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This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil
Healing Complex Shame with Dr. Zoe Shaw | 420
00:35:13
Dr. Zoe Shaw breaks down the hidden impact of complex shame and how it fuels people-pleasing, perfectionism, anxiety, and self-doubt. This powerful conversation explores healing trauma, rewriting limiting beliefs, and building true self-worth so women can stop hiding and start living more fully.
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- [00:00]
Nicole Kahlil
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- [01:01]
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- [01:36]
Nicole Kahlil
I am Nicole Kahlil and you're listening
- [01:38]
Podcast Host
to the this Is Woman's Work podcast, where together we're redefining what it means, what it looks and what it feels like to be doing woman's work in the world today. And friend, we can't do that without talking about the stuff we've been trained to avoid. I know none of us want to, but it's imperative that we get honest about the not so postworthy stuff that's actually driving our behavior and our choices. And I'm not just talking about the stuff that shows up on the surface, but what's underneath it. Because we will talk all day long about people pleasing, anxiety, self doubt, overachieving, perfectionism we have on this show and will continue to as long as it plagues us. And we have to acknowledge that it's easier to talk about those things because we can all look at each other and nod and say, yep, that's me too, and know that we'll be in good company. But what if those things are just a byproduct of a Deeper problem, one we don't raise our hands about in a crowded room. Heavier, stickier, harder to name, because we don't want to say it out loud. Things like grief or. Or trauma or the topic we all know about but don't want to talk about. So we're talking about it today, and that's shame. And I'm not talking about the momentary kind that we all feel when we mess up or fall short. I'm talking about the kind that gets internalized, the kind that shapes how you see yourself, the kind that decides what you believe you're worthy of, what you will and won't tolerate and how small or safe or big or risky you're going to play. Because if we don't understand that deeper layer, we're going to keep trying to fix the behaviors without ever addressing what's actually fueling them. And here's the truth most of us don't want to admit. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away. It just gives it more control. In my personal experience, when you name it, when you say the thing, when you share your shame, when you put language on it with somebody that you trust, it starts to lose its power. So that's what we're going to do today. Here to help us dive into shame is Dr. Zoe Shaw, a licensed psychotherapist, author, speaker, relationship coach, and host of the podcast Stronger in the difficult places. After 15 years in traditional therapy, she stepped away from the couch to create a more dynamic approach to healing, blending psychology, faith, and feminism. She is best known for coining the term complex shame, and through her work, she helps women break free from it so they can reclaim their voice, boundaries, and self worth. Dr. Zoe, thank you for being our guide through what can be a really hard topic to talk about. And I'd love to ask you to start by defining or describing complex shame. Is it complex shame or complex shame? I'm not even sure. So what are we talking about here?
- [04:28]
Dr. Zoe Shaw
I call it complex shame, but complex works as well. Nicole, first I have to say thank you so much for having me on. And that was the best introduction both to the topic and myself that I've ever heard. So thank you so much. Yeah. So shame, it is a very unsexy topic and I talk about it with a smile on my face because there's so much hope about when we get over it. And I've done that myself. And so most people understand that shame is that kind of that feeling, like that physiological deep gut body feeling that makes you feel bad about yourself. Right. But I want to kind of open that up a little bit so people can understand. So first, we can't talk about shame without talking about guilt, because people get them very confused. Guilt is this feeling that I've done something wrong. Guilt is a very healthy feeling. When you've done something wrong to break your own moral code, you feel a feeling, and that feeling motivates you to change. It motivates you to go back and repair, to apologize to. And even if that doesn't work, you can say, I will not do that again. So guilt is a healthy feeling that motivates you to change. Shame says, I am wrong. And when you have this feeling that gets attached to your identity that says, I am wrong, there is nothing for you to do but run or hide, right? And so that's what happens with shame. And shame is always unhealthy because shame makes us hide. And when we hide in our relationships, when we hide from ourselves, we usually do damaging things, and nothing good comes of it because you can't repair if you've already decided I'm wrong. Now, the difference between complex shame and shame is that complex shame is a type of shame that doesn't go away when you talk about it, and you receive some external compassion. So Brene Brown became famous talking about the way to get rid of shame, right? We talk about it, someone else gives us compassion. People say, me too. And all of a sudden our shame dissipates. And that's beautiful, and it's almost miraculous when it happens. And that's what I call simple shame. But there's a type of shame that when you do that thing and someone gives you external compassion, it doesn't go away, and it actually makes you feel worse about yourself. And