The Shame Matrix: Emma Lyons

This is the Chris Project, where we discuss mental wellness, self-awareness, and mindset with entrepreneurs and experts. Set your perceived ideas and biases aside and let's go on our journey for yourself, for your family, for the world.

Welcome to another episode of The Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining me today is Emma Lyons of The Matrix Project— no, Trauma Matrix. Good Lord, where'd I get Matrix Project? The Trauma Matrix. Sorry, I screwed that up. Uh, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me, Christian. Great to be here.

So, uh, as we were discussing in the green room before we started, you are originally from Ireland, living in Mexico?

That's correct, yes.

What is it that you do in Mexico?

Well, I was— I'd been in— there's a bit of a story behind this.

I, I love stories.

Let's hear it. Yeah, I had been living in London for a long time, and I decided to move home for a couple of years, for a short time, to kind of consolidate. And while I was at home, I got very, um, depressed, and then I just decided that I needed to leave and get away. And since I've been here, what's really come to— I've really come to realize that my family system is quite toxic and that my mother bears a lot of the characteristics of a covert narcissist and that I had been the scapegoat within that dysfunctional system. And I've taken, I've taken some I've gone kind of no or minimal contact with my family. And it's really interesting to see how they engage with me via email now. And it's all very much about their needs and what they want and then never really asking how I am, which kind of fits into the exact traits of narcissistic family structures. And I really tick all the boxes of a scapegoat survivor. And it's all this time, my whole life, I thought I was the problem. And I've been trying to, you know, fix myself and figure it out. And, uh, yeah, just kind of landed, landed. I just realized this thing, and, um, my body just reacted. My nervous system had been holding all this tension all my life, and I never even realized it. So that's the situation. And I also broke my leg. So the universe, the way it does, it kind of stops you in your tracks. I had a motorbike accident and broke my leg pretty badly. So for about, well, it turned out to be about 6 months. I was kind of hobbling around and stuck in the north of Mexico. So that was kind of being to sit down in one place and really start figuring things out for the first time.

So how long, how long have you been in Mexico?

I've been in Mexico for about a year and a half.

Okay. Well, the weather's better than London for sure.

It is definitely that. Yeah.

Yeah. I, you said you're in northern, um, Mexico. It doesn't really matter where you are in Mexico. The weather's better than London. As you were describing that, we're going to have an interesting conversation. Are you familiar with the TV show The Bear?

I've seen it. Yes. The one about the restaurant.

Yeah. Yes. Okay. So my wife and I are watching this and were watching the episode called "Fishes." It's where they have the Christmas dinner. I don't know if you recall this, but it was so difficult to watch because of the emotional intensity. But it centered around this dysfunctional family and specifically the mother who was— I don't know, I'm not going to try and diagnose her, but like she had issues and drunk. And it was so painful to watch. And I turned to my wife, that's— that was hard. She goes, yeah, if I want to see that, I'll just, you know, hang out with my family. I don't need to watch it on TV, right? But I found it very refreshing in one sense, because, uh, you know, my family dynamic was not like that, uh, but I'd experienced other people's families that were. And I'm like, it's nice— it's not nice. It's good to show that so that people understand that that dynamic exists, right? That there are people that come from that background where the daughter specifically, she was the object of her mother's wrath. For just asking, are you okay? Right? And that's what triggered her mother to break a dish and drive her car through the door. Right? And you're just sitting there and you're looking at it and you're like having these empathetic emotions and like, God, that's just awful. But that's reality for some people.

