The Courage to Heal: Facing Pain, Shame, and Change Together (Episode #112)

Welcome to the Human Intimacy Podcast. Dr. Kevin Skinner with Marianne Michalis, licensed clinical social worker. Marianne, we're a couple weeks out from the Human Intimacy Conference that we just completed. Grateful for those who participated. Want to make sure that everybody knows that it's now available on the website humanintimacy.com. And then jump into today's topic. But Marianne, your thoughts about the final couple weeks out from the conference, your thoughts.

You know, I'm having clients who are saying like, how do I access this, Marianne? And so my thoughts are, I think we probably ought to be very clear and help people know if you paid for it and you weren't able to attend all the sessions, if you didn't sign up for it, you can still access it. So I think it'd be great for us to talk about how to do that.

Yeah, real simple. If you didn't register, you can go there now and go to humanintimacy.com and click on courses, and you'll find it under the 2026 Human Intimacy Conference. And it's going to be listed as the paid course, 2026 Human Intimacy Conference. If you have registered and you want to go back and review it, if you have an account on Human Intimacy, you should have access to that course now.

So if I don't have an account at Human Intimacy, it's free. I just go there.

Human Intimacy.

A free account. Yeah. Good clarification. So, but if I paid for the conference, I can create the free account and will my email be automatically connected to the conference or is there anything?

The way that works is your email. Then gets notified our system that allows us to make it so you're enrolled in the course.

So does that happen automatically or is that—

No, it has to be done manually.

And I think I'll just add on to here. And if they have any questions, email info@humanintimacy.com. Yep.

For sure.

I'm glad we talked about that.

Yeah. So today's topic, Marianne, is courage.

Yeah.

And as you brought it up, and the multiple ways that we talk about courage. And I was just making a list in my mind. It takes courage to stay in a relationship where you've been betrayed. Your turn.

It takes courage to acknowledge the pain. It takes courage to acknowledge the work that needs to be done. We're going back and forth, so it might, my list is growing.

Yeah, you gave 2. Okay, that doesn't mean I have to do 3. It takes courage for the betraying spouse to come completely clean and deal with the ghosts of the past and not ignore the pain.

It takes courage to step into seeing yourself and saying, oh, there may be some things in my own past for a betrayed partner, or the betrayer partner to say, there's some things that haven't been addressed that I need to address that might be really difficult and really uncomfortable.

It takes courage to talk about what you've been struggling with in front of a group.

I was just going to say it takes courage to ask for support.

And it takes courage to deal with your own unresolved emotions. Last time we talked about our adverse childhood experiences, I shared a little bit of my own experience. I think it takes a lot of courage to dig into the past and not ignore some of those things that maybe you haven't looked at or explored for maybe all of your life.

Mine are just kind of like variations on a theme of that. It seems like, but it takes courage to create your trauma narrative, to go back through and put your whole story together, to look at it and to share that. It takes a lot of courage to be vulnerable when you don't know the outcome.

And it takes courage to lean into hard conversations with your spouse when maybe it's something you haven't done, or especially if I'm the betraying spouse, to lean into those conversations and ask questions like, can you share with me more about the ways that I hurt you so I understand more? Can you help me understand in a way that maybe I haven't before because I haven't been open to that, or I've been shut down? Or I've been in shame, which would be another one I would add. I think it takes a lot of courage to address the shame associated with the sexually acting out behaviors.

And I think it takes a lot of courage to be honest with yourself and honest with others.

And so then now we expand that a little bit in both directions. It takes a lot of courage, and I've seen this a lot where people acknowledge it to their children or to other family members, especially if I'm the betraying spouse, to acknowledge that to say my spouse's family and acknowledge the ways that I've hurt. That takes a lot of courage to own that. And I appreciate it when I see people do that. A lot of courage there.

