The Hidden Weight of Shame & How to Release It | Dr. Zoe Shaw | 202

What if the shame carried for years wasn’t proof that something was wrong… but proof that healing had never truly been given space to begin?

In this deeply vulnerable episode of Manders Mindset, host Amanda Russo sits down with Dr. Zoe Shaw, licensed psychotherapist, relationship coach, author, and podcast host for a powerful conversation about shame, secrecy, identity, and emotional healing. Dr. Zoe opens up about growing up in a strict religious environment, navigating racial identity shame, becoming pregnant as a teenager, and carrying the burden of secrecy for decades after placing her daughter for adoption.

Together, Amanda and Dr. Zoe explore the emotional weight of people-pleasing, perfectionism, trauma, and the ways shame quietly shapes relationships, self-worth, and the ability to show up authentically in the world. Dr. Zoe also breaks down the difference between guilt, simple shame, toxic shame, and what she calls “complex shame”, a deeper form of shame built over years of painful experiences and hidden wounds.

This conversation is an honest and hopeful reminder that healing doesn’t begin through hiding…

It begins through vulnerability, self-forgiveness, and finally allowing the truth to be seen.

⏰ Timeline Summary

[5:40] – Growing up with racial identity shame and strict religious expectations                                                                                                                    [9:15] – Becoming pregnant at 15 and carrying the burden of secrecy                  [14:30] – Using achievement, success, and perfectionism to hide shame [19:05] – The moment she revealed her secret to her children and family [23:45] – The difference between guilt, simple shame, complex shame, and toxic shame                                                                                                            [31:40] – Practical ways to begin untangling shame and finding forgiveness 

💡 In this episode, listeners will discover:

🧠 The difference between guilt, simple shame, toxic shame, and complex shame
💔 How secrecy and people-pleasing can quietly shape identity and relationships
 ✨ The emotional impact of carrying shame from childhood into adulthood
 📖 Dr. Zoe’s personal journey through teen pregnancy, adoption, and self-forgiveness
🪞 How perfectionism and achievement can become coping mechanisms for hidden pain

To Connect with Amanda:

Schedule a 1:1 Virtual Breathwork Session HERE

📸 Instagram: @thebreathinggoddess

Follow & Support the Podcast:

📱Instagram: @MandersMindset
👥 Join the Manders Mindset Facebook Community HERE!

To Connect with Zoe: 

 📖 Get Dr. Zoe's Book Stronger in the Difficult Places: https://a.co/d/bWNSd4G

Get Dr. Zoe's Must Have Resources to untangle Shame: 

https://dr-zoe-shaw-enterprises.kit.com/7247f0bc86 

Transcript

Welcome And Meet Dr. Zoe Shaw

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Manders Mindset Podcast. Here you'll find both monologue and interviews of entrepreneurs, coaches, healers, and a variety of other people, where your host, Amanda Russo, will discuss her own mindset and perspective, and her guest mindset and perspective on the world around us. Manders and her guests will help explain to you how shifting your mindset will shift your life.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Welcome to MandersMet, where we explore the power of shifting your mindset to us. I'm your host, Amanda Basett, and I am here today with Dr. Zoe Shaw. And she is a licensed psychotherapist, a relationship coach, an author, and a podcast host who helps women untangle complex shame and heal their relationship with themselves. After 15 years in traditional therapy, she began blending psychology, coaching, faith, and real life tools to support women in stepping out of shame, codependency, and people pleasing. And I am so excited to speak with her today. Thank you so much for joining me.

SPEAKER_02 1:15

Amanda, thank you so much for having me on the show. I'm thrilled to have this conversation.

Who Zoe Is At Her Core

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Absolutely. So who would you say Zoe is at the core if you stripped everything else away? That's such a good question.

SPEAKER_02 1:30

I really have good questions like this. Who am I at the core if I strip everything else away? I would say I am empathic and full of love, I think would be my answer.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Would you say you've always been empathic and full of love?

