The Secure Start® Podcast
In the same way that a secure base is the springboard for the growth of the child, knowledge of past endeavours and lessons learnt are the springboard for growth in current and future endeavours.
If we do not revisit the lessons of the past we are doomed to relearning them over and over again, with the result that we may never really achieve a greater potential.
In keeping with the idea we are encouraged to be the person we wished we knew when we were starting out, it is my vision for the podcast that it is a place where those who work in child protection and out-of-home care can access what is/was already known, spring-boarding them to even greater insights.
The Secure Start® Podcast
#5 Shame Containment Theory: A Revolutionary Approach, with Lisa Etherson
Shame isn't just a fleeting emotion—it's a complex process that profoundly shapes our lives from childhood through adulthood. In this eye-opening conversation, psychosexual therapist and PhD researcher Lisa Etherson introduces her groundbreaking Shame Containment Theory, revealing how our earliest attachment experiences create enduring sensitivities that influence everything from our relationships to our work choices.
Drawing from both clinical experience and rigorous research, Lisa explains how shame functions as part of our attachment system, designed to keep us connected to others and functioning in society. She breaks down the five components of her theory: attachment injuries, shame response, contained shame (including shame scripts), shame containment strategies, and uncontained shame. This framework helps us understand why seemingly innocuous childhood experiences—like a distracted parent or an unavailable caregiver—can create lasting patterns that we carry into adulthood.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn when examining Netflix's controversial series "Adolescence," exploring how intergenerational shame passes from fathers to sons, and how violence often serves as a re-containment strategy when masculinity itself becomes a source of shame. Lisa challenges the notion that external factors like social media are the primary drivers of concerning behavior in young people, suggesting instead that we need to look more deeply at attachment and shame.
Whether you're a mental health professional, parent, or someone curious about your own patterns, this episode offers transformative insights into changing your relationship with shame. Lisa's perspective helps us see that shame isn't something to eliminate but to understand—a necessary emotion that, when properly contained, allows us to live connected, authentic lives.
Connect with Lisa through LinkedIn or explore her recently published academic article on Shame Containment Theory. Her children's book "Jake and His Shame Armor" will be available this summer, offering a tool for adults to help children understand and navigate shame in healthy ways.
Lisa is a qualified psychosexual therapist with over a decade of experience in private practice. Currently, she is also a PhD researcher. Her research focuses on developmental shame, and compulsive sexual behaviour in adult men, leading to the development of her innovative Shame Containment Theory (SCT). Her clinical work and research have cultivated a strong interest in the impact of childhood experiences on adult behaviour. Lisa is the author of Jake and his Shame Armour, a children’s book about shame.
You can find our more about Lisa's work here.
You can connect with Lisa on LinkedIn here.
Disclaimer
Information reported by guests of this podcast is assumed to be accurate as stated. Podcast owner Colby Pearce is not responsible for any error of facts presented by podcast guests. In addition, unless otherwise specified, opinions expressed by guests of this podcast may not reflect those of the podcast owner, Colby Pearce.
Welcome to the Secure Start podcast.
Lisa:We can feel like we're going to be annihilated and destroyed. So it is literally the most unpleasant human experience I think that we can have, and I went into the literature to see what other people were saying about this and again I couldn't really find anything in the literature either.
Lisa:People were just talking about shame, but what they weren't doing was describing that actually, shame is a process, but for Jamie's dad to be a better parent, he would have to have looked at his own stuff, and that's a very, very difficult thing to do. He would have to have looked at his relationship with his dad, what his attachment injuries were, where his contained shame is what? What does his contained shame tell him about? About him? So it's so much easier to say well, actually, everything was fine for me.
Lisa:It's this thing over here, it's this phone device, it's this app. It's what people are watching. My kids are watching. That's really the problem. When it's not, it's actually our stuff and it's what we are bringing into our dynamics with our children. But that's a very hard, it's a very big ask to ask people to do that, even though I think we should.
Colby:So welcome to the Secure Start podcast. I'm Colby Pierce, and joining me for this episode is a thinker, researcher and practitioner in the nuanced area shame. Before I introduce my guests, I'd just like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land that I'm meeting on, the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains, and acknowledge the continuing connection that the living Kaurna people feel to land, waters, culture and community. I'd also like to pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging. Now. My guest this episode is Lisa Etherson. Lisa is a qualified psychosexual therapist with over a decade of experience in private practice. Currently, she's also a PhD researcher. Her research focuses on developmental shame and compulsive sexual behaviour in adult men, leading to the development of her innovative theory shame containment theory. Her clinical work and research have cultivated a strong interest in the impact of childhood experiences on adult behaviour. Lisa is the author of Jake and his Shame Armor, a children's book on shame. Welcome, Lisa.
Lisa:Thank you very much, Corby. Thank you for having me.
Colby:You're welcome and I just want to acknowledge that, whilst I'm here in Australia and it's a nice sunny afternoon for me it is sunny there, as we can tell from the look over your shoulder, but it's. It is not the same time of the day and I do wonder 6 am.
Lisa:I just after 6 am and how, how, yeah I'm.
Colby:I'm jealous of both early risers and uh and those who have the stamina to stay up late at night. I think I can. I could get so much more work done, but I am neither an early riser nor am I energetic much past 8.30 at night time.
Lisa:Oh yeah, I was there with night time, but I'm a very early riser, so I've been up and about since 5.30 this morning, and it's not because of training. You know, they say that it's that's the best thing to do, isn't it? Get up early and then you'll be super productive. It just happens. My body clock says right, okay, this is the time that we're getting up, but my brain switches off by about 4 pm yeah, I, mine, mine switches off a little bit later than that, um, but it definitely.
Colby:I can't work in the evening, um, and I can't record podcasts in the evening because my brain has gone to sleep. And I did once try to get up at five o'clock and work and at last. I remember it lasting about four days before I became insufferable so during the day. So so back back to getting up sometime later. In fact, round about 6, 6.30 is good for me. Anyway, enough of all that. I heard about you from Kath Nibbs and I heard about your shame containment theory whilst actually recording a podcast with her about three weeks ago. So I'm really pleased that you agreed to come on. I've given a little bit of an opening spiel about you. Is there anything that you would add that describes the work that you do?
Lisa:I don't think there was necessarily anything more I would add, but I think perhaps there's something quite important when it comes to being a researcher is being a term that I've come across since doing my PhD is a pracademic.
