What Do I Do When Overwhelming Shame Is Keeping Me From Seeking The Help I Truly Need?

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Welcome to Stronger in the Difficult Places. I'm your host, Dr. Zoe, and I'm so glad to be here today. Today we're going to be talking about what do you do when you have overwhelming shame? How can you even begin to speak about it? I had a listener write in. I'm gonna read her question, and she made me come on today because I really wanted to answer this question. I have a backlog of wonderful guest interviews that will be coming on soon. I have been so busy in my life speaking, finishing up, you know, the, my book launch. Get my book, Stronger in the Difficult Places. The link is in the show notes and it's really attached to a lot of the things we're gonna talk about today. But I've been so busy and haven't been on, but I'm glad to be here. And I wanted to answer this listener's question. And so let's get started. She said, Dr. Zoe, what do I do when overwhelming shame is keeping me from seeking the help that I truly need? How can I begin How do I begin the conversation, find the words, gather the strength to reach out when I'm feeling so ashamed of myself? Now, she didn't give me any details. She didn't tell me why she's ashamed, but the first thing I have to say is you will never get there. You will never feel unashamed and good before you start talking about it. And a lot of times we expect that we've gotta get to this place where we feel less shame to talk about it. I'm gonna tell you a quick story about when I Really started to release my shame. And I started scared. It was at my father's funeral. You'll read it in my book. You've probably heard me, if you've heard me on a stage or maybe even on this podcast, I've talked about it before. But it was at my father's funeral when I shared a secret that had at this point become a family secret that I didn't feel I had the permission to share. I told my family that I had had a baby, placed her for adoption many, many, many years ago. I introduced my now adult daughter to my family. I broke the family code, and I had so much shame around it. Now, I didn't do that. I didn't blurt out those words without fear. I blurted out those words because I could no longer hold my shame in. I could no longer keep the secret. But if I had waited until I no longer had fear, I would still be holding that secret today. There is nothing that you can do to get yourself ready enough so that you will not feel fear when you talk about your shame, so that you will not feel shame when you talk about your shame, so that you will not feel any of the guilt that may be around your shame when you talk about it. But I will give you some steps to help you. So for that listener out there, the one who asked the question, and for anyone who's listening right now, there are things that we feel shame about, right? There are things that we feel guilt about. We don't talk about shame a lot, except for me. I talk about it all the time. So the first thing I want to do is just separate What's guilt? What's shame? Guilt is a feeling when you've broken your moral code. That's healthy guilt. We have that feeling because it makes us want to change. It makes us wanna go back and repair, or it makes us want to go move forward and not do the thing anymore, right? So guilt is healthy when it's valid because it makes us stay aligned with our moral code and it makes us Do better, essentially. So when you start to feel guilt, you do have to ask yourself, did I break my moral code? Because if you're feeling guilt, like you've done something wrong, and you haven't actually broken your moral code, that's false guilt. That's invalid guilt. And that's something you need to work on getting rid of out of your life. Recognize that that's guilt that someone is usually placing on me. I'm not going to take it on. I'm going to give it back to them. So that's guilt, but we were talking about shame. So shame is unhealthy in all of the ways that it shows up. Shame is a physiological and emotional response that says, I am bad, I am unworthy. And the thing that you need to know is that shame wants us to hide. That's the only purpose, because if you are unworthy, there is nothing left for you to do but hide. So in all ways, shape, or form, shame wants us to hide. And when you hide, You serve shame and you feel more of it. So what you need to do is start by naming what shame does. When you start to feel it, say, I know what that is. That's shame. It wants me to hide. Shame is telling me, if anyone knew who you really were, if anyone knew the truth, they would reject you. Your shame is telling you, don't speak up. You should be able to do this on your own. Your shame is telling you, you are the only person that struggles like this. Your shame is isolating you, telling you you're the only one, and telling you if you talk, You will be rejected. It is a lie because the very thing that shame tells you to do, which is to hide, is the very thing that keeps you stuck in your pain. Healing almost always begins by you being able to speak your truth, scared, and know that you're still gonna be okay. It's not, you have to get forgiveness, exoneration, external compassion from anybody else. It's, I'm gonna speak my truth because that's what matters most. And I'm still gonna be okay no matter what the response is. So how else do you do this? You separate who you are from what you feel, and you separate who you are from what you did, right? So whatever you did, I don't know what you did. Maybe you cheated on your husband. Maybe you yelled at your kid. Maybe you have a horrible, terrible secret, which by the way, there's nothing new under the sun. So no matter how terrible your secret, You are not the only one. You are not the only one. So maybe you did something heinous. Maybe you hurt someone purposefully, or maybe you didn't purposefully do it. Maybe you've betrayed someone. Maybe you've betrayed yourself. Maybe someone has victimized you