Shame Shadows

Chronic shame—we've all felt whispers of it at some point. It's more than a fleeting emotion; it's an unwelcome narrative that claims a permanent spot in our identities, painting our self-perception with broad strokes of inadequacy. But why is it so crucial to bring chronic shame into the light? Understanding is the first step in deconstructing the fortress around our hearts. 

Key Take Aways

• The profound difference between shame and other transient emotions.
• Learning to recognize the often subtle yet impactful signs of chronic shame.
• The physical toll of chronic shame and how to decode our body's messages.
• The compelling power of our stories binds us and sets us free from shame’s grasp.
• Exploring strategies for identifying, acknowledging, and navigating the pathway to healing chronic shame.
• The crucial role of compassion and shared experiences in overcoming the barriers erected by chronic shame.

To further our exploration and understanding of our emotional journeys, we've created the Simple & Deep™ Feelings Wheel—a tool designed to help you identify and articulate your emotions with greater clarity. 

Also mentioned:

• Life-Span Integration Therapy
• Virtual EMDR (affiliate link) 

For more insightful episodes and resources, follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook, and subscribe to the Simple & Deep™ Podcast on your favorite podcast platform.

Simple & Deep™ Homepage: We help you understand attachments, engage your stories, and live intentionally.  You were not made to be subtle.

Waiting for Mister Rogers: Teaching with Attachment, Attunement, and Intention by Wysteria Edwards BA, Ed.M available wherever books are sold.  

Other episodes you might like:

• "Shame and the Case of Moaning Myrtle"
• "Locked in a Story"

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Contact Wysteria Edwards BA, Ed.M at simpleanddeepinfo@gmail.com for professional speaking, coaching, or consulting services. 

Send a message with the subject line "Speaking/Consulting Inquiry" to discuss rates and availability. 

Transcript

Simple & Deep™ Podcast: “Shame Shadows”

Welcome to the Simple Deep™ Podcast, where we delve into attachment stories and intentional living. I'm your host, Wysteria Edwards, and I'm thrilled to have you here with me today. We'll be exploring the depths of all of these topics together, sharing insights and unlocking the power hidden within your story.

Let's get started.

Today we're continuing a crucial conversation that we've been having about shame. We started that with the last episode called “Shame and the Case of Moaning Myrtle.” Now we're going to venture a little deeper into the shadows of chronic shame to illustrate its contours and most importantly, paths towards healing.

In our last episode, we explored the strategy “Catch, Check, Change,” and if you didn't listen to that, I would definitely go back and try that out to see if you can find those thoughts that are interfering, those negative. Narratives that we tell ourselves. Grab it, ask yourself if it's always true, flip it for yourself, and give yourself a new narrative.

It is a great and powerful strategy. Where does shame come from? How does it manifest in our bodies physically? And This strange and beautiful liberation journey that we take that unfolds from the stories that we hold dear to ourselves. So chronic shame lurks beneath the surface, and it's a persistent feeling of unworthiness that clings to our inner selves.

Whispering tales of our supposed inadequacy. Why does this discussion become so vital to our healing? It's because Understanding chronic shame is the first step in dismantling its fortress. We have to name it. We have to say that is shame. But the hard part about it is that when we do name it, we might feel shame because of it.

So it's a beautiful, careful process that we have to do to unpack shame at its core. Unlike a little embarrassment or a pang of guilt for a wrong action that we take, chronic shame is embedded. It's embedded in our being and it's there from the very beginning of childhood. At some point, we felt or swallowed the idea that we were flawed.

It's rooted in our psychological tracing all the way back to our earliest moments of neglect, some harsh criticism, or even specific traumas. So how do we learn to recognize it? Now you might be wondering, if shame is such a deeply rooted issue, How do I begin to recognize it in my body, and then what do I do when I find it?

It's actually a great question, honestly, because recognizing shame can be as tricky as trying to read the fine print without your glasses on, which unfortunately is my new reality. But it is possible. The first step is tuning in to what those inner dialogues are, like we talked about last time. Those things that we're telling ourselves over and over again.