Well, we can keep going, Dr. Skinner, if you'd like. I'm laughing a little bit to myself. As you know, with the RISE podcast, we did the season 1, which was focusing on the early betrayal stage, and season 2, we've been diving into more of a series of let's really dive in and drill into this topic. And I'm laughing here because we've just listed like 15 different podcasts we could do just focused on what we've been bringing up, the courage, all these different categories of courage that I know that we could spend a lot of time really digging into all of the aspects. And I know we're not going to cover them at the, at the depth that I know that we could, um, at least today, just because of time, but all of recovery for both partners and the coupleship takes an incredible amount of courage, courage to take, to face the pain, courage to forgive, courage to see each other truly, and also with compassion. There's so much here.

Yeah. And then when I think of courage from the beginning, I look at it this way. It takes a lot of courage to look inside of yourself and ask a question like, what am I— what are we doing? What am I doing? And why am I doing it this way? And so I think that first reflection, looking into the mirror, looking in and seeing What is it that I am doing in this life and how is that working out for me?

Yeah. You know, when I did my EMDR training, one of the analogies they talked about, they said oftentimes when we're dealing with things that are hard, it's kind of like driving through a tunnel. And I used to live in Colorado and there's a lot of tunnels under the mountains there. And so that, that really hit home for me, but they said, Sometimes the pain feels so big and it feels so difficult that all you want to do is just stop. I just want to stop the pain right now. I can't, I can't do anymore. But the problem when you're driving through a tunnel of pain is if I take my foot off the accelerator, I don't make it out. I get stuck there. And so I think it takes a lot of courage to keep our foot on the accelerator and keep moving forward, especially when it feels like our heart has just been wrenched out, especially when we can't even see the light at the end of the tunnel. I want to share a really quick story here. It's on the border of Idaho, but you have to go through Montana to get it. There's a trail called the Hiawatha Trail, and it's a bike trail. It's about 14 miles long. And when you take it, you go through all these old train tunnels. You're basically going along an old railroad track. And the first tunnel you go through is a mile long and it's pitch dark. And so they say, make sure you've got really great headlights as you're going through these tunnels. And so we went out and we bought some, you know, the best lights that we could. We had some headlamps and some on our bikes and we went through the first tunnel and it was okay. It was long and you couldn't see because it curved. You couldn't see. The end for a really long time. And we got through that one and then we went in and we came out and it was really bright, really light. And it was like, oh wow. Yeah, we made it through. We went into the next tunnel and I noticed, I was like, something's wrong. This is so much darker than the last tunnel was. I don't know why this is so dark. And I couldn't really see and I was trying to use my husband's light, and I was like, this is so weird. Why is this so much darker?

Did your light go out?

No, my light was on.

Okay.

We got into the third tunnel and I was like, it's so dark. What's going on? And as I was just a little ways in, I realized I'm wearing my sunglasses. So when we'd come out into the light, I pulled down my sunglasses and put them on and I'd forgotten to take them out. And I think sometimes when we are in betrayal or whether it's fear, I think sometimes we can have a lens that we're wearing that can make it even feel so much darker and so much harder to get through. And maybe for this example, maybe my analogy here is that I had to use other people around me to help me get through because I couldn't see clearly. I couldn't see. I knew it was gonna be dark, but I had this extra impediment.

That you didn't know was there.

That I didn't know was there. What a great example, silly story, but it was really real. It was so hard.

So when I think about that story, there's a few things like you could be in that tunnel and glasses on, glasses off. Sometimes it's already hard, and sometimes we can make it harder by the decisions we make while we're in trauma or in addiction. And so I could say we don't know how difficult things are, but our own actions when we're in that crisis mode can make things more difficult. And I've seen that in individuals' lives. They do things that they later regret, like, I'm done with this marriage, it's over. And they take actions that they, in the future, them, it's like, why'd you do that? And I think that's maybe an example of what you're talking about. I think it takes courage when you're in crisis not to act too fast, to step back and evaluate who you are in the crisis rather than acting in ways that you later regret or feel bad about.