Colby:A pracademic, wow yeah.
Lisa:So a pracademic is somebody who is in practice, who's also in academia, so that you know bridging that gap, and for me that's super important because, often.
Lisa:You know, I've been doing my phd for seven years now. It's part-time, um, so I've been spending a lot of time in around academic work and reading research and I've I can really see the difference between people who are pure academics and people who actually do do the work that the research is supposed to be applied on, and that, for me, is a real key. I think it's it's so important and I would love to have more um practitioners, in whatever fields you are, you are in to do the research, because it just has such more depth.
Lisa:Yes, because you know, whatever it is that you're doing, has to apply to the work that you're trying to achieve with whoever it is that you're working with.
Colby:Yeah, I'm quite envious of practitioners who do get to do research. I started my career doing primarily research but as I was working through the process of getting my qualifications in clinical psychology, I loved doing research. It was some of the best work years of my life. But, yeah, I often turn my mind to practice expertise and titled expertise, and often titled expertise goes with academic appointment, and I think you're right. I think that practitioners bring a different kind of knowledge to the problems that we're seeking to address in our work, that we're seeking to address in our work. I'm also mindful of the so-called 10,000-hour theory. Have you heard of the 10,000,? Yeah, it takes 10,000 years, 10,000 years, 10,000 hours to develop expertise in something.
Colby:And I think, yeah, and I think you know, in practice I've been practising for 30 years. So once with a colleague, patrick Tomlinson, we kind of turned my mind to how many hours of direct client contact that might encapsulate, and it was a lot more than 10,000. Yeah, so I think practitioner expertise is very important and, yeah, and if you're lucky enough or fortunate enough to be able to go back into academia and research, then I think that that's doubly important and beneficial.
Lisa:I think practitioners are doing their own research anyway. It's almost like ethnographic research, isn't it? You are in it, you are involved.
Lisa:And all this PhD is doing really, for me at least, is making it slightly more official. So I can say well, actually I have done the research, I have systematically researched this thing that I've been talking about. That I've known for a long time and I think that's also was if people have listened to Kath's podcast. I think that also was if people have listened to Kath's podcast. I think that was Kath's motivation as well. She knew all this stuff way before her PhD ever came along. But you just kind of need to get that rubber stamp to say we have researched this properly.
Colby:And you've obviously listened to the podcast and my response to her was that I think of research as the scientific inquiry into things that we already believe to be true, and not always, but a lot of the time. It is that and you're right Particularly, practice over a long career is a fertile ground to develop a lot of knowledge and wisdom in your area of endeavor, at least you know, I believe so, and I think that we need to hear more from experienced and expert practitioners, and that's really part of the reason why I started doing this podcast. A large part of the reason is because I wanted to provide a forum for expert practitioners people who've worked in a field of endeavor for years and years, if not decades and decades to be able to come on and share what they've learned through their, through their work yeah but no, you know I you'll have to tell me off if I talk too much.
Colby:Actually, just give me a look. But you can't kick me under the table, of course You're on the other side of the world.
Lisa:That would be impressive. Yeah.
Colby:So you've come on to talk about shame and I guess my first question is what drew you to the work, to looking into shame, to the work?
Lisa:to looking into shame. I think this is, um I don't think my experience is particularly unique um to me as to why I became interested, because it was my own experience, which is often the way something happens to us, and I think, oh goodness, okay, I really need to take notice of this which is basically what happened so about maybe 10, 11, 12 years ago I can't quite remember now. Um, maybe slightly more. I had been qualified as a psychosexual therapist for about a year, and the thing that's really quite interesting about shame is it's generally missed in our um, in our training as a, as any sort of counselor, psychotherapist, um, I believe, social workers too I'm busy training social workers in shame containment theory at the moment in the uk um, it's been notoriously missed from the conversation.
Lisa:Loads of things about anxiety, the conversations around trauma are fantastic, but there's just very, very little on on shame. Um, and I had an event that happened to me, what I now call uncontained shame, an uncontained shame event which is where all of my shame that I'd managed to successfully keep inside me and contain and not let necessary people see, came out in one moment, and that moment was when I received a letter to say I was being investigated for something, um, from a professional capacity for for work. Uncontained shame is a very acute experience, um, it's what a lot of people define as shame.
Lisa:If you look at the literature, when people are talking about shame, they're talking about about this, um, and it's a horrendous experience and it's the thing that we want to avoid, but it can make us feel um suicidal it can feel we go into various different um places with our nervous system either panic, shut down, freeze, all of all of these different things can happen quite simultaneously, so we're kind of bouncing up and around our our nervous system, um we can feel like we're going to be annihilated and destroyed.
Lisa:So it is literally the most unpleasant human experience I think that we we can have, and this is the thing to me, um, so you have a very acute experience of that. Well, I did had a very cute experience of that for about um maybe 24 to 48 hours, and then um a more chronic experience of it, all in all for about two weeks until I received another letter to say the investigation had been completed, everything was fine, it was a mistake, all was good, and it was that moment that I felt like I was sort of let off the hook. I couldn't let myself off the hook because I was waiting to find out what my fate was going to be in the hands of these unknown people.
Colby:The regulators yeah.
Lisa:Yeah, it was just a horrendous experience, but it completely changed my life, because what I was able to do from that experience was name shame for the first time and I was 40 at this point and I'd never been able to name shame. And another couple of things happened beyond that, which was the feeling that I had of uncontained shame was familiar to me. I'd had it before, not to the extent that I had it then and touch what I've never had it to that extent since that was. That was a very unique experience, but I could remember feeling very similar to that in childhood, as far back as my memory would. My explicit memory was enabling me to to go um. But the thing that was more interesting for me was I recognized that I had set up my whole life um with what I now call shame containment strategies. So shame containment strategies are the things that we do think, feel, believe, behaviors, all sorts of things mixed up in there that prevent us from having these moments of uncontained shame. So that was the relationships that I was having, how I was in relationships, the work that I was doing and how I applied myself to work. So having work as a shame containment strategy, the work that I was doing and how I applied myself to work. So, having worked as a shame containment strategy and then suddenly something with that happened, was utterly devastating and what I wanted to do was work on the shame containment strategies because I recognised I didn't have the language, I didn't use that language at that particular point in time. That's come from the theory, but they were the things that I wanted to work on because they were starting to get in the way.