Yeah. Most families are dysfunctional, Chris. I didn't realize how dysfunctional my family was. I thought my family was normal and I was the problematic one. And this is, this is classic for particularly a covert narcissistic family system. I've recently discovered that my grandmother, my mother's mother, was more than likely a malignant narcissist because she was quite a sadist with my uncle, who was also the scapegoat and kind of exiled himself in the United States. But he was— he's been telling me stories about, you know, her sadism basically, and the abuse, both physical, mental, and emotional that he experienced at her— at her. And my mother and my aunt, for example, my mother's sister, they totally minimize it. They say, oh, you know, she was just a bit anxious, but she was a malignant narcissist. I mean, I remember when I was young, the way she treated me, she was a very, very nasty woman. And that inevitably affects the children, even if they're not the scapegoat. The scapegoat comes off worse, but all the other children are affected. And, uh, no one in my— no one, no one in that family system did any work on themselves or therapy. Even one of my aunts who is a social worker, she just kind of said, oh, I'm fine, you know. And that's really— it's— that's, that's classically what happens in these dysfunctional families. People just suppress it and pretend everything is fine when really, and particularly in narcissistic families, it's all about appearance, you know, it's all about looks fine, but under the surface everything is not fine, everything is really dysfunctional. It's like a, it's a, it's a house of cards, you know, and it's all designed to look good from the outside with little to no care about the well-being of the people inside it. And I can see now that I'm looking at my family from the outside that every single person is kind of mentally ill as well. You know, I'm not the only one who's been affected by this. Everyone gets affected because even the golden child, who is kind of the— in dysfunctional families, not in all dysfunctional families, not just in narcissistic families, to cope with the trauma, the scapegoat is chosen, usually the select, usually the most sensitive one. And there's also a golden child that's selected. But my sister, who's the golden child, she has issues with rage and anger, and, um, we've never had a close relationship. I've never been close to any of my family, so I can see how they're all dealing with mental health issues as a result of the, the family dysfunction that's been passed down. And also on my father's side, another very much enmeshed family where he was the golden child in his family system. So I'm kind of putting the pieces together now and seeing it all and seeing how crazy it is, you know, because I've told them I needed some time to kind of— that I was going through some difficult things at the moment. Not once have they asked if I'm okay, you know, they've just— they're sending me emails about everything that's happening. Who's died? When are you going to come back? And it's just astounding because even in a dysfunctional family, there would be— there would be some concern. And there is no, none whatsoever. It's all centered around their needs and what they need and their anx— their anxiety and nothing about what I'm going through, even though they are aware that, you know, I have a history of depression. When I was at home for a short time before I came to Mexico, I was suffering from a really bad depression. And it was because I was back in the very toxic environment. And rather than asking why, They just, uh, they just told me to go and take pills. Like, there's no, there's no ability to take responsibility or no curiosity as to why might that have happened. So it's really interesting to see that in my family.

What prompted you to, to move to Mexico? Like, you moved back home, you're depressed. What, what was it that changed your path?

Well, I knew that I just needed to get away, and my plan had always been to kind of go to Mexico, but it was always you know, when I reach a certain goal. But at one point I just decided I just need to go. Nothing is working here, you know. Life, life kind of keeps beating you on the back of the head saying it's not working, this is not where you're supposed to be. And, um, yeah, I had to go through a bit of that before I took the leap and went away. And yeah, it's really interesting looking back to see how, how, you know, the— how life kind of guides you in a certain direction.

So you've used a lot of clinical terms. Were you educated as a psychologist?

No, I'm not a, I'm not a psychologist. I do what the work that I do. I have read a lot of, read a lot of studies about that, but I'm not a, I'm not a psychotherapist. I have, uh, I have, I have most of the healing journey that I did was did 12 steps. I've also trained in a lot of different kind of energy, energy healing methodologies. So it's all about kind of which deals a lot with, um, you know, emotional trauma and all that. But even though I did a lot of that, what I discovered in the years when I was in London, for example, um, you know, changing belief systems and working and shifting and changing trauma systems and all that. And I also did some therapy What I've discovered is that that was just really doing feng shui and the furniture in the living room when the house was on fire, when I had all this unaddressed stuff and was, was, was still connected to the toxic soil of dysfunction and narcissism, narcissistic control, when I was totally unaware of that, if that makes sense.