and you feel a lot of invalid shame as a result. Often when this happens, we say, I am. I am dirty. I am unworthy. I am a cheater. I am A liar. I am a thief. I am a criminal. I am a bad mother. I am— I don't want to say a million and a half bad things, but we can say these bad things to ourselves about who we are. And what you need to first do is separate your shame because it's not who you are. It's something that happened to you or it's something you did. That's all your shame is, something that happened to you or something you did. And so you need to work on separating that thing that happened to you or that thing you did. from who you are, because it's not who you are. We wanna move shame to guilt, right? And then we can evaluate, is this healthy guilt or is this not healthy guilt? But it's not who you are. So when we start to talk, often our shame wants us to move to confession instead of talking. And there's a big difference because when we have a lot of shame, we feel like we should be judged and punished, right? And so our shame says, you must confess all. You must be in this state of, I am a bad person. I need to confess. And I'm saying, no, No, this is not about confession. This is about acceptance of who you are as a person and what you've done or what's happened to you. And so I want you to start small when you begin to talk, and we're gonna talk about who you talk to, but first I want you to start small. This is not a confessional. So reaching out in a small way can be like, hey, I have this thing I need to talk to you about. Hey, I'm really embarrassed, but I need support. Hey, can I just bounce something off of you? You don't have to tell the entire story to begin to tell the truth. Now here's the next thing. You want to choose a safe person. And ironically, sometimes a safe person can be a stranger. And this is both in reality and then also the way our brain works, right? Because you've got this phantom critic. That's telling you all kinds of lies about your shame. And one of the things it tells you is, if they knew. And we have this idea of who they is. Maybe it's a family member, maybe it's an old schoolmate, maybe it's a teacher, an authority figure, a coach, a pastor, a best friend, your spouse. Your phantom critic says, if they knew. And because of that, and because of the connection that we have with them, because we value their opinion, we value their judgment so much, it makes it even harder. And so I suggest that when you first start talking about something about which you are deeply shamed, that you choose someone who doesn't really know you, because then you don't have this connection about what's going to happen in the future. Now you have this social construct, and now you can have a little bit more space to say all the things. So that stranger could look like a therapist. It could look like a friend. A counselor. It could look like another clergy person. It could look like someone online. Honestly, you need to start a small practice of talking about the thing. And I don't suggest you use AI or ChatGPT or Claude. They're not going to help you. They will give you external compassion, which isn't real. And yeah, it may feel good in the moment, but what you have to recognize is that shame is a social construct. We only experience it within any type of relationship or perceived or fantasy relationship with somebody else. So when a robot gives you external compassion, it is not going to give you the same kind of healing as a real human. And the robots were programmed to make you feel good. Not that I want you to go somewhere and feel bad, but I want you to have a real human social interaction. And it can start small. You know, in my book, I talk about the fact that I I will any day of the week, if someone wants to hire me to talk out something that they feel shameful about and they only can hire me for 1 session or 2 sessions, I will in the most resounding way say, yes, yes, yes, I am all for that. I know some therapists will say, I'm not a clergyman. I'm not a clergyman either, but I understand shame and I understand shame very well. And if you need to talk about it, You need to get it off your chest, you need to have a conversation to just start learning, to know what it feels like for those words to roll off your lips and everything still be okay, I am here for it. And I know there are plenty of other therapists who will be here for it. So find somebody, sometimes anonymously, that can hold space for you until you develop a little more strength to start talking to the people that you know. And when you start talking to people that you know, make sure that you are implementing self-care such that you are not talking to people who have historically been critical, demeaning, not a good listener, right? Or in any way, shape, or form make you feel bad about yourself. That is the person that you may be more likely to go to because maybe they're closer, maybe you're used to it. Don't. Ask yourself, how has this person historically responded to me? Do I feel loved for, cared for? Do I feel like they give me space? Do they, do I feel like they're nonjudgmental? If historically your answer isn't yes, do not go to this person to start working your shame out with. Even if they're a spouse, even if they're a parent, you need to find safe people. And sometimes, like I said, it can start out anonymously that you can begin to practice letting the words roll off your tongue. One safe person can interrupt years of shame. Now, the telling, if you have complex shame, is not going to fix it all. And I just realized I haven't really even talked about what complex shame is. So there's shame and then there's guilt, and then there's complex shame. What you're describing to me is probably complex shame because it feels like so much, right? And the reality is, is that with complex shame, if you go and you talk to somebody about it and they give you external compassion, It doesn't fix it. It doesn't fix it. And that's because your shame, I'd