Peeling Back the Layers of Shame for Personal Enlightenment - 202

Have you ever felt the sting of shame so acutely that it seemed to define you? We're peeling back the layers on an emotion that's as common as it is misunderstood, guiding you through the murky waters of shame and its influence on those who strive to perform at their peak. My conversations with clients, from CEOs to startup visionaries, have unearthed a universal struggle with this deep-seated feeling, one that transcends success and demands our attention for true personal growth. 

Amidst the stories and professional observations in our latest discussion, we unravel shame's intricate tapestry, distinguishing it from guilt, and challenging its place in society. Is there room for shame in the fabric of our culture, or is it a relic of outdated norms? We explore this question, along with how the emotion shapes our interactions within groups, affects self-identity, and can even play a role in our pursuit of self-acceptance. Our journey through these chapters is enriched by the profound work of thinkers like Brene Brown, whose insights into vulnerability and courage offer a beacon of hope for navigating these turbulent emotional waters.

As we wrap up this compelling exploration, I extend heartfelt thanks to you, the listener, for joining us on this thought-provoking voyage. Your presence in our community is a reminder of the collective strength we share, vital as we confront the challenges that shape us. Remember, while our episodes may come to an end, the conversations and the connections they foster are just beginning. Let's carry the wisdom gleaned here into our daily lives, supporting one another in the ever-evolving quest for understanding, acceptance, and growth.

Are you an executive, entrepreneur, or combat veteran looking to overcome subconscious blind spots and limiting messaging to unlock your highest performance? Feel free to reach out to Sean at Reload Coaching and Consulting.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Reload, where we help unconventional leaders craft the life they truly want by questioning the assumptions they have about how life works. My name is Sean and I'll be your host on this journey. As a performance coach and special operations combat veteran, I help high-performing executives kick ass in their careers while connecting with deeply powerful insights that fuel their lives. All right, I have been. I have been struggling, I guess, to tap into what I thought might make for a powerful episode, and there's a lot of different ideas that I've been kicking around and I don't know. I guess in some ways the creativity well ran dry for a little bit. But recently I've been having some conversations and, if I take a brief aside here, it's interesting for me to observe you know, in these coaching sessions that I do with individuals oftentimes, I've noticed a pattern over the years of doing this that clients of mine will sometimes kind of congregate unknowingly because they don't know each other for the most part and they're not doing joint sessions, they're all doing individual sessions. But sometimes they'll congregate in terms of the theme or the concept that they're wrestling with, and lately a lot of clients have been wrestling with shame. Now, for many of you listening, shame may not be the thing that you really want to hear much about, and I get it, but if I look at the history of this show, so many times we end up diving into topics that are difficult, that are unpopular, not because, hopefully, not because we're masochists or anything like that, but because these difficult topics are realities in life, and so we can either put our head in the sand and try to run away from them, or we can try to better understand them. Try to run away from them, or we can try to better understand them, have a better understanding of how to navigate these difficult aspects of the human experience. And really that's a big part, I think, of growing up. You know, being an adult and gaining real wisdom. You know there's that joke in the corporate world about do you have 20 years of experience or do you have one year, repeated 20 times, and so where is that element of progression coming forward? But ultimately, there were a couple of key questions. I guess that prompted me to think about today's episode Is there a place for feeling shame, and what benefit might come from feeling that sense of shame, from feeling that sense of shame Now, if you have done any self-development reading or self-help or whatever label you want to throw on it.

Speaker 1: 3:14

Oftentimes, people come across a lady named Brene Brown and I like a lot of what Brene has written. Do I agree with all of it? No, but I would say, to the extent that I have quibbles, they're relatively minor, and I think that a lot of the research that she's done over the years and also and in some ways perhaps more importantly her ability to communicate the insights that she's gained from the research that she's done, on the one hand, it's very user-friendly and it's very accessible, which should not convey that it is simplistic or reductionist. I think that she still treats the topic very deeply, but she does so in a way that a lot of people can access and can understand, and so often, when we are attempting to understand complex topics, to have somebody that can actually convey the idea in a way that is relatable, that is understandable and that is hopefully actionable is paramount. Otherwise, it just becomes this kind of I don't know this intellectual trivia oh, that's nice to know or that's nice to have heard. Maybe I can drop a couple key phrases at a cocktail party and seem like I'm in the know, but if you've been listening to this show, or if you are a subscriber of the show, then you are a person who actually wants to make things better not just say that they're better or not pretend that they're better, but actually make them better. And a big part of that is identifying and owning your responsibility in whatever the situation is and I think that that goes in both directions Situations that are not going well, what is your responsibility there? And then also where things are going well, you know where do you get to give yourself credit for the work that you're putting in and the responsibility that you're taking.