so what happens is you've got this complex shame. You talk about it, and two things can happen. Either someone will give you this compassion, and then what happens internally is you say, oh, but you don't really understand. If you really knew the depth of my shame and really knew what I did, or it was done to me, you wouldn't give me that compassion. And so we can't accept it. And so the shame just goes deeper. The other thing that happens, and this happens a lot with marginalized communities, happens with women. It happens in lots of scenarios where someone will talk about their shame and then they're gaslit about it, they're told probably didn't happen. You're exaggerating. Why are you playing that card, right? And so what happens is they don't get any compassion. Shame stays Goes deeper. And so that's the difference between simple shame and complex shame. Now, how it develops a whole nother thing, Right. So shame we experience as early as 18 months old.
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Podcast Host
Yikes.
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Dr. Zoe Shaw
Shame is something that unfortunately our society runs on. I could talk on and on about it because I just saw this Instagram post where people were just deeply shaming someone and felt that it was important to shame someone, to change their behavior. And what we don't understand as a society is that when you shame someone, their behavior doesn't change, but it looks like it does because it goes underground. And so we think that it's a useful tool. We start it with our children. As early as 18 months, we shame. And so simple shame is always there. Starting from 18 months old, complex shame is a little more complex. And that happens. And I like to think of it as a snowball. So we have our normal shaming experiences. Right. And then we may have some trauma or we may have some things that happen on top of it. And I think of it as a snowball going down a hill, just collecting more and more and more shame. And it gets to a point where it's kind of compounded. It's very difficult to just kind of obliterate it, if that makes sense. And so it develops these layers. Right, right. And that's why it's so difficult to untangle. And so in order to work on complex shame, we've got to kind of untangle all of the layers to get to the root of it and to understand it deeply within ourselves so that we can free ourselves from it.
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Podcast Host
Well, thank you for going through that. I think that was a really powerful distinction. I was going to ask you about guilt. I'm glad you covered that. And I said in my intro about putting words on it, and that has absolutely helped me and made my simple shame lose a lot of its power. And so I'm not saying that you don't agree. I stand by that for myself. It's this deeper level of complex shame that we want to dive in today. And you use the word untangle. Obviously we're not going to be able to just talk about it. It can't just be addressed, this untangling, what does that mean? What does that look like? How do we even begin?
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Dr. Zoe Shaw
You know, in my book, I share eight steps to untangling complex shame. I also share my own, my very personal story of how I developed complex shame and came to understand what it was going on with my clients and myself. But we begin to untangle it by starting back to initial shaming experiences that we can recognize are still very much haunting us. And so we've got to, there's an eight step process. I won't go through the whole thing, but we've got to go back to those initial shaming experiences. We have to understand the messages that we were told to us. And one of the things we don't think about often is that when we get out of unhealthy experiences, family relationships, other relationships, we think that we've left them and moved on. But what we often do is we just pack up all of the unhealthy words and we carry them with us. We just pack em up, carry em, and then we repeat them to ourselves and they become part of our language, our internal language. And so we've gotta understand that too. But the thing with complex shame is that because we aren't experiencing external compassion or can't take it in what we have to do, that is something that kind of goes counter to traditional therapy, which is learning how to just kind of exonerate yourself. So if someone, let's say someone was a victim of a crime, right? And they go into therapy and they talk about it, often therapists are trying to help them understand it wasn't your fault. Right. How can you stop blaming yourself? I actually do the opposite because I understand how the brain works. And this might feel like victim blaming, but this is what we have to do with complex shame because our brain says I am to blame, I am unworthy. And what we have to do is actually look at that and say what am I blaming myself for? So maybe it's I didn't respond quick enough. Maybe it's I went to that person's, you know, apartment. Maybe it's I fought back, maybe it's I didn't fight back. When we can actually start to look at the things that we blame ourselves for, take accountability, even micro accountabilities for it, and then work on forgiveness. That is something that works with our brain and allows us to release some of our own shame. And so it's about acknowledging accountability. And I'm not saying that you did anything wrong, but that's what your brain is saying. No, you don't understand. Right? So acknowledge whatever your brain is telling you that you did wrong or you are accountable for. Forgive yourself for those micro decisions or sometimes those macro decisions and then work on acceptance. And that's part of the untangling process.