Ah, you're so stupid. You're too much. People are annoyed when you talk. No one wants to listen to what you have to say. See, people always leave, you're so boring. All of those things that we say to ourselves. When I was at a training once, I was paired up with this one woman, and I was supposed to, as she held the mirror, say the things to myself that I would normally say in my head.

Then, the next part of the activity was they would have us, the person drop the mirror, and we would have to say it to them, as if we were saying it to a friend. It was ridiculously hard. Because we don't want to say those things to someone else, but we always say them to ourselves. It's a great reminder that person is unique, but so are we.

If I were to look at her like a flower, and I am also a flower, but we're different types of flowers. I'm a tiger lily and she's a rose. I could put them together in a bouquet, but that doesn't mean that we are the same type of flower. That makes sense to our mind because it's one of those things where we can.

appreciate both flowers for what they are. They have different fragrances, they have different ways that they're put together, different colors, all of those kind of things, but they're still flowers. And so we are so subjective when it comes to what we believe is worthy of good things based on what we see in our society as well as what we compare ourselves or who we compare to.

One of the first steps is to recognize how we are judging ourselves. Shame often dresses up as critical thoughts and self judgements, and it makes us feel as if we are perpetually falling short. It's the yes, but. We see this a  lot with anxious, ambivalent attachment. It is so hard for those of us who grew up with broken connection and trust to believe that something good is going to come next because we were always waiting for the other thing to happen.

One of my favorite strategies for this is to allow yourself to stay in a good moment 1 percent longer. You have to be willing to receive the good because our brain wants to look for the possibility that something could change. It's going to be the reason that we avoid certain situations or people because deep down we fear that flaw is going to be exposed.

I remember one of the first times that I was a playwright in Chicago. I had a reading with a professional actor. Absolutely phenomenal. He came in and he read this scene in my play Broken Thread. He went on to be in a Pulitzer winning play Ruined on Broadway within the next year. In my experience as a playwright, I loved where an actor would be invested in what I had written that I would forget that I wrote it.

And I could just absorb the moment and enjoy it. And I was super blessed because that happens so often. And in this case, it was profoundly amazing. He was so good. The play, just so you have a little bit of background, is about missing and endangered children. This actor came in and he read the part of the father.

It's this part where he is being questioned. by the FBI and kind of just losing his crap about it. I remember he was so invested he threw a chair and was just phenomenal. I remember afterwards I was in the car with the director, and I turned to him and I said, “At some point they're gonna realize I'm faking it as a playwright.”

He laughed at me and he said, “Wystie, what are you talking about? You are a playwright!” And I think that goes back to that feeling of being exposed, not enough, like I was playing pretend. I hadn't gone to drama school and therefore had a degree in playwriting. I had a degree in drama, but I didn't have one specifically in playwriting.

And so we, in our head, decide what is the ideal and how we don't measure up to that. listening and acknowledging those feelings right there when they rise up to the surface and asking ourselves, is this really rooted in kindness? Is it true? Just like catch, check, change. Is this always true? In that moment, friends, I was a playwright.

I wrote those words that that amazing, beautiful actor was saying. I had written those. Therefore, I was the playwright. It was true. And is this thought that we're having reflection of perhaps deeper unaddressed shame? So that feeling of pretending, not being enough, somehow I was going to be ostracized, really keys in on one of the greatest themes of my life, which is being scapegoated or cast out, being exiled.

Which is a huge theme for people who have experienced tremendous developmental trauma. If you have that feeling of, at some point I'm going to lose this, at some point they're going to figure me out, at some point I'm going to be exposed, that is a key element to shame. That step alone of identifying it is not going to solve everything.

But that recognition is the first step towards your healing. And remember, we're all in this together. I'm not saying I have this figured out whatsoever. And shame loves to jump up and remind me that I don't want to take risks. And what it does is it paralyzes us and keeps us stuck in places that no longer fit us.

with people that no longer help us grow, that don't make us feel loved, but it's that unfamiliar heaven to that familiar hell, and our nervous system is going to choose the familiar hell, because at least we know what to expect there. So by shedding a little bit of light on this shadow that we have within us, we already are on the path to a much more compassionate relationship with ourself.

