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If you walk around with a quiet or sometimes not so quiet sense of there's something wrong with me, this episode is for you. That belief, that very human but also untrue belief may be running more of your life than you think. You're listening to Relish, the podcast for people ready to stop chasing self-improvement and start savoring their lives. If you're tired of the hamster wheel of healing and hungry for more joy, presence, and meaning, you're in the right place. Hey friends, it's Alysia and welcome or welcome back to Relish. Now, this podcast is about stepping off the hamster wheel of fixing yourself so you can actually relish your life and find joy. But today we have to talk about
what's fueling that wheel. That constant sense that you need to improve and optimize and be better. That's almost always powered by a deep core limiting belief which is in one way or another I am not enough as I am. This belief is a deep wound. It's shame. So we are going there today finally. I have been wanting to do this for months. Shame is something I've gone deep into through uh psychology and emotion science with my client work, my years teaching the Huffman process, but most importantly through my lived experience because understanding my own shame is really what I believe has helped me most to support other people with theirs. Shame is an emotional experience. It's a very
heavy one, but it's an emotion that has already been interpreted. It doesn't just hurt. It tells a story about who you are. And that's why it feels less like a feeling and more like a fact. So, in addition to being an emotional experience, it's really what I'm going to call a lens. And when you're looking through it, everything kind of gets distorted. When I'm looking through the lens of shame, it's like everything in my experience is interpreted as evidence that I am not enough. But it's not true. And today we're going to talk about that. We're going to discuss what shame actually is, why it forms, what it does to your brain and body, and how to start loosening its grip. We're going to talk
about how feeling shame doesn't mean you're broken. It means you're human. It means you have a nervous system. It means you've been shaped by life. And it means that your brain learned a strategy to keep you safe. And this is part one of a threepart series. So part one is going to be the foundation. It's recognition. What shame is, where it comes from, what's happening physiologically when it shows up. Part two is about separation. It's where we go deeper into why shame becomes fused with identity, what I call selfing, and how ego gets involved, as well as how mindfulness can help create some of that separation from shame story. And then part three is about what I'm calling reclamation
to see what shame might be covering, the potential gifts underneath it, and what it looks like to live from truth instead of the shame lens. Now, before we dive in too deeply, I have to ask if this podcast has been supporting you, I would love if you could take a moment to follow and subscribe, download the episode, leave a five-star rating, a little short review. It genuinely helps the work reach more people. And if something in this series hits home, please share it with a friend or social media, especially if someone you know carries a quiet burden of feeling not enough. Okay, let's dive into it. But because shame is a feeling, before we talk about shame intellectually, it's important to get a felt sense of it. And
I'm going to borrow this short bit here, this experiential bit from something I teach at the Hoffman process. You might even close your eyes, if it's safe to do so, to immerse yourself for a moment. And just imagine that someone you care for, someone you love, maybe it's a partner or a friend or a family member, they come to you upset and they say, "We need to talk." And I want you to take a second and notice what happens inside. What happens in your body? Do you feel any kind of drop in your stomach? A tightening in your chest or your throat? Maybe there's heat in your face, like some kind of flush.
Is there any urge to try to fix something or explain or defend or hide? Maybe notice where your mind goes next. Is it something like, "What did I do?" or "They're mad at me. I'm in trouble. They finally realized this." Okay, so you can open your eyes. if you close them, shake that off. For a lot of people, a whole chain of events happens with that. Some kind of hit to the body. It could be different for everyone. Maybe there's heat, a gut punch, a contraction, uh tightness of some sort. There's often also a flood of self-lame or the urgency to try to fix or hide. That whole feeling experience is an example of the felt sense of shame.
It's very uncomfortable, isn't it? I mean, why would we want to go there? I have found that going there, getting to know that feeling is really vital to finding relief of its suffering. I know it seems kind of paradoxical. So, let's start with what is shame? Shame is not just feeling bad. It is a very particular embodied emotional experience that we need to unpack. Bnee Brown is one of the pioneer researchers on shame. She defines it as the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love, belonging, and connection. I find it personally helpful to distinguish between guilt and shame.
