October 7, 2024 • 37 mins
Shame follows us everywhere. So many of us are bound by shame about our past, our mistakes, our identity, our looks, our decisions and choices. This can make living a meaningful and fulfilling life incredibly difficult when you have your own personal, shame bully following you everywhere. In todays episode we learn:
- How shame gets implanted in us
- The links between shame and trauma
- Shame vs. guilt
- How shame manifests in hidden ways
- What a life without shame could look like?
- How to release shame by communicating with your inner child
- How to shut down shame spirals
- My own personal story of body shaming
Listen now! I hope this releases you from the heavy burden of shame.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here. Back for another episode as we break
down the psychology of our twenties. This episode was listener requested.
Actually it was requested a lot of times, a lot
(00:47):
of times, and as with all listener requested episodes, I
always am like, how have I never done this before?
Because when you start thinking about it, A lot of
us live with shame about who we are, and we
carry that in silence. We are ashamed, each of us.
(01:07):
I think of something in our lives, of our past,
our past mistakes, maybe our bodies, our choices, our identity,
our entire personhood at times, and that shame takes over
quite literally everything. It can become a constant companion and
everything that we do, so that when we wake up
(01:28):
we feel like we aren't good enough. When we want
to take a risk or do something brave, we can't
trust ourselves when good things happen to us, we think
we don't deserve them. Shame is above all else, at
its core, at its beginnings, it's a social or moral emotion.
That's what it was, what it's kind of evolved to be.
(01:49):
We feel it very intensely in situations where we believe
that we have upset, offended, disgusted someone, or when we
go against some social norm or moral health by society.
That means that perhaps we deserve to be punished, outcast,
we are unworthy of acceptance and forgiveness. This is what
makes it a deeply painful emotion that seems so hardwired
(02:14):
into our social brains. It's a way to make us behave,
make sure that we are good boys and girls, and
also that we hide behavior that we think others will
judge us for. We hide ourselves away all together when
we think that our mistakes or something about us makes
us unsavory as a whole, not worthy of being seen.
(02:36):
This is the problem with chronic shame. It's that we
don't just feel this emotion in response to specific circumstances,
because that would be guilt. We feel shame even when
we are alone, even when there is no audience, there
is no offensive behavior that we have committed. And that
is the kind of shame that I want to discuss today.
(02:58):
Toxic make shame that just doesn't accompany a hiccup or
small mistake, but which kind of ends up feeling like
part of our DNA. And that's what it means to
be shame bound. And it's one of the big battles
that a lot of us have to overcome in our
twenties to be released from this very oppressive force that
(03:20):
keeps us small. And that is what shame does. Shame
keeps us small because it becomes self imposed.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
At some point. We don't need another person to give
us a dirty look, or to humiliate us, or to
expose us, reject us all of those things. We end
up doing them to ourselves in a way as a
way to stop us from being critiqued and seen, and
because we almost anticipate that if we were to show
(03:49):
up and try hard and be visible, someone is going
to find something about us that we deserve to be
ashamed of. I don't think that it will come as
a surprise that, sadly, this pattern has a lot of
roots in trauma, and not just the big trauma that
we think of, but small moments where we were made
to feel terrible and disgusting because of part of who
(04:13):
we were. So let's talk about it today. I want
to really discuss how shame gets implanted in our self concept,
what that feels like, what that does to our ambition,
what that does to our direction, but also some of
the best advice I have encountered in a long time
(04:34):
on how to release ourself from being shame bound. I
know this is something that a lot of us live
with for different reasons, and we're going to discuss those
as well. But I really hope that if the thing
what you might actually realize is that the thing that
is keeping you from everything you might want, everything that
you could be, is not a lack of effort. It's
(04:57):
not because you're lazy, it's not because you don't know
what you want. It's not because you're not capable. It's
because of an inherent shame that you feel around being
seen and being loud and being heard. So without further ado,
let's discuss the psychology of shame. Brene Brown is one
(05:24):
of my favorite favorite researchers people in general, and in
her very well known ted talk, which is called The
Power of Vulnerability, was released almost fourteen years ago. It's
incredibly popular. It's a must watch. She says that shame
is essentially the fear of disconnection, and it sits very
closely besides our fear of loneliness, of judgment, ostracization, and
(05:49):
social pain, because basically it is posing a very insidious
and toxic line of questioning. Is there something about me
that if other people were to know or were to say,
they would believe I wasn't worthy of belonging? And if
there is, I better hide it? Or else how could
I be loved and accepted? There is this kind of
(06:10):
toss up in our brain. Either I can be truthful, open,
I can be myself and maybe I won't ever be loved.
Or I can be secretive and I can conceal who
I really am and maybe I can be loved. Those
in our mind when we are shamed bound are the
only two options. We never once think, well, maybe the
things I'm ashamed of others would just see as part
(06:31):
of me. That would just be something that they love
and that they would nurture. That's not how chronic shame works.
It's a very limited belief that if you are unworthy
in some ways, you'd better be hiding that part of yourself.
This results in a number of really really unfortunate, unhappy
behaviors and compulsions, like the need to self isolate. If
(06:52):
you've ever found yourself, you know, self isolating after a
big social event and you don't think that you're an
introvert or hiding away after like a really long exhausting
day in front of people, or after a big presentation,
or after you've spoken your mind, feeling the need to
be silent. Maybe that comes from shame. There's also an
(07:13):
intense embarrassment or anxiety in social situations. There is a
self loathing, there is a self sabotage, feeling of rejection,
all of which stop us from attempting anything that might
make us feel seen, because that is what shame does.
It's a minimizer. Literally, think about the physical actions and behaviors,
(07:34):
the physicalities that a company feeling shame. Think about the
last time that you were like, oh my gosh, I
feel ashamed. You were probably not making eye contact, you
were slouching your shoulders, lowering your head, almost curling into yourself. Physically, socially, mentally,
shame's goal is to shrink us. The opposite of shame
(07:57):
in that sense is self acceptance excepting who you are,
your body, your identity, how you've gotten here, even if
you have regrets, and that self acceptance, that self confidence,
that is what makes us expansive, self assured creatures, passionate, outspoken,
loud about life creatures. And that's the goal here, that's
(08:18):
the direction that we want to move in. But before
we get there, I do need to give you few
more crucial details about the pathology and the underworkings underpinnings
of shame. So shame is universal. I know it feels
like quite a solitary experience, that is the nature of it.
But the only people on this planet who don't experience
shame are those who have essentially no human empathy. They
(08:43):
have no desire to be liked or be seen or
accepted by others. So we might call these people psychopaths, right,
and a few studies have found a very strong association
between psychopathy and low shame proneness, which basically means that
even if you were to do something that's like objectively
(09:03):
wrong and immoral, you still don't feel bad about it.
There was a really fascinating case study that I dug
out of the archives and I was looking into this,
and it's on a man, This an unnamed man who
was in prison in the US, and he had admitted
his crime. His crime was armed robbery and actually resulted
in someone being murdered. But even years later, he felt
(09:25):
no remorse at all, He felt no shame. He believed
that he was justified because of how he was raised,
and when he was in prison, he continued to steal,
to lie, to do interviews, what he almost bragged about
his crimes, whatever he could to basically get his way,
even when it meant others were hurt. All because of that.
