Trauma and Unworthiness: How to Work with the Shutdown Response to Trauma 

The difference is that rhe client is looking for VALIDATION from the therapist through complete understanding of their feeling/belief/trauma. That is why they fight to have the therapist agree with their assumption. Hearing that it was a a survival/coping strategy (however true that is) makes the client feel as though they had a choice. And since the strategy is "unconscious", that feels like the therapist is saying they don't understand. How about saying "I completely understand that you see yourself as worthless. I validate that feeling and belief. Now let's work on changing that, let me show you how."

The part where she talks about agreeing on that point with her client, having survived... After many very harmful attempts by incompetent therapists, I am now at that point of sayng "I have survived" - survived my trauma and ESPECIALLY survived the disgusting incompetence of mental health professionals I have had the terrible bad luck of encountering over the past 18 years!

I legitimately did recently ask a therapist how shame manifested as a survival response.

When someone goes to law enforcement about being "injured" (however that might have occurred), is a joke. They have no training on trauma, they have no understanding of trauma. They tend to blame the victim for not doing what they "should" have done for not protecting themselves. THAT causes trauma far beyond the injury.

At least now we can thank ourselves for doing our best to survive back then. We did great.

Surely people think they're unworthy because of bullying, abuse, neglect. Painful memories. So this is the 'EVIDENCE' that tells them they're unworthy. Therapist can tell them it's only a 'belief'. Sure. But I think they require a bit of validation too.

I love this womans voice. I dont think there could be a voice with more desire and care anywhere!

Wow. "Unworthiness is not an emotion. It is a belief." The shutdown response is a survival tactic. Wow. It sounds crazy but also makes some weird kind of "sense" in terms of mere survival itself. This is an amazing and truly profound idea and explains so much about my husband of 25 years. I have other "issues," which my husband has helped me with and through. My current therapist says that the trauma and neglect that my husband and I experienced as children were probably quite similar in terms of severity but very different in the details and particularities. That same therapist alluded to this site in passing a couple of years ago, and I have been lurking off and on ever since. Thank you all for your very important work. I really appreciate you. : )

i shut down for pretty much 20 years. in bed. not working. crippling depression. HELL. but there was a reason…

I can FEEL her decades of experience. It's good. She made me cry.

Her voice is so calming and nurturing 😭

She is a sweetheart! Her warm presence would certainly make a difference to clients. It would be great to see some videos on the therapeutic alliance. Thx. 🍃🌻

This is so beautiful. I think this is a healing attitude, both allowing and holding, not invalidating and yet also holding a bigger context for the patient to grow into as they are ready to introduce more compasison for themselves and depersonalise the abuse into a bigger pattern of human survival behaviour. That patient stretching to encompass the grief and the integration into a bigger more whole self identity, can only happen if a therapist stays honest about their boundaries and doesn't merge into the patients belief system too sympathetically. I can see how this actually creates more trust, rather than erode it through blurring the boundaries of what's going on to be palatable.

I’ve never had feelings/ belief of unworthiness but I have been experiencing shutdown response since I was a child. I just felt deep frustration and injustice at my experience. But I did not have the option to respond any other way. It was not about my belief, it was being a child with a violent adult at home and bullies at school, whose behaviors I could not change or flee from. I never mentally accepted it or believed they were “right” to treat me badly, so I never felt shame for it, only resentment. I’m sure some people have these feelings/ beliefs. But I am very sure that has not been my experience.

Thank you so much for this. Having worked as an LMSW, only two years and worked with trauma, I am impressed and illuminated with the way you have articulated unworthiness and I am very grateful..

This is actually good news. If its only a belief, it can be changed relatively easily with "repetition + emotion" How you do this: find real life examples that mirror to you that you are worthy, as many as you can, dont worry they dont have to big ones, even a simple "I believe every human being has innate worth and since I am a human being I am worthy too" Make sure these examples are believable to you, thats important. Now read them to yourself every day while also FEELING their message. Do this for at least 21 days and voila you will feel worthy. I think if you had felt worthy in childhood in certain situations your reaction would have been FIGHT instead of flight/fawn/freeze and that was not possible for whatever reason (too small etc.) However it shows you how to heal this a bit too. Use your ANGER now when you think back on it! Get really mad at your abuser, you deserved better! Screw them!

