help you set boundaries if you need to set boundaries? What if it could help you say no if you need to say no? What if it could help you do the next level of your life if that's what you wanted? And what if you could actually have a good relationship with shame instead of, you know, it being this horrible thing that attacks them every night. Does that make sense?
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (23:49)
Well give me, actually, trying to wrap my head around this. So tell me about that. So shame then leading to setting boundaries. Tell me about how that would go.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (24:00)
Well, everybody's different. If it's somebody that's having trouble setting boundaries – let's say it's somebody that wants to go back to school, and she is driving her kids to school, and she's like, “Well I can't go back to school this year because my kids are going to be here for another five years.” And if she goes in like this, she starts pulling like that, I might say, “Oh, I noticed you put your head down when you talk about wishing to go back to school, but you can't do it because you have to drive your kids to school.” And I might say something like, “If you could have that, and if we could have a part of you, instead of putting yourself down that there's something wrong with you, with that part instead, it could come forward like a shield and say, ‘No, I can't drive them to school this week,’ or ‘I can't drive them to school right now. Because I'm going to start a new plan.’” And that would be boundary setting and that would be career development or whatever.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (25:14)
And it's so different for everybody.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (25:16)
So like, rather than kind of reacting to the shame and going to a place of helplessness, taking shame as a signal to then indicate that you might need to set boundaries or something. Or like when somebody touches the stove and they pull their hand away. They're kind of using that as something to help inform them or guide them.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (25:41)
Yes, exactly.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (25:42)
Got it.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (25:43)
That's the boundary thing. And then everybody's different. And for some people it's about boundaries and for some people it's about self-expression. So, you know, some of my clients are secret artists and they've been painting for, you know, 50 years and they’ve never done a show. And I'm like, “Okay, how about this year?” And they're like, “Not yet.” So I say, maybe there's a developmental purpose to shame. Maybe there's an evolutionary purpose to shame that, you know, why didn't you show your paintings? Because your father would've torn up your pictures or whatever. So we go backward and forward in time and then I say, well, if we transfer that shame or we give the shame back imaginably and take back the dignity that she didn't get growing up about her artwork, maybe now as an adult she could actually have a show.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (26:38)
Sure.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (26:39)
And it would be her evolutionary purpose of shame, in her family, in her showing, you know, the bigger world. And it's like really cool.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (26:50)
Yeah. And I've been kind of thinking – we also had Dick Schwartz on the program and I went to a conference of his – of that idea of getting to know these parts. And I think you've talked about that, getting to know the shame. In that situation, sometimes especially in a traumatic situation, the shame is a way to keep the person safe. Kind of not showing your artwork because it'll get ripped up, or something like that, by the parent. Or sometimes I think about too, when somebody grows up in a complex PTSD situation, they do something and the parent reacts and the shame tells them, “Oh, you shouldn't have done that,” or “You should have figured that out.” Where as a child they don't have the abstract thinking to realize it's really not about me; it's really about my parent who's volatile or reactive. I have no control in this situation. So the shame kind of comes in to say like, “You should have not been so loud or you shouldn't have done this,” or whatever. So sometimes it's very scary to not have the shame as an adult because it protected you for so long.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (27:51)
Yeah. Yeah. What you're talking about, it's like when I work with all the different parts I work with because I'm a drama therapist. I have a couple magic wands and I have all these different objects, and so I have people talking to their shame, or I talk to their shame where I talk to the parent. So we can go back in time; we can replay a situation and work with those interjected parts. And instead of the shame part, then the person becomes a hero, and they can bring their hero part forward. Because, you know, shame can be such a debilitating thing. And so to be able to rescue more and more of their parts, counter-shame them, have them live in a forward moving motion. Then good things can happen.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (29:00)
Sure. Definitely. So there's the shame as the like stage fright type freeze shame and the “not good enough” shame. What was the third kind of shame?
