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When Love Interrupts Shame with Sher Nyquist · Echoes & Edges

0:03
Speaker 1: Hey, it's Patria. If you've been listening to this podcast
0:07
Speaker 1: and find yourself recognizing pieces of your own story, the
0:12
Speaker 1: patterns of secrecy or shame, the questions about your worth
0:16
Speaker 1: or purpose, or maybe you see clearly the places that
0:20
Speaker 1: feel stuck, I want you to know that you don't
0:24
Speaker 1: have to navigate that alone. Courageous Pathways is a nonprofit
0:29
Speaker 1: we created as a space for individuals walking through healing.
0:35
Speaker 1: Courageous Pathways offers support for you to be in a
0:38
Speaker 1: place where your story is taken seriously and where healing
0:43
Speaker 1: happens through skilled, safe, compassionate care. We offer a number
0:49
Speaker 1: of sessions to qualifying individuals, and what qualifies you is
0:54
Speaker 1: not necessarily income information. Often the times of financial strain
1:01
Speaker 1: aren't because of lack of income, and we deeply understand
1:05
Speaker 1: that if you're looking for support or even just wondering
1:10
Speaker 1: what your next step could be, you can learn more
1:13
Speaker 1: by going to the Broken and Beautiful website and clicking
1:17
Speaker 1: on the link to Courageous Pathways. And if you're looking
1:21
Speaker 1: for a place where integrity and honesty lead the way
1:25
Speaker 1: to put the greatest use to your donation dollars, please
1:30
Speaker 1: consider supporting Courageous pathways. We double every dollar you give
1:36
Speaker 1: by supporting both the recipient of care and the caregiver,
1:41
Speaker 1: who are all people that have personally walked the walk
1:44
Speaker 1: of healing and have turned back to extend a hand
1:47
Speaker 1: to others. To you, the person thinking about checking this out,
1:52
Speaker 1: You are not alone in this reach out. There is
1:56
Speaker 1: a way forward. Welcome back to Echoes and Edges, the
2:11
Speaker 1: Broken and Beautiful Podcast. I'm so glad you're here. I'm Patria,
2:15
Speaker 1: the host for Echoes and Edges and the founder of
2:18
Speaker 1: the Broken and Beautiful Collective. We are a group of
2:22
Speaker 1: people on the hunt for beauty, meaning, and transformation, and
2:26
Speaker 1: I hope that this offers a little bit of that
2:28
Speaker 1: into your world. In Part one of my conversation with Share,
2:32
Speaker 1: we explored the ways shame, loneliness, and survival adaptations can
2:37
Speaker 1: shape our lives, often without our awareness at all. Today
2:41
Speaker 1: we're picking up right where we left off. One of
2:44
Speaker 1: the most beautiful things about healing is that it isn't
2:46
Speaker 1: simply about learning new information. Most of us already know
2:50
Speaker 1: things we wish we could believe about ourselves. We know
2:53
Speaker 1: we're loved, we know we're worthy, we know we're allowed
2:56
Speaker 1: to take up space and yet knowing something intellectual isn't
3:00
Speaker 1: always enough to change the way we experience ourselves. In
3:04
Speaker 1: this part of the conversation, Share shares how compassionate presence, attunement,
3:10
Speaker 1: and story work began creating entirely new experiences inside her
3:16
Speaker 1: nervous system. We talk about shame, worthiness, self, compassion, and
3:21
Speaker 1: the surprising ways that our brains begin to heal when
3:25
Speaker 1: we receive care in the very places we expect rejection.
3:30
Speaker 1: Let's jump back into the conversation. It's not about what happened,
3:42
Speaker 1: It's about what is still happening. That's the wound. It's
3:46
Speaker 1: the thing that's still happening inside of us, that belief
3:50
Speaker 1: about who we are, lack of identity. So if you
3:54
Speaker 1: have additional thoughts about what it looked like for you
3:57
Speaker 1: to begin that courage, just hope filled, you know, turn
4:04
Speaker 1: towards your story instead of away from it. How did
4:07
Speaker 1: you do that?
4:08
Speaker 2: You know? What?
4:09
Speaker 1: Was it accidental? You know what what happened?
