How Can Psychodrama Help?
One of the most important steps in relieving shame is to break the lock that imprisons the secret behind the shame and bring it to the attention of others. The group acts as a powerful witness to the material being shamed. The person who role-plays a situation with which shame is associated has the chance to give back to the perpetrator the shame that she has internalized as her own. In psychodrama this can happen spontaneously, in just the way the protagonist needs it to take place. Unconscious feelings of shame will exert a powerful control over the psyche until they are made conscious and felt in the present moment: when shame arises, an effort is made to allay it by controlling the self or others, by acting out behaviorally or by ingesting substances. Psychodrama offers the opportunity both to mobilize shame through direct enactment and to watch the enactment of others, so that shame can be brought from the inner depths to the surface of the mind where it can be seen and felt in th