Lisa:I recognized that I wouldn't really take risks, I wouldn't put myself out there, I would keep myself very closed in because of the vulnerability of if I was to be attacked, if I was to be seen, my own contained shame may present itself, um, and so I tried a few therapists over here in in the uk. Um, couldn't find anybody to help, couldn't find anyone who really fully understood what it was that I was talking about, um. So then, um, as as part of all of this, I was starting to recognize the same thing in my, my clients, the people that I was working with in psychosexual therapy, um, they were describing these moments of uncontained shame. I work with German, the majority of people that I work with are men um, and they were describing moments when maybe they'd been caught because their porn history had been discovered by a partner or something along those lines, and they would describe exactly the same feelings as what I had when I was also uncontained, even though the circumstances were completely different and also recognising that they also had their own shame containment strategies. But, like I said, I still didn't necessarily have the full language of that at the time and I went into the literature to see what other people were saying about this and again, I couldn't really find anything in the literature either.
Lisa:People were just talking about shame, but what they weren't doing was describing that actually that shame is a process and we have different parts and elements of shame. They were just talking about, um, they were just you know name shame, but they were talking about different things, which was very, very confusing. So I couldn't find anything there, um. So then I decided that actually what I needed to do then was to really understand this thing, because clearly there was a gap, and not only was I experiencing it, but other people around me were also experiencing it, and we're starting to see it and and just my family and and friends. It's almost one of those things that, once you see it once you know it. You can't unsee it, you just see it everywhere.
Lisa:Um. So then I embarked on a PhD, and the rest is history, I suppose. Um, and having to figure out my own stuff, um, without really the aid of um therapy.
Lisa:Not because I'm reluctant to be in therapy, quite the opposite I just haven't been able to find anyone who could actually really understand what it was that I was trying to explain and what it was that I needed to work through, um, so I've had to sort of do that my own self by reading the literature and apply and being very reflective and okay, yeah, I understand that actually, that these are the things that were happening to me and shifting that. So what I've been able to do, um, in amongst all of that has completely changed my relationship with shame and that's one of my biggest aims is to help people to change their relationship with shame.
Lisa:It's not about curing shame or letting go of shame, which is often what we see, that the narratives that we have around shame time is a bad thing it's shame is a bad thing and it's it's not shame's a very good thing. We absolutely need shame. It's a very, very feeling, it's a very bad experience, and they are two completely different things yeah, yeah.
Colby:So listening to you, I was thinking that you've developed shame containment theory and I'll ask you a little bit more about the various components of the theory in a moment. But you develop from your own experience and observations of others and again I'd like to ask you what you have found has been the reception for a theory that has been generated in that way. I mean, I've done something quite similar in my own work and just getting back to our earlier comments about research, I think that there's probably a lot of theories that are developed through the developer having their own personal experience, uh, their observations of others and their um exploration of the relevant literature and their own exploration more generally, yeah, and. And then the research comes um, if people are fortunate enough to do the PhDs and so forth, the research then comes that those theories that hang around are supported by that. But just before I get you to describe shame containment theory, and while I remember to ask, what have you found to be the way in which shame containment theory has been received?
Lisa:It's been overwhelmingly positive. And the thing that's really quite interesting because I've trained a lot of therapists and different practitioners in shame containment theory now and it's very new still yeah, it was published, which was fantastic peer-reviewed art journal. It went into attachment, which was, you know, a really decent um publication, which I'm very, very pleased about, in December 2023, and that was almost like um. That was the seal of approval that I needed to say okay, this is an actual thing, this is a thing. Now, this is, this is an entity in its own right. So it was a very big moment for me to get that paper published, that article. And, yeah, I've since trained a lot of people since then in shame containment theory and the thing that's really interesting is that the feedback from more experienced practitioners is generally a lot more enthusiastic. I don't know if enthusiastic, it's just been amazing. And I think one of the reasons is it's quite rare Well, it's not often that you get a theory where you think, oh, my goodness, that makes sense and I can use it.
Lisa:You can actually apply it directly to the people that I am working with, and I think, because that doesn't happen very often. Um, that's why the the more seasoned um practitioners, if you like, are taking it on board so readily, whereas the people who are maybe newly qualified are the people who are still in training. Think oh god yeah that's great, that makes a lot of sense, but they don't know any difference, they they just think that this is something that you do.
Colby:Yeah, it's just just another tool, whereas the older practice older by but I mean more experienced practitioners are like oh wow, yeah, that's, that's really something and I recall reading in in some of your material that, um, when you looked at the literature, you you did find that people talked about particular aspects of shame. You referred to Freud and Freud kind of dispensing with shame in favour of guilt, and you talked about Brene Brown and how she has managed shame. But it struck me that the literature talked about shame as a discrete construct, and I think that's the difference, isn't it and you've already mentioned it that that your shame containment theory is about shame as a process and that there are different. You know it has different sides and aspects to it. I wonder if, if you can give us a bit of a synopsis of shame.
Lisa:So from my perspective of shame containment theory, there's five components and the first component is attachment, injuries and um. There was just something I was wanting to mention. Really Obviously, your podcast is Secure Start and you know you think about attachment and you think about child experiences. So why is an adult practitioner on your podcast? And it's because for me, everything comes from that place, it comes from attachment, it comes from childhood experiences. So you know, you were talking to new um, to kath, and I just think, well, um, I'm the person who well, hopefully kath presents people from getting to me.
Lisa:But if, if there isn't people like kath around, then the other people who, who I do get to, to see, we can't separate into moments in time, can we? Childhood and adulthood? They're so entwined, they're still us. It's still us that's actually had these experiences. Yes, and that's one of the reasons why I spend so much time thinking about childhood when I'm with my clients is these are the reasons. You know, if you're looking for answers, those answers are in your experiences, in those moments of being a child. So the first part of um I refer to them.
Lisa:Sorry, I was just gonna say I refer to them as enduring sensitivities enduring sensitivities enduring oh, enduring yeah yeah yeah, that's, that's a, that's a nice way to put it. So we have these childhood experiences where we feel a disconnect in our attachment to our significant others, whether that be parents, caregivers, whoever it is, whoever those attachment figures are, and these attachment injuries can be very, very subtle.
