One client, whom I will call Shoshi, consistently chose the smallest materials available in the room.  In the sand tray, she placed a single, unpainted wooden figure at the very edge, partly buried and mostly hidden behind a pile of small stones.  When I gently invited her to say anything about what the chosen figurine might be experiencing, she said quietly, “It’s safer for it not to be seen.”  There was no need to ask about shame; it was already speaking fluently in the language of symbol.  What emerged over time was not simply a history of interpersonal wounding, but a deeper belief that visibility itself was dangerous: that being known and seen authentically risked a painful encounter.

Shame differs from guilt in that it does not ask for repair.  Guilt says, I have done something wrong; shame says, I am wrong (Brown, 2006).  Shame collapses one’s identity around defectiveness and organises the nervous system around concealment.  From a trauma-informed perspective, this collapse is a necessary adaptation for survival in environments where safety, dignity, or attunement were unreliable (Herman, 1992; van der Kolk, 2014).  What appears as self-rejection is frequently the residue of our survival instinct.

Yet shame rarely forms in neutral territory.  We aren’t born that way.  It gathers around the parts of ourself that long for tenderness, and meaning and blocks us from our authenticity.  It forms where the soul reached outward, toward love, with creativity, toward being fully embodied and it was met with rejection, intrusion, or stone-cold silence.  Jung’s understanding of the numinous is helpful here: the sacred is not merely religious, but an experience that carries deep emotional charge and significance (Jung, 1959).  Shame often marks the site where the numinous was violated and it led to withdrawal. 

For some, this violation can and does occur within explicitly religious contexts. One young man in his 20s, Dodi, spoke of growing up with parents whose theology emphasised moral purity but offered little in the way of normalising human limitations or modelling repair when mistakes were made.  In expressive work, he often drew figures with their mouths covered or chose figurines that he would bury or hide.  When I asked what these might need, he responded with “Permission.” Over time, it became clear that his shame was not only psychological but spiritual. His inner world had learned that certain experiences, his desires, his doubt, his anger, rendered him unworthy of divine presence.  The sacred had collapsed from a numinous symbol into surveillance.

When the sacred is held symbolically, it functions as a source of meaning, relationship, and orientation rather than control.  Symbol allows spiritual language and images to remain spacious, metaphorical, and humane, capable of holding paradox, vulnerability, and growth.  Problems arise when this symbolic quality collapses and the sacred is experienced instead as constant observation or judgement.  In such contexts, God, morality, or spiritual authority is no longer encountered as a safe, loving, relational presence but as something that watches, evaluates, and measures the inner life.  

This shift from symbol to surveillance often happens subtly, particularly in environments shaped by fear, trauma, or rigid certainty.  The result is not ethical clarity, but chronic self-monitoring.  Inner thoughts, feelings, and desires come to be experienced as dangerous or disqualifying, and shame takes root not around what one does, but around who one is.  Rather than mediating compassion and repair, the sacred becomes associated with exposure and threat, leaving the person feeling permanently visible and perpetually at risk of failing.

In such cases, it is essential that therapy does not replicate the same collapse. Symbol becomes a vital mediator.  Unlike a literal explanation, symbol preserves mystery.  It allows multiple truths to coexist without forcing premature resolution.  In expressive therapies, symbol and metaphor provide a way to approach shame with gentleness through image, metaphor, movement, sound and art-making, without reactivating the exposure that shame fears (Knill, Levine, & Levine, 2005; Pearson & Wilson, 2009).

In my work with clients, I experience symbolic moments as quietly sacramental. When a client selects a symbol and places it in the sand, chooses a colour, or shapes clay, something inward is outwardly expressed without being violated.  The process itself carries reverence.  Meaning is not extracted; it is received.  This stance echoes contemplative spiritual traditions, where presence is valued over explanation and mystery is honoured rather than resolved.

