Week 37 Focus on Application Session with Ruth Buczynski, Joan Borysenko, and Bill O Hanlon Dr. Buczynski: : Hello, everyone. We re back. This is the part of the week where we re going to focus on application, how you can use the ideas that we talked about all week, how you can use them in your practice. I m joined, as I always am, by my two good buddies, Dr. Joan Borysenko and Bill O Hanlon. Guys, let s jump right in and start with what takeaways you had this week. How about if we start with you, Joan? And when we ll go to you, Bill. Dr. Borysenko: Sure. First of all, as usual, what an interesting mix of people! From Stephen Porges to Peter Levine to Donna Eden, everyone has a different sense of the physical somatic expression of shame. There s been a saying for a long time that shame is the master emotion, and when you re filled with shame, you can t feel other emotions. It dampens them down. It confuses them. Shame is underneath things like rage, which Donna Eden talked about. If you can t feel seen, sometimes the rage comes next. I really enjoyed Nina Boles research, which I d never heard before. Steven Levine mentioned that if you could get people to experience an emotion in a laboratory setting, it would block their ability to experience other emotions. What we heard from everybody was the somatic approach to that. I also enjoyed listening to Steven Levine, as he spoke about asking clients to join him in the slumped, disappearing posture of shame. Then, he d gradually lead them to come up straight again and see again, at a deeper level, the combination of body and mind, which you can never underestimate. I thought it was exceptional. Dr. Buczynski: Thank you. What about you, Bill? What stood out to you? It s important to remember that shame is rooted in the body people want to disappear or shrink, or be smaller and invisible. Mr. O Hanlon: This whole physical thing. We therapists are so oriented towards words and conversation, but it s important to remember that shame is rooted in the body people want to disappear or shrink, or be smaller and invisible. Ive heard so many clients talk about that, but I didn t think about it in a physical way. So, that that stood out for me. I have to keep remembering the physicality of emotions of all emotions but especially shame. Dr. Buczynski: Thanks.
Joan, Stephen Porges compared the biological effects of shame to life threats. As Bill just said, it makes a person want to disappear. What kind of defense mechanisms have you seen clients develop to counter this? How did that feed into deeper problems that might have been associated with shame? Dr. Borysenko: In particular, there is a man who comes to mind, who had an abusive stepfather and felt terrible about himself. He was deeply, deeply shamed in terms of wishing to disappear. He was a brilliant man, and his defense against these feelings of shame and wanting to disappears was puffing out, and inflating himself, and getting grandiose. He took that into a work setting, and he was in I can t remember, maybe corporate sales? It was something of the sort. But he had to deal with people a lot of the time, and he became grandiose and that was off-putting to people. He didn t get good results. He got angry, and blamed his co-workers. He blamed his clients. He blamed his boss. When I saw him, he had gotten fired. All those behaviors of grandiosity and rage were his attempt to compensate for those feelings of unworthiness and the need to disappear. He combatted deflation with inflation. Dr. Buczynski: Yeah. Bill, can you talk about any physical exercises? Have you used any physical exercise in your work helping a person work through a posture of shame? All those behaviors of grandiosity and rage were his attempt to compensate for those feelings of unworthiness and the need to disappear. Mr. O Hanlon: As Joan was talking, I was thinking about this client I had who also had trouble at work but her trouble was confidence. She worked in a place with mostly men. I had read an article in some business magazine about a woman who was the first female head of a big ad agency in New York. It was mostly men in the 60s. They asked her, how did you deal? She said, Yeah, I would go to GM, and I d walk into a boardroom and there d be fourteen 58-year-old guys and here I was, this 30-something woman. I had to buck up my confidence or else I couldn t have walked in those rooms. The boardroom doors would be shut, and I would stand tall outside and say to myself Chest up. Then, I d walk into the room. It really gave me confidence. So, I was telling this woman that story since she had been working mostly with men. She started to cry and said, That story is perfect for me, because when I grew up, I got tall really quickly and I was taller than any of the body so no one wanted to ask me out for dates. There were some things that were said about her. She continued, Ever since then, I ve kind of slumped over, trying to be smaller than I am. Now I realize that s crazy. I m not even that out of proportion to other people, I just grew up quickly. That s going to be my new motto whenever I walk into a situation: Chest up. That physical shift of standing up tall and straight allowed her to feel more confident when going into those situations.
