The Start of the Healing Process

I had an experience the other day with one of my students left me emotionally exhausted but it taught me so much about healing and the start of that process. 

Healing is something that happens throughout the therapeutic relationship as you develop rapport. Healing occurs when the client is comfortable sharing information they have withheld because of whatever barrier held them back before. Healing is not something that happens overnight. Healing involves people, it is not a individualistic thing for the most part. 

I was working with one of my students who was tough. He had a hard egg shell you could say and breaking his egg shell to where he could smile at you was difficult. A lot of times, people will look at these people and say that they are hopeless because they will never open up and continue to have behavior problems. The first couple of sessions was just getting the basic of information shared and then having to calm him down because he thought therapy was stupid. 

I'm sure most therapists have had this experience happen. The defensiveness from a client who says "I want to leave". "This is dumb". "I'm not mental". "Therapy is for crazy people and I'm not crazy". He just was under the assumption that therapy was something that was a waste of time. 

Long story short, I started to get him to respond to my questions and even have eye contact. 

A couple of sessions in our therapy, we were doing play therapy and he looked and me and told that he had lied  in an assessment . He then disclosed some information from his past that explained his defensiveness. This information was detailed information from a previous incident in his life that was difficult to hear and for him to say. 

This moment is critical in therapy. How do you respond when someone shares information they have withheld due to shame?

This moment is so important to therapy because this is when healing starts. First of all, to share private information that has been blocked by shame, it must mean that they realize there is a trustworthy source of help. 

Then, this moment, they let someone else try to release some of their pain/shame/ weight on their shoulders by getting out of their system. 

Healing comes from this sharing of their burden. I am a Brene Brown lover and she is the shame guru of social work. Her research covers over courage, connection, vulnerability and shame.When talking about why I love her to people who don't know about her research, it sounds weird. What does she research about? "She talks about shame". That gets some weird looks from most people. 

Yet, Brene Brown talks about this moment in her research consistently. "Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen. Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen. ". Dr. Brene Brown. 

This initial step of sharing our story and opening up is the courage that leads us to be vulnerable despite of fear. 

After this step of sharing the shame with a trusted person, the real work of therapy beings of processing and repairing until what is broken grows back or becomes something new. 

If you really want to dive in deep in this messy world of healing and shame, read Brene Brown. She will open up your eyes to how healing works when it comes to combating shame.