Speaker 1: 5:17

Now, to take it back to Brene Brown, if you don't know who that is, she's a New York Times bestselling author. She's given multiple TED Talks that have been, you know, wildly popular, and she fundamentally researches vulnerability and shame. She was focused more on women and then, later in life, I think, she's branched out to also men and then other demographics from there. One element that she has made very popular is this notion that there's a distinction between guilt and shame. Now, is she the first person to make that distinction? No, guilt and shame Now is she the first person to make that distinction? No, but she's also probably one of the main ones that has popularized this notion that there's a key difference between guilt and shame.

Speaker 1: 6:14

And, in Brene Brown's language, which is also shared by other people in the psychology world and the coaching world, is that guilt is I have done something wrong and shame is I am wrong. So there's this key implication there that while guilt is an action that can be corrected or you can make amends for that action, that potentially it's a mistake or potentially it was malevolent, but then you can atone for it, but that there is no atonement for being wrong. Fundamentally. Now that leads us to this question right? The question that we're looking at today is is there a place for shame? And I don't have a textbook answer for you, as much as I wish I could give you the objective, right answer, but I think it could be valuable to walk through some of the thinking, especially in relationship to what I've seen with my coaching clients, so that you can determine for yourself how it is that you want to navigate this for yourself.

Speaker 1: 7:24

Now, generally, what I have seen is that when people are engaged in this notion that they have done something wrong but that they can make up for it or that they can atone for it, they typically have seemed to be more amenable and more open to owning up to whatever the misstep happened to be, because they recognize that there is some sort of corrective measure that can be taken and they want to make things right. Fundamentally I, in the experiences that I've had traveling the world and working with all kinds of different people, I fundamentally believe that most people on the planet want to do the right thing. They want to be good people. Do they always act that way? Nope, not at all. But it's typically not the result of some malicious and malevolent desire to hurt people. It's usually because they're tired, they are underfed, underslept, whatever, and their caring is not at the highest level and they're too preoccupied with their own inner head trash. So when we look at this notion that people are more open when it's something about guilt, something about having done something wrong, it kind of makes sense.

Speaker 1: 8:49

But I think where people end up starting to feel a little fuzzy is in this notion of shame being. I am wrong, Because they often struggle to identify well, how do I get out of this box? Where do I go from here? What do I do about this? How do I fix this? And so it starts to wonder okay. Well, there's so many instances of people you know, if you think about your parents, for instance, or elders in a community telling some young child, you should be ashamed of yourself, should you?

Speaker 1: 9:35

What is the utility of shame? It exists and, as far as I understand, most cultures around the globe have a concept of shame, and so, if it is so common, why does it exist? If it doesn't serve any purpose, why does it exist? I'd like to believe that the things that we are exposed to, the things that exist in our world, especially if they're commonplace and if they cross cultures, that there's some sort of utility being served by that concept or that device. But what is it? Especially when?

Speaker 1: 10:14

What I recognize, when people are sort of over-indexed on shame is they shut down and they go into really weird squirmy behavior. Down and they go into really weird squirmy behavior. They often try to hide the source of the shame or they do things to ignore it. They do things to compensate for it in really strange ways. They try to sort of over-exaggerate and over-emphasize areas where they're doing. Well, you know, let me show you all the bling, bling so that you don't happen to look in this one corner over here where my mess is and it's very taxing, you know. And that notion of why explore shame in the first place. Well, you know, most people run into it at least once in their life, if not more, and most people have no idea how to navigate shame in a healthy way. Again, because this notion, the phrasing from Brene Brown that you know, shame is, I am wrong and there's nowhere to go from there.