No, it totally makes sense. I think, you know, there's a lot to unpack there. But I just wanted to clarify what your experience via education was on the subject. I think that this— my mother, I was not raised by my mother. I was raised with my father, but I my mother had visitation. So I spent time with her. And it wasn't until I was 54, 55, what I mean, within the last 12 months, that I realized she's a narcissist. And I'm, I'm not trying to play armchair psychologist. But the— my experience with her, uh, was like, she checks all the boxes. Like, I don't know if there's some other diagnosis, but like— and the interesting thing was I, I asked my friend who's an entrepreneur who exited his business and went and obtained his doctorate in psychology, his PhD in psychology, which like whatever, dude. Um, I said, do they ever tell narcissists? Now, so he's, he's a licensed therapist and doing stuff. And I said, do therapists ever tell narcissists that they're narcissists? He goes, no, they never give them that diagnosis. I said, why? He goes, because it's, it's not treatable. Like, if you tell a narcissist they're a narcissist, they're not going to be able to understand it. Like, that's not because of their condition. He said true narcissists usually have, uh, some exceptional trauma in childhood that, um, is not fixable. Yeah. Um, and I'm like, huh, okay. But that shift where I went to, okay, my mother is mentally ill And I have to stop being frustrated because she's not changing. She's not adapting to what people are telling her. And I have to change my expectations. Like, you know, I'm not talking to a normal, emotionally adjusted person. Like, they cannot experience what I'm experiencing. And it doesn't matter what I do or say, they can't. But that really, it really helped me and my wife and, and frankly, our adult children in, in dealing with her. Because you, you really have to change your expectations because they're not going to change.

Yeah, absolutely. No, they're definitely not going to change. There are a few narcissists out there who have been in therapy, but yeah, it's not, it's not treatable. They just become self-aware, and they can often, you know, we can talk about this. I talk about how we've, we internalize this narcissist in our own head, and taking it to therapy is it, um, when you take narcissist, or when narcissists go to therapy, or when you go to therapy with your narcissist partner, mother, whatever it is, they tend to manipulate that and use it against you to You know, it doesn't, it doesn't help them. They don't, they don't heal because there's no— they don't want to. They don't want to.

No. And what I have, what I've experienced is to the extent that they behave the way you want them to or would expect them to, or, you know, give you what a normal person would give you in terms of emotion, it's, it's mimicry. It's not real. It's like they've learned this behavior gets them what they want. And so they act that way, but they don't really feel it or mean it.

That's right. Yeah. So one of the classic signs of a narcissist is a lack of empathy. So they don't tune into other people's emotional realities unless it serves their agenda. So that's one of the key traits of a narcissist. The rest of them are grandiosity, um, attention-seeking, lack of empathy, as I said, entitlement, exploitation, and fragile sense of self-esteem. And I don't know if your mother— your, your mother was a covert or a more obvious narcissist. My mother was— is a covert narcissist, and this is why for all those years I never I never saw.

What does that mean?

It's, uh, it's kind of the, you know, those people who are like, poor me, oh, I'm such a— oh, I'm suffering from this and that. So it's more self-centered in the sense of, oh, I'm suffering, and oh, my eyes, and I'm always a victim, everybody look at me. So it's not, it's not so obvious as the grandiose narcissist, but they're still self-important and want to be the center of attention, but in a much less obvious way. That's why they call it covert.

And the other term you used to describe your grandmother?

She's a malignant narcissist. So this is a narcissist who's quite sadistic, almost like a psychopath. She— I mean, I could tell you the story of what my uncle told me. She sent my uncle out one day with a boy who was having digestive problems and was shitting his pants. And she got my uncle— she said, go— she got my uncle to go out when he was a little boy and call him Shitty Seamus and got some sadistic pleasure out of that. So that's just one example, and that is— that's sadism. That, that sadism, and that's, that's malignant narcissist.

Well, not to one-up you, but I— my mother was adopted, and, um, Her adoptive parents could not have children and should not have had children. She was sexually molested by her adoptive father, which would have been bad enough. But her mother was a sadistic narcissist and would, like, punish her by putting her in the crawlspace under the house. Like, that was her punishment, right? As a toddler. Wow. I didn't, I didn't have much interaction with, uh, my grandmother, but I do remember one very poignant example, and I didn't connect the dots for a long time. I just knew even at that age, I was probably 6 or 7, like, this is not right. But my, my grandmother gave me a lollipop And after I had it in my mouth, she took it. And of course, actually, I wasn't even, I wasn't even 6. I was more like 3 or 4. And I started crying. Like, she took, took the sucker away. But then she started teasing me with it. Like, you can't have it, right? Uh-huh. And then come to find out she'd had a tape recorder. And she replayed it and said, see what a baby you are? See, like, like, yeah, like, and yeah, like, sick shit, right?

