Note from the Author: I am committed to keeping my client’s identity confidential while also being able to share some examples from therapy for educational purposes, therefore, names and details of their stories have been changed in this blog.

Embrace the opportunity to assist your client to overcome their shame. Journey to where there is shame and help your client learn to bring what is hidden to the light. 

Shame is different from guilt. Rather than feeling guilty for having done something wrong, we instead feel ashamed for who we are as a person, a disregard for our character or characteristics about ourselves. Thus, the experiences we are most ashamed of, we hide and keep secret. (There is a privilege as a therapist to be told so many secrets that our clients keep close to their hearts. No wonder it takes trust, courage, and vulnerability to overcome shame.) Shame can be universal; in that, it can connect to any aspect of ourselves. However, I have found that shame often revolves around the reality of sex and sexuality. Many times, I have had clients, who after building trust, disclose to me a particular event or situation that occurred, that they either participated in or was done to them. In many incidents, if not all, sexual shame has whispered the lie, that one is “damaged goods”, not good enough to be loved or valued. The repercussions or the outcome of this shame is reinstated. Shame manifests itself through difficulty in forming intimate relationships, resistance towards emotional and physical vulnerability, and a distorted perception of sex and sexuality. Because of such, many people with sexual shame either resist or are “reactive” towards sex and their sexuality, avoiding anything to do with it. Thus when coming in contact with it they become very anxious or others might express that they see themselves as only “meat” and willfully embrace that concept for themselves. Shame will deceive you, it will cause you to believe that because of this sin you are unlovable and the actions which are done are dirty and something to be ashamed of, to avoid. How many people are afraid of their sexuality and do not know the incredible truth? (A topic I will discuss in my next blog.) I have found that the shame that many of my clients experience causes so much suffering that they reject a part of themselves. For rejection of one’s sexuality or emotional being is a rejection of self. 

I have often worked with young adults who struggled greatly with their shame. Abby* is gripped with shame and terrified by her sexuality. She is afraid of intimacy with friends and with her boyfriend, knowing especially in her romantic relationship, physical and sexual intimacy is a part of the relationship. She knows that the expression of love is found in the essential, emotional, spiritual, the physical, the affectionate, and in the sexual part of a relationship. She was ashamed due to fears and distorted beliefs about herself and her sexuality. In the sessions, I would gently challenge Abby* to allow her tears to fall. She felt so small and so ashamed, so helpless. It was in her voice, the crackling, the struggle to get her words out that depicted the helplessness she felt that she might never be capable of love. I saw before me a soul who was broken by shame. A soul who longed for the truth that she is loved but could never receive such a love. To bear witness to such a beautiful wound, was breathtaking and sometimes tremendously insufferable to see so much pain in her eyes. Thus Abby* learned to love and accept her wound. Her shame turned into grace, a part of her that is good and whole, rather than broken and dirty. 

As counselors, we are trained to be empathetic, but I say we go farther, and be human. During those first sessions with Abby*, I felt broken. My heart ached for her. The kicker is that shame renders a person in a place of great despair that reaches vast depths. A lot of times, shame is intimate and close to the heart, thus it can cause more damage. Shame is a silent killer, it seeps in through criticism and lack of separation of self-worth. It ultimately prevents us from receiving what we most desire in this life, what we are created for, to be truly and unconditionally loved. To see shame on your client’s face will move you, even break you, because you know as a therapist that there’s hope and yet hope is not yet found. So you assist your client in learning how to bear witness to that hope. You long for your client to receive what you know can be freely given. During your time with your client, as they encounter shame and are broken by it; covering their face and weeping, devastated, hopeless, and disparaging. With tears, crying out, hoping that shame is not the last note played, the last word written on the page of this chapter, I invite you, as a therapist, to be moved to compassion that reaches down to the deeper levels of the heart, and give them hope. Do so by taking their hand and helping them stand back up (figuratively) and turn a page in their book, to bring the shame to light, to help persevere in overcoming their shame. It’s important you don’t become emotionally attached to their shame, where you begin to cross boundaries but you can allow yourself to ache for them to feel their pain. It’s only by being able to be present with them and to listen to their words, by seeing their true potential and by simply being yourself, that your client can learn to trust you so that you can slowly lead them to hope.

Shame is ugly and destroys hope and seeing it on your client’s face is heartbreaking and wonderfully moving. I say this because what they see is shame but what you see is more than shame or what the shame represents, you see goodness, beauty, and potential. Thus you are willing to wade through the mess to assist them in learning how to see such truth for themselves. That they can be freely loved and they have tremendous worth that no sin can take away. 

*Name and details changed for confidentiality.