So saying to ourselves, “Wystie, It's okay that you feel a little bit of shame here. It's a huge risk. It is so exposing as a writer to write something out and then hand it to someone else and allow them to respond to it.”

Do you remember having to do that in other ways? Perhaps you painted this beautiful picture. Perhaps you worked really hard on something and when you brought it to someone who you believed would receive it, they didn't. That's what broken attachment is. It’s a child is waiting to have their need met and that need is validation. That need is not just safety, it's emotional safety. It's knowing that we can bring whatever we have to the person that cares for us and that they're going to receive it, not just receive it, but they're going to receive it well.

They're going to ask us questions, they're going to be responsive to us. That reciprocity is there so that we can rest in it. And if over time that is not something that is consistent, it builds shame. So these experiences, especially in their repetition, they're going to weave a narrative of not being enough inside of us.

And it is so deeply rooted because it's been there for so long. And what happens is we have senses with our nervous system, and then we have emotions. But our body is somatically going to sense something way before we can cognitively figure out how to respond to it. And that is why oftentimes, if we've been traumatized, we instantly have a reaction before we can think about it.

And our goal is, through good practices, through things like EMDR or other types of therapy, meditation, to lengthen that space between the sensation to the reaction. But remember that when we experience trauma, it's in that in between place where all of our cognition turns off to keep us safe. Because our whole body is getting ready to run, or to fight.

And so what happens is it gets stuck there. And so all of those sensations and feelings and emotions, [00:12:00] fears, all of that is stuck in a place that it doesn't belong. And so we have to go back and rescue ourselves and reparent ourselves in that place so that we can, in turn, integrate that into our brain so that we are not constantly working from a place of fear and flight.

So, when we do have that physical manifestation of chronic shame, it's not just affecting our inner selves, because it does have that physical manifestation as well, so it's often going to manifest in a form of tension. I've had a ton of stress in my life recently, and I've noticed for the first time ever that I am holding it in my jaw.

My husband has constantly told me about how his jaw gets sore when he is stressed or angry. I've never had that happen. I've always been someone that holds it in my neck, my chest. I've held it in my hip before. So as we start to think about our body and scan our body mentally through meditation, we can actually think about where the parts of our body are sore or tense and it actually helps us key in on what is actually going on.

Sometimes we don't even know, especially if you were to take our test for Simple Deep and you realize that you have a void attachment, you're going to have a harder time locating as well as labeling the feelings in your body. And so I'm super excited because at the end of this episode you'll have an opportunity to DOWNLOAD: a “Simple Deep Feelings Wheel.”

As silly as it sounds, it is super helpful, especially it's been for my husband because he has a feeling and I can put it in front of him and he can choose a word because if you have a void in attachment, you didn't have someone come alongside you and help you label that and then to be able to understand how to unpack it.

So, recognizing those physical symptoms, you're going to have tension, you might have in your tension in your chest or feeling of heaviness, stomach areas aching, chronic shame can also lead to this constant feeling of exhaustion due to just the emotional toll that it takes on our minds and our bodies.

So, recognizing these physical symptoms, can also serve as a huge clue to identifying and addressing the chronic shame in its place. So if you had chronic stress growing up, toxic stress, which we relate to adverse childhood experiences, you are most likely going to have deeply rooted chronic shame because the two are like buddies, they go together.

So it's essential to acknowledge the stories that we have in our lives created or continue to create this toxic shame. I addressed that small story last week of asking a little girl if she wanted to play with me and she told me the reason she couldn't because it had something to do with something I could not control which was my father's occupation.

But we have stories like this throughout our lives. We have divorces, we have betrayals, we have moments where we were not chosen, something so minor as not being chosen by a team, which isn't minor, it hurt, versus someone leaving us for another person. Regardless of what it is, if it happened, it mattered.

And I'm going to repeat that again. I say that a lot in my business. If it happened, it mattered. Because we get so quick to dismiss our pain, And when we compare our pain to someone else, we're choosing not to really sit with our own pain and to love ourselves enough to give us what we need. And that is one of the first steps of reparenting is just to acknowledge, Oh, I've got shame.

