Counselling Skills for Working with Shame helps professionals to understand and identify shame and to build shame resilience in both the client and themselves. Shame is ubiquitous in counselling where there is an increased vulnerability and risk of exposure to shame. While many clients experience feelings of shame, it is often overlooked in the therapeutic process and as a result can be left untreated. It is particularly pertinent when working with clients who have experienced trauma, domestic or complex abuse, or who struggle with addiction, compulsion and sexual behaviours. Written in an accessible style, this is a hands-on, skills-based guide which helps practitioners to identify what elicits, evokes or triggers shame. It gives a general introduction to the nature of shame in both client and counsellor and how these become entwined in the therapeutic relationship. It focuses on increasing awareness of shame and how to release it in order to build shame resilience. With points for reflection, helpful exercises, top tips, reminders and suggestions for how to work with clients, this is a highly practical guide for counsellors, therapists, mental health practitioners, nurses, social workers, educators, human resources, trainee counsellors and students.

A book for psychotherapists and their clients - and for anyone who wants to make the journey from shame to unshame. Carolyn Spring, author of 'Recovery is my best revenge: my experience of trauma, abuse and dissociative identity disorder', documents in this, her second book, her journey through psychotherapy to heal and resolve trauma-based shame, which had resulted in a catastrophic mental breakdown in her early thirties and an eventual diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder (DID). She then embarked on a nearly ten year journey of psychotherapy through which she came to realise that shame had actually saved her life. However, the cost to this protective function is a life lived dissociated from feelings of joy, connection, love and belonging. This book explores Carolyn's pathway towards 'Unshame'. Suitable for both professionals and survivors alike, it is a fascinating insight into that most private and mysterious of places - the therapy room, and the mind. About the author Carolyn Spring helps people recover from trauma and to reverse adversity. She is author of numerous books and articles and has delivered extensive training throughout the UK for both dissociative survivors and professionals working with them. She set up PODS (Positive Outcomes for Dissociative Survivors) in 2010 to promote recovery from dissociative disorders. She now works more widely in the field of mental health and adversity and combines a wealth of personal experience with research in her writing and training, bringing a rare positivity and the belief that no matter what people have experienced, recovery is possible. For more information go to www.carolynspring.com.

Conveying the reality of the counselling room, this book provides helpful tips and techniques to enable practitioners to develop and refine their skills. At the heart of this book is the idea of 'situated action'. By this we mean suspending purely intellectual faculties and exploring a different kind of intelligence - one shaped in the real world - in essence what happens to theory when it meets real life. This book offers thirty four skills to achieve this kind of practice wisdom which contain a mixture of reflection, client stories, quotes and images. This text will translate theory into practice for students and be a source of inspiration and reflection for the experienced practitioner.

Excessive shame can be associated with poor psychological adjustment, interpersonal difficulties, and overall poor life functioning. Consequently, shame is prevalent among individuals undergoing psychotherapy. Yet, there is limited guidance for clinicians trying to help their clients deal with shame-related concerns. This book explores the manifestations of shame and presents several approaches for treatment. It brings together the insights of master clinicians from different theoretical and practice orientations, such as psychodynamics, object relations, emotion-focused therapy, functional analysis, group therapy, family therapy, and couples therapy. The chapters address all aspects of shame, including how it develops, how it relates to psychological difficulties, how to recognize it, and how to help clients resolve it. Strategies for dealing with therapist shame are also provided, since therapist shame can be triggered during sessions and can complicate the therapeutic alliance. With rich, detailed case studies in almost every chapter, this book will be a practical resource for clinicians working with a broad range of populations and clinical problems.

Unhealthy or maladaptive shame is believed by many to be the root cause of a diverse range of mental health problems. If we want to offer a more reparative healing to people contending with these psychological issues, we must ultimately trace back and resolve their underlying shame. This book offers researchers practitioners and students a balance of theoretical and empirical evidence for a practical approach in shame-informed counselling and psychotherapy approach. Drawing on empirical field study evidence on shame, and making references to both Western and Eastern literature on the subject, Ng advocates that shame-informed interventions be applied following or alongside the contemporary counselling modalities and protocols. Using his 15 years’ professional practice in the field, he offers a shame-informed counselling and psychotherapy approach which aims not merely to help the individual cope with or suppress the shame as commonly advocated in current literature, but also deals with its roots through the restructuring of core beliefs and early memories.

This volume reports on the growing body of knowledge on shame and guilt, integrating findings from the authors' original research program with other data emerging from social, clinical, personality, and developmental psychology. Evidence is presented to demonstrate that these universally experienced affective phenomena have significant implications for many aspects of human functioning, with particular relevance for interpersonal relationships. --From publisher's description.