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Sacred by Design
We’re diving deep into topics like desire, sexual integrity, relational healing, and so much more. Get ready for honest, safe conversations with women, about women. Together let's do the important work of connecting your sexual struggle to your story to God. Your sexuality is, in fact, Sacred by Design
Sacred by Design
Shame, Betrayal, And Becoming Real Sized w/ Cat Etherington
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If betrayal made you feel small, doubtful, or invisible, this conversation offers language, tools, and hope. We sit down with Kat Etherington, Director for Recovery at the Naked Truth Project, to unpack what shame actually is, why it often predates a relationship crisis, and how to begin healing without rushing yourself into more pain. Kat brings rare clarity from both sides of the work—as a betrayed partner and as someone in long-term recovery from addiction—showing how shame can be both a sudden feeling and a deep identity wound formed in early attachment.
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Resources from this episode:
Support for Users - Naked Truth Project
Support for Partners and Spouses - Naked Truth Project
Restored2More Marriage Recovery Group
Contact us today: If you have a question, comment, or need help, email us at info@regenerationministries.org
Free Resources for you!
👉Women 21-Day Prayer Journal & Devotional - (Women overcoming unwanted sexual Behavior)
👉Compass 21-Day Prayer Journal & Devotional - (Wives who are or have been impacted by partner betrayal)
Welcome And Guest Introduction
SPEAKER_03Here we go. Uh as if the new table was not enough. We've expanded and reached across the pond and invited Kat Etherington to join us today. Kat, thank you so much for joining us on Sacred by Design.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm pleased to be here.
SPEAKER_03The Naked Truth Project. It sounds from if you go to the website right away, you know that Regen and um the Naked Truth Project carry so much of the same um so much of the same hopes and healing programs. And so it is um awesome to just join forces. Um what I have loved about hearing some of your story, which I know we can go into, is that you bring the story today as a woman, as a wife, and as a wounded healer. Um and so I'm really grateful to have your voice and your face here with us today. So special. So where do we want to begin?
SPEAKER_04Why don't we find out just about Kat? Let her some of our listeners might not be familiar with you. So let's let's find out a little bit about you.
Recovery Work And Personal Background
SPEAKER_00Yeah, gosh, there's a lot that I could say in response to an invitation to talk about myself, but um, I guess I'll introduce myself professionally first. Um, so I am the director for recovery with Naked Truth Project. Um and for those people who don't know Naked Truth, we are a UK-based non-profit organization, and our aim is to open eyes and free lives from the damaging impacts of pornography, um, brackets and other problematic sexual behaviors, but that doesn't fit on the website so easily. And um, and we do that work really in those two parts. We open eyes, which is our education and awareness piece. Um, and so we have teams of people speaking to children at school about um the issues of pornography, sexualization in culture and internet safety. We do a lot of work with churches, with parents, with young people, really just beginning to educate and raise awareness around these issues. Um and then the work that I do is in our open eyes space, which is recovery. Um, and so we work with men and women um impacted by problematic sexual behavior, whether that's their own or someone around them that is struggling. Um, so we work with couples as well as um strugglers and betrayed. Um, and I come to this work from my own experience as a betrayed partner, but also as a person who has navigated addiction and recovery in my own life. Um, and so maybe there's more to say about that, but that's kind of my starting place for who I am.
SPEAKER_02Busy, busy, busy. Yeah, yes. And I know Kat a little bit just through Appsats, and she has a an amazing voice there as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, thank you. I um I'm glad that you mentioned Appsats because I should say that I um am very heavily involved with AppSats. I sit on their board of directors um and I co-deliver their clinical training as well. So I'm kind of right in the middle of the bed with AppSats as well.
SPEAKER_02Well, thank you for all that you do and are doing.