I'm ashamed. And if I don't say, I am ashamed, I can say something like, I'm having a lot of big feelings right now. I don't know what this is, but I'm gonna sit with it for a little bit and not try to numb it. Because Gabor Maté, who is just phenomenal, says that to avoid pain, we go off and we create more pain.

And that more pain is usually through addiction. And addiction isn't just shooting up heroin, it's binging on Netflix. It's hitting the Buy Now button on Amazon over and over again. It's going and buying a bunch of things that we don't need. It's scrolling Instagram for two or three hours. And it's so easy to do because we are so interested in what is on that feed because they know as they watch us on social media what it is that we're looking at.

So all of a sudden when you're looking for a brand new armoire or you're looking for coaching, it's showing up in your feed. So of course you're going to be interested in it, never mind all the celebrities and things that we can get stuck on or old reels of XYZ. The point is, we will find a way to avoid pain, or to avoid discomfort.

Because it doesn't feel good in our bodies. It's not like all of us wake up and go, I'd like to deal with shame today. So, Brene Brown says that the best way to get people to leave her alone on a plane is to talk about the fact that what she does for a living is she studies shame and vulnerability. She says it can shut down everyone really quick if she doesn't want to have a conversation.

I get it. It's not an easy thing to do. But it's something we can spiral into and it absolutely can paralyze us. And I want more for you and I want more for me. And really the quality of your life is a true. reflection of what you tolerate, what you tolerate, the standards and virtues that you deem the best quality for your life.

So we have to look at what you're tolerating and then put a spin on that or get rid of it because here's the deal. You're only going to be exactly where you are if you don't do anything about it. So my goal for you and my goal for myself is that we would continually strive to be the best version of ourselves and that is not someone that is birded and held down by shame.

The best way to do this is to actually look back at our story. At Simple & Deep™,we believe that women need to understand attachment, and then they need to engage their story, and so when I talk about engaging your story, this is a narrative, trauma informed focus that is highly connected to the work of the Allender Center in Seattle, but also this idea that in story we are healed. In story, we are found. And we are also broken in relationship and story. We are wired for story. You are a story. Not that you have a story, but you are a story. You are in the story of God. You are in the story of the universe. You are in the story of what the evangelical church would call the gospel. You are part of something bigger to the world.

You have a purpose. You have a theme on your life that is going to display in beautiful glory something good. But we have to walk it out. We have to know who we are. We have to know why. We are here. What our purpose is. And our purpose has to be more than us. Because otherwise, what is the point if we are not doing something that can connect to other people?

Because we are relational human beings. And one of the things we might be doing is literally not engaging with our world because it was so freaking hard and someone hurt us so bad, but it doesn't have to stay like that.

Looking at your story is the most powerful way to heal shame. And by sharing those experiences, we're not only releasing the weight of carrying those stories, but we're inviting empathy and connection from other people.

Because if we are broken in relationship, we can only heal in relationship. We're going to challenge the narratives, those things that tell us or those stories that reinforced that we were not enough. And we're gonna flip the script on ourselves. I heard this incredible talk the other day about grief, and he said that if I were to call you every day after your son died, and I would say hi, how are you doing on the phone, and you would say, oh, I've been thinking about the day that my son died, and I would hold space for that, and I would listen, and I would be compassionate, and a good friend.

And then the next day I would call you and we would go through the same dialogue over and over again. I know that many of you have been in this place. You've been on the side of the person who's calling and the person, maybe possibly not that your son died, but there's been some type of grief because life is tragic.

There's no way we can get away from tragedy and trauma. because it's what, it propels our story forward, but it also is just part of living in this world. It's a broken, beautiful disaster. Let's say I call for several weeks and we have the same conversation. What that is really doing is it's creating a neural pathway in your brain that you're going to stay in your grief, because It's familiar, it's that familiar hell, it's that familiar suffering.

My new mantra is I will no longer participate in my own suffering. And you gotta be really honest about it. Some of these narratives, the things we like to talk about, the things we want to rehash, The things that we want to talk to our friends about over and over again. Yes, it's good to unpack those things.

But if we are not really trying to, to change the narrative, if we're not trying to bless it, articulate it, ponder it, and get it through our system and heal it, we are re traumatizing ourselves because our amygdala at the bottom of our brainstem, it just does not, know the difference between now and then.

