Shame, Pride, and Relational Trauma

Book excerpt: Shame, Pride, and Relational Trauma is a guide to recognizing the many ways shame and pride lie at the heart of psychotherapy with survivors of relational trauma. In these pages, readers learn how to differentiate shame and pride as emotional processes and traumatic mind/body states. They will also discover how understanding the psychodynamic and phenomenological relationships between shame, pride, and dissociation benefit psychotherapy with relational trauma. Next, readers are introduced to fifteen attitudes, principles, and concepts that guide this work from a transtheoretical perspective. Therapists will learn about ways to conceptualize and successfully navigate complex, patient-therapist shame dynamics, and apply neuroscientific findings to this challenging work. Finally, readers will discover how the concept and phenomena of pro-being pride, that is delighting in one's own and others' unique aliveness, helps patients transcend maladaptive shame and pride and experience greater unity within, with others, and with the world beyond.