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The Antidote to Shame and Feelings of Unworthiness
00:43:33
Shame often keeps us from living the full, expansive life we’re desiring. In this episode of You Make Sense, Sarah explains the difference between “healthy” and “unhealthy” shame, and why unresolved trauma can often leave us feeling unworthy or like there is something inherently wrong with us. While shame can affect every area of our lives, from our relationships to our purpose, the good news is that it’s absolutely possible to heal. Sarah will walk you through tangible somatic steps to bring your nervous system back into internal safety and access your healthy aggression or “life force energy,” both of which are imperative to releasing shame and finding freedom in your everyday life.
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Sarah
Hi, I'm Sarah and welcome to youo Makesense. I'm a somatic experiencing practitioner, an expert on trauma resolution, attachment parts work, and nervous system regulation. This podcast is a manual to understanding your human experience so that you can navigate the world with freedom, ease, empowerment, and create the life that you desire. Remember, you make sense all parts always. Shame is something that we all experience to some degree in our lives. So today we're going to talk about what shame is all about and how we can actually remediate that so we can free ourselves from it. The first thing that I wanna name is there's actually two different categories of shame. One that I'll call healthy shame and the other that we'll call internalized, unhealthy shame. Healthy shame is actually something we wanna experience throughout our lives and certainly in our development when we're young. So think about when a baby's little. I'll give a couple examples. And they're breastfeeding and a baby reaches an age where they develop some teeth and they realize not only is this a me to get food and also bonding from my mom, but it can even be like a toy, meaning like a little pacifier. And so they start to bite. So what will a mother do? Of course, at the first time that, that she experiences that pain she might have pull her baby away. So unlatch. And in that moment, the baby experiences disconnection and what I'll call healthy shame. So what they're experiencing is, and learning is when I do that, something occurs that doesn't feel good for me. But it's the mother's job to repair that disconnection. So the mother's job to help the child relatch. What the baby begins to learn is when I do that particular thing, there are these results that don't feel good. And so I'm going to not do that thing so that I can continue to have the connection I desire that is healthy shame. The same goes for an example of, let's say you have a toddler and they're pulling the dog's leash, not the dog's leash. Or maybe they're pulling the dog's leash, but I meant pulling their dog's tail. And you say, hey, we don' Pull the dog's tail. That hurts them. We're not going to do that. And then the baby does it again. The child does it again and again. And then we have to have a consequence which is we're not going to be around the dog right now. And the child might, you know, start Crying and be upset about it. And it's the parent's job to come back into connection with the child and comfort them and let them know that it's okay. And to not acquiesce, though, and not have consequences, because this is how a child learns. Now, what makes that shame healthy? Two things about that is that, number one, the child is not being told that you are bad. What they're being told is that behavior or that thing is something that we don't do, but it has nothing to do with you or your inherent value. So that's number one. So in that experience, there's a differentiation. I am not bad. Pulling a dog's tail is bad, though. That hurts them. Very clean and clear. The second component is that the adult repairs the rupture. So the adult comes in and says, and I'm coming back into connection with you now. For so many of us, when we were developing and of course later on in our lives, we didn't get to experience healthy shame. Instead, we got messaging that we were bad. Like, why are you doing that? Stop being a little brat or knock it off, you're always hurting your siblings or whatever. You know, the messaging is not that something that we want to correct, but instead, you're inherently bad or something is wrong with you. The result of that is it can become internalized. So that child then inherently begins to feel, I must be be wrong, I must be bad. And then how does that look in our adult lives? Well, when we are experiencing other sorts of healthy shame, which could be something like, you know, I don't know, maybe you're always late meeting your friends for dinner, and they say to you eventually, hey, can we talk about this? It's really hard for me that you're always late, and it kind of bums me out, and I feel frustrated about it, and I just want to talk about it. So that's healthy shame, right? They're not saying you're bad. They're saying, this thing is something that doesn't feel good to me. Now, if a child experienced healthy shame when they were little, then the adult can navigate that. Meaning I can feel, oh, that doesn't feel great. It's not supposed to feel great, right? Because I'm doing something that's causing someone I love to not feel great. And then I can look at the behavior and say, oh, I wonder