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

[SenseOrgan]

David Bedrick - The Unshaming Way: A 3-Part Model for Dismantling Shame - Integrate Trauma, Unlearn Self-Blame, and Reclaim Your Personal Power

For readers of Brené Brown, Curt Thompson, and Tara Brach. We're sold the idea that shame serves a purpose: it must protect us from something...otherwise it wouldn't be there. Right?

Not really. In Unshamed, author, mental health expert, and professor David Bedrick reveals that there really is no good "use" for shame—and offers a revolutionary model to dismantle it. He shows how shame affects us all...and often in ways we might not expect. Shame connects to our struggles, our relationships, how we show up in the world, and how the world shows up (or fails to) for us. So how we can shed our shame, integrate our trauma, and unleash the personal power, efficacy, and confidence that are our birthright? Bedrick breaks it down in three parts:

Respect: how the practice of witnessing can help us be fully seen, heard, and held—and what that can do for our self-power and self-esteem
Relating: how to restore our sense of mattering—especially when our hurt, neglect, or trauma shows up as shame
Radical belief: how we can reclaim our voice, experiences, and embodied truths by owning our authority, autonomy, and authentic needs without projecting our shame and trauma onto others

Bedrick explores the roots of shame, sharing the connections between trauma, shame, and experiential validation—and explains how shame shows up when woundedness isn't seen, held, and appreciated by ourselves and our loved ones.

He helps us understand the role of boundaries in healing from shame; how shame impacts our physical health and wellness; how to unshame disturbing feelings; and the interconnections among body, social issues, shame, and abuse. With exercises, profound insights, case studies, and psychological science, Unshamed is an easy-to-understand guide to breaking shame down for good.
source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/209194384-the-unshaming-way


You can't truly understand trauma, without  understanding shame. Unshaming is the essence of trauma healing. Most of us are, consciously, or unconsciously, imprisoned by shame. What is Unshaming? When you Unshame, you stop viewing the things you're ashamed of as broken parts of yourself that need to be fixed or healed. You integrate the deep meaning behind your difficulties, as if they are invitations to embrace your wholeness and doorways to your shadow's gold. The result is a life liberated from judgment, connected to your inner intelligence, and attuned to a profound sense of wellness. A life where you understand what your next steps should be, as you begin to walk a path that is aligned with your soul purpose and the unique medicine you are here to share with the world.
source: https://www.davidbedrick.com/

[TheBigBlue]

Reading this, I feel it in my body - silent tears running down my face, not from pain alone, but from recognition. Thank you for sharing this.

[Desert Flower]

Thank you SenseOrgan. 

[Kizzie]

Thanks for this SO, it's such a big part of our trauma landscape that any help ridding ourselves of it is a positive move in recovery.

One thing that has helped me deal with shame is first identifying it (it can run quite deeply in the soul), and then figuring out why I feel it. In my case (and I'm sure most others survivors) a lot of shame came as a form of control by those who abused me. If I felt shame then I was more vulnerable and open to manipulation and abuse.

Thus, saying "No" to shame I didn't earn or deserve was pivotal. I think this falls under "radical beliefs" ("reclaim our voice, experiences, and embodied truths by owning our authority, autonomy, and authentic needs") and embracing my true self. 

I must say I love the word "deshaming"!

[Hope67]

Thank you SenseOrgan, I was impressed by everything written here and also the reviews I saw on Amazon, plus the fact it was on a special price at the moment, so I actually ordered it!  I am looking forward to reading it - although I have a line-up of books I need to get through, and feel like I don't have sufficient time (but I am going to pace myself!!!)

[SenseOrgan]

TheBigBlue
This resonates, doesn't it? I haven't read the book myself yet, but I rushed to share it here. I think Bedrick really gets it. I'm both sorry and happy that his angle hits home for you.

Desert Flower
 

Kizzie
Thank you very much for sharing your lived experience. This is very insightful and empowering!

Hope67
I know what you mean! I'm reading three books and I'm binging several podcasts. The Unshaming Way is going to go very high on my to read list though!

[Hope67]

Hi SenseOrgan,
The book (Unshaming by David Bedrick) has arrived, and I've started reading it, and I am so glad I bought it - it is really helpful so far.