4:12
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't think any thing for me was
4:14
Speaker 2: accidental because I'm so intentional about everything. But I think
4:19
Speaker 2: when I experienced that kind of compassion, and we'll just
4:25
Speaker 2: keep talking about that. In that first story group, which
4:29
Speaker 2: you know, then I experienced that I have I have
4:32
Speaker 2: experienced that many times since, but experiencing that from another
4:41
Speaker 2: opened and it took time, for sure, but it opened
4:44
Speaker 2: the possibility of me seeing myself differently. And so when
4:51
Speaker 2: we only see ourselves through through the through the eyes
4:55
Speaker 2: of our suffering or our shame, we are just trying
5:01
Speaker 2: to survive life. And we, at least for me and
5:06
Speaker 2: I think this is true, we are so hungry for
5:09
Speaker 2: love that we just don't want to keep messing it up.
5:14
Speaker 2: But we kind of keep messing it up because that's
5:18
Speaker 2: all we know to do. Right. We were stuck in
5:20
Speaker 2: our patterns. We're struggling with our areas of deep suffering,
5:26
Speaker 2: like shame and insecure for me, shame, insecurity and loneliness.
5:30
Speaker 2: And of course that kept showing up in my relationships
5:34
Speaker 2: and in my life. And when it would show up,
5:39
Speaker 2: or to keep it from showing up, I had to
5:42
Speaker 2: have a pretty heavy hand with myself. And I had
5:46
Speaker 2: a very loud inner critic who was not very nice
5:52
Speaker 2: to me, and so I had a lot of thoughts
5:56
Speaker 2: that went through my mind about don't be so stupid,
6:00
Speaker 2: or that was you know, well, that was ridiculous or
6:05
Speaker 2: you know, but but constantly beating myself up. So when
6:09
Speaker 2: in the context of that story, I was offered such
6:12
Speaker 2: compassion and and and not just oh you poor thing,
6:17
Speaker 2: but but words of power and strength of share. This
6:25
Speaker 2: is what I hear when I hear your story, This
6:29
Speaker 2: is what I imagine when I hear the details of
6:33
Speaker 2: your story. And I was kind of blown away, and
6:36
Speaker 2: I was defending. I sat there and defended, Oh no, no, no,
6:41
Speaker 2: you don't understand. You know, that person didn't have any power,
6:45
Speaker 2: or that person got out of control. But but you know,
6:49
Speaker 2: they didn't really mean to write. So I always felt
6:53
Speaker 2: like if something bad happened to me, it was my
6:56
Speaker 2: fault because I did something that caused and that I
7:02
Speaker 2: caused the pain or the consequence. And so when I
7:10
Speaker 2: sat with these women and they said, and they reminded
7:14
Speaker 2: me you were a child. You were a child, and
7:19
Speaker 2: you needed help, and I can just remember the feeling
7:26
Speaker 2: of wait, what you know, just what are you saying?
7:33
Speaker 2: And that story was reframed, and it was the beginning
7:40
Speaker 2: of me being able to hope, to feel compassion for myself.
7:46
Speaker 2: It was the beginning of me being able to say
7:49
Speaker 2: to that inner critic. Everything you say isn't true to
7:56
Speaker 2: my inner critic, because now I have other voices of
8:02
Speaker 2: kind people who are saying something else.
8:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there was something about what they were saying
8:08
Speaker 1: that was drawing your attention away from what the inner
8:16
Speaker 1: critic was saying, right, because the inner critic was just
8:19
Speaker 1: the only way to help yourself through until there, you know,
8:23
Speaker 1: it was. It's it's that posture of like year to wait,
8:27
Speaker 1: what did you just say? Right, and the surprise in
8:32
Speaker 1: a moment like that. You know, and you talk too
8:44
Speaker 1: about you know, you said earlier, just a little bit ago,
8:48
Speaker 1: about actively seeking help to you know, mentorship and therapy
8:56
Speaker 1: at thirty, but I hear you describing even that posture
9:01
Speaker 1: of seeking help was to fix you. It was to
9:06
Speaker 1: make you good. And there was something about this moment
9:10
Speaker 1: that shifted. It turned it all upside down and inside
9:13
Speaker 1: out where you could actually see things right sidedly, even
9:18
Speaker 1: just a fraction right. It's like turning the shirt inside out,
9:22
Speaker 1: like oh wait, wait wait, like it functions, but it
9:26
Speaker 1: gave you a sense of oh, that actually fits better.
