112: Shame - In Grief & Life

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Welcome to Grief and Guts. I'm your host, Melissa Dugulecki. It is my honor and privilege to serve you by sharing stories, tools, interviews and strategies that will help you transition from what do I do now? How do I get through this? Those feelings of overwhelm and uncertainty to truly standing in your power.

From my grief journey in losing my.

Daughter laden in 2014 that I learned, practiced, was exposed to all these tools, but they are not grief specific. In fact, they apply universally to all of our unique situations. You've already done the hard part by showing up, by opening up to something new. So without any further ado, let's get to the good stuff that's going to help you in your journey. Let's dive in.

All right, squad, you ready? Because today we are going to be talking about one of the most powerful in the sense that it will subconsciously drive a lot of our behavior and emotional responses, but yuckiest energies out there. Why are we talking about it? Because here in this community, we know that it is only through talking about and exploring the things that most people don't like to talk about that we make massive progress. What are we talking about? We're talking about shame. Now, I want you to just notice what comes up for you when you hear the word shame. What thoughts come into your mind? What tension in your body? Where do you feel it in your body? Now, for a lot of us, shame is trapped in like our hip flexors, lower abdomen, that area, which is why when you do certain yoga postures that open the hips, we can get really emotional. Now, the way that I look at energies is that there's a depth chart to them. I don't believe in good or bad or no bad vibes here because what makes it bad, it's just, it is, it's an energy, it's a vibration. Now, does it serve? Is it growth producing do? Sure, that's a different conversation. But let's not add shame, right, or judgment to whatever we're experiencing by labeling it as good or bad. So if we're looking at a depth chart and I actually have a visual on this, where I want you to envision like a circle. And in the center of the circle is love. And then outside of the circle are different layers. So draw another circle outside of it and another circle outside of it and another circle outside of that. The furthermost, outermost circle is going to be things you see more surface level. So on the high vibration side, right, the top of the circle, maybe you have something like sweet. And then if you were to go a little bit deeper under sweet. Maybe it's empathetic or sympathetic or nurturing.

Right.

And maybe under that it's a deeper compassion.

Right.

Or a sincerity. But what my point is is that it's only on the outer part of the circle are the things that we usually see. And then as we get closer to love, which is what we are all at our core and what we're all trying to return to, they're not quite as like visible, right. You might not look at someone and say that person is empathetic. Right. You might say that person is sweet. So if we're looking at the bottom part of the circle, let's look at shame as the deepest, closest to love. Because ultimately shame is a degree away from love or just it's where we feel the most disconnected. You're typically not going to look at somebody and say, well, that person looks like shame or that person is experiencing shame. So if we work our way outside of the circle, we might see something like proving, forcing, manipulating things that are a little bit more visible.

Right.

It might be, you know, angry, impatient. And I believe a lot of these more surface level energies actually are connected to the deeper energy of shame. And here's how that becomes really apparent in grief, but is just as present in life.

Now.

Shame ultimately comes down to feeling a lack of worthiness or acceptance or love, as though there's something wrong with us. We are ashamed of ourselves. We feel shame. This could be a thought associated with an action that we took, that we have regret around. And we believe that it makes us less deserving or less worthy. So we feel shame. Now when shame has this power over us, we'll go to long, long, long, long like depths and extents to protect said shame or embarrassment or regret from being seen or witnessed. Because if it's seen or witnessed, well, we're not worthy is the story we've created. I'm not saying that is our truth, which is why it can also lead to proving. It can lead to a lot of behaviors around masking, hiding, binging, binge eating, binge drinking. It can binge exercising because there is this like numbing, almost a cutting feeling.

Right.

