How to stop the shame spiral (REPLAY) - Live Saturday Reset with Jerry S Lin

She said, "I failed my marriage." I want to tell you where that sentence came from. Before the divorce, I had a brain aneurysm. The doctor gave me a death sentence of 10 days. See, when you're that close, the noise stops. The roles, the performance, everything you've been maintaining for everyone else.

It just stops.

It's gone. What's left is just what's actually true. And what was actually true was the marriage was toxic for years, maybe even a decade. The aneurysm didn't damage my life. It showed me what I was already living. And that was conditional love. I had believed that the love was real and unconditional, but the moment I choose what was healthy, the love grew conditions. See, conditional love looks like love until you stop doing what it wants you to do. I was done maintaining the façade. When, when we divorced, she asked me to keep it private because she didn't want her parents to worry about it. I said, "Okay, but we need to tell them sooner or later." She just said, "Hold on, just for a little while." 18 months, my side of the silence, fielding questions, hunkering down in isolation, staying away from friends and family and saying everything was okay, every— everyone was fine, kind of deflecting and trying to stay away from the situation as I healed myself and was looking for my own path. Her side was building the stories of victimhood, and none of it was true. She could not face her truths. So she had to become that victim hidden behind the shame. See, my silence was a promise I was keeping. Her silence was a story she was building on mine. She was trying, or rather she wasn't trying to destroy me. She was trying to survive a truth she didn't know how to carry. See, the truth she had is the shame spiral. The spiral does what spirals do. It protects by burning everything down around it. See, in Asian culture, Chinese culture, it's called miànzi or face. In families where honor is the currency, divorce isn't a private ending. It's a public verdict. And it's all she cared about. How will it look? Will it dishonor the family? See, when shame has nowhere honest to go, it moves outwards. It finds whoever gave it room. I gave her 18 months of room. And then my father got sick. We were completely caught off guard, and still we hadn't told anyone yet about the divorce. And then my father passed away. See, my father died not knowing his son was divorced. See, that was the moment right there. No more secrets. I decided to live out loud as myself. And the second I found someone new, my ex-wife went no contact, and the untrue, outrageous rumors spread like wildfire. Moving through my family, my friends, my business partners. It was nuts. And my 3 daughters followed. See, all 3 gone. Hell have no fury like a woman scorned. This is the spiral's final move. When it can no longer control the narrative, it just cuts everything off. Not because I'd done something wrong, but because my happiness was proof the story wasn't true. See, I won't tell ya that it didn't hurt. It did, in a way I don't have full words to explain. But in the middle of that hurt, all I did was I put my hand right here. See, this is a body signal, not a verdict on who I am. Her shame spiral tried to pull me in, but I didn't go. I want to show you what was actually happening inside that story. Because it wasn't random. It was 3 brains running 3 completely different programs. See, we don't run on 1 brain. We run on 3. Up here, the head brain, logic, planning, the part that knows better, the part that said, "Keep your word, absorb the cost, don't join the war," right? It's, it's the logical brain. It's the one that covers speech, language, uh, all your cognitive thinking, right? Calculations. And then right here, this is your second brain. This is the heart brain. Connection, belonging, love. The part that felt every story that moved through those friendships. The part that hurt when the daughters went quiet. And then down here is the gut brain. It's the survival brain, automation, the pattern recognition, the part that chooses before the other two even know there was a choice. See, over here in your gut brain, it receives about a billion bits of sensory information every second. Your head brain can only process 10. So that's a billion to 10. That means there's 100 million times difference between what your gut brain can process than what your head brain can. 'Cause your gut brain basically runs most of your life on autopilot. It fires what you've practiced, it fires what you've repeated, it fires what you've been told enough times. And it starts thinking or feeling that whatever you fired off is true, no matter if it is or it's not. So her gut brain had been running one program for 20 years. Don't show the failure. Protect the face. Find somewhere for the shame to go. See, my gut brain had been running another: Absorb it. Keep your word. Endure. Provide. Do what men do. Be strong. Be responsible. See, neither of us chose those programs. We practiced them until they became automatic. The 5-second reflex. Here's what I call that gap. It's that moment between the trigger and the reaction where the gut brain already made a decision or decided before your head brain even knows something happened. See, when her parents asked about the marriage, before she consciously could choose a story, her gut brain had already protected her. See, when my daughters went no contact, before I consciously chose what to do, my gut brain had already fired. Hand to the chest, this is a body signal, not a verdict. See, that's the 5-second reflex. That's the gap where your life is actually being decided. Not the big moments you see coming. In 5 seconds after the trigger, before you think. And here's the thing about a reflex. If it was built by repetition, it can be rebuilt by repetition. Rewired. Retrained. That's what today is for. But first, I want to show you how yours is firing right now. We're gonna play a game. Hold on, give me one second real quick. All right, uh, all right, quick game, quick game, guys. Can we turn our cameras on? Whoever can turn on their cameras, that would be great. But, uh, we're gonna go ahead and play this quick game. There's no wrong answers. Nothing to figure out. Just notice and not think what happens in your body when you hear each question. Okay, so listen to this, these questions carefully. Round 1, question 1: What's your favorite meal? Go and put it in the chat. Just think of it. Beef and pepper chow fun. Very good. Fruit. Oh, that's good, Harrison. I thought it was lasagna for you. Yeah. All right. Sushi. Cool. All right, so number 2, think of one person who always makes you feel at ease. Just one. Go ahead and put it in your chat. Could be their name, could be just girlfriend, wife, John, Jane, whatever. Just your son, Nina. Okay, I thought there was a person named Ramen for a second. All right, okay, so, um, question number 3: Where in the world do you feel the most like yourself? Just free. Just notice your body, right? Notice where it just went when you thought about these 3 things. Okay, you get a warm and fuzzy feeling, you feel happy, right? Before I even finished asking the question, your body already felt that because you didn't choose it. It just kind of went. See, that's your gut brain. It's already running. So round 2. Now think of something you said recently that you wish you could take back. What's something you said that you wish you could take back? You don't have to put it in the chat. Just think about it.

