Bonus Episode - Transforming Shame into Radical Self-Embrace

Gorgeous Creatures, welcome to this week's episode of Finding Your Way Home

And it's another special feature - a bonus episode, touching one of our least embraced, and most impactful emotions - Shame. 

And I promise - by the end of this episode you will have a deeper sense of not only how and why shame burrows deep inside of you - but learn the blueprint for moving through it, working with it, ultimately coming back into right relationship with yourself. The whole of you; not just the dissected parts we believe to be acceptable...

In this mini, we cover: 

✨ The roots of shame from a developmental and conditional perspective
✨ The somatic, emotional and thought-entanglement that shame often involves: how we move from feeling it, to hearing the internalised self-label, to becoming "identified" with the shamed self
✨ How to identify your personal shame biog, and begin to soften beneath the sensation into greater awareness, compassion and agency 
✨How to bring the unloved parts back into wholeness 
✨And why this self-work far outstrips any desire to have another validate what you yourself have cast aside...

As you will hear, this is a tender and intimately important theme - one which unchecked can block people from not only authentic expression, but professional success, romantic fulfilment and creative talent. Alchemised, brought into integration, it can be the most potent recipe for self-embrace and creating the reality that you desire.  To find ease and safety in greater success and visibility, we must first be willing to see and accept the whole of who we are. This is where we begin... 

Sending love, always; let us know what lands. 

Transcript

Anthea: 0:14

welcome to Finding Your Way Home, the secrets to true alignment. I'm your host, Anthea Bell, movement teacher, mind body coach, and lifelong spiritual seeker. This is a podcast about the depth, weight, and profound healing power of connection between mind and body, spirit and soul, and from one human to another. Together with an incredible range of inspiring guests, we'll explore just what connection and alignment mean. How to get there in a world full of the temptation to conform, and how great challenge ultimately can lead to life changing transformation. Get ready for groundbreaking personal stories, conversational deep dives, and a toolkit of strategies to build not just your inner knowing, but your outer world. Let's dive in.