It was very sick.

Yeah. And, and so when my mother, as an adult, she said, this is what I experienced, I'm like, oh, okay, I, I can believe that right now. I don't know Yeah, I don't know if what all my mother has said about her childhood is true in the sense that, like, could she be making some shit up to, uh, you know, make people empathize with her and give her attention? Sure, that's possible. I don't know. Um, but I do know from my firsthand experience that she wasn't making up some of it.

Oh yeah, yeah. And that can't— that's— oh yeah, that, that's definitely, definitely a malignant narcissist. It sounds like your grandmother. Um, and yeah, my, my mother, on the other hand, she went the other way. She went— denied it. She was like, oh, she's not— she's just— she was just a bit anxious. She probably shouldn't have had children. She loved us. She gave us all our needs, but she couldn't really love us, you know. So totally minimizing it because she wasn't the main victim. It was my, it was my uncle who was the main victim. He was the scapegoat and he was just— I speak to him on the phone occasionally and he would say he would phone her. He was actually disinherited and no one in the family seemed to care because he's just the scapegoat. He continues to be the scapegoat. But she, he told me that he would phone his mother and she'd be like, oh, it's you. And she would never use his name, that fella, you know. So very, very weird dynamic.

Yes. So tell me a little bit about the trauma matrix. What is it that you are doing there?

So now I work with people because I've realized I will start to do after I got this download, I would say, about my own family system. I started to piece together, you know, why I was the way that I was and why that none of the healing that I'd done previously had really worked. And I realized, you know, everyone's worried about AI and how, you know, we're still— we're stuck in the matrix and AI is going to get us. And I realized, no, well, we're already in the matrix. It's of our own trauma. And that's the real thing that's blocking us from evolution. And What I realized as well is that the main driver for this trauma is shame. So I identified shame as being the kind of source code for this trauma matrix that we're all in to varying degrees. We're all in it, but it's just how aware are you, how conscious of you are that. And particularly in the Western world where this— where it's a very narcissistic culture, I realized, I started to realize that, you know, this is how I came up with the idea of the inner narcissist. Because I realized that, you know, okay, so you have these family systems where you have the narcissist, the scapegoat, the enabling parent, and the golden child. And then I started to see that this, this pattern shows up everywhere. It shows up in corporations, it shows up in communities, it shows up in governments, it shows up in intergovernment situations. You, like, right now you have a country that's committing genocide that was scapegoated previously. That is the golden child of another country, and it's now scapegoating another country, another group of people. This is what happens if the scapegoat or the person carrying that load of shame doesn't deal with it or, you know, start telling the truth about that, transform that shame. Because shame, it's not like a normal emotion. You can't process shame. You have to like release it and start telling the truth about it. You will find another target for that shame and that scapegoat someone else. And this is why abuse passes down. People who, people who are— receive sexual abuse carry the shame of that, can't process it, and find when they have a child, they, they pass that on because they're carrying so much shame that it's just impossible to deal with. They have to, they have to pass it on somehow. And that, that, that passes on through this dysfunctional scapegoating that goes on. And you see it everywhere. This is how I started seeing it everywhere. And then I realized that I internalized this as well, you know, and use this because we live in such a narcissistic shame system. One, the way that we protect ourselves from it, you know, is, uh, we think of a child, okay, the way I'll just shame myself first so that it won't hurt so much when when I get shamed. And then that's how the narcissist that we internalize, the inner narcissist that I call— it's often called the inner critic, but I've realized that it's not, it's not a wounded child. It's not a, it's not something that you need to love. It's, it's a narcissist. It ticks all the boxes of a narcissist, and it's something we need to treat like a narcissist. It's a parasite. And when we treat it like that, we reclaim our freedom because when we perform for it, when we try to therapize it, when we try to send it love, just like with the narcissist, we give it power and it gets— it takes narcissistic supply and it grows and develops from that. And this is the thing that causes us to commit suicide, you know. Without this narcissist implant that says, you might as well not be here, when nobody commits suicide, you know, we need that. And I've been suicidal since I was a young child. I suicidal thoughts. I thought that was normal. And this is the internalised shame. This is the, this is the so-called inner critic that we're told is trying to keep us safe, but actually it's trying to destroy you. It's not— just like the narcissist, it smacks you across the face, it punches you in the balls, and then tells you, I'm trying to keep you safe. No, it's not trying to keep you safe. The narcissist doesn't care about you. It cares about itself. And the same thing with the inner narcissist. It doesn't care about you, it cares about oursel— itself. And the con— conventional wisdom tells us to treat this thing like a wounded child, to take it to therapy. It's the completely wrong approach that just feeds the thing. And I should know because I did that for a long number of years myself. And it just feeds it, it metastasizes into something more malignant, and then it says, oh, you might as well not be you hear. And then when you act on that, you know, you create more misery.

