Ep. 32: Spring Cleaning your Brain

On episode 32, I am going to talk with you about a very misunderstood emotion, shame. It's an emotion that calls out when there is something inside of you that needs some spring cleaning. 

It's an emotion I see stopping so many of my clients from living their best lives and having the personal growth & expansion they desire. Not only do they avoid it...but they don't even want to talk about it!

So please listen to this podcast - it's actually very inspiring & empowering! This is one of the secret ingredients to getting what you desire. 

There are actually 2 different types of shame: authentic shame & false shame. It's the false shame that stops so many people from making the changes they want in their lives. 

Knowing how to tell the difference between authentic shame & false shame is critical and is something I help my clients with so they can get aligned with their highest self and live a life that feels good. 

Shame is like a flashlight helping us clean out the shadowy parts in us, that need to be cleaned up, to get back into our highest aligned self so we can accomplish what we want in this life. Understanding your shame helps bring light to so you can clean out the repetitive patterns if your life  that are not serving you. 

On this episode you will learn:

• What is guilt vs shame
• What authentic shame and false shame and how to tell the difference
• Why shame helps us shine a light on what inside of us needs to be healed

Follow me on Instagram @katweissner and check out my website at www.klwcoaching.com

By listening to this podcast you agree to the following Disclaimer: https://klwcoaching.com/disclaimer/

The Wildly Confident Podcast, LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of KLW Coaching, LLC, all rights reserved. 