So it thinks it's happening again. So that neuropathway is firing and so whatever fires together, wires together. So every time you talk about that experience without doing the work of understanding what trauma does to the brain, You are re traumatizing yourself and that's why you're constantly replaying it over and over in your mind because you want to make sense of it.

Our wounds want to heal but they have to be in the right context to do it. If you are at a highly dysregulated state all the time, your brain is going crazy as far as hypo-arousal, you are not going to integrate that trauma. Trauma is only integrated when we are in a kind state. Peaceful, regulated state, with someone who really understands what they're doing, and that is the key, and if you find that every time you're talking about your trauma, you're getting more and more aroused, and it's out of control, and your body is hot, it is not helping you.

It's not helping you at all. The calmer you can be with someone who can work through that with you, that is when your brain is going to heal. It's the same reason why we don't talk to a child when they're out of control and having a tantrum, because it doesn't work. Our brain doesn't want to go there.

Our cognition is off. Our executive functioning off. Our lid has flipped. I wanted to share one of my stories with you because it's the best way for you to understand and hopefully you'll get a little bit of a feeling about this and this is actually from my recovery from behavioral addictions. I had a behavioral addiction, love and sex addiction for about 12 years.

And we can go deeper into that later, but I was just bonding and connecting to really toxic people, and unavailable people that were going to hurt me, and also people that were going to reenact the trauma bond that I had with my mother. That being said, one of the the stories that I'm going to share with you today is rooted in that recovery when I first started.

So in 2015 my life Completely unraveled and shattered and that's when I found myself stepping through the doors of my therapist's office for the very first time I was introduced to something pretty special and it's super rare, but I would encourage you to look for it It's called Lifespan Integration Therapy and to unpack this, really what it is, you are taking your timeline and you are putting cues along it, so if you remember things from when you were three, you would say like, Bethel Stairs, Bethel was the church that we went to, Bethel Stairs, The Coat Closet at Joy Bell, my other preschool, and Nikki was my first friend there.

So you're putting cues for your brain because our brain just needs one little cue. It doesn't need a whole story. And so she would say my timeline in order because Time is fractured when you have trauma. It doesn't make sense. So that's why a lot of times that cognitive piece, that the middle of our brain, it just goes offline because we're trying to survive.

So what happens is that we lose sense of time. So even though I thought The person that eventually shattered me at the very end of my addiction had just left my life. It had been a year, two years. So we really do lose track of that. What you're trying to do is go back and take those splinters and iron them out in your brain and create new neuropathways like we talked about, firing and wiring.

You're trying to create like new roads in your brain of this actually happened but we're gonna go around it or we're gonna go through it and it doesn't stop. That is over. That is what we really need is we need to know it's over. I am safe. I am okay. I live through that. Because right now you've lived through the 100 percent of the worst days of your life.

So, Lifespan Integration Therapy. Another thing that you can try is EMDR, and I will talk to you about that in a little bit. It's not something that you hear about every day, Lifespan Integration Therapy, but it is so powerful and it totally worked for me. It was a game changer. When we started this process, the therapy journey is not easy.

It's just not easy. It's not fun to sit in front of someone you don't know and tell them, Hey, I've been ruining my life and now I'm here because Well, I'm a mess, right? So, my therapist, what she did first is she told me you have insecure attachment, which was mind blowing to me because I was like, what are you talking about?

And all of these words that she was saying to me that were so foreign became like a second skin that now has created my business, that spearheaded me going and pursuing the personal papers of Mister Rogers writing a book, using it in the classroom. So everything from my deepest shame became my deepest purpose.

Everything from my deepest shame led me to my deepest purpose, which is helping you, which is helping children, which is helping the world know that it is simple and deep and we are making it way too shallow and complex. She helped me to create this timeline and then she helped me to identify the moments or cues that elicited responses from various places and moments or phases in my life.

So, not all of the things on this timeline are bad, there are beautiful moments, like my wedding, the birth of my children, buying my German Shepherd, singing at Omaha Beach in Normandy, France. All of those things are amazing and beautiful, but then also moments of heartache, people that I had acted out with, other things that had happened in my life, and moments that were incredibly painful, that some, are in the book and other ones that are not.

