Personal Mastery with Jerry Henderson
You deserve a life that feels as extraordinary on the inside as it looks on the outside—and Personal Mastery with Jerry Henderson (formerly The Permission to Love Podcast) will help you build it.
I’m Jerry Henderson, creator of the Personal Mastery Framework™, high-performance and trauma-informed coach, Harvard-trained in the psychology of human behavior, researcher, author, and speaker.
Every week, I—along with world-renowned experts—share powerful conversations and research-backed insights to help you align with your true self and create sustainable success from the inside out.
We cover topics like cultivating a growth mindset, building resilience, healing trauma, overcoming shame, practicing presence, strengthening relationships, developing a healthy relationship with yourself, and living your purpose—real, relatable tools for meaningful transformation.
If you’re ready to achieve from a place of full alignment, fulfillment, and lead with authenticity, this podcast is for you.
New episodes every Monday. Subscribe now—and start creating a life that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside.
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Personal Mastery with Jerry Henderson
What I Wish I Had Known About Shame
How to heal from shame can be really tricky especially if you don't know what it is and how it manifests in your life.
In this episode, Jerry shares 5 powerful truths that he wishes he would have known about shame earlier.
Shame is one of the most toxic and misunderstood emotional wounds—especially for high-achieviers who look successful on the outside but feel unworthy on the inside.
In this episode you’ll learn:
- What shame actually is
- How it develops as a coping mechanism from trauma and early pain
- Why so many of us unconsciously get addicted to it.
- Tips on how to start healing shame
Jerry also shares personal insights on how shame hijacks your identity, tricks your brain, and what it truly takes to heal from it.
If you’ve ever struggled with feeling broken, not enough, or stuck in shame, this episode will give you the clarity and tools to begin your healing journey.
I am grateful you are here,
Jerry
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Hello everybody and welcome to Personal Mastery. I'm your host, jerry Henderson, and if you're ready to create a life that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside, you're in the right place. Let's get started. Today, in this episode, I'm going to be sharing with you five things that I wish I would have known about shame, because, the truth is, shame really messed up my life and I wish I would have known the things that I'm going to be sharing a long, long time ago. So let's get started. The first thing that I wish I would have known about shame is I wish I would have known what it is.
Jerry Henderson:I had no idea what shame was. I didn't know that. The feeling that I carried about myself for over four decades, that feeling that there was something wrong with me, that I was uniquely broken, was a thing, and that thing is called shame, and it's a thing that's very common, and I'm not the only one who was dealing with it. You see, that feeling that there's something wrong with you is what shame is. There's guilt, which is I did something wrong, and then there's shame, which is I did something wrong, and then there's shame, which is I am something wrong, and so if you're carrying that feeling, that's what shame is. I didn't know that. I didn't know there was a thing called shame that actually existed. I just knew the way that I felt about myself. I felt terrible about myself, a lot of self-loathing. That self-loathing caused me to act out in ways that were self-destructive, even though externally I was very successful. Internally I didn't feel that way. Lots of self-hatred, lots of self-loathing, and it would have saved me a lot of trouble just to know what shame was. The second thing that I wish I would have known is that shame is a coping mechanism. Shame doesn't just come out of nowhere. We're not born with it. It's something that we develop in order to stay safe and to survive, and you might be thinking to yourself how in the heck could shame be something that's helping me stay safe or helping me survive? It's like super destructive, this way that I feel.
Jerry Henderson:Let me just have you think about it this way for a second. If you've experienced trauma or early childhood pain, or what is known as ACEs, adverse childhood experiences, or even later in life in a toxic, abusive relationship, you might develop shame the feeling that there's something wrong with me as a way to stay safe. So let's think about it as a kid. If you have a father or a mother that's abusive or is neglective and doesn't know how to take care of you, it's not a really safe decision and I just want to make a note here that your brain's not consciously making these decisions as a young person. But either way, it's not a safe decision for your subconscious or conscious mind to make the decision that your parent is incapable of taking care of you. Your dependency rests on them, your survival is in their hands, and so if you make the decision they don't have the capacity to take care of you. That's a very dangerous decision to make.
