Coping with shame: an exploration of shame and resilience among shame-prone trainees in the psychological therapies

Shame is a debilitating emotional state, affecting people’s psychological and physical wellbeing and the ability to remain in relationship with others. The negative impact on learning experience and more importantly on the ability to enter into healthy working relationships could lead to trainees in the psychological therapies facing particular difficulties in completing the training programme.

This study aimed to explore the experiences of shame-prone trainees in counselling psychology and psychotherapy training, how they negotiated the difficulties they faced, and sufficiently managed their shame processes in order to successfully complete their qualification. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with four participants with the aim of revealing how they made sense of shame and resilience experienced during various aspects of the training including formal academic learning, assignments and group activities, clinical work, supervision and personal therapy.

Interview data was analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) which allows for in-depth engagement with interviewees’ lived experiences and the meanings that they made of their experience. Three master themes emerged from the interview data. ‘Shame as all pervasive’ depicts various aspects of the physical, emotional and behavioural experience of shame and its effect on identity and the sense of self. ‘Being less aware of how I coped with shame’ portrays interviewees’ emerging recognition of their competencies, their coping strategies and their embracing of their vulnerabilities and coping abilities into their sense of self. The third theme ‘Being supported through shame’ examines what trainees found useful and/or what they thought would have been useful, including personal development, normalisation of shame (including teaching about shame) and support from educators.

The findings indicate that shame can affect trainees’ learning experience in a variety of ways, such as cognitive impairment, enhanced anxiety about performance or being exposed to be defective, avoidance and withdrawal behaviour, and power differentials. Shame-prone trainees employ diverse coping strategies, including managing their anxiety, re-engaging in contact with others, and embracing their vulnerabilities and abilities to overcome their shame. Shame was not recalled to have been taught as a subject matter in a way that interviewees could engage with, and interviewees found it difficult to access and/or take advantage of support. Learning about shame and how to cope with shame came from outside the academic teaching aspect of the counselling psychology and psychotherapy training: through supervision and personal therapy during and after training, through further training programmes in different modalities and through employment settings.

The study offers recommendations for improving the training experience and offering support for shame-prone trainees.