You know that part of us that lights up when
(09:47):
we hurt, we injure, we upset someone else. Our shame
center his basically wasn't working. And that's kind of the
alternative that we're working with. Shame is also very different
to guilt. I know they are sometimes used interchangeably, but guilt,
I actually believe it's adaptive. You know, it is tied
(10:07):
to a specific situation in which we have done something
objectively wrong, We've made a mistake, and we can say,
you know, I feel guilty for how I've acted, because
I've messed up, I've hurt someone, And that acknowledgment of
a specific instance in which we have gone against our
own kind of our own expectations for ourselves, our own standards,
(10:28):
that makes us a better person. We bring ourselves back
in line. Shame, on the other hand, it does not
make you a better person. At no point is shame
going to make you better. In fact, it's just so
incredibly destructive because it rests on the premises that it's
not just that we sometimes make mistakes, is that our
(10:48):
whole sense of self we are a mistake. We are wrong,
even when we have no evidence for that, even when
it's not situation specific, like guilt. Oftentimes, when you feel shame,
you begin to notice that no one's even around. You
haven't hurt anyone, You are a good person, there's nothing
that you can think of, but you still feel this
(11:09):
deep sting just by existing. Also, I think the other
key point here that I didn't mention before, guilt actually
has somewhere to go right. You know, we can rectify
our mistakes, we can apologize, it can motivate good behavior.
Shame lingers, it doesn't exit. It just implants deeper and
(11:29):
deeper within us. Something really important to remember is that
no matter how long you have carried your shame, no
matter how long you and shame have shared the same home,
beIN companions, none of us were born ashamed of who
we are. At some point, and this is a sad
(11:49):
thing to say. Actually, someone had to teach you that
there was something about how you look, how you act,
your identity, your existence that was a defensive to them
and that shouldn't be seen. Think about the shame that
a lot of people used to associate with being queer,
with being part of the lgbt QA plus community. At
(12:11):
some point, someone said something really demeaning to you, or
maybe someone's parents, so that they would be shamed to
have a queer son or a queer daughter, or you know,
you see things in the media that just villainize people
who are literally just living their life. That is leading
probably led a lot of people to internalize that therefore
they are shameful and that is not the case. Or
(12:32):
the shame of making a mistake as a child and
being criticized for so much more than the action, you know,
instead of just your parents scolding you and saying I
can't believe you spilt the milk. It's I can't believe
you are so clumsy, You are so lazy, You are worthless,
you are useless. Can you see that shame is not
about what you've done. It's associated with who you are?
(12:56):
And how can any part of who you are be
inherently shameful? It becomes implanted in our minds until the
point where it is self imposed. We end up using
it against ourselves without ever needing anyone else to tell
it to us. Again, I heard doctor Pete Levine. He's
a very well known trauma doctor and trauma specialist. Look
(13:16):
him up if you're interested in this. But I heard
him say in a video the other day that shame
is like a cancer that grows from the injury of
trauma and from the wound of betrayal, especially into personal
trauma and interpersonal betrayal, which is basically the trauma we
encounter from the transgressions and actions of others, especially people
that we trust, And that cancer from these situations becomes
(13:40):
deeply lodged in our bodies and our minds, and it
affects and infects all other aspects of our life, your relationships,
how you show up at work, in class, how you
walk into a room, what you feel you deserve from
your life. Nothing remains untouched. So how do we get
to this place? This doesn't just happen. How do we
(14:02):
get here? Well, Doctor Levine, same guy. He suggested that
there are two specific pathways through which we adopt chronic
shame or we become shamebound. The first is if you
are traumatized or humiliated as a young child or a teenager,
either by a parent, a sibling, a friend, a bully,
a teacher, whoever it may be. Someone trespasses against your
(14:25):
sense of self worth by harming you, by making you
feel useless and small. And because of our limited critical
thinking skills at the time or our limited life experience
as children, the only way that we can make sense
of what we're experiencing is by internalizing what has happened,
which causes us to basically assume that something must be
(14:49):
fundamentally wrong with us. We lay the blame on our
own innate badness because we have to assume that we
are the cause. The other common denominator, because how else
could we continue to trust people? How could we continue
to trust people that we rely on, like our parents,
like our teachers, like our family. They must be right.
(15:13):
This is actually part of what he proposes as a
survival strategy. We cannot possibly think that the people that
we rely on for security and safety would be wrong
about things like this, because then they could be wrong
about other things, and then you know who could help us.
The other element of this, occurring in childhood especially, is
that all the people that we feel ashamed or feel
(15:35):
shamed by are often older and wiser, and so we
deduce that they must know something about our character that
we don't. They are the truthholders. We have this big
red cross on us. They must be correct. We are
wrong and awful and bad because they told us that
we were. The more experiences we have like this, the
more difficult it is to deny our badness, the more
(15:57):
oppressive and entrenched the shame becomes. This can also be
more pronounced for people who who's just identities in general
are criticized by a very oppressive, dominating prejudice society. We
do see higher rates of internalized shame in the queer community,
amongst people of color, amongst people in marginalized religions, because
(16:19):
there is this system that says, and there is this
you know, it's held up by the media, it's held
up by discrimination, by prejudice, by stereotypes that essentially says,
we don't really like you that much, and there's no
reason that we don't like you. There's just some part
of you that's wrong. And it's just so awful that
children from a very young age begin to pick that
(16:42):
up shame. I really want this to be very apparent.
Shame is not dispersed equally across society. The second way
that chronic shame develops can come about a little bit later,
and it really comes down to a fear of being
left out, which feeds off again our fear of loneliness
and our fear of being excluded, very human, primal fears.
(17:03):
I don't think I have to tell you, hopefully, I
don't have to tell you that community and belonging are
so important. They're just literally our lifeblood. It's one of
our foundational psychological needs, and not just a physical need,
but an emotional need as well. There's a really well
known study using fMRI technology, which is basically a machine
(17:25):
that shows us which parts of our brains are active
when we're doing certain things, and it examined the brains
of people who were made to feel lonely, disconnected, and rejected,
versus the brains of participants who are made to feel accepted, included,
and connected. The brain scans of the participants who were
made to feel isolated were just lighting up in the
(17:47):
areas of the brain responsible for pain and perceiving danger,
meaning that this experience of not being liked or welcomed
was physically uncomfortable at times. Now, if you know what
that feels like to have people not like you, and
to not only have them not like you, but to
make that known to be openly judged, you are going
(18:09):
to work pretty hard to stop that from happening again.
And here is where your shame, seemingly to you, feels
useful because you're like, Okay, if I listen to my shame,
I'll never step out of line. If I listen to
my shame, I'll never do something that's wrong. I'll be
able to make friends, I'll be loved. Any time you
(18:31):
go to therefore, you know they're onwards. Go to change
anything about yourself, to put yourself out there, to bet
on yourself, to be authentic, vulnerable. That shameful voice comes
in and says, don't do it. Don't let yourself be seen.
The more visible you are, the less safe we are.
