Is My Child A Monster? A Parenting Therapy Podcast

Bonus Episode: Understanding Shame

• Leslie Cohen-Rubury • Season 3 • Episode 72

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This is the second mini bonus episode where we will focus on understanding shame. In this bonus episode we discuss the difference between shame and guilt, the beliefs and myths associated with shame and an effective skill to deal with shame. Shame was present in the third session with Sarah in its many forms.  Our children can feel shame even when we try very hard not to shame them.  As parents we can easily feel shame that we carry from our childhood or trying to do this job called parenting. And this list goes on.


Time Stamps

1:49 Defining Shame

2:22 Identifying some myths that go along with shame

  • “I am not good enough”
  • “I am bad”
  • “People are going to reject me”
  • “I’m broken”

2:32 Defining Guilt

4:00 Child can internalize shame through interpretations that they are doing 

4:45 Overt Shaming - the “should” statements and other judgments 

5:55 Myths are mistaken beliefs

7:30 When the shame is not justified or is not effective because of the duration of the feeling or the intensity of the feeling

7:55 Opposite Action

  • Identify the urge to hide which associated with feeling
  • Act opposite to that urge - such as pick up your head, make eye contact, speak the feared item out loud
  • Do it over and over again

12:35 Separate the behavior and the interpretations of that behavior

  • Check the facts
  • Finding other interpretations 
  • Doing opposite action



Resources:  



For a full transcript of this episode and more information about the host visit https://lesliecohenrubury.com/podcasts/ . You can also follow Leslie’s work on Facebook,  Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Join the conversation with your own questions and parenting experiences.


Credits: Is My Child a Monster? is produced by Alletta Cooper, Camila Salazar, and Leslie Cohen-Rubury. Theme music is by L-Ray Music. Graphics and Website Design by Brien O’Reilly. Transcriptions by Eric Rubury.  A special thanks to everyone who contributes their wisdom and support to make this possible.

[Music: The Wilds Beyond by L-Ray Music]


[00:00:00] Leslie Cohen-Rubury: Hi friends. Welcome to our second mini bonus episode of Is My Child A Monster? where we reinforce skills we've talked about in the previous episode. This bonus episode is all about shame. I'm Leslie Cohen-Rubury, and no, your child is not a monster, just misunderstood. 

In my third session with Sarah, we touched on the idea of shame in both her and in her children. Talking about shame is something both close to my heart and my personal experience, and something I work on every day in myself and with my clients in therapy. Just like Sarah, you may not even realize what you're feeling is called shame. It can be subtle, and it can be toxic. So I just thought I wanted to take a deeper dive into the concept of shame, what it means, and some skills to manage it.

So, as a reminder, this show is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for therapeutic intervention. My producer, Alletta Cooper, is here with me today to have a conversation about shame. Hi, Alletta. 

[00:01:14] Alletta: Hi, Leslie. Thanks so much for having me. Okay, so I know that shame is something you've talked about in so many of your podcast episodes. It is something that we as humans, it is a universal experience. So the first thing I want to ask you is just, can you define what shame is? Because I think a lot of people confuse shame and guilt.And these things are different. 

[00:01:36] Leslie: Yes, and it's good to have the comparison between shame and guilt so that you can hear what they each are. And to tell you the truth, it's a confusing emotion even in the professional world.

We've talked about it as whether it's a justified emotion, so let me back up. Shame is the feeling that you have when you feel like someone is going to reject you, you are going to be rejected as a person. And so what you begin to feel if you feel shame, is that you feel, I am bad, because there's a context to shame that makes you feel bad about yourself as a person.

Often, some feelings that go along with it is, I'm not good enough, I'm a bad person, people are going to reject me. And so that's the basis of shame. Now that gets confused with guilt because people think, I'm a bad person. But guilt is tied to our behavior and our values. So when I say I feel guilty, that means I've behaved in a way that goes against my values.

I might feel like I might not have the belief that I'm a bad person or I'm not good enough. I might just say, “Wow, I just yelled at my child and that is not the way I want to behave.” So I feel guilty for yelling at my child. But if I feel shame, then I feel shame that I'm a bad person for being the parent I am, for being the person I am.

And so it's a deeper, much more…it goes to our belief systems. Whereas guilt might stay at a higher level about our behavior. Does that make sense?  