So I'm gonna, I'm gonna put a pin in that and I'm going to come back to it. And the question I want to ask is, what, what is the proper response if it's not therapy and/or like you're calling it feeding it? So I'm going to put a pin in that and ask a question. What in your mind is the difference between shame and guilt? Okay, if there is one.

Yeah, there is a distinction between guilt and shame. Guilt is the belief that I've done something wrong, so arguably useful. Now, shame is the belief that I'm wrong, there's something wrong with me. This is the conventional wisdom, but this is a Eurocentric idea because this idea that I'm bad, that there's something wrong with me This idea of individualized shame, it really came with the Catholic Church and Christianity. It wasn't there before that. Before that, there was a collectivized type of shame, and this is what you see in Far East, in China and places like that. Also very toxic, but it's more about— it's more tribal. It's like if you step out what's acceptable in the family, then you're shamed for that. You've done something bad. You've shamed the family. And for example, in Ireland, this was the kind of shame that exists. It was tribal shame, collectivist shame, as I call it. But this individualized shame that says, you're bad, you're a sinner, and you have to forgive. Just think about that for a second. You're a sinner and you have to forgive. That is a double bind that you can never escape out. This is individualized shame. And it's not something that you can ever escape from because it's about who you are, your identity. Is that you are a sinner. And this is the template, this is the foundation piece for our culture. So it's no surprise that we're now living in a narcissistic world because it has that foundation, that shame foundation that is so toxic. And we're all swimming in shame, we're all taught that shame is normal, where even linguistically in our language, "Oh, you have no shame," that's an insult. To say to someone they have no shame because they're behaving— linguistically, it's coded into our language that you need shame in order to be a good person. And if you don't have shame, then you're shameless. So shame keeps you good, keeps you a good person. And we're taught that you need a bit of shame. You have no shame. And usually the people that we say these things to are, ironically enough, acting out of repressed shame. It's not that they're free of shame. And any other word that we have in the English language that ends in -less, for example, shameless, homeless, whatever, you know, hopeless, these— you have no hope. But when we say someone is shameless, it's an insult. It's a slur. They're not free of shame. We just consider that they're behaving in a bad way or it's triggering me or something. So it's not about shame. And our whole world is kind of created to teach us that we need this shame, that it's good for you. Even people like Brené Brown, who studies shame, she says, and I think, and even people like John Bradshaw, who talks about shame and talks the shame that binds you. Brené Brown, for example, says that if you don't have any shame, then you'd be a psychopath. I totally disagree. Psychopaths, narcissists, they're operating out of repressed shame. And John Bradshaw talks a lot about shame as well. He— and this is the, the conventional wisdom— it says there's a thing called toxic shame, and then there's also a thing called healthy shame, which keeps you good, which keeps you humble, which keeps you knowing that you're not God. But what I'm saying is that that's total— that's Eurocentric approach. And that's— these people are talking from inside the cage of shame. The call is coming from inside the house, so to speak. They can't see outside the shame matrix, so, because shame has been so normalized. But we don't need shame to be a good person. We need empathy. We don't need shame to know that we're human. We need humility. It's not shame that does that. And often these people who defend shame also conflate guilt with shame. I, I think in an enlightened society, we wouldn't need guilt either.. But guilt is that belief that I've done something wrong, maybe I need to go and apologize. Shame doesn't do that. Shame, it's more than just the belief that you're bad or you're wrong. It's a suffocating thing that tells you that you need to shrink, that there's something, that you shouldn't be here, that you don't have the right to exist. It's much more than the belief that there's something wrong with me. It goes even deeper than that and it's a toxic cocktail of fear, disgust, self-loathing, so many things. And there is no upside to shame. It's not like fear. Fear has an upside. Fear tells you there's something, there's danger there, you need to run in the opposite direction. It's not like, um, it's not like anger, which tells you that, oh, somebody's crossed my boundary, I need to put down a boundary and say no. Shame has no upside whatsoever. Yet we're gaslit into believing that it's healthy or that we need it in order to be good. And this is the whole society that's gaslighting us with this BS.