Speaker 1: 11:20

But if we look at a couple different websites so just FYI for you in case it's ever helpful I have found that psychologytoday and verywellmindcom, that those two sites often not always, but often have articles that are well-written and that are quite meaningful in terms of one's ability to sort of parse out, yeah, what are we actually talking about. And so in my own experience of life, if there's something where I'm feeling, a sense of some sort of emotion or some sort of inner dynamic that I can't quite understand, I'll hop online real quick and oftentimes go to one of these two sites and see if there's an article that's been written about this that will help me better understand so that I can better navigate the obstacle or the confusion that I'm experiencing. So in looking at verywellmindcom, what is shame? The first section in this article what does it mean to have shame? And I'm just going to read from it here, so you can obviously do a Google search of your own and, you know, come up with it all by your lonesome. But to save you a little bit of time, they write shame is a feeling of embarrassment or humiliation that arises from the perception of having done something dishonorable, immoral.

Speaker 1: 12:59

They write flawed. Shame can often be hard to identify in oneself. While shame is a negative emotion, its origins play a part in our survival as a species. Without shame, we might not feel the need to adhere to cultural norms, follow laws or behave in a way that allows us to exist as social beings. So this really starts to get us into this inquiry around. Yeah, what is the benefit of shame? To self, to group? And you know there's this expression that I learned long ago. When I was little, I needed others to teach me what shame is. When I was little, I needed others to teach me what shame is, but once I learned it, I did it better than anybody else, and what that signifies is that shame is a learned emotion.

Speaker 1: 14:03

Shame is an emotion that is typically derived from group interaction and has much to do with conformity, and you can do a little thought experiment for yourself. Imagine that you had never been exposed to any sort of group. I know that this would be impossible, but let's you know, it's a thought experiment. Imagine that you had somehow been born into a place where there are no other people and you were able to grow up all on your own, with no point of comparison or contrast, no group to which to belong, no social norms to adhere to or to be subject to. Would you feel shame? I don't know. Maybe there's a way for it that you, you come up with the answer yes, somehow. But every time that I have thought about that, I have never been able to figure out yeah, where, where would the shame have been sourced absent group interaction?

Speaker 1: 15:03

And I'm not trying to tell you that group interactions are bad, far from it. We are, at heart, social creatures. That's how we evolve, that's how we have come to be the sort of apex predator, even though most of us don't actually go hunting these days. But that is how humans came to be at the top of the food chain. So group interaction is still quite valuable. And when we think about what is it that keeps a group together. There are rules, there are traditions, there are customs, there are all kinds of, you know, tools and dynamics that we use to make sure that there is cohesion in the group.

Speaker 1: 15:46

Now, can a group be toxic? Of course it can. Rules can be overly stringent, gosh. I mean there are social customs throughout history and throughout different cultures that have been immensely harmful. Think about foot binding in some of the older Asian cultures, where small feet were supposed to be the epitome of feminine allure. So they would physically bind a woman's foot in sort of a boxed frame to make sure that they stayed small. Well, in reality, all that happened was their bones became all distorted and it was tremendously painful for the woman. And there are all manner of different customs that various groups have enacted that have actually been quite harmful.

Speaker 1: 16:36

But to get us back on track, this notion of shame where is it that shame benefits the group? Well, it benefits the group in keeping people in line. Why do you want that? Well, I mean, again, it can be overblown, but in large part, without agreed upon rules, customs, traditions, et cetera, groups tend to splinter apart. Now, there's always going to be a tension in any group between, sort of the mean of the group, the average, and then the people that are on either end of the extremes. You have people that are willing to take more risk and people that are willing to take comparatively a lot less risk, for instance. And so, as it relates to either family groups or working groups like work teams, part of it is understanding. Okay, what is the average in this group as far as workload or work capacity or, again, the willingness to take risk, you know, to pursue new opportunities, but opportunities that are unknown or unproven. And where are the outliers in the group from that average or that middle point? Because a lot of times the rules of a group and the rules that you know, if you break them, that can potentially create shame, are usually pegged to somewhere in the middle.

Speaker 1: 18:16

Now, what about shame as being beneficial for an individual? Is there such a thing for an individual? Is there such a thing? You know here again we go back to Brene Brown's language that guilt is I have done something wrong, but shame is I am wrong. We're using that as the framework to understand this question. Can there be benefit to the individual to feel shame? We know why it might be beneficial for the group, but what about to the individual. Why might it be beneficial for an individual to feel shame versus guilt? Because, again, if I've done something wrong, okay, cool, here's where I went off track and this is what I will do to fix it. So why aren't we framing it more in the sense of guilt? If I have broken a rule of the group and I'm now sort of out of conformity, why not just focus on the guilt? You should feel guilty instead of you should be ashamed of yourself.