what that's all about, and how can I work on changing that? But no part of me is feeling like my inherent beingness is bad. And that's the result of not having shame be internalized. And that's what was supposed to happen for all of us. But for many of us, that wasn't the case. And instead we experienced something that I'm calling unhealthy shame or the internalization of what happened. And so there are varying degrees to this, by the way. You know what I just mentioned there, our experience of internalized shame, where we got the message that we're bad because we didn't get straight A's, or we're bad because. Because we didn't behave in a particular way. And so all of that sends us the message of me not being enough, there's something wrong with me, I am not valuable, and so on and so forth. There are other ways that we develop this unhealthy shame. And again, the most important thing to understand is that it's the internalization of what happened. So the internalization of what was done to us or what was said to us, or perhaps what wasn't said at all. So, like neglect. The internalization of that. What would the internalization of neglect be? Well, it might be that I am unlovable, not that this caregiver doing this thing isn't okay. So I make meaning of it that it has to do with me, rather than the thing that is done to me is the thing that isn't okay. And I think of this like a dirty sweater analogy. One point in my. In my journey. Really kind therapists use this. And I find it so helpful because I had a lot of shame in my life. So much internalization of what happened to me because of the abuse I experienced, the sexual abuse. I felt like I was disgusting or dirty or bad. So instead of seeing it as that which was done to me as bad, I'm bad because I was neglected and abandoned by my birth father and then really not protected and abandoned by my mother. I felt like I was unlovable. So that's the internalization of that experience. Because of things that happened with my siblings, them being really unkind to me, I felt like I was inadequate. So instead of saying, hey, what you're doing isn't okay to bully me like that, I made it mean I must not be good, I am not valuable, I am not smart. All of these things, that was shame as the result of what was done to me. And we've all experienced this to some degree. Again, you most certainly don't have to have my experience for shame to be internalized for you, just an experience of being bullied could be internalized as, oh, this must Mean, I'm too short, I'm too tall, because that's what they're saying versus, hey, that behavior isn't all right. So this dirty sweater analogy is a really wonderful way to understand shame. So I want you to think about it this way. Imagine that someone is wearing this tattered sweater. It has holes in it, and it' dirty. And this is the trauma that they've experienced and that they actually internalize. So maybe they experienced abuse at some point in their lives or they were abandoned and it wasn't safe to express themselves and how they actually felt about that experience. So what occurred is this sweater was put on them. And for some people, when they experience trauma, they internalize, and that's how shame develops. So I make it mean there's something wrong with me. Others externalize, so they experience trauma, and then to try to rid themselves of it, they put it or externalize it onto another person. So it's as if they're wearing this dirty, tattered sweater, and they can't tolerate being with the activation around the trauma they experienced. They can't tolerate actually looking at all of that for themselves. So what they do to try to rid themselves of it is they externalize it onto us in hopes that they can get that sweater off of themselves. But they don't get the sweater off themselves. What they do is they duplicate it and put a version of that sweater onto us. And so anybody that is, you know, abusing what they are doing is exactly this. They are externalizing the experience that they want to come to an end for themselves. And of course, this doesn't necessarily have to happen with abuse. Right? It could be that my caregiver is got. Got the message that as they were, wasn't enough. So they have this dirty sweater on them. So what they do is they try to, as I was growing up, control my food. And they put me on a diet when I was a little kid because they really loved me so much. They just wanted to make sure that I was perfect, because if I was perfect, they could feel perfect. So they're externalizing that onto me. And what does that do? It duplicates the sweater. And now I feel like I'm inherently bad. I am not good as I am because I'm not feeling accepted. And so then what happens is we wear these sweaters, us that internalize it, and we think the sweater is our skin. So instead of seeing it as what happened to me wasn't okay, like my mom micromanaging my food wasn't okay, we make it mean no My body must be wrong. I'm not okay. So that's the internalization of it. And I did this in. So I had this happen in so many areas of my life. I was wearing so many of these dirty, tattered sweaters, feeling less than in my life. That was like one of those sweaters, like I didn't belong. That was the internalization of not being chosen. Like, everything was my fault because I was constantly reprimanded. So I felt like, well, I must be wrong all the time, not feeling like I was enough. So my inherent beingness wasn't okay. And