SPEAKER_02 1:50

You know what's interesting because I had a conversation with my mother a couple of days ago, and she reminded me of when my little brother had a surgery, and I was maybe five or six years old, and she said, I was astounded. She said, You never left his side the entire time when he was in recovery. And I just remember just feeling so much empathy for him having gone through a surgery and I was so young and I didn't fully understand what was going on. And so my answer to that, I don't know that I would have answered that same question, this the question the same way if I hadn't had that conversation with my mom yesterday. But I think the answer is yes. Yes, I've always been that way.

Childhood Roots Of Identity Shame

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Oh, that's beautiful. Can you take us down memory lane a little bit? Tell us about your childhood, upbringing, family dynamic.

Teen Pregnancy And A Hidden Adoption

SPEAKER_02 2:41

Yeah. You know, I delve into it a little bit in my book. And I grew up in a a really wonderful family. And so I want to preface it by the saying that because the rest of the stuff that I say may sound like it wasn't that way. But I grew up on the East Coast. I was born in Nashville. My father was a medical doctor, and he was also in the Air Force at that time, and he was stationed at Andrews Air Force Base. So we moved to Maryland, where I lived uh in the DC area until I was about eight. And then my father got out of the Air Force and got a job in this very rural area of Maryland called Hagerstown. And we moved to an even more rural area called Smithsburg, a little farming town where we had lived on a mountain, 18 acres in the woods. So from eight years old on up, I grew up there after coming from a very diverse area, you know, in Washington, DC, which was very much a culture shock. And I'm I was a black girl growing up in this all-white farming community. So I developed a lot of um of racial identity shame for reasons that probably make a lot of sense. And I also grew up in a very fundamental Christian home. And my dad was a prominent doctor in the community at that time. And I got pregnant when I was 15. And when that happened, my parents' response was that's not happening here. And they sent me away to a pregnancy home in Virginia, three or four hours away, with uh the understanding that I would come back without a child. And I was a very compliant adolescent at that time, and I did exactly what my parents um wanted me to do. I gave birth unmedicated in a hospital in Virginia, and I left my baby in the hospital and came back home to pretend like nothing happened. And retrospectively, sorry, I don't know what happened. Retrospectively, I can see that that is where my complex shame developed in that, you know, small town in Smithsburg and through that very difficult experience of uh placing my child for adoption and learning to keep the secret and pretending and covering my shame. So fast forward, I was very, I covered a lot of my shame with achievements. I excelled academically, I excelled athletically, I was a track athlete. I got a scholarship to UCLA. I competed at a very high level and got married very early, as is very common in the Christian fundamental Christian community. Also, of course, I had a lot of purity shame from you know growing up the way that I did. Um, so I got married very early. I had my children and my first uh my first kept daughter was born with a very rare genetic disorder called Protter Willie syndrome. And when that happened, and all this time, of course, I got my bachelor's, my master's, my doctorate. At that time, I was a practicing clinician and very adept at hiding my shame and keeping my secret. And that was kind of the the impetus for the damn to break. And when my shame collided with, you know, my false stories in reality at that point. I thought that I was being punished and my daughter was being punished for me having given up my first uh born daughter. And so I went down some very dark tunnels, and I had to really just heal from the bottom up. And it's a long story, and I don't want to belabor it. It's definitely um in my book, but I got to a place where I began to understand what had happened to me and the shame that got created. And we talk about the different types of shame, but the type of shame that I realized I had was very different than the simple shame that Brene Brown talks about. And so I coined it complex shame and began to help not just myself, but other women learn how to entangle it for their life from their lives and ultimately develop freedom from shame.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

Now, what grade were you in?

SPEAKER_02 6:47

When I to my daughter for adoption? Yeah. Uh 10th grade. Yes. I was 15 when I got pregnant. I was 16 uh when I gave birth to her. And I came back to school. It was in May, so I came back to school at the end of the term, but I didn't go back to school. So I had the summer to kind of continue grieving and then started my junior year and just started it with a bang, got right back into track and field, you know, broke records that still stand today there at the school, you know, um, and just just ran from all of my shame.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Yeah. Now you mentioned you have a brother. Did your brother know about this?