9:30
Speaker 1: And there's something about story work or just not even
9:35
Speaker 1: just a good friend, someone that can sit in this
9:39
Speaker 1: kind of place with you that can hold it and
9:43
Speaker 1: say this is like you just said, this is what
9:46
Speaker 1: I see, this is what I imagine that is convincing
9:53
Speaker 1: enough to bring us to a different place.
10:00
Speaker 2: It's like when we when we read, when I like
10:02
Speaker 2: to read a good novel, a really good novel, when
10:05
Speaker 2: I'm surprised there are twists and turns, and when that
10:09
Speaker 2: happens and I'm surprised, like I just love it, and
10:13
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, I didn't see that coming, and I
10:16
Speaker 2: didn't see this coming. I didn't see it coming. And
10:20
Speaker 2: what happened was I encountered love and love you and
10:27
Speaker 2: I talk about love is the most powerful force on
10:30
Speaker 2: the face of the earth, and love in that moment
10:35
Speaker 2: began to redefine. And I want to say one thing
10:39
Speaker 2: about the inner critic, because I think probably most people
10:44
Speaker 2: struggle with that at points or in huge ways.
10:49
Speaker 3: And I want to say, Belly, I think, but yeah, yeah,
10:52
Speaker 3: I now like I can really bless that part of
10:55
Speaker 3: me because that part of me kept me alive.
11:00
Speaker 2: That part of me kept that was she, you know,
11:04
Speaker 2: my inner child helped me survive by being small or
11:11
Speaker 2: not speaking or trying hard to be good right, And
11:16
Speaker 2: so I am grateful to her now for all of
11:21
Speaker 2: that hard work. But me staying there under that voice
11:29
Speaker 2: was was really just hurting me and kept keeping me
11:32
Speaker 2: stuck in my suffering.
11:34
Speaker 1: You know, you're she your inner child, that inner critic,
11:39
Speaker 1: that way of surviving impossible, you know, lack of support, neglect,
11:48
Speaker 1: you know, whatever those particular stories are, was operating out
11:53
Speaker 1: of fear, it was operating out of need, it was
12:00
Speaker 1: operating out of necessity. And so when again, this is
12:07
Speaker 1: the wisdom of our self, you know, of this is
12:12
Speaker 1: why my passion in my work is to help people
12:17
Speaker 1: connect with themselves, because ourselves actually in safety when it's
12:24
Speaker 1: safe enough. Just know when something is a better solution
12:30
Speaker 1: for surviving than what we've had up to that point.
12:34
Speaker 1: You know, it's simple in the sense that love and
12:40
Speaker 1: this is really what I want to get to here
12:42
Speaker 1: is I want to say this about the reflection to you.
12:45
Speaker 1: The love that you found was really a mirror for
12:51
Speaker 1: you to see yourself as love for the first time,
12:59
Speaker 1: and your inner critical would just have to like listen
13:03
Speaker 1: because she's honest, she's trying, like she's just a survivor,
13:08
Speaker 1: she's just trying. She's honest. Right, So there's going to
13:11
Speaker 1: be a diminishment, even if it's not fully convinced. Whatever
13:15
Speaker 1: that part is, whether it's an inner critic or you know,
13:18
Speaker 1: something else, but that reflection of honest humanity, it's not
13:25
Speaker 1: even a blessing versus a curse. It's it's just a
13:30
Speaker 1: reflection of Here, here's you as a person, a little
13:34
Speaker 1: girl eight or nine years old. Let's think about what
13:39
Speaker 1: an eight or nine year old little girl looks like,
13:43
Speaker 1: and let's look at her. Right, So this is what again.