Take a step back. That shameful voice. You think that
(18:54):
it's acting as your protector. It's convincing you that it's
keeping you safe from reject and exclusion. But you know,
although our shame likes to masquerade as a form of
self preservation, it ultimately limits your ability to experience life
because it's keeping you tied down. So that smallness is
(19:16):
one of the consequences of letting shame be the loudest
voice in the room. And that's actually how I like
to think about it. It's the guy in class in
your meeting who's always interrupting you, you know. It's the
voice that just doesn't know when to shut up. It's
the voice that's saying, oh, well, actually this, well, actually that.
Another real loss is that when when you are shame bound,
(19:38):
even when good things happen to you, you still don't
believe that you deserve them. When someone listens, when someone
lets us be vulnerable and accepts us, we never totally
accept it. We are waiting for the so called emotional
jump scare because our self concept has been reprogrammed time
and time again, to assume the worst, to have our guy,
(20:00):
to cut ourselves down before someone else can. Actually, it's
really interesting because it's really interesting, and this is kind
of a side note, but there has been some really cool,
fascinating research, not cool, but definitely fascinating research that shows
that people who experience more shame often are quite obsessed
with self improvement because they are constantly trying to fix
(20:24):
or fix something about themselves or to show that they
are deserving of things by working hard to change who
they are. And so sometimes it's like, well, I can't
have anything that comes easy because I don't deserve it,
so there must be there is something deeply, deeply wrong
about me that if I focus on self improvement, on
getting really really fit, on learning, or making my life
(20:47):
seem perfect, then I can prove that all these good
things have actually worked hard for them. So quite an interesting,
very interesting point of view, especially as someone who I'm like, ooh,
I like work in the self help, self improved space.
I want people to get the most out of their life.
It's interesting how many of us might actually be doing
that because of a shame of never being good enough,
(21:08):
chronic shame. I think this is very similar is also
reflected often in people pleasing, because we of course prioritize
the opinions of others over our own. We want them
to stay happy with us, even if it means a
loss of personal identity and less personal fulfillment. And shame
can also lead to self sabotaging behaviors where we consciously
(21:31):
undermine our success or our happiness by procrastinating, by neglecting opportunities,
neglecting relationships, minimizing ourselves in front of others, or even
engaging in really risky behaviors to confirm negative beliefs about ourselves.
Because when you have lived that long in shame, it
feels like home. What's that quote? It's like better the
(21:54):
hell you know than the heaven that you don't, And
that is where we are at. I think another element
of it is also, you know, success and doing well
brings attention, and that spotlight might reveal even more aspects
of us that we should be ashamed of, and we
can't have that. So you know, you go out and
get drunk the night before a big meeting, you ruin
the relationship before it can progress. And at least you
(22:17):
know you already feel comfortable in that understanding of yourself.
You are a failure, You're not enough, You'll never deserve this.
Can you kind of see what doctor Levine was saying.
It is a cancer the way that shame manifests itself.
It metastasizes into everything that we do. So what I
want to talk about next is where we can go
(22:37):
from here. We've identified the problem. I think maybe I'm
saying things to you and you're just nodding your head,
being like, yeah, I already knew that. I've literally lived
with this fears. What do I do about it? How
do I be more big and vulnerable and authentic when
I'm being told by my own brain to be quite
small and visible. Well we are going to talk about
all of that and a lot more after the short
(23:00):
so stay with us. Shame is kind of like a
bad habit. It won't change unless you do. And I'm
not saying it won't change unless you get better and
you prove it wrong. I mean that it's always going
to feel like you're fighting with yourself until you accept it.
(23:23):
Until it's almost like when you lay back in the
ocean and you just let it take you and you
lie in it and you realize that You've been struggling
against something for so long that if you just turned
around and said it's okay, I see you, I accept this,
maybe it would start to fade a little bit. The person,
and I've already mentioned her once in this episode, obviously
(23:43):
I am obsessed, But the person I always turned to
her for advice on this is Brene Brown. And obviously
Brene Brown, She's made her career on shame, guilt, vulnerability,
and the best thing she ever said about the shame
cycle is that an actual bad person, a person who
has done things they deserve to feel ashamed for, they
would never sit down and question whether they are a
(24:05):
bad person. They would never admit their mistakes. So the
very fact that you were considering your worthiness as evidence
in yourself that you are worthy. You are someone deserving
of love, You have empathy, you are someone who is lovable,
someone who can be forgiven, however big or large that
mistake was, and you are actually it might sound surprising,
(24:27):
you are someone who was enough, regardless of what makes
you believe that is not true. So there are a
few steps we can take to truly accepting that fact. First,
don't let your shame be general force it to be specific.
You know this sounds very strange, but you see, one
of the reasons Shaane is so good at convincing us
that we're worthless is it takes a single instant of
(24:50):
embarrassment or a slip up or a thought and it
applies the feeling to everything. So instead of saying, you know,
I feel bad because I said the wrong thing to
my really good friend and I hurt them, I feel
awful because I wish I was a better friend in
that moment, our shame takes that feeling and it removes
a bunch of information and it concludes, well, I am bad,
(25:13):
I am wrong, I am awful, even after the situation
has long passed. That over generalization is what causes trouble.
So instead, learn to add information back into the negative
statements that you tell yourself. You need to realize that
shame relies on you taking everything that it says truthfully
(25:35):
and not interrogating how it could be so general. You know,
are you really a bad person always without question? Or
are you just feeling bad? So I want you to
replace the I am awful with I'm feeling awful, I
am wrong with I am just assuming that I'm wrong
I feel I assume I'm thinking that I am. Use
(25:56):
those exact words instead to kind of put some reality
back into your faulty thinking. So let's use the example
of a really common one, I am an unlovable person
to kind of show how this works. Is this statement
I am unlovable? True? Is it? You know? Is it fact?
Could you find this fact on Wikipedia? Has someone done
(26:18):
a peer reviewed experiment on this and come to you
with a solid, you know, thesis conclusion hypothesis saying yeah,
this is I've conducted, you know, millions of interviews and
I did heaps of studies and oh, by the way, yes,
you are unlovable? Or or is this an emotions based conclusion?
(26:38):
It's emotions based, right, It's coming from you. So I
want you to replace I am with I feel I
feel like an unlovable person and then ask why is
there something that has triggered this feeling? Is there a
specific recent memory? Maybe there is, and you can add
that in I feel unlovable because of how badly that
(26:59):
date went. I feel unlovable because that person didn't treat
me well. That puts distance between you and the immediate
instinct to go to shame you can kind of now
see that this isn't something intrinsic about you. It's actually
a feeling, not a fact, and it's about how someone
else chose to treat you. That's a sign of their
(27:21):
flawed character, not your own. This is not a permanent fact.
I just want to say that again. It's a momentary
experience based on someone else's actions, not your inherent worth.
The other alternative is that you may searching for a
recent memory where you've been made to feel this way
and you just can't find one. It's like no evidence,
(27:43):
there's no reason why you should be feeling this way,
and it must be based on something else. And that
thing that it's based on a shame. It's not a
real statement. There is no evidence for why you should
be feeling this way. It's just shame. That is what
it is. Either way, when we rely on those I
(28:03):
am broad statements, they are just incorrect because they are
way too general. Next, I think it's really worthwhile to
explore your shame and try and find an origin point.