We must not forget to only validate the valid. Also remembering to look at the dialectic in these situations finding truth in both sides perhaps but know that it lies somewhere in between in reality.

Sooo good!!! Thank you so so much!

Thank you!

Thank you so much

WOW, really good. I appreciate that you did answer the 'how is that a survival skill' question because that is what I thought as soon as you said it was. Yes I was very afraid of my dad. He told me when I banged on his door and told him to leave my sister alone because she was screaming and it woke me up in fear. He came to the door and told me to get out of there or he would kill me. I believed him and to this day I have felt like a coward because of it.

Great video, thank you for sharing.

I love you Janina Fisher

Thank you. This was very helpful.

Wow, powerful video! Thank you for this. I am saving this one to refer back to in the future.

I loved this one!!! Sooo simple and soooo sweer and soooo working!!!

Janina is brilliant

Hello from New Zealand

my covert narcissist father died having first shed his shame on me before dying. i have been struggling with worthlessness every since his death. i asked him "do you like anything about me"......crickets............long silence. "I guess i don't like myself" the shock that my fathers own self loathing revealed why he could never say anything nice about me my whole life. to admit that i had any positive accomplishments or attributes would have made him feel utterly worthless. Atleast i know that its not really about me. that the shame is his. However still having never received a "father blessing" or a sense of identity and validation and missed life experiences that were positive.

I would argue at the end of this video that surviving is merely staying alive, not living. So yes, the sufferer is surviving, is still alive. But is not living until is gotten rid of that mental torture.

Wow no one ever told me that. I always thought it was an emotion

beliefs can only be addressed when emotions have been sufficiently honored and dischared. if you hit someone with a hammer on their thumb and then ask them to spell their name backwards you would understand that trauma is not a place of rational intellectual processing. griefwork leads to a place where we can when we are ready begin to address underlying "beliefs" about the self whether true or false. "worthiness" and "unworthiness" are two sides of the same self centered coin. God and the therapist can present Grace (unearned undeserved favor) when the self has been taken out of the way. love reveals that you can be accepted with both good and bad parts because of the grace available in the empathetic and honest other. we must realize we have real guilt, false guilt, and internalized guilt from others who blamed, shamed or punished us. all this confusion needs to be separated out in boundary work and ownership of our responsiblity or lack of responsibility that must be placed on others. this is the human condition we all have guilt and guilt to be dealt with must be carefully parsed out, admitted and "GRACED" in the light. secrecy is the twin cousin to "unworthiness" whatever is not touched in the light of truth with Grace in relationship can never be healed.

Valuable insights from Fisher, but video needs a title that more accurately reflects the content.

i love how everyone’s watching this for themselves or people when i’m watching this for a horse who has this response-

powerful and helpful to understand why we believe we are unworthy

If you are unable to provide comfort (aka validation, aka grounding, aka presence), before inquiry, healing does not occur. Two ideas cannot be held in a body that is not calm. It will resist one and cling to safety by doubling down on one idea- Black or white thinking - a defense, but a worthwhile one.

Why do we go to the negative as a survival skill?

Nice explanation of how it works. But whats the solution? How do we fix that belief?

Love her red nails

👍

Worthlessness is

Unworthiness isn't acceptable. Neither is feeling anger towards the reason of our trauma. Trying to walk that high-wire is a tough struggle. Living with PTSD is a second by second process. If you live with it, you understand. If you don't, you don't understand. No matter what the therapist says, we have our deep rooted thoughts.

it's not shame. it's regret.

Yes it’s a belief that you are not worthy as such

IFS in a nutshell

😢❤️‍🩹💔