Guilt says I did something wrong. I did something bad. Shame says I am bad. I am what's wrong. So with guilt, the focus is on the behavior. And I personally think guilt can actually be a helpful emotion. I've talked about on this podcast before how emotions are information. If I'm feeling guilt, it can be an opportunity for me to check in with myself and see, you know, have I acted out of alignment? Do I need to make amends or take responsibility for something right or wrong? Research shows guilt actually can promote behavior change. This is not the case with shame. With shame, I am the problem. This emotional experience is very different and it's one of the few emotional experiences I would argue is
not so helpful because the meaning has already been made. Unlike most emotions, shame doesn't give us clean information about the world. It gives us distorted information about ourselves. Shame says there's something wrong with me and whatever is happening is because I'm bad. I'm broken. I'm not enough. Guilt says, you know, this wasn't aligned. Let's address it. Shame says, this is who I am. And that's a part of why shame is so painful because it doesn't just hurt. It defines. So shame isn't an emotion that's moving through you. It's an emotional experience that is already turned into a conclusion about the self. That distinction matters because shame is what keeps us on that selffixing hamster wheel. It's the fuel. Because if deep
down you believe I'm broken, I'm not enough. I'm fundamentally flawed, then it makes perfect sense that you'd spend your whole life trying to fix yourself. Whether it's self-help or achievements or productivity, perfectionism, overgiving, constantly needing to prove your worth, hustling for your worth, we think we're chasing success or happiness. But if you peel it back, most of us are chasing something deeper. We are chasing a feeling. We want to feel enough, to feel whole, to feel like we belong. Shame is the belief, most often the subconscious belief that blocks that because it says you don't belong. You are the exception. You are
the one who is too much or not enough. Or maybe if you've got similar conditioning to me, you are too much and not enough at the same time. I've met people who learn about the concept of shame and they need to spend a little bit of time exploring it within themselves. They might not, you know, get it right away, but I'll say I have never met someone who actually doesn't know the feeling. For some of us, it's really obvious. You know, right away we know the feeling of being flawed or not enough. For other people, it might show up more covertly. Many of us have aspects of ourselves we feel, you know, maybe even important big parts of us that we carry shame around. For me, a long time, one was being on the spectrum, which I'm going to talk
about throughout this series. But a lot of times, shame comes up from seemingly small moments like when someone says, "We need to talk." In my coaching experience, almost every negative experience someone is having, when we really peel the layers back and explore it, the root is shame. Sometimes people think they don't have any shame. And even that is often rooted in shame because there's this insecurity. They're so insecure they don't want to be found out. In part two, we're going to talk about how shame can show up as ego and often how it does show up in that way. A big part of what I hope to do here is normalize shame. Not just explain it psychologically, but normalize it and humanize it. And for me, so much of that
happens understanding neurologically what's happening. So let's talk a little bit about the neuroscience to understand why shame can feel so convincing. Shame doesn't sound like a thought. It sounds like a fact. It actually feels like a fact. And that's partly because your brain's primary job. We've talked about this before. It's not happiness. It's protection. Your brain is this prediction machine. It's constantly scanning for what keeps me safe, what threatens me, what gets me belonging, what gets what's risking me rejection. You probably know about the negativity bias. That tendency for negative events to grab more of our attention. That includes rejection for humans. Rejection doesn't just feel emotionally painful.
It can register as a form of threat. There's a body-based reason that shame feels like this emergency. We're wired for connection. And for most of human history, being cast out wasn't just sad. It was dangerous to not be a part of that group. So when shame shows up, the sense that there's something wrong with me, your nervous system can treat it like something is threatening my belonging here and then the body responds accordingly. That's why shame can bring up those body sensations I mentioned earlier or that you might have experienced in that opening embodiment piece I did. You know, maybe some kind of sematic collapse. It could be contraction. It could be nausea, a flushed or hot face. It could be the
urge to hide or fawn or even attack yourself before anyone else can. When this happens, you're not being dramatic. That's your survival system doing what it learned to do. So, we get why shame can be here neurologically. But where does shame actually begin? Where does it start getting written into us? Let's go back to early in life, back to when you were born, okay? You did not come into the world hating yourself. You didn't come in blaming yourself or criticizing yourself. You came in relatively unconditioned, innocent, like spiritually and also in great part biologically, present, alive, open, whole, inherently whole. And then without explanation, you are born into this big scary world of conditions. If you think about being in the womb,
your needs are met automatically. There's no gap between you having a need and the fulfillment of that need. You can just be you and your needs are met. But once you're here, your care depends on other humans. That's very vulnerable. If you think about it, your experience at that time is completely dependent on other people. And caregivers are humans with limitations. So sometimes you cry. No one comes right away or they don't know what your need is. And then people are, you know, humans are human. They get distracted. They get stressed. They're dealing with their own, you know, stresses and wounds. Mom goes to work, dad's in the other room cooking or whatever, and you're left alone. And even if it's only
for a few minutes, that can feel like forever to a baby. And that's not to say that shame comes from our parents. We're going to discuss in a moment how it's reinforced all around us by society and the world. But we're starting with when you're born particularly to understand the brain because here you are having needs and now those needs are not always met. This is where a key developmental piece matters. In early childhood, we are naturally egocentric. Not in like a selfish sense, but in a developmental sense. If you have kids or if you've been around a kid, have you ever noticed it's like me all the time is all about me. It's not just that kid or your kid. That's the nature of neurological development.