SPEAKER_03Oh, we have we talk a lot here about, especially for women who've been betrayed, about um the earthquake that Barbara Stefan Barbara Stephens has laid out for us. And in those three stages of recovery, of safety and stabilization, if that's where the earthquake comes in, and then remembering and mourning and reconnecting.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
Where Shame Begins
SPEAKER_03Where does the the shame begin?
Addiction History And Shame’s Thread
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, that's a really interesting question because I want to say it begins before any of those stages of healing, at least for some of us. Um, and so I I like talking about shame because it's been such a huge part of my own story. Um, and as I've reflected on my journey of addiction and recovery, which came first, and then my experience of chronic betrayal um and trauma healing, what I've come to understand is that shame has really been a central component throughout that entire story. Um, and so as a person in recovery from addiction, I had an addiction to heroin between the ages of 16 and 26. I did a decade in addiction, um, which was pretty serious addiction and impacted my life in some pretty serious ways. Um, and then some years into my recovery, I had my betrayal experience. Um, and the common thread through both of those experiences was shame. Um, and it showed up differently in each of those processes, but it showed up centrally in each of those processes.
SPEAKER_02Well, thank you for sharing both stories with us. And we are really looking forward to hearing your wealth of growth and I'm sure a lot of sorrow mixed in for the betrayed woman and that thread of shame.
SPEAKER_03Does it show up in a distinctive way for her?
Stay Or Leave And Spiritual Pressure
Feeling Shame Vs Identity Shame
SPEAKER_00Versus Yeah, I think with betrayal, there is a sort of an experience of shame that's almost universal, in as much as the central message of betrayal within your most um important relationship is going to be some kind of message about your enoughness as a wife, as a partner, as a woman. Um, because inevitably, when you are in a relationship with someone who seeks out others, there is an inherent sense of if I were enough, that would not be happening. Um, and so I think that level of shame is somewhat universal for betrayal. Um, the other place that I think shame shows up somewhat universally for betrayed people, women or men, um, is the shame if I stay and the shame if I don't. Um and the pressure around what's the right way, especially within the Christian community, what's the Christian way, the godly way to show up in the aftermath of this experience. But if you've lived chronic betrayal, you know that you don't have all the choice about how you show up in the aftermath because it's so out of control and your emotional responses are so big and uncontainable that actually we don't get a lot of choice, at least in the very early stages, about how that expresses itself, right? And so I see a lot of shame um both in um whether I stay and how I'm messily trying to stay well, or if I choose to leave and how messy, messily that plays out. So there's like this universal starting point of shame, this reactive shame. Um, my experience was I also had something else going on, which was this deeper held kind of identity of shame, which had been the driving force for my addiction and which I'd kind of received some level of uh freedom and healing from, but which was poked in all these kind of dramatic ways with the subsequent betrayal experience. So, like what was left of that shame was compounded, confirmed, and um kicked around by the experience of betrayal.
SPEAKER_04Wow. So, what then, how would you compare that, the shame of betrayal to the shame of addiction?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, very different and yet very similar in some ways. Um I sometimes try to differentiate what I call the feeling of shame, um, which is that, like, ah, that thing just happened and I feel exposed, or I feel judged, or I feel um, you know, kind of uh acutely aware of my shamefulness from the identity of shame. So I'm talking about like every betrayed partner is gonna feel the feeling of shame. Um, but some of us also have this identity of shame. Some people have called that a shame call, or like um the, you know, this idea that there's something more central to our identity. Um, and so for those of us who have that identity shame, that deeper shame, that shame that comes from a difficult childhood, that shame that tells us that fundamentally at our core we are unacceptable, unlovable. Um, the betrayal experience is gonna really kind of dovetail into that in a in a distinctive way. Um, and it's really, really painful.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, my heart feels like lead right now. Um just oh yeah, sorry. So heavy topic. It is, it's so heavy.
Not Enoughness And Culture’s Messages
SPEAKER_02How would you um you know, where would we like to go today in particular, right? For the woman that has, you know, both the identity crisis too, along, you know, with the deeper shame. Um in particular for women who are just that I'm not enough. Maybe we could just talk about that piece and that that shame script and that shame spiraling and um yeah, yeah.