You know, I think a lot of you are familiar with the energetics or you know, the practice where somebody suffering in pain will cut, cut themselves to inflict physical pain, to release the emotional pain. Well, in less intense ways. We are doing this when we binge, even if it's binge exercising. That's why it's never about the what it's about the why. Now, shame is something I got to know really well in my grief journey. Having had Laden not married, having been in a relationship that was publicly scrutinized, and there were a lot of stories around it that weren't the truth, but stories are stories, and so the impact was still there. So I felt a lot of shame even around Leighton's birth right. I felt a lot of judgment, as if I had done something wrong or I was misunderstood. Now, when Layden died, that shame became really intense. I felt as though I did something wrong, I was being punished, I didn't protect my daughter. Now, this was just pulling up deep shame that I had buried in me for years and years and years that actually had nothing to do with Laden. Remember, grief doesn't suddenly create new energies in us. It pulls them up to the surface. So if you are somebody who you know has anger buried down, you will likely experience more intense anger in your grief journey. If you are somebody who has a lot of anxiety buried, you are likely going to experience more anxiety in your grief. Grief just takes all the shit down there and pulls it up. Now, the beautiful part of that is we can clean house. We can literally clean and clear from death is rebirth. Now, I'm not saying that we want these grieving experiences or deaths. I want Laden back every freaking day. But what I don't want is to miss what is available in the pain. If I'm going to feel the pain, let me at least get out of it what I can, right? So I invite you into that. It doesn't mean we're okay with it. It doesn't mean we've moved on. It's that we are making the choice because we always have choice into what's going to best serve us. Other examples of this could be in relationships right now, interestingly enough, the shame that I felt and feeling so misunderstood and feeling as though, you know, Layden wasn't honored in the way that I wanted her to. Now, again, these are all stories. There are over 100 people at Leyden's memorial service. But I created the story from my own shame that she was less loved and it was somehow my fault. I actually did a lot of things in hindsight out of shame, right? I wanted to make sure everyone learned from her and everyone knew the lessons and, you know, she was going to be celebrated and loved to make up for what I feel like I caused her to not have. Again, that wasn't true, but it was my truth at the time, right? So extreme, you know, events and Fundraisers, and of course, they're wonderful things to do. It was part of my healing. But there was intertwined in there an energy of shame that if we could do these great events and raise this money and I could run all these marathons, that will take away some of the shame. Going even further if I can make the relationship with Laden's father work.

Right?

Even when it was clearly out of alignment, not making either of us right or wrong, but when it was clearly out of alignment, like we weren't, we had served our purpose for each other, right? If you heard my episode with Melissa Martin, we talked about everything as an expiration date. Everything has an expiration date, and that doesn't make it right or wrong. Some. The length of some, you know, relationships or jobs or whatever it may be could be really, really long. Some have a shorter expiration date, and that's not wrong. Shame will drive us to make it wrong, right? So I thought if I could make this relationship work and change the narrative in the story, that I would feel less shame or there would be less shame around Laden. Oh, my goodness. I even noticed as I'm recording this episode how I can feel when I talk about shame and get into shame. The tightness in my body, right? I can notice it in my breath. This is a lot of the work that I've been doing more recently around understanding the cues from our body and what we're experiencing and also releasing this energy from our body. What I was trying to do for so long wasn't necessarily release this energy from my body. I was trying to numb it or make it okay or justify it or whatever it may be, ease it. But the truth is, is that we get to move this stuff out of our body. Now, you will see shame pop up in a lot of different ways, right? It will often appear more as a proving energy. But the reason in which we feel like we need to prove things is that if for some reason we don't do something, we feel shame. So if my business doesn't grow to a certain level, like, I need to prove my business will do this, I need to force this result. I need to create and generate this. So then I'm free of shame. Because if I don't get that, I will feel shame. And if I feel shame, I am not worthy, right? Or rather, if I don't get that result, I am not worthy, and therefore I feel shame. This happens a lot, not just in jobs, but in relationships, in fitness. I need my body to look a certain way, right? And we move again. Into that force and that control and that prove energy. And if my body looks a certain way, therefore I am worthy, it must look that way. Otherwise I feel shame. Same thing in relationship. I need this relationship to work. I need it to look a certain way. I need to post about it on social media. I need everybody to know how great this is. And even if I know that this isn't right for me, I'm going to prove it and make it work anyways. Because, man, that feels better than the shame I will feel if it doesn't work. Like, oof, can we just sit in that? I know, I've been there.

Right?