1:07

Oh, you gorgeous, gorgeous creatures. Oh, I am coming to you on a slow, soft, quiet, dusky evening. You guys know that I love recording these solos late at night. The world is quiet and my mind, which is so occupied day to day. Um, in the business, in and amongst the life of the practice, in and amongst the dreams and the hopes of my students and my clients. And then there's this thing where nine o'clock hits and as I prepare for meditation sometimes then is this spark of creation and. We received so many comments for the last solo that I felt really guided to share another on a related theme. So I'm gonna be really specific this evening, and you're gonna get it in slow soft tones because that is the vibe that we are riding with on this, um, autumn, winter, evening. I'm recording this right at the get go of October and. It really, I can feel the shift. I can feel the shift in my, in my body, in my being, in my nervous system, in my temperature regulation. Um, there's really a, a downregulating. Um, and just a little note to say that, you know, especially if you're listening to this, you're likely to be a fellow, uh, fast track traveler, so. Especially if the last episode resonated. You know, we were talking a lot about moving consciously with action toward the prize and toward the, the fully realized version of you toward the energy and the external manifestation of this thing that you know is burning inside of you and how important it is to be an integrity between the intention inside, the identity inside, the belief in yourself inside, and then the external steps that take you there. Until so quickly, it becomes an evident reality that then that's what you start to believe and all of that I hold sacred and true. What I also wanna recognize is that as we dip down into winter, and especially if you're on the developmental path, you will notice that there are moments where there is a need to pause and recognize. Everything that you've achieved, everything that you've done to be, uh, really encircled in both a softness and a gratitude and a receiving. And that slightly touches on what I wanna talk about today. A little deep dive into working with shame. And I'm gonna preface this by saying that I may cry because, uh, shame has been a close bedfellow. For most of my life, there's a very common distinction that is made in, uh, psychological and therapeutic frameworks between guilt and shame. The broad understanding is guilt means I have done wrong and shame is I am wrong. And in some senses that distinction is very binary because actually for most people, my experience is that they become this rich amalgam. Your identity and your life experience sort of get woven together in the constructs of the mind. And then in the most inopportune moments, when you feel the most vulnerable and exposed, you just get this cacophony of sensation, the hotness in the cheeks or the suddenly going pale or the the feeling of freeze or the. Seizing in your diaphragm, your solar plexus, your pelvic floor, that thing that takes you to that place that says, I'm not good enough. I'm not, okay. It can be soft and slow like a murmur, or it can be like a shockwave through the system. It makes it feel impossible to speak or to breathe. And so in one sense, what I'm talking about is very serious and in another sense. It. It really is just another emotion to become familiar with, to learn how to sit with, to be in ceremony with. And so when I say that today's episode is about working with shame, that is my intention for all of you guys. That is what we are doing here and now together is exploring really what is this thing that arises in me. What does it guard and protect? What does it signal? Where does it let me know that there is something so tender inside of me that hasn't ever seen the light of day? And how do we begin to cultivate a relationship with not just the experience, but with the, the aspect of you, the the hidden part that is speaking in that way. So I wanna start by just explaining a little bit of what goes on when we go into shame. And as we do that, the thing that I'd like you, if you're listening and you are one of those people that kind of goes along with the meditations and goes along with the explorations, I want you to just be with me here for a second and feeling to the last time that you experienced the quality, the emotional, tangible, often felt experience of shame inside of you. And what you'll notice pretty quickly is that it's a sensation and it's also a statement. There is a statement in there or more than one that will be echoing about you, about something inside of you that you currently deem to be unacceptable to others, and by definition, therefore, to yourself. I've spoken before. About the fact that when we are seeking from another person, confirmation of our loveness, or our intelligence, or our interestingness, or our importance, the vast majority of the time that is coming from a hole within. You know, the, the very commonly cited hole in the soul, it's a, it's a form of outsourcing. And in outsourcing that goes unconscious. Then that outsourcing becomes projection and it becomes pedestal, and it becomes, you know, one of the many things that we've talked about together before. But it's really important to underline this conversation about shame by recognizing that when that experience is quite visceral and vivid. There is quite often either a, a non-existent positive belief or a very deep rooted negative belief. And this is a nuanced, and in some senses, this conversation is a very, very fine grained theme. Because the reasons that we develop those shame patterns are extensive. They are complex. They're often rooted in childhood, in early developmental attachment, in primal base needs not being met. And so if you're someone that's experienced a lot of shame, there are sort of two things that I wanna ask you first off the bat just to reflect on in terms of your context. And again, kind of go gently with this. The first question is, did I receive a feeling, an impression? And, and remember, the mind is very creative and the mind of a child is very, in some ways it takes quite simple conclusions. It will create simple stories that then become quite hardwired. So did I receive the impression when I was a, a little one that I was. Either not important or not interesting, or not loved or not valued, either independently or in relation to the other figures within the family context. So that's question number one. Did I receive that, let's say, on an implicit level, really not about what was said or what treatment you received, but very much about like when I think back to what I used to believe as a younger version of myself, what were the earliest feelings and memories that I had at that time? Quite often when a child has not received