[00:03:22] Alletta: It does make sense. So my understanding of shame also is that there are times when shame is justified, but most of the time it really isn't.

[00:03:33] Leslie: Absolutely. 

[00:03:34] Alletta: When we feel shame, because I'm speaking from personal experience, because I spilled milk on the carpet as a child. That shame is not justified. But internalizing that—spilling the milk did not make me a bad child, but I internalized this idea that that behavior made me bad, even though it didn’t.

[00:04:00] Leslie: So that brings us back to the episode when we were talking to Sarah about her son and she would try to get him off his technology and he would have a meltdown and big emotions. His interpretation—she actually wasn't shaming him, but—his interpretation was that I'm a bad person. So you are 100 percent right. That the behavior may have been a problem in some way. And to take it to the next level and say, “I'm a bad person because this happened. I'm a bad person because I made my mother upset or because I had a big meltdown.” Children don't want to feel that way. But that's a natural interpretation.

I am often telling parents, please be aware that yes, there is overt shaming of children. “You should have done better. You shouldn't do that.” And when we use the “should,” we're often shaming because it's a judgment of you are good or you are bad. And so judgments are definitely the way that we may convey shame towards another person…

[00:05:06] Sarah: …which is then easily internalized, especially as you're growing.

[00:05:10] Leslie: …because that’s overt. But then there's the more subtle one where you as a parent may say, “Wow, that was a really hard transition for you.” So now I'm validating the child, but the child then still interprets it as, Well, I'm a bad person because I do that. And I'm a bad person because everybody else can get off their technology fast, but not me.

So, there's, again, that context of, Why can everyone else do that? There must be something wrong with me. I hear people say I'm broken or there's something wrong with me. So that's one level of shame, when children are interpreting it as a belief system. And I often talk about, and the work that I do with people is to help them look at beliefs that we actually call myths that are mistaken beliefs.

And we would help you, we would help the child, we would help people, all of us. Me too—I grew up believing I was a bad person because of a learning disability, because it was challenging for me. And my sisters didn't get yelled at the way I did. So I figured there must be something wrong with me.

And so then we get to learn that we can outgrow our myths. We can outgrow and replace those beliefs that I am good enough. And I am a good person and I can still make mistakes and have problems. 

[00:06:28] Alletta: So tell me how that can relate to parenting, because it is something you talked about with Sarah in your third episode with her, in that the shame that we carry from childhood can impact the way we are interacting with our own children or with the relationships around us.

[00:06:47] Leslie: As I said in the beginning, there were different aspects of shame in this family. One we just talked about was with her son. The other one that I just want to mention as I answer your question is the fact that this is a military family. And mom and dad both had mental health issues as a result, and they struggled with that. The one thing that brought down the level of shame is her openness. So the openness and talking about it is such a key to shame. Because when shame is not justified, when shame doesn't fit the facts, you are not a bad person, but you are feeling shame. Then we have a skill in Dialectic Behavior Therapy called opposite action.

[00:07:35] Sarah: I was going to ask you about this. What do you do in DBT for shame? 

[00:07:40] Leslie: Okay. So when it's not justified, so when the feeling is not justified—that you are. not a bad person—or when the duration of that feeling or the intensity of that feeling is not effective, then we say, let's do opposite action.

What that means is you identify the urge associated with the feeling, which is, shame makes me want to hide. Hey, you ever go into a high school and see how many kids have their hair over their face? Or their faces under hoodies? 

[00:08:10] Sarah: That was me the whole time. 

[00:08:11] Leslie: Those are the kids that are feeling shame. So that's the first thing to look at, that shame has an urge to hide. When you're talking to your child and they just sink lower into themselves and they hide into themselves, that again are behavioral indications of that urge to hide expressions. So, opposite action is you identify the urge: My urge is to hide. Now you go opposite to that urge. So if I want to hide, the opposite is: pick up my head, take my hoodie down, look someone directly in the eye. It can mean a lot of things, but it means whatever should, whatever it would mean in that situation. So for her family and their own mental health issues around the military they talk openly about it. That is opposite action. 