[Dalloway]

Mild trigger warning - mention of abuse and neglect.

I finished reading the book not so long ago and I found it very helpful. There were many new information and I really liked Bedrick´s approach of shame. Shame has always been something that plays a huge role in my life so I appreciated the compassionate and trauma-informed/oriented theory he described. For me, the book was one of the best self-help books I´ve read so far.
Here are some highlights from the book that I found particularly eye-opening:

"We suffer painful feelings as a result of being put down, and we think we're having those feelings because something is wrong with us, instead of thinking it's because we're being injured. That is shame."
This is a brilliant take on what shame is, in my opinion. And also very true - I´ve realized very recently that I´ve been looking at myself as a pathology just because I was made to believe that something´s wrong with me when in fact I was just responding to the abnormality that kept happening to me.

"Understanding oneself as a story that is unfolding, instead of a pathology that needs healing," - similar to the first statement; it´s a key component of unshaming ourselves.

"[W]e don't have to learn to create boundaries so much as we have to heal from the events that first impaired their functioning."
It´s very important to me to learn how to access the inner wisdom that´s been the part of me my whole life; it´s been there all along and that gives me much hope to find the inner peace, to discover and unearth more and more of it every day.

"Many people who wrestle with boundaries dream at night of doors they cannot close or lock."
This was a major aha-moment for me because I´ve been having these kinds of dreams since I don´t even know when and never knew their meaning but now it gives so much sense. I´ve always struggled with creating boundaries because as a child I was told I didn´t deserve to have them so disrespecting me and ignoring my wishes was normalized. That´s why I struggle saying ´no´ and believing that it´s okay to have myself on the first place of my list of priorities.

"I have had many clients who've said, "I've been working on myself for years and it still isn't helping." I instantly think, What does working on yourself look like? You can be assured that whatever they're doing, some part of them has not consented to it. They have bypassed their own "No," which creates suffering as well as shame from being treated like their resistance doesn't matter and there must be something wrong with them for not progressing."
A massive YES to that. Healing can be something I take as a work to do, as a chore that needs to be done so I tend to overrationalize it, forgetting in the process that my self also wants to join the conversation, giving me signals that I often ignore because I´m too invested in finding out what´s wrong and how to fix it. There is a reason why I resist something, I just need to try to listen to that message.

"When we are told and come to believe that our authentic form of expression is wrong, or when it is judged without a witness, shame enters."
This concept of the unshaming witness was very new to me, I haven´t come across this theory before and I found it to be a very useful and practical way of understanding the impact of trauma which is created by our suffering not being witnessed. When I was abused and neglected, no one stood up or fought for me or even said that what was done to me wasn´t right so I ended up carrying the pain all by myself and trying to figure it all out alone what led to my interpreting the bad things as something I deserved.

"Her anger was a sacred, just, intelligent, and protective part of her being."
I found this thought particularly beautiful and because it was written in feminine, I felt like it was talking to me even more. Anger was a taboo in our family so I had to push it down all my life. Now I´m trying to find the voice of my anger.

"We often think our inner criticism arose from family members alone or simply because there is truly something wrong with us. Witnessing the social dynamics unshames."
The chapter in which Bedrick talks about shame as a part of the social dynamics was very interesting for me because it was a new perspective. These days I think about the society more often and how everyone is intertwined so it´s very logical that personal is also a part of the bigger picture. Most of the mechanisms that worked in our family were impacted by beliefs like "what would people say" and "it´s us vs. them".

"Shame teaches us not to trust our feelings. Instead, we ask why we have those feelings, as if they're symptoms of an illness. We ask why they still arise, as if we were doing something wrong. Rather than trust our body's feeling experience, we apply theories and opinions to our feelings, like, "I'm not really upset with my parents, because I understand why they were so abusive."
This one I highlighted in dark red. It´s so spot on and yet so simple. The first thing that comes to my mind when something arises in me is "what´s wrong with me?" and "how do I fix that?" I was taught that my reaction to the world is abnormal so I started to question my experiences. I tend to rationalize them instead, trying to understand them on a cognitive level but not listening to them somatically. But I´m learning that I can just simply accept and be with everything that arises and that it´s fine not to be fine. The next paragraph summarizes this greatly:
"[W]e needn't figure out what's right and wrong, how we should respond or feel. We simply need to pause and check in with our body's intelligence, listen, and trust."
And also this one:
"Shame labels our feelings before we "feel" them, and it pathologizes them as if they are problems, which stops us from exploring them for their deeper intelligence."

