Using EFT ‘Tapping’ for Shamework
Note: The beginning of this article has been extracted from an article I wrote in 2023 entitled Shamework: The Most Important Work We’ll Ever Do which lives on the EFT International website. The version below has been updated and the role of EFT expounded upon.
I came up with the term shamework to describe the process of unlearning the toxic shame that has been put upon us.
Yes I said unlearning and I said put upon us. Because we learn shame through being told that something about who we are, how we behave, where we come from, what we believe / prefer, or what we look like is not good enough; that we’re disappointing or faulty somehow.
Is Shamework the Same as Shadow Work?
There’s an element of shamework which is similar to what many of us know as shadow work. Shadow work, or shadow work therapy, is a Jungian term that refers to the process of identifying and integrating the aspects of ourselves that we’re ashamed of (which Carl Jung called our ‘shadow selves’). I consider this to be an integral element of shamework for sure, but shadow work stops at the integration stage. It asks us to do the essential work of allowing those parts of ourselves that we’re ashamed of to simply exist, to be seen.
When I engage in shamework, however, I ask clients to go one step further and release the shame entirely.
Why is Shame so Hard to Talk About?
So why aren’t we all jumping at the idea of shedding our shame? Because the conditioning is deep! We have been taught since our brains were still developing that there’s something shameful about our shadow sides. Maybe we’re ashamed of something sexual; of our dark sense of humor; of our jiggly bodies. Maybe we’re ashamed of our lineage; of the place in which we grew up; of our unpopular politics. Some of us carry deep shame about abuse we incurred or addictions that haunt us. About something we did once - or something we did not do. Maybe we were rejected or abandoned as children. It would behoove us to remember that our brains develop around these imprints.
Quite simply, the nature of shame is such that we believe we don’t deserve to release it, that we deserve to be ashamed. If we weren’t taught in our formative years that we are perfect, loved, and accepted just as we are, why would we believe that now? We won’t.
There’s also this ugly little thing called meta-shame, which is the shame of having shame. One of the other things we’ve been taught about shame is that only the most depraved people in society are shameful; therefore, if have shame, we must be very bad. Meta-shame can be strong enough that it prevents us from admitting even to our ourselves that we feel shame. So, one of the reasons shame is so hard to talk about is simply because most of us aren’t cognizant that we even feel it!
Shamework is the process of understanding who taught us that we aren’t enough, when, and why. We look at how this Toxic Shame has infiltrated every aspect of our lives from how we behave to how we self-sabotage. We look the demon called Shame in the eye and we listen to its story about how we’re unlovable, immoral, selfish, or incomplete. We get very honest about the parts of ourselves which we don’t like and vow to do better and yet, we also permission ourselves to let go of the shame.
We can not like something about ourselves, be not proud of something we did, be repelled by something that was done to us, or deeply regret our behavior and simultaneously let go of the shame because Toxic Shame doesn’t serve us.
Shame is insidious. It’s a cycle by which we are told that our behavior or our character is somehow wrong so we feel shame so we behave in a way to expel our shame which hurts either ourselves or others so we feel shame so we behave in a way that expels our shame which hurts either ourselves or others so we feel shame…and so the endless cycle of shame goes.
How We Cope with Shame
In her book, Counselling Skills for Working with Shame, Christiane Sanderson outlines four ways that we process shame:
1) We avoid it which looks like denial, deflection or numbing through substances, sex, or Narcissism;
2) we withdraw by isolating ourselves from community which often looks like debilitating shyness, social anxiety, or being voiceless;
3) we attack ourselves through self-harm, self-deprecation, perfectionism, or putting ourselves in situations where we are at risk; or,
4) we attack others through rage, righteousness, or abuse.
When we do our shamework, we look at which of these coping mechanisms we’ve adopted, how it’s been sabotaging us and, importantly yet painfully, at how it profoundly hurts our loved ones. Above all, we acknowledge that our shame is not helping us be the people we aspire to be.
In his seminal book on shame, Healing the Shame That Binds You, John Bradshaw said, ‘Shame begets shame.’ Meaning, when we feel shame, we shame others. Shame is taught to us by people who haven’t confronted and cleared their own shame. This isn’t fair; in fact, it’s cruel. The shame that binds us is not our own which is why in shamework we unlearn shame as well as the means by which we’ve learned to cope with it.
Why EFT is Perfect for Clearing Shame
EFT is, I find, one of the most effective techniques to use in shamework because it allows us to rewire our neural programming thereby literally unlearning the shame so we can see reality and take action from a clear and autonomous place. The first acknowledgement of shame is usually the most difficult due to meta-shame and this step often incites an abreaction (an intense emotional experience during which we feel as if we’re reliving a memory rather than just feeling emotions about it). By using continuous tapping (tapping while speaking conversationally) while a client processes the fact that they harbor shame, I’ve found that abreactions can be halted or significantly mitigated. This goes a long way to soften the blow of meeting our shame for the first time.
We can also re-enter the memories from which shame originated but do so safely with EFT. Tapping while looking at memories from the perspective of a third party observer usually keeps our nervous system regulated and prevents our amygdala (the survival center of the brain) from going into a survival response. In this way, we’re able to observe the transactions during which another’s shame was transferred onto us or when we behaved in a way that caused us shame while noticing that our behavior in that moment was normal, human, and potentially even healthy despite being ashamed.
The inherent danger of Toxic Shame is that if it becomes internalized, meaning we lose the ability to separate the shame from our self, we stop being able to recognize shame as an emotion and it becomes our identity. We and the shame become one and the same. By neurologically regulating us while we revisit the sources of shame, EFT ‘tapping’ helps us to externalize the toxic shame and see that it is in fact not who we are. Occasionally, EFT can be used to re-program these painful memories so that we experience them the way they should have happened, not the way they did, though I caveat this with the statement that this kind of work needs to be done by someone who knows what they’re doing.
If you suspect that shame is part of your experience, I invite you to pause right now and notice how you’re reacting to what I’ve just proposed. Is there a whisper telling you that you don’t have the right to do shamework because you deserve your shame? That you shouldn’t reprogram your memories or even revisit them because they’ll remind you of the exquisite pain you felt? Take note - this is the voice of shame and is an indication that your toxic shame has been internalized. It’s also a sign that shamework is precisely the right kind of work to do to finally feel those changes so many of us desire.
By releasing our toxic shame we can start from scratch. We can’t find ourselves or learn what we truly want while we’re still shrouded in shame. This is why shamework is the most important work we’ll ever do. We aren’t actually ourselves until we drop the shame.
AN IMPORTANT NOTE: Although I talk about revisiting memories and sources of shame, keep in mind that we DO NOT need to share our shame stories in order to do shamework or clear the shame. As long as the feeling of shame is present in your nervous system while we do the work and if you can express to me how and what you’re feeling, I don’t actually need to know what happened in order to help you process the experience or release the shame. Ideally you’ll become more comfortable discussing the source of your shame as we do the work, which is a sign that the shame is becoming externalized instead of internalized but this isn’t our goal and it’s not required.