With a special guest, we dive into the unique relationship between shame and trauma, and why both should be worked on cohesively and strategically to better the individual’s growth.

Topics:

all right welcome back to another
awesome exciting it’s awesome and
exciting to me so i’m just going to keep
saying it episode of finding peaks
um
i’ve
come in my shortest of shorts today
because the viewers were calling on a
little bit more skin jokes aside it’s
warm out today here in colorado springs
so i’m enjoying the warmth and letting
my and opening up my legs to the sun
here so i can get a little color so
we all win yeah
so hopefully the viewers are winning
equally in this regard uh today so
i’m joined again i’m brandon burns chief
executive officer for peaks recovery
centers joined by my friend colleague
clinton nicholson uh lpclac
therapist
awesome awesome there you go we finally
after 20 or so episodes however far we
end we have a guest today and as
promised the great alan cook lpc lac is
joining us today um he’s been just a
tremendous asset not only to our
programming our our currently our family
programming but has also helped us out
of the depths of um
some really difficult times at the tail
end of covet at least in the 2020 side
of the covet experience
so
a little bit more about yourself please
alan
what more can i say i am
i’m the chair of the
addiction counselor examiner board at
dora
infamous as that might be absolutely i
also
have the dubious distinction of helping
develop the competency competencies and
all the classes that torture addiction
counselors to become addiction
counselors so which is where we met
right in one of those torturous classes
yeah one former
instructor extraordinaire awesome yeah
yeah well wonderful i’ve always
greatly enjoyed my time discussions and
energy with um with you uh alan uh
you’ve provided a lot to me a lot of
great insights for how this industry
works how addiction works mental health
and so forth and so
uh today i just wanted to kind of go
back through the reel and introduce your
narrative around trauma and shame and as
we were kind of talking about
pre-episode here um there is this common
notion it feels like from my experience
where individuals leave treatment and
recovery falls short on the other side
maybe it’s relapse
something comes up in that regard and
they say you know what had that prior
center just worked on my trauma i
probably would have been more successful
and for me there’s this cause and effect
tone that they’re sharing with us that
trauma sort of or the absence of work on
trauma is causing the relapse and i’m
just curious about what your thoughts
are when folks say that and if there is
any relationship for you as far as cause
and effect goes
okay
well i think that there is a cause and
effect between shame and trauma first i
and in my experience
i think there is not shame without
trauma i think trauma underlies most
shame and in fact anchors it
that um
that people’s response to being
traumatized is
almost always that they feel this sense
of something went wrong with themselves
or something’s wrong with them or it
couldn’t have happened to them
so i think that that there definitely is
a cause and effect i think speaking
more pointedly about
folks leaving treatment and i’m gonna
i’m gonna talk about the peaks
experience a little bit because we’re a
and we tend to have a basic premise that
we will identify trauma but that 45 days
is not a particularly good amount of
time to unpack it and resolve it
and so as i’ve been at peaks for the
last four and a half years i really have
thought a lot about
how what can we do what can we do in
that period of time
and i find honestly that at least the
the clients that have come through peaks
and and i suspect they’re
representational but i don’t know for
sure
but they have an easier time talking
about their shame than they do about
their trauma that trauma has a great
deal more stigma attached to it
and that there’s a belief that it goes
deep and it takes forever to resolve and
that it’s earth shaking but shame
doesn’t seem to hold all that stigma so
my sense is that in a in our program
we do deal with trauma by talking about
shame
that it’s simply changing the word and
changing the language and what’s
interesting about that is that it really
affects how clinicians think about it as
well that a clinician i hear clinicians
all the time when i do supervision oh
well we we don’t want to touch on trauma
and then i’ll talk about shame and say
yeah yeah we can we can unpack that no
no problem and and i just have a sense
that since they
they are almost one in the same and at
least building blocks of each other
that it is easiest to simply
talk about
face
and resolve and integrate shame
it takes the same cancer presence
unconditional positive regard
whichever we’re doing
and
clearly
it is at least in our minds
easier to approach
so why not yeah
no my experience i think that checks out
as well so because trauma does have this
um
sort of uh it feels really rooted and
really grounded in like persona to a