[00:09:02] Alletta: That was something else I was going to ask is: If your instinct is to never say the thing out loud, this thing you feel deep shame about, the opposite action is to actually say it. And like, as a child, I had my, one of my earliest memories is feeling shame that I didn't understand Christmas. And I went downstairs and opened up my stocking before everyone woke up. I was four. And I felt so much shame about that, that I literally couldn't even say the story out loud until I was in my mid-thirties. How silly is that? So, the opposite action… 

[00:09:35] Leslie: Wait, what's so important before you get to the opposite action is that's how toxic shame is. It took you till you were thirty to actually… 

[00:09:44] Alletta: Thirty five 

[00:09:45] Leslie: Thirty five. Oh my goodness. It's painful. 

[00:09:48] Alletta: In therapy. 

[00:09:49] Leslie: Because you're holding it and you're hiding it. And so opposite action is to tell that story. Thanks for telling that story. 

[00:09:59] Alletta: It’s really that I was actually embarrassed. And I felt so much shame about the embarrassment for not understanding and I didn't, couldn't parse that, because I was four. 

[00:10:08] Leslie: So two things about going opposite action to saying it, which is: go public with it, as we say. There are two reasons why that could be helpful in parenting. And that is because when we ask our children openly, “Hey, did you feel badly that you got upset this afternoon?” Just observe and describe, just notice it and name it.

So that helps your child not sink in further with the shame because nobody knows how they feel. So take a guess, because if that child said, “No, I was really angry, I was okay that I was upset,” then he doesn't have shame around it. But if he says, “Yeah, as a matter of fact, I really don't like myself,” or, “I hate myself, or I'm a bad person.”

Now they're going opposite action. They're speaking about it. And that's it. Sometimes you don't need to do more than that. You've just made sure that the shame doesn't get stuck deep inside their body. The other part about saying it out loud is when you name it and when you put it out there: “Is it possible that you feel like you really felt badly about yourself after you yelled and screamed? Did you see what happened? Did I reject you? Did I say I don't love you?” “No, but that's what I think.” “Great. Can you check the facts?” “Mom, do you not like me when I yell and scream?” And so you can have a conversation about it. And that's the reason why we want to go public. You learn something different.

If you keep it in, you don't actually know whether or not the world is rejecting you. You just believe that you've been rejected. But on the other hand, if you actually say it out loud, if you could have said, “I opened up my…I don't know what Christmas is. And I opened up my stocking and I don't understand it.”

They would have said, “Oh, you don't understand. Of course you don't understand. Let's help you understand it.” You would have learned that you are okay. Yes, you're embarrassed. Embarrassment is okay, and children don't like that feeling, so instead of bringing it out, it goes internal.

[00:12:16] Alletta: And when you have big emotions, your perception of what's happening around you is distorted. So by talking about it and actively asking your child about it, it is allowing them to get a better picture of the full story of what happened.

[00:12:31] Leslie: Right. And so we want to remember, you want to separate out the behavior—which may be a problem, may be problematic, that's not it, that's where we talk about guilt—and we want to help them understand that the interpretation that they are bad is often not justified. So checking the facts, finding other interpretations and doing opposite action is a great way to deal with shame so that it doesn't become toxic; as Sarah had to look back on her life and realize she's been carrying this shame around personally for many, many years. 

[00:13:05] Sarah: Thank you, Leslie, for exploring shame with me. 

[00:13:09] Leslie: Thanks Alletta. It's a big topic. Thanks for opening up that door.

[Music: The Wilds Beyond by L-Ray Music]


[00:13:17] Leslie Cohen-Rubury: And if you enjoyed this bonus episode, please let us know. We really want to do everything we can to make sure that you, our listeners, have the skills you need on your parenting journey. And you can let us know by contacting us at ismychildamonster.com or leaving us a review on Apple podcast or Spotify.

And come back on Tuesday when I'm joined by Dialectic Behavior Therapy expert Amy Kalasunas to share her clear guidelines to help you deal with the age-old questions: when should I give in to my child and when should I stand firm? 

So subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find a full transcript of this episode or sign up for my newsletter at ismychildamonster.com. The Is My Child A Monster? team is Alletta Cooper, Camila Salazar, and me. Special thanks to Eric Rubury. Our theme music is by L-Ray Music. I'm Leslie Cohen-Rubury. Thanks so much for listening.

Transcribed by Eric Rubury