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (29:10)
Oh, there's millions of shames. There's the third kind of shame I talked about, the humiliation shame. It's like if somebody feels humiliated – that might happen if somebody, you know, shows up for work and they found out that somebody has already been hired. They show up to their desk and they're like, “What's going on here? Why can't I go to my desk?” And they're like, “Oh, new company. You're being…” you know, whatever it is, in front of everybody. That happened to one of my clients a couple years ago, and I'm like, “They didn't even tell you?” And they're like, they walked out in front of everybody. You know, it's terrible. So the humiliation that can happen with that. It's like a person, if they have a lot of healthy reserves, if they have a lot of grounding and secure base, they can work with that humiliation and let it go.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (30:13)
But if they don't have a lot of emotional reserves, then the humiliation kind of can take them down for sometimes a couple years, until they go see a therapist and figure out about the shame that got put on them. So the way through that is multilayered and leveled, just kind of like working with the different parts and the humiliation. It's on this continuum of shame, and to be able to understand that it's on the continuum of shame, sometimes for people they're like, “Oh! It makes sense that I would feel this way.” You know, it's on the continuum of shame. And then I might say, “Are there other things? You know, do you ever get stuck? Do you ever feel like you can't think right?” You know, all these other things that are on this continuum of shame, that the person may or may not have talked about to themselves. You know, being able to counter-shame them and get curious. And the key to all of this is being curious.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (31:22)
Mm-hmm. Definitely. Yeah. Being curious and kind of befriending the shame or getting to know it or what it's needing to tell you.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (31:30)
Yeah. Yeah.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (31:32)
Yeah. Well, great. So tell me a little bit about your ideas about what heals shame. For example, like you're talking about with the eating disorders, and I'm working with a client who when she was much younger had eating disorders. She's made very much progress in lots of areas and I've done individual and family work with her and her partner. But there still are so many of those “shoulds”. So many of those, you know, we were even talking about what she wants to do this weekend. She's like, “Well, I should have all these plans or I should plan activities.” Her husband was going out of town, and she was going to be with her daughter. And I said, “But what do you want to do?” And she said, “I just want to relax around the house, maybe make a nice breakfast. You know, like maybe clean up a little.” And so we looked at that, right? Because she felt like that's wrong or lazy, and those “shoulds” kind of are throughout her life. Yeah. Tell me about that. How do you think about that or how do you work through that with the client?
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (32:38)
A brilliant question. Those “shoulds” are actually the perfectionism. There's all different parts of shame and that's the perfectionism part of shame. Yeah. Somebody has a million “shoulds” and if they could just, you know, do the next this, do the next that, whatever it is, then they can relax. But they never get to pleasure and they never get to have fun. And so what I do is, I say, “What if this is a no-should weekend? What if your job this weekend – there's no ‘shoulds’ – what if this weekend all you have to do is have fun? And if you can't have fun for the whole weekend, how about an hour? And if not an hour, how about 10 minutes?”
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (33:23)
Mm-hmm.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (33:24)
And if not 10 minutes, maybe one minute. But for one minute, being able to feel a little bit of pleasure or a little bit of ease or a little bit of comfort and a little bit of, you know, like, good enough. And that's like a way to counter the shame. Because all of those “shoulds” can be really toxic and attack a person and they don't get to really enjoy their life because they're doing the list.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (33:54)
Yeah. Yeah. Very good. And it makes me think about these kind of more stubborn “shoulds”, or exactly what you're talking about with the perfectionism. And the way that I've kind of conceptualized perfection, it's not like everything has to be perfect, like tied with a bow kind of Martha Stewart, you know, perfect and clean and such, but oftentimes it’s a lack of tolerance for any mistakes. Like some of my clients, they might do a hundred things right, but if they do one thing wrong, it's all bad. Or it’s kind of, exactly with the shame, it's like, I screwed up with that, therefore it basically reinforces that I am worthless or bad or something. All that good stuff kind of doesn't count.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (34:38)
That’s shame. That’s shame.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (34:40)
What do you do? And particularly for some clients – especially I do a lot of work with ADHD adults – that perfectionism is kind of the thing that also sometimes helps them be successful. I think about like, almost they're kind of whipping the horse to get it to go, but they're beating it so much it's like passed out, and they're scared to let go of that because then they're just going to do nothing or they're going to…
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (35:06)
Yeah. Well for that I might say there's an evolutionary purpose to your habit, and the reason you've been beating the horse until this point in your life is because it’s how this person gets successful, and that's really wonderful. And then part of being alive is having fun, enjoying things.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (35:26)
Yeah.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (35:28)
Having a good time and all of that. And so saying to those ADHD clients, it's like, you know, one of the benefits of ADHD is that you can have a super hyperfocus. And you can also turn off that super hyperfocus with music or with pleasure, with dance, or with something, and figure out what that client enjoys and help them have two minutes or an hour of something different and let them play. And instead of the part that beats themselves up, having them say, “The way to win this next game is not by doing something right. It's by not doing something.” Which is impossible. And so for them to just notice that's a conundrum. They're like, what?
