The Therapeutic Poet in conversation with Marc Pimsler about recovering from shame.

We all feel shame. Shame in and of itself can have a healthy function, to alert us to the threat of disconnection with others.* When a small child gets told off for a mild social indiscretion they will feel some shame, it’s how social norms are created. An attuned parent will follow up the correction with a repair, a reconnection, a ‘you’re ok, it’s just that behaviour is not ok’.

When this doesn’t happen though, shame can build up. Toxic shame is a result of repeated rejection, scorn or empathic failure which can mean that the last thing we want to do is share how we are feeling or what we need**.

Where shame resides vulnerability hides.

So in this episode we  bring it out in the open and I can think of no one better to do that with than my guest today, Marc Pimsler. Marc is an award winning therapist, certified as a national master addictions counselor, clinical supervisor, and yoga and meditation teacher, and co-host with Courtney Leak of The Magic Well podcast. To be honest, that’s just a small selection of his CV.

I met him as a tutor at Onsite workshops when he trained me in experiential therapy. Marc is passionate about recovery, both his own as well as his clients’, believing that sometimes all we need is a helping hand and a fresh perspective. Grounded in the belief system that everyone has the capacity to recover, Marc brings humour, spirituality, and creativity to everything he is involved in.

In this episode I started with my poem ‘I hulp’, a poem I wrote about shame. Marc and I both shared different stories that we had about when our shame was triggered. Marc described how the only way to receive empathy, which can help us through our shame, is through exposure; exposing those parts of ourselves that we would rather deny or hide in order to try and belong.

Marc shared his 3 stage process to recovering from shame:
Stage 1 is recovery, owning our self and our story wholly, removing medicators so that we can feel in order to heal.
Stage 2 - the uncovering of ourselves from our story, identifying those experiences which gave us limiting messages and how those messages inform our behaviour today
And finally stage 3 - discovering who we’ve been all along. Because ultimately, we are all lanterns who need to be clean and clear so that our own individual, unique light can shine.

There were so many gems in this conversation, I think its probably worth listening to a couple of times. You can find out more about Marc at www.marcpimsler.com vp-consulting.net www.onsiteworkshops.com or on Instagram where his handle is  @mpimsler.


In this podcast Marc mentions Patricia De-Young's definition of shame and we also touch upon the work of shame and vulnerability researcher Brené Brown.
*From Working with shame in individual psychodrama psychotherapy by Anna Napier  in One to One psychodrama psychotherapy  (ed. Anna Chesner, 2019)

** From Shame and Jealousy by Phil Mollon (2002).