How EMDR Therapy Can Help Tackle Cultural Guilt and Shame
How I conduct my EMDR sessions with devices called buzzers or tappers. Tappers help you process cultural guilt and shame (without overthinking it)!
Key Takeaways
EMDR is known to be highly effective for decreasing guilt and shame for Brown women
Cultural guilt is the guilt that stems from strong cultural rules, norms and expectations
Cultural shame comes from associating your identity with cultural guilt
EMDR can help you process rather than dwell or spiral on cultural guilt and shame
EMDR’s 8-phase model can help you target issues, memories, and triggers for your cultural guilt and shame
Table of Contents
For Brown Women with Cultural Guilt and Shame
Who feel like you’re doing something wrong, or like you’re a problem that needs to be fixed. You’re not “bad”, “lazy”, or “ungrateful”, you’re just done having to think of everyone else but yourself.
Perhaps you’ve tried talk therapy, but you realized that talking in circles only made you feel more stuck. If therapy felt suffocating in the past, then EMDR might be able to help you process the things that are harder to name. In fact, EMDR therapy has been shown to reduce guilt and shame tied to certain mental health conditions, and has been proven to be highly effective for clients who come from immigrant families.
If you’re sick of ruminating and you’re ready to move past cultural guilt and shame, EMDR can help you actually process how you feel and close the loop without running around in mental circles!
What is EMDR?
The EMDR butterfly hug can help you regulate cultural guilt and shame!
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a type of therapy that regulates the part of your brain that stores traumatic memories and emotions. It’s the recommended treatment for PTSD and complex PTSD, but can be used for navigating cultural guilt and shame, bicultural identity, relationship anxiety, and intergenerational trauma.
If you’re a Brown woman who feels scared to confront your guilt and feels triggered in your relationships with your parents, family, and cultural community, then EMDR might be a good fit for you.
What is Cultural Guilt and Shame?
Guilt is the feeling of remorse, regret, or wrongdoing that comes after making a mistake or doing something wrong. Cultural guilt is the guilt that results from strong cultural rules, norms, and expectations. This might look like, “I’m doing something bad”, or “I’m not doing enough”.
Shame is the feeling that comes with associating your identity with your mistakes, or things you feel guilty about. Cultural shame is the shame that comes with cultural guilt. This might look like, “I’m a bad person”, or “I’m not enough”.
Guilt and shame are conditioned emotions that are learned from outside sources. We learn through rules, roles, and expectations of what not to be. But if your cultural identity is formed by what you’re not allowed to do, then who are you?
How EMDR Can Help Decrease Cultural Guilt and Shame
Therapy can’t make your guilt and shame go away, but EMDR can decrease the intensity of these difficult emotions for you. Here’s a general process of EMDR’s 8-phase model, and how EMDR works with guilt and shame:
Phase 1: Assessment: Your EMDR therapist helps you identify the main issues that impact you, such as where cultural guilt and shame show up in your life.
Phase 2: Grounding: Your EMDR therapist will help you develop tools to access a calm state and needed coping skills for guilt and shame.
Phase 3: Target: Your EMDR therapist will help you identify a memory that brings unnecessary guilt and shame in your life, and target negative self-talk that comes with it.
Phase 4 and 5: Past, present, and future:Your EMDR therapist will help you process this memory, how it impacts your life now, and how you’d like to respond to these triggers for cultural guilt and shame in the future.
Phase 6 and 7: Scan and complete:Your therapist will guide you through a body scan to ensure that physical sensations from cultural guilt and shame are no longer present and help complete the session, if time allows.
Phase 8: Debrief: You and your EMDR therapist will debrief how your previous session was, and if any new insights, thoughts, memories, or experiences with cultural guilt and shame came up for you in between sessions.
Your feelings are not facts, but they are data points into your inner world and past experiences. EMDR can help you reassign the guilt and shame to the people, places, and memories responsible, rather than making them your burden to bear.
Tips for Making EMDR Work For You
EMDR can help you tackle cultural guilt and shame, but it does not happen overnight. Here’s how to make EMDR work for you:
Be patient: EMDR processing of guilt and shame takes time, and can be a lot emotionally. It may take several sessions before you notice a shift and that is normal (and a sign of quality EMDR)!
Don’t judge yourself: Don’t place expectations on yourself to “perform well” at EMDR. Cultural shame might have taught you to be a “good” therapy student. You can’t fail here!
Allow your brain to go wherever it takes you: Let your brain take you on your journey, and allow your EMDR therapist to guide the process, even if random things come up.
Journal between sessions:It’s expected that new insights, thoughts, and realizations will come up for you between sessions. Jot down brief bullet points and bring them up to your therapist during your next EMDR session.
Communicate: Let your EMDR therapist know when something’s not working. Your therapist can help you troubleshoot if it’s a problem with the EMDR process, or if cultural guilt and shame are getting in the way.
It’s not always about the destination. The journey towards tackling guilt and shame matters just as much!
Tips for Finding the Right EMDR Therapist
An example of an EMDR Credential
The best way to find an EMDR therapist is to visit the EMDR International Association website (EMDRIA). The EMDRIA directory can help you locate an EMDR Certified™ Therapist in your local area.
Many EMDR Certified™ Therapists will have a badge on their website that looks like the one here (also at the very bottom of this webpage):
However, it’s important to know that many therapists with formal training in EMDR are not yet certified, and that’s okay. You can also search for EMDR therapists on Psychology Today.
Who I Am
Hey there! I’m Tracy and I call myself The Bad Indian Therapist.
I’m an EMDR Certified™ licensed therapist in New York, New Jersey, and California who helps Brown women like you who struggle with chronic guilt, shame, and self-abandonment.
Together, we can stop letting cultural guilt and shame dictate your life, embrace the nuances of your bicultural identity, and break the cycle of intergenerational trauma with culturally responsive EMDR!
What I Offer
If confronting your guilt and shame scares you, I use EMDR to help you feel less intimidated. Here’s my general EMDR process:
Joining: I meet you where you’re at to build a safe space and name the things you’ve been taught to suppress in the name of “culture”.
Grounding: Together, we’ll develop tools to help you access a calm state, and get through life’s difficult moments and challenging triggers, even with your family’s cultural expectations.
Past, present, and future: We’ll identify the cultural guilt and shame holding you back, how they impact your life now, and how you’d like to respond to guilt and shame better in the future.
Why I’m Different
Most traditional EMDR therapists follow a strict protocol without understanding that EMDR is not one-size-fits-all, especially for Brown women. As a result, traditional EMDR lacks cultural nuance and can be intimidating if you’re new to it—but it really doesn’t have to be that complicated!
I’m not here to force you to do something you’re not ready to do. I take my time with you, and together, we ease into EMDR in a more natural and culturally affirming way.
Conclusion: You're Not a Problem to be Fixed
While traditional therapy might ask, “What’s wrong with you?”, culturally responsive EMDR asks, “What happened to you?”. You’re not a problem to be fixed; rather, the guilt and shame you feel are learned emotions. They don’t have to be your burdens to bear.
Do you feel suffocated by cultural guilt and shame? I can help. Book a call with me and let’s see how I can help you tackle cultural guilt and shame.
Hi there! I’m Tracy and I’m “The Bad Indian Therapist”.
I’m an EMDR Certified™ licensed therapist in New York, New Jersey, and California who helps you stop letting cultural guilt and shame take the wheel and embrace your desires!
If you’ve been questioning the things you’ve been told, you’ve come to the right place.
Book a call with me and let’s see if I’m a good fit for you.