One of the more unique aspects of this process though, involved a lifelike baby doll, which I got to accessorize with a hat of my choosing each time that we did this activity. So it seems so bizarre and you might be like, what is she talking about? But just bear with me here. She would say, today how would you like your baby to be dressed?

And so she would have the baby in a onesie or whatever and it's like one of those real life like baby dolls. And then she would have me choose a baby hat. So I would choose maybe today I want the pink hat with the polka dots or I want the green hat with the white polka dots or whatever. So she would put that baby hat on and then she would act as though that baby were me as an infant.

Because we are, our attachment is broken in infancy. Up to about three years old and a lot of the stuff that I had to work through was when I was three and she would Coo at the doll and be like, oh whiskey is so beautiful. Look at how beautiful baby whiskey is and I Hated it. I felt so weird when she would do it I felt like first I thought it was stupid then I was like uncomfortable and almost embarrassed for her And for, this is so stupid, I can't believe people would do this.

And then, I just felt like I couldn't even watch it. And both my sons and my husband also tried Lifespan Integration Therapy and it did not work for them. And they were like, what's up with the baby doll? And I'm like, I know. But the thing is, I decided I wanted healing so bad, I would try it. Like I would just try it.

So she would hold the baby, rock the baby, talk to the baby. And then she would tell me to close my eyes. And then she would read a little bit more of my timeline. Then she'd tell me to open my eyes, because this is what they call a protocol. And then she would continue to soothe and talk to the baby and show me the baby.

And what she's doing is she's trying to show my frontal cortex, like, here I am caring for you. And what she's offering is her secure attachment system, her nervous system, because she's secure that I can borrow from her in that moment. We cannot give someone what we do not have. If you do not have secure attachment, You cannot give that to your children because we don't give what we don't have.

We can give them lots of good things, but there's going to be something missing there. So the greatest thing is that when we surround ourselves with good, healthy, emotionally secure, and strong people, It helps our nervous system. So hang out with people who make your nervous system feel good. And if you don't know what that feels like, start being curious about it.

It's a place where you're calm, where you feel seen, where you feel known, that you could tell that person anything and that they would accept you and not judge you. It's that person you would call at two in the morning when something horrible and tragic has happened. It's that person that just gets you.

That is secure attachment. And that they don't push you towards or help you go towards things that are going to make you emotionally, physically, [00:32:00] or any way sick, or hurt, or shattered. Do you have at least one person like that in your life? And if you are looking for someone to do therapy with, don't stay with someone who makes you feel weird.

That makes you feel like they have more need than you do. Because therapists aren't always super secure. and Whole. So you have to find the right person. I'm not saying run away from someone that challenges you or holds you accountable. That is not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is someone who you feel absolutely safe with emotionally.

Because psychological safety is real. And if you have been abused or damaged, that is going to be really key for you. Because remember, we can't heal that trauma if we are in a dysregulated state. So, as she continued this process of talking to the baby as if she were talking to me, She is reinforcing the idea that the baby, essentially me, didn't need to do anything special to deserve care or safety. 

It was a right that we have as human beings to have people that take really good care of us. And it's reflecting on why this part of me felt so strange initially. Because really, it was boiling down to shame. Deep down, I was struggling with the idea of receiving this kind of attention. and care that I should have gotten as an infant because I had always been taking care of someone else, especially my mother's own emotional needs.

That came at a pivotal moment in one of my sessions because as she was rocking the doll and saying, Wystie, you don't have to take care of anyone else. You can just be right here, and I will meet your needs. And it was like the floodgates opened. Tears streamed down my face. As I faced that shame head on and I kept my face looking at the baby doll, and I allowed it, to be exactly what it was.

The shame of wanting to be cared for, of wanting to step back from being my mother's caregiver emotionally. And that moment highlighted this paradox, often seen in anxious attachment, which is we find ourselves in our caregiver roles from a very young age. So, taking on the emotional burdens of our parents and feeling super guilty for this immense responsibility that we've never been asked to do, to be the caregiver for, but also this guilt that we have for wanting it to be different.