Lisa:I think a lot of people think when we're talking about childhood experiences, we're talking about the capital T traumas the big events, and when I'm talking about attachment, injuries and a sense of disconnect, I'm talking about unavailability, uninterest, parents being distracted. Again, kath was talking about parents on their phone.
Colby:I know it was gave me chills when she talked about the three-part family, the mother the parent, the child and the boss and it's so easy to create.
Lisa:This isn't about blame. It's just so easy to create these attachment injuries without us even realising that this is what it?
Lisa:is that we're doing with the children that we are in care of um? So we have attachment injuries and shame is a response to those attachment injuries. So we see shame as part of our attachment system, which is why it's vital. So the idea of letting go and healing shame's like no, no, no, because this is such an important part of us being able to survive. But what shame will do is as a response to these attachment injuries is it will get the child to modify their behaviour so that the parent or the caregiver will want to reconnect back up with that child, so that the child looks attractive and valuable again, because we have a sense of, as you'll know, children are narcissistic. I don't mean it as in personality disorder narcissistic but, the world has to revolve around them.
Lisa:So if there's a disconnect, the child will assume that it's something that they have have done, so therefore, they can modify their behavior to undo what it is. So there's a theorist called helen block lewis. She calls that writing behavior. So shame, it really propels us into a position to write our behaviour, and how it's going to do that is by telling us that we are bad. So you know that position of bad childhood parents. It's shame as a mechanism that puts us in that position so that we can then rescue ourselves from that position. From there we have. So from the shame response, we have shame script.
Lisa:So this is part of the thing that I call contained shame. So contained shame is um. We can sometimes call this trait shame as well. So this is starting to become our identity, who we think we are. So if we have enough attachment injuries and if you think about how innocent an attachment injury can be from being distracted or not available, a child can have 10 15 attachment injuries in a day and they're having shame responses to each of those attachment injuries. That's a lot of shame response, um. So contained shame is um. That can be um confused with what people are talking about with self-esteem or self-worth. So these shame scripts I'm bad, I'm not good enough, I'm useless, whatever it is that actually that shame response is telling us that we have to change, because we generally don't have conversations around shame.
Lisa:We don't necessarily have adults around to help us with understanding what it is that's actually happening and why we have these feelings of of this um, internalized shame, if you like. Um that it stays stuck, it's got nowhere to go, can't really be expressed, because if anyone was to see it, we're already in a place of vulnerability. If anyone was to see that we are bad, that we're no good, that we're um, we're unlovable, worthless, whatever it is, then we're definitely going to be abandoned. So shame is all about preventing us from being abandoned. That's why it's part of our attachment system, um, so we can't allow anyone to see this contained shame. So what we do is, um, we create shame containment strategies, and they are the things that help us to prevent the contained shame from becoming uncontained and being seen.
Lisa:So our shame containment strategies are, as I was saying before, behaviors. It can be thoughts, it can be attitudes, beliefs, it can be all sorts of different things, and we absolutely need shame containment strategies. We all need them as humans, because shame is about helping us to be pro-social. It's how we function in society. So the example that I often use is a really good, helpful shame containment strategy is politeness and, as a British person, we're very open to our politeness and it's basically just a shame containment strategy because it helps us. It allows us to function and not be ousted from the group and be seen in a positive way and not be rejected. So we all need shame containment strategies. The difficulty, as I was saying at the beginning, with my experience is when our shame containment strategies become life limiting rather than life enhancing. So being polite is a life enhancing shame containment strategy. Um, the uncontained shame that is that very acute, extremely unpleasant, very, very painful experience of shame and every time we have an attachment injury, we tend to move into a state of uncontained shame.
Lisa:It's a trauma response, basically um, and that's the thing that we're really trying to avoid. So I I envision contained shame and uncontained shame. Is it like a jack-in-the-box? So we have our contained shame is held down by this lid, the lid of the shame containment strategies. Something happens with that um lid. Either the shame containment strategies, something happens with that lid. Either the shame containment strategy fails or we just didn't put one in place because we didn't expect this thing to happen. Uncontained shame tends to erupt as a surprise, as a shocker thing that we were not expecting at all.
Lisa:So the lid comes up, uncontained shame will literally explode out if it's a big enough um, uncontained shame experience. And then we need something to put the lid back on, and they are what I call re-containment strategies, which are very similar to shame containment strategies, but we employ them depending on whether we're trying to keep the lid on or whether the need the lid needs to be put back on, if that makes sense.
Colby:Keep it on and put it back on. Yeah.
Lisa:Yeah. So with re-containment strategies they can either become very life-limiting or they can be life-enhancing. So my therapeutic work, what I do with clients now, is to address all of these different aspects of shame and see it as a process a linear process. So someone arrives for me and to me in therapy. It might be that they're recognized well again. They wouldn't have this language at this point, that there might be something going on for them. A shame containment strategy which is starting to become life limiting yeah they've been avoiding relationships.
Lisa:They've been using a lot of porn um to avoid the vulnerability of intimacy, because that's much safer.
Lisa:But that strategy is starting to get in the way and they want to do something different for example or it could be, as I was saying before, someone's been caught, their their partner isn't very happy with their porn history or something along those lines. They're in a state of uncontained shame at that point and the therapy is used then to recontain that shame. So people present it all different parts within that process and it's really not linear, but there was always a starting point and that starting point is always attachment, injuries from childhood. So that, yeah, in a nutshell, that's a very, very quick Thank you.
Colby:And it sounds insight-oriented, because I think I've either read somewhere or you've said that. I think you are both. You've said it's. I wonder if therapy is about changing your relationship with shame.
Lisa:Yeah, absolutely.
Colby:Yeah, and the thought that I was having as well was as you were describing it was. You know what we all have shame. Shame is a process. We we all have shame containment strategies and they're functional. You're saying, until they're not. And I was trying to imagine. I was trying to imagine in which a person might seek a psychotherapeutic support in relation to their experiences and you were saying they don't necessarily see it as shame and use that language. But what I'm hearing you say is that it often, from your point of view, has its basis in uncontained shame which stems from early attachment injuries and shame containment strategies going awry. I guess, so to speak. Yeah, and therapy is part of the um recontainment process, um, but left to their own devices. What, what, what happens for people as um, as part of trying to recontain their shame? What sort of things occur?
Lisa:well, well it. It's interesting, um, because I know that, um, you, you mentioned adolescence, um, with the conversation that you're having with kathena. I believe that was maybe something that you and I were going to talk about today, because that's a brilliant example of of that.