Yeah. And as you say that, I think about, you know, that it was wet. Most of these tunnels were wet and so they were muddy and slippery and, you know, there were some crashes and some people got off and they were like, this is too hard. I'm just gonna push my bike. I'm gonna walk through. And sometimes we, we all have different paces.

And that's the important part of when we, I think about you riding a bike through a tunnel. I would say there are times where I might want to get off the bike, slow down the process to make sure that I'm safe and making the best decisions moving forward. And so even as we go through this analogy, there's times where I might have to get off the bike, slow down just to get through the next stretch. And so the courage to slow down sometimes, rather than speed our way through it.

Right.

And metaphorically, if I just put that into real life, that means I might not make a decision today. That means that I might today just say it was good enough to get out of bed and get dressed and pick up the kids.

Yeah. And I love that you went there, Dr. Skinner. Just go back to that analogy. You know, people were whizzing by me, but because my sunglasses were on and it was so dark for me, as soon as they were gone, like, I couldn't see through their light. And my pace was okay. I was doing the very best that I could with the light or the access to light that I had. And there was a point also where I realized, hold on a second, I don't need this. Hold on a second. I can change my my lens. I think it's so important to not judge or measure ourselves by someone else and their journey.

That's so important because if I judge myself based on other people, I could be judging myself who's been working their healing and recovery process for 2 or 3 years. Sometimes that gives people hope. It's like, okay, I see that. And then I see, wait a second, they've been doing this for 2 or 3 years. And so You know, again, as we go through that tunnel analogy, I might be at the beginning and I might have already been through one tunnel, and now I'm in the second tunnel or the third tunnel or the fourth tunnel, and it's a mile long, and I met another— not another tunnel— and the courage to go through whatever that, that challenge is at that point, and to do so with, this is just what I do, the resilient me or the resilient us, this is how we work through it.

I want to change our analogy just a little bit here because I'm reminded of a quote from Brené Brown that I love. And as you know, I can never quote Brené Brown enough because she just really speaks to me, but she talks about when we're working through shame. And I think this applies to whatever it is that we're working through. She says, we do— when we're walking like through the swamp of shame, we don't build our house there. We put on our hip waders. And we have to go through it and we keep on going. We can't stop in the middle and say, I think I'm gonna just camp out here for a while. We have to, and I, and I think that's what we're talking about today is this journey of recovery, whether it's of your relationship with your partner or just your relationship with yourself, it takes a lot of courage. It takes us having to face the things in the swamp that we are afraid of, the things that are under the surface that we don't know that are there. And it takes courage for us to continue and keep going through it, especially because sometimes we, there can be a loss of hope. It can feel insurmountable. And that is the challenge is the continuing through it and not stopping and not giving up.

So I want to take this and get really specific for a second.

Okay.

So I've been working on a model, the Intimacy Repair Method that I talked about at the, at the conference. And I've been working on an assessment for individuals to take as it relates to their relationship. And what came to my mind is one of the questions, and it is the— and the question doesn't say courage in it, but it's really, do you have the courage to stay in a situation that you initially would move yourself away of emotionally? And because what we find is when I'm in a place of shame, there's a biological manifestation of shame that puts me into a state of fight or flight. So instead of in shame, I don't, I don't really have the capacity within myself to be calm and relaxed. And so the question itself is looking at when I'm in a state of shame, what do I do with that state of shame so I can be present with my partner in their pain? The courageous self is able to recognize that I'm going into that shame spiral or shame loop, whatever you want to call it, and come back out of it and stay present with my partner's pain.

