Toxic Shame Worksheet
By
HappierTherapyAuthor bio
The Happier Therapy editorial team is made up of Masters and PhD counselling psychologists. Each worksheet is created by a team member with exposure to and experience in the subject matter. The worksheet then gets reviewed by a more senior editorial member. This is someone with extensive knowledge of the subject matter and highly cited published material.
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What is the theory behind this Toxic Shame Worksheet?
Toxic shame refers to an intense feeling of being worthless and undeserving of love. People who experience toxic shame continuously feel like they are never good enough leading to self-destructive behaviours. Toxic shame can be rooted in a traumatic childhood especially in cases of neglect and abandonment or when important figures in one’s life instilled shame with their words and actions.
How will the worksheet help?
This worksheet can help clients suffering from toxic shame to acknowledge their thoughts and feelings and challenge them in order to reframe them positively. This is a helpful technique used in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help people identify their negative thinking patterns and hard held irrational beliefs and replace them with helpful alternatives.
How to use the worksheet?
Instruct the client to use the worksheet whenever they feel negative thoughts and feelings coming through. Instead of avoiding them, instruct them to write them down and follow the questions in the table from left to right to help them reframe the negative thoughts into balanced and helpful versions that can make them feel good.