Like you know how every villain has an origin story,
Your shame has an origin story as well. As I
said before, you know, no one is born feeling disgusting
(28:25):
and deserving, shameful. It's a learned behavior, it's a learned habit.
And when we do the really hard autobiographical work of
looking back through our memories in our past, often that
becomes very very clear, very quickly. You can see that
there is a line between the thoughts and the feelings
(28:45):
you have about yourself now and the things your younger
self encountered and internalized. I'm going to provide an example,
my own example here. I think of all the shame
that I have felt about my body for years, and
it was so hard to even think of where that
may have come from, because my opinions of my bodies
(29:07):
were just so hurtful to even touch. But when I reflected,
I saw this very clear line in my memory, a
before and after around a series of events. The first
was a picture day when I was when I was seven,
and we I don't know if you remember this, but
we did our big class photo and I remember getting
(29:28):
the photo and the boy, this boy said that I
looked like a whale. I was wearing this little dress
and I kind of looked at all the other girls
and I was just like, oh my god, I'm bigger
than them. Bear in mind, I was seven, Like I
wasn't like, look at that. Now I feel the need
to justify. I'm gonna I'm gona stop myself there. But
(29:51):
I remember like taking the photo home and telling my
mom that I was like, oh, there was a fan
behind me. It was blowing my dress up. That's why
I have such a belly. It's really sad to think
of now that's how I felt. And that was my
first experience of shame. And then maybe a week later,
I was at after school care and we were watching
a movie and I remember what it's called. It was
(30:12):
called The Little Princess, and a much older boy said
to me, you know you would look like her, meaning
the main character, if you weren't so fat, And oh
my god, I can still remember how I just had
this like hot flush all across my face and my
skin was like prinkly, like oh, just more. I wanted
(30:33):
to hide. And that was the moment that I think
I was like, oh, this is a new feeling. This
is the feeling. This is shame. It's really kind of
sad to relive those memories. But the self knowledge that
came with that was so powerful, you know, to be
an adult knowing so much better now and kind of
(30:54):
rethinking how I would have responded. I know I would
have stood up for my seven, I think maybe seven
or eight year old self. And so now now that
it's my own thoughts that are saying those cruel things,
you look fat in that outfit, everyone is going to think,
so you know, you should wear something more flattering, you
should cover up. You know, that's my own voice now
(31:16):
telling me those things. But I picture that voice as
this ten year old boy, and I think, oh my gosh,
what do you know. You're a child. Shut up. I'm
an adult. You're ten. I'm the adult. I'm gonna wear
what I want. So that's how I picture it. I
picture it as the first voice that I heard it
as you know, when that shame was implanted in my brain.
(31:37):
It was spoken as a ten year old. And I
think about him, and you know, he's a fucking kid.
I don't need to listen to that. That's one approach.
Or I also think about myself as a child suddenly
being very awoken to a world of judgment and unkindness,
and it must have been such a shock, And I think,
how would my present adult self comfort her if adult
(31:59):
me had been in out building watching that situation, ready
to intervene. What would I have done. I would have
pulled her aside, and I would have said, you have value,
no matter what anyone else thinks. I think you are
the most beautiful girl in the world. And you deserve
to love your body because it does so much for you.
Look at how it takes care of you. You don't
(32:19):
need to hide for anyone, especially not this boy. And
confidence is going to be your superpower. And I would
say those things. When you are reflecting on those origins
of your shame, consciously bring empathy, kindness, compassion back into
those memories. Because shame is so socially orientated, often we
(32:40):
think that we need others to approve of us in
order to heal from it. But there is a lot
of self forgiveness that you can provide yourself. For me,
it was about apologizing to my younger self for ever
believing that this person knew who I was, or forever
believing that I needed to hide, forever believing that something
was wrong about me. I've learnt that's not the case,
(33:02):
and now I'm going to go forward, and you're going
to go forward, nurturing the part of you that still
wants to withdraw and instead showing up as this big protector,
this big strong person, this adult who is going to
defend you. We also want to practice the kind of
unconditional love that we've always craved by showing it to ourselves.
(33:23):
Don't hide from the shame. In fact, speak it out loud.
I'm ashamed of my past, I'm ashamed of who I am,
I'm ashamed of my body. And yet, and yet I
choose to love myself anyways because I am as deserving
of love as anyone else. I love others unconditionally, so
(33:44):
I can love myself the same way. In fact, think
about all the people who know and love you, not
because they're forced to, but because they want to. They
want to be by your side. They have the freedom
to be friends with anyone, and they are choosing with
that freedom to love you. It's just a further proof
(34:09):
of how brilliant you are. And wouldn't they love you
even more the more they saw of you? Reflect on
your own relationships here, doesn't your love only grow with
more vulnerability when someone shows you more of who they are.
Don't you just love them more? That goes both ways. Finally,
I want you to question what staying small out of shame?
(34:32):
What's it going to get you? And is that actually
your dream destination in life? What is the cost of
staying small versus the benefit of staying safe. Shame is
just fear, and fear is something you don't have to
listen to. It's a fear of failure. It's a fear
of embarrassment, of loneliness. As we discussed before, and when
(34:55):
you have your last moments on this earth, do you
want to think, Oh, I'm so so glad I let
myself be scared. That was a great decision. Or do
you want to think, I'm so glad I let myself
be free. I'm so glad I listened to the people
that mattered and I ignored the rest. I'm so glad
I let myself be authentic, vulnerable. I put myself out there.
(35:19):
I took risks on myself. I just knew who the
fuck I was. And I want a serious answer from you,
because I do believe that you can overcome chronic shame.
If you see what waits on the other side, that
is a very motivating thing. And for me, you know,
it's just been as we said, total acceptance, because why
(35:39):
would I live my life based on what a mean
voice says to me in my head when that's not
even my voice, someone else's voice that's just snuck in there.
It's not welcome for me. That has really helped me
build a courage to try anything and everything, even if
it goes wrong. It's It's resulted in the ability to
(36:01):
commit to my dreams because I deserve them. It's evolved
into the capacity to accept love, and I really want
that for you. It does make me quite sad to
think of how many of us don't realize that the
root of everything we don't like about ourselves is not
the fact that those things aren't worthy. It's that we
just feel shameful about them. And shame is not a fact.
(36:23):
It's a feeling. You know, the parts about yourself that
you don't like, there is nothing inherently bad about them.
It is that someone at some point has conditioned you,
taught you to feel that way, and I don't want
you to feel that way anymore. So I hope that
this episode has helped you understand the root of it,
has helped you go back and discover the origin, discover
(36:46):
the villain, the villain origin story, and I hope that
you start treating that younger version of yourself with the
kindness that you always deserved, and that includes treating your
current self with the kindness that they deserve. Because you
and that child itself are not different. You're the same person,
You're on the same timeline here. If you enjoyed this episode,
make sure you're following along. Maybe share it with a friend,
(37:08):
share it with a parent if they might need to
learn this lesson. That's a bit audacious. Just hopefully it
reaches the people that it needs to reach. That's all
I'm saying. Make sure that you are following us on
Instagram at that Psychology Podcast. If you have further questions, queries,
stories to be shared, please let us know. We would
love to hear from you. We're also taking episode suggestions.