SPEAKER_02 7:28

So, you know, it's interesting because my sister, I have a younger sister and I have an older brother. And when my parents sent me away, they told my siblings that I had a psychiatric breakdown and I had to go to a psychiatric hospital and they couldn't visit me there. So that was the story that they knew when I was in the pregnancy home. Uh later, at some point, I did tell my brother. I did not tell my sister. So she didn't find out until decade and a half later, I believe. Um, but I did tell my brother at some point, I don't remember when, and he also held the secret.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

So you come back, and now did you end up going to college after you graduate high school?

SPEAKER_02 8:15

Oh, yeah. Well, I got a scholarship to UCLA, and so I ran track for UCLA and got my bachelor's degree, and then I went on and got my master's degree, and then got my doctorate degree, got licensed, and started working as a psychotherapist. So yeah, remember high achiever. And did you do it all straight through? I did, I went straight through.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

Wow. Wow, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 8:40

And I had two children in the process of getting my doctorate. So went straight through and had two children at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

Wow, that's amazing. And so now you mentioned you got married early as well. I did, I got married at 19, yes. Well, you and you were in school during that?

SPEAKER_02 9:01

I was. I was uh it was in between my freshman and sophomore year of my bachelor's degree. I got married.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

Did that change how like how college was for you?

SPEAKER_02 9:11

Um, I wouldn't say that it changed. Well, actually, yes. So there was, you know, there was this weird feeling that I had ever since I came back from Virginia having left my daughter, that I was kind of like light years ahead, just psychologically and emotionally, from my peers who hadn't had any of the experiences that I had over that time, you know, in Virginia and being pregnant, giving birth, placing my daughter. So when I started college, I was already dating my husband by that time. And I would say I didn't have the normal college experience. I ran track, like it was a job, and I went to school and I lived this entirely separate life away from school. So, yes, I had a very different experience in undergrad than most kids my age did. And I say kids because I was a kid trying to be an adult.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

I get that. No, so then you go through your schooling and you get your doctorate, and from there, what was your next first step?

Breaking Family Rules To Stop Hiding

SPEAKER_02 10:25

I went straight into private practice, and I've literally been in private practice since. It wasn't until really I started my own transformation that I stepped out of just private practice. I'm still in private practice, but that's when I began to write and speak and really help heal people in in other ways with other modalities. But I went straight into private practice, continued to raise my children, had a couple more children. I have five children all together, homeschooled my kids, and I was really I was in a place of just really focusing on my children and distracting myself and my children and my marriage and my work, which worked well. And there was obviously a lot of success. At the same time, there was still a lot of hiding. How did you stop hiding? You know, my first experience where I stopped hiding was and in some ways forced on me, although I could have made a different choice. So my father died suddenly, and I had already reunited with my daughter by that time, but my children didn't know about her. And at my father's death, and my parents had had also reunited with my daughter, but the our extended family didn't know about her. So she was still a secret, even though I had reunited with her and my parents had. I don't know if it was brave, actually. It was one of those moments where I felt there was no other option because I was not no longer willing to hold the secret. Um, but it definitely broke family norms, it broke the rules. And so for me, it was a big step. Now, because what I know now about shame, which is that with simple shame, when you speak the truth, when you are vulnerable, and other people give you external compassion, which I had plenty of it from my family, the shame dissipates, right? But with complex shame, when you speak the truth, when you're vulnerable, the shame doesn't go away. And there's two reasons why. One is because when someone gives you external compassion, there's a part of you that says, Oh, but you don't really understand. If you really knew what I did or what happened or all the circumstances, and that's because your shame is so complex, you wouldn't be giving me that external compassion. And so then the person isn't able to take it in. Another way that complex shame stays and goes deeper is that people gaslight you for your shame. You may talk about your shame and people may say, This happens in marginalized communities a lot. Like, oh, that didn't really happen. Oh, you're exaggerating. Oh, I'm not sure that you're seeing it that way. And when you are told that your reality is not real, that's not your experience, your shame doesn't go away. It just dives deeper. And so for me, when I was able to speak up, although there was an immense amount of freedom that I experienced, my shame did not go away. And that's when I had to really begin to learn and understand the difference and how to untangle that shame and eventually forgive myself for all the things I did, all the things I did while running from my shame.

Simple Shame Complex Shame Toxic Shame

SPEAKER_01 14:21

So are there two types of shame? You said complex and simple.