This is so interesting to me, Dr. Skinner, because I want to take this down to the biological level. We're talking about emotions. And when we have emotions, we are like a living, walking chemistry set. And when we have certain experiences, our breaker box in our brain says, shut this one down, shut this one down. Let's add this one. We need this one. Add this one over here. So we get this whole flood of neurochemicals that are created when we experience something that— we've got neurochemicals that are flowing through our body that are there to help protect us. And so I don't think that we think our way through shame. We have to recognize our bodies are tools that we can use to get through, but we have to realize there's a biological process going on inside of me. Because I think so many times we shame ourselves for our emotions, not realizing my body is finely tuned and I'm fighting neurochemicals here. And so we've got to slow down. And also, I think, give ourselves a lot of grace. And this is where I was talking about that compassion. And I think that's where the mindfulness comes in and being kind of saying, okay, I'm having this emotion. I'm recognizing it. How do I reconnect with my body then and help my body to calm and soothe so then I can work through the shame? Because my body's just like, it's just trying to protect me in this space.

So the courage to come out of the place that I used to stay in the shame, because it's a physiological feeling, what we're talking about, this physiological concoction of chemicals in our body. To be able to recognize it and then to confront our own self in that shame with that kind of awareness, that's courageous to me. So both partners go into their version of shame. Step back, be with yourself, understand yourself, be aware that your body's flooded or feeling this desire to fight or to flee. Normally in this situation, I might fight back or defend myself, or normally in this situation, I would turn away from you and I wouldn't be present with you. Instead of doing that, I'm staying in this place with you when I hear what you're saying. And I might recognize that I might need a timeout right now. The courage to say, I need a break right now because if I say something, I'm going to hurt you. Again, the courage it takes to have that kind of self-awareness to own it. I need to do this. And then as a couple, being able to take a break, that's another courageous thing. Is to be able to take a break when you're flooded or feeling overwhelmed and give yourselves a time to cool off, to get your minds in more clarity and more awareness of what's actually happening.

Yeah. I'm hearing you talk about being really intentional, being really self-aware. I can recognize what's going on in my body and I need to be really intentional or have the courage to be intentional enough to say right now is not a good time because I'm flooded, I'm hijacked. Right now is not a great time. And I do want to solve this with you, but I can also recognize I need to ground myself. I need to take care of myself. That owning my emotions, owning where I'm at, even being vulnerable. I think this is that intentionality here that we're talking about.

Which again, is it self-work, being willing to do the work. Is courageous. Because if I'm not doing that kind of work, then what am I doing? I'm usually going to be on autopilot, and our autopilot hasn't been working very well for us in most cases. So again, to make changes, when I work on intensives, one of my favorite assignments is to have my participants write with their non-dominant hand. And there's a whole exercise that I go through this process, writing with your non-dominant hand. And when I tell them, look, Every change that you make towards healing and recovery is like writing with your non-dominant hand. Some of these feelings you're gonna be having, some of these emotions that you're not used to, they're gonna be uncomfortable. That's writing with your non-dominant hand and leaning into them, writing with your non-dominant hand. And over and over, I'm like, the more you do that, the more repetition you have, you're gonna create the changes you want.

As I'm hearing you say this, I'm, I'm thinking about a clip. I'm assuming you've probably seen it. Maybe some of our viewers, are you familiar with the backwards bike?

Yes, very much so.

Okay. So if you haven't seen that, I don't know if we can put a clip for that or a link.

I'll see if I can create the YouTube link for it. I'll see if I can do that.

Yeah. Yeah. Because I showed that to one of my clients a little while ago and it made so much sense. You know, if we've learned how to ride a bike as a kid, we learn how to, we turn to the right and it goes to the right and they just switched it. On this guy, and he thought this would be so easy. I can't remember how long it took him, maybe you do, but it took him months of daily practice to learn how to ride his bike. The back— he wasn't riding backwards, but his handlebars were backwards, like, like the direction they turn. And then when he went back to a regular bike, he had a really hard time with it.

And one of my favorite parts of that is he's like, he started doing presentations on, on this with other people. And he'd say, hey, I'll give you $100. I'll give you, you know, to be able to ride across the stage. And they couldn't do it. Just universally, nobody could do it. It's so counter to the way you think. Again, we're talking about the change process and having courage to change. And I think that's a great, great example.