(37:31):
Just slide into our DMS and tell us what you
want to hear about. Until next time, remember stay safe,
stay kind, and most importantly, with this episode, be gentle
with yourself. You don't deserve to live in shame. You
don't deserve to be shame bound, not one bit. And
we will talk very very soon.
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here. Back for another episode as we break
down the psychology of our twenties. This episode was listener requested.
Actually it was requested a lot of times, a lot
(00:47):
of times, and as with all listener requested episodes, I
always am like, how have I never done this before?
Because when you start thinking about it, A lot of
us live with shame about who we are, and we
carry that in silence. We are ashamed, each of us.
(01:07):
I think of something in our lives, of our past,
our past mistakes, maybe our bodies, our choices, our identity,
our entire personhood at times, and that shame takes over
quite literally everything. It can become a constant companion and
everything that we do, so that when we wake up
(01:28):
we feel like we aren't good enough. When we want
to take a risk or do something brave, we can't
trust ourselves when good things happen to us, we think
we don't deserve them. Shame is above all else, at
its core, at its beginnings, it's a social or moral emotion.
That's what it was, what it's kind of evolved to be.
(01:49):
We feel it very intensely in situations where we believe
that we have upset, offended, disgusted someone, or when we
go against some social norm or moral health by society.
That means that perhaps we deserve to be punished, outcast,
we are unworthy of acceptance and forgiveness. This is what
makes it a deeply painful emotion that seems so hardwired
(02:14):
into our social brains. It's a way to make us behave,
make sure that we are good boys and girls, and
also that we hide behavior that we think others will
judge us for. We hide ourselves away all together when
we think that our mistakes or something about us makes
us unsavory as a whole, not worthy of being seen.
(02:36):
This is the problem with chronic shame. It's that we
don't just feel this emotion in response to specific circumstances,
because that would be guilt. We feel shame even when
we are alone, even when there is no audience, there
is no offensive behavior that we have committed. And that
is the kind of shame that I want to discuss today.
(02:58):
Toxic make shame that just doesn't accompany a hiccup or
small mistake, but which kind of ends up feeling like
part of our DNA. And that's what it means to
be shame bound. And it's one of the big battles
that a lot of us have to overcome in our
twenties to be released from this very oppressive force that
(03:20):
keeps us small. And that is what shame does. Shame
keeps us small because it becomes self imposed.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
At some point. We don't need another person to give
us a dirty look, or to humiliate us, or to
expose us, reject us all of those things. We end
up doing them to ourselves in a way as a
way to stop us from being critiqued and seen, and
because we almost anticipate that if we were to show
(03:49):
up and try hard and be visible, someone is going
to find something about us that we deserve to be
ashamed of. I don't think that it will come as
a surprise that, sadly, this pattern has a lot of
roots in trauma, and not just the big trauma that
we think of, but small moments where we were made
to feel terrible and disgusting because of part of who
(04:13):
we were. So let's talk about it today. I want
to really discuss how shame gets implanted in our self concept,
what that feels like, what that does to our ambition,
what that does to our direction, but also some of
the best advice I have encountered in a long time
(04:34):
on how to release ourself from being shame bound. I
know this is something that a lot of us live
with for different reasons, and we're going to discuss those
as well. But I really hope that if the thing
what you might actually realize is that the thing that
is keeping you from everything you might want, everything that
you could be, is not a lack of effort. It's
(04:57):
not because you're lazy, it's not because you don't know
what you want. It's not because you're not capable. It's
because of an inherent shame that you feel around being
seen and being loud and being heard. So without further ado,
let's discuss the psychology of shame. Brene Brown is one
(05:24):
of my favorite favorite researchers people in general, and in
her very well known ted talk, which is called The
Power of Vulnerability, was released almost fourteen years ago. It's
incredibly popular. It's a must watch. She says that shame
is essentially the fear of disconnection, and it sits very
closely besides our fear of loneliness, of judgment, ostracization, and
(05:49):
social pain, because basically it is posing a very insidious
and toxic line of questioning. Is there something about me
that if other people were to know or were to say,
they would believe I wasn't worthy of belonging? And if
there is, I better hide it? Or else how could
I be loved and accepted? There is this kind of
(06:10):
toss up in our brain. Either I can be truthful, open,
I can be myself and maybe I won't ever be loved.
Or I can be secretive and I can conceal who
I really am and maybe I can be loved. Those
in our mind when we are shamed bound are the
only two options. We never once think, well, maybe the
things I'm ashamed of others would just see as part
(06:31):
of me. That would just be something that they love
and that they would nurture. That's not how chronic shame works.
It's a very limited belief that if you are unworthy
in some ways, you'd better be hiding that part of yourself.
This results in a number of really really unfortunate, unhappy
behaviors and compulsions, like the need to self isolate. If
(06:52):
you've ever found yourself, you know, self isolating after a
big social event and you don't think that you're an
introvert or hiding away after like a really long exhausting
day in front of people, or after a big presentation,
or after you've spoken your mind, feeling the need to
be silent. Maybe that comes from shame. There's also an
(07:13):
intense embarrassment or anxiety in social situations. There is a
self loathing, there is a self sabotage, feeling of rejection,
all of which stop us from attempting anything that might
make us feel seen, because that is what shame does.
It's a minimizer. Literally, think about the physical actions and behaviors,
(07:34):
the physicalities that a company feeling shame. Think about the
last time that you were like, oh my gosh, I
feel ashamed. You were probably not making eye contact, you
were slouching your shoulders, lowering your head, almost curling into yourself. Physically, socially, mentally,
shame's goal is to shrink us. The opposite of shame
(07:57):
in that sense is self acceptance excepting who you are,
your body, your identity, how you've gotten here, even if
you have regrets, and that self acceptance, that self confidence,
that is what makes us expansive, self assured creatures, passionate, outspoken,
loud about life creatures. And that's the goal here, that's
(08:18):
the direction that we want to move in. But before
we get there, I do need to give you few
more crucial details about the pathology and the underworkings underpinnings
of shame. So shame is universal. I know it feels
like quite a solitary experience, that is the nature of it.
But the only people on this planet who don't experience
shame are those who have essentially no human empathy. They
(08:43):
have no desire to be liked or be seen or
accepted by others. So we might call these people psychopaths, right,
and a few studies have found a very strong association
between psychopathy and low shame proneness, which basically means that
even if you were to do something that's like objectively
(09:03):
wrong and immoral, you still don't feel bad about it.
There was a really fascinating case study that I dug
out of the archives and I was looking into this,
and it's on a man, This an unnamed man who
was in prison in the US, and he had admitted
his crime. His crime was armed robbery and actually resulted
in someone being murdered. But even years later, he felt
(09:25):
no remorse at all, He felt no shame. He believed
that he was justified because of how he was raised,
and when he was in prison, he continued to steal,
to lie, to do interviews, what he almost bragged about
his crimes, whatever he could to basically get his way,
even when it meant others were hurt. All because of that.