SPEAKER_02 14:26

Right. So there's two types of shame, I would say. There's complex, simple, and then there's toxic shame. And that's a different type of shame that so that's actually three types that is very much attached to your identity in a way that's a little harder to let go of. That's kind of the basis for a lot of personality disorders. And a lot of people who have complex shame think that they have toxic shame, but what they really have is complex shame. And then there's categories of shame. So in my book, I outline seven different categories of shame. And that's kind of the box that that holds your shame, whether it's like religious shame, body shame, imposter syndrome shame, there's gender shame, racial shame, trauma shame, that type of thing. And so shame's shame's there's a lot when it comes to shame and the way that we use it in society, and also the way we feel and experience it.

Guilt Versus Shame And Why It Matters

SPEAKER_01 15:19

What are some ways that people can begin to ununtangle shame?

SPEAKER_02 15:24

What's a great question? Um, in my book, I outline eight, like eight steps for the formation and the untangling of complex shame. But if we remember, because shame is complex, it's not usually created by just one incident. And so one of the things that we have to do is start to kind of lay out our shaming incidents, understand what type of shame it is, you know, like the categories that I talked about, and understand where those first shaming incidents happened. And then because, and I don't know if I talked about this much. Um, so let me go back and really explain the difference between guilt and shame, and then we can talk about some of the steps to overcome it. Because a lot of people get confused about the difference between guilt and shame. And guilt is when we've done something to break our own moral code, we feel something. And that thing that we feel is guilt, right? It makes us feel bad. And guilt, when it's healthy, there can be invalid guilt, but when guilt is healthy, it's a beautiful motivator. It doesn't feel good, but it's a motivator for change. So we can either try to go back and repair, and sometimes repair isn't possible, or we can decide, I will not do that again, right? So guilt incites healthy change. Guilt allows us to maintain our moral compass. Shame is something very different because shame attaches to our identity, and shame says, I am wrong. And if you are wrong, there's nothing you can do but try to hide, right? And so shame in all of its facets drives us to hide. And hiding, whether we're hiding from ourselves, our partners, our family, our you know, relationships or work, it is never healthy. And so what we have to understand is where we begin to hide when we go back and we look at those shaming incidents. What were the shaming incidents? I talk about something called the phantom critic. The phantom critic are all those word messages that we bring with us. And often we might leave an unhealthy relationship, we might leave an unhealthy family dynamic, and we think we've gone on, like we've moved on towards health. But often what we do is we just pack up those words, we allow the phantom critic to really be created, and it just perpetuates all the negative messages that you know to ourselves. So we need to begin to understand what are those negative messages that keep our shame so attached to our identity. And then we need to kind of start to open them up and ask ourselves, where do I blame myself? And a lot of times this can feel like victim blaming, and it's not. And yet maybe you could say it is, but it's the way our brain works because your brain is already blaming you for something. It doesn't help for you to just say, oh, it's not your fault. That does nothing for someone who has complex shame. And so what we have to do is start to open up the places that we've blamed ourselves, whether we hurt ourselves or we've hurt other people. And then we need to work to a place of forgiveness, of acknowledging, taking radical accountability. And, you know, there are plenty of things that aren't your fault, but in tiny moments, you made decisions, right? And those decisions are things that you can take accountability for, and not in a I was bad or I need to be blamed, but in a when I talk about forgiveness, I love the quote by Lily Tomlin that says, forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past. Because when we can just look at our choices, when we can look at our micro choices, our macro choices, and we can look at the things that have happened to us in our life, and we can give up all hope that the past could have been different. It's not attached to anybody else, right? That is where we begin to start to feel forgiveness. And then once we're in a state of being able to forgive, then we can also accept whatever happened, whatever we did, right? And that's where shame begins to dissipate. And once you've gotten there, then you can be vulnerable. And you can be vulnerable in a healthy way because even if someone gaslights you, even if someone doesn't believe you, it's okay because you've already forgiven yourself. You don't need that external compassion in order for the shame to dissipate.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

That makes sense. Interesting about the difference between guilt and shame, though. I really like how you mentioned that it's not just one incident, too. It's not like one mistake, is what initially came to my mind. Right.