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:49

Hey, super excited. You're here this week. We're going to be talking about something. I often see as an obstacle in my client's life, sometimes in my personal life. And it's also something that is really, really misunderstood and not harnessed for the incredible power that's in it. And so without further ado this week, we are going to be talking about the idea of guilt and the feeling of shame don't get off the podcast. Okay. I know last week I talked about death and if you didn't listen to it, everyone said it was super upbeat and it was isn't it all, but they thought it was gonna be. So please go listen to it. It's super uplifting and freeing. And this podcast is the same thing. I'm going to help you understand how to use guilt and shame in your life to get the life you want. I'm also gonna be chatting with you about why guilt and shame can be common pitfalls or obstacles for people in their paths. So, first I wanna chat with you about some definitions of guilt and shame. I don't necessarily like to use the term guilt you can, because I mean, I think the term guilt automatically imply is like some sort of wrongdoing. And, and I like to actually use the term true or false. It's a lot more neutral and a lot less loaded in our culture. So to me, guilt, or if something's true or false, right? Maybe you wanna say innocence or guilt true or false. That is just a, is a factual thing in your life. Guilt is not necessarily an emotion. It's really just a question to ask yourself when you are feeling that emotion of shame. So the emotion of shame is most commonly associated with like an, an internal anger at ourselves. Shame arises within us, within yourself when a boundary and another word for boundary is like a value of yours has been broken by you. The value's been broken inside of you by something you have done wrong, okay? Quote, unquote, wrong. Something that you feel is true that you did, or that you are guilty of or something you think you have done wrong doesn't necessarily mean that everyone would agree that you did something wrong, but you could, you could just think you did. And that is causing a state of internal judgment. It's like, there's something wrong. This doesn't feel good. I don't like myself. When I'm like this, there there's like a, an internal judgment to it. And what's important to know about shame. And the way that I view shame is it falls into two categories. More or less in this culture we live in. There is something that I call authentic shame, and this is shame. That's in alignment with our values, with our higher self. Um, when we're in integrity, this is the shame that's in alignment with who we are at our core and our essence. And then there's something I call inauthentic shame or false shame. This is manufactured shame from culture that is not there serve you. Authentic shame actually serves you and is super empowering. And I'm gonna tell you why in a moment, but false shame is created by something external to us. And basically we are trained into it, right? It's not that the core essence of who we are. It is an external force coming in through a broken boundary. Typically when we're children and telling us how we should or shouldn't be false shame usually has things like should involved with it, right? I should do this. If I wanna be good, I should do this. If I wanna be loved, I do this. If I wanna be good enough, it's, it's based on a concept, typically that there's something wrong with you, that you are not good enough. And in order to be good enough to be successful, to be lovable, you have to be a certain way. And when you're not that way, you judge yourself. I don't know if you have ever experienced this, but I can tell you I have experienced it in my life. A lot of child rearing practices in the United States are shame based. A lot of the stuff we learn in school is shame based. I mean, shame based, false shame based. That's what I'm trying to say is false shame and based. It's based on using false shame to try to control people into certain behaviors. And it's, it's basically saying, this is the way you need to behave. And it's rejecting your authentic built in compass. Your authentic integrity that already knows already has values at the core of you that are authentic to you. So false shame provides a lot of confusion and can keep you stuck and actually caught in a cycle of thoughts and stops you from taking action. I always tell people, you're probably in false shame. If you're stuck in a cycle, you can't get out of it. A cycle of self-judgment of deprivation of saying mean things to yourself, right? Being unkind to yourself, judging your body, judging how clean your house is judging, how you're showing up at work. Are you perfect? Are you not perfect judging how you are with your kids, any of this stuff, the ideas about how you're supposed to be, if you feel really crappy about it and stuck in this cycle, that's probably because those ideas aren't coming from inside of you, they're coming from something outside of you that was implanted or given to you, woven into you through culture to try to control you to be a certain way. And so one of the things I help my clients with is starting to recognize what is authentic shame versus false shame and how amazing and what a great teacher authentic shame can be. And the flip side, how unhelpful false shame can be and how we, we still wanna treat it with loving kindness and compassion, right? Because we're feeling those things and we wanna love ourselves, right? We wanna, we wanna treat that part of us that you know, is shoulding ourselves in order to feel lovable, but we also want to start to recognize and become aware of cuz awareness is always the first step to healing and changing that that is not authentically who we are and start to question some of those false shame models that have been built in society that I think are meant to keep people playing small, trying to control people, giving people less, less freedom, and start to recognize that that stuff is holding us back and is not helpful to our own growth, not helpful to getting the results we want in our life. Not helpful to, to living our expansive, you know, full freedom life, where we're being able to really share our gifts authentically and connected with people. This is why it's so helpful to start the, that differentiate between the two of these things. So the first thing you wanna do, if you're in a situation where you're feeling shame, and you're like, ah, you know, is this authentic or false shame is I want you to check in with your values, with your integrity, with your moral code and see if it is coming from who you are as a person. And it's something that really matters to your value system, or it's something that you don't really care that much about. It's actually coming from a place of lack. For example, for me, some of my values are respect for other people, integrity, honesty, connection, communication, empathy, okay. These are things that are natural alignment to my authentic self things that are not in alignment with my authentic self. These are false