Jerry Henderson:So it's a much safer decision to decide there's something wrong with you as a coping mechanism, as a way to stay safe, because what that allows you to do is it gives you a sense of control that you can now scan yourself and say well, maybe if I don't act this way, you know dad won't beat me up, or maybe if I don't act this way, mom will accept me, or if I do this, I'll be able to please them and I'll be able to stay safe. So I keep looking for what's wrong with me, that I'm experiencing that rejection, and it's just so natural for us to make the decision that there's something wrong with us when our little brains are thinking that, well, they're adults, they should know how to do adult things. They should know how to express love, and if they're not giving that to me, then what's adult things? They should know how to express love, and if they're not giving that to me, then what's wrong with me and how can I now change to get that love to stay safe, et cetera. So it would have been extremely helpful for me to know that, that I developed that sense that there's something wrong with me, the sense of shame, in order to keep me safe that it wasn't something that was true. It was just a little boy's mind that had experienced pain, who was trying to figure out the world. Now, the third thing that would have been really helpful for me to know is that you can get addicted to shame, and this surprised me more than anything else, and I remember when I realized it, I was in rehab my second stay in rehab, trying to get sober, and I just come out of a group therapy session where they were talking about how our bodies and our brains can get addicted to alcohol and that routine and as I was taking a shower, all of a sudden all these feelings of shame started to come up.
Jerry Henderson:And I was reliving the past and just feeling terrible about myself and call it grace or whatever. But something hit me in that moment and I had the thought that said oh my gosh, I'm addicted to that way of thinking, just like my brain and my body got addicted to alcohol. I'm addicted to feeling terrible about myself. I've become so familiar with that feeling that I repeat it, and if I ever start to feel good about myself, I kick up a thought as to why I shouldn't feel good about myself. My body and my brain are trying to bring me back to what it thinks is home, what it thinks is my survival, which is shame, which is feeling like there's something wrong with me, so I can keep trying to figure out how to fix myself. And so, just like you can get addicted to any other feeling, you can get addicted to shame, and you can keep pulling yourself back to it over and over. Now the fourth thing I wish I would have known about shame is that shame will trick you into thinking that you are the shame. It's super sticky, it's like tar. It just like absorbs you.
Jerry Henderson:I have a quote that I wrote in one of my books about shame is a devious parasite. It tricks the host into thinking that they are the shame, because shame doesn't say you have shame. Shame says you are shame, you are shameful, there's something bad and wrong about you. And when you realize this is how shame works that you're not alone, in that you're not the only one carrying that feeling, it can really help open up your eyes to what's going on. And when I realized that that that's how it works it's MO.
Jerry Henderson:It allowed me to start dis-identifying from shame, to put distance from me and it, and I often say in my coaching all we need to do is get a little bit of distance between us and the shame for us to see what shame is. We just need a little crack for that light to shine through so that we can see that we are not the shame. It is something that we learned. It's a coping mechanism. It's something that we inherited, given to us by other people, but it is not us. It is a protective part trying to keep us safe. So if you feel like you are shame, that you are shameful, I just want to let you know. That's exactly how shame works. That's what it is, and so it's not you. It is that deceptive part of shame to make you think that you are it, so that you can never get free from it.
Jerry Henderson:Now, the fifth thing I wish I would have known and this is the best of all of it that you can actually heal from it, that you're not stuck with it for the rest of your life, that there are strategies that you can use to be free from shame once and for all.
