Tim Arrigo argues that empathy is the antidote to shame. When you're vulnerable with the right people, their empathy dissolves the shame you've been carrying. Stop dragging your past forward.
I used to carry around so much toxic shame for the things that I had done and the things that I had been through in my life and experienced. And one of those powerful things that I ever learned was the relationship between shame and empathy. See, where there is empathy, shame struggles to exist. Shame and empathy are like oil and water. They have a hard time existing at the same place at the same time. See, if I'm shameful about something and I open up with about it, with somebody else, right? And I get vulnerable with them because vulnerability is the portal to true healing. If I get vulnerable with them and they offer me empathy, which is emotional understanding, right? The shame that I feel in relationship to what I've been through or what I've done is significantly reduced by the empathy, the emotional understanding that that person offers me. So they tell me, hey man, I've been through that too. Or, you know, I can really relate to what you're going through because Right? What's most personal is what's most relatable. So, so many of you guys, you don't do this. You don't get vulnerable. You never experienced the benefit of experiencing true empathy from another person because you've gotten vulnerable with the wrong people. Right? And so you learned, right, that vulnerability has become a liability instead of an asset in your life. And so you don't get open with people. Guys, you can't keep dragging the ball and chain of your past into your future. Right? You determine your release date from your emotional incarceration, and true emotional freedom is on the other side of vulnerability with the right people. Guys, stop dragging the ball and chain of your past into your future, or your familiar past will become a predictable future.