Young kids are selffocused because the brain has not yet wired for my experience versus your experience. They don't have the cognitive capacity to accurately consider the perspective of someone else. You can't think about, you know, their parents and go, "Oh, you're overwhelmed. You're disregulated. You're doing your best. This is a systemic issue." Okay? Kids can't do that. They have not differentiated. There's no sense of you versus me. They personalize. It's all about me. This isn't because anyone did anything wrong. It's because the nervous system needs an explanation. And at that age, it can only make meaning by turning inward. And that meaning is bodybased. At that young age, we don't have a kind of
cognitive processing capacity to make sense of it. You don't process intellectual thoughts as a baby. You don't barely know any words or concepts. You only know what you feel, sensations, emotions. You're so present. You only know. You are so attuned to what's happening now. Hungry, alone, scared. And in those moments of fear, you have needs that are not being met. And so the nervous system experiences distress and fear and disconnection. If that need isn't met, if you're criticized, if you're teased, if love
feels conditional, if your emotions feel like too much, if you're misattuned to. If society racializes or pathizes you, that child nervous system lands on this conclusion, it must be me. Mom must be leaving the room because of me. They're making fun of me because I'm a problem. And that's the birth of shame. the first rupture into me and what in part two I'm going to talk about as selfing. So we learn I have needs those needs are not safe and therefore this part of me that needs anything is bad. We learn I feel those feelings aren't welcome so something about me is wrong. We learn I exist in this body and this body isn't welcome by the world and so something about me is wrong. It must be me. And
then we learn we need to hide it. And so this is where the mask begins. This mask that covers up who we authentically are in order to be acceptable and safe, to be lovable, to be successful, to be chosen. Because if who I am is the problem, then I can't let anyone see the real me. Now, I didn't make this up. This is a sentiment of what they call the negative love syndrome at the Hoffman process. Um Donald Winnott's model, the false self model discusses this. But something a lot of people don't talk about is that shame doesn't only come from our families. So once this mask forms, it gets reinforced internally and externally. This is all happening when our brain's developing before we have any capacity to question what we're
learning. And once that belief is there, that belief that something's wrong with me, the brain starts looking for evidence that it must be true. And so we reinforce it within ourselves. For example, if you make a mistake, you know, it's not I did something wrong. It's that I am wrong. I'm bad. I'm flawed. Maybe you get rejected. When we get rejected or left out, the story can become there's something wrong with me. I don't belong. And this shame is reinforced externally. Some of you might have had people as when you were a young child, maybe a caregiver or a teacher, a coach, a peer, or some other authority figure, they might have explicitly shamed you, tell
you, "You're a burden. you're not enough. There's something wrong with you. And it can be even subtle implicit language. Even something like be a good girl. Okay? Now, it's not malicious intent behind that. But because of the implicit binary it creates, good versus bad. So, if I'm not good, if I'm not a good girl, I must be bad. And of course, shame is reinforced by larger systems, culture, media, advertising, institutions. If you've experienced oppression around any of your social identities, it feels like the world pointing a finger and saying, "You don't belong. You're not enough. There is something wrong with you." And because this all began so early, we don't stop to question it.