because of all of these things, what I then tried to do, which we all tend to do, is we try to remediate the shame by going against it or doing the opposite. So, for example, because I felt less than to try to make up for that I was constantly achieving, so that my hope was that I could just stop feeling this internalized shame. Or when I felt like I didn't belong anywhere in the world, what I would try to do is do my very best to make sure everybody loved me. Because if everybody loved me, then maybe I could belong. So these are the responses to this internalized shame. And I spent so much time in therapeutic containers trying to talk my way out of shame. I remember having therapists who had say things like, Sarah, well, do you think other kids would be bad or disgusting or unlovable? And of course I'd say, no, I don't think that. And I could feel that for other kids, but I couldn't feel it for myself. And the reason is because shame lives in our bodies where our nervous systems are. It doesn't live up in our cortical thinking brain. And the language of our nervous systems is not a verbal one. It's somatics, meaning the felt sense. So shame is not something you can rationalize your way out of. You have to experience your way out of it. I'm gonna give you examples of that in just a moment. But it's really important to understand here that there's no amount of thinking or talking or rationalizing that is going to make this go away or get this sweater off of us and to be able to see our skin underneath it, which is that we are good and what happened to us is bad, we are not bad, or what happened to us wasn't okay, we are not unlovable, and so on. And so for. So I want to explain a little bit more of the root of shame. And then we're going to get to some practical things. You can do to begin remediating this in your own life. And again, I can tell you that shame becomes a driver for a lot of people in their lives. A lot of people are overachieving because underneath that is a deep feeling of inadequacy or shame. A lot of people are trying to contort themselves into being what they think other people want them to be because they feel so inherently unlovable. All of these things are rooted in and this deep sense of shame. And so much of this begins in with trauma. Now remember, trauma is something we have all experienced in our lives and there's varying degrees of trauma, but essentially it's anything that overwhelms our system's capacity to process what is happening. So if we had an experience where we weren't actually able to use our voice and say, you know what, that doesn't feel good when you say that to me. You know, it might be literally a parent that, as I mentioned before, controlling your food as a child and you saying, mom, that doesn't feel okay for me. Maybe when you did that, you didn't receive a positive response from her. So you learn not to do it. So that's the internalization. So instead of being able to access our self protective response of using our voice or getting away, that becomes inhibited. And instead what occurs is we go into something called our dorsal vagal complex. This is our state of shutdown or collapse. And it's a really adaptive thing to do this. We only do it because our nervous system is saying it wouldn't be safe to fight back. Use your voice, take up space, space, et cetera. So what we're going to do is we're going to almost like a bear going into hibernation, we're going to shut down and go into this collapse response. And this is where the internalization of shame occurs. So instead of me being able to say, hey, this isn't okay, or separate from this thing, I actually internalize it. And therein lies that dirty sweater. Now it's on me. I am it. Instead of it being something that wasn't okay. So I want to just briefly talk about the way out of shame. How do we actually resolve this? And again, I am coming to this as somebody who was so riddled with shame, it was paralyzing me in my life in every single way. Everywhere I went, I felt like I was bad. I felt like there was something wrong with me. I felt like I was different. I felt like I didn't belong. I felt disgusting and awful and terrible and unworthy. All of that is the result of shame. So let's talk about the way out, because I can tell you for me, everything I'm about to tell you led to me being free of the shame that I experienced, that I experienced for decades, that I tried so hard to get rid of. And only the things I'm about to name actually made it go away. The first thing is beginning to regulate your nervous system. So I talked about this, I've talked about this in previous episodes, but there's a hierarchy or order to your nervous system. Essentially that means there are different parts of it that we go to for protection. And there's an order that we come out of those parts. So if you are in this shutdown collapse response that I just named, that's called your dorsal vagal complex, where we have low energy, we're disconnected, we internalize. In order to come out of that, we have to come into something called our sympathetic nervous system. This is mobilization. And what we have to do in order to remediate the shame is we have to access the appropriate response that we weren't able to feel or express at the moment that that shame was internalized. So it doesn't just mean what we what we wanted to say. It means the feelings of self protection that weren't able to be accessed. So that's an imperative part