very much attention, and that's sort of understood to be one of those little t traumas that, um, because of its level of consistency and the subtle damage that it causes has quite a significant impact on not just the belief mindset and the identity that someone develops, but also on the developmental function of the nervous system, the way even that cognitive processes develop. So. It's a significant thing. If you think back to your experience and, and you sort of get a, a sort of recall of, okay, yeah, maybe that was true for me. The other very common factor is that on a much more explicit level, people have received signals very early on that they are on some level, not enough, not tidy enough, not, uh, good enough not, um, academic enough. Uh, not pretty enough. You know, I, I had many of these, and the tricky thing about those statements or those impressions, or a combination of the two is that our tendency is to make ourselves the thing that we believe that we are seen as. So if we receive a projection from an outside person who's been critical to our wellbeing of some. Dent or some lack in, in many senses, that then is the reality that we create. It impacts how we behave in the world. It impacts the personality that we would describe that we have. Um, it can have a touchstone impact on the sort of friendships that we form on whether we lean into trust and abundance and celebration, or whether we're a little bit more guarded, timid, wallflower, et cetera. And I say none of this to, uh, to blame any of the people involved the majority of the time. This is vastly unconscious, and I fundamentally operate from a principle that everyone is doing absolutely the best that they can with the tools that they have. What I also know. Is that, uh, these rivers can run quite deep. And so there is something useful in recognizing, just acknowledging is this belief that I now want to shift? Is this form of identity that I want now want to shift? Is this physical experience in my body that I'm ready to move through and beyond and evolve with? Is that something that has lived in me for a certain time? Has it, uh. It impacted a little bit the way that I hold myself in the world, or even the world that I believe that I'm entering into. Part of why this theme is so important to me is that I've been very explicit with all of you guys that listen regularly about some of the areas of my own growth that have been superlatively tested. Uh, over the course of the last three, four years, and I've also been very explicit with you guys about a lot of the themes that brought me into this healing trajectory over 10 years ago Now. Um, been studying this stuff since I was in my teens, but it was not until 29 that I had a major rock bottom. So, for any new listeners, I really speak of what I know, um, on a, a being based level and also on a, a student, uh, study, coach guides, uh, teacher facilitator level. Um, this is very much my world and. It's important to recognize how prevalent, because of everything that I've been sharing so far, how prevalent and actually how bloody amazingly protective that shame mechanism is. Because if you have grown up in that way, or if you have learned quite early on that there is a certain conditionality. To the degree to which you'll be accepted and loved, and the degree of success that you're allowed to have, the, uh, the quality of expressiveness that you're allowed to have in your voice, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. If you've grown up with any of that, if that's been a part of your schooling experience, a part of your university experience, if that has imprinted somewhere, it becomes a little bit in the body mind, like a rule. And because the body mind believes that it's a rule, a sort of fact of reality. That level of conditionality, it will do Its absolute best to keep you away from ever coming into intimate contact with that feeling of shame again. That's the case, even for people that as they listen to this, they're like, no, I feel shame all the time. I, I'm sure that you do and your system will be working so, so hard to try to prevent that on a day by day basis. And unfortunately, often is the case that what we try and prevent the most, we also get a lot of, uh, experience of, um, which of course gives you the opportunity then to look at it and to work with someone on it or to work with yourself on it. And to begin to find the, the ways and the means to, uh, loosen up a little touch. Because the aim of life is not that we take it so horribly seriously, that we are so committed to doing the hard work of healing, that it all becomes a bit of a drag. But what I do feel very committed to doing is shedding some light on some of these, really on some level, quite basic, but also on some level, quite thorny themes. So if we go back to this thing of how does the system try to protect itself? Well, on a very material level, it will absolutely, if you've learned that only a certain level of visibility or success or, um, self aggrandizement is acceptable, all of which was me. Then your nervous system and your mentality and your identity and even your intuitive steps will be dramatically tailored to keep you away from environments that would challenge any of that. That essentially would put you in danger, and that is part of why growth can be so fucking uncomfortable because we are constantly having to come up against our fear edges like we were talking about last week. If you feel shame very strongly. So if you go back to that place of there's something bad, deeply bad in me, it is both one of the most important things to acknowledge because it is one of the most important beliefs to shift and most important identities to shift. Um, but it is also really important to recognize that there is gonna be a certain degree of gentle loving, connection oriented titration for you to begin to. Shift that baseline. Much of the time, shame is an emotion that sits on top of others that were more difficult to express. So often more common in women is the orientation towards shame. Often more common in men is the orientation more towards anger. Part of that is societally conditioned that women have been deconditioned to express anger, and men have been positively conditioned more in that direction. So most of the time when I'm working with a woman who, uh, experiences quite a lot of shame, especially around building their own career or stepping up with greater visibility or, uh, expressing their desire or asking someone out on a date, um, a lot of the time there's some anger release and anger work that needs to be done. Not always, but quite often. And, and part of that is therefore recognizing that, you know. The full spectrum of human beings is the deal. We have to, we are not really allowed to look away from, um, the