We take it on as who we are. So very early on, before you even have language, you start learning strategies to meet your needs to earn love from everyone around you. So it could be like maybe if I smile and am easy then I'll be loved. I need to be a good girl to be loved. Maybe if I stop crying, I won't be a burden. Maybe if I get perfect grades and I never need help. Or maybe if I'm taking care of everybody else all the time, then I'll be safe. Maybe if I disappear or blend in, no one will reject me. Maybe because the body I exist in is wrong. My size, the color of my skin, my shape, this body isn't welcome. and so I need to change it.
Maybe using my voice isn't welcome, so I should just be quiet. Do any of these resonate? These strategies crystallize into our survival patterns, the peopleleasing, perfectionism, hyperindependence, caretaking at your own expense. overachieving, numbing, shrinking, not using your voice, masking. On the outside, some of these can look successful, but on the inside, they are driven by that same engine. There's something wrong with me, and I have to compensate or hide it. Shame is this deep subconscious belief that I am not enough, I'm unworthy, I'm not lovable. And because we believe it, even though it's a lie, it becomes the part
of us that we don't want anyone to find out. If you have ever felt like an impostor or like a fraud, it's often trying to cover that core shame belief. Shame in a way, it's like blaming ourselves for our needs not being met. I've always resonated with how Bnee Brown talks about blame. She says, "Blame is the discharging of discomfort or pain." Think about when someone else is blaming you. You know, can't you feel energetically they're trying to displace their own stuff, their own pain onto you? I mean, if I'm blaming someone else, I can feel that this need to get away from my own discomfort, my own pain. With shame, I see it as this internal version of that. We feel the distress of these unmet needs. And
because we are self-focused developmentally and we have nowhere to place it, we learn to turn the pain inwards and blame ourselves. It must be me. It is my fault. I'm a problem. And we take that on before we have any cognitive capacity to question it. That's why it's this felt sense, that gut punch, that contraction, that visceral I am bad. I also want to acknowledge that while earlier I mentioned shame is in a way a built-in evolutionary protective mechanism trying to secure our survival and prevent us from being outcast from the group. The paradox is that it actually prevents our sense of being connected with others. It creates a sense of separation. I am separate from you. You over there are good. I over here am bad. And we start
taking it as who we are. In part two, we're going to talk about how that shame becomes fused with our identity. So it's not just I feel bad, but I am bad. And we'll talk about how mindfulness, including some Buddhist framings, can help create separation from that identity fusion without bypassing the pain that's there. So, let's take a moment to make this more real and relatable. I'll start with a client example that's incredibly common. So, imagine being a single parent or even if you're not, this might resonate with you. Um, working full-time, doing their absolute best, and they cannot attend every
school event. They can't volunteer the way they want. They can't be the class mom who's always present. And that doesn't just feel disappointing. It becomes I am a bad parent. My child will suffer because of me. Everyone else can do this. Why can't I? And this is where shame is so brutal because it ignores reality. It distorts it. It ignores the time constraints, finances, support systems, labor demands, nervous system capacity. It ignores the actual love that the child is receiving. It reduces a complex life into a single identity label bad. And I want to pause here for a moment, especially if you're a parent listening.
Learning about shame can bring up a sense of self attack. Like, oh my god, am I doing this to my kids? Am I the cause of their, you know, negative patterns? So first just take a breath and notice if shame is coming up right now or whatever is coming up and then hear this truth that no parent can be perfectly attuned all the time. You're human. You have limits. Needs will be missed. Ruptures will happen and developmentally that's not a failure. It's a part of growth. Research on caregiver and infant interaction shows that even in healthy relationships, attunement is not constant. In fact, even healthy caregiving relationships are only in