How Shame Shows Up Day To Day
SPEAKER_00And it strikes me as you say that that shame and blame kind of go right side by side, right? Because when something bad happens in the world, it's our human nature to try to make sense of that. So we try to assign a story to that that somehow explains how that could have happened. Um, and often what we find in that sense-making process is uh both an a desire for and a need for psychological safety. So we try to assign a story that somehow makes us feel even like this much, this tiny little bit safer in the world. And so when we start to bring that story inwards, um, that's usually about safety. Because if I did something or I was something that made that bad thing happen, then maybe I can change something about me. Um, and that could prevent that from happening again, which is a slightly more powerful place to be than there's nothing I can do that can ever stop that from happening again, right? That's a that's a really scary place. Um, so it's often about psychological safety, but it's also about the lies that we're carrying about ourselves already. And like, gosh, when I think about the number of women, and we know that betrayal relationships disproportionately happen to women. Um, women growing up in our culture and society are already carrying so much woundedness around their identity, right? We're already carrying so much not enoughness with us that betrayal feels like it confirms the beliefs that we might already be holding around that stuff for ourselves. Um, and that's how shame works, right? Shame has to be shame is a message from outside that has to connect with a belief inside in order for it to feel true. Um, and so I guess that's the work of healing is to begin to question some of those untruths that we are carrying about ourselves.
SPEAKER_04So, Kat, how what does that look like? Excuse me, day to day for a person who is filled with shame, carrying the shame, how might that play out in some of the relationships they have, in the way they just kind of move through the world?
Shame Containment Theory Explained
Recontainment And Coping Patterns
SPEAKER_00Well, and so that depends on whether we're talking about the acute feeling state of shame or whether we're talking about the identity of shame, because um, people do a number of things to try to manage shame. Um, so um you and I talked a lot, Kyle, about shame containment theory, which I think packages shame in a really helpful way. Um, so my colleague here in the UK, her name's Lisa Etherson, she did some research around shame um and she presented this idea of shame containment theory. And so she says that for those people who have this kind of shame core, she calls that contained shame. So, like, imagine that like I'm walking around and I have this kind of container of shame. Um, and I will have through my life created mechanisms that help me keep that contained. Um, and most often, especially for women, that's gonna look like things like people pleasing. It's gonna look like things like perfectionism, it's gonna look like being good and quiet and nice and not rocking the boat. Um, and often shame containment strategies have a component of dishonesty, not necessarily overt dishonesty, like I'm a dishonest person, but more like withholding of truthfulness. Like I just don't fully tell the truth about what I think, about what I feel, about who I am in the world. And I certainly identify with all of those defense mechanisms growing up. Um, and so if we've got negative experiences in childhood of kind of it not being okay to be who we are, of disapproval, of um kind of that low level, your emotions aren't welcome here, your opinions aren't welcome here. We might develop these adaptive mechanisms to just to get by in our families, right? And to make it okay. And so we might already have that stuff on board. And then betrayal happens and it like smashes through all of our defenses, and all of this shame becomes uncontained because now everybody can see that I'm not enough, is how we experience it. Then we will need like a secondary set of strategies, which are designed to suck to get that back in the box, right? To put it away so that nobody knows. Um, and those shame recontainment strategies is how she talks about them. And um, those tend to have a slightly more kind of frantic or desperate nature to them because the feeling of uncontained shame is so um, I don't even know what the right word is, excruciating, I think is the word that she uses in the research. Like to be exposed in that way is so excruciating that we have to do something. Um, and so for women, and I this is a very gender-based generalization, but women, we tend to be nice. We tend to smooth things over, we tend to make everything okay, we tend to take care of everybody else as a way to manage our own shame. Because if we can just calm it down out here, maybe we won't look like we're not enough, right? Um, sometimes that will look more um uh, I don't know what the right word is. Um, it will look less smooth than that, right? Like so um when you think about people with addictions, some of the shame containment and recontainment strategies that you'll see them use, that's that stuff that looks like defensiveness, it looks like aggression, it looks like gaslighting, it looks like trying to subdue the threat externally. So it will either be that we'll do something internally or we'll do something externally. Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_02Yes, and thank you so much. Um you know, K, how it um what what place, you know, with if a woman's listening today and she's you know, maybe just been betrayed or it's just been a few months, the shame work that you're really beautifully unfolding for us is um you know, when when does when does this um become you know, being able to get to, you know, the earthquake has just happened or someone is just in a few months of learning of betrayal, but yet this is all still there as well. In a healing journey, when do you uh begin that?