fundamental of what it is to be human. And these, they're considered to be seven core emotions. But, um, among that list seven and then 27 subcategories and many more than that, the subcategories are understood to be a sort of amalgam, um, of several of the core seven. But getting, getting under the hood of shame becomes really, really important. I mentioned earlier that much of the time when we're wanting somebody else to validate something in us, um, what it really speaks to is our own self-belief or the lack thereof. So as you tune into this, this theme and this question of shame, what I'd like you to just sense into now is what are the statements that come out the most strongly? When I think about myself or talk about myself in that way, what is it within me that I consider to be unacceptable? That's really the fundamental question. What is it that currently I have ostracized or rejected or neglected inside of me that needs to be brought home to find soothing and love and integration? Just let, let that question rest for a second. What is it that I currently deem to be unacceptable? Because what I know is that we will spend an unbelievable amount of energy trying to continue to deny and hide and shield and pretend against this thing, whatever it is, whatever the thing is that you consider to be unacceptable. And as you will have explored, if you've, uh, ever read books like Existential kink, um, there is an unbelievable level of liberation in coming to celebrate the thing that you once deemed completely impossible to adore, to move into a place of ownership. Where you allow your lens of what makes a, a beautiful, whole, rounded, loved human being to allow that lens to expand so that it includes whatever this thing is that you currently deem not to be. Okay. Peter Cron, I, I, I adore and I was watching a little reel of his on Instagram. I do clue team sometimes go on Instagram. I was watching a little reel of his. What he was saying was getting triggered is a really good thing. I actually don't love the word trigger, but getting triggered is a really good thing because it shows you the area in which you are not free. And shame and experiencing shame is exactly the same. It shows you the area in which you are not free, and the freedom is at your hands and your hands only. It is only when you come to as a practice lean into. Loving, caring, accepting, welcoming, whatever this side of you is or whatever this trait within your temperament is that you've learned on some deeper level is not okay. It is only in creating that homecoming that you gain freedom, because in that place, really other people's opinions become far, far less important, if important at all, if important at all. This is really relevant, especially for those of you who notice that you sink into shame quite easily, but, but that you also experience quite significant levels of jealousy or even judgment of another person for having something that on some level, if you are really honest with yourself, you do want. So the shame will make us deny the want, the desire, the ambition, the success, the grim, uh, very human tendency to want to believe that we are always correct, all of that jazz. And the shame is the protective mechanism.'cause on some level we believe that we will not be acceptable to others. Therefore, we will not survive if this part of us is shown. And what will then come in is when we see other people that have that thing. That we really wanna be able to express that ugly side of us that would feel so good and guttural to really Oh, really express out into the world. The tendency is to both be mesmerized by them and also feel really often intense. Either jealousy or judgment. That thing in them is not acceptable. Well, it's only not acceptable in them because we've made it not acceptable in us. And so this comes back to not just the radical responsibility piece, but the, the kind of radical self embrace, radical self ownership piece is to accept that there are probably size of you that you don't love to accept, that there are probably desires within you that might not be tidy and neat and palatable and polite, maybe even feminine, I don't know. And to, to really embrace that. To really enjoy that. You're learning a lot more about yourself. Oh, I have this and I have this, and I'm really not quite the person that I thought that I was. What I think is also really important about this conversation is that you guys know quite well by now. If we come to something with a preexisting belief, then we will find all sorts of manifest ways of making that belief come true. We will see that belief expressed in the facial expressions of those around us. We will turn down opportunities that would challenge that belief. We will lean into and find familiarity and safety in scenarios that reinforce the truth of that belief because the brain and the nervous system fundamentally are quite hardwired to, uh, recreate what they think to be true. The brain likes to believe that it is correct. So especially if a belief has floated inside of you for quite a long time, and shame linked beliefs often have, it'll be very, very tempting to continue to cultivate a life where those things seem to be being reconfirmed. What is much more fun, much more of a learning and much more, in some ways challenging, is to allow yourself to become plastic, plastic. Like the neuroplasticity of your brain plastic, like the adaptability of your evolutionary complex plastic like love. Any of you that are listening, you know, think back to the last time that you were in a relationship and you thought that that person was the only person you could possibly ever love, or people that have had one child and they're like, oh my God, this is as much as I can love. I just couldn't have more love than this. And then, hey, preso, and you baby is born. Or a new deeper partnership comes to the table and you're like, oh my God, there's different, there's more. This is, I'm now adapted to this new thing. Well, the brain and the body work in exactly the same way, right? And so you have just as much capacity to lean into and adore this new version of you with all of these parts, all of this diversity and richness as the old version of you. And the illusion is, if I lean into loving the part of me that I think is unacceptable, I will lose something. No, no, no. You don't. What you might lose is relationships that were conditional in that way, and my argument to you would be that as uncomfortable as that might be, that is an absolute blessing. It is a rich gift, a, a rich, rich, rich gift. For your relationships to evolve and shift and leave and enter in a way that matches the person that you are finding yourself to be becoming. There are however far, far, far more gains than just that non loss loss. It is a radical, beautiful, fucking