Wanting them to say, “Oh, Wystie, I'm so sorry that's hard and I'll be here if you need me. Take as long as you need with that. Or do you need my help with that?” So looking at that baby doll, actually decked out in a little tiny pink hat, I realized that accepting and embracing my own shame was not only okay, but it was so incredibly necessary.

Because allowing myself to feel all of these emotions, It was healing because nothing is a shadow anymore. It's all coming to the light. Every piece of your story has something to tell you. If that shame could talk, what would it say? I heard one person say once it would just scream. Yeah, it might. It might cry.

It might ask why? What would your shame ask you? Last week we talked about it being a character and I talked about Moaning Myrtle being my self-critic. So if Moaning Myrtle could come to the surface and she could tell me exactly what she was feeling in that moment, she would whine. and moan about the fact that I felt certain things and why is it not okay for me to have a need?

This is where it can be a great time for you to pause this podcast and really think about that. What would your shame say? What would it look like? And maybe it says lots of things. You might want to draw an outline of a person being you and just write all the things that your shame would say. There's truly no magic formula, my friends, for getting out of shame and healing all the trauma.

There's all these different philosophies of internal family systems, cognitive behavior therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, mindfulness. EMDR. There's so many different ways that we combat the effects of trauma, but I wholeheartedly believe that it is only through going through the stories specifically that you're going to be able to heal all of those pieces.

We have to challenge these shame laden stories and nurture self kindness. So we have to say, I love myself enough that no matter what I find when I am excavating this, I'm going to keep going and I'm going to keep tending to the wound, because Let's say we're cleaning out a wound and we leave some bacteria in there, what's going to happen?

It's going to continue to make a problem. It's a profound strategy of sweeping out the darkness and allowing this gentle light and this gentle kindness to come in and make things better. So in this journey, I want you to imagine that you're not facing just your emotions, but you're inviting them to dance with you.

wholeheartedly opening yourself up that you can receive and hold your shame, your brokenness, your beauty, your glory, all together. And then you have room and space for other people to join you in this stance of learning more about yourself. And then by doing that, you're not overwhelmed by the immensity of them because actually they're part of the human experience.

The interconnectedness of the human race. We all experience these things. That's why this is a universal kind of thing. You have attachment, I have attachment. We have stories. We have themes. We have contours and patterns. And we have the ability to walk beside one another and be social human beings. So it's recognizing the presence of these emotions and not letting them completely control and dictate us.

So this approach isn't just about dismissing it, but just transforming how we interact with it and being like, Ah, there she is, there's Shame. And Shame, why are you here? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And we let her, we let her talk. We let her explain to us. Why? Why she's here? It might be that she's just in the habit of showing up and we can tell her, Hey, that is so great that you came to help me, but I've got this.

I'm the wise adult now. So I often say to the little girl inside me, I've got this baby girl. Like I know that you have protected me for so long and you're terrified right now. But what's so cool about being the wise adult is that I can make those decisions for us now and you don't have to make them from the age of eight, nine, ten, whatever age you might be in that moment because those moments are frozen for us.

You have to ask yourself how old would I have been when this happened and then what would your ability to reason that out have been? If you were six, you only had the logic of a six year old. You didn't have the logic you have now as an adult woman. So it's one of those things where you have to have that compassion and empathy, but also that understanding and self awareness.

When it happened, that is where you are frozen. So your reactions are going to be at that age. That gives you a little bit of clarity as to why you burp these bizarre Childlike responses to things that don't match the situation and your husband's why are you doing that? And I'm like, I don't know but I'm throwing things and I'm acting crazy I'm probably acting like I did when I was three because it's not integrated.

It's not healed. It's not whole So I want to give you a couple ways that you could support yourself in dealing with the shame. One is to practice self-listening Dedicate some time to reflect on your feelings without self-judgment. Listening to yourself is a huge step towards understanding and healing.

Since I am an outward processor, I do a lot of this in my car. As I'm having anxiety, I'll say, Oh, Westy, I so understand that you're anxious right now. And I will label that for myself. And then just like I talked about a little bit ago, I talked to her and say, I'm wise and I'm going to take care of you.

