How to Let Go of Shame and Embarrassment.

Shame is a cycle that can be broken and it's also learned, which means we are passing on what we were taught about shame to our own children or to the children in our lives if we don't even have our own children or to our co workers. We bring it with us everywhere we go and we lead in shame just being part of what the human experience is. And that doesn't have to be the case. Okay, we're going. Okay. Three, two, one. Oh, shame, baby. Now, how could I be using this word shame and smiling and laughing all in the same breath? Well, shame doesn't have power over me anymore. And for I would dare say the first four decades of my life, on some level, shame had power over me. And today on the healing is possible experience with me, your host, Rebecca Silence with we are going to tackle taking on how to take your power back even in the face of shame. And we are going to take on looking at shame in a way that lightens it up and neutralizes it so that you get to lead your life versus shame. Leading your life with maybe you not even realizing that is what is happening. I am so grateful that you are here. I am so excited to have this conversation. And while I'm saying shame doesn't have a chokehold over me anymore, I'm not suggesting that I'm immune to the experience of shame whispering in my ear, blowing me kisses, or tapping me on the shoulder every once in a while. Because it happens, right? So the first thing is let's just normalize shame and then be sure to tune into today's entire show because I'm going to give you the five big reasons why shame is still an energy and a force in your life that you deal with whether you are conscious of it or not and what you can do about it. There are five things that I truly believe are the reason why shame takes over. Just five. And if we can look at where we engage with and participate with dancing with these five energies and five things that we actually have control over, we can start to take our power back and let shame be there as a wake up call, a reality check, an opportunity to course correct versus a Mount Everest that seems insurmountable in your life, that's just going to be there just how it is for the rest of your life. Shame does not need to be there and shame doesn't need to be how it it is for the rest of your life. Period. It doesn't. Okay. And just like no one's immune to trauma, no one's immune to Shame or the experience of shame. And, you know, next, let's just talk about briefly, and then I'll just cut to the chase and get to the five things underneath shame that we all have control over here. But we were shamed or we wouldn't know shame as a coping skill. And I guarantee that many of you watching haven't thought about shame as a coping skill, but that's really what I want us to think about it as. Just to see shame in a more innocent light and in a more manageable light. Right? Shame is how we cope. Shame isn't ever happening to us. And if you've ever wished certain parts of your life hadn't happened or could just, you know, be erased from your history and your experience, you're not alone. But we can't erase the past, but we can take the shame out of the past. And we can take our coping with our deepest fears. Using shame to cope out of our future experience and out of our toolkit of ways to cope. So we learn shame. We're not born knowing how to feel shame. It's not natural. Shame is unnatural, which is why it feels like shit. We were shamed, meaning we experienced someone shaming us, and they're only shaming because they were shamed. Shame is a cycle. It's a generational cycle, and it's a societal norm that we just pass around. Like that game hot potato, right? Just relate to each other based on our shame, Pass the shame around, validate the shame, normalize the shame. That's what we do. And I think it is catastrophic to leaders that want to make a difference. And if you're here with me, that's you, right? Because I'm working with the leaders that want to be as healed as possible so they can make their biggest impact in the world. That is who I work with. And so if you're here, you're a leader. Check out the episode of the Healing as possible experience about leadership. I think you'll like it a lot if you missed it. But just consider that when we cope with shame as the tool that allows us to get through the feelings and the upsets and the fears that we're facing, we keep ourselves powerless. And the cycle of shame, while it's learned, can be unlearned and transformed and. And knocked in a new direction. And that's what today's show is about. The five steps to breaking through and breaking up with the shame cycle that you didn't even know, you didn't know can change your life if you'll let Them. And just, first of all, just to recap a little bit here, shame is learned. Shame isn't natural, and shame is how we cope. It's not who we are, and it is certainly not not our destiny. So with that being said, I just took shame, and we're going to break it down. We're going to give you what's underneath shame, starting with us, which is secrets. And I am very clear that I'm not the first, and I certainly won't be the last to suggest that shame is because of secrets. Underneath shame, we have secrets, period. End of story. And what I mean by secrets are the parts of ourselves that we're afraid if the world found out, we'd be loved less or we would be rejected, or it's the part of ourselves that denies our very own truth about what we want, what we need, how we feel, and. And what we