ACT With Compassion

Each month we highlight some practical resources for therapists interested in compassion. We don’t go into great depth about what we find, but encourage you to check them out if you think they’re interesting.

This Month's Find: Shame psychoeducation handout

Here is a handout we created for use with people experiencing high levels of shame, or shame that may be interfering with valued life directions. When people are in the middle of feeling shame, they are likely to believe that there is something wrong with them and that they should withdraw and hide. We hope that this handout helps people to recognize that those experiences are normal responses to feeling shame, rather than an indication that something is really wrong with them.

This handout asks the client to explore their usual thoughts and bodily experiences associated with shame, times when shame has been more helpful and less helpful, shame’s effects on their relationships with others, and how they would like their life to be different if it weren’t for shame (i.e., valued directions).

If you use it with your clients, we’d love some feedback. Let us know if you find it useful!

You can access the handout mentioned in this post along with other homework exercises here.