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (36:28)
Sure.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (36:30)
The shame comes up and tells them it's impossible. And then I'll say it's impossible to do it right. It's impossible to do it wrong. And in that in-between place is this amazing thing called good enough. And that in-between place is that wonderful place called being human. And being good enough. And we get to have a little bit of it some of the time.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (37:01)
And I imagine that's where the compassion comes in. Because I've been really getting interested in compassion-focused therapy and reading more about that, and it seems like it's really also another avenue to address shame. But like you're saying, that good enough and kind of having that compassion to be able to be there rather than that harsh critic of always getting it right or perfect.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (37:26)
Yeah. I love your questions. You know, the compassion – what I say to people is there's an exercise I have them do for compassion. I have them rub their hands and then just kind of put one hand here and breathe in and breathe out and just kind of say, “Breathing in, I'm good enough. Breathing out the shame. Breathing in, good enough. Breathing out the shame.”
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (37:53)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (37:54)
Of course the shame is going to attack them. So then I say we might need a second hand to do this. “Breathing in with compassion and breathing out the shame.” And just kind of like normalizing that we're human and we're not supposed to work 24 hours a day. We're human and we're supposed to rest. We're supposed to have fun. And part of healing the shame is being kind to ourselves. And so with a lot of my clients, it's like I'm trying to explain to them: Just on that list of a million things to do, have another page that just has one thing to do, which is love yourself.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (38:57)
Yeah. Yeah. So it sounds like kind of the one piece is the psychoeducation that this is even shame and that this is the physiological response to shame. And even like you're saying, kind of breaking out the parts of the inner critic and so on, and then kind of having them do small bits of the alternative. I was hearing you saying just a couple minutes of doing this, or so on, that kind of other side, of letting go, or relaxing, or something like that. So it sounds like there's some parts work in here, there's some psychoeducation, there's some mindfulness, and then kind of listening to it and seeing what it needs to tell you in order to go in a different direction. Like setting the boundaries or whatever it might be, to be curious and present with it.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (39:55)
Exactly. Exactly. And that's a beautiful summary of the first level of the work. It's like yeah, all of that.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (40:06)
Mm-hmm.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (40:08)
And when a person starts to have a little bit of mindfulness and a little bit of self-compassion, and when a client is able to notice when they're going into shame, and instead of going into shame, put a hand on their heart or take some breaths or you know, maybe write something down instead of beating themself up. When they start to do a little bit of the vehement attack that has been going on for a lifetime, then something different starts to happen, which is the kindness and the compassion. It's like, people wake up. They start to wake up. The opera singer that came to our workshop started singing opera after like, I don't know how many years. And then, you know, a lot of people are scared artists and they take our workshops and they start painting again or doing this or that again.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (41:08)
And so part of this is the creativity. You know, there's a shame fear bind and there's a shame anger bind. And our theory is that shame and anger bind to protect the person from, you know, hurting a parent if they're in a shame situation growing up. The anger would come up and they would get angry at the parent, and the shame comes in to protect them and says, “Don't get mad at the parent. They could hurt you or stop feeding you or something.” So on a very core level, when somebody starts to move out of these habitual shame states, their creativity comes back and they start remembering what they wanted in their life and they start having little things. And it's just like, people say, you know, “I take your workshop and my life is changing as a therapist, and my client's life – they're changing. I just thought I came for CEs, but it's like so much more than that.”
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (42:17)
Well and that shame and anger also makes me think of, sometimes, especially with a lot of my clients – I do a lot of work with couples and complex PTSD – and where it's a very, sometimes black-and-white kind of all-or-none. And it seems like the flip side of shame is blame because, and I was just working with a client the other day, and she said, you know, “He's been great and I feel bad because I yelled at him, but I can't forgive him for what he did.” And I said, “If you did forgive him, what then?” She said, “Well then I'm the bad one. I'm horrible.”