long for life to look like. So secrets, they're multilayered, just like shame is multilayered. But underneath shame, every single time, look for a secret or two or several that are contributing to that feeling of shame. What are your secrets? So for many years, I'll get vulnerable with you. There were so many secrets that I had that I was terrified I would get found out about. Whether it was how much I was drinking, I was bulimic, I was broke, I had piles of bills that I wouldn't even open. Whether it was when I was in my first marriage and the whole thing felt like we were playing house and I was really unhappy and I wasn't being treated well. And that was in my marriage, but also in how I was treating my myself. I wasn't being the person I could be proud of, but I was walking out that door every day, dressed, face on. We got this, but it was an act, and I didn't want to get found out. And I'll never forget a Christmas party. I was a school counseling Internet. I had gotten the dream internship. I was acing my master's degree in counseling 4.0, had the dream internship. I was running groups. I was effective in the meetings with administrators, in the sessions, one on one with students, in classroom presentations with the teachers. I was finally starting to see that maybe I had some talent here and maybe I did have an ability to make a difference. And it made me so happy and excited. But then I would come home, and life at home was not feeling how life at the internship felt. I was not a fraud, but I wasn't authentic. And what I was thinking at the time here was a secret I was carrying was that life at home was the truth. And life at this school where I was an intern was more like an exception versus the rule. But actually the opposite was true. Who I was being in my internship, that was me. Who I was being at home was me falling into shame and secrets and hoping no one would find out and going through the motions, powerless. And I didn't want anybody to know. So this Christmas party with all of my peers and colleagues and friends in this community that maybe was one of the first communities that I felt like ever really saw me. 25 years old, baby at home, I didn't see me yet. And these people, they saw something in me. And they gave me so many opportunities to find my voice and to be creative and to lead. But I still didn't see myself as a leader. So we are at this Christmas party, and without going into too many details, I was embarrassed beyond belief. My husband was there, had had too much to drink. We were playing the Newlywed Game, I think it was, or something like that. And there was literally a moment where the full moon came out. And I am literally. It was one of, at the time, probably my worst nightmare, but one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. To this day, I'm seeing what's about to happen. I'm seeing the full moon is about to come out, and I literally say no. And it's like slow motion. No. And I fall on the floor in front of all of these people and I look at my husband and I just want to get swallowed up and never show my face again. The divorce wasn't too long after that. But the secret about how I was living and how I was participating in this level of powerlessness. No, the truth can't be the truth. No, the truth can't actually get found out. No, I don't want anybody to see that this is my life. Curtain came up. There was nothing I could do about it. That was difficult to recover from at the time. The shame, the embarrassment, the horror, the secret. But it was also the beginning. When I finally did get divorced, it happened really fast. And the truth coming out is painful and embarrassing. And shame based as I was, it gave me access to support. When we are wanting our secrets to be hidden, they do keep us sick and they do keep us toxic. And they do take our ability to sleep well at night away from us because we are worrying and we are stressing and we don't want anybody to know. And I want you to think about what are the things from your past or your present that you just don't want anybody to know about it because it would be too painful. And I just want you to begin to think about the power that you get back when you neutralize those secrets. Meaning the secrets no longer have a hold on you. And I'm not saying that you need to broadcast every single secret you ever had publicly. Boundaries are important also when it comes to healing through shame. Meaning, you know, I just saw Pretty Woman, the musical, so let's use this metaphor. You say, when you say who, you say who gets to find out and what they get to find out about you and your past and your. What once were secrets that are just now truths that you share to connect, not to reinforce your pain, but to reinforce your freedom in your life. Right? But you say who, you say when. Right? But if you won't let anybody know about it, if you won't connect to someone outside of you about these secrets, whether it's a great coach, whether it's a mentor, whether it's a therapist, whether it is your boss at work, if you won't let people know the truth about who you are and where you've come from, the truths that still hurt you. And if it still hurt you, it's still harming you. If it hurts you, it's still harming you. And my definition of healing is once it's healed, it doesn't hurt anymore. And my point when it comes to secrets is get to the point where they don't hurt you anymore and then you're free. So again, you don't have to tell everybody, but at least find someone that you can unpack the pain of the secrets with so you can move forward in your life without these secrets being the forefront of your life. So because the truth had started to come out, I got divorced. 