ABSTRACT
Relational theories give the author many templates for understanding shamed clients and for reconstructing their stories with them. Clients carrying chronic shame will objectify themselves. They will feel intense self-disgust, especially if they are survivors of acute trauma. They will be especially prone to judge others as well as themselves harshly and to rely on binary schemes of good/bad or admiration/contempt in their relationships with others. Attachment theory describes the outcomes of different patterns of parent–child affect regulation, and thus it explains different patterns of shame. Self psychology describes different patterns of selfobject need for emotional response and varieties of selfobject failure, which lead to different kinds of deficit. Understanding these patterns leads clients to develop complex, unique narratives of personal chronic shame. Right-brain relational connection supports the experience of a coherent self, a self that grows stronger and more expansive as it connects to left-brain concepts about emotions and relationships.