Jerry Henderson:Now, I will note it's not a quick process and, of course, everybody has their own timeline on how they heal from shame. Shame is sticky, it does echo, it does resurface from time to time, and that is simply because of how shame works that I've already shared, that it tricks us into thinking that we're it, we get addicted to it, it's something that kept us safe, and so all of that makes it a little bit extra sticky to get rid of. And so if you're struggling on your journey of healing from shame and it keeps coming back and you see that as evidence as to why you'll never heal from it and why you're the only one who will stay stuck in this pattern forever, that's all the voice of shame. And what I want to do right now is just give you a couple of tips about how to heal from shame, and number one is to practice radical self-compassion. And this is going to feel very unfamiliar to your system as you start to practice it, because you've been so busy beating yourself up, judging yourself, to now start moving towards self-compassion. It's going to feel really awkward. It did for me for months, if not years. Okay, that's normal, but you need to start practicing self-compassion. It's like the antidote for shame. Begin treating yourself like somebody who's worthy of love, somebody who is worthy of good things, even if you don't feel like it. You're not going to feel like it. It's going to bounce off your nervous system. That's okay. You're retraining yourself. You're moving from what feels comfortable for you right now shame to something that feels uncomfortable self-acceptance, self-compassion. You're just not used to it. That's all that. It is Don't believe the voice of shame that says that you don't deserve those things. Once again, that's the stickiness and the deviousness of shame. It'll push against that reality of what you truly are worthy of, to try to pull you back to something that, once again, you think is going to keep you safe.
Jerry Henderson:The second tip I can give you is to get help for the things that caused the shame. Shame is a byproduct of the experiences that we've had in life, whether it was trauma, toxic relationships, other painful life experiences. We developed shame as a result of it, and it can be even our own experiences, our own decisions and choices that we've made, that we can't seem to forgive ourselves for. Listen, you deserve forgiveness. I know that as soon as I said that, there might have been five things that came up in your mind as to why you don't, but you do. I encourage you right now. You deserve forgiveness. You deserve to get healing from the things that cause shame to happen in your life, whether that was through somebody else, life experiences or your own actions. You can heal the sources of shame and as you heal those, shame will begin to lessen in your life because you won't need it anymore as a coping mechanism to keep you safe from the things that originally hurt you. Now the third thing that you can do to start bringing healing is bring it into the light.
Jerry Henderson:Shame thrives in secrecy and Dr Brene Brown does a lot of work around this and vulnerability and being met with empathy, and it is so true that shame begins to die when it's brought into the light, and I know it can be scary to bring that into the light. I know, I know. I know personally I'll tell you at some point about my experiences of why it was so scary for me to bring the struggles that I had into the light. Because I was afraid of judgment. I was afraid of so many things, and that's what happens with shame. We are so afraid of what other people are going to think about us that us bringing it into the light is going to reinforce the fact that, yeah, there is something wrong with us and people are going to think that way about us. But the truth is it is going to be really important for you to find relationships that you can trust, that you can be vulnerable.
Jerry Henderson:With that you can bring this stuff into the light and be met with empathy, to be met with a yeah, me too, I've been there. See, we all think our story is the worst because we've lived it. But the truth is we all carry our wounds. We all carry the things that we're ashamed of. But when we take the risk and we share our pain and we're vulnerable and we're met with empathy, shame begins to die, we no longer feel alone and we begin to heal in connection and we start to feel the freedom of what a life feels like when you no longer have to carry that feeling that there's something wrong with you and you begin to truly get free from shame.
Jerry Henderson:So those are just a few of the things that I wish I would have known and some tips that can help heal. And let me encourage you, no matter where you're at on your journey of dealing with shame healing from shame you're not alone in it. It's never too late. I didn't start to get healing and freedom from it until I was almost 50 years old. As an additional resource for you on overcoming shame, I do work with individuals one-on-one in my coaching program. If you'd like more information about that, you can simply see the show notes in this episode. In there you'll find a link to my website. You'll also find a link there to set up a free strategy call so that we can connect and see if working together is the right fit. So if you're ready to start creating a life that you truly love, set up that free strategy call. I'm looking forward to meeting you, getting to know more about the goals that you have and, most importantly, learning more about you, and I want to remind you that you are worthy of a life that feels as good on the inside as