"Unshaming means making a safe place for a feeling to do its thing so we can get to know it, not so we can marginalize it, fix it, or make it go away."
The idea of holding space for everything that wants to be heard and seen is something I´ve been missing my whole life. The idea that I can care for and nurture the pain and the joy as integral parts of me makes me feel empowered and more in charge of my life.

"Feelings are experiences, not problems. It's shaming to treat feelings like problems to solve."
I´ve always pushed down all the emotions that arised because it was safer to do so, so now I find it very hard to feel, connect to and express them. I can articulate and talk about them only with great difficulty but I know it´s not my fault that I struggle with these things. This is my human experience that I may be sharing with many other CPTSD folks and it makes me feel a lot less alone.

"Trauma is an abuse experience that doesn't have a sufficient witness."
This thought was very often mentioned in the book so it made me think about the truth of it. Gabor Maté says that trauma is not the event that happened to us but it´s impact on us, so we can experience even abuse or some other adversity and we may not be traumatized by them. But not having a witness who supports us and validates our feelings can further isolate and traumatize us. So I agree with Bedrick and also with Maté on this one, that leaving us alone with our pain, disconnected from the world, feeling that we´re different and that no one understands us, are the things that create trauma.

"Our greatest gifts and our deepest wounds reside in the same place." (referencing mythologist Michael Meade here)
Just beautiful. And also full of wisdom. Suffering is indeed the path that leads to enlightenment. I don´t mean to dismiss the horrible suffering that people are going through and label them as something necessary or even useful. I would trade all my trauma for a normal childhood in a heartbeat. But at the same time, I want to learn to live with all that happened and create something from that because that´s the only story I have.

"[N]ot making judgments and forming opinions about challenges and problems is a powerful intervention."
Not only powerful but extremely difficult. My mind is a huge spreadsheet full of formulas and comments on every each of information that gets into the system. Lindsay C. Gibson writes about this in her book Disentangling from emotionally immature people; when someone is emotionally neglected and their emotional needs are not fulfilled, they are trying to fill the huge holes in their experience with thoughts and thinking. This is what happened to me, and it led to compulsive rationalizing basically everything in my life.

The last paragraph I highlighted is a perfect summary of the book and also of the feelings I´m taking with myself after reading it:
"I'm going to believe in who you are until we both get to know you, until the seed of your difficulties flowers and ignites us with the wisdom that only you carry for yourself and the world, until the genie hidden in the bottle of your troubles is released, fulfilling your greatest wish — to live the life that is meant for you."

[SenseOrgan]

Dalloway
Sorry for my very late reply. Thank you very much for this selection and your comments. It makes me very happy this book resonates so much with you!
What I'd like to add about the topic of unshaming, is that I need frequent reminders. It doesn't suffice to read a book or more books and understand. I need a maintenance dose every so often. 

[HannahOne]

I have been dipping my toe into David Bedrick's work. I really love it. I'm so glad it was shared here!

The algorithm noticed, and today this popped up on my feed. I was fascinated, because for me, meditation has also been in general "not good for me" despite years of studying it in a yoga cult, then with a Buddhist nun weekly for a year, and through books and videos. What interested me most about his post is his understanding of how shame works, how it can take even good things, the ways we try to heal, the healing tools themselves, and turn them back on us.