Colby:Yeah, um, I was leading there you know what I say when I say to kids. I say to kids you're supposed to say to me get out of my head, colby, it's rude to be in there. You know like, and I'm feeling like saying what are you doing? Read in my mind, we're supposed to be doing a podcast. Sorry, go on. Yes, yes, I was very. I was leading that way towards. Yeah, I wanted to ask you about adolescence and what we saw happen in that show.
Lisa:And I am going to put the caveat in that you know it is an outlier with how all of that experience was sort of played out. But one of the things that was amazing for me was I literally got to I was just watching Shame Cont, shame containment theory throughout the whole series, particularly in episode three, which is when Jamie was talking to the psychologist and you get to really understand what it was that was actually happening and why things happened and there's been some amazing research done by a guy called James Gilligan over in the US and he was a psychiatrist and he was asked a lot of years ago now I believe he was asked to go into a prison that had the highest mortality rate of inmates.
Lisa:So basically, inmates were murdering each other and and um it was a problem and they they couldn't figure out why there was so much violence in this particular prison. So james was sent in to find out what was going on and he did some amazing research from there and what he discovered was, um that actually what was happening was people's shame was being triggered. Um, I don't actually like the word triggered, but I've said it um, so people were becoming uncontained, and how they were becoming uncontained.
Lisa:And again this. This wasn't james language. This is my interpreting his research in the language that I use, but the the language that he did use was about being dissed. It was about being disrespected. So if you think about what what being disrespected means is that you have no respect.
Lisa:Therefore, you have no value so when people are perceived by their peers to have no value, they move into a state of uncontained shame. And, um, what was happening was, as so someone was being dissed, um, and the person who was, who was being, just had to assert their respect back, which is a re-containment strategy. They were trying to re-contain that sense of uncontained shame that they were feeling, and how they were doing that was through extreme violence, through murder, and this is kind of what we were seeing with Jamie in the television programme. Very, very fictional, it doesn't happen very often, strangely enough, I fictional, it doesn't happen very often, strangely enough, I'm saying it doesn't happen very often.
Lisa:It did actually happen somewhere very local to me, about 25 miles away from where I live, about two years ago, a young 15-year-old girl was murdered by her partner, who was 17. And there's so many similarities with what was displayed in the tv program. So, again, it's about the rejections, about the disrespect, it's about the all of that shame coming out that I am not okay. I need to do something with this feeling, because that feeling is intolerable. And, um, there's something similar happens as, as we understand it, in gang violence, for example.
Colby:It's a.
Lisa:Thing of disrespect. So really it's about uncontained shame and this is one of the reasons why, for me, uncontained shame needs to be looked at, because those re-containing strategies that we have, they are very, very life-limiting for everyone for the victim, for the person who actually doesn't have any other ways of re-containing that shame. I also have another friend and colleague at the moment, who's doing her phd?
Lisa:on shame and violence and men and aggression, and she's finding something very, very similar within her research as well. So it's a it's, it's a really important thing. And yeah, it was a fictional program and you know it doesn't happen all that often in the way that it was described, but equally, you were seeing it playing out yeah, what did you notice?
Colby:what did you notice?
Lisa:no, I noticed um that uh for me that the the big thing wasn't necessarily um the social media and the um the insult. That isn't necessarily how incels operate, that you know his cast said of course he was celibate. He was the 13 year old kid. You know he's not voluntary celibate, he's not deciding that you know, this is the lifestyle for him or this is the gang that he's going to be part of. That really wasn't the thing. It was more about his relationship with his dad and it was about his.
Lisa:It was about his dad's relationship with his dad, and you just got these little snippets of this stuff coming through about his dad's idea of masculinity and how, for him in his childhood, if he deviated from that idea then he was. He was severely punished, he was beaten, and he didn't want to do the same thing to his child, but that's his shame. His shame was still presenting itself. So when Jamie wasn't very good at football, it was his dad's shame that was coming up. It wasn't Jamie's, it was his dad's, and his dad was responding to Jamie in that particular way. I hope there's no spoilers here.
Colby:people haven't watched the program yeah, spoiler alert before, but anyway, go, go ahead um, yeah, so it was.
Lisa:It was that relationship and there was just there was these real key statements. Um, so you know it was about when Jamie was describing to the psychologist how his dad had turned away when he was playing football. You know, you turn your face away. You can't stand. It's a sign of disgust and contempt to turn the face away and that's very uncontaining for a child to have that happen. And in episode four, jamie's dad actually confirms that that actually was the case. It wasn't Jamie just imagining that his dad was ashamed of him. His dad actually was ashamed of him, and so it was more along those lines. That was the thing that really piqued my interest, was that dynamic. And on social media.
Lisa:everyone was focusing on the social media stuff and I'm like, no, there was so much to this.
Colby:And dad was ashamed of himself as well. Yeah, for producing a son in this way.
Lisa:Yeah, because of his history, because of the attachment injuries that he had experienced from his dad. So really what we're seeing is that intergenerational trauma, but that also looks very ordinary. So it's part of this idea that intergenerational trauma or trauma isn't necessarily these big events, it's these moments of disconnect are the thing that for me is key.
Colby:Yeah, the issue in the show was of recontainment strategies was partly depicted in the way in which Dad in the's, the way in which Dad in the show behaved and how he was described by his son in terms of the shed yeah, exactly.
Lisa:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you think about that. So, dad, there was just this underlying aggression from Dad. So I know the destroying of the shed, or you saw him, you know, being very angry when he was provoked by the kids when he was outside of the DIY store. There was lots of aggression there, you know. And there was another key moment when he was talking to his wife, when his wife said to him but Jamie's always had a temper, but so have you. So there's just all of these little hints of their recontainment strategy is as men as males within that family was violence or aggression at least?
Lisa:not necessarily, but certainly aggression. So when jamie's being dissed by his dad, I still see that as disrespect, not being allowed to be who you are not allowed to be your authentic self.
Lisa:the idea of having to be who you are, not allowed to be your authentic self, the idea of having to be something else, is quite disrespectful to you, but also the shame of him being ashamed of his son and that uncontained shame that you would feel from that, as well as that being an attachment injury, but then that being reinforced by the bullying and the things that were actually happening online. And one of the things that I'm very concerned about is when we focus on things like porn is a big thing, um, at the moment, obviously with young people, as it should be and social media. If we just focus on those things, we're missing all of the stuff that's going on underneath, which are things like um, how are we parenting? How are we creating, um, good attachments, how are we repairing attachments when that?