- [12:20]
Podcast Host
I actually really like this. I know that sounds crazy to say, but I have a really hard time whenever I Feel like I'm lying to myself. Affirmations on one hand. Or in this case, like if. If I feel like I'm to blame, you can tell me till I'm blue in the face that I'm not. But if I believe it, all I'm doing then is resisting. Or as you said earlier going into the. You just don't understand.
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Dr. Zoe Shaw
Yes.
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Podcast Host
Whereas I think if we are allowed to explore, what are we blaming ourselves for? And I could be way off base. Please challenge me. But. But it almost moves us more into that guilt. I've done something wrong and you're allowing me to acknowledge it. But then I can forgive or I can acknowledge, or I can be accountable and I can repair. Which is what you said was the difference between guilt and shame. I've done something wrong versus I am wrong. And allowing us to explore what we believe we did wrong even if we didn't.
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Google Chrome Sponsor
Yeah.
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Podcast Host
Allows us to, I don't know, do something with it. Am I way off base?
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Dr. Zoe Shaw
You are so accurate there. It moves. Because remember I said guilt is healthy, shame is not. When we take it from identity to behavior, then there's something we can do about it. And then when we've forgiven ourselves, then guess what? We can move towards vulnerability. We can talk about the thing that usually when people have deep, complex shame, it's not easy for them to talk about it. But when you've gotten to a place of acceptance, accountability and self forgiveness, you can talk about that really hard thing. And even if someone else does not give you compassion, you've already given it to yourself. And so it's okay. I talk about my story all the time. It just came out in People magazine. Oprah Winfrey Network did an entire episode on my story. And I can talk about it despite all the haters. Cause I get a lot of that too. But I'm okay with it because I'm good with myself. I understand deeply what actually happened. So I don't have a sense of, oh, you don't understand. Unless it's. I mean, they might not really understand. And I'm okay with that because I understand. And so the thing you can do now is be vulnerable. The thing you can do now is release it. You can maybe go back and repair, even just repairing with yourself.
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Podcast Host
So this makes me feel very hopeful. But I don't want to send the message that this is easy work. I can't imagine it is. So I was gonna ask if you could share a bit of your story as a way that we can think about exploring our own Complex shame stories and really how that shapes how we see ourselves.