You know that part of us that lights up when
(09:47):
we hurt, we injure, we upset someone else. Our shame
center his basically wasn't working. And that's kind of the
alternative that we're working with. Shame is also very different
to guilt. I know they are sometimes used interchangeably, but guilt,
I actually believe it's adaptive. You know, it is tied
(10:07):
to a specific situation in which we have done something
objectively wrong, We've made a mistake, and we can say,
you know, I feel guilty for how I've acted, because
I've messed up, I've hurt someone, And that acknowledgment of
a specific instance in which we have gone against our
own kind of our own expectations for ourselves, our own standards,
(10:28):
that makes us a better person. We bring ourselves back
in line. Shame, on the other hand, it does not
make you a better person. At no point is shame
going to make you better. In fact, it's just so
incredibly destructive because it rests on the premises that it's
not just that we sometimes make mistakes, is that our
(10:48):
whole sense of self we are a mistake. We are wrong,
even when we have no evidence for that, even when
it's not situation specific, like guilt. Oftentimes, when you feel shame,
you begin to notice that no one's even around. You
haven't hurt anyone, You are a good person, there's nothing
that you can think of, but you still feel this
(11:09):
deep sting just by existing. Also, I think the other
key point here that I didn't mention before, guilt actually
has somewhere to go right. You know, we can rectify
our mistakes, we can apologize, it can motivate good behavior.
Shame lingers, it doesn't exit. It just implants deeper and
(11:29):
deeper within us. Something really important to remember is that
no matter how long you have carried your shame, no
matter how long you and shame have shared the same home,
beIN companions, none of us were born ashamed of who
we are. At some point, and this is a sad
(11:49):
thing to say. Actually, someone had to teach you that
there was something about how you look, how you act,
your identity, your existence that was a defensive to them
and that shouldn't be seen. Think about the shame that
a lot of people used to associate with being queer,
with being part of the lgbt QA plus community. At
(12:11):
some point, someone said something really demeaning to you, or
maybe someone's parents, so that they would be shamed to
have a queer son or a queer daughter, or you know,
you see things in the media that just villainize people
who are literally just living their life. That is leading
probably led a lot of people to internalize that therefore
they are shameful and that is not the case. Or
(12:32):
the shame of making a mistake as a child and
being criticized for so much more than the action, you know,
instead of just your parents scolding you and saying I
can't believe you spilt the milk. It's I can't believe
you are so clumsy, You are so lazy, You are worthless,
you are useless. Can you see that shame is not
about what you've done. It's associated with who you are?
(12:56):
And how can any part of who you are be
inherently shameful? It becomes implanted in our minds until the
point where it is self imposed. We end up using
it against ourselves without ever needing anyone else to tell
it to us. Again, I heard doctor Pete Levine. He's
a very well known trauma doctor and trauma specialist. Look
(13:16):
him up if you're interested in this. But I heard
him say in a video the other day that shame
is like a cancer that grows from the injury of
trauma and from the wound of betrayal, especially into personal
trauma and interpersonal betrayal, which is basically the trauma we
encounter from the transgressions and actions of others, especially people
that we trust, And that cancer from these situations becomes
(13:40):
deeply lodged in our bodies and our minds, and it
affects and infects all other aspects of our life, your relationships,
how you show up at work, in class, how you
walk into a room, what you feel you deserve from
your life. Nothing remains untouched. So how do we get
to this place? This doesn't just happen. How do we
(14:02):
get here? Well, Doctor Levine, same guy. He suggested that
there are two specific pathways through which we adopt chronic
shame or we become shamebound. The first is if you
are traumatized or humiliated as a young child or a teenager,
either by a parent, a sibling, a friend, a bully,
a teacher, whoever it may be. Someone trespasses against your
(14:25):
sense of self worth by harming you, by making you
feel useless and small. And because of our limited critical
thinking skills at the time or our limited life experience
as children, the only way that we can make sense
of what we're experiencing is by internalizing what has happened,
which causes us to basically assume that something must be
(14:49):
fundamentally wrong with us. We lay the blame on our
own innate badness because we have to assume that we
are the cause. The other common denominator, because how else
could we continue to trust people? How could we continue
to trust people that we rely on, like our parents,
like our teachers, like our family. They must be right.
(15:13):
This is actually part of what he proposes as a
survival strategy. We cannot possibly think that the people that
we rely on for security and safety would be wrong
about things like this, because then they could be wrong
about other things, and then you know who could help us.
The other element of this, occurring in childhood especially, is
that all the people that we feel ashamed or feel
(15:35):
shamed by are often older and wiser, and so we
deduce that they must know something about our character that
we don't. They are the truthholders. We have this big
red cross on us. They must be correct. We are
wrong and awful and bad because they told us that
we were. The more experiences we have like this, the
more difficult it is to deny our badness, the more
(15:57):
oppressive and entrenched the shame becomes. This can also be
more pronounced for people who who's just identities in general
are criticized by a very oppressive, dominating prejudice society. We
do see higher rates of internalized shame in the queer community,
amongst people of color, amongst people in marginalized religions, because
(16:19):
there is this system that says, and there is this
you know, it's held up by the media, it's held
up by discrimination, by prejudice, by stereotypes that essentially says,
we don't really like you that much, and there's no
reason that we don't like you. There's just some part
of you that's wrong. And it's just so awful that
children from a very young age begin to pick that
(16:42):
up shame. I really want this to be very apparent.
Shame is not dispersed equally across society. The second way
that chronic shame develops can come about a little bit later,
and it really comes down to a fear of being
left out, which feeds off again our fear of loneliness
and our fear of being excluded, very human, primal fears.
(17:03):
I don't think I have to tell you, hopefully, I
don't have to tell you that community and belonging are
so important. They're just literally our lifeblood. It's one of
our foundational psychological needs, and not just a physical need,
but an emotional need as well. There's a really well
known study using fMRI technology, which is basically a machine
(17:25):
that shows us which parts of our brains are active
when we're doing certain things, and it examined the brains
of people who were made to feel lonely, disconnected, and rejected,
versus the brains of participants who are made to feel accepted, included,
and connected. The brain scans of the participants who were
made to feel isolated were just lighting up in the
(17:47):
areas of the brain responsible for pain and perceiving danger,
meaning that this experience of not being liked or welcomed
was physically uncomfortable at times. Now, if you know what
that feels like to have people not like you, and
to not only have them not like you, but to
make that known to be openly judged, you are going
(18:09):
to work pretty hard to stop that from happening again.
And here is where your shame, seemingly to you, feels
useful because you're like, Okay, if I listen to my shame,
I'll never step out of line. If I listen to
my shame, I'll never do something that's wrong. I'll be
able to make friends, I'll be loved. Any time you
(18:31):
go to therefore, you know they're onwards. Go to change
anything about yourself, to put yourself out there, to bet
on yourself, to be authentic, vulnerable. That shameful voice comes
in and says, don't do it. Don't let yourself be seen.
The more visible you are, the less safe we are.
Take a step back. That shameful voice. You think that
(18:54):
it's acting as your protector. It's convincing you that it's
keeping you safe from reject and exclusion. But you know,
although our shame likes to masquerade as a form of
self preservation, it ultimately limits your ability to experience life
because it's keeping you tied down. So that smallness is
(19:16):
one of the consequences of letting shame be the loudest
voice in the room. And that's actually how I like
to think about it. It's the guy in class in
your meeting who's always interrupting you, you know. It's the
voice that just doesn't know when to shut up. It's
the voice that's saying, oh, well, actually this, well, actually that.