When To Start Shame Work
Groups And The Role Of Compassion
SPEAKER_00Yeah, shame work, shame work is long-term work. Um if you have that shame identity, if you have that contained shame, um, actually the truth is it's not the shame you're normally working with, it's the attachment wounds from experiences in relationships, and it might be all the way back to childhood. And so you're actually not necessarily trying to heal shame so much as you're trying to heal and understand those attachment wounds that have yielded the shame in the first place. And so that's long-term work, and it's definitely not for betrayed partners, even close to the very beginning work, right? The beginning work is safety and stabilization. It's dealing with the drama and the chaos that's unfolding in the relationship right now. Um, but that kind of feeling state of shame is gonna be present, right? That not enoughness, that feeling terrible about myself, that um self kind of uh judgment, all of that stuff is gonna be really present even in those early stages. And one of the most important things I think that we can do for betrayed partners is get them into groups for that, because um often self-compassion is really hard for people who have shame. Like that's the thing we hold out and we say that's the antidote to shame is self-compassion. But for people who really don't like themselves very much, self-compassion is very, very hard to do, right? Like I've had clients say to me, like, it just feels like I'm lying to myself and it doesn't feel authentic because it doesn't feel authentic because I have so much shame. And so actually, the first thing we can do for betrayed partners is get them to love on each other and get them to compassion to be compassionate with each other. Um, because I can't tell myself that I deserve love, but somehow I might be able to receive that from somebody else. And group is so helpful for shame reduction because you would never say to somebody the thing that you are saying to yourself from that place of shame. So yeah, there's like immediate work that can happen, and then there's long-term work. And if you have that more kind of attachment identity stuff, um, that's gonna come much, much later on because first we need to do the work of getting safe and stable and of grieving what's happening here in the marriage, and then later on we can get to understanding that other stuff.
Shame Driving Sexual Behaviors
SPEAKER_04And so for the person who is a has addiction with pornography, um, or maybe you know, their serial hooking up. Uh one of the questions I wondered about is is there this kind of like piling on shame, like the shame, there's a component of shame that drives you to addiction, and then there's a component of shame of being in addiction. And so you kind of got kind of layered shame.
The Cycle Of Shame And Acting Out
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's like a horrible cycle whereby, and and I really think that that shame is the key component to all addiction, and I think it specifically is a huge part of um addictions that involve sexual acting out behaviors because there's so much complexity around our sense of self and our sense of self-worth and how we interact with other people through sex, right? And so um, the longer I've worked with people dealing with problematic sexual behaviors, the more I'm convinced that there is an element of shame outworking, right? This seeking validation from others, this um kind of measuring my worth by how attractive I am to other people. And our culture really sets us up for that anyway. And so if you add to that this shame identity, you've got a very potent shame containment strategy, which is that if as long as other people are interested in me, whether that is directly through hookups or whether it's indirectly through pornography and I can control the intimacy there, that really can be a powerful shame containment mechanism. Um, and so for people who are struggling with their sexual behavior, you see this really terrible looping of the antidote to shame feels like in the time that I'm in the moment that I'm feeling it so acutely, it feels like I need an external fix for the internal problem of shame. But then afterwards, after I've medicated that, then I feel like, oh gosh, here I have overstepped my values, I've broken my boundaries, that's not who I want to be. But the drive to seek that out is so intense that in the moment that I'm experiencing it, I can't think about what happens afterwards. But then when I get to what happens afterwards, it feels so terrible that it piles on more shame. And then you have that compulsive roundabout of like now, I need to medicate that again, and then I feel terrible again, and that is the cycle of shame.