- [14:56]
Dr. Zoe Shaw
Right? Yes, you're, you're right. It's not easy. And if it weren't worth it, I'd say don't bother, just keep on about life, cover yourself up and go. But the freedom on the other side of releasing your shame is worth all of the pain, all of the difficulty getting there. So yes, I will share my story as quickly as I possibly can. I grew up a black girl in an all white farming rural community in Maryland around a lot of Mennonites. And I developed some racial identity shame. And there's lots of types of shame I can talk about in that process. But When I was 15, I got pregnant. And I also grew up in a very fundamental Christian home in the height of purity culture. My dad was a prominent doctor in the community. And the response was, my parents response was this isn't happening here. You were a bad influence on your siblings, you have to go away. And so they sent me away to a pregnancy home in Lynchburg, Virginia with the understanding that I would come back without a child and me being a very compliant child that I was. I stayed at the pregnancy home, I gave birth unmedicated in a, in Lynchburg, Virginia hospital. And I left my daughter in the hospital to go back home to pretend like nothing had ever happened. And so you can imagine all of the guilt, all of the shame, all of the waves of grief and trauma that I was pushing down as I came back home to live a normal, quote, teenage life as if nothing had ever happened. And I doubled down, I pushed, you know, I hurt myself by, by over accomplishing. I doubled down on academics, I doubled down on athleticism. I got a scholarship to ucla. I competed at the highest college level, coached by Olympic coaches Bobby Kersey, and hurdled and excelled at UCLA as an athlete, excelled academically, went on to get my master's, my doctorate in clinical psychology. I got married very early to kind of exonerate myself from that purity culture. And all the while pushing down these deep waves of shame, I hid my secret. And it was. I'll fast forward very quickly to when my first kept daughter was born. And she was born with a very rare genetic disorder called Prader Willi syndrome. We didn't even know if she was going to live at that time. And that was the moment for me when my shame dam broke because I concocted this story that God was punishing me for placing my first daughter for adoption. She was punishing my, my daughter for what I had done. And that's when I really began to spiral. And so both as a clinician, I'll save the story for someone who wants to read it somewhere else. But as a clinician, and of course, as someone really struggling with deep shame, I dove into trying to figure out what was happening here. And so over years, I worked on healing myself. I started to understand the difference between this different kind of shame that Brene Brown than what Brene Brown talked about. And that's how I came up with the idea, the concept, concept of complex shame, both in walking my clients through this type of shame and myself.
- [18:05]
Podcast Host
Sorry to break in, but this part matters.
- [18:08]
Nicole Kahlil
Rate the show, share it, and support the sponsor so I can keep making
- [18:12]
Podcast Host
episodes worth interrupting you for.
- [18:16]
Nicole Kahlil
I don't know about you, but nobody told me that one of the hardest and frankly most annoying parts of being a mom would be answering all of the questions. Like, I did not sign up to man the family help desk, but here we are. And I could give you a list of the daily questions, but I know that you know and I know that we all love our families, but one day one of these questions is going
- [18:37]
Podcast Host
to be what puts us over the edge, right?
- [18:39]
Nicole Kahlil
So for my sanity and everyone else's safety, we now have a Skylight calendar sitting right on our mudroom counter where
- [18:46]
Podcast Host
everyone can see it.
- [18:47]
Nicole Kahlil
Skylight Calendar is designed to bring families together and it sinks with Google and Apple calendars, Outlook, all of it so everyone can see what's happening without me needing to verbally deliver updates. And it took me less than five
- [18:59]
Podcast Host
minutes to set up.
- [19:00]
Nicole Kahlil
Listen, Families are better when they're working together. Right now, Skylight is offering our listeners $30 off their 15 inch calendars by going to myskylight.com womanswork go to myskylight.com womanSWork for $30 off your 15 inch calendar. That's my S K Y L I g h t.com womanswork this message is sponsored by Greenlight. As most moms do, I spend a lot of time thinking about parenting. Am I doing it right? Am I teaching her what she actually needs to know to live well? And teaching kids about money feels pretty high on my list, especially because most of us learned the hard way. And that's why we started using Greenlight years ago. Greenlight is a debit card and money app built for families. Parents can send money quickly and actually see how their kids spend and save while kids get real world practice managing money and building habits that will stick for life. We use it for allowance spending and savings goals. JJ actually used greenlight to track and save for her iPad, which made the whole thing feel tangible and empowering for her and saved us both from another lecture from Mom. Millions of parents and kids already use greenlight and I'm thrilled to be among them. Every day they're handling money without guidance is a missed opportunity. So start your risk free greenlight trial today@greenlight.com tiww don't wait to teach your
- [20:29]
Podcast Host
kids real world money skills.
- [20:31]
Nicole Kahlil
That's greenlight.com tiww to get started, greenlight.com tiww your call has been forwarded to voicemail.
- [20:42]
Dr. Zoe Shaw
Hi, this is Zoe Deutch and Nick Robinson.