shame items. And that I have been caught in, in the past dealing with not feeling good enough perfectionism, fear of making the wrong decision, judging my body, judging who I am. I remember one like not once<laugh> I remember being told many, many a times from men that I worked with on and off for just men in life that I'm too opinionated that I need to learn how to be quieter. That I'm, I am too aggressive or assertive was a popular term. I used to get a lot assertive too, too, too opinionated in general. And I would just feel so much shame around that. I used to feel like, oh, well, I should do do that. If I want people to like me, right, I should be quieter. So I was actually going against my own value of being authentic in order to feel like people liked me. Like I was good enough. So it was showing me when I started sitting with this and being like, Hey, actually we, one of my major values is people having freedom of speech, people being entitled to being authentic. And I had taken on a bunch of false shame around this. And in turn, I was making myself smaller, silencing myself, right? Anyone ever been there before? Doesn't feel very good. You feel crappy inside. You almost feel like frozen and stuck up side. And so by being able to notice like that was false shame that wasn't anything to do with my core values. My core values are all about self love and authenticity and good communication and respecting other people and respecting myself that, uh, I was able to shine a light on that and start to heal that part of me that didn't feel good enough that needed other people's approval. That somehow didn't have good boundaries there. Like my boundaries were enmeshed my own concept. If I was lovable or not was enmeshed with what other people thought about me and those people were no better than me and their judgements. They're just human beings. We give so much power away to other people who they're not gods. They're not experts. They're not smarter than us. We're all equal. And if we're all equal and you have an own your own internal guidance system inside of you, you always know the most about you and you always know what's best for you. So all this did was, you know, by identifying my false shame in this situation, it allowed me to shine a light on why I was having false shame. It allowed me to have compassion and kindness towards myself and that false shame inside of me. Right? I wasn't, I was a little angry about it, right? Angry that this is the way that, you know, I think society works often in terms of, you know, raising children. There's not great boundaries. And there's also a lot of false shame in order to get certain behaviors from people. So there was a mourn and grief and anger around that, for sure, during part of my life. But also there was like, aha, I'm so grateful. I learned this about myself and now I know that that is part of my shadow. And I need to start finding a way to have better boundaries with people and know that, Hey, those people are entitled to their opinions. Totally fine. But that means nothing about me. They think I have too much to say, they think I'm too opinionated, right? That's where the concept of guilt is really helpful. We ask ourselves are, if someone says that to me, Catherine, you're too opinionated, is it true? Is what I'd ask myself now. Right? I'd say, is it true? And the answer right now is no, for me, I'm not too opinionated. That is their opinion. And I'm gonna let them keep it. And I'm not gonna make it mean anything about me. And it's totally fine to have that opinion, but I'm not going, I don't, my boundaries are strong here and I'm not gonna let that into my boundary. And at the same time, I can have compassion for them. And I can have compassion for myself at the lost connection here that somehow they're not seeing me and my fullness, I can be there with that. So that's one example from my life of how I've dealt with false shame. And I have turned it around to be something beautiful for me. And authentic shame is like double yummy. Like<laugh>, if you like all the things you can learn from understanding your false shame and all like the beautiful healing and growth you can have and stopping patterns in your life. Like I think a lot of patterns, your painful patterns, we repeat in our life. We can start to understand them by looking at where we, where we feel shame in our life and trying to figure out is it false shame or authentic shame and what needs to be healed? Because unlike false shame, that kind of keeps you stuck and confused. And like, cuz you're like, you're like in a house of mirrors, you're like, I don't get it. Like it does not an alignment with your true self. It's an alignment with some outside cultural construct. It can be really confusing to find your way out of false shame. And that's why I'm giving you some of these tools. So authentic shame what's so, so cool about authentic shame is again, it teaches us how to be our best selves. It really is an alignment with who we to be when something happens where you feel authentic shame, you will want to fix it immediately and take responsibility for it. And it's actually a pretty empowering process because it's really in alignment with your highest self, with your true self. So let me give you an example from this, um, a few ago, my son was talking to me and I was also on my cell phone at the same time. Imagine that<laugh> parents being on cell phones, people trying to do two things at once<laugh> anyway, um, I laugh because I think humor is such a great way to have compassion for yourself. I think the, the more we can kind of see humor in this stuff and recognize that in that moment I was doing the best I could. Right? Just like in this moment, I'm doing the best I could and I can laugh about it. Cuz that's part of who I'm part of a bigger thing than just one little perfect piece of me. I am, as one of my teachers would say all the 88 keys in a piano, I play all the keys. Some days I play over here. Some days I play all the play, everything. Some sometimes I'm down, you know, in this lower range, but we are, we are all of the 88 keys. And I, and I, I think sometimes when we're in, in false shame a lot where we're shrinking ourselves down, we're, we're playing less keys, we're less expanded. And one of my goals in life is to be in that authentic place of living, which means also connecting more into my authentic shame and expanding out to all of my fabulous keys, right? And some days I'm playing sad songs. Some days I'm playing happy songs that is all part of life. All the emotions are part of life. And that's what makes gives life its depth. And it gives you all the highs and lows, which make living so, so, so beautiful. So back to when you feel the story with my song in that moment, he's like, mom, you're not really listening to me. And I was like, uh, it was a gut punch. I was like, he called me out. I asked myself, am I guilty of not really listening? Is it true? And I was like, yes, that is true. I can feel that being true in my body. It's also true that I'm out of alignment with one of my core values by being on my phone and trying to listen to my son at the same time, which is heartfelt connection, good listening, true deep listening, really important values for me. So I immediately rectified it. I immediately was like put down my phone and I recognized like I need, I thought I was better around my phone, a with my kids being around and I have come a long ways, but I still have work to do. I'm still operating a little sub unconscious here with my phone and I need to start to question, why am I doing that? What is the shadow? The shadow part of me, the part that wants to be healed that needs to be on her phone or needs to be doing two things at once.