certain degree whereas shame feels a bit
more fleeting a bit more or i guess
maybe just easier to detach from so
um
while like you like you said they’re
they’re closely related there is a there
is a very
nuanced difference between the two of
them and so i’m wondering in your
experience and and for the viewers if
you could speak to what
the approach in treatment looks like how
how that might be different than if
you’re taking a going a straight head-on
trauma we’re gonna we’re gonna tackle
the deep-rooted stuff versus you know
what we recognize that trauma exists and
that shame is closely related to trauma
but we’re going to approach and and
really work on the shame instead
so what is uh from a clinical
perspective what does that look like how
might you explain that or share that
with families so i think
i’ll talk about shame okay i think
clinically
shame is approached first by
acceptance on the part of the clinician
to hear whatever the client has to say
and not to to judge it or to question it
but to explore it and be curious about
what it means that that
that in itself gives the client a chance
to
openly unpack it openly talk about it
and
so that’s a little different than shame
because we don’t clinically typically
have a person
jump right into their traumatic
experience right so that demarks a
fairly big difference between the
approaches of the two
that we do have somebody talk about
their shame which is interesting to me
because often people will talk about
their trauma while they’re talking about
their shame in my experience but they
won’t have the same emphasis on the
shame because they’re not focused on
that they’re focused on
um you know what they were thinking and
feeling during that experience not so
much about what happened to them right
yeah and that makes a big difference
absolutely yeah i think
it um when you’re going into the sort of
what happens space it requires a lot
more containment right there’s a lot
more preparation that has to go into
that and actually how to emotionally how
do i emotionally hold these memories
while i’m going through them versus the
shame gives you something adjacent to
that that you can sort of uh
hold that space a little bit more
clearly within a little bit i know loose
more loosely right like provides more
room to breathe when you’re addressing
the shame yeah absolutely and added to
that that when we’re talking about shame
at least the the way i approach it is to
always stop start with how shame how
we’re living shame now
what we believe today
trauma is always anchored in the past
and so clients think i have to unbe you
know unearthed my entire history in
order to work on trauma not so much with
shame
and the truth is that we resolve
trauma in the present too
but clients don’t believe they do right
but we know we we address shame in the
present so it just makes it so much
easier if there’s an easy about either
of these topics it just makes it so much
easier to clinically approach absolutely
the shame so the
i think that’s powerful
in thinking about how we can do
something
um that’s not such a deep dive in
regards to the shame uh experiences but
when it comes to trauma where do you see
it beneficial to just
get right into it and unearth it in a
way or is or when is that valuable
i guess in the sense of things right you
know i’m so i i’m not going to be able
to give you a clear answer because i
almost always approach trauma through
shame now
because it just seems so logical to me
so it’s really rare that i unless a
client walks in and they unpack that
story
in front of me i will tend to start what
the you know the emotional things that
that they believe impacted them about it
right which is their shame i tend to
approach most trauma through shame now
absolutely because it just seems
powerful and even when a client does
come in and just starts to just shares
all of their trauma with you i think
it’s still important to bring it back to
the moment and say all right what was
that what led you to want to share that
with me you know it’s like rather than
continuing to go into that story
bringing it back into the moment because
that was a shame response right like so
being able to help them identify that
just by wanting to dive deep into it
there is a shame attached to that so
bringing it back into the present moment
so
this music’s my ears
so so how do
me you know i’m i’m just curious and i’m
sure the viewers are curious as well too
but we hear this language from you know
clients about you know trauma and
needing to unpack and and all of that
where do we think like this narrative
came from the intensity about if we just
unpack all this trauma you know you
i think before the episode you talked
about since what the beginning of
dinosaurs that whatever your phrase was
there for how long you’ve been in this
industry you’ve been able to see in a
really historical context how this
industry has really unfolded in front of
you and so how did we get into this
position where we’ve just got this
hyper-focused
sort of feels like clinical culture
around like we need to do this deep dive