13:46
Speaker 1: I just so appreciate your language, because it's really pulling
13:50
Speaker 1: up not only the granularity of the power, the power
13:54
Speaker 1: of the granularity of the story, but the granularity of
13:58
Speaker 1: change and how and why change can happen, and the
14:07
Speaker 1: surprise that it brings, like, oh my goodness, it doesn't
14:12
Speaker 1: make null anything that's happened, but the weight of the
14:17
Speaker 1: joy is so precious and profound that it heals. It
14:21
Speaker 1: really does.
14:23
Speaker 2: Oh And I could go into because because the healing,
14:28
Speaker 2: and I could go into some brain talk here, and
14:31
Speaker 2: I will just just briefly. I'm not a I'm not
14:34
Speaker 2: a brain expert by any means, but I know enough
14:38
Speaker 2: to know that knowing a little helped me so much
14:44
Speaker 2: when I began to understand that I have all the
14:47
Speaker 2: memories that I experience. So let's just say all of
14:50
Speaker 2: the traumas, all of the hurts, all the good stuff too,
14:54
Speaker 2: but it's all stored in a part of my brain
14:58
Speaker 2: that everything that I experience today, as I run that experience,
15:04
Speaker 2: it goes through that part of my brain up my
15:07
Speaker 2: brain stem, through that middle part of my brain where
15:10
Speaker 2: that stuff is stored before it gets to my prefrontal cortex.
15:15
Speaker 2: Everything that I experience. And so when we experience something,
15:20
Speaker 2: we have a neural pathway, a path that that particular
15:26
Speaker 2: kind of experience. It might be the way it smells
15:29
Speaker 2: or the way it sounds, or what we see, right,
15:32
Speaker 2: but it always will go along that same pathway because
15:37
Speaker 2: that's the only pathway that my brain has until I
15:43
Speaker 2: have a new experience. And that is what happens in
15:47
Speaker 2: story work, is we're bringing these old stories that have
15:52
Speaker 2: a pathway that always it might have been in truth
15:57
Speaker 2: or even in our imagination that played a certain way.
16:00
Speaker 2: But now when I shared that story with others and
16:06
Speaker 2: I received their responses of care and kindness and attutment
16:12
Speaker 2: and love, it gave my brain new data. So Now
16:20
Speaker 2: that story wasn't only encapsulated in pain and separation and
16:30
Speaker 2: loneliness and survival. Now that very memory was also encapsulated
16:41
Speaker 2: by love and kindness and care and attutment. And so
16:48
Speaker 2: now my brain has options that it did not have before.
16:52
Speaker 2: And it's you know, usually we have to run the
16:55
Speaker 2: new neuropathway a few times before it becomes the default.
17:00
Speaker 2: But once we run that new like, oh, kindness is
17:05
Speaker 2: available to me. Oh, this place where I thought I
17:10
Speaker 2: would be utterly unacceptable, I now have people who could
17:16
Speaker 2: hear that very thing and not turn away from me
17:19
Speaker 2: and discuss and like you better and like me better. True, right,
17:26
Speaker 2: it's true because now and it helped me begin to
17:30
Speaker 2: become more authentic with people because I wanted that and
17:36
Speaker 2: my brain and my body and so and so, when
17:39
Speaker 2: we understand a little bit about the brain and recognize
17:41
Speaker 2: that healing is when our brain can run a new
17:46
Speaker 2: neural pathway. But the only way that that that that
17:51
Speaker 2: can happen is through experiences. I mean, yeah, we have
17:56
Speaker 2: to experience something different. We can learn something different, and
18:00
Speaker 2: it stays here. When we experience something different, it goes
18:05
Speaker 2: through our body, through our brainstem, through that part of
18:08
Speaker 2: our brain before it ever gets to our prefrontal cortext
18:12
Speaker 2: So the prefrontal cortex that is the part of our
18:15
Speaker 2: brain that helps us make decisions or learn a new skill,
18:22
Speaker 2: or schedule our lives. It's what we call our executive function.
18:27
Speaker 2: And so once I have this new experience, then that
18:31
Speaker 2: part of my brain can help me. For example, say
18:35
Speaker 2: I think I want to stay in a story group.
18:37
Speaker 2: I'm going to sign up again, you know, I think
18:44
Speaker 2: I want to you know, all the things. But it's
18:47
Speaker 2: that part of the brain that then helps me begin
18:50
Speaker 2: to do life differently because I now have other experiences
18:57
Speaker 2: that are reshaping and re framing, you.