of the process. And the more that we practically focus on regulating our nervous system, the more we reshape it, the more this process naturally starts to occur. If you're interested in that work, I have a program that you can purchase at any time. It's under 100 bucks called nervous System Essentials. We'll put that in the show notes for you and lots of other programs that help you navigate that process too. So that is, it was also the foundation of all healing, regulating your nervous system. And it is most certainly necessary for remediating shame. Now once we come into this place of our sympathetic nervous system, what we have to access is something called healthy aggression. And as I named, this is the appropriate response to whatever was occurring. Meaning healthy aggression is our ability to protect ourselves, to get away, to do the thing that we could never do. When we are able to access that energy, we start to uncouple ourselves from the over coupled experience of being over associated with what happened to us. And so coming into healthy aggression means beginning to feel this, it's really our life force energy, feel this energy in our body. So feeling frustration, feeling protection, feeling protective, feeling anger and noticing the sensations of it and seeing if we can Be with those sensations and allow them to process through our bodies. So making sounds, loud sounds can be helpful. Moving things can be helpful. Squeezing something even, like, I mean, you might not have a space to do this, but taking some old plates or something like that and holding them over your head and then throwing them down, obviously do that very safely and let the energy leave your body. Other simple ways to do it is see if you can grab like even a twig and feel the energy in your body. And then we want to break the twig as much as we can with the energy that we are feeling. That all helps the healthy aggression to discharge or leave our bodies. So first it's can I build my capacity to be with that energy? And then what we want to do is build our capacity to be with the appropriate response to what happened to whatever it is that happened to us. And so it might be feeling that anger towards our caregiver that didn't meet our need or projected their own trauma onto us or wasn't there for us, or anger about the fact that maybe we were bullied in school or that we were abused or neglected. So the more that we can feel into that appropriate response, what occurs is our psyche actually then marks that as complete. Meaning, I have successfully separated from this. I am no longer the bad thing. That bad thing is separate from me. And then we can actually feel in our bodies what the truth of who we are, which is good and whole and worthy and enough. This work is really, really powerful. I'll never forget the moment where I went back to some, you know, pretty intense, healthy aggression around the sexual abuse I experienced. And when I was actually able to feel that healthy aggression fully in my body and process it through to protect myself. And this is something we can do in somatic therapeutic containers, it was released. And I truly mean this. From that moment on, I didn't feel the shame anymore that I felt before the ugly sweater was gone. This is literally us taking it off and giving it back and saying, this was never mine to have, and it truly, truly frees us. So again, you don't have to have a history like mine. You may have had an experience like I named where you, your caregivers, projected onto you perfection. So unless you were perfect, you got the message that as you are, wasn't inherently good. So then there's shame around that I am inherently not good. And so the more that we can access the appropriate anger and healthy aggression, the more that we can actually free ourselves from it. And I want to name, especially for people who had, you know, wonderful, loving caregivers. This is not unkind work to do. This is also not negating all the wonderful things that they did. And in fact, in working with so many people and doing this, it actually is what allows them to then be closer to their caregivers. Because now there isn't this barrier that perhaps, maybe is there, that comes out as resentment and agitation and frustration, which is really this underlying unmet need of this unresolved shame. And then the last thing I just want to name is shame feeds on silence. That's the whole thing about collapse. It feeds on silence. So the more that we can bravely name it, name these things, and say it out loud and normalize it, so many of us struggle with these things. We can see our commonality and our humanity. And just that naming helps us come out of that collapse response and into this place of mobilization, so that in and of itself is healing in motion. And of course, we want to do that with a safe other. So whomever feels safe with you see, might I be able to lean in, into sharing a little bit more about some of the things that I have internalized too? And all of this is what gains freedom for us from the shame we may have been carrying for many, many, many decades. We all need support on our healing journeys. So if you think I might be the right practitioner for you, I'd invite you to get on the waitlist for one of my upcoming programs. All waitlisters get access to limited time, reduced pricing before the course or program opens. Link in the show notes to learn more. All right, we have four really wonderful