on trauma and we need to make that the
thing
well i’m gonna i’m gonna step out a
little bit because i think that
since we named everything as needing to
be in our field trauma informed
that clients have latched on to that oh
well trauma must be the thing that’s
going to heal me
and
i think it’s probably not true
that trauma isn’t the thing that if i
somehow unpack it it’s it’s like this
cancer inside me if i get it excised
i’ll suddenly be healed
but i think we perpetuate that because
everything is trauma-informed which i
think is brilliant but we could easily
make it shame informed i mean
we chose trauma because that
in at least in my memory that’s the next
shiny thing
in the field
so
we
we latched onto the word trauma we’ve
written tons of books about it we we now
have all this information about it and
since i write core competencies i have
to make sure everything’s trauma
informed so
we have competencies for it and it’s
important
well so with that said
how do you a client who comes in
expecting to have a pretty significant
like
experience like really working on their
trauma and all of the sudden you bring
this conversation or this sort of new
language around shame
how do you help them to correlate or
connect
um the shame to substance use like to
kind of bring it back like what how do
you because i think people can there
again there’s this narrative like i have
trauma which is why i use drugs right or
which is why i drink and but shame it’s
a little bit different right it doesn’t
that it doesn’t that connection may not
be as
as uh apparent or um and maybe that’s a
good thing because the actual direct
like i have trauma which is why i use
drugs is probably not actually a thing
but uh so i’m curious how do you
it’s really it’s really pr not rocket
science for me okay and it starts with
saying well how do you know that that
something’s going on for you you know
how do you know something’s going awry
for you and the client will describe
that and i’ll say well what what is a
what is your thinking and feeling
pattern that leads to that we’ll talk
about that for a while talk about the
shame of that and
then it’s a really simple question after
that where did you learn that
and that touches on their trauma but
from a third person point of view
where’d you learn that they’re thinking
about what they learned not their trauma
so i’m not unearthing their trauma but
it’s at their trauma they learned it
and i don’t care about the trauma at
that point i care what they took away
from the trauma i care what they
believed about themselves
as a result of the trauma and that’s
what’s creating their shame and their
current thinking right
and then that lesson is
essentially being manifesting through
behavior right and so on one of those
behaviors could be substance use right
and then after all of that is unpacked
i’ll say
that’s a really powerful experience of
learning something important from your
trauma and then i’ll use the word trauma
after they’re all done
really let’s just put it in a bottle and
sell it yes
yeah absolutely um always appreciating
your your poignant and
thought through answers and i’m always
sort of captivated being in front of you
sincerely about just your ability to
quickly get to the situation and
identify you know examples you know for
which you’re walking through and so you
know what is one thing that we can leave
you know families in that regard of so
when
because the families are hearing that
same sort of experience my trauma was
not worked on i relapsed as a result of
that now what now what can we share
about families about maybe how to
um
what what can we share with families
differently about trauma than we would
share as an individual session with a
client in that regard to better inform
them about how to appreciate you know
what’s happening
if that makes sense it might not someday
it kind of you always have you always
have a way of talking
i’ll make a stab at it and we’ll see how
it goes yeah i would say to folks that
it is not the trauma that has caused
them the problem it is what they took
away about themselves what they believed
about themselves
what they believed they lost or what
they believed they disempowered about
themselves or what they had to protect
themselves from
that’s important to release and relearn
because most of the time our traumas
happen sometime in history that’s the
nature of trauma it’s in the past
and
we forget that no matter when our trauma
happened
we were different then but we’ve
anchored that trauma in that experience
especially childhood trauma we were
children we were helpless we didn’t have
a lot of skills so we believe about that
trauma that it’s true today even though
our skills have changed so if i approach
that from shame because when somebody
grows up what they bring about that
trauma is their shame well why couldn’t
i take care of myself why couldn’t i
stop that i must be a bad person
if i can release the shame today
then i can remind them that they have
different skills today than they had
then
and link it differently