Another mid-teenage client, Dee, worked with clay almost exclusively. She formed small, hollow vessels, pressing her thumb deeply into the centre of each one. She spoke little, but tears often flowed as she shaped.  Eventually she said, “It’s like something precious was meant to live here, but it never arrived.”  Rather than interpreting this spiritually or psychologically, we stayed within the metaphor.  Over time, the vessels became thicker, more stable.  One day she added a lid. “It doesn’t need to be open all the time,” she said.  In this slow, symbolic process, shame softened, not through insight, not through psycho-education, but through being held within what Dora Kalff (1966) referred to as “ein freier und geschützter Raum” which translates into English (1980) as “a free and protected space”. 

Shame thrives in collapse: the collapse of time, where past wounding is continually re-enacted; collapse of self, where identity becomes fused with defectiveness; collapse of relationship, where connection feels too costly.  Symbol and metaphor restore dimension.  It introduces space between the person and the wound.  In that space, curiosity becomes possible, and where curiosity emerges, compassion can be encouraged to follow.

From a neurobiological perspective, this symbolic distancing also supports regulation. Shame frequently activates dorsal vagal shutdown or sympathetic mobilisation, leaving little capacity for reflective thought (Porges, 2011).  Expressive processes engage sensory and right-hemisphere pathways, allowing experience to be processed without overwhelming the nervous system (Siegel, 2012).  Here, the sacred is not transcendence but immanence. 

In this context, I use the word immanence to describe an experience of the sacred as present within lived, embodied experience rather than located elsewhere or beyond reach.  Immanence is our capacity to remain with what is arising: sensation, image, emotion, and symbol without needing to transcend, correct, or distance from it. For many clients carrying shame, this capacity has been deeply disrupted; the body and inner life no longer feel like safe places to dwell, and spirituality becomes associated with distance, effort, or judgement rather than accompaniment.  Expressive and symbolic processes support the restoration of immanence by inviting attention back into the body and into relationship, allowing meaning and a sense of sacred presence to emerge from within the experience itself, rather than being imposed or sought from outside.

Spiritually, this is where I locate hope: not in dramatic transformation, but in the gradual restoration of relationship and glimpses of authentic Self.  When shame is met with reverent attention rather than correction, something non-verbal begins to re-order internally.  Clients often begin to speak differently, not only about themselves, but about their relationship with something transpersonal: God, the Universe, meaning, purpose or trust.  One client said simply, “I don’t feel watched anymore.”  Another described sensing “a gentle presence not demanding anything.”

My role as a therapist, as I understand it, is not to resolve or fix a client’s shame, but to accompany my client in their witnessing of it.  To hold the symbolic field with enough steadiness that shame no longer has to disappear in order to be tolerated. This is both a clinical and spiritual ethic.  It requires restraint, patience, and trust in the psyche’s movement toward integration. When we as clinicians resist the urge to explain or redeem, and instead remain present with what is emerging, we are more likely to witness something quietly transformative for our clients.

To work with shame through symbol is, ultimately, an act of re-consecration.  What was once hidden is not exposed, but honoured.  What was once experienced as evidence of unworthiness is slowly recognised as the imprint of longing and survival.  In this way, expressive therapy does more than alleviate distress.  It restores meaning where meaning was lost.  And where meaning returns, the sacred, the numinous space where healing unfolds, whatever a client names it, is no longer something to fear, but something that can be approached, gently and on one’s own terms.

Note: All names have been changed to provide anonimity.

References

Brown, B. (2006). Shame Resilience Theory: A grounded theory study on women and shame. Families in Society, 87(1), 43–52.

Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and Recovery. Basic Books.

Jung, C. G. (1959). The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Collected Works, Vol. 9, Part 1). Princeton University Press.

Kalff, Dora M. (1966). Sandspiel: Seine Therapeutische Wirkung auf die Psyche. Rascher Verlag, Zürich, Switzerland

Kalff, D. M. (1980/2003). Sandplay: A Psychotherapeutic Approach to the Psyche. Temenos Press

Knill, P. J., Levine, E. G., & Levine, S. K. (2005). Principles and Practice of Expressive Arts Therapy. Jessica Kingsley.

Pearson, M., & Wilson, H. (2009). Using Expressive Arts to Work with Mind, Body and Emotion. Jessica Kingsley.

Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory. W. W. Norton.

Siegel, D. J. (2012). The Developing Mind (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.

van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score. Viking.