It is interesting you mentioned the linguistics because words are powerful things. And that's why I asked the question, in your mind, what's the difference between guilt and shame? I like your definition. I would stipulate it for the purposes of this conversation in the sense that— and to reiterate what you said, guilt is the realization that I have done something wrong as opposed to I am wrong. Now, I— we oftentimes talk about faith on the show, but I really don't want to go down that faith road with the original sin, inherent sin. I don't want to have that conversation because I don't think we're going to find any common ground on that. But I don't think you need to, to understand that if there's something that you have done wrong to someone else, whatever the standard of behavior is, you know, if it's intentional or unintentional, right? The idea of repentance of that guilt, like, I insulted you, Emma, I didn't intend to, or maybe I did intend to. I said, you know, those Irish are a bunch of drunks, right? Like, and I meant to be hurtful to you. It still requires that repentance in the idea of turning away from it. It's not just like, I'm sorry that you feel bad, right? Like, I'm sorry that you feel bad. It's, I did something that I shouldn't have, and I need to turn away from that behavior. What say you?

Well, yeah, I mean, guilt is arguably useful, but I, I mean, I think in an enlightened society you wouldn't need guilt either. You just need empathy. I don't need to feel bad that I've done something wrong. I just need to have empathy and recognize that you may be hurt. But yeah, I do think that guilt has a, plays a positive role.

That's interesting. Okay. So, so, so the, The tool you're mentioning is empathy, like, okay, I perceive that you have taken offense to what I have done or said. And what is my motivation to correct that behavior? Well, via empathy, because like empathy to me is just like recognition.

Like, well, empathy is really— it's not about— it's, it's about feeling other people's feelings. So if I feel your feelings, I recognize that I've hurt you. I don't need to— I don't necessarily— this is a— I mean, but guilt can be defended. Shame can't. There is no defense for shame. Right. Because shame says you are bad. Right. So I agree with you. You can defend shame or guilt. You can defend guilt and say that guilt helps people say sorry. Right. Recognize they've done something wrong. But shame doesn't do that. Shame says you're bad, and that's very different energy. But the problem is that usually guilt— and I'm from Ireland, so I know it— 99.999 times out of 100, it's very rare that it doesn't come with a very, very large side of shame. So this is the, the conflation. It usually— they usually come together if done something wrong, you usually have a lot of shame about that.

Yeah. And there was a speaker that— and I wish I'd written it down. I can't remember. But he made a very clear distinction between guilt and shame. And it was— my recollection is that it had to do with agency, like whether or not you were I wish I could remember it. I'm not going to waste time trying to recall it, but it was profound. So let's pivot back to my question I put a pin in. So if you are feeling the internal critic, the internal shame, you said the traditional methods of dealing with that is not helpful. What is the solution?