40 women showed up to my house. 40 women and some of their husbands or relationship partners. And we got me moved out of this five bedroom house into a little bitty apartment. I was unpacked, curtains were hung. One of my friend's husbands got me new tires for my car that, you know, were desperately needed. I was driving on bald tires. I didn't even know in four hours. And at one point, just a week or so before this move, I didn't want anybody to know about the truth of my life. I didn't want anybody to know that that marriage was violent. I didn't want anybody to know that I was walking around a shell of a person in my own home, going through the motions, just starting to. Just trying to survive. You know, it was an interesting Freudian slip. I almost said starting, you know, and what I think was happening at the time is I was starting to actually live, but it felt like I was dying. And I think evolving and growing your life, yourself through shame. It can feel like you're going to die, but you're not. Your ego's dying, your survival personality is dying. Who you thought you were and had to be to protect yourself from secrets coming out needs to die right for you to really live. So that's us. That's the first step to breaking the shame cycle, is addressing your secrets that are still keeping you sick and in shame and dying a slow spiritual death. And later, when I first started coaching, after I left school counseling and first started coaching, there were still secrets I didn't want people to know. In the very, very beginning, I was still bulimic. I was still drinking too much. I was still not really believing that I could handle all the truth about who I was or where I came from, let alone the world. I had secrets still. And I am not sure what the moment was, but there was a moment where I just decided what would life be like if there was nothing I was afraid could get found out about me? What if I just started to own it? What if I started to use my secrets that used to keep me in shame to my advantage, to better myself as a human, as a woman, as a leader, as a difference maker. Secrets can become part of your message in life, purpose, work, or at the very least, they can become a pathway to freedom because they no longer run your life. And again, you don't have to tell anybody you don't want to tell about your secrets, but at least work with a professional to start to unpack the pain in your secrets. So for the secret step, I would love for you to, when you have time and try to do this today, what are your top three secrets that haunt you, that keep you up at night that you wouldn't want the world to know about? Just write them down. And then part two is who would you be on the other side of no longer being afraid of these secrets getting found out? The second step, H. It's hopelessness. Okay. Hopelessness creates shame just like secrets create shame. And in our childhoods there's literal hopelessness because there's not much we can do about our parents choices, the environment we're living in, or what is happening day to day in our households. And so we can get resigned as children to believing that it's hopeless. It's a lost cause to Expect anything to be different. And we just survive. And we just become who we need to be to survive. We, our childhood, our family system, the environment. And this doesn't mean our parents are bad people or that they're even doing anything wrong. They're just doing their best based on how they were parented, right? And again, shame is a cycle that can be broken and it's also learned. Which means we are passing on what we were taught about shame to our own children or to the children in our lives, if we don't even have our own children, or to our co workers. We bring it with us everywhere we go and we lead in shame just being part of what the human experience is. And that doesn't have to be the case, but hopelessness will inevitably escalate the experience of shame. When we're hopeless, how do we cope? Shame. We snuggle up with it. We cuddle it. We let it comfort us. And this might sound counterintuitive or even nuts, but just think about it. My work is very much about bringing the unconscious to the conscious. So don't hear me suggesting that you've been doing any of this on purpose or that you've even been aware that it's happening. But I want you to think about when you've been hopeless, what has been present in terms of shame. And I want you to think about how shame has been a comfort, right? Because shame basically proves the hopelessness, right? That's why I'm saying it's a comfort. Shame proves hopelessness, right? Shame proves right that there is no hope, that there is no solution, that this is all there is for you, that this is the way it is, that you don't get to have nice things or you don't get to be happy, or you don't get to have a relationship where you're not cheated on, or the list goes on and on and on. You don't get the promotion, right? Hopelessness feeds shame, and then shame validates hopelessness, and then we're screwed. Do you see how this works? And the thing about childhood is, in a lot of ways, hopelessness wasn't a wrong place for your brain to go. Because there really wasn't a lot of hope that things would be different or people would change. But now you're an adult and you're a powerful, badass leader that has a