- [20:45]
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- [20:57]
Dr. Zoe Shaw
Please stay.
- [21:00]
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Podcast Host
First, I'm sorry that you lived that experience. I think what stands out to me is for all of us, whatever our experiences are they, I don't know, inspire is not the right word. Impact isn't either. But they basically create the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves. I know Brene Brown talks about that a lot.
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Dr. Zoe Shaw
Right.
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Podcast Host
But it impacts how we see what's happening to us. Your example, when your kept daughter was born, you saw that as a punishment. You saw that as a you did something wrong and you had to pay for it. And we all know there were a bazillion ways to see that set of circumstances. But in your experience, and please correct me if I'm saying this wrong, that was the only way you could see it because the shame was in control.
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Dr. Zoe Shaw
Exactly. I felt so inherently unworthy. That was the only lens through which I could see it. And I had been taught it as well.
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Podcast Host
Sure.
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Dr. Zoe Shaw
Right.
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Podcast Host
So how do we begin to separate how we're seeing things and we feel like the way we see it is right and true and factual because of what we've been taught and because of our experiences, how do we begin to separate that into other available options?
- [22:30]
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Yeah.
- [22:32]
Dr. Zoe Shaw
That is a process. And what you're also talking about is confirmation bias. Because when we are taught something and we believe something, we will see it. Our brain will actually unsee. There's blinders. Right. It'll unsee things that contradict what we believe and it will hyper focus on any little small point that confirms what we believe. So that's confirmation bias. And we have to understand that that happens to us in multitudes of ways all the time, right. In our lives, and especially with our shame. So if you're carrying this deep shame, your brain will find ways to confirm it for you. And so sometimes just understanding that and asking yourself if maybe I wasn't inherently wrong, right, if maybe I'm not being punished, if I am actually loved and worthy and okay, what would I see in the world that would confirm that? And that's work. And that's a lot of kind of untangling and first understanding the messages that you have, because a lot of us, because we grow up in the water, in the soup, we're steeped in it, we aren't even aware of the messages that we carry, the messages that then we reinforce for ourselves. And so it starts with being, with understanding what they are and, and recognizing. You know, Joseph Wynn wrote an amazing book that's. It's called don't believe everything you think. And I love that book because the reality is, is that there are plenty of things that you believe deeply to be true that just aren't. And if you can hold that, and a lot of people have difficulty holding that, especially when it comes to faith, you know, really deeply held ideas, there's no one person in this world that could possibly have all of it. Right. And so that applies to you? It applies to me. Which means that things that you believe deeply, Nicole, things that I believe deeply, some of them are just completely untrue.
- [24:32]
Podcast Host
Right.
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Dr. Zoe Shaw
And if we can hold that in our hand, kind of hold that in our minds and be open to the reality that there's something different that could be true for us or true for the world out there, then we can begin to start accepting, you know, some of these ideas that are shame free.
- [24:49]
Podcast Host
I feel like what you're describing is like the deepest, hardest level of curiosity we could possibly be talking about.
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Dr. Zoe Shaw
Yes, yes.
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Podcast Host
When we think about these closely held beliefs and experiences, we tend to be toughest on ourselves. Absolutely. And I'm curious your thoughts on this. Sometimes when I have a really, really hard time giving myself any sort of grace or seeing things from a different perspective for myself, I will ask myself, what would I say or think if my daughter was in this situation or my closest friend or somebody I just love at the highest level? Because what I find is God. I would never say to my daughter, right, you know, God is punishing you or anything. I wouldn't believe it. I wouldn't say it because I would not even Fundamentally believe that, yes. And I know I should be able to find it for myself. Sometimes I can't. And when I can find it for somebody else and then go, okay, if I would say that to her or if I do that in this situation, then that's what I get to say to myself. Any thoughts on that? Is that like a healthy or not healthy approach to something like this?