Lisa:sense of disconnect is broken. It's not necessarily the social media stuff that's going on that might reinforce things, but that's not necessarily the social media stuff that's going on that might reinforce things, but that's not necessarily the genesis of where these things are happening.
Colby:And I just it really concerns me that we're really missing a trick if we just focus on these things external to us they're the, they're easy targets, um, and and they're uh, and we can reassure ourselves that we think we know what's going on, without really turning our mind to what is really going on for a young person who reacts in this way to the provocation.
Lisa:Yeah, and it's really difficult, isn't it? I think you're absolutely right. So if we just go back to adolescence, and just because it's a fictional story that everybody got to witness or the people who've watched it have witnessed this- and, by the way, I was having the thought about spoilers and I was thinking maybe we should get Netflix to sponsor this episode.
Colby:It's so rare that we have a well.
Lisa:I don't know. I think it's so rare that we have a well. I don't know. I think it's a really good idea. It's. It's so rare that you, that we've had something that's generated so much conversation, and I think that's a brilliant thing that it that it did there's there's lots of things about it that were problematic, but the fact that it has created conversations is is amazing but for for Jamie's dad to be a better parent, he would have to have looked at his own stuff, and that's a very, very difficult thing to do.
Lisa:He would have to have looked at his relationship with his dad, what his attachment injuries were, where his contained shame is what? What does his contained shame tell him about? About him? So it's so much easier to say well, actually, everything was fine for me.
Lisa:It's this thing over here, it's this phone device, it's this app. It's what people are watching. My kids are watching. That's really the problem. When it's not, it's actually our stuff and it's what we are bringing into our dynamics with our children. But that's a very hard, it's a very big ask to ask people to do that, even though I think we should hard.
Colby:It's a very big ask to ask people to do that, even though I think we should. I think you're right. Um, I was only talking about this issue this morning, about, um, um, when parents bring along a child to see a therapist and, um, the quickest way to scare them off is to ask them well, about their own childhood, and you know how it was for them when their parents were not happy with some aspect of their behaviour. Yeah, very difficult.
Lisa:Yeah, yeah, you've just given me a brilliant idea for one of the books in the book series. I can't.
Colby:I mean, it is the cornerstone of a certain theoretical approach that that is, um that, the name of which escapes me just at the moment, but it was quite prevalent here in some of our services.
Lisa:Um, yeah, within the last 20 years, yeah, yeah, it's strange as a sex therapist, psychosexual therapist, I actually have more um friends and and people around me who are child psychotherapists, which is brilliant for me because I get to hear all of this stuff and what I know from from them is yeah, it is really difficult to get parents to look at their own stuff and what is it that they are bringing um. But there's a lot of similarities with my own work. So what happens in my own work is um a partner. If you have a couple um, one of the the people in the couple is deemed to be the one with the problem. The other one, who doesn't consider themselves to have any problem at all, literally drags the one with the problem to therapy and says to me okay, you need to fix them, because once you fix them, I'm going to feel okay.
Lisa:But what they're not recognizing is actually what that person is is doing is bringing up all of their stuff yeah, and part of my job is to help them to understand that actually it's your stuff that's coming up here and it's your stuff from childhood and it's your attachment injuries, and I don't say it like that. Obviously that's a bit of bit of work but it's a very similar dynamic, it's a very similar process it's fascinating.
Colby:I did have a thought and I was hoping it would come back.
Lisa:I really recognise that look.
Colby:Yeah, that's an age-related thing, but yeah, certainly, usually, it'll come back. Yeah, anyway, moving on, yeah, anyway, moving on. So I think people will take home certain messages from the TV show Adolescence, but I wonder what you think would be the better take-home messages for parents in particular. This is going to be a bit of an unfair question, double-barrelled Unfair take-home messages, I guess, from what was portrayed from a shame perspective in the show adolescence and what, what you think um, professionals should um take away from from our conversation and from your from, from shame containment theory, uh, in their work I think if I start with the um, with professionals first, that's probably the easiest one to answer, really, um, I think there's something about recognizing that shame is there for all, all humans, and there's a.
Lisa:There's a quite an interesting idea which makes sense to me, that even people who are present as shameless are so full of shame that they are the people who have to um, disavow or bypass or avoid these are various different terms that are used within the shame literature to not feel their shame and um. So, yeah, you know, there's something quite important about people who present as being shameless and what it is that that's going on for them. So even within those um dynamics, we will still be seeing shame. So just to go back very briefly to what you were saying about Freud, I believe that he's single-handedly been responsible for us ignoring shame or not looking at shame or not recognizing that shame is there. We suspect it may be because he was so full of shame that he had to do exactly that.
Lisa:He had just avoid his shame entirely, so guilt was a much easier thing for him to to um to, to spend time with, and that's been the legacy of psychoanalysis, which has then been the legacy of most other things that we do within with regards mental, mental health. Um, so, it's about recognizing that, because shame is a human emotion which is quite different from trauma.
Lisa:Not everyone has had trauma experiences, but everyone will experience shame because we're supposed to um, that shame will be there for their clients in some way, shape or form, and one of the things that shame containment theory does is it brings a language that we've never really had before, to the extent of being able to recognize these different components of shame, these different parts of shame, rather than people just talking about shame and me when I'm looking at the literature, thinking well, but but what which part of shame are you actually thinking about them?
Lisa:because contain shape is very, very different from uncontained shame then you have all the strategies to try and manage all of these these things. Um, shame. Then you have all the strategies to try and manage all of these these things, um. So I think for professionals it's. It's about if you've got people who are stuck or if you've got people who don't feel like they are. They're I don't really like the word resistance, but just to use it to make it make sense in this context if you're perhaps giving a suggestion about something and they're just really reluctant to take that suggestion on board, it's because that's a shame containment strategy and they can't allow themselves to let go of that shame containment strategy just yet. So, yeah, things, when there's an impasse, it's often shame. That's that's there. Shame will get people into the room. Shame will get people out of the room yes as well.
Lisa:It's just present the whole time, and we're really missing a trick if we're not looking at shame, yeah, um, and you know even things like with anxiety, and there was a guy called Wormser, leon Wormser, who coined the phrase shame anxiety so shame anxiety is the anxiety that we are going to feel sorry, the anxiety that we feel of the impending shame.