questions today around shame, so I'm excited to get to the first one now. Hi, Sarah. I wanted to ask a question. I'm really looking forward to your podcast. I was raised by a narcissistic mother who often shamed and critiqued and criticized me. And I am trying to grow and access my creativity. I've done a lot of healing in other areas of my life, and I have benefited greatly from that. But I just feel like the creative parts of me aren't coming back. So I guess my question is, how do I access the creativity and those parts of me that feel that they were shamed and how do I bring them back out? Thank you. That's such a wonderful question. So when we're. First of all, I want to name we are all creative beings. So if you're thinking like, well, I'm not a creative professional. Every single one of us is creative in some capacity, and being in our creativity is Essentially being in our essence. So it's embodying our full, truest self and allowing that self to be expressed. So think about the two things I said there that are probably very threatening for this person, right? Being in your essence because that wasn't safe in the past, and being fully exposed and expressed probably wasn't safe in the past. I'm saying probably. But clearly that wasn't safe based on what they explained from their childhood. So when that has occurred for us, what happens is our nervous system says, never again will I put you in a situation where you're going to have to feel that pain. And so what must occur is that we begin showing, not telling our nervous system that the thing that was once dangerous is actually safe. It feels paradoxical because your nervous system is going to consistently say, I don't think so, based in the past, because of the past. So this means that at first it might not feel good and you might not get it all right? And that's exactly how it's supposed to go. So I want you to think about taking tolerable steps towards being in your creativity that are safe for your parts. And that's going to begin by embodying creativity without any outcome or perhaps even being seen by another human being. I don't know if you enjoy writing or painting or sculpting or dancing or moving, whatever it is, but I want to see if you can begin stepping towards just a titrated small amount of that when you're alone. So literally, the act of putting music on and letting your body move however it wants to is a creative expression act, right? It's me being able to be in my essence and being free to be exactly that without being inhibited. Or if it's writing, really freeing yourself up to not get it right, to get it wrong, because there is no wrong, and allow that to flow through you. But doing it in a container where we are not seen by another and there is no outcome involved is going to make it more tolerable. The more you gather those experiences, the more your nervous system begins to see, hey, maybe this is safe, safe. And then maybe I'll share it with a friend. But I'm not sharing this with the world. Usually what I find people doing is they're thinking way too far down the line to a place that's beyond their capacity, like publishing their book or even posting something on Instagram, right? Like, oh, I have this poem. I want to post a poem on Instagram. So you sit down to write a poem. Do you think that your protective parts are going to let you write that poem. No way. If they think that people on Instagram are going to read it. So we start in this tolerable way and the more that you build up this capacity for it, the more easily you're going to be able to get to the place you're wanting to go. And those steps are no longer gargantuan. They actually feel attainable. The other thing that I want to name is there's parts work involved here. So we have to come to the aid of these parts that are feeling terrified. Those parts, those young parts of you are so scared to be who they are and be seen in that because it was so utterly unsafe for them to do it in the past. And I say this a lot, when we don't protect our younger parts, our nervous system does in the form of our stuckness. So if you're finding yourself stuck, that's usually an indicator that you have parts that are saying, I don't think that's safe, I don't think that's safe. But we're not listening to them and we're not protecting them. And so our nervous system stops us in our tracks. So I want you to see if you can get to know when is the first moment that you remembered your creativity being inhibited? Connect to that young version of you. Who are they? This magical, special little being. And what they need not only is your softness and connection, but they also need your ferocious protection. So I really want you to think about, I don't know, maybe they're four years old. That part of you think about a four year old who was not safe to play, who is not safe to create, and how does that make you feel? And likely it'll make you feel two things. Deeply sad and also very protective. And both of those are necessary to feel into for that younger part. The more that you do that, the more the part sees that they are safe. And then our nervous system doesn't have to continue to protect us. And lastly, I also want you to think about this little, little you. All the creativity and play that they were robbed of. How might you be able to begin playing with them? So, so these parts aren't made up. They are truly our versions of us. So imagining if I had a 4 year old, how would I play