Another real loss is that when when you are shame bound,
(19:38):
even when good things happen to you, you still don't
believe that you deserve them. When someone listens, when someone
lets us be vulnerable and accepts us, we never totally
accept it. We are waiting for the so called emotional
jump scare because our self concept has been reprogrammed time
and time again, to assume the worst, to have our guy,
(20:00):
to cut ourselves down before someone else can. Actually, it's
really interesting because it's really interesting, and this is kind
of a side note, but there has been some really cool,
fascinating research, not cool, but definitely fascinating research that shows
that people who experience more shame often are quite obsessed
with self improvement because they are constantly trying to fix
(20:24):
or fix something about themselves or to show that they
are deserving of things by working hard to change who
they are. And so sometimes it's like, well, I can't
have anything that comes easy because I don't deserve it,
so there must be there is something deeply, deeply wrong
about me that if I focus on self improvement, on
getting really really fit, on learning, or making my life
(20:47):
seem perfect, then I can prove that all these good
things have actually worked hard for them. So quite an interesting,
very interesting point of view, especially as someone who I'm like, ooh,
I like work in the self help, self improved space.
I want people to get the most out of their life.
It's interesting how many of us might actually be doing
that because of a shame of never being good enough,
(21:08):
chronic shame. I think this is very similar is also
reflected often in people pleasing, because we of course prioritize
the opinions of others over our own. We want them
to stay happy with us, even if it means a
loss of personal identity and less personal fulfillment. And shame
can also lead to self sabotaging behaviors where we consciously
(21:31):
undermine our success or our happiness by procrastinating, by neglecting opportunities,
neglecting relationships, minimizing ourselves in front of others, or even
engaging in really risky behaviors to confirm negative beliefs about ourselves.
Because when you have lived that long in shame, it
feels like home. What's that quote? It's like better the
(21:54):
hell you know than the heaven that you don't, And
that is where we are at. I think another element
of it is also, you know, success and doing well
brings attention, and that spotlight might reveal even more aspects
of us that we should be ashamed of, and we
can't have that. So you know, you go out and
get drunk the night before a big meeting, you ruin
the relationship before it can progress. And at least you
(22:17):
know you already feel comfortable in that understanding of yourself.
You are a failure, You're not enough, You'll never deserve this.
Can you kind of see what doctor Levine was saying.
It is a cancer the way that shame manifests itself.
It metastasizes into everything that we do. So what I
want to talk about next is where we can go
(22:37):
from here. We've identified the problem. I think maybe I'm
saying things to you and you're just nodding your head,
being like, yeah, I already knew that. I've literally lived
with this fears. What do I do about it? How
do I be more big and vulnerable and authentic when
I'm being told by my own brain to be quite
small and visible. Well we are going to talk about
all of that and a lot more after the short
(23:00):
so stay with us. Shame is kind of like a
bad habit. It won't change unless you do. And I'm
not saying it won't change unless you get better and
you prove it wrong. I mean that it's always going
to feel like you're fighting with yourself until you accept it.
(23:23):
Until it's almost like when you lay back in the
ocean and you just let it take you and you
lie in it and you realize that You've been struggling
against something for so long that if you just turned
around and said it's okay, I see you, I accept this,
maybe it would start to fade a little bit. The person,
and I've already mentioned her once in this episode, obviously
(23:43):
I am obsessed, But the person I always turned to
her for advice on this is Brene Brown. And obviously
Brene Brown, She's made her career on shame, guilt, vulnerability,
and the best thing she ever said about the shame
cycle is that an actual bad person, a person who
has done things they deserve to feel ashamed for, they
would never sit down and question whether they are a
(24:05):
bad person. They would never admit their mistakes. So the
very fact that you were considering your worthiness as evidence
in yourself that you are worthy. You are someone deserving
of love, You have empathy, you are someone who is lovable,
someone who can be forgiven, however big or large that
mistake was, and you are actually it might sound surprising,
(24:27):
you are someone who was enough, regardless of what makes
you believe that is not true. So there are a
few steps we can take to truly accepting that fact. First,
don't let your shame be general force it to be specific.
You know this sounds very strange, but you see, one
of the reasons Shaane is so good at convincing us
that we're worthless is it takes a single instant of
(24:50):
embarrassment or a slip up or a thought and it
applies the feeling to everything. So instead of saying, you know,
I feel bad because I said the wrong thing to
my really good friend and I hurt them, I feel
awful because I wish I was a better friend in
that moment, our shame takes that feeling and it removes
a bunch of information and it concludes, well, I am bad,
(25:13):
I am wrong, I am awful, even after the situation
has long passed. That over generalization is what causes trouble.
So instead, learn to add information back into the negative
statements that you tell yourself. You need to realize that
shame relies on you taking everything that it says truthfully
(25:35):
and not interrogating how it could be so general. You know,
are you really a bad person always without question? Or
are you just feeling bad? So I want you to
replace the I am awful with I'm feeling awful, I
am wrong with I am just assuming that I'm wrong
I feel I assume I'm thinking that I am. Use
(25:56):
those exact words instead to kind of put some reality
back into your faulty thinking. So let's use the example
of a really common one, I am an unlovable person
to kind of show how this works. Is this statement
I am unlovable? True? Is it? You know? Is it fact?
Could you find this fact on Wikipedia? Has someone done
(26:18):
a peer reviewed experiment on this and come to you
with a solid, you know, thesis conclusion hypothesis saying yeah,
this is I've conducted, you know, millions of interviews and
I did heaps of studies and oh, by the way, yes,
you are unlovable? Or or is this an emotions based conclusion?
(26:38):
It's emotions based, right, It's coming from you. So I
want you to replace I am with I feel I
feel like an unlovable person and then ask why is
there something that has triggered this feeling? Is there a
specific recent memory? Maybe there is, and you can add
that in I feel unlovable because of how badly that
(26:59):
date went. I feel unlovable because that person didn't treat
me well. That puts distance between you and the immediate
instinct to go to shame you can kind of now
see that this isn't something intrinsic about you. It's actually
a feeling, not a fact, and it's about how someone
else chose to treat you. That's a sign of their
(27:21):
flawed character, not your own. This is not a permanent fact.
I just want to say that again. It's a momentary
experience based on someone else's actions, not your inherent worth.
The other alternative is that you may searching for a
recent memory where you've been made to feel this way
and you just can't find one. It's like no evidence,
(27:43):
there's no reason why you should be feeling this way,
and it must be based on something else. And that
thing that it's based on a shame. It's not a
real statement. There is no evidence for why you should
be feeling this way. It's just shame. That is what
it is. Either way, when we rely on those I
(28:03):
am broad statements, they are just incorrect because they are
way too general. Next, I think it's really worthwhile to
explore your shame and try and find an origin point.
Like you know how every villain has an origin story,
Your shame has an origin story as well. As I
said before, you know, no one is born feeling disgusting
(28:25):
and deserving, shameful. It's a learned behavior, it's a learned habit.