Okay.

And then the next question. What's one role in your life where you feel like you're not quite enough? Is it a partner, a parent? You know, you're not a good son, daughter, boss man, businessman, whatever. What is it? Something that you think you're not quite good enough. All right. The third question is, what's something you've been telling yourself you'll fix but you haven't? What's that one thing? Did you notice something? In round 1, your body opened up and went free. And then round 2, your body closed up.

Felt tight.

See, you didn't decide that. All right, so third one. This is the last round, okay? This is the deepest one yet. What's the word, your harshest word, that your inner critic uses about you the most? What does your inner critic, the one word that says something about you— don't say it out loud, just Just let it be there. Alright, if you guys got that word, who was the first person who said that word to you? Was it your mom, your dad, teacher, a friend, business partner, customer, some stranger? Who was it? Who said that word to you? And how old were you? Okay, go ahead and take a deep breath. Kind of let it out.

Ahh.

Okay, let that feeling go. See, I want to tell you what just happened. See, that wasn't a warm-up exercise. That was your 5-second reflex running in real time. So round 1 was safe and your gut brain opened before you thought. Then round 2 was pressure, so your body closed before you could even decide. And then round 3, that word, that person who first said it— see, that word is not you. It was handed to you by someone else. You inherited it. In some room at some age and it filed away in your gut brain as "this is who I am." Not because it's true, but because it was repeated. See, that's the same program that ran when you think— didn't think you did that thing the right way. It's the same program that moved through your friends and your family, or my friends and my family when they heard from my ex-wife. The same program that my daughters are breathing right now. And it has a name. Let me give you the distinction that makes it stoppable. So, We're gonna go ahead and close your eyes if you're comfortable, or soften your gaze and find a spot on the floor.

Breathe in slowly, hold, and let it all the way out.

One more.

Hold.

Feel the weight of your body where you're sitting now. You're not going anywhere. You're just here. I want you to think about a silence you've been keeping. Not someone else's silence, yours. Maybe it's something you haven't said to someone you love, something you've absorbed, something you've carried, something you've stayed quiet about to protect someone or yourself. Just let it be there. Don't fix it. Don't explain it. Now notice where it lives in your body. Is it in your chest, your throat, your stomach? Where is it? Just notice. Now I want you to ask yourself, is this silence protecting something I believe in, or is it protecting something someone else is afraid to face? You don't have to answer out loud. Your body already knows. Because that's the thing about the gut brain.

It never lies.