with them? And can I actually invite that into my life? And all three of these things are really going to open up creative expression for you. So let's get to the second question we have today. Hey Sarah, I'm currently In your navigating your nervous system course and loving it. I do find that I'm struggling still with panic attacks. This seems to be the thing that I've been kind of chasing in therapy and in my active addiction. I was working through this quite a bit. And in sobriety, obviously shame is a huge part of this. As I work with an IFS led therapist, we're consistently working on shame. If when I have panic attacks, it gets worse because I'm shame filled and we've gone to the root. I seem to just continue after almost two and a half years of therapy around this, I'm still stuck, still experiencing them. And I would love to talk about here, about shame when it comes to this and maybe how that can be healed and worked through to have more freedom in this area of life. So I'm so interested to hear this question answered. So a lot of us shame ourselves for the responses that we are having. Like we shame ourselves for our anxiety, we shame ourselves for our panic, we shame ourselves for our depression. And so I want to just normalize that for you because it's so incredibly common. The thing that I want us to get curious about is. Or actually the first thing before we get curious, first thing that I want to say is, so when we're having a panic attack, all that's happening is you are going into a heightened state in your sympathetic nervous system. So that's our state of fight or flight or mobilization. And it's a clue that your nervous system is saying, oh my goodness, this threat is so dangerous, dangerous that I don't think I can fight it or I don't think I can flee it anymore. And we go into this, this, I would call it like a 10 out of 10 sympathetic place that is not happening because anything is wrong with you that is happening. And the reason you're accessing this is because there are, there is likely a time in your life where you experience something that was so overwhelming to your nervous system. This was the autonomic response that you experienced. And when we, you know, brilliantly find ways to cope, like addiction, you know, like alcohol, drugs, food, exercise, working, whatever those things to cope or help, help to cover up that activation. So it covered up all of that high sympathetic charge for you really beautifully. And I actually want you to see what's true here. You accessing this, this panic is the result of the amount of work you've done that you've been able to lift the veil of that dorsal shutdown. And now I can be with what was always there. Now the work is to begin allowing our system to process through that panic. And there's a couple ways that we do it. Number one, the consistent neural exercises of regulating your nervous system is imperative. This person mentioned navigating your nervous system. That's a program I have that's all focused on nervous system regulation. And the more that you do that, it's like gently chipping away at that panic. If I'm consistently regulating throughout the day, like doing things to support myself to be more present here and good, every time I chip away at the panic a little bit more and a little bit more, so it lessens the overall charge or amount of dysregulation around it. The other thing that's really important for you, and I hope you might maybe join my other program, umake Sense or another other programs I have around parts work or continue to do your own parts work around this, but you have to address the part. So if parts work is new to anyone listening. We all have many versions of ourselves and we have our adult self, but we also have these, these younger versions of ourselves, which could be as young as two years ago or a year ago. But we have these younger versions of ourselves that are essentially trapped in the experience that they had, those overwhelming traumatizing ones. And they don't know that there's a way out. So when life things occur for us that remind our system of those childhood things or those things in the past, it's as if that young part inhabits our body. And so this tells me that you have a young part that experienced panic at some point in your life. And I want you to connect to who is that part part. How old are they? And they need two specific things from you. When I think of becoming a parent to our parts, there are actually two main components of it. One being the mutually empathic witness. So being soft and gentle, kind of like imagine a lioness with her cubs. She's soft and gentle and loving. That's one component. The second component is she's also a ferocious protector. So if anyone came near her lion cubs, she would maul them, right? She would kill them. Our young parts need that too. And so what's really important is when you're doing that internal, I call it internal co regulation or connecting with your parts, it's so important that you can attune with them and feel deeply for them, you know, empathy and compassion that that little person had to be with that much panic. This is also, by the way, how you help remediate that shame. Because when you are too emerged with your young parts. You think they're you. And what we do is we then shame our ourselves. We think we're just shaming ourselves or you're really shaming a little part of you. And when we can differentiate it from our parts and see I am