19:01
Speaker 1: Know, for those of us who have been in the
19:04
Speaker 1: world of walking alongside people for a while now, you know,
19:09
Speaker 1: I think that that early language, you know, like that
19:13
Speaker 1: started in the eighties maybe nineties, was about all we
19:17
Speaker 1: knew was that information wasn't producing what we thought it would,
19:24
Speaker 1: but experiences were. And so now we're understanding, like we're
19:30
Speaker 1: able to retrofit language through the science that's coming out
19:35
Speaker 1: to understand why that's true. And so in this particular
19:41
Speaker 1: example of what we're talking about today is it's the
19:44
Speaker 1: experience of an enlargement of shame within the experience of
19:52
Speaker 1: love and compassion, so that the shame can then ultimately
19:58
Speaker 1: be reduced. And eventually it just can't. It just doesn't
20:02
Speaker 1: have anything to hook onto in that kind of love.
20:07
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you went into the brain science, because
20:11
Speaker 1: you and I neither one are neuroscientists or whatever doctors
20:18
Speaker 1: of brain. I can come up with the right words,
20:23
Speaker 1: but I'm not going to just for the fun of it,
20:25
Speaker 1: because that's not who we are. We are women who
20:28
Speaker 1: have lived the truth of this, and that's where we're
20:31
Speaker 1: coming from. We've had to learn. You know, it's not
20:33
Speaker 1: to say education is bad. Information is bad. It's excellent.
20:36
Speaker 1: We need the information, but it is really largely to
20:41
Speaker 1: help us retrofit what's happening that we in our senses
20:45
Speaker 1: understand our inner critics starts softening, our heart starts opening.
20:52
Speaker 1: Can you just speak to something even a little bit
20:55
Speaker 1: more particular about what it takes to reclaim a sense
20:59
Speaker 1: of worthy worthlessness when it's been you know, this distorted
21:06
Speaker 1: and challenged, really, and by that, I would say it's
21:11
Speaker 1: it's because you weren't given those deeply embedded needs of
21:17
Speaker 1: a human to be seen and safe and soothed, and
21:22
Speaker 1: what's the fourths?
21:24
Speaker 2: Secure?
21:25
Speaker 1: Secure? Yeah, So talk to us about that, how that
21:31
Speaker 1: reclaiming of a sense of worthness.
21:33
Speaker 2: I think for me, so much of that pain came
21:37
Speaker 2: from a lot of it came from the mother wound.
21:42
Speaker 2: And and I've shared stories about how as a child
21:46
Speaker 2: I was, I was nurtured by mother Earth more than
21:53
Speaker 2: my own mother, and that I would run to the
21:58
Speaker 2: woods and I would climb a tree and wrap my
22:02
Speaker 2: arms around the trunk and sway in the treetops, or
22:07
Speaker 2: I would just burrow into the earth underneath the pine
22:12
Speaker 2: branches and just you know, and we know now how
22:18
Speaker 2: the earth actually gives us love. It actually fills our
22:21
Speaker 2: body with oxytocin, which causes us to feel love. And
22:26
Speaker 2: I literally was being nurtured by the earth. And I
22:33
Speaker 2: love that so much, and I love nature, and I
22:39
Speaker 2: am so grateful that nature was there, because even as
22:45
Speaker 2: a pretty young child I was I was searching for
22:49
Speaker 2: a mother's love. And I would go to visit friends
22:53
Speaker 2: or cousins or and I would just I would just
22:56
Speaker 2: kind of hang around the mom and I just longed
22:59
Speaker 2: for her or to put her hand on my shoulder
23:02
Speaker 2: or say something kind to me, and so I had
23:07
Speaker 2: just this really huge longing for a mother's love throughout
23:14
Speaker 2: my life. And I think that that was one of
23:19
Speaker 2: the things then that came through sharing stories and stories
23:25
Speaker 2: of harm in this area where the words and the
23:30
Speaker 2: care that would come to me and even I remember
23:34
Speaker 2: one particular story where one of the people said to me,
23:40
Speaker 2: if I could pull the little girl in that story
23:46
Speaker 2: onto my lap right now and wrap my arms around
23:50
Speaker 2: her and hold her close, I would, And those words
23:56
Speaker 2: again in the context of that story were so powerful
24:03
Speaker 2: for me, and it was in it there was such
24:08
Speaker 2: purity there and such goodness that my body and soul
24:17
Speaker 2: had literally longed for decades. I've joked about the children's
24:26
Speaker 2: book where the little bird goes around, the little bird
24:29
Speaker 2: that fell out of its nest, and it goes around
24:31
Speaker 2: and it says to everyone and everything, are you my mother?