Colby:Yeah.
Lisa:It's going to come when we do a certain thing. So speaking on stage, we might feel a lot of anxiety, but really what we're worried about is the shame that's going to come when we trip over, or when someone tells us that our presentation was terrible.
Colby:Real bad and inadequate at what we were doing.
Lisa:Yeah, so evening and anxiety generally. What's going on is shame, so we need to just take so much more notice of where the shame is and what is?
Lisa:is actually playing out. Um. So I think for um parents, the key messages, I think for me would be about thinking about what is it that we are doing that might cause an attachment injury in a child, considering that my research is indicating that the biggest um sources of attachment injuries are uninteresting, unavailability. And again, this isn't about blaming parents, because there's a lot of parents who have to be unavailable because they haven't to work. We're in a very, very different position these days.
Lisa:Momsums are working and and rightly so they have that career, but how are they managing that so that the child does still feel connected somehow? Or if there is a a disconnect, if there is a rupture, how are people repairing that rupture? You know this is a relatively new thing to be talking about. I think certainly people of my generation and I should suspect yours as well, colby our parents weren't taught anything about about repairs and ruptures. We were just told off and that was it. That child is us as children, where they're just left in the state of uncontained shame because we don't know why.
Lisa:We've just been told off yeah without that explanation, without that that ability to reconnect? And about how a lot of the stuff that's going on is our own stuff. You know, if you just think about back to the programme, really we can look at all of that family and see that actually it was the granddad that kind of set things off and no doubt it was stuff from his dad.
Lisa:And you know you can go back and back and back, but there has to be something where, at some point, that cycle needs to be broken, and I suppose this is an opportunity for us to be the ones that are actually going to do something a little bit different.
Colby:I don't know if you listened closely to well, I presume you did. You listened to the podcast, but at the end of the podcast I do the question without notice for me. I ask a lot of questions. Here's your chance to ask me a question Before I give you that opportunity. With the last podcast, I did talk about with Kath asking about and what, what we're doing with boys and having spoken to you now, I think that, um, and and you and, and thinking about what, at least what I said in that conversation, as well as what kath said, for, through the lens of shame, it strikes me that one of the things that we need to be concerned about I basically, to simplify the issue where are we going wrong with our boys? I simplified it down to we're not showing that we're proud of them. We're not showing enough pride in boys and in their competencies and their achievements, and you know we're very concerned about our boys and in talking to you, I wonder whether a lot of that is, you know, manifests as attachment injuries for our boys.
Lisa:Yeah, absolutely.
Colby:And because we are, you know, there is significant concern perhaps misdirected but significant concern about boys and yeah, if people want to hear more about my thoughts about that, um, they should listen to the podcast with kath. But this, this was what left my mind earlier and has come back. I was thinking about masculinity, masculinity amongst men, or boys, and men as a shame containment strategy, and how, in our society, there is a, there is such a reaction to people like andrew tate and others who are. I mean, andrew tate irritates me as well, I have to say, just in the way he communicates. But there's been, it's not just him, there is this whole what do they call it? The man verse or something like that. But anyway, there's a whole reaction in society against masculinity and, as Kath referred to it, hate, her dislike of the term toxic masculinity. But you know, and and the, the, the demonization of um, masculinity. In a way, I just wonder about um, you know about, about that, about attacking, almost attacking, yeah, attacking, shame containment strategies and recontainment strategies and what's the impact of that.
Lisa:Well, the impact of those things are huge, aren't they? As I said, it's violence. Yeah, it's violence, or it certainly can be.
Lisa:And I think the reason why it's violence or it certainly can be, and I think it's I think the reason why it's violence for men and boys is because of that conditioning. Well, it's okay to to be aggressive if you're a boy, it's not okay to be aggressive if you're a girl. There was a. I was doing some training quite recently and it was really, really interesting. This woman asked me. She said she had read a book. I don't know what the book was. I really should have asked her what the book was. And in that book, um, what it was saying is that women feel shame and men don't. And I was like, wow, that that's some statement actually, because what we're saying is an awful lot of shame. Um, for men, am I?
Lisa:saying an awful lot of consequences of that shame for men. It's just that men say, oh, if you are presented with violence, that might not look like shame.
Colby:Yeah, and I guess where we landed in that part of the conversation is my strong view that the way we're going, the way certain social forces and agendas are going in relation to masculinity and kind of attacks on masculinity, they're not going to make the scenario. They're not necessarily violence reducing, they're actually by shaming boys and men for being boys and men. They, they, they. I'm concerned that they just opt out of the conversation and then social forces exert less influence over their approach to life and relationships.
Lisa:But thinking of it from the point of view of what we've talked about, um, nothing good comes of of shaming masculinity nothing good comes from no because if, if you are, if you are feeling shame because of who you are, so being male mask, um, you know, I'm wary that that's very um binary in the way that I'm talking here.
Lisa:But for the sake of the conversation. That is the thing that is bringing that shame, because we're telling men and boys that that is not okay. There always has to be a response. There will always be a response. And the thing that's really interesting is I work with adults, but I work with um, but like the predominantly men from the ages of 18 plus, I see a lot of young men and um. These young men are terrified of being male, so what's happening for them is they are completely avoiding relationships, they're avoiding sex. They are the people who are going to porn because that is a safer place to be, because then they don't actually have to worry about what anybody thinks about them.
Lisa:So they're not in relationships and they're watching porn.
Lisa:These are the people who would be classed as being sex uh porn addicted or have compulsive sexual behavior haven't they're in a state of fear of being who they are, because they're worried about the consequences, because they're reading all this stuff online and they're being told categorically that them being men, male masc is not okay. And then you have the likes of Andrew Tate at the very, very opposite end of the spectrum very extreme To me. He's just one big walking shame. Containment strategy or re-ontainment strategy, depending on where his own contained shame is. Because he has to. He also has to have a response. So the reason why for me that andrew taker so attractive is because young boys need a response they need to move away from their shame, because that's the most intolerable place that we can be.
Lisa:So this is what I mean they have to be responsible. They're either going to withdraw or they're going to attack.
Colby:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's absolutely fascinating. Thank you for that. It's your turn now, if you'd like that, and I'll try and be quicker. I'm not sure what else you got on today, but it was quite a long conversation when Kath asked me last week.