not them, it is so much easier to remediate that shame. Because, you know, you never talk to a child that way, right? And say, what's wrong with you? Why are you being this way like we do to ourselves? So the more I can differentiate from my parts, the easier than it is for that shame to begin dissolving. And then we want to turn towards them with loving kindness and hold space for them. So our parts don't need us to change them. They need us to listen and provide safety. That's really it. Listen and provide safety. And by the way, this is also the imperative nature of working on regulating your nervous system because the more that you are in your adult self, the more able you're going to be to comfort those young parts. Really, really important and then to ferociously protect that. So the more that you do this, the more that they get what they never got, the more that that panic can begin to discharge forever and also the remediation of that shame. So let's get to the third question. Hi, Sarah, this is Nicole. I have two questions around shame. The first one is the shame of not having done enough during the traumatic experience, Especially if it's the death of a loved one and just regretting the situation that happened. Not spending enough time with them, not helping them more. And the second question is the shame of now, years later, telling your story and feeling that others diminish your trauma. Thank you. I love it when people that I know from previous programs write in. So. Hi, Nicole. Nicole, I worked with actually for a number of years. So it's nice to hear your voice, Nicole. And a couple of things important that I want to say. I want us all to be ferociously protective of our story and our experience. Ferociously protective of it. That not everyone deserves to know it and to hear it and to experience the gift of knowing us more deeply and fully. That's something that needs to be earned. And so it's very important that we're really discerning about who we're sharing with. And if we find that when we do, someone is, you know, diminishes it or, or even gaslights us out of it, that is not a safe person to continue to share with. If you are sharing with a safe person like your Partner, let's say, who just, you know, they don't understand your experience because they weren't in it. What's important is to begin by ask before you even start sharing, asking for the need up front. Meaning what I really need is after I share this, for you to validate everything that I said and how hard it is and how challenging it was and how painful it was, and that it makes sense that I feel this way. I really need that from you. And being clear on what will feel supportive for me that I receive back from them, that can be really helpful. Now, around the shame of feeling like I didn't do enough. Like, when I think you're talking about when your mom passed away, I didn't do enough and, you know, I didn't show up enough. For all the ways that we beat ourselves up, what can be most helpful is to do two things. Number one, to look at this through the lens of the nervous system. So if you are in a survival response of, let's say you're shut down and dorsal, it is not physiologically possible for you to mobilize and do so. You can't. You literally can't. That part of your nervous system is 500 million years old. You couldn't have done more. Or if you were in your state of freeze, that's tonic immobility. So think deer in headlights. And we have this experience of like, I have to, but I can't. I have to, but I can't. And I feel frozen. You cannot just will your way out of that. So you couldn't have done more. Or if you were in your sympathetic nervous system feeling panicked all the time and unable to actually, you know, spend more time present with them, you couldn't have done more. So when we look at the neuroscience behind all of this, it can really support to help remediate some of that shame, because we literally couldn't. And I know you personally and know that that wasn't possible for you either. And then the second thing that I want to share is it's so important to greet those parts, that younger part, who for you, I think that part was, you know, a young teen to support that part. And by the way, I know I do happen to know this person quite well, I think. Could you imagine if I got that wrong? I'm pretty sure from hearing their voice that I know them, who they are. But anyway, this relates to all of us. So if you kind of, like I said in the last answer, if you are able to see who is that part that. That couldn't do more. Who are they? And can I begin seeing them more clearly? Like, especially if they were just a child, they did their very best. And if you can differentiate from them, you are able to do this. What we tend to do is we project our adult self onto our young self. And then we think somehow that that young version of us has the mind and the wherewithal and the ability of our adult self. They did not. They were a child. So the more that you can see that part of you clearly who they were, differentiate from them. So seeing I am separate from you, that's what then allows us to come to their aid in the ways that I just, like I said in that last answer to the last question, being the kind, compassionate, loving caregiver and also the ferocious protector. All right, let's get to the last question we have today. So my question is around shame. As I go through my healing journey, I notice that, you know, every time