24:35
Speaker 2: And I kind of did that. Through a lot of
24:38
Speaker 2: my life. I was looking and wanting so much, and
24:43
Speaker 2: then when I began to find it in a place
24:46
Speaker 2: that was very safe and where such goodness was offered,
24:50
Speaker 2: and throughout my life, honestly, I think there have been
24:53
Speaker 2: many people who did. They were there and they made
24:57
Speaker 2: me worthy of enough goodness in this space of sharing
25:04
Speaker 2: my stories and like you said, even making shame bigger
25:09
Speaker 2: when we share the particularities. It's not going in and
25:13
Speaker 2: saying yeah, well I experienced this time. When we don't
25:18
Speaker 2: give the view from thirty thousand feet, we actually share
25:22
Speaker 2: the things that were so hard and so shameful. And
25:29
Speaker 2: when the people that heard my story looked at me
25:36
Speaker 2: and spoke words of kindness and offered love, they made
25:41
Speaker 2: me worthy for the first time that I could connect
25:50
Speaker 2: with human to human and I needed those experiences before
25:58
Speaker 2: I could actually offer that to myself. Now I can
26:04
Speaker 2: offer it to myself. I'm worthy of love. Yeah, yeah,
26:08
Speaker 2: I'm really worthy of love, and I will ask for
26:12
Speaker 2: it sometimes like you know, I, here's what I need,
26:15
Speaker 2: Like I can say that. But it took experiences first
26:21
Speaker 2: with the earth, then with people in general, then in
26:25
Speaker 2: this very precious kind of space that for me was
26:30
Speaker 2: so so powerful and effective before my brain could understand that, Wow,
26:38
Speaker 2: maybe it's true. And what if I can turn toward
26:42
Speaker 2: myself now with curiosity and compassion when I'm disregulated or
26:50
Speaker 2: when I miss something up. Can I turn toward myself
26:56
Speaker 2: with the same kind of or a similar kind of
26:59
Speaker 2: case that I now experience coming from another human.
27:10
Speaker 1: As we wrap up Part two, I keep thinking about
27:13
Speaker 1: something Share said. Healing happens when we experience something different,
27:19
Speaker 1: not simply when we understand something different. There is a
27:23
Speaker 1: profound difference between knowing we are worthy and experiencing ourselves
27:28
Speaker 1: as worthy, and perhaps that's why healing can feel so
27:33
Speaker 1: slow At times. Our minds may understand long before our
27:37
Speaker 1: bodies and hearts are ready to trust. In our final
27:41
Speaker 1: conversation together, Share and I move even deeper into themes
27:45
Speaker 1: of belonging, mothering, connection, creativity, and what it means to
27:51
Speaker 1: reclaim the parts of ourselves that were never fully welcomed.
27:56
Speaker 1: We'll explore the lifelong nature of healing and the surprising
27:59
Speaker 1: way love continues to reshape us long after the deepest
28:04
Speaker 1: wounds have occurred. I hope you'll join us. If this
28:10
Speaker 1: episode resonates with you, follow or subscribe to Echoes and
28:15
Speaker 1: Edges on your favorite podcast platform, Leave a five star review,
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Speaker 1: and share with a friend who might need a gentle
28:21
Speaker 1: invitation to self understanding. Echoes and Edges is produced and
28:25
Speaker 1: edited by Stephen R. Sanders. Music promoted by Vado. Echoes
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Speaker 1: and Edges is part of the Vivid Livid podcast network,
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Speaker 1: where bruses speak and healing finds its voice.