SPEAKER_02 19:53

Yeah, like one mistake. You know, if you wait, make one mistake, or you do one dumb thing and you talk about it, you're vulnerable, and people give you that external external compassion, you're like, okay, I'm not the only one. That's why the me too movement was so powerful, right? When someone says me too, all of a sudden your shame dissipates because you realize I'm not the only one. But when you express something and someone says me too, but you have 10,000 shaming incidents attached to that, maybe that little tiny piece falls off, but your shame still stays.

SPEAKER_01 20:27

That makes sense. Uh so now you were talking before about the different categories and then untangling them. So you said there's eight steps.

SPEAKER_02 20:38

Yes, there's eight steps to untangling complex shame. And then the categories were the the categories that I talked about, like religious shame, body shame, imposter syndrome shame, trauma, those types of things. The that's basically like the buckets where our shame shows up. And usually it's early in childhood. And usually you have two to three that are kind of your biggest shame buckets, if that makes sense. So for me, it was you know, racial identity shame and it was religious shame. Those were my two biggest shames growing up. It also could be trauma, or it could be body shame, or it could be hereditary shame or gender shame. And do they usually start like in childhood? Most of our shames do. They start in childhood and then they kind of get attached to other things as we grow. You know, our kids as early, or should say babies as early as 18 months can experience shame. And the unfortunate thing is in our society, we use, we wield shame as a tool for behavior change. But research has actually shown that shame does not uh change behavior, it does not shape behavior. Shame, remember, I told you earlier, shame makes us hide, right? Guilt shapes behavior, shame makes us hide. And so it looks like behavior. Behavior has changed, but all that has happened is someone's behavior has gone underground. And usually it gets even more dysfunctional when it's underground. But as a society, we tend to use it because it looks functional on the surface. So, yes, most of our shame begins early. And then many of us who have complex shame, it just kind of gets attached. It's like a snowball. It rolls down the hill and it just, you know, gains more and more shame.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

Is there any type of shame that comes? I don't know how I want to word this, but like that you get like later on in life, or it can happen from multiple different experiences of I don't know what, but like you know Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 23:04

So trauma shame would be one. If you haven't had trauma in your childhood, that you have some traumatic incidents. Ironically, um, when people have been victimized, even though someone did something to them, we tend to, as humans, feel shame about it. And so trauma shame is absolutely a type of shame. I mean, it could happen early in childhood, but it could definitely happen in adulthood. Imposter syndrome shame usually comes along later. And that's usually in school, in the upper grades or or you know, college, and definitely shows up in the workplace where you have this deep sense of I haven't, I don't deserve this position, or if they really knew that I didn't know all the, you know, enough, this sense of not being good enough. Now, usually that imposter shame is tied to something in childhood. Like you don't generally have no shame and you feel very good and confident about yourself, and you get into the workplace, and all of a sudden your confidence explodes and it's gone. It's usually attached to something else, but imposter shame definitely shows up more towards the late adolescence, depending on like what kind of achievements you're pursuing to early adulthood.

Writing The Book And Finding Her Voice

SPEAKER_01 24:12

That makes sense. No, I want to transition a tad. I'm curious when you wrote your book.

SPEAKER_02 24:20

Yeah. You're curious when I wrote it? Yeah. Yeah. So this book has been seven years in the making. It just came out. It came out in September, but I started writing this about seven years ago. And it's just taken this long to refine it and refine my idea about complex shame and get to the place that it is now. But I started it about seven years ago, right when I was really coming to a place of health with my own complex shame, is when I began writing the book.

SPEAKER_01 24:55

Have you always like prior to seven years ago when you started it, maybe even 10 years ago, did you think at some point you'd write a book?

SPEAKER_02 25:03

Well, I did. So I wrote another book before that. So that book I wrote, when did I write that book? So it came out five years ago. But I have always wanted to write. I've been a writer my whole life in just different ways, but I just didn't have anything worthwhile to say, honestly, until I started writing about seven years ago.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

I gotcha. That's awesome, Lau, that you were able to write the book and share, share it with so many people. I think that's one of the best platforms because anybody in the world can get the book, you know?