sync about a third of the time. What supports secure attachment and development is the ability to repair to uh come back into connection again and again even when the inevitable moments of disconnection happen. So if you're holding yourself to an impossible standard, shame will use that standard as evidence that you're failing. But the fact that you care this much, the fact that you care to even ask the question, that is often the proof of what's underneath the shame. In some ways, it's evidence of your love and attunement. So, I also want to give you a personal example of shame as well. I'm going to dive into this one more throughout the series, but a big one for me, and I've mentioned it briefly in past episodes, I'm still learning to navigate it, is
being on the spectrum. I only found out about it myself six or seven years ago. So, I didn't know as a kid. And while that diagnosis was incredibly validating and helpful, it also shook my identity to its core. I can see now that it was my internalized abbleism. You know, what I had learned or rather not learned about autism, neurode divergence. Uh, and that led me to believe that being different was bad or wrong. I mean, all my differences. I'm I'm also mixed race. There were a lot of there was a lot of conditioning in my life that led me to believe that difference was bad. And that became I'm bad. I'm wrong. When it comes to talking about autism with other people, I often am very discerning and sometimes scared because
of that shame. There's this fear of being found out. Like if anybody really knew this part of me, they would judge me. They'd reject me. Uh they'd see me differently. They wouldn't really love me. Bnee Brown talks about how shame grows in three conditions: secrecy, silence, and judgment. And that really resonates here because when shame shows up, we often do exactly what keeps it alive. We hide. We don't talk about it. We judge ourselves for having it because we believe it. So, I've been out with groups of people who didn't know that I was autistic. And someone would make a pjorative comment about people on the spectrum. And in those moments, especially when I was
first diagnosed, I was often hijacked by shame. When shame comes, it feels like I'm hijacked. So instead of speaking up, maybe I would shut down. I'd freeze. I didn't want to be found out. I didn't want to be judged. When shame hijacks us, there's this kind of spiral that begins. Usually subconsciously, it's like, I'm bad. I'm not enough. I'm going to be rejected. When that happens, I feel quite young internally. Often I feel like a child. Shame is a type of emotional regression. It pulls us right back to that original wound and it's so uncomfortable that we will do almost anything to get away from it. So the strategies kick in. For me, the strategies, those patterns looked
like shutting down and being silent, not using my voice, freezing, avoiding, not rocking the boat, abandoning my own feelings and needs to stay safe. But for someone else, the strategies could look different. Some someone else with different conditioning might join in on the criticism so that they're not singled out or go to overexlaining trying to prove themselves. We all have different patterns. But can you see how one way or another, how quickly that vicious cycle begins, that self-abandonment, the hustling for worthiness, the need to disappear or prove. Shame takes this one moment and turns it into a whole identity story and that's exactly what we're working with in this series.
I want to give one more example that I think is broadly resonant because of my background and many years supporting people with emotional eating, binge restrict cycles, eating disorders, body image. I want to name how commonly shame shows up around food. shame about what you eat, how you eat, when you eat, especially eating around other people, or eating maybe secretly. Sometimes that shame comes from overt commentary, family, culture, partners, doctors, fitness spaces. Sometimes it's internalized like your nervous system learned early that being hungry or having an appetite or having desire or having needs is not safe. And over time, the shame, it doesn't just sit there. It drives our behavior, which might lead to restriction as a
form of control. It might lead to binging as numbing. It might lead to secrecy as protection. It might lead to seeking perfectionism as worthiness. And this is why shame is so linked to compulsive coping and addiction. Not because people are weak but because shame is rooted in pain and the human brain is looking for relief. All these examples I also want to acknowledge this shame can't be traced back to a single person. It's not just a caregiver. It's reinforced through intersections with other people in society in the world. And the reason we don't stop to question it is because it develops at a time when neurologically we can't.