- [25:57]
Dr. Zoe Shaw
I love that. And as you were talking about it, I was thinking of an exercise that I do and what I call the maintenance stage of shame. Because I've worked for years on myself, I work with other people, and I've gotten to a place where I'm in that maintenance stage. But shame will always show up. And so what I do is, number one, you have to know when it shows up. And I have this term called the phantom critic. The phantom critic are those shame messages, those shame words that we say to ourselves? And so when I hear myself wanting to say those negative things, I'm like, oh, okay, that's the phantom critic. But. But when the phantom critic shows up, I think about shame as this thing that's like I'm standing on the side of a riverbank and I see shame coming and it's just coming down the river, right? And when it gets in front of me, usually what I do is I do what shame wants me to do, which is to hide. But when I see shame, I recognize it. Oh, that's the phantom critic. Oh, that's shame. I know what it wants me to do. It wants me to hide in many different ways. I'm going to do the opposite, and I'm going to let shame just kind of flow down the river. And so when I let shame flow down the river, I then garner what I call the courageous truth teller. And the courageous truth teller is kind of what you talked about is the person who would talk to your daughter, right? The courageous truth teller tells me the truth about who I am, about my worth, and that's what I work on garnering. And so I'm always paying attention. Is this the phantom critic that's talking or is this the courageous truth teller? Because I want to make sure I'm walking mostly having conversations with a courageous truth teller.
- [27:36]
Podcast Host
I love that visually. I. I'm gonna absolutely borrow that. And when you ask yourself if this is the courageous truth teller, what would you say to the person who's like, but how do I not slip into toxic positivity? How do I still challenge myself or be honest with myself in a courageous, truth telling way without shining everything up or trying to make everything feel good.
- [28:06]
Dr. Zoe Shaw
You know, here's the thing. So remember, she's a truth teller. She's not just a Pollyanna affirming woman, she's a truth teller. But also what I notice is that when someone is walking with their phantom critic and the phantom critic is saying all kinds of terrible things to you, rarely does anyone say, you know, I want to make sure I'm telling the truth to myself. No, no one ever says, I don't want to say that because that's not fully true. Right. We just kind of soak it up. But then the second you say something positive to yourself or say something that feels like maybe, you know, toxic positivity or Pollyanna talk, then you question it, like, oh, I don't know if that's fully true. So my ask is that if you're going to question the positive things about yourself, then you must also question those negative things about yourself. It needs to go both ways. And so. And yet still I understand that concern. I'm not that concerned about it, to be honest with you, because I think that we can pump ourselves up and tell ourselves really wonderful things. And we can also use the courageous truth teller that says, yeah, you did that thing and that's not who you are. Yeah, you made that mistake today and that's not who you are, and you can do something different tomorrow. You're not the same person you were five minutes ago. And so that courageous truth teller can say those things. We're not saying you're perfect. We're not saying, you know, you're gonna, you know, win the lottery tomorrow or whatever. We're acknowledging the truth about who you are. And it's also okay to pump yourself up.
- [29:42]
Podcast Host
So that may be the best personal lesson I've had on this podcast in a very long time. And let me be. I get a lot of great personal lessons from this podcast. I feel like lovingly called out in the best way because my brain does that. My brain goes, oh, you might be being too positive. But my brain doesn't go, oh, you might be being too negative. Like, it's just crazy. So thank you for that. And I want to ask this last question. It said in the intro, you know, we talk a lot about people pleasing and self doubt and anxiety and your work and your book says that this is probably a byproduct of complex shame. Yep. How do we, I don't know, recognize the connection? And then is your recommendation to start with the complex shame or do we deal with some of these more Surface level things that everybody's talking about first, what are your thoughts?