Well, the solution is to recognize that it's not your friend. And that's again, not what we're told. We're told that this inner critic is trying to keep you safe, that it's looking out for you, that when you sabotage or when you procrastinate, that's your inner critic trying to keep you safe rather than recognize that that's the that narcissist that we've internalized that's actually trying to keep you small. So first of all, recognizing that and recognizing that shame has no positive function, because we're, we're, as I said, we're kind of taught through every mechanism in our, in our society that shame is good for you and healthy. And when you start recognizing that, you can— when the shame attacks, I don't know if you've ever had a shame attack, I personally have, you can, you can actually break the trance because that's actually what it is. It hijacks your body like no other emotion. No other emotion is like shame the way that it takes you over because shame is more than just that belief that I am— there's something wrong with me. It's a lethal cocktail of self-disgust, self-loathing, fear, anxiety, so many different things kind of merge together. And from, from that feeling place, you get those beliefs, the downstream from that— there's something wrong with me, I shouldn't be here— they're, they're downstream from that kind of nervous system hijack that happens. So that's the first thing, really recognize that, that it's, um, that it, that, that it doesn't serve you and that it's not you. That's really the first step.. And then from there you can, you can work with it to really break its power when, when it does attack. And I mean, I have, have a whole system for that. It's, it's called BREAK. So first thing is to recognize that, recognize what's happening and to really break and recognize the trance. So when the shame attacks either physically or a voice in your head, Recognize that it's a voice, that it's a spell, that it's like a trance that you've been under. And when you catch it and interrupt it, that automatically disrupts the loop. Then you go on to R— you refuse to engage in it. So this is the thing, and this is where a lot of us can get caught up, because you start arguing with it, you start defending. This is the thing not to do with a narcissist. Dr. Ramani, who's the main woman out there who talks about narcissists, she talks about deep Dont defend, dont engage, dont explain, and dont personalize. So we do that, you just say, not today, not today shame, not today Satan. Then you go on to E, which is expose the lie. So call out the shame-based programming, recognize that it's always, always about control. Whenever you see shame happening, it's always about control. It's never about care. Recognize that it's not your story and that automatically starts to disarm it. And then you want to anchor it in your body because like I said, shame, it like hijacks your body like nothing else that I've ever seen. So come back to your body, feel your breath, say your name, the year, and really remind your nervous system that you're safe and that you're sovereign. And then finally, K, kick it out, shake it out like you can do it physically in your body. And recognize that it isn't mine. This is how you start diffusing the power or disarming this shame voice. But you've got to stop feeding it. And if you've been feeding that shame voice, that internalized narcissist, that inner narcissist, for 30, 40, 50 years, it's going to have some momentum behind it. So it takes a bit of practice to really start taking back our power because we've been gaslit into believing this shame is useful. You know, even in entrepreneurial circles, you know, this hustle culture thing, you gotta fight, you gotta show you— this is all shame-based programming. So we're all wired kind of in our culture to believe that shame is effective to get the result that you want, when really it's poisonous. It can get you a— it can— like if I shame someone here who's bothering me, I can get them to stop their behavior, but really it's about my comfort. It's not about them. And it always leaves a toxic trace, even if it looks impressive in the moment. So this is the toxic concoction that we're working with. Our society has trained us that shame is useful and helpful to get things done. And but it always leaves a toxic mark.

I would agree. I think the reason why it has been, uh, promulgated is because it's effective in, in, in one regard. I mean, you know, I, I can think of individuals in my life, coaches and, and others, that were, uh, uh, uh, the, the people that are just what I would describe as old-school, hard-nosed you know, get your shit done. I don't want to hear your excuses. I don't want to hear your, you know, emotions. And in a certain segment of activity, athletics, maybe business, it is effective. But that doesn't mean that it's not toxic. I, I, what you said was interesting to me about it's not you trying to protect your— it's not trying to protect you. It's trying to protect itself. And, and that kind of led me to this idea that this hindbrain that we have living inside of us now, that, that, that I want to be clear, is not the voice, because the voice is from your cognitive brain. But your lizard brain that really is trying to protect you, uh, where your fear comes from, right? Your, your nervous, uh, your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous responses to fear, um, The idea that it is separate from you, not integral to you, I think is interesting. I'd never really— I thought of it more of a continuum. Right? So the cognitive sits on top and the lizard brain's at the bottom, but it's all the same. But in what you're describing, it makes me think that really, it's it's more— it really is more a separate entity, right? Like that. So one of the guests I had recently on the show, um, he coaches people. He's, he's a doctor of psychology and a stuntman. Oh, cool. Right? And so he coaches people around, um, high what, what I would call and most everybody else would call high-stress situations, right? But he said there is no such thing as a high-stress— stress is a response. There are high-stakes situations where, like, as a stuntman, your life's on the line, right? But he, he discussed how our, our sympathetic— our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system responds to that is, is absolutely controllable and then can be redirected to use. Like, if you have a fear of falling, dying, whatever, that, that adrenaline dump that you get in your body can actually help you focus to perform, as opposed to succumbing to it and it paralyzing you, right? Yes. Um, so I think, I think there's some commonality in, in there. I'm not sure exactly what, but like, I, I like the idea that you have that this, this inner critic, your, your ego, whatever you want to call it— we're all not psychologists is not your friend in most cases. No. Not that you can't use aspects of its response, right?