Speaker 1: 19:34

Where did this verbal construct come from? Well, there is one area and I have been thinking about this for a while and this is partly why I think I've been so stymied, because it's tough. It's tough for me to really try to identify yeah, are there benefits of feeling shame, benefits that could not be conferred simply by feeling guilt instead? And one thing that I've noticed about shame more so than any other emotion that's related to it. So you would say that guilt and shame probably travel hand in hand quite frequently. But one of the things that I've noticed about shame more than I've ever noticed about guilt and when I'm saying that I've noticed it, I mean that both in terms of my own personal experience and then also the experiences I've observed or had related to me by my clients over the years, is that shame, even more than guilt, turns up the intensity.

Speaker 1: 20:40

When we think about these negative emotions that we tend to feel fundamentally when we are looking at human behavior, what we are looking at is this negative emotions that we tend to feel Fundamentally. When we are looking at human behavior, what we are looking at is this spectrum of pleasure versus pain. Both ends of that spectrum can incent behavior. I feel pleasure, I want more of it. I feel pain, I want less of it. Fundamentally, in very simplistic terms. But when we look at how behavior tends to change, either in the moment or in the longterm, when we look at pain as a motivator, pain is extremely motivating in the moment because we want out of it ASAP. But as soon as the source of pain isn't present, we often sort of regress Without that thing pushing us from behind. We tend to sort of slouch back down into whatever the status quo was, whereas pleasure, we will often extend ourselves, we will be pulled forward by our enthusiasm in order for us to have more of that thing in our life. You know, and I used to joke, or I still do joke that between the carrot and the stick, carrot being the reward, the pleasure, the stick being the pain and the punishment that, yes, the stick will cause us to run away from the tiger that's trying to chomp us, but it's the carrot, it's the reward that allows us to build civilizations, that allows us to be in it for the long haul.

Speaker 1: 22:39

Now, shame, when we look at this as being you know, quote, unquote a negative emotion, if you will. I generally don't like tying it to some of those pejorative terms, but we'll go with it for today. So, if we look at these negative emotions that, basically, are connected to the sense of pain and punishment, one thing that they do very, very well is that they turn up intensity. They cause us to pay attention, and I have yet to see an emotion that causes more intensity and more paying attention than shame. It creates oftentimes this physical sensation. People report having kind of a flush. You know that they can feel either a buzzing in their ears or they can feel their ears going red and they feel blood traveling to their face oftentimes. And you can physically see it as well, because a big part of that response is also the embarrassment. It as well, because a big part of that response is also the embarrassment. And when we are embarrassed we're not always ashamed, because if it's something minor, typically it doesn't tip the scales that far. But embarrassment often does come, and almost almost always comes with shame.

Speaker 1: 24:07

And so when we look at that capacity for intensity, what I've noticed with individuals is and in this regard, a lot of my clients, all my clients, now that I think about it well, no, most of my clients, let's say 95% of my clients, run teams. Now, whether that's a C-suite team or it's a vice president running a sales team or whatever, they run teams. And one of the things that I've noticed is that if they have someone who's not quite understanding the direction of the team or the organization or there's some sort of breakdown in communication, oftentimes the client will attempt to communicate what the gap is and what they see the corrective measures being, in a pretty level-headed, calm way. And then they come back to the next session and they say, ah, it doesn't seem to be working, it doesn't really seem like it's getting through, and you know. And then they kind of gradually start to escalate the tone and the seriousness or the severity of what they're trying to express to their team member, and sometimes it actually escalates to the point where they raise their voice. Now, whether they're yelling, they generally are not actually fully yelling, but there's generally sort of a physical escalation of tone and it's only when the team member hears that sort of increasing decibel level that they start to recognize. Oh, my manager, my boss, is actually being really serious about this and I should take it seriously as well. So this element of intensity and where it serves to have us really paying attention and thereby really learning from that experience, can be quite useful.