Here's his post:
I went through * at the end of my twenties into my early thirties. A marriage had ended. I'd left graduate school without finishing my PhD. I had a whole traumatic history I barely knew anything about - I certainly didn't know how frightened I was, or how I'd survived it by assimilating into a family and a culture.
Even with those survival strategies, I fell, and went looking for answers. One day, walking through a bookstore, I found a book on meditation by Stephen Levine. It was simple, and very soon it felt like it had saved me. I had incredible experiences.
Until my patterns of survival took hold - meaning I started trying to meditate well, to get an A at meditation. That's when the beautiful experiences stopped.
Instead I sat in cramps, trying, always trying harder, with each extra effort, tying myself into tighter knots. This went on for years, one meditation teacher after another - famous teachers,  seven-day retreats, ten-day retreats.
Every one of them, I'd tell about my experiences, how painful it had been, the great states of mind I could no longer reach.
Each one gave me a method.
"Try this, David. Do it this way." And I did exactly that. I tried, and I tried harder, and the knot grew tighter.
Some days I sat over twenty hours, getting up only to eat something and pee. That kind of endurance, that intensity, isn't only a bad thing, it's an important part of me. But it was being used against me - used to follow rules of effort, not beauty.
Trying to become someone I wasn't.
About four years into my practice, I went to a retreat with a man named Bhante Gunaratana. We called him Bhante G. I told him my story, how much pain I'd been in, how many years I'd spent trying to meditate. He looked at me and said, in his beautiful, gentle voice, "Meditation not good for you, David."
He was the first person who was a true witness. He didn't see someone who needed to learn to meditate better. He saw someone hurting himself, using the discipline to punish himself, to correct himself, to become a person he wasn't.
That was one of my first lessons in what it means to witness trauma. You see the person as they are. You drop your ideas. You put away your theories. You dispense with your methods.
 You see a person.  And when you see someone hurting themselves, you do your best to help them stop, to notice their how they override their nervous system, their own self-love.
That was forty years ago, and yet he was one of my greatest teachers about about how to approach and heal trauma.
I'm so blessed and thankful to have met this man of spirit, this man of heart, this man who had eyes to see me.

[Luma1123]

Saw the notification on this thread... this book looks really, really insightful. Bought a copy, tentatively diving into chapter one today. Wish me luck!

[HannahOne]

Good luck! I love the book and am having to read just a bit at a time, it really speaks to me.

[SenseOrgan]

HannahOne
I'm happy to know you got this validation, and very sorry you were in a yoga cult. I imagine it must have been incredibly lonely for you to experience meditation not being good for you and hearing otherwise from so many sources. Hooray for choosing you over the gospel!

There can be a lot of violence towards ourselves in striving. A lot of rejecting of who we actually are right now. Just as we were taught, now disguised as something supposedly beneficial. It doesn't help if it's expected of us, encouraged, demanded, or worse, or endorsed by the masses as only positive. I did come across conversations about the potential downsides of meditation here and there, but it's not commonly talked about. If someone happens to read this who is in distress due to meditation: https://www.cheetahhouse.org/

I left a sangha I was loosely connected to due to detrimental effects. The people and the teacher were nice, and I had no issues with the meditation. It was the social exposure in that setting that was unexpectedly triggering. There are aspects about my trauma that made it not a good fit, even though the teacher did his utmost to accommodate for it. I had put myself through a lot of suffering and desperately wanted to ease into the social aspect of it. But no. It wasn't in the cards for me. The triggers were leading as soon as I meditated in a group setting and it remained that way. It was not good for me. Clearly. I think we especially owe it to ourselves to be our own unshaming witness and to honor the internal feedback we get. Wherever we are and whatever we do. This has been a theme in my life for a long time. I aspire to be unapologetically me :-)

Much love


Luma1123
Good luck! I like Bedrick a lot. He difintively understands shame in a way that not many do.

[HannahOne]

SesneOrgan, I love how you describe it. That's part of what was not going well for me---striving. I'm so into this Ani Difranco song, Hearse, and the first line is "I don't wanna strive for nothing anymore..." Love the double negative And yes, I was so young at the time and very desperate for answers, striving very hard, so it was really devastating when it did not work for me. In the end, it was a helpful part of my process to understand more about group dynamics, power, and boundaries.

I'm so sorry to hear you experienced a sangha that was not accessible in the way you had hoped, and continue to be impressed that you've found your own way forward.

I really appreciate that you added this book to the list as it's been one of the more helpful I've read in a while. The idea of "unshaming" and also his way of communicating feels respectful, I like how he thinks. 

Here's a toast to being unapologetically you!

[Dalloway]

I love Bedrick´s work so much I even cited him and his book in one of my essays last year at school.