Finding Safe Witnesses Is Hard
SPEAKER_03We just need a witness. We need a person in the room with us to bear witness and rewrite that story for us and with us when we don't have that vocabulary.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but you know what, that's really hard, actually. And as a practitioner who's done a lot of my own work with shame, I've really come to understand how, you know, in theory, There are lots of safe people in the world. But when it comes to shame, um the one of the things that's difficult about shame, and you see this with people is they they sort of want to throw out their worst thing because they're asking you, can you hold that with me? Can you still love me if that thing is true? Um, and actually it's quite rare to find people who have done enough of their own shame work to really be able to hold the humanity of people who are engaged in some stuff that is not pretty and doesn't look nice. And yeah, so you know, there's a lot of great work that happens in groups, and and I guess that's the work of healing, isn't it? Is to be able to hold both your own humanity and the humanity of others with grace.
SPEAKER_04So it sounds like really good community is a great start if you are a person who I know even the scripture talks about shame feeling like a garment. And I know we have listeners who would love to shed that garment. Um and so how would you encourage someone at that place where they go, hey, like I'm a betrayed partner, I don't want anybody to know, or I'm this woman who I've just been addicted to porn, and um I just I just don't think I'm being the good Christian that I need to be. So how would you encourage them to even take the step of finding good communities and places where others can hold that with them?
Gentle First Steps For Today
SPEAKER_00Yeah, as you said that the language that came up in my mind was reparative relational experiences. So shame is formed in relational experiences that don't honor our uniqueness, they don't make space for our truthfulness. Um, and so what we're trying to do in recovery from addiction, from betrayal, and from shame is access reparative experiences in relationship. Um, and it's not wise actually to kind of do that all at once. You don't you don't want to pull out that secret from the back of your closet and say, hey, can you love me in this? You want to take baby steps into that because your nervous system will scream at you if you try to expose all of the darkness and all of the secrets. And so I think my encouragement would be that people are generally, and I can tell you this as a person who's been recovering from shame for 15 years, right? And like trying out some strategies around that. What I've learned is that people are nowhere near as mean as I have made up that they are. Um, because shame will tell you, because shame and fear go hand in hand, right? So shame can't exist without fear. Fear is the mechanism by which we contain shame. If you see, then you'll know, and you can never see and you can never know. And so I'll keep it contained. Um, and so what community allows you to do is just open the door just a little bit and say, this is who I am, this is what I think. I'm gonna try out believing that maybe that it could be okay for me to tell you the truth about who I am. And we try that on little by little. And so it's like we don't throw off the cloak and be naked. We we slowly try to replace it with something else and through these reparative experiences. And so, you know, what we want for people in groups or in any relationship is someone who can say, gosh, it was really brave of you to let me see who you are. Thank you for sharing that with me. Even if we don't agree with whatever they're sharing, even if we don't like it, it's about kind of having spaces where we can recognize that's that's who you are, and I can accept the the truth of who you are. Um, and so yeah, don't do it all at once, but do be willing to do it. It does, there's there's no doubt that recovering from shame, rewriting shame requires a huge amount of courage to be willing to say, ah, part of me wants to hide the truth of who I am, and I'm gonna show you anyway, and I'm gonna try to believe that you're not gonna be as mean as I think you're gonna be.
Embodied Practices: Take Up Space
SPEAKER_02Well, Kat, I'm sure there are many women listening and just feel heard and understood with what you're offering. So thank you so much. And I know myself am receiving from you. Um, I have just a you know, uh a question for women, you know, who are listening that feel overwhelmed by shame today, right now, that are listening, maybe driving or home. What is the first gentle step they can take?