Speaker 1: 26:05

And so, thinking about what is the benefit to an individual to feel shame, my argument, I guess, is that it provides us that extra horsepower to really pay attention and to really learn as quickly as possible. Okay, what happened in this situation that I am feeling this crappy Now? This situation may be a whole string of situations, it may be a theme in your life, but this is also where shame, I think, can very quickly go off track. Look at either these articles about really any of the articles about shame, you know, any of the ones that have comprehensive treatment is they're also going to start to look at where it is that shame becomes harmful or, in the words that I would prefer ineffective or counterproductive, and that is very quickly. Shame blinds the individual because it hurts so much they don't even want to look at it, they don't want to begin to explore whatever it was that is creating this terrible feeling inside of them. And so when we look at shame again versus guilt, for instance, you know people are more willing to engage in looking at guilt because they more quickly, more readily identify that there can be a solution. It's not this black box that they just don't know how to navigate. So when we think about navigating shame, how do we get to a better spot with shame? Well, I think, fundamentally we look at where this feeling started, and not just in that finite instance.

Speaker 1: 27:59

But what is the pattern? What is the pattern that I have with shame? Does it show up in certain areas of my life? For instance, body shame. Many of the women that I've coached have real shame about their body, and when I ask them what they like about their body, they often can't tell me anything Except for all the ways they don't like their body, which is obviously counter to the question. And oftentimes with men the shame shows up in at least for the men that I've coached, where they don't perceive themselves as masculine, as pertaining to their ability to provide and or their ability to protect.

Speaker 1: 28:53

Now, this may not be your story, that's totally fine. All I'm trying to do is give a couple examples to help you better understand. Oh, this can be thematic. I may feel very proud of myself or very good about myself in other ways. For instance, if you're the person that has body shame, maybe you're very proud and feel good about your intellect. And in fact, oftentimes one effective way of trying to parse out where you're feeling shame and where you're not feeling shame is to ask yourself what are the parts of my life where I feel really good about myself? Where do I feel like others would say good things about me?

Speaker 1: 29:39

And it's often, at least again, for my kind of client. I tend to work with senior executives, for the most part, and business owners. It's in the professional domain, in their ability to start a company or their ability to run a company or both. But then where my type of client really starts to struggle is in being vulnerable, in being tender and gentle. That goes for the women as well. So, writing down and as always, I do recommend writing this stuff down. You know, don't just think it Actually write it out so that you can look at it, you can make it external to yourself and you'll have a much more I don't know a much more effective exploration when you're able to look at something outside of yourself. It's just rattling around inside your head. It gets jumbled up with all the other stuff you need to do, but to write it out and to really look. Okay, yeah, these are the areas of myself, my presentation in the world, how I show up, where I would have no qualms with people looking at it.

Speaker 1: 31:00

Imagine that you're putting something on display to the public. Now, in another column, think about the things that you don't want on display. What are the things you hope the public does not see? And by public I don't necessarily mean like a literal version of the public. Public can I mean really? I just mean external to you, because sometimes we have things that we don't want colleagues to see, but we're okay if friends and family see it. There are other things that we don't even want our friends to see and oftentimes it's connected to where it is that we feel that we need to conform to that social norm.

Speaker 1: 31:46

You know, maybe, I don't know maybe your sexual appetite varies too much from the social group that you are normally a part of and you feel like you have to downplay or hide that part of your life. You know, one way that that has shown up in the past with sort of more traditional men's groups is there's a machismo, sort of a puffing up about sexual desire and sexual conquest that we as men, that we should want it and we should go after it at every opportunity. We should want it and we should go after it at every opportunity. And for myself, just to kind of give you another example here, I never really felt that, not because I thought it was a more enlightened way of being. I guess More it was. Just I don't know, I just didn't have.

Speaker 1: 32:44

And to my knowledge, in doing therapy and working with coaches myself as a client, I've never been able to determine whether there was some sort of finite experience that I had that created a lower interest in sex generally. So I don't know, I don't know where this came from, but I know that in terms of how guys you know locker room talk, as it were, how guys would talk about sex, I never felt that inside Would I play along. Yeah, you bet Right. And it's not something I'm proud of. In many ways, I wish I had had the courage to stand up and say well, you know, that's cool for you guys, but that's not something that I'm feeling. It's not that I never want to have sex, but it's not. It doesn't seem to be as all-consuming for me as it seems to be for you, the way that you're talking about it. But I wanted to fit in, I wanted to belong, and so I would go along. But if somebody were to actually look at my dating life, I didn't date that much and I was not as sexually active as my peers, and so there was a sense of shame there that I was somehow wrong. Right, because I didn't conform to the norm.