difference to make in the world and that has a difference to make in your own life. So you can be free, fulfilled and happy, right? Like you deserve. You deserve to be so happy and all I believe happiness is you're free in the face of anything that happened, that is happening, that might happen. You're you fully, powerfully, volume turned up all the way on because what else is there to do except be all of who you choose to be? And when we talk about being all of who you are, it's just be all of who you choose to be. Right? And we didn't choose shame in our younger childhood years, but we can stop choosing shame now once we've woken up. Up to the fact that it's a coping skill and that it keeps us stuck and powerless in our pain and in our past. And that stuck pain and unhealed past inevitably bleeds into your future until it's healed and resolved and neutralized. And it can. All right, so if you've been hopeless, which we all have, I've been there too. When I left my first husband at a two year old daughter and I did not believe that I had the capability, ability or the capacity to support us or to take care of us. I didn't know what I was doing. I was scared to death. I was panic stricken and I was hopeless. And the way I got through it was I just kept putting one foot in front of the other, one step, then the next. I went as far as I could and I took another step and then another one. Thanks to coaching from Carol Reynolds, my first coach, she used to say, just go as far as you can and take one, one more step. And then know that if you have a vision for your life that inspires you, that is exciting to you, there's hope again because you're seeing what you want. And if all you can see is what you don't want, just write it down. What are the top three places in your life where you feel hopeless, that this trauma happened and there's no way to actually put it behind me. I'll just manage in spite of or there's no way that my relationship with my child can get better, or my relationship with my ex or with my spouse or with my mother, my father, my sister, my brother, my ex, best friend. Like where are you hopeless? Pick the top three. I'll never be able to get into an overflow when it comes to money where you're hopeless. Write down your top three hopeless areas of your life right now and beliefs right now. And then just next to it, right? Well, what would I want to be different? What would I want instead of this hopeless outcome? Because again, we're proving our hopelessness, right? Until we use shame to break through hopelessness. Ok, the third one. The third one is avoidance. I wanted to double check to make sure I was on the money with it because this is a doozy. This is a big one. We avoid the emotions we don't want to feel. We avoid the secrets and the hopelessness and the shame and the embarrassment. We avoid being the person it would take to create the breakthrough for ourselves. I firmly believe that each and every one of us, we are our own healer. And we can connect with healers to help us be our own healer. But we are the healer. You are the healer. My work in the practice of emotional healing is about helping people become their own healer and their most healed leader for their lives and for all the lives. Right. That they're going to touch. Right. So avoidance absolutely breeds shame. Avoiding self care, avoiding even taking the time to be still and know what our truth is. Avoidance of looking at where we're out of alignment with who we say we are and how we're actually living. Or where we're out of alignment in terms of the intentions we have and the actions that we're taking. We're going in different directions. Avoidance is huge. Avoiding making the hard leadership calls, avoiding having the hard conversations. Avoiding leaning in to what feels dark, threatening and daunting. And I'm going to tell you again, it might not sound like a good idea, that would actually be effective. But I want you to lean in to what feels dark and scary and turbulent so you can look and see what's there. So you can take the power back. And again, I'm not saying you have to deal with what you're avoiding with anybody that you're not comfortable facing the music with, but have someone in your life to support you in looking at where you're avoiding your own greatness, where you're avoiding creating a life beyond survival. Whatever avoidance looks like for you. So again, top three ways that you are in avoidance in your life. And what would life be like on the other side of avoidance if you weren't worried about getting found out? If you weren't worried about making things worse? Whatever it is in Pandora's box, it's already running the show and potentially ruining the experience of life that you long for because it leads to shame. And shame is optional. Just like suffering is optional. I had some really difficult conversations with my 17 year old just yesterday. In two weeks she leaves for three months to do a gap semester in South America. And we are talking about hard things on the way, feelings that we're both having about it, things that she needs from me things that I hope for her. What are we feeling? What are we needing? What are we wanting? How are we going to face this next season of our life and relationship together, where I'm not parenting a little child anymore or even a teenager in high school, she's graduated, she's her own person. She's going to make whatever decisions she's going to make whether I like it or not. So how do we navigate that? So just yesterday, because