Well, no, it's never your friend. It's always trying to preserve itself. It's not trying to help you.

Well, right, right, right, right, right, right, right. But there might be times when preserving yourself, like you're equally yoked. Like, yes, I want to protect myself. I don't know that, but that doesn't exactly describe what you're talking about. So you're talking about the inner critic, which is really more a cognitive thing. It's a cognitive function. It's not the lizard brain response to stimulus.

Well, you see, that's the distinction. I'm talking about the shaming voice then it's not just a voice, it's the shame thing that hijacks you. It's an emotional hijack. Or, well, shame isn't a normal emotion. It's like the lowest vibration. It's the lowest vibrational emotion out there. But shame is very different from fear. Like, shame is a combination of a bunch— it's a toxic cocktail of a bunch of different things that I talked about already. And it has no upside. You're right, fear has an upside. You see something scary, you run in the opposite direction, you get the adrenaline hit, shit hit, you save your child, you get out of the situation. It's powerful. That's the limbic brain coming into action and clicking into place. But shame shuts you down. Shame does not have a positive function. And that's not what we're taught. That's not what therapists are taught. They're taught, and this is because they're in inside. They're speaking from inside the shame cage where shame has been normalized and considered to be a part of what it is to be human. But, uh, shame doesn't have a positive function. If you look at people defending shame, then they say, oh, you need it to be not a psychopath. Maybe you need guilt, or maybe guilt— arguably they conflate guilt and shame— or humility and shame, they're very different things. Or empathy. And ironically enough, shame shuts down our ability to empathize. So it actually has the opposite effect. We need more empathy, ability to understand what's going on with other people. Shame doesn't help with that. Shame makes us go inside, makes us contract. And it's not just a cognitive thing, it's, it, it takes over your whole body and your nervous system, and it's extremely debilitating. And regardless of that, yeah, go ahead.

Well, so, so you're saying it's, it's not part of the cognitive, but then how else does it have a voice? Like if there's not a voice, if there is a voice, it's got to be part of your cognitive brain.

No. Well, I mean, everything is connected, but I'm shame. It's not, it doesn't start with that belief that I'm not good enough. Starts with the emotional thing and those feelings of, "Oh, there's something wrong with me." It's a feeling, it's a fear, it's self-loathing, it's a disgust. And all of those verbal things, they're downstream from that, if that makes sense. So in a sense, saying that shame is the belief that I'm bad, it's a simplification of what shame really is, because shame is much bigger than I Well, you have given us quite a bit to think about.

I appreciate the, the, uh, the point of view and the, and the things that you've, you've brought to the table. How do we find, uh, more out about The Shame Matrix?

Well, you can find me on— I've written a lot about this, so maybe the best place is to check out my Substack, which is called Trauma Matrix. And also I'm on Instagram and TikTok as trauma.matrix, so you can find me there. And yeah, I have a free gift for people as well, if I could, if I could talk about it.

Absolutely, we love gifts here.

Okay, it's 5 Signs That It's Time to Break Up with Your Inner Narcissist. So if you feel like, oh my God, I— this shame thing, this shame voice, this shame energy takes me over sometimes, as it has me, and I had my free gift is called 5 Signs It's Time to Break Up with Your Inner Narcissist. So we're not negotiating with it. We're actually breaking up and taking back our power from it. So this will give you those 5 signs and also some tips and strategies to start that breakup process. And you can find that at tinyurl.com/nottodaynarc. Narc as in narcissist, N-A-R-C.

Not as in a narcotics officer.

Yeah, not as in a narcotics officer.

Perfect. Listeners, we'll have that link in the show notes. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. Until next time, remember, you are not alone.