Speaker 1: 34:14

So in helping you better navigate and more effectively navigate shame, we have to first identify where it shows up, how it shows up. Are there any specific buttons or levers that throw this into action? And then, as always, right, we try to look backward. We try to see is there a time and a place or a person where this first came into being? Did I learn this from someone or some you know, from some place or some group? When did I first notice that I didn't fit?

Speaker 1: 34:59

And, yeah, most of the stuff shows up when we're kids. You know, it's not that we are going to just blame everything on our parents or our peer group, but we want to be able to understand the origin. You know where does it come from, so that we can then contrast the person that we were which is typically somebody that was less experienced, that was probably not as strong as we are today, whether that's physically, mentally or emotionally or spiritually or whatever and we contrast that with the person that we are today and we say, huh, huh, you know, maybe that did show up then because of those reasons. But am I that same person today? Am I the same person that needs to feel I don't know in some way cowed by the group and its perceived norm through exercises with, with men's groups, where men also talk about these moments in the locker room, so to speak, whether that was like physically or metaphorically, that they would hear this kind of conversation happen, and they weren't. They weren't feeling it either. So is it something that we just hyped up as boys, because that's what we thought we were supposed to be talking about and there were only maybe a few of us that really felt that? I don't know, that sexual urge to that degree or, I don't know, maybe something else was going on.

Speaker 1: 36:49

But recognizing where am I stronger now as an adult? Where am I more self-assured, where am I more grounded and more accepting of the flaws that I have, the challenges that still stand before me in terms of raising my level of performance, raising my understanding of my sense of self, but also accepting that there are things that I do well. Now there are going to be people out there who might say, well, I don't think I do anything well. I would be willing to challenge that. There may be people out there who do nothing well. That is possible, but I find that highly unlikely.

Speaker 1: 37:38

What I find more likely, again because of all the conversations that I've had over the years, is that people often take for granted the things that they're good at, because they often come easier to that person, and so they think, oh well, this must be easy for everybody. So, as a, for instance, one of the things that my clients have told me over and over and over and over again is that I am very, very skilled at helping them see how disparate events in their life tie into a common pattern and that when they see that common pattern, they all of a sudden recognize oh God, wow, okay, now I know what to focus on. Now I know what to pay attention to so that I can begin to fix this. I know what to focus on Now, I know what to pay attention to so that I can begin to fix this. For me, being able to listen to somebody talk over months and taking copious notes and then recognizing oh huh, interesting I think these little gems tie together in some weird way and then raising it for the client in the form of a question or an observation that to me seems quite natural. I don't have to spend hours and hours and hours psyching myself up to go do this thing. Yes, I do spend hours going through people's notes and really paying attention, but again, it doesn't feel burdensome to me, it doesn't feel like it requires any sort of special attention, whereas if I have to go do bookkeeping, for instance, oh God, I want to pull my teeth out.

Speaker 1: 39:28

And so oftentimes, when we have individuals who are mired in shame, they're drowning in it and it's like I'm wrong. Everywhere in my life I am just messed up through and through. Oftentimes, that has been the product of being beaten down by individuals when they were younger, such that they're not able to connect to a healthy sense of self, they're not able to identify at least one area in their life where they say, no, I actually do that quite well and sometimes you know, because I have worked with a couple of people that have been in the midst of a depression related to this and I'll say, well, at least you're really good at beating yourself up and that, believe it or not, actually does elicit a little bit of a chuckle and so, and that helps people see, okay, yeah, all right for me to be able to say that I'm not good at anything is false, because here I am just like the world's best at beating myself up. But again, when we look at, how is it that we identify areas that we can have a certain measure of understanding around doing something well and having a certain healthy pride in sense of self?

Speaker 1: 40:41

Sometimes we need to go to the people that care about us. We need to ask what do I do well From your perspective? What do you think I do well? And it can be daunting to ask that question because sometimes it feels very self-serving and I don't know, like we're trying to puff ourselves up, and yeah, we kind of are. We're trying to get a positive. We're trying to puff ourselves up and, yeah, we kind of are. We're trying to get a positive. We're trying to get a warm fuzzy from people. We're trying to get that sense of, yeah, what do you see me doing? Well, what do you think comes naturally to me that I would maybe take for granted?