- [30:39]
Dr. Zoe Shaw
So the. I'll answer the second question first. It's both. And we can work on boundaries. We can work on people, people pleasing, as we also work on our own complex shame. And so the way that they are connected is that, remember, if complex shame says, I am bad, I am unworthy, the result is we must hide. So if we're hiding, we're hiding everywhere. We're hiding in our relationships. And so in our relationships, we are showing up with a false Persona. It may be to a large extent or it may be to a small extent, it depends. But in some ways, we are not showing our full self. And so then when someone loves us, what happens internally? And this person may actually genuinely love and like us, but internally we have that same sense of if they really knew me, they would not love me. And so then we respond as if we are not loved. And it's this whole dynamic, right? And then we're also responding in a way that's trying to hustle and earn love because we don't feel worthy. And so this dynamic happens in codependency. Because if we, if you, if you're a codependent person, if you can control the emotions and the experience of the person you're in relationship with, then you feel safer, right? And it's a false sense of safety because remember, you're still hiding. And so then you're people pleasing and you are controlling emotions. And a lot of people think that codependency is weak. Codependency is actually about power and control. I want to control how you feel, so I feel better. And so that's how it's connected. And yet then what we do is we self abandon at the same time because we're trying to feel better. And so we self abandon. We don't take care of ourselves. We're trying to control the other person. And it's this kind of just negative soup, but it's all based in shame.
- [32:30]
Podcast Host
Okay, Dr. Zoe, I said that was gonna be my last question, but I have one more. As we think about rewriting the narrative or rewriting our story, given the experiences and the beliefs that we have up to this point, if we want to rewrite our story toward resilience, towards self worth, towards value and confidence and whatever is important, what are the best steps to do that? You talked about hiding. How do we show ourselves to ourselves, to the people closest to our. Basically, where do we go from here? Yeah, where do we go?
- [33:07]
Dr. Zoe Shaw
I get it. Because A lot of people listening. And I want to honor someone who's listening and thinking, oh, my gosh, like, I think that's what's going on with me. What do I do next? So there's a couple of things. Number one, I want you to just start to acknowledge. And now it's going to be hard not to see shame and parts of your life as you're showing up. If you are people pleasing, if you. If your boundaries are low, you may want to ask yourself, what. Where do I feel bad about myself that's making me need to control this person's emotions or to please. Right. It's starting to just pay attention now. One of the biggest steps is learning to talk about your shame. And that is one of the hardest steps. But it's not the first step. The first step is really starting to understand those shame messages. So what I would like someone to do who's listening right now is get a pen and paper or get on your phone, wherever you take your notes and ask yourself, what is, like, what's my deepest shame? And let me tell you how you find it anywhere in your life where you are hiding, where you get a sense of, oh, I don't want them to know, oh, if they found out, that's exactly where your shame lies. And most people kind of have an idea of what that is right now as I'm talking, right? That is where your shame lies. And that's what I want you to start writing down. Just write down that thing that, oh, I don't want them to know or him or her to know. There it is. And that's where we start. And now we've got to figure out, where did that come from? Now we've got to figure out where my blame is, right? Where's your blame about that? There are steps. They're in my book. But the first is to understand where are the places that you hide in your life right now and in your relationships?
- [34:56]
Podcast Host
Well, friend, if, like me, you're hearing and seeing yourself in this conversation, I am going to encourage you to go, I mean, like, run, don't walk. For the love of all things holy, find wherever you go, to your local bookstore, Amazon, wherever you buy books, get the book stronger in the difficult places. And you can also find out more about Dr. Zoe and her work on her website, drzoeshaw.com we'll put those links and every other way to find and follow her in show notes. Dr. Zoe, thank you for an incredibly important and impactful conversation and for talking about something that's so hard to talk about in a way that felt loving and safe and all of the things. So thank you.
- [35:36]
Dr. Zoe Shaw
Thank you so much, Nicole.
- [35:38]
Podcast Host
All right, friend. Your story has had a lot of contributors, some invited, some not. But at the end of the day, you're still the author, which is great news because that means you get to decide what stage stays, what goes, and what gets rewritten.
- [35:53]
Nicole Kahlil
Your past may explain you, but it doesn't define you.
- [35:56]
Podcast Host
And shame was never meant to be holding the pen. So write your best story, truer and braver, something that honors who you are and who you're becoming. Because that is woman's work.
- [36:18]
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