like to think of it as like a snowball that rolls down the hill and it just collects more and more shaming experiences. It collects all kinds of things. And so it's this, you know, packed snowball and you can talk about a little part of it, but when you do, and then someone gives you external compassion, the feeling you have, and internally you say to yourself, oh, but they don't really know because if they really knew, They wouldn't be giving me this compassion. If they really knew what I did, if they really knew who I am, if they really knew the thoughts, then they wouldn't give me this external compassion. And so your shame stays, and that is what complex shame is. It's a type of shame that doesn't go away when you talk about it and someone gives you external compassion. Now, there's a couple of reasons for it. The first reason is because of what I just said, the snowball effect. The second reason, and this happens sometimes with marginalized communities, is that You actually talk about it and someone doesn't give you external compassion. That's why I say, don't go to the unsafe person. They may tell you that you don't know what you're talking about. They may, they may make you feel bad about your shame. They may say that you're overreacting. They may gaslight you, and that will just make your shame go deeper. So we wanna avoid people who are going to actually continue our shame. We want to move towards people who are going to actually help release it. Now, my new mantra is stop agreeing. I love this statement, stop agreeing, because what I've realized is that people, especially who have complex shame, agree all the time. They are agreeing with others when they don't really agree. They are agreeing with the phantom critic messages in their brain that they don't really agree with. You are agreeing to things in a codependent way that you never actually wanted to and don't feel deep inside. So I want you to think about where in your life are you agreeing? About something that you don't really agree about, right? That is also driven by your shame because you don't feel worthy. You don't feel like everybody else. You feel like something is wrong with you. So you wanna go ahead and agree. You wanna say, yes, it's fine. I'll be okay. No problem. Because you feel that the way that you think and feel is not okay. And so you agree with whatever anybody else wants. You agree with what the Phantom Critic messages say in your head, and your shame stays. So as you move forward, as you interact with people, as people ask things of you, and as you hear yourself talk to yourself, I want you to ask yourself, what am I agreeing with that I don't really agree with? And I'm going to stop agreeing. I'm going to stop agreeing with my own lies. I'm going to stop agreeing with other people's lies, and I'm going to stop agreeing with other people's requests that cause me to self-abandon. So I want to emphasize this even more than I did in the beginning. Courage comes after you do the thing. I am not a courageous person, but people will look at me, they'll read my books, they'll see me on stage, and they will imagine and say to me, how are you so courageous? How are you so strong? How are you so whatever? I do things scared, and I'm asking you to do it scared. What I can promise you is that you have this lie, you have this message that if you share this thing, if you show people who you really are, that they will reject you. The most beautiful thing about getting rid of shame, the most beautiful thing about speaking about the thing for which you are the most shameful about, you know, if that was an appropriate sentence, but you get what I'm saying, the most beautiful thing about that is the freedom. That it gives you. When you speak the words that you're so terrified to speak, nothing will happen. I'm going to say that again. When you speak the truth that you're so terrified to say, nothing will happen. We create these horror stories in our head about what will happen. The reality is, is that nobody cares about you. And I say that in the most loving way. People love you. You matter, and at the same time, nobody cares. You are the one that cares the most about this thing, and when you talk about it, no one will care as much as you do, and nothing will happen. And you will begin to learn that you are okay, that you are not so weird because everybody's weird, that you are not so terrible because we all make mistakes, that you are not so damaged because things have happened to everyone. And over time, you will develop freedom when you speak the truth. So the courage doesn't come before. You don't get yourself strong enough to be vulnerable with your shame. You do the hard thing when you're still scared. You let the words come out. There's no perfect way for them to come out. You just start speaking. Remember, shame thrives in isolation. But it dies in connection. We cannot connect with others when we're hiding. One of the most healing moments I know that people experience in therapy, I know that I've experienced in therapy, is having someone tell you, you're not crazy, you're not damaged, you're not too much, you're not alone, and I understand. And so I'm saying that to you today. You're not crazy. You're not damaged. You're not too much. You're not alone. And I understand, and you can do this. So if overwhelming shame is keeping you from speaking up, I want you to hear this. Just the fact alone that you have reached out to me, that you were trying, is the biggest step ever. You want to heal, and you will heal. Keep reaching out, keep opening your mouth, keep typing on the keyboard until the words come out. Start very small and do the exact opposite of what shame wants you to do, which is to hide. Healing starts the moment you allow yourself to be seen. You've done that. We're talking about it today, and you can keep doing this. That goes for every single one of you out there. You've got this. Have a great week. Bye.

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