You might need to also write it down. Now, some of you might be like, I don't journal, Dear Diary. That's not what I'm talking about when I say journaling. It could be as simple as writing out a list. It could be bullet journaling. It could be writing out quotes or song lyrics. I have glued song lyrics into my journal.

I have put Care Bear stickers, whatever makes me feel good. Washi tape, lots of markers. You might want it to be all black and white and this mole skin, just beautiful. Everything is linear. Whatever makes you happy. and makes you feel good. That's what I want you to do. I want you to reflect on it. Ask yourself questions.

You might not have the answers, and that's okay. Acknowledge that your emotions are valid. Telling yourself it is totally okay for you to feel ashamed. It is totally okay for you to be angry about this. It is okay for you to be scared about this. It makes sense. That's There we go again. It makes sense. Say that to yourself a lot, even if it doesn't make sense.

Somehow, this kept you safe, this reaction, this fear. So now what you need to do is explain to yourself, this is a new situation. Yes, they could reject you. Absolutely. Yes, you could get hurt. But maybe not. Maybe parts of it won't suck at all. And are you participating in your own suffering by quitting, by how you are getting crippled and paralyzed, by not moving forward through shame?

Cultivate that self-compassion to remind yourself that you are so worthy. You are so worthy of not having to be constantly crippled by these things. Be an understanding friend, the best kind of friend to yourself. Stay present with your emotions and allow yourself to feel whatever you're feeling without rushing out of it or numbing out.

Make a list of ways that you know that you disengage. Your phone's gonna probably be a huge one. But there are other ways that you could disengage. Maybe you are a prolific runner and so you go running no matter what. But maybe running has become one of those things that allows you to not engage hard things.

So, asking yourself your motivation behind the things that you're doing, and it might just be that you need to flip things around in your schedule so that you give yourself time. to be able to process, and it's going to feel like crap. It's not going to be fun to sit with things that are uncomfortable or expose things within us.

But remember that it's not going to kill you. It really won't. As much as it's uncomfortable, the great thing about shame is it's very fleeting. It will go away. And as it goes away, then you can start to process it. It's one of the emotions that comes very quickly and leaves very quickly. And what we have to do is we just have to clean up the debris.

Be curious about why. This is what I've learned in my own journey is that saying what a feeling is makes it dissipate. It's naming it that gives it less power over us. And then refrain from just trying to fix it. Recognize that looking for a quick fix is just gonna not address the root of the feeling.

And acceptance is more supportive than just trying to get rid of it. And then share with someone that you trust that makes your nervous system feel good when you're ready. And just explore it. And that's where I'm going to make sure that you have the opportunity to download the “Simple & Deep™ Feelings Wheel” because it's going to engage in a healthy strategy of naming the feeling you're having and then asking it questions as if it were a friend coming to call to explain something to you.

Recognize that every feeling you have is there to tell you something. It's there to tell you a story, but you have to be willing to listen to the story. Remember that you need to be grounded and centered as you do these things. Taking simple, quiet breaths, holding your breath for four counts, letting it out for four counts, taking another deep breath in, up to ten of those breaths to ground yourself in the moment because the only thing you have that's present is your breath.

You cannot take tomorrow's breath and you cannot take yesterdays. It's only present. So, the more that you can focus on breath work, It is life changing because it will keep you in the present moment. Exploring this lineage of our shame and understanding where it began and how it shaped us and the things that it's telling us, it's going to change us.

It's going to bring more healing and awareness. As we wrap up today's episode, Remember that while the shadows of chronic shame are vast, we can penetrate them. Healing is a pilgrimage, a path that we walk with [00:45:00] patience, compassion, and this gentle unveiling of the stories that have shaped us. You are a story, but you're not navigating this story alone.

You've got me. You've got our Simple & Deep™ Community. And remember, until next time, take care of yourself because you are important. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Simple & Deep™ Podcast. I hope that you enjoyed our conversation and found it enlightening and empowering. Remember, by understanding attachment, engaging your story, and living intentionally, we can transform our lives.

Feel free to reach out with any questions you might have. And remember, until next time, take care of yourself, because you are important.