<laugh> it's interesting question. Right. And I wouldn't have been able to even question that if this hadn't come up so authentic shame, I'm like, yes, I am out of alignment with my values. And it's so easy. I don't get stuck in spin cycle. I'm not like, ah, what to do. You know, I hate myself if I'm a bad person. No, no, none of that. It's out of alignment with who I am. I can apologize to him and then I can start to think, what do I need to do now to not do this again? One and two. Why, what is the shadow here? What is this? I need to be doing two things at once. What is that connected to? What is that shadow in me? The, that wants more light on it. That wants to be healed. And for me, this really tied back to when I thought about it was the, the hurry sickness. I talked about a few episodes back and thinking about, yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm still in recovery from hurry sickness. I still struggle from it. And this is a perfect example of hurry sickness. This, this idea that like I have to constantly be achieving in order to feel worthy, to feel good enough, right. To be part of this culture and that's tied to a false value. So I was able also to identify the SHA that wanted to be brought outta the light. And I was able to connect in with the authentic shame in me. So I could immediately take responsibility for it and get curious around why it's happening. I'm not stuck in it. I'm just really interested. And on a side note with this conversation with my son, I also wanna present another way. This could have gone. If I had some false shame am still around not being a good enough mom. So in that interaction, if my son had said to me like, Hey, you're not listening mom. And what came up for me first was false shame about not being a good enough mom. I might have gotten defensive about it. I would have instead of wanting to repair and take full responsibility and look change, I might have gotten stuck in spin cycle around it of self-judgment like, why do I keep doing this? I'm such a failure as a mom, like what's wrong with me? So the first thing that needs to be handled in those sort situations where you're spinning out on fall shame, and you can't even connect in with the authentic shame to immediately repair and take responsibility and make a meaning and full change is to start to heal again, the false shame of not feeling good enough, not being a good enough mom having kindness and compassion for yourself. Where does that come from? Is it true that you're not a good enough mom really? Is it true or is it true? You're always doing the best you can in any given moment. And you need to give yourself some kindness or compassion. What does it even mean to be a good mom? Can you write out a list and can you take a look at it? Because once we start to do things like that, we start to take the, bring the light to the shadow and we start to, to see the truth, our truth, and we get to get reconnected in with ourselves. Super powerful. So something I like to say about shame is you can't use false shame on a person that loves and knows themselves. So you can't get into someone's boundaries with false shame, right? False shame cannot come into a person who really loves themselves and knows themselves, knows what matters, loves what loves themselves knows kind the practices of a kindness and compassion. And again, that's maybe a perfectionist fantasy there because I think we're, we're all gonna probably struggle from time to time with false shame. And that might just be something that's, you know, continues to be a growing tool for us. But what I like up about bracing shame a little bit more and understanding how to use guilt, guilt more as a question like, is this true to me? Am I really guilty? Am I not guilty? Or is this their stuff right? Where is the boundary here? Is this about them? And they're projecting things on me or is this actually true to me? Okay. Yeah, I am guilty. Yeah. That's true. Now, what do I wanna do about it? What do I, how do I wanna change? How do I wanna make amends and repair? And then how do I wanna change? And what is in this for me? What do I need to learn in my life to get more in alignment and more in integrity, be with my own personal moral code and higher self. Woo gosh, it's such powerful. Our emotions are so incredibly powerful. They have so many gifts in them for us. And I just wanna say, I'm so grateful for the concept of guilt and for the emotion of shame right now. And even when it's false shame, that doesn't feel too good. If we can start to become aware of it and stay curious with it and see what's there for us to learn in it, we can free ourselves from some of those patterns. So this is a great way. When you get more in touch with your shame and understanding it to free yourself from painful patterns that you might be repeating in your life that you might be like, why is this happening to me? I wish should, could just go away or I wanna get this result, but I can't, you know, and, and you get stuck shame, especially false shame just kind of stops us. So just start to get curious, have compassion. Is it true that this is for you? Is it, is it true or is it not to do with you? And one other thing I wanna bring up for people who are, are still confused about how to figure out foster, authentic shame. I tell my clients to look at nature. I say, if you're not sure if this shame is yours or it's cultural shame, look to nature, does that shame exist in nature? Does nature have to be perfect all the time? Does nature have like a perfectly clean house? Does nature have to everything right? All the time. Everything have to be a quality work. No. Do things in nature have to behave a certain way to be good enough. No, that's how I know it's false. So if you're ever confused about this and you can't really tap into your authentic, you know, your aligned guidance, look to nature, play around with it. Journal have fun. I'm so grateful you showed up today. I hope this is a super helpful podcast for you. And I'm gonna end on a beautiful, beautiful quote. The quote is from F Scott Fitzgerald for what it's worth. It's never too late or in my case too early to be whoever you want to be. There's no time limit start whenever you want. You can change or stay the same. There are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you've never felt before. I hope you meet people who have a different point of, of you. I hope you live a life you're proud of. And if you're not, I hope you have the courage to start over again.