And when we do the really hard autobiographical work of
looking back through our memories in our past, often that
becomes very very clear, very quickly. You can see that
there is a line between the thoughts and the feelings
(28:45):
you have about yourself now and the things your younger
self encountered and internalized. I'm going to provide an example,
my own example here. I think of all the shame
that I have felt about my body for years, and
it was so hard to even think of where that
may have come from, because my opinions of my bodies
(29:07):
were just so hurtful to even touch. But when I reflected,
I saw this very clear line in my memory, a
before and after around a series of events. The first
was a picture day when I was when I was seven,
and we I don't know if you remember this, but
we did our big class photo and I remember getting
(29:28):
the photo and the boy, this boy said that I
looked like a whale. I was wearing this little dress
and I kind of looked at all the other girls
and I was just like, oh my god, I'm bigger
than them. Bear in mind, I was seven, Like I
wasn't like, look at that. Now I feel the need
to justify. I'm gonna I'm gona stop myself there. But
(29:51):
I remember like taking the photo home and telling my
mom that I was like, oh, there was a fan
behind me. It was blowing my dress up. That's why
I have such a belly. It's really sad to think
of now that's how I felt. And that was my
first experience of shame. And then maybe a week later,
I was at after school care and we were watching
a movie and I remember what it's called. It was
(30:12):
called The Little Princess, and a much older boy said
to me, you know you would look like her, meaning
the main character, if you weren't so fat, And oh
my god, I can still remember how I just had
this like hot flush all across my face and my
skin was like prinkly, like oh, just more. I wanted
(30:33):
to hide. And that was the moment that I think
I was like, oh, this is a new feeling. This
is the feeling. This is shame. It's really kind of
sad to relive those memories. But the self knowledge that
came with that was so powerful, you know, to be
an adult knowing so much better now and kind of
(30:54):
rethinking how I would have responded. I know I would
have stood up for my seven, I think maybe seven
or eight year old self. And so now now that
it's my own thoughts that are saying those cruel things,
you look fat in that outfit, everyone is going to think,
so you know, you should wear something more flattering, you
should cover up. You know, that's my own voice now
(31:16):
telling me those things. But I picture that voice as
this ten year old boy, and I think, oh my gosh,
what do you know. You're a child. Shut up. I'm
an adult. You're ten. I'm the adult. I'm gonna wear
what I want. So that's how I picture it. I
picture it as the first voice that I heard it
as you know, when that shame was implanted in my brain.
(31:37):
It was spoken as a ten year old. And I
think about him, and you know, he's a fucking kid.
I don't need to listen to that. That's one approach.
Or I also think about myself as a child suddenly
being very awoken to a world of judgment and unkindness,
and it must have been such a shock, And I think,
how would my present adult self comfort her if adult
(31:59):
me had been in out building watching that situation, ready
to intervene. What would I have done. I would have
pulled her aside, and I would have said, you have value,
no matter what anyone else thinks. I think you are
the most beautiful girl in the world. And you deserve
to love your body because it does so much for you.
Look at how it takes care of you. You don't
(32:19):
need to hide for anyone, especially not this boy. And
confidence is going to be your superpower. And I would
say those things. When you are reflecting on those origins
of your shame, consciously bring empathy, kindness, compassion back into
those memories. Because shame is so socially orientated, often we
(32:40):
think that we need others to approve of us in
order to heal from it. But there is a lot
of self forgiveness that you can provide yourself. For me,
it was about apologizing to my younger self for ever
believing that this person knew who I was, or forever
believing that I needed to hide, forever believing that something
was wrong about me. I've learnt that's not the case,
(33:02):
and now I'm going to go forward, and you're going
to go forward, nurturing the part of you that still
wants to withdraw and instead showing up as this big protector,
this big strong person, this adult who is going to
defend you. We also want to practice the kind of
unconditional love that we've always craved by showing it to ourselves.
(33:23):
Don't hide from the shame. In fact, speak it out loud.
I'm ashamed of my past, I'm ashamed of who I am,
I'm ashamed of my body. And yet, and yet I
choose to love myself anyways because I am as deserving
of love as anyone else. I love others unconditionally, so
(33:44):
I can love myself the same way. In fact, think
about all the people who know and love you, not
because they're forced to, but because they want to. They
want to be by your side. They have the freedom
to be friends with anyone, and they are choosing with
that freedom to love you. It's just a further proof
(34:09):
of how brilliant you are. And wouldn't they love you
even more the more they saw of you? Reflect on
your own relationships here, doesn't your love only grow with
more vulnerability when someone shows you more of who they are.
Don't you just love them more? That goes both ways. Finally,
I want you to question what staying small out of shame?
(34:32):
What's it going to get you? And is that actually
your dream destination in life? What is the cost of
staying small versus the benefit of staying safe. Shame is
just fear, and fear is something you don't have to
listen to. It's a fear of failure. It's a fear
of embarrassment, of loneliness. As we discussed before, and when
(34:55):
you have your last moments on this earth, do you
want to think, Oh, I'm so so glad I let
myself be scared. That was a great decision. Or do
you want to think, I'm so glad I let myself
be free. I'm so glad I listened to the people
that mattered and I ignored the rest. I'm so glad
I let myself be authentic, vulnerable. I put myself out there.
(35:19):
I took risks on myself. I just knew who the
fuck I was. And I want a serious answer from you,
because I do believe that you can overcome chronic shame.
If you see what waits on the other side, that
is a very motivating thing. And for me, you know,
it's just been as we said, total acceptance, because why
(35:39):
would I live my life based on what a mean
voice says to me in my head when that's not
even my voice, someone else's voice that's just snuck in there.
It's not welcome for me. That has really helped me
build a courage to try anything and everything, even if
it goes wrong. It's It's resulted in the ability to
(36:01):
commit to my dreams because I deserve them. It's evolved
into the capacity to accept love, and I really want
that for you. It does make me quite sad to
think of how many of us don't realize that the
root of everything we don't like about ourselves is not
the fact that those things aren't worthy. It's that we
just feel shameful about them. And shame is not a fact.
(36:23):
It's a feeling. You know, the parts about yourself that
you don't like, there is nothing inherently bad about them.
It is that someone at some point has conditioned you,
taught you to feel that way, and I don't want
you to feel that way anymore. So I hope that
this episode has helped you understand the root of it,
has helped you go back and discover the origin, discover
(36:46):
the villain, the villain origin story, and I hope that
you start treating that younger version of yourself with the
kindness that you always deserved, and that includes treating your
current self with the kindness that they deserve. Because you
and that child itself are not different. You're the same person,
You're on the same timeline here. If you enjoyed this episode,
make sure you're following along. Maybe share it with a friend,
(37:08):
share it with a parent if they might need to
learn this lesson. That's a bit audacious. Just hopefully it
reaches the people that it needs to reach. That's all
I'm saying. Make sure that you are following us on
Instagram at that Psychology Podcast. If you have further questions, queries,
stories to be shared, please let us know. We would
love to hear from you. We're also taking episode suggestions.
(37:31):
Just slide into our DMS and tell us what you
want to hear about. Until next time, remember stay safe,
stay kind, and most importantly, with this episode, be gentle
with yourself. You don't deserve to live in shame. You
don't deserve to be shame bound, not one bit. And
we will talk very very soon.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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