Fierce Self-Compassion, Not Self-Betrayal
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's a really great question because shame work is long-term work, right? And so you just need to take one step at a time. I think, in a way, the answer that I want to give you feels frustrating because it's there is no kind of magic solution to shame, right? And so it is gentle, slow work that starts with self-awareness. I think one of the most important things we can begin to do for ourselves is pay attention to the way that shame shows up in our lives. Um, and what that looked like for me was just beginning to notice the ways in which I didn't quite open myself to the world, right? The way, the places that I chose to be quiet when I had something to say, the ways that I pretended I didn't fully believe the thing that I believed, the ways that I, and you know, really what I learned about myself was that I kind of participated in my own shame, you know, and and at first I had to notice that. I had to notice the places where I said no when I meant yes, when I said yes when I meant no. Um, and just be really kind to myself in those places. And before I could be kind, because that took me a minute, um, I would be curious. I would just kind of start asking questions, what's happening there? Um, and eventually I really learned to notice what shame felt like. Um, so for me, and and people who hang out with me, they know that I think um and feel in kind of noises and actions. Um, so for me, the feeling of shame is like this little uh that happens in my chest. It's like a little twist in my soul that goes, oh, I don't feel like it's okay to tell the truth or to be who I am. And over time I started to notice that feeling, even before I could notice the thinking. And I'd go, oh, what is that? Um, and my first reaction in shame is to hide, it's to get small, it's to pretend I don't exist and to try not to be noticed. Um, and so I started to practice just taking up space with my body, literally just moving my body. Um, and when I'm working with clients now, often I'll say to them, Oh, that looks like shame. And they'll go, Yeah, I feel that. And I'll say, What does it make you want to do? And they'll say, It makes me want to hide. And you'll see them move their body in certain ways. And I'm like, okay, what should we do instead? Then let's push our shoulders back, let's take up some space, let's take a big breath. And we're teaching the body and the nervous system that it's okay to be real-sized. Like, um, and so you know, maybe one thing you can do for yourself today is notice what your body wants to do when you feel shame, and then choose something else and notice that it's safe to be in your body and taking up space.
SPEAKER_04All of us, we were like, Oh yeah, yeah, I saw you right right there in the mouth. And I thought, yeah, that's too big.
SPEAKER_03But real sized, even I like that, yeah. Even uh, you know, versus big, it's just this is really who I am. This is the real you know, size that I can take up. I love that. Yeah, I'm taking it a lot, right?
Owning Small Truths In Daily Life
Final Encouragement: Shame Isn’t Final
SPEAKER_00I know. The other thing I want to say, I I did want to just say something about self-compassion, though. And and I I usually talk about this when I talk about shame because there was a moment in my kind of shame recovery, once I kind of understood how I participated in that, I that I just kind of went, huh, I'm just not gonna do that anymore. Like once I understood that, and I think my betrayal experience was key to this because I I suddenly had this experience of betrayal that allowed me to see that the way that I behaved when I was in shame was some kind of self-betrayal. And I was so angry at betrayal that I was like, I am not doing that to myself. Like, I am not willing to betray myself. Um, and and there was something that really switched in me when I experienced that betrayal by my partner and my husband that just was like, I'm not, I'm not going there. Not today, Satan, kind of something happened. And um, and that was really key for me in sort of taking my my shame healing to a new level. Because what I began to notice was um that one of the ways I managed shame was through this kind of subtle dishonesty, like I just won't tell the truth. Or um, I had an experience where I was watching something on the TV that I didn't feel very proud of watching. It was like trash TV. Um and my husband's like, What are you watching? Um and I felt it, ugh, that little twist of like, I don't, oh, he's gonna judge me for watching this trash TV. I don't want to tell him. Um, and I said, instead of saying I'm watching X TV show, um, which by the way was made in Chelsea, which is trash and you shouldn't watch it. Um, uh instead of saying I'm watching Made