I want to zoom out for a moment. One of the most humanizing things I've learned, especially through teaching the Hoffman process, is that no one gets out of developing shame. I've worked with thousands of people, people with more wealth and power and success and visibility than I could have imagined. And I have never encountered a single person who does not carry some version of there's something wrong with me or if people really knew me, they'd leave. I'm fundamentally not enough ever. And there's a quote I love something it goes something like we teach what we need to learn. A big reason shame is so interesting to me is I have spent decades of my life debilitated by it, believing it's true, believing I'm not
enough, I'm flawed, I'm unwanted, I'm broken, and desperate to understand it. And the more I've understood it in myself and the more clearly I've seen how universal it is, that's shown me how much freedom becomes possible when we stop mistaking shame for the truth. I want to take this from concept back into embodiment because if shame is a nervous system state, you are never going to get out of it by thinking about it. You have to get out of your head and into your body. So, it's important to ask yourself when shame shows up, where does it live in your body? I call this my shame signature. Okay, most people I've worked with have one, if not more than one, and it's an area of the body that activates for them when shame shows
up. For me, it is a tight heaviness in my throat and kind of upper chest. It almost feels like this metal lava caving in on itself. It's very specific for me. When I feel that sensation, I know it's shame, but it's different for everyone. It could be in your chest, your stomach, your throat, your face. It could be tingly or numb or uh caving in heat, pressure. You might notice other emotions and sensations wanting to disappear or go numb or overexlain or try to fix everything. This matters because shame is going to hijack you before you have a coherent thought about it, especially when you're first exploring it. If you go back to the experience I led you through at the beginning of the episode, when you
imagine someone came to you, said, "We need to talk." Where in your body did you notice that? And what did it feel like? Get curious because if you can recognize your shame sematic signature early in your body, you can catch that spiral sooner. And that's what we're going for. Not perfection, but awareness so you can meet that moment that it arrives as opposed to having to recover after the spiral. So, I want to give you some practical steps to keep in mind when shame comes up that have been really helpful for navigating it. in real time within myself. Not to make the shame disappear, but to stay aware and get some distance so that you can let it not take over or define you. So the first step is to name
it. Literally name it. This is shame. If we don't name it, we become hijacked. This is what I call um turning on the light to shame. Shame feels so dark. And if you think about a dark room, what happens if you're in a dark room and you turn on the light? It can't stay dark. It loses its power. So just naming it helps to zoom out from that lens. That's my experience and that's also what the research shows. The next thing that I found really helpful is step two, locate it and feel it. Where is it in your body? And can you breathe into that place? Sometimes this second step comes first for some people. You know in that moment where I am out with people who are speaking negatively or inappropriately about autism. I was not
initially aware of what was happening for me emotionally. We are not aware when we're hijacked. But this is where the body can become an alarm and so helpful. That sematic shame signature became my cue to noticing. And so now if the same situation happens, which it still does at times, that exact area in my throat, in my upper chest, it can seize right up. And that sematic signature, which I now know very well, is what allows me to go, "Oh, this is shame." And helps me to step out of the cycle of spiraling into those old patterns. So that now I can be present and make an authentic choice which might be saying something to the people or it might not depending on the context. But I am back present and in my agency.
And I also want to acknowledge these two steps. You know the name it and then the locate it and feel it. Those can happen alongside each other. Everyone's emotions show up differently. We talked about this in the science of emotions episode. So you have to get to know this for yourself. But regardless, it does mean facing the discomfort of the feeling and feeling an emotion. If you remember from that previous episode, it's not about understanding it intellectually. We need to feel the sensations in the body, letting them move through the system. Naming the emotion can be helpful in allowing us to do that. And I find that especially to be true with shame. We there's a saying, we have to
name it to tame it. And yeah, it sucks when it comes. It feels terrifying. I mean, it feels like it's never going to end. So, I don't want to let it in, like I'm going to be consumed by it. But now, I've seen through my own experience, when I do let it in, the more I practice it, I see it comes. And like other emotional experiences, it eventually goes. Step three is to separate from it. To watch the experience like an observer. Watch the sensations moving through your system as opposed to fusing with it and becoming the experience. When shame hits, I become it. I am bad.
I believe that I'm bad to my core. But when I can recognize it as shame, I get some separation. And in that awareness, I can then investigate, is that really me? And even if I did do something wrong, even if I made a mistake, maybe I can connect to the emotion of guilt without it being that I am wrong. So I have an example of something that just happened the other day. I had confirmed with someone that I was going to attend an event on certain dates and then I realized after the fact that I had made a mistake and I couldn't come. And in the moment that I realized it, what alerted me was actually that sematic shame signature. I felt that feeling in my throat and chest. I recognized it as