SPEAKER_02 25:38

Yeah. It's a means of you know being able to help people outside of my one-to-one therapy, which I can only help so many people, right? At a time.

SPEAKER_01 25:47

Exactly. And you also host a podcast. When did you launch that?

SPEAKER_02 25:52

Um, I think I launched the podcast maybe about a decade ago. So it's been close to a decade. I it started out as a radio show. And then the station that I was doing the show went out of business. And I had, you know, it was this period of time for me where I was like, okay, I love this show. The station's going out of business. I don't have a platform anymore. And podcasting was, you know, a thing. And so I was just like, I'm gonna start. I started a podcast, but really I'd already been doing the radio show for a couple of years. So I just transitioned the show that I was doing into a podcast. And uh the podcast is called Stronger in the Difficult Places, same title as my book. And yeah, I've been doing it for a while now.

SPEAKER_01 26:37

That is so cool that it started as a radio show.

SPEAKER_02 26:40

Yeah. Which I'm thankful for because I don't think I ever would have just started a podcast. But having already had the show, it was just very easy to transition it into a podcast.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

You wouldn't have just started one. Why do you say that?

SPEAKER_02 26:53

I don't uh, you know, I don't know. It I think at that time I just didn't really have any interest. And someone, you know, offered me this show, and I started the show with just very little experience. And I really did not, I never did any solo episodes in the show. It was always me interviewing people, and it was radio, so there was, you know, little segments, these bites, and it was very easy. But when I had to start just talking myself, I remember feeling a lot of just anxiety about it. And I don't know that I would have started it if I hadn't already had this ongoing show, but I'm thankful for it.

SPEAKER_01 27:30

That makes sense. Was it the same title as the radio show? Stronger.

SPEAKER_02 27:34

I'm trying to remember what the radio show was the title was. And I'm blanking on it now because I kept the I don't remember because I kept the podcast that and I changed the type the name of the podcast maybe five or six years ago. I changed it to Stronger in the difficult places. I don't maybe it was Dr. Zoe Talks. I think that might that might have been what it was.

SPEAKER_01 27:56

Yeah. I love that though. That's awesome that you repurposed it. Did any part of you think about just giving it up, just not continuing it?

SPEAKER_02 28:05

Yeah, I did. I initially I was like, oh, okay, well, I guess that's done because the station's going out of business. I don't have any other, you know, prospects. But then I've just decided just because they're going out of business doesn't mean I can't continue this. So I absolutely initially thought that's done. That was a fun run. Um, but then yeah, I decided, no, actually, it's not done.

SPEAKER_01 28:29

Because a decade ago, you were in the early podcasting people. Like kind of.

SPEAKER_02 28:34

I mean, I feel like there's still a ton of podcasts, but it wasn't like it is now. Yeah.

The Aha Moment About Secrecy

SPEAKER_01 28:38

That's awesome, Zoe. No, I I'm curious. I ask almost all the guests this, and I'm sure you've had a bunch of them, but what you would consider the biggest aha moment you've had in your life.

SPEAKER_02 28:53

You know, the biggest aha moment I would say that I've had in my life is the burden of secrecy. And so that moment, when I told my children that they had a sibling, I remember the words coming out of my mouth, and I literally wanted to grab them and just put them back in. But it was too late. They kind of like they went through my fingers and I couldn't take the words away. But when I said those words, and when you have been taught to hold a secret and you hold a secret for so long, that burden is so heavy. And you create these stories about what will happen in your life and to in the world when you share and nothing happened. And that was my biggest aha. Nothing happened. When you were taught that these awful things will happen if you share your shame and nothing happened, that's when my world shifted and changed. That's when I realized wait, all the things that I believed, you know, were aren't necessarily true. And the way that I've been living with this burden when it lifted off in the lightness, yeah, that was a huge aha moment for me. Which is why I am so passionate about helping other people not carry the burden of secrets that just aren't healthy for them in any way, shape, or form.

SPEAKER_01 30:09

What that must have been a big aha for you.