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (42:51)
Right.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (42:52)
So she even cognitively got that he was wonderful, and he screwed up and upset her, but he repaired. But then she had a hard time letting that go because it either goes back to, they’re bad or I'm bad.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (43:07)
That is the catch-22. And that is the rules many families are set up with. There has to be a bad guy.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (43:19)
Like that perpetrator-victim kind of…
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (43:21)
Right! You got it. Perpetrator-victim, either they’re the bad guy or I'm the bad guy. And this is a different world. This is a different world where when there's blame, there's shame, and when there's shame, there's blame. It goes back-and-forth and back-and-forth, and there's a new possibility with the evolutionary purpose of shame: What if nobody was the bad guy?
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (43:50)
Yeah! Right?
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (43:52)
And what if your client, instead of saying, “He is the bad guy or she is the bad guy,” what if like – you know, Sue Johnson talks about it – maybe it's the cycle that is the bad guy, and nobody's a bad guy and it's kind of projected out front. So I say maybe it's shame that's a bad guy. Maybe it's shame itself. You blame shame, and we could work with all these different ways of working with shame over time so that there's not a bad guy.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (44:25)
Yeah. And I found too, particularly sometimes in my couples when anybody's kind of talking about, “Oh, this thing hurt me that you did,” sometimes the reaction is, “Well let me explain why it wasn't my intent to do that,” or something so you don't feel bad, or “Well I was justified because of this or that,” or “Well you're being too sensitive,” or you know, “Well you do it too,” or something like that. So essentially, “I'm not that bad guy.” Because usually we're not intending to hurt the other person or doing it out of malice. So hearing that, again that shame of like, well if I really am that hurtful person, who's going to be with that person? And so I have to defend against it. But I also find too that the shame kind of gets in the way of the empathy.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (45:13)
Again, sometimes in my clients where there is more of that black-and-white or structural dissociation, where when the one partner is talking about their hurt, the other one will sometimes react with frustration or anger to kind of get away from that shame. And the shame kind of blocks the empathy because if they actually connect with the part of themselves that has felt what it's felt like to be hurt in that way, also kind of then they are the perpetrator, like they're the abusive parent or something like that. So they get way away from that. And so it gets in the way of also the connection and being with their partner.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (45:52)
It's just so tender. It's so tender what you're describing. It's like yeah, you're seeing the shame. You're seeing it come up in your couples. You're seeing it come up to try and protect somebody. And the problem is when shame comes up, there's either attack-self: “What's wrong with me? It's my fault.” Attack-other: “He's a bad guy.” Or deny: “I didn't do it.” Or withdraw: Just kind of pulling away. I pause in those moments. I'm like, “Okay, let's pause here. Let's figure out, of these four reactions to shame, which one is coming up and can we counter-shame that?” The key to my work is to counter the shame and say we're all imperfect beings. We're all doing the best we can, and what can you learn from that? Rather than going into the shame again, it's like is there something that could be learned from this?
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (46:55)
And you just said the four kinds of reactions. Can you go over those again?
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (46:59)
Yeah, yeah. This is like a Rosetta Stone of shame. Attack-self, attack-other, deny, and withdraw.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (47:10)
Hmm. Other, deny, or withdraw.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (47:14)
And then these are from Donald Nathanson's book Shame and Pride. He says that in every moment, we're balancing between shame and pride, and that these reactions to shame… A person is not going to know what they're doing. It's automatic. To be able to slow a couple down or a person down, and just say, “Wait a minute, what happened?” You know, and just say, “I noticed something and I wonder if maybe, you know, you're mad at me because I said this,” or “You're mad at your partner because they said this,” and “You're putting yourself down,” or “You're putting them down.” Maybe what's in the middle of all this is the uncomfortable and pretty terrible shame that's too difficult to handle.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (48:08)
And what if I hold the shame for this session? So nobody has to hold the shame. I can hold it. I can put it over there. I have lots of objects that can hold the shame for me so that I don't have to, you know, get exhausted. But I explain to people that they've been holding shame for a lifetime. Put it down for a little bit in the session. And I can interview the shame and find out why it is putting them down, or I can just kind of like put it aside for a little bit and find out what is the message that was put on this person that they no longer need, and we can work with that.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (48:51)
Yeah.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (48:52)
Sometimes change helps.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (48:54)
Hmm. So kind of by externalizing the part and kind of getting to know it and kind of shifting the relationship. Rather than just being something that's in me, something that I've got a relationship with kind of helps to shift that.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (49:09)
That's exactly what we're doing. Yes. Yeah.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (49:12)
Great. Wonderful. And yeah, any pieces that we've missed that you think are really important for me to know or the listeners to know about shame?