in Chelsea, I said, Oh, you wouldn't know, you wouldn't know what it is, which is not not true because my husband wouldn't know what that was, but it was actually deliberately kind of evasive. And I went, ah, okay, if I can't accept that about myself, then nobody will ever be able to accept that about me because I'll never believe them. And I just noticed that little, uh, here I am, pretending I'm not who I am, pretending I don't like what I like, pretending I'm better than the truth of who I am, or whatever it was that was happening for me. And bless him, my husband had disappeared, he'd gone for a bath, he wasn't interested, he didn't care. And I find myself like hammering on the bathroom door, going, I'm watching Maiden Chelsea, and I think you're gonna judge me for it, and I want to own who I am. And and that was that was a real important kind of moment. Or and I've had a few moments like that where I go, okay, I have a choice to make. Either I own the truth of who I am, or I give it away to my husband, or I give it away to my tutor at college, or I give it away to the person down the shop. And that's what I realized I'd been doing my whole life. I'd been giving you the power to define who I am and how I show up in the world. And I once I really realized that and became as angry about that as I was about the betrayal that my husband had done to me, something really changed. And I call that like fierce self-compassion, which is not like that I'm I'm stroking my own hair and being nice to myself. It's like that I will not allow myself to participate in my own silence, in my own dishonesty, in my own betrayal any longer.
SPEAKER_04Wow, that's so good. Thanks for sharing that. We appreciate it. I'm sure there's so many people who are listening who will be able to identify that with that in some way, shape, or form.
SPEAKER_03I love that you banged the door. Good job.
SPEAKER_01My poor husband. He's like, I don't care. Good, because it's not a full year, it's finished.
SPEAKER_03That's exactly right. We've covered a lot. We have, we have. I feel like I wish I'd had my notebook to take some notes. So I'll be listening to this episode myself when it comes out. It's beautiful.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and maybe there's an opportunity we'll we we'll be able to circle back again and and do some more with Kat. Such a pleasure to have you with us today.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, thank you so much. Well, is there is there a final word that you think we should share with the folks who are listening?
SPEAKER_03Well, I would love to toss that to you, Kat, if just because all the words of, you know, not enoughness, um should I stay, should I go, the feeling of shame versus the identity of shame, the psychological safety through story, I mean, all these things that you're saying, um, and pay attention to how shame shows up. That's like Kurt Thompson, you gotta name it to tame it. Um which I love, but it is there uh a truth that every betrayed woman could speak over herself.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's a really beautiful question. And you know, I can remember a therapist asking me once when I was talking about my shame, my shame from the past, and I remember her saying, What would you say to your younger self? And like, I know the right answer to that question, right? Like, I know I'm supposed to say you're worth more than the way that you're treating yourself, or whatever the right answer was. But I remember saying to my therapist, she's not listening. She's not listening. Um, and the reason for that is because she doesn't believe. And so there is a part of me that wants to say that if you have that shame core, there is a part of you that's not listening, um, that isn't able to take in some kind of alternative truth. But I think if I could give you anything, it would be to say that um this is not the end. When you said, like, is there a last word? I thought, yeah, the last word is the shame does not get the last word. Um, and that um, you know, where you are today is not where you have to stay forever. Um, and so even if you can't hear today that you are worthwhile or that you deserve love, or that you are lovable and worthy, even if that truth can't go in, I think I what I would say is that that's okay. It's okay to be where you are right now, and where you are right now is not where you have to live forever. Um, and I guess that's my hopeful but realistic desire to pass on to your listeners. Um, I do believe that they're worthy. I do believe that they're lovable. And I know that for some of them, that's not going to go right into where it needs to live today. And that's okay.
SPEAKER_03And that is a real size prayer right there. Thank you so much. Amen, amen, amen. Amen. Thank you, Kat.