Speaker 1: 41:15

And it's gaining more of that outside perspective that can often be very helpful in helping us root into the things that are positive about us, so that we don't over-index on shame. And I think fundamentally, this is one of the conclusions that I've come to and that clients of mine have often come to as well. It's not that you shouldn't feel guilt, it's not that you shouldn't feel guilt, it's not that you should never feel shame, but it's when we over index on something, when we over index on something to the point where it has, we have imbalanced ourselves such that the emotion that we are mired in is no longer proving to be beneficial or useful. If I feel a moment of shame, or even several moments of shame, that helped me really pay attention to what I didn't see or that I didn't understand, that led to a negative outcome in the group to which I'm a part of. I want to pay attention to that, I want to learn, and then I want to figure out how to assuming that I want to excuse me, that I want to remain a member of that group then to figure out, what am I going to do different? How am I going to be different? How am I going to be different? Am I going to come with a better attitude somehow, whatever that means? That can be very productive, that can be very effective and helpful.

Speaker 1: 42:57

But then, if I never let go of that and if I'm just constantly just hammering myself, even when the moment that slipped sideways on me is no longer present, but I'm still just beating myself down, well then we have to start to ask okay, what's the purpose of this? Is it so that I stay sharp for the next time? Okay, I mean, I could bite off on that for a bit. What happens if we don't stay sharp for the next time? This thing comes around? The same dynamic, the thing that we screwed up last time. Are we going to be subject to social disapproval again? Approval again? Maybe there's some fear that there's going to be a worse consequence if we don't really stay focused on this thing. That went sideways. Okay, fair.

Speaker 1: 43:52

But do you have to be mired in shame to stay sharp on that? Can you begin to reframe and look at, okay, what would be the benefit of changing my perspective on this to fit in with a group better? Or here's the thought maybe this is not a group to which I want to belong? And this moment of shame, instead of thinking, oh God, I have to stay with these people Maybe that moment of shame can actually be this moment of insight, of real clarity, that says, huh, you know what. I don't actually belong with this group and I can be okay with that. I might be on my own for a while. I may not have a clique for a bit, I may not have a group, but I'm gaining a better understanding of what I want in life, how I want to be in life and how I can be aligned with that and feel comfortable in my own skin. And I think this is also part of that growing up wisdom process. That shame actually can be quite helpful in illuminating how is it that I want to be and recognizing that in this wide universe there are all kinds of ways of being and that way of being in one group is going to be unacceptable but will be totally okay in another group, and that all these different ways of being can coexist on this planet and it'll be okay. So hopefully this helped bring up some actionable items for you.

Speaker 1: 45:58

If you've been feeling shame. What is it really about? What is this shame really connected to? Is it about something that's happening here in the moment or is it connected to something that happened to you way back when? And if it's connected to something way back when, how will you recognize that you are not the person that you were when it first showed up, when that shame demon first showed up? If, in turn, it is actually connected to something contemporary, how can you look at that experience through the lens of learning and ride that sense of intensity, that emotional intensity that comes with shame, and focus it like a laser on what you can learn? Is it a group to which you want to belong?

Speaker 1: 46:48

Okay, great, be clear about that, know why and then figure out how you're going to adjust your mindset, your outlook, your behaviors, whatever to be in line with the group that you want to be a part of. You know you don't have to be a clone, but you know, to be more towards that, that middle ground, to the point where you're not feeling the shame anymore or, conversely, recognize oh yeah, huh, yeah, maybe I don't actually want to be a part of this group anymore and then start to get hot on figuring out what group you do want to be a part of. Or maybe you want to take a break from groups for a while. That's fine too. But again, I think that shame, because of the intensity that comes with it, one of the real benefits is it causes us to pay attention if we're willing to face it. But if you've been mired in it your entire life or for a long time, there's some pre-work to getting to a place where you can actually view shame as a teaching tool and not simply punishment.

Speaker 1: 48:07

Anyway, hopefully this is good for you. If it's not, there's plenty of other podcasts and articles out there. But in either case, if you have been enjoying the show, I would love it. If you would like, subscribe, share, do all those internet-y things or don't, it's totally up to you. And until next time, take care of each other.