I have a low or what is perceived by me as a setback, a lot of shame come forward and a lot of regret. Why am I not further along? Why am I still not getting this or. Or something along those lines. And so although on the intellectual level, I understand that in the embodied level, I haven't resolved that shame yet. And so I guess it's trying to understand why that happens and what would look like when I'm, quote, unquote, fully healed. Does it get better? Maybe the shame is not as present when I have a setback, or maybe I'll have less setbacks than I'm having now. But I guess the question is around this shame. So healing and expanding into the life that we desire is the process. I've talked about this before, of expand and contract, expand and contract. So when, you know, we've experienced trauma that isn't resolved, our nervous systems are going to be protecting us. Us. If you feel stuck in your life in any way, that's a clue. Your nervous system is protecting you. And when it's protecting you, it's like your nervous system is standing in front of you. Imagine it's like arm guards, shoulder to shoulder, blocking you, and they're trying to keep out danger. And so when we begin to regulate our nervous systems and heal, it's like we have these moments of expansion where they move aside for a minute. And that allows you to see out into the world. It allows you to go out into the world. It allows you to you to feel better in your body and more regulated in your body. And then what happens is they say, okay, that's enough. And they contract back. We experience that contraction is more dysregulation or feeling stuck or setback, as you're saying. But what occurred, and by the way, that is an indicator that you just had an expansion. So we actually want to change our orientation to those setbacks or contractions because the truth of the matter is in terms of how it works with somatics and our nervous system, that is not backwards, that's forward movement. The more that we have expansions, the bigger they grow, the smaller the contraction becomes. Bigger the expansion, smaller the contraction, bigger the expansion. And you get it. Until we are living predominantly without these setbacks in our lives, and the foundation of that is really focusing on the regulating of our nervous systems. It is so incredibly imperative. The other thing, and here's what I hope for everyone listening. There's so much commonality in these questions, aren't there? I don't pre listen to these. So this is my first time I'm hearing them. And the thing I was thinking the most in listening to this last one is how it connects to all the three before it. And this thing that we do when we don't realize that we are actually shaming parts of ourselves, younger parts of ourselves, we think we are shaming ourselves, adult us, but we are actually shaming this little one within us. And it is so important that we begin getting to know who is this part that is feeling terrified. Because a part of why a setback is happening is because you have a part that's afraid of the life you're wanting. So the more that you can get to know what part of me is afraid of this life? Who are you? What are you afraid of? Are you afraid to be seen more and take up space more and be known more? What is it? What's scary to this part? Get to know them. They're not trying to cause you suffering. They just don't know the life that you want is safe. And so if we can get to know that part and understand why they're so scared of it, they're scared of it because it's reminding them of something in the past that wasn't safe for them and they never want to experience that again. And so until we come to their aid and protect us, our nervous system is going to stop us in the form of those setbacks you're talking about. And then we. It's like we're, you know, making the fire worse by then reprimanding or shaming those parts for just trying to protect themselves. And we do that by saying, what's wrong with me? Why am I doing this? Well, it's not you. It's a younger version of you. So the more that we can do, just as I named in the previous questions, the work of become the adult. You never got get to know who that part is and what they're afraid of, become what they never had, which is that attuned, empathic, loving person and listener and holder of space, and also that ferocious protector letting them know, never again will I let you be exposed like that. The more that occurs, the less the setbacks happen. And it also helps to resolve that shame when we can see that it isn't actually adult me that's having this experience, it's the younger me. And would I ever, ever, ever speak to a child this way? Of course the answer is going to be no. And that can help to really begin resolving it. So all three of those things are the things I want you to focus on. And I can assure you that when we do this work, life opens up for us. It's not. I know you asked that question, like, how long does it take? Or will it be like this forever? It won't. I was there. I could have said this, asked the same question. And I can tell you for myself, it's this work that. Not just in this episode, this whole podcast, the work we're doing here is the work that. That changed my life. And it's work that's backed by research, and it's worked that I've spent a decade getting trained in. And the whole reason I created this is so that I could give it to you so you can have it and be. Begin changing your life, too.