Because we have to learn how to do our life. We have to change our patterns. We have to learn how to think and act and react and respond in completely new ways. And it takes time. It takes practice. It takes falling down and failing and getting up and trying again. And it is a process. I also want to bring in another word. I think a lot of this process takes a lot of curiosity as well. And so as I'm taking or having the courage to make changes, I think that really couples with Can I be curious about what I'm learning? Can I be curious about what I'm experiencing? Can I really be curious about how I'm changing?

Previous podcast, we talked about the courage to confront yourself, right? Confronting yourself. And I think what you're describing there is the courage to look internally, the courage to look externally at the relationship, the courage to look at what we're doing and why we're doing it. And so I guess if I could leave our listeners with this, this is my real takeaway today, is are we taking the courage to really self-evaluate and look at what we're doing and why we're doing it?

And I think for today, my wrap-up would be that many times we get mired and we kind of get our single-track vision and we might not see the end of the tunnel. We might have a hard time even seeing where we're at right now. And I remember being in a training with Dan Siegel and he talked about the— give me a second if I can remember it. He talked about the Einsteinian way. And what was the other way that he talked about of thinking? Was it Newtonian?

Draconian?

No, I don't think it was that one. I think, I believe he talked about the Newtonian way of thinking, which is kind of like you're in a train car and you can see the carpet, you can see the wallpaper, you can see everything that's right there in your boxcar. And then he said, but we want to start looking at things through an Einsteinian perspective, which is I'm actually going to get out of the train car. I'm going to climb up the mountain and I'm going to look from my perch on top of the mountain. And I'm going to see where the train has been, where it's at right now, and where it's going, which is a very different viewpoint than that. I'm stuck only in the train car and I can only see the here and now. And so I would love to encourage our listeners or viewers to take this different perspective and see the courage of where I've been, where I'm at now, and what do I need to be able to get to the place where I'm going. And life is a process. We learn every day. We change every day. But I invite you to look at your life today and say, where do I need courage today? And also through that compassionate lens, where have I had courage? Because if I can see where I've been, that's such a helpful tool to say, like, I have done courageous things and this thing that's in front of me, It might be really hard. And this is where I have to pull on my hip waders, take a deep breath, maybe grab a brighter light, whatever it is that I need and say, and what is it that I need to do next? That's going to take some courage. And I invite you to look at that and to recognize you have the strength to do this and reach out for help if you need it as well.

Thank you. I like that a lot. My addition to that is, while that I look internally so critical, right? Have that compassion. And I want to give a shout out to people that I've been interacting with recently. I've had the chance to do a few intensives recently. And man, I'm so impressed with the work they're willing to do. And so I would say, for me, the courage as a couple to turn towards each other and really work on difficult issues, difficult conversations, Because when I do intensives, and I know you do them as well, Marianne, when we do intensives, people are doing hard work. And I remember just a few months ago in the middle of one of the intensives, one of the persons said, I can't, it's too hard. It's so hard. What we're doing right now is so hard. And they buffaloed up, they faced that storm. And it was so amazing as they worked through those difficult emotions, how to be present with each other in those difficult conversations. Anyway, cause that's what we do. We role-play and role-play to help people get a way of communicating that they haven't done before. So I guess I want to say, I appreciate the couple's courage when they learn to do that kind of work together to make the relationship better, especially the betraying spouse who's just hurt their partner so much to step in there and stay in the arena, get in that arena as Brené Brown says. And well, quoting somebody else, but, but staying in that fight, staying in that willingness to learn and grow and seeing each other in new ways that are powerful. And so I just, the courage to do what everyone of our listeners are doing is stay there and keep in the work hard, do that. I, man, I just appreciate it.

Beautiful. Great topic today, Dr. Skinner.

All right. You guys have a great week and we'll look forward to seeing you next week. Have a good one.

All right, thank you.