Latest / RiseUp - Live Joy Your Way / How to Get Out of The Cycle of Shame

Transcript

How to Get Out of The Cycle of Shame · RiseUp - Live Joy Your Way

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Today's episode is produced by my friends at Walk West.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: If you're looking to grow your brand and generate leads through podcast or video production, head over to walkwest.com.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's start the show.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Rise up, live joy your way.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: From emotional intelligence through cognitive distortions, certified life and wellness coach Comedy Wood is on a mission to help people see the magnificence of their own unique human spirit.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Through these small bites of self-visualization and self-confidence, you can have healthy relationships, success in business and career, and live the life you want to live.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Rise up, live joy your way.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: Hi there and welcome to another episode of Rise Up, Live Joy Your Way.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Whether it's morning, afternoon, or evening, thank you for taking time out of your day to spend with me.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: And today's topic is all around the cycle of shame and how we can move on.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: Shame is what many of us consider a toxic emotion.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's the one that can actually have a detrimental effect on your physical, mental, and emotional health, and often leads to situations of substance abuse or anxiety, depression, poor self-esteem, poor self-uh self-confidence, and overall just the lack of self-acceptance.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: But what does where where does shame come from?
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: And how do we break the cycle and move on?
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: So let's just start with what shame is.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: Shame is that self-conscious emotion that gets developed most often in childhood.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Now, of course, we can feel shame as we go through experiences as adults, but just keeping in mind that from the age of zero to seven, our subconscious is just taking in information.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: So as we are having experiences or we're receiving messages, we are just sponges at that level or at that age.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that can often lead to feelings of shame that we may not even be aware of.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: So although people feel shame and guilt at the same time, it's important to recognize that shame and guilt are two different things.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: So guilt, in contrast, involves a almost a reasoning or a thought process of I'm I feel bad because I made a mistake or I did something bad and I need to rectify it or make amends about it, versus shame is based in the thought of I am a bad person.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: There is something actually wrong with me.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: So what causes us to feel shame?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: We feel embarrassed when we realize that our behavior doesn't meet the usual standard.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: So some typical situations that can cause you to feel self-critical or self-conscious could be, for instance, getting in trouble with your partner for something you said or did, or being laughed at by somebody close to you, making a mistake that caused trouble, having to handle your child's tantrum in a storm.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: That could we actually can feel shame around that, being judged by others or having people say things about how you look.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: Now, again, think about that.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: When you were younger, between the ages of zero and seven, some of that stuff will stick with us.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: We will, like, for instance, when you're in elementary school, you're five or six years old.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: There can be real shame around some of those experiences.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like, for instance, being made fun of or being humiliated in front of a class.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: That can create a sense of shame that gets carried with us in the subconscious all the way into adulthood.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: So many people do develop a distorted view of themselves as not good at good enough or flawed, right?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a very common false belief that I end up dealing with with my clients, which is I'm not good enough or I'm just bad.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: So uh again, what we're talking about here is this this sometimes gets developed in early childhood, where as a child that that false belief gets rooted in the subconscious.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then as an adult, when the conscious, you know, consciously we have an interaction, it immediately gets processed with that false belief of I'm bad or I'm not good enough.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: So when we think about the cycle of shame, when we are overwhelmed, for instance, by an embarrassing moment or humiliation, uh what happens is it calls upon those earlier errors or disappointments.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so as a result, you start thinking yourself and talking to yourself in these self-destructive ways.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: So the the thoughts become, I'm a bad person, I don't deserve love, I'm a failure, I'm not enough.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then from there we spiral into a destructive sense of a destructive, we spiral into destructive behavior patterns.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: So how do we recognize when we're in this cycle of shame?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, each of us, we we're gonna have mo we each of us brings some type of embarrassment or something into adulthood, right?
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because most of us do not go through childhood without having moments of embarrassment.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: But every time our shame is triggered, we kind of relive that notion of there's something wrong with us.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: So for example, if your five-year-old, when your five-year-old says something inappropriate or acts out in public, the actual or perceived judgment of those around you can trigger deep-seated feelings of shame and inadequacy that you may have had when you were a child.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: So to avoid that shame cycle, you it's important to bring to the awareness what has happened.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: So understanding where your shame comes from, so that then you don't act in a way that then projects your shame onto your child and then actually creates shame for your child and then gets relived by your child when that child goes into adulthood.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: So we it's really important to start unshaming so that we can break this cycle and we break the repeated patterns around it.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because toxic shame can actually be very destructive and very dangerous.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: What ends up happening is when we are in a state of shame, we may start to feel depressed or we may start to feel anxious.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's difficult to make decisions.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we end up isolating ourselves and just avoiding relationships altogether.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we end up picking up numbing patterns and habits such as drugs and alcohol or other substances, and so spiraling into shame can actually make you feel worse about yourself.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: So it's important to work towards breaking that cycle of shame.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: So the first thing that we that we really need to look at is our feelings.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I say this all the time that we as a society tend to be so afraid of our emotions, and it is so important to be able to give ourselves the ability and permission to name what we're feeling and to talk about those feelings.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: Feelings and emotions are just data packets, they're data packets of information trying to uh get our attention, illuminate what's happening for us, and then allow us to take action from that place of knowledge.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: Secondly, be aware of your triggers.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Shame is frequently caused by certain triggers.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: So being aware, because awareness is their way to change.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: So when you're able to pinpoint and become aware, then you're able to take um take aligned action and to moving away from that.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: Take some time to define your own self-worth from the inside out, not from external, not from an external point of view where we're looking for external validation.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: But go ahead and accept responsibility for the mistakes that you've made.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: But don't let them define you.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Instead, allow them to just be mistakes that you can learn and grow from and really come to a place of deep self-acceptance.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: And self-acceptance meaning I accept myself as I am, imperfections and all.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: Take some time to learn to reframe your shame.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: Self-compassion is an amazing way that we can take that shame and we can come from a place of curious, uh, from curiosity.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: And when I'm saying curiosity, compassionate curiosity, kindness over judgment.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: So you can learn how to look at that situation with a different frame of mind.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Learn to shift from negative self-talk into loving all the parts of you and recognizing that certain parts of you may be present to you with an intention for protection or something.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: And once we become aware of that, we can actually move through it.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: Through coaching, we talk about this all the time is getting curious with the different parts of you so that you can learn to accept those parts, come to a place of acceptance, allowing it to be there, and then through your own actions, value-based actions, you can start moving yourself forward.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, learning to let go.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: And we let go through a practice of self-forgiveness.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: And self-forgiveness is not a cognitive thing, this is a very somatic practice.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: This is a heart-centered practice where you learn to forgive from the from the the almost like the body up, right?
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: So a bottom-up approach because the body remembers things too.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: So it's about taking the time to go through that process.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Again, coaching can absolutely help you walk you through and support you through this process.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: But it is so important to understand that you do have a choice.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: You have a choice of whether you're going to continue living in a place of shame or whether you want to take the really brave actions in order to go through the process of unshaming.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because when you break that cycle of shame and you give yourself permission to unshame yourself, so much is possible.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: If you would like to talk about this or anything else, or just learn how coaching can maybe help move you forward, absolutely feel free to book a time with me anytime at chatwithcomedy.com.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: And until next time, stay well.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to Rise Up, Live Joy Your Way.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: For more information, book a chat with comedy at www.chatwithcomedy.com.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Or visit her website at www.comedywood.com.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: You can also find comedy on Facebook or Instagram.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Username it's authentic me.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.