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (49:25)
Uh-huh. Are there any pieces we're missing?
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (49:28)
Yeah, yeah. Any pieces that are…because I love hearing all these different aspects. I just want to make sure we get to all the…
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (49:37)
I guess I will say some pieces, and I also want to say we have some free webinars about shame on our website, www.healingshame.com, as well as workshops for therapists on our website. But, you know, reading about shame – there's so many levels in the complexity of shame. That's why we have these free articles so people can read them and download them. “Oh, I thought that was her fault, and it's my fault.” Or, “I thought that was this, and it’s shame.” And so what I would say in closing is just that shame is a multi-headed hydro, and just when we think that we have figured out the shame with a couple or with an individual, the shame is going to come up in a different way. And so to be able to be ready for all the different ways that shame can come up.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (50:38)
Yeah. Yeah. So kind of being able to detect it or kind of get to know how it appears or what triggered it. Sometimes with clients, we're kind of almost like a shame detector, like seeing where it is. One last piece that I wanted to kind of throw out and get your thoughts on too is that, oftentimes one of the things I talk with my clients – I do a lot of work with ADHD with kids and adolescents and families and adults – and I talk about the way I think about the antidote to shame is integrity.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (51:15)
Yes.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (51:17)
By taking responsibility for what happens, making amends or trying to learn from the situation, and then taking the next step in the direction of your values. That we oftentimes can feel better. Because even though yesterday – and again, my clients with ADHD, they're going to screw up one and a half standard deviations more than the average person due to the definition of ADHD – but even if they messed up yesterday and were late to work, whatever, at least the only thing they can do about it today is try to make amends, figure out a new system or something, you know, and take the next right step. Although what I've found too is, particularly when there's a lot of trauma and the person doesn't have a good sense of their self, that they have a hard time with that integrity to kind of measure, am I doing the right thing to do the next right thing?
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (52:02)
Or sometimes I think about growing up in an invalidating environment, like the parent hits the child and then the child's crying and they say, “Why are you crying?” It’s hard to develop your sense of self because your understanding and your knowledge of reality is so thrown off. So many of these clients, and Pete Walker talks about how toxic shame is the core piece of complex PTSD, but also it's hard to have that integrity if you don't have a measure of what is good enough or what is right. And so oftentimes just going back to that shame and not what's wrong.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (52:41)
You know, I think it's so important, and I help my clients find an inner compass. I help them kind of like talk about imagining that there's an inner compass inside themselves that's going to point north and I help them through gut visualizations, you know, to find true north. I tell people that anytime there's shame or anytime there's difference – racial difference, sexual difference, difference in age, difference in whatever – anytime there's a slightest difference at all, there's shame. So to be aware that people could be going into shame without even knowing it and just being a word to counter shame.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (53:29)
Yeah.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (53:29)
That it's normal.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (53:33)
Yeah. Yeah. Everybody has it. Even somebody that's very confident, they still have the part of them that's like, “Oh, you're no good,” or “You can't do it,” but that other part of them comes in and it's compassion or acceptance or support or so on. Definitely. Well great. Thank you so much for your time today and I love talking about the subject with you. I think it's such an important piece and so many clients struggle with it, and there's so many different ways to look at it and approach and think about shame. Sounds like you're doing wonderful work, and I'll also link to the website where you have the workshops for clients and the workshops for therapists. Thank you so much. I appreciate you taking the time.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (54:12)
Thank you for having me, and I feel like we're just starting this conversation of shame.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (54:19)
I know. There's so much.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (54:23)
Levels and levels and levels. Take good care.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (54:26)
Okay. Take care. Bye-bye.
Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT: (54:28)
Bye-bye.
Keith Sutton, PsyD: (54:30)
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