we didn't avoid having a really meaningful and heartfelt and, yes, in moments, difficult conversation, we got to talk about how we each want to be supported by the other one. What respect looks like, what love looks like for each of us, and what our vision is for how we want our relationship to go moving forward. Because it is quite literally the end of an era. Okay, so avoidance leads to more shame. And when we refuse to avoid and lean in to what feels dark, we get to shine our own light on it again. And we get to neutralize the pain and take our own power back. And that's always possible and we always have access to it. All right, The m in shame that I want us to look at that keeps shame going and strong is what I'm going to call meanness. We can be so mean to ourselves, and again, that breeds more shame and embarrassment and fear and frustration. And typically, when we're being mean to ourselves, whether it's how we're treating ourselves, how we're talking to ourselves, how we're neglecting ourselves, how we're abandoning and betraying ourselves, whatever it looks like, whatever your ways of being mean to you are, let's normalize that. Chances are you're doing to you what was done to you. And again, the point isn't to place blame or to make anybody wrong. It's just to kind of get to the bottom of what the hell is going on here. So that shame doesn't have to be a rule you live by. It can be there to show you, okay, wake up, get back on track with who you want to be, and not devastating or detrimental or derailing you anymore. But meanness is a big one. Mean breeds shame. And so it can look like you and how you're mean to you. It can look at thinking about what was mean and happening that was mean in your childhood that you're still playing out today. And it can also look like getting really honest with yourself about any. Any way that you're still living in an environment that is mean to you and not honoring, respecting, or taking care of You. Right. So if you've got, you know, co workers that say cruel things, children, you know, your spouse, friends, family members. If you're engaging in anything that's mean to you at this point in your adult life, I'm going to say something bold and I mean it with all my heart. And you take what you want and you leave the rest. But if you're engaging in mean, you're choosing it. You can hang up the phone, you can end a conversation, you can have boundaries, and you can be someone who's no longer willing to engage in anything that's mean to you. It takes courage, but it's possible. And it absolutely starts with you getting honest about where you're mean to you again. In your behaviors, in your actions, in your self talk. What are three ways that you know you're still mean to you? And what is the opposite behavior? Write it down. Mean doesn't serve you. Mean means you have to cope with. With using your shame as your ally and as your security blanket. And it will make life worse. And you don't deserve mean. And if you're attracting people that are still mean to you, it's because you're still mean to you. I can pretty much guarantee. And it doesn't mean they're bad people. They're treating you the way they treat themselves. And you can become someone who loves and honors and respects yourself enough to say, this feels mean. This isn't working for me. I just want to make you aware if I experience mean, I won't stick around. I'm not here for that. And that doesn't mean I'm cutting you out of my life. I'm just letting you know I used to be willing to engage in mean behavior under the guise of humor or just because it's the dance we're used to. I'm not willing to participate anymore. So the second something feels mean, I'm going to let you know this feels mean. So I'm going to take a break from this. You can be the person that courageously stands for mean, no longer being a part of your life that you are willing to dance with and participate in. Just like you're no longer willing to participate in dance with shame. And the more you catch mean in its tracks, whether it's coming from you with you, or someone else towards you, the more you neutralize shame and take your power back and the faster. All right, last one is emptiness. E. Emptiness. Okay, I want us to think about and get really honest now. About what areas of your life do you feel like are empty. It could be self care, it could be relationships, it could be health, it could be money, it could be anything. And you just have this sense of feeling drained and empty and unfulfilled. And I want to empower us to not just realize that where you're feeling empty, that leaves a lot of space for shame to breed, right? What we need something to fill the space. Empty often gets filled with the space of shame. And it can happen when you've got a dream and you're just, you're just not taking action and you don't know why. And so shame fills up the space that you taking action towards your dream could be taking up whatever it is for you. It's different for all of us. But no one is immune to at least at some point in their lives, feeling empty. And I want us to become the source of our own encouragement that fills that, that void instead of with shame, with our passion and our commitment and our conviction to the life that we're building. And again, how many nights when you were growing up did you go to sleep feeling empty, having shame and having no place for any of it to go? And how often is that still happening in your day to day life now as an adult? And what if it's just again, a coping