SPEAKER_02 30:12

And I tell people who also, because now, because I share my story, so many people come to me with all of their shame stories and their secrets. And, you know, I let them know listen, when you share your shame, when you share your secret, yes, someone may say something, people may talk for like five minutes, but ultimately nobody cares. They go back to worrying about their own shame and their own secrets. And we create these, these, you know, ideas that people really care and we don't show up authentically in the world because we're worried about what will happen. And for someone out there who is holding a secret or is walking with a lot of shame, I can tell you nothing happens. The world goes on and you feel lighter.

Rapid Fire Questions And Life Rules

SPEAKER_01 30:57

I agree. And it's great that that you are a resource for people to be able to share their shame with now. Yeah, that's great. Well, thank you so much, Zoe. I really appreciate this. You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me on. Absolutely. Have you heard of a man named Jay Shetty? Yes. So I'm a big fan. He hosts a podcast called On Purpose, and he ends his podcast with two segments, and I've incorporated those two segments into my show. First segment is the many sides to us, and there's five questions and they need to be answered in one word each. Ah, those are hard. Okay, I'm ready. What is one word someone who was meeting you for the first time would use to describe you as? Light. What is one word someone who knows you extremely well would use to describe you as complicated? What is one word you'd use to describe yourself? Um loving. What is one word that if someone didn't like you or agree with your mindset would use to describe you as? Stubborn. What is one word you're trying to embody right now? Courage. Second segment is the final five, and these can be answered in a sentence. What is the best advice you've heard or have received?

SPEAKER_02 32:40

That's a good one. There's so many things that are running through my mind right now. I'm trying to think of what would I consider the best. I would have to say the concept that all behavior makes sense in its context.

SPEAKER_01 32:53

Why is that the best?

SPEAKER_02 32:56

Because when you understand that all of your behavior, all of everybody else's behavior makes sense in its context, it's impossible to have judgment. And that is really where empathy lies, right? Because judgment for yourself as well, and empathy for yourself as well, because all the choices you made make complete sense in the context of you, your temperament that you were born with, the how it interacted with the environment and created a personality and all the things that happened to you, all your choices and all everybody else's choices make complete sense. So for me, that was life-changing.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

What is the worst advice you've ever heard or received?

SPEAKER_02 33:33

Oh goodness, there's been a lot of really bad advice. I would have to say it's around it's around keeping secrets that the whole advice of like don't tell other people your business kind of thing, I think that can be really dangerous.

SPEAKER_01 33:48

What is something that you used to value that you no longer value? Secrecy. If you could describe what you would want your legacy to be as if someone was reading it, what would you want it to say?

SPEAKER_02 34:05

She was a she was a visionary who helped people find freedom from complex shame.

SPEAKER_01 34:15

If you could create one law in the world that everyone had to follow, what would it be? And I want to know why.

SPEAKER_02 34:23

Oh my gosh, one law that everybody had to follow in the world, one law. It would center around doing something. Uh how how can I say this? It would be a requirement that you do something nice that's not self-serving at all for someone every day. Why would that be yeah? Because if we had more kindness in the world, I I think it would make a better experience for everyone. And if everyone, this is about reciprocity and relationships too. If everyone is doing something, at least one kind thing for someone every single day, then we would all have that experience of kindness in our life.

Hope Joy And Closing Messages

SPEAKER_01 35:13

I like that law without any benefit. I like that. Well, thank you so much, Zoe. I really appreciate it. Those are really, really great questions. They're not mine. I can't take any credit, but thank you. You're welcome. I will link your website and social media in the show notes, but I do just like to give it back to the guest. No pressure. Any final words of wisdom? Anything else you want to share with the listeners?

SPEAKER_02 35:41

You know, I think the only thing I would say is that shame is such an unsexy concept and thing to talk about. Um, but I talk about it with a smile on my face because there's so much joy and hope when you're able to release shame for your life from your life. So I just want to focus on the hope and the joy involved in that.

SPEAKER_01 35:59

I love that. Well, thank you, Zoe. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me on, Amanda. Absolutely. And thank you guys for tuning in to another episode of Mando's Mindset. In case no one told you today, I'm proud of you. I'm voting for you. And you got this. As always, if you enjoyed the show, I would really appreciate it if you would leave me a five-star rating, leave a review, and share with anyone you think would benefit from that. And don't forget, you are only one nine-step shift away from shifting your life. Thanks guys, until next time.