David Bedrick - The Unshaming Way: A 3-Part Model for Dismantling Shame

[HannahOne]

I love that Dalloway! His work is getting more well known that way!

[bardic]

Great to see there's a discussion of David's books! His concept of working with shame, especially in being able to see how it not only affects our own selves but it globalizes all the way to our cultures, politics, ancestors, etc., have been powerful for me.

[HannahOne]

David Bedrick is killing it on his Substack talking about sexual abuse and assault especially re: current news in the US. His work is the only thing I'm willing to read about the topic. It may still be triggering for some to read his Substack, but it may also be helpful so I wanted to mention it here.

[bardic]

Seconding! I enjoy his Substack format, more than his previous Instagram carousels as we get to see more of his thought process. His principle of noticing when what we've been taught as "reasonable" & "precise" is just another way to maintain existing power imbalance is very useful & cathartic to name.

[HannahOne]

Yes, that exact idea really spoke to me too! That the very act of minimizing, dismissing, or ignoring the victim's statements or experience is itself the power dynamic. I had never thought of it that way. So grateful to SenseOrgan who introduced Bedrick's work to me. I have to go in small bite-sized pieces to not get overwhelmed but it is very helpful work.

[bardic]

I'm glad to hear you found his works helpful too! 🤍 I think I enjoy the way he understood shame as an internalized perceptual lens that was misleading & abusive, thus keeping us misinformed even if what we're perceiving is not the same thing or even arena. I think I resonated with the idea of shame as not just an emotion or a particular coping mechanism/behavior, which is something I guess might by why I didn't feel like a lot of literature about trauma that has attempted to explain shame resonated with me.

[HannahOne]

Shame as a lens, that's excellent!

[dollyvee]

Glad I came back and reread this thread. When I initially read it, I understood that his work was in line with Brene Brown's and decided to give it a pass, but am glad it is not. Will have to look it up.

Shame is a big, complex thing to circumnavigate. It took a long time for me to read and finish, Healing the Shame That Binds You, and if I had to try and recollect passages from memory, I don't think I could even though I found it to be quite eye-opening. Maybe it has been working away in the background and is also something I need to revisit.

[Gently]

Thank your for this thread, for reminding me of this central theme in recovery. I think it's the main root, and radical self-love, care, affection, compassion, gentleness, encouragement, nurture, attentiveness, and all the good we can do to ourselves is the antidote. To reclaim our feeling self, our sense self, our knowing self, our loving self, our wanting self, and to gaze upon with tender loving kindness what we find there.

In the period of my recovery when I had begun to work very hard with unshaming (that's awesome), my T told me about a first nations practice of using cedar boughs to take the shame for us. We collect some cedar boughs and put them somewhere in our home. When we feel the shame coming (and it feels totally different from any other emotion, it feels foreign, like an attack), we go to our cedar boughs and give the shame to the cedar. The cedar absorbs it for us, because the shame doesn't belong to us in the first place. It was forced on us, and we are putting it away from us, every time. I did that many times a day at first. It was a powerful practice, and made me much more able to identify when it was actually shame that was acting on me, and not my own natural emotions. Some people will then burn the cedar. Cedar smells so good when burnt.

I had to stop myself from feeling sorry for the cedar for having to absorb this horrible feeling. I actually felt guilty about that. I tried not to think about it that, and instead thank it through tears for helping me.

Recently I was pondering the fact that it isn't my painful feelings that create a trauma response and EF in me, it's the way I feel about the fact that I am having the painful feelings. That's the shame, I think. The lens. Somehow there is an interpretation happening automatically in my brain that there is something wrong with me whenever I experience thoughts or feelings of a certain type.

My practice is now to soothe the part that is panicked that something is wrong with me, and to reassure that this feeling and this pain is not "bad", it's okay, and even good because it allows us to grieve and offer comfort for our precious self, and that is a lovely thing to be able to do for our self. We don't need to shame the feelings away, we can stay, lovingly, gently, compassionately in the moment, through witnessed tears, and that moment can become a thing of love and beauty in itself.

[SenseOrgan]

It's great to read Bedrick's book is resonating with you too! Thank you all for contributing to this thread. There can hardly be enough attention for shame as a core part of trauma imho.

I don't remember if Bedrick wrote about this, but recently I realized an aspect of shame I hadn't been aware of. Namely that it's an incredibly lonely experience (for a child). Chronic invalidation by a mother lacking cognitive empathy instilled a deep sense of shame and existential loneliness in me. It's a type of violence that I haven't heard anyone speak about. It's different from the classic narc stuff, including the covert variety. The term "shaming/unshaming witness" validated something for me that has always been challenging for me to capture into words and properly get into focus. I've sometimes used "evil eye" for this, but I think Bedricks's term is more precise. The antidote also captures one of the core strengths of this forum. Thank you all for being here. 

[dollyvee]

In the period of my recovery when I had begun to work very hard with unshaming (that's awesome), my T told me about a first nations practice of using cedar boughs to take the shame for us. We collect some cedar boughs and put them somewhere in our home. When we feel the shame coming (and it feels totally different from any other emotion, it feels foreign, like an attack), we go to our cedar boughs and give the shame to the cedar. The cedar absorbs it for us, because the shame doesn't belong to us in the first place. It was forced on us, and we are putting it away from us, every time. I did that many times a day at first. It was a powerful practice, and made me much more able to identify when it was actually shame that was acting on me, and not my own natural emotions. Some people will then burn the cedar. Cedar smells so good when burnt.

This is really beautiful Gently, thank you for sharing