Shame Counselling in Vancouver
We Know it Can Be Really Hard to Share the Things we Feel Ashamed About.
You're Not the Only One Who Feels This Way.
We’ve all felt shame before. Shame has a way of making you want to disappear: wanting to curl inward, or be swallowed up by the ground and disappear. Sometimes shame comes with a hot face, or a pit in the bottom of your stomach. It can be of the most isolating feelings of all, partly because it convinces you that there’s something fundamentally wrong with you, and that you're the only one who feels this way.
You're not, and that's what shame therapy and counselling can help with.
Connect With One of Our Counsellors Experienced in Working with Shame Therapy
What’s The Difference Between Guilt and Shame?
A question that comes up often in therapy, is “Is this guilt? Or is this shame?”
Often we think we feel guilty when we are actually ashamed, or we aren’t quite sure if they are the same thing. Even though they get tangled together all of the time, guilt and shame are actually two very different beasts!
Guilt usually carries the message, "I did something bad."
Shame usually tells us, "I am bad."
Guilt can actually be useful, as it shows us where our values are and sometimes points you toward a repair, an apology, or ways you want to might want to act differently in the future. Shame doesn't really point anywhere specifically, and often doesn’t even focus on the thing that happened, it just tells you something's wrong with who you are as a whole. Shame is also often paired with fear of what that might mean (I’ll be left, I’m useless, no one will love me) which usually isn't true, but usually feels pretty convincing.
What Shame Can Sound Like
“If people really knew me, they wouldn't like what they saw”
Replaying things I said or did years ago and still cringing
Having a hard time accepting compliments or kindness. I don't fully believe I deserve it (even when I know, logically, that I do)
I need to hide parts of myself (even from people close to me), to be liked
“I'm too much”, or “I’m not enough”, depending on the day
I need to give to others, or take care of others in order to feel worthy of love
Getting stuck in a shame spiral I can't seem to think my way out of
Where Shame Often Shows Up
Like many intense feelings, shame can show up both around specific areas, or as a general feeling of unworthiness or feeling small. For some, shame shows up solidly centred on in body shame, appearance or weight. For many, shame is loudest when it comes to sexual experiences or conversations and parts of our identity related to sex. Shame is also almost always shows up alongside trauma that was never spoken about out loud and a lot of people have shame around vulnerability, emotions, or needing help in the first place (essentially the belief that struggling at all means something's wrong with you). It can also live in parenting, money, or the unspoken rules a family or culture decided were acceptable to feel or want.
Shame researcher Brene Brown likes to remind us that all shame thrives in silence, secrecy and isolation. Wherever shame shows up for you in your life, it tends to lose some of its grip once it's actually said out loud and shared.
How Counselling for Shame Can Help
Shame is very rarely built alone; in fact shame is typically is born from our relationships with others (not just individuals, but also society at large). Shame can be a product of a family with strict, unspoken rules about who you were supposed to be, a culture or religion with clear ideas about what was shameful, being punished for having needs, or being told, directly or not, that some part of you was too much. For many, shame is also tied to identity itself, queerness, race, disability, neurodivergence, in a world that hasn't always made space for who they actually are.
Shame is NOT a reliable indicator that something is actually wrong with you. It just meand that somewhere along the line, you learned to believe something that isn't true.
You might even know that already, but it still take some time to unlearn.
If you’ve been carrying shame alone, counselling can be a place to share some of this weight.
In therapy, you can begin to separate what actually happened from the story shame built on top of it, gently, and at a pace that doesn't ask you to reopen everything at once. Maybe you've never actually said shared how you feel inside out loud to anyone before, not to a partner, a friend, anyone. As shame tends to grow best in secrecy, shame can convince you that staying quiet is the safer option, even though it's usually the opposite. If you've been carrying this on your own for a while, counselling isn't about someone telling you to just think differently. It's about being met and understood by someone who won't flinch, who won’t reinforce that you’re too much, or broken, so the shame can start losing some of the power that silence gave it.
Several of our counsellors also bring EMDR into this work, since shame often lives in the body, or is tied to specific memories similarly to trauma. Shame is also the flip side of the coin to self-worth and self esteem, and can benefit from a variety of different approaches such as parts work, and attachment-focused therapy, particulary when it shows up most in your close relationships.
Frequently Asked Questions About Counselling and Therapy for Shame
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Reducing shame usually starts with naming it out loud to someone, whether you think of it as shame therapy or just counselling, which is all about just naming how you feel.
From there, we help you understand where your shame originally came from and slowly begin build a different relationship with it. Shame work is both an internal job, and also focuses on how you can relate differently to and receive from others. -
Yes, shame is closely tied to self esteem, worth, and ones’ sense of self. Ongoing shame often erodes self-worth over time, and working on one tends to move the other too.
One of shames biggest markers is the impulse to hide, be small or defer to others. Building a solid sense of self through therapy (and of course, through working with shame), can support you in being more present and taking up more space in your own life. -
Very common, and a little ironic, Shame about being in therapy, or being seen, or even sharing why you came to counselling in the first place is often one of the first things that come up. We encourage you to share these feelings with your counsellor as soon as you feel comfortable enough to name it. We welcome and completely understand your feelings of embarrassment or shame we well. worth talking about!
She/Her
Registered Clinical Counsellor
“To heal you have to get to the root of the wound and kiss it all the way up”
- rupi kaur
Specializes In:
Self-awareness
Childhood trauma
BIPOC experiences
Self-esteem and self-worth
Relationship challenges
Attachment wounds
Neurodivergence
Family dynamics
Personal growth
Burnout
Also Loves Supporting:
Creatives
Educators
Older adults
Young adults
Helping professions
People who have lived outside Canada