I need this to work. Even if I know this isn't my fullest expansion, my fullest alignment, right? If I know intuitively that this isn't from a place of my highest self, I need this to work. Because being in this, even if it's not my most expansive, feels less painful, right? What I'm not allowing to exist in my life feels less painful than the shame I would feel if something didn't work. We can see that in paths that people pursue, right? This is why I think a lot of people go through, you know, intense transformations later on in their life. For some, maybe it's their 30s, maybe it's their 40s, maybe for some it's in their 20s. But when we've been following and doing all the things that we think we need to do our entire lives, because then we get validation and we're worthy and we fit in and we're accepted, we have that moment of like, wait, is this even what I want? We often find ourselves in a tug of war. Well, do I pursue what feels right for me? Or will that cost be shame? Will I feel shame? Will I feel not worthy? Will I feel disconnected? And so I just invite you into this topic to explore and to look at. You know, where we feel like we're forcing or we're proving or we're trying to control, can we get real quiet? Can we not judge ourselves? But can we witness? And can we sit with and notice in our body, notice in the stories in our mind? Where is there an underlying, a deeper element of shame? Because if this doesn't happen, I'm not going to be worthy of love, acceptance, validation. I will have failed. Now, the antidote to shame isn't proving, it's not forcing, it's not making it work. The antidote to shame is radical self love, acceptance. Nourishing, expansive relationships that hold you through the challenges. Seeing yourself and knowing yourself at such A deep level that you are fully in your power because you're not giving it away. It's a willingness. It's a willingness to lose what was, to step into what is. It's a willingness to allow some relationships to maybe not be your closest, but create space for ones that align for you more deeply. And we bless and release with gratitude, right? Anytime we've outgrown a relationship, our relationship has outgrown us, whatever it may be. We just get to bring thanks and gratitude for everything that relationship provided in that time and know that it was beautiful and perfect and served a purpose. But when we try and grip onto anything, a job, a result, a number on the scale, a number in the bank account, a marital status, whatever it is, when we're trying to grip out of these things, out of proving the only thing we are doing is stepping further and further away from our authentic selves, our expansive selves, our truths. And we can only change the world. And I know so many of you want to change the world. We can only change this world and raise the collective vibration by having the courage to allow ourselves to risk, to let go, and to live truly in alignment with our authentic being. So thank you for getting a little gritty and exploring this topic. Notice where you feel in your body and your mind. Notice what power it has over you. Invite in. What would it look like if I were to free myself of that? And then just a little bit at a time, I highly recommend with a coach or a mentor or support, because here's the thing, we'll start, and it'll often be two steps forward, one step back, maybe three steps forward, and then a paralyzing fear of, oh, no, I made a mistake. Nope, I am vulnerable. I am afraid. Nope, we're going back because we're human and we're on this beautiful, emotional human experience, so sending you all the love and the courage to just witness and explore and the gratitude for the lessons that can become much louder in our grief journeys and that intensified energy that allow us to break free of it in our life. Because it was through my grief, through my daughter Laden's loss, that I realized how much shame I had been carrying well beyond her. And it was through that and the witnessing of that and the allowance of that, that slowly, a little bit at a time, I was able to let it go in ways so much further beyond grief that impacted my entire life and cultivated a new way of being, a sense of freedom, of risking, of exploring, of attaching to the process and of trusting myself that has brought such happiness and fulfillment that I will have these conversations all day because I know it's available for all of us, all of us to live so expansively, freely, lovingly, joyfully. And in order to do so, we gotta get rid of shame.

Thank you all so much for being here at Grief and Guts as Layden's mom. Being able to spread the stories, the strategies, the lessons I have learned through Layden and from Layden is the thing that means the most to me in this world and allowing my daughter's short life to have long and lasting impact by shining her light. Truly, nothing means if you align with and believe in the work that we're doing here in these messages. The best way to give back and to spread this out into the world is to rate and review on Spotify and on itunes. Thank you for taking just a moment to do that. Feel free to shoot me a message. Let me know what you want to hear more of, what you want to see more of. I am here to serve. I'm grateful to do so, and I'm cheering you on in your journeys.

Always, Sam.