Lisa:I'm not sure if I did have a question, but I think you may have answered it. My question is a very, very broad question and it may be similar to maybe what Kath did ask you actually, what do you think is the biggest issue that we're missing?
Colby:With boys.
Lisa:No, not necessarily for boys, young people.
Colby:Young people. As I said when I was on with Kat, we should do a three-way podcast because we talked a lot about Kat. We should do a three-way podcast because we talked a lot about it. I always pride myself with being able to answer questions without notice. What's the biggest thing?
Colby:Look, I would have said before reading and speaking to you and I'll still say it because you know my, my thoughts and my thoughts I would say the role of, of um worthiness, self-worth, beliefs around self-worth, self-worth, adequacy and competency. The role of attachment beliefs and how they they become. They are the rudder. I'm not very binary about them. You know, I see attachment as a continuum. I think even I've seen some of the most attachment disordered kids. You could see most disordered kids with, with, with grotesque attachment histories that you could see, and I've seen times when those young people approach life and relationships in a positive and pro-social way. But their enduring sensitivities are such that they're often I'm going to use the word now triggered to head back down to that very yeah. So I think I would have said we need to be very careful with people's felt sense of self-worth.
Colby:Yeah, and there's a long conversation that we could have about that.
Lisa:But I should imagine that the conclusion of that conversation is we're actually saying the same thing.
Colby:Yes, I think so.
Lisa:It's interesting. I'll just say this very, very briefly, but my husband is um 62 now and, if you see it, if watch any of the the videos that I have available on online, it's a conversation between um rob and I and um he had a very, very difficult childhood lots of trauma, trauma and lots and lots of therapy and various different things, and it wasn't until he started to look at his shame that things started to really shift and change for him. But the most difficult process, part of that process, was understanding and acknowledging and feeling his lack of self-worth.
Colby:Yeah, yeah, I think they're the same and different. And feeling his lack of self-worth? Yeah, yeah, I think they're the same and different. Like, what's going through my head is that shame is the insult, self-worth is the or lack of worthlessness is the outcome. That's how I'm kind of processing it in my head at the moment.
Lisa:Yeah, yeah, so how I would say that is so. I don't say shame is a wound, I say shame is a response. The attachment injury is the wound. Shame is a response to that, and part of that response, is that sense of low self-esteem, low self-worth, just not being valuable at all, and for me, there's something about value being valuable enough that someone was going to take care just being enough just being enough. Yeah, yeah, and going back to adolescence, that's the thing for jimmy. He was never, felt as enough.
Colby:No no, no and and and these are these early attachment injuries as I refer. I think we in my area of work in child safeguarding and out-of-home care and therapeutic intervention with deeply hurt and troubled children we imagine that somehow not me but there is a thought that we can fix what's happened. I think we need to understand what's happened and we need to understand that there will be enduring sensitivities and we need to. Yeah, in the focus of my work, in the focus of my work, is strengthening worth, felt worth, believed in worth to compensate for the ongoing impacts of shame. Because we don't, I would. This conversation could go on and on, but I would dare say that improvements in felt sense of self-worth probably positively. I wonder if they positively impact one's capacity to not go into a shame, you know into an uncontained shame space, absolutely, yeah, yeah.
Lisa:So one of the things that so that what you're describing is um the work that I would do on the contained shame.
Lisa:Let's look at the contained shame and change those scripts and and change that idea and bring in the reality in, because all shame scripts have to be believed but they're not based in any truth, that their responses. That we needed to keep us as safe as possible. So my work with adults when they've had these experiences, let's change this. Contain shame and help you to express that. And then what you find is is that some shame containment strategies just naturally drift away because they're not needed anymore. But also there's there's less uncon, there's less contained shame to be uncontained.
Lisa:So we we experience and contain shame a lot less often. Yeah, the big events that I experience people generally experience those maybe once, twice, three times in a lifetime we don't experience those very often because we have such good shame containment strategies.
Lisa:Yeah, um, so that that is part of the process. That's the part of the therapeutic process is to start changing your relationships with all of those different components of shame, and that's our change in our relationship with shame. We need uncontained shame because that's the stuff that keeps us pro-social. So, if you were to leave this podcast, go outside and smack someone in the face, you're going to feel uncontained shame. That you worked prevents you from doing that. So we need uncontained shame. When we understand it properly, when we work with it. That's the stuff that that's our conscience, that's the stuff that tells us not okay to do nothing.
Colby:I've often and I think I may have even put it written in my, in my attachment book that way the example that I used to give from very early trainings was the reason was disapproval, the reason why you don't and disapprove, and the feeling associated with disapproval, particularly from people whose opinion of us is really important to us, like our parents, our life partners, our children. We don't that because we fear the consequences for our relationship, and I think what you're, but I've never I don't know that I've ever really named it. A shame, but that's exactly what we're talking about, Lisa. We could talk all day, but I'm sure you've got things to do. You've got the whole day ahead of you.
Lisa:I'm near the end of it. Yeah, you're ending down.
Colby:Yeah, so listen. Thank you for coming on and, um, how can people find out more about your work?
Lisa:um, so I do have um. If people are interested in the academic side of things, I do have um, a open access um article, as I said in an attachment. So if you just google shame containment theory, it will come up. It's the first thing that that does come up. Um, I use linkedin quite a lot, so there's various different articles. You can access different videos and things like that on there. Um, so that's just lisa efferson, if you just go to linkedin, you can find me there.
Lisa:Um, I do have some online training, um, although I'm putting that on hold because, as happens, my training and my thinking has developed and I feel like it's slightly outdated right now. So maybe revisit that in about six months when I do that again. But anybody who has any questions can email me at info at lisabethersoncom as well. I'm always open to conversations and questions. Yeah, and there is a book that will be coming out in the summer, as I said, called Jake and his shame armor, and that's for adults to read with children to help adults understand and also help children obviously understand what it is that's actually going on with shame when we see behaviours and we don't understand them. It's about looking at the underlying shame. So there'll be a guidebook that goes along with the children's books, so that adults can actually understand the more complicated aspects of what we're saying. Obviously, the book's very simplified because it's for children, so that's very exciting.
Colby:Terrific, excellent, all right. Well, thank you again, and we'll bring it to a close there.
Lisa:My pleasure. Thank you very much.