The head brain tells stories. The gut brain just holds what's actually true. If what you felt just now was someone else's shame, I want you to imagine holding it out in front of you. Not throwing it away, not fighting it, just holding it out at arm's length and seeing it clearly. This is not mine to carry. I can understand it without owning it. I can have compassion for it without becoming it. Now let your hands come back to rest. Put your right hand on your chest. Feel your own heartbeat, if you can find it. This is your silence, the one that belongs to you, the one that holds what you actually believe, the one that no story no spiral can reach unless you hand it the key. You are not what someone else's shame needed you to be. You are what you do in the 5 seconds after the spiral reaches you.

Jerry Lin.

File that.

One big breath in and all the way out. Every time you hear that sound, your gut brain knows what it means. One rep, and what you practice becomes permanent.

I'm gonna bring you back now.

With each number, come back a little more present. 5, the sounds coming back in, aware of the room around you. 4, feel the weight of your body where you're sitting where you're planted. And 3, wiggle your fingers and roll your shoulders once. 2, almost back. One easy breath.

And 1.

Eyes open. Welcome back.

How is everyone doing? Drop one word in the comments, whatever it is. Maybe calmer, at peace, feeling great, tired, full of energy. For those of you who have been here before, we set our alarms on our phones 3 times a day: one in the morning, one in the afternoon around noon, and one at night, labeled Reflex, to remind us of our daily homework. And we ask 2 questions of ourselves. Number 1, every time that alarm goes off, we We ask our bodies, how is our body feeling right now? 30 seconds. And the second question is, what do I need right now? So that's total of 1 minute per session, so 3 minutes a day. You need to spend those 3 minutes a day because the more reps you get in, The more practice you get in, the more aware you become of your automatic response. So for those of you who haven't done this yet, go ahead and put the alarm in your phones right now. And then this week we're gonna go ahead and stack these 3 other ones. But for the new people, go ahead, grab your phone right now. And put in 3 alarms inside your— in your phone. Just set it, call it Reflex, and then those are the 2 questions that you need to answer. All right, and then we're gonna stack 3 new questions on top of that for this week's homework. And this is just for this week. All right, so 3 days, 3 questions, 3 minutes each. So you're not spending that much time. It's only extra 3 minutes per day. If you don't have 3 minutes a day to spend on this I don't know what else to tell you. All right, so go and write this down. Day 1, Monday evening, set the alarm and call it the silence. All right, the silence. Write one silence you're keeping right now. Is it protecting your integrity or someone else's shame? Just like how I kept silent about the divorce. What are you protecting? What are you keeping silent? Are you protecting somebody else or your own integrity? Are you protecting somebody else's shame? Write that down. Okay, so I want you to do that on Monday. Day 2, Wednesday morning. All right, so stack this on top of your Wednesday morning Um, homework, the one where you say, how am I feeling right now? What do I need? And then you want to do this one, all right? And it's the word— write the word from the game that we did earlier, okay? That's that harshest word or your most inner critic, right? What was that one word that you wrote? And then who taught you this? Who taught you this word that your inner critic said? About you. And then, how old was I? So how old were you when they told you this? How old were you? And lastly, is it still true? Is it still true? Think about that, right? The word, who told it to you, and is it still true? And then write it down so we can work on it next week, so we can get it out of your system. Especially if it's not true. Because just because your body saved it doesn't mean it's true, because it's been hiding in your gut brain, right? It's been hiding in your gut brain. So go ahead and write that down. And then day 3, set it on any of the alarms, the third one, and that's the carry. Write the one thing you've been carrying that isn't yours.

To carry?

What's the one thing you've been carrying that's not yours to carry? And then write, I have compassion for this without owning it. You have compassion for this without owning it. Set the alarms now while you're still in here. And Shane, can we go ahead and post these in the chat for them to copy? Maybe email them out again on Sunday. All right, thank you, thank you. So when your phone reads The Silence, you don't even have to think about what to do. Your gut brain already knows. That's not willpower, that's a rep. And what you practice becomes permanent. Say it with me, all right? Say this with me right now: we wake up Come on, everybody say this with me. We wake up, we choose, and we bring everyone we love with us. So we wake up. What does that mean? We wake up from the automatic, we pause ourselves and we see this gap, right? That 5-second reflex gap. We choose. We choose what we want to do instead. And then we take all the people we love with us. We teach them to do the same thing. See, that's who we are in this room, this Reset Room. It's free every Saturday. You're a weekly rep.