skill and a habit and what you're used to, but that can change, right? So where do you feel empty, top three places you feel empty. And how are you going to be the person that encourages and empowers yourself with hope, with courage, and with commitment to taking action instead of just sitting there hoping that these areas of your life where you feel empty start to resolve themselves on their own. Shame is a big deal. Shame kills our spirits. Shame has us misunderstood. Shame has us afraid to be vulnerable and willing to tell the truth about who we are, what we want, how we feel and what's important to us. And I want us to be willing to risk letting shame be a season of life that's behind us. What will happen when you take on shame? Because you take your power back and you take on how powerful you really are, recognizing you have always been more powerful than shame. Shame has never been more powerful than you. When you walk that walk. I'm more powerful than shame. Shame doesn't have power over me. Shame is giving me access and an opportunity to heal more of my past and how I've coped with the pain of my past. So I don't keep coping using shame. When you begin to get there. Talk about unstoppable, but also I recognize the risk. There's a risk in taking your power back and no longer letting shame keep you smaller. Dimming your light, dimming yourself down because of your fear of what other people think. You will get access to the truth about what people think and who is really aligned with who you are now and the life you want now. But I think that's good news. And in my experience, most of my relationships reinvent. They might look different, but I don't lose very many people. The more I stay in my power and stand in my power. And the ones that I have lost, I keep my heart open, I wish them well, and I recognize that our paths have changed. And now let's talk about vulnerability, right? Brene Brown talks a lot about this, how shame and vulnerability go hand in hand. But vulnerability just says, I am unwilling to not stand in my power and not stand in my truth. I refuse to be someone who isn't standing in my power in my truth. I stand in my power and my truth, and I risk being misunderstood, rejected, left, criticized, judged, whatever it might be, because I didn't abandon me. When you're vulnerable, that means you're not abandoning you. And when you won't abandon you, you won't experience shame the way you have been or the way you're used to or the way you fear will continue. You're more powerful than shame. And you have what it takes to tell the truth about who you are, what you want, what you feel, and what you need. And you have the power to get your needs met with the right people that are meant to be on your path now, recognizing that those that might not align anymore aren't bad. It's just different paths. I used to be very attached to everybody I ever loved staying on the same path with me. And then, thanks to my coach, Stefan, in a session one day, he's like, so really, everybody needs to be on your path. Everybody is supposed to be on your path. Their path must be the same as yours. And I was like, well, that sounds terrible. And, no, that is not what I want. And it just gave me such a sense of peace and relief to recognize that my path gets to evolve and change. Other people's paths get to evolve and change. And then we will see where and when our paths align. But when we refuse to live in shame, when we refuse to abandon ourselves, we are never alone again. I hope today's episode brought you some comfort, understanding that underneath shame, we have secrets, hopelessness. We have avoidance, meanness, and emptiness. And it doesn't have to be that way and the way out of shame is to take your power back and to nip in the bud right here, right now, all the secrets you don't want to deal with, all the ways that you avoid, all the ways that you're hopeless, all the ways that you're mean and all of the places that you feel empty. You decide to fill yourself back up. You have what it takes. I am here to support you. And if you want a crash course in getting through all of this quickly, go immediately and sign up for the free Trauma and Trigger Release Masterclass on rebeccasilence.com Take the Emotional Survival Kit course which in less than 3 hours I guarantee will give you your life back. Or if you want the ultimate, come and live with me for three days. We have one retreat left where you live with me, I feed you. We nurture the greatness in ourselves and each other and you experience the Emotional Survival curriculum so that you have access to your full on power and the difference that you are destined to make for the rest of your life. If you're interested in one of the final spots for the retreat, reach out right away, but choose at least one of these three options or find someone that feels like the right support that resonates for you to support. Start taking on your shame so it's no longer a rule you live by or something that you're just used to. Thank you for watching today's episode. The Healing is Possible experience is meant and here to take you on a journey of hope and healing. It is brought to you by my gorgeous team@rebeccasilence.com I love you. Thanks again for being here. If you don't want to live the way you've been living, it's time to start again and let's start new and fresh when it comes to our shame. Because the darkness is real, but so is the light. And healing is possible for you, for me and for all of us. I love you so much. See you soon.