As we heard from several of the experts this week, I think a simple change in posture no longer slumping and disappearing can make a difference. Dr. Buczynski: Thanks. Chest up that s an interesting thing to remember. It s a little bit like Amy Cuddy s work. Mr. O Hanlon: Oh, yes, yes, yes. I hadn t made that connection. Good. Dr. Buczynski: Anybody that wants to follow that, go to YouTube and put Amy Cuddy, C-u-d-d-y. Mr. O Hanlon: She has great TED Talks. Dr. Buczynski: Yes, you ll find them there. Joan, Peter Levine talked about the importance of practitioners really getting where the client is, and getting it right away. Do you have any thoughts on how to do that? We don t want to do it so quickly that we get the wrong get. How do we accurately and quickly sense where they are? Dr. Borysenko: I m going to tell you a story. It s often hard to talk about shame, and that makes it difficult for the therapist to immediately name it and get in there with the client and say something that makes a difference. Peter was able to do that with his client Ray, and that is wonderful work. I do recommend that people go watch the video of Peter working with Ray. But the story I want to tell is of a man when he was in his prime. He was in his mid-30s and dying of cancer. He decided to kill himself- but he managed to botch the job. When an engineer botches killing himself, you can figure maybe he didn t want to go. I asked him to come in with his wife, who I d seen in previous sessions. I m going to call him Roger, which was obviously not his name. I said, Hey, Roger. Tell me what happened, because my hint from this is you re one of the most competent people I ve ever met. If you wanted to kill yourself, I wonder why you didn t succeed. I was going for the heart of the matter. It brought up a tremendous ambivalence. He was ashamed that he had tried to kill himself, and it was that shame that had gotten in the way of doing something definitive enough to pull it off. He was torn between the shame of not talking to his wife about this before he did it, recognizing that this could cause her tremendous pain; and the pain of living in the way that he was, with the fear of what was going to happen to him as the disease progressed. The disease had already progressed, and these are difficult topics to broach. Very, very difficult these existential topics. The nearness of death brings up so much. I ve found the easiest way to go since then is simply to name it from the get-go. That allows everybody to show up in a way that is honest and courageous.
Dr. Buczynski: Bill, let s talk about Donna Eden. She talked about how difficult it is for people to articulate shame that it seems hidden beneath words. I like that phrase. I think that says something. How have you helped a client go beneath words to get to the shame that they re feeling? Mr. O Hanlon: I learned this technique when I was working with teenagers. Sometimes they come in and you ask them questions, and they just shrug their shoulders and don t talk. So, I learned this technique when I was doing that a fair amount. I d tell them, Next session, bring in two or three of your favorite songs with the lyrics. Then, they d come in, and they wouldn t have to talk about their feelings the songs would say everything. I started doing it with adults. They d bring in their two or three favorite songs, and then we d use that as a jumping-off point. Why is that song so meaningful for you? What about the lyrics? What about the song really moves you and speaks to you? Sometimes they re not able to articulate where they are, but music can do that in a particular, nonverbal way. It goes back to your earlier questions you asked Joan how do you get where people are? Sometimes they re not able to articulate where they are, but music can do that in a particular, nonverbal way. Somebody else has already said the words, and they can start to talk about what moves them about that. I think that s a technique you could use to get beneath the words. Dr. Buczynski: Have either of you felt that frozenness is associated with shame? Mr. O Hanlon: Yeah, we didn t hear people talk about hat, but I think that s exactly right. Dr. Borysenko: Yeah, I think so. I think you see frozenness occur in the features that are not so expressive in an immobilization of Dr. Buczynski: At the throat? Dr. Borysenko: People can t speak up and don t get heard which reinforces the pattern of, Hey, I m not worth listening to. Dr. Buczynski: Yeah. Mr. O Hanlon: Yeah. Dr. Buczynski: Do you have any more thoughts on that, Bill? Mr. O Hanlon: Well, just the Peter Levine thing. We always heard it s fight or flight but now we know freeze, the third typical response. When you re under stress in some way, or when people are feeling deep shame that just emerges from them, they do one of these three things: They want to get out of there and disappear, as we ve heard.
They want to get defensive or grandiose, as Joan mentioned in her example. Or, they just freeze and they can t speak up. They can t do anything effective. In looking for one of these three things, you get an idea of how you can help them unfreeze, or stop being so aggressive, or stop running away and disappearing and dissociating. Dr. Buczynski: Thank you. That s it for this week now it s your turn. Go to the comment board and tell us how you re going to use the ideas that you heard this week. We d love to hear your thoughts. We d love to hear how it turns out. So, please share your ideas on the comment board, and we ll see you again at the end of next week. Bye-bye.