shame. And then I was able to go, "Oh, I'm feeling bad. I'm feeling that I'm bad because I made a mistake." That helped me separate and go, "Okay, I made a mistake. I am not a mistake." When that behavior is separate from me, from who I am, I don't internalize it as being me, my identity. So, it's important to have that separation and name what I find is helpful to name the specific mistake that I made. Staying focused on the behavior. So, not I'm bad, but I snapped, I avoided, I lied, I overe, I ghosted, whatever it was, that matters because the shame is always going to try and make it global. In part two, we're going to go deeper into this. There's a whole uh identity
mechanism here that mindfulness can help us unwind. So the fourth step is to share it. And this is not always going to happen, but if it's possible, the research shows it's helpful to bring shame into the light with another safe human. Bnee Brown talks about how empathy is kryptonite for shame. It can't survive being met with understanding instead of judgment. I'm not talking about oversharing or dumping on people. I mean safe emotional spaces, trusted relationships. And I also want to name something important here. This step informed in part by Bnee Brown's work on vulnerability. It's been incredibly impactful. And it's also been a bit critiqued for how vulnerability and courage can land differently depending
on power, identity, safety, context. So empathy can dissolve shame, but only in the right context with the right people. The discernment of that matters. So for me, it might sound like calling up one of my sisters or a close friend and saying, "Gh, I'm feeling this shame that I committed to this thing that I can't do. I feel like I'm a bad friend." You know, that's vulnerable to say out loud. It feels kind of exposing, but again, something important and kind of helpful to understand. Shame is incredibly selforiented. When I'm at it, it feels huge to me, but someone who loves me, it's probably not going to be a big deal to them. You know, they'll offer their perspective or empathy like,
you know, of course this is hard. Not being able to go doesn't make you a bad friend. And that kind of mirroring brings us back into presence. Uh John Bradshaw calls this being a benevolent witness. Someone who can see your shame without shaming you for it. And that kind of witnessing can loosen shame's grip. Now, can you get rid of it? The intention of all those steps is to help you navigate shame, but it's not about getting rid of it in some kind of permanent way. This is a human experience I believe because it developed when your brain was developing. We can continue to heal the pain behind it but it may never go away completely. Your nervous system has fired those pathways so many times. The work is about getting to know it
intimately so that you can change your relationship with it. So instead of running away terrified when it comes, being consumed by it, fused with it, taking it as confirmation that I'm bad, which is what most of us typically do, or at least some version of that before we have awareness of how to navigate it. Now I have the capacity to be aware of it and aware of that tendency to get swallowed up by it. And even when I do get swallowed up, which is more rare these days, but it happens sometimes, I can so much better name it in real time without becoming the shame. So, it may and likely will still arise, but it no longer takes over my experience. I can maintain control and the ability to
regulate through it. I can recognize the story that it's telling me with some separation, without believing that story is true. even if it takes me a few minutes to get there. I have tried to make this to normalize this in my life with the people I'm around. I've been on team meetings with my podcast team or I've been even on coaching sessions um where I'm coaching a client or in business meetings where I've had a moment of shame come up and I have actually said, "Oo, I'm experiencing some shame right now. I need a minute." And sometimes I can be contained and sometimes it's not so regulated. But what I've seen is most people really appreciate that honesty and vulnerability and meet me with a lot
of empathy and kindness. Okay, so we are going to recap part one. There's still a lot to go through, but we've already talked about a lot today. We've talked about shame versus guilt. Guilt being behavior-based and can often lead to repair. Shame is identity based and leads to hiding. We've talked about how shame forms through rupture and meaning making. So we learn it must be me. Shame feels true because that strong feeling in the body, but it's a lie. It's not a reflection of your truth. Shame is not just a thought. It's a nervous system embodied emotional state. Your job is to start recognizing your shame and using your shame signature in the body. if you have access to that. And we talked about
four practical steps that you can work with naming it, locating and feeling it, separating from it, and if it's safe, sharing it. In part two, we're going to talk about why shame becomes fused with identity, why it becomes I am bad, not I feel bad. And we'll talk about how we can integrate the parts of us that learned to protect us without integrating the distorted lens of the shame itself. We'll also explore ego from a psychological lens and from a spiritual lens. And I'll bring some mindfulness and Buddhist informed framing in a grounded practical way because this is one of the clearest paths that I know for creating separation from shame's lens without bypassing the pain that's really beneath there. And then when we get to part
three, we'll take it a step further to what is shame protecting? What's it covering? And how might there be even a gift underneath there that becomes available when we can stop living inside that shame story? I know that's a lot. Be gentle with yourself. That's why I'm spreading this out. If this episode supported you, please follow, subscribe, download it. I hope you'll leave a fivestar rating and review. It really helps us grow. And if there's someone that you know that you love, that you care about that has a feeling of being not enough. Share this with them. I would love to get this series out to as many people as possible. And most importantly, if shame showed up here
while listening, just notice that it's not proof that you're broken. It's proof that this is tender territory. You are enough. You are not broken. You are not your shame. You are inherently whole and radiant and remarkably lovable. I appreciate you and I'll see you in part two.