absolutely
yeah
yeah i mean i’m captivated too yeah
yeah and i will say the one the other
thing i say to clients all the time is
that
guilt shame trauma
are simply lessons encapsulated in
judgment if we can release the judgment
then we can simply
learn the insight or the understanding
or
the the preference
absolutely that is available to us and
then we can start to rewrite the
narrative right because we start trauma
we start telling a story about ourselves
you know and i think once you can when
you look at shame in a way that it’s a
it’s a sort of narrative it’s a persona
you’ve created and but that actually
doesn’t fit anymore you know the story
no longer matches the skills and once
you can kind of see you see that
disparity or that uh discrepancy there
you can really lean into it and start to
actually build a new narrative start to
tell a different story that isn’t based
on the the lessons learned in trauma but
are actually grounded in the skills of
the present and the person that actually
is in front of you
i agree
it’s it’s powerful stuff and so it’s
just
slightly nagging me a little bit
to when is the appropriate time then for
like an emdr or this semantic experience
sort of intervention i mean both of you
are welcome to field the question but
you know i really just want to contrast
because you know working the admissions
line for you know here at peaks for the
past three and a half weeks or so you
know you just get these questions like
johnny needs to work on his trauma so
what are you guys going to do about this
trauma they’re quick to engage with what
they know about these clinical
interventions which is emdr and somatic
experience and these sort of things so
you know again
you know when can we really tie in the
appropriateness of those in your
clinical experiences like where does
that
seemingly work best if if at all and i
think it’s okay to poke the bear to say
maybe it should be limited and because
it feels powerful to really approach
this shame story in this way leave
trauma in the past and let’s talk about
these
experiences this judgment you’re
experiencing with these new skill sets
you have that are no longer matching
um i mean i can i’ll take a step at it
go for hit my mic um
i think that it at least at the model
let’s let’s take a 45 day model like
peaks uh that is about stabilization not
necessarily about the deep dive into
trauma i think that at that point in
time
the
the reality is that there are
oftentimes skills that still need to be
learned right and in order to be able to
sort of contain and manage and manage
the experience of processing trauma it
it’s not easy you know and it takes uh
you need to be in a pretty clear and
stable
physical and mental state in order to be
able to appropriately and safely and
effectively address trauma
so i would
my recommendation clinically would be
after 45 days of treatment you start to
ex you start to explore that with the
therapist on the outside you know that
to me that feels like aftercare or at
least like a long-term care plan because
it’s going to take a while you know and
it’s and it’s going to be intense and
it’s but
before you and before you go there
though you have to you need to be stable
you have to learn how to regulate you
need to learn skills so that once you
start down that path you don’t
relapse right or you don’t fall
backwards into old patterns
and i would say it’s both and
i think that what the curriculum at
peaks
is brilliant at opening the doorway for
stillness for mindfulness
for
turning off the midbrain the experience
herself beginning to get access to the
observer self exactly what emdr does it
moves us out of that experience or into
our observer and distracts us as simply
essentially so that we can connect dots
in ways we haven’t connect them
and we do yoga and we do meditation and
we do exercise opening the door for
realizing that the body holds
experiences it as well
and all of those are important and peaks
absolutely sets the stage for all of
that absolutely and in essence we’re
working on trauma yeah we’ve
we are working on
what gets in the way absolutely
beautiful
it’s good to learn what’s going on
within the program absolutely and you’re
down with you guys and um you know again
alan thank you so much for joining us
today my pleasure certainly would love
to continue future episodes with you and
bring in more of that that knowledge um
that you bring
and always a pleasure always a pleasure
as well too
for all the viewers on the other side
thanks for joining us today we hope that
this was informative and impactful to
you um
we only know what we know in regards to
what can be impactful for you so please
email us finding peeks at
peaksrecovery.com
bring your thoughts and ideas and
questions forward so that we can bring
that into these episodes
uh find us on the facebooks the
instagrams the podcasts the twitters all
of that sort of stuff to learn more
about these episodes and what we’re
doing within the space of addiction
treatment and mental health and thanks
for joining us again and we’ll see you
next time