rebellious thing to decide that you are lovable to you as you are. And it opens every single door. It just does because of course, other people believe what you believe, even just on the basis of mirror neurons. People are looking to you for signals all the time, and they are mimicking what you are putting out. And so the more that you go into spaces, believing that the hole in the totality of you is stunning and beautiful. And complex and ette and you know, like one of those beautiful Japanese porcelain uh, bowls that has the, the chink and the fracture in it that's sewed up with a seam of river gold that's you. And that version of you is actually more likely to achieve success than the version of you that's trying to push down the things that you don't think the world. Will allow you to be and still attain visibility or success. I mean, we have so wrapped ourselves into the illusion. It's this thing that makes me successful. It's this thing that makes me successful. Oh, I need to be authentic now to be successful. Like even that has become a pressure point. The work of being a human being. Oh God. I mean, there are so many different ways of answering that question, but. More and more for me, it feels as though the, the work and the opportunity has just come into more and more radical honesty about who you are, who you be, what makes you tick to come into more and more radical seeing of yourself, seeing of others, really dissolving the rules and the regulations and the illusions that we place as limiting factors. In what will happen? How could I possibly know that if I keep hidden this part of me, it will make me more successful? I mean it. It's just flagrant. Forgive my swearing. It's just flagrant bullshit. That's not either what people find magnetizing interesting. Captivating, no one can relate to your story. If you seem like someone that's sitting on a pedestal with no skin in the game, no baggage in the tank. You know, part of why we got so many, uh, responses and pieces of feedback for the episode that I opened, um, and shared with you guys last week was because I also shared this really squeezy moment where I was screaming at the wall, uh, just before the Costa Rica retreat. That is what people will resonate with, connect with you for, feel heart, heart allegiance with you for. And it's not all about obviously just, you know, flagrantly showing unhealed levels of vulnerability and trauma. I'm not ever an advocate of that because it's not good for the person sharing, but it is really, really important that we reset the filter that you, as you listen to this, reset, the filter of what you're allowed to be. The things that you consider to be a demerit are not actually blocks to your success or to your love or your joy, whatever the metric is that you're currently working on. They're really not. And I promise you, if you spent more time embracing them than you did rejecting them, you would free up a hell of a lot of time and space and emotional openness you would get on your own team. I said this to three clients so far this week, and it's only Monday. What is it like to be on your own team, to be batting for yourself rather than batter battling against yourself? And that brings us right back to this thing of shame. Really, truly, as you listen to this, especially if you've gotten this far, just ask yourself, what really is the truth, the validity of that shame statement, that shame feeling? Is it true? Is it useful? And when in my day to day I start to feel that rising up, could I ask myself just those two questions, is it true? Do I know it to be true? Like going right back to the Byron Katie work concepts, but also is it useful? Is believing this useful to the day that I wanna have? Is believing this useful to the relationships that I wanna build? Is believing this useful to having dinner with my husband today? Or being in sacred presence with my kids, is this just bloody useful? And the answer is almost inevitably no. And so if the answer is no, the question becomes, okay, what would be useful? What would I need to lean into? What would I need to forgive myself for? What would I need to recognize and celebrate? What grief would I need to hold space for in order to be able to soften? A little bit of this emotion. You guys know that as part of the work that I do and as part of this podcast, we release a lot of meditative practices and so you will find a bank of things that can support you in coming home, even in the moments that it feels hard. And if there is a resource that you need and we have not put it up, you are to let me know because that is my, my duty of care for you all. It's to be shining a little bit of a light in moments when it can feel dark, and then to be having a big old party in the moments that it feels celebratory and bright. But the most important takeaway here I is that the only thing missing, really, the only thing missing here is the receipt of your own love. In the area that feels the most vulnerable and tender, the most squeezy, the most exposed. Anyone that's experienced imposter syndrome is just shame wrapped up in another way. I, it's just the fear, oh, they're gonna see something in me that I really don't want them to, because it makes me unlovable. And that's where to start. It just doesn't, and for a time, you're gonna have to test the theory. And you can do that in a lot of ways. You can share with one intimate other, something that you feel you can't love yourself for, and see how they receive you. Choose your person. Choose them based on the experience that you've had with them. Choose someone that you know feels safe. You can gently start to step toward your dreams in incremental actions, and you can see what happens. You can trust saying yes when someone offers you care, rather than preemptively closing down. You can feel what it's like to let the world feel your warmth and your openness of heart rather than hiding it from the fear that you might be too much. You can step towards yourself in small and in subtle and in big and in grand ways. And so I wanna leave you there with that as your core takeaway, your core commitment, your core practice. And I wanna remind you that if you're listening to this, you and I are no different. And in my 10 years since breakdown and in my, my God, how long has it been? Mm, 24 years. God, I am. I am. Yeah. That is a time. Hey, in my 24 years, 25, actually from the time when I first went into some form of crisis that made me look at this stuff. I can promise you that I have moved through depths and depths and depths of walls between me and me and all of the beauty and the love and the care that I've allowed myself to experience. It's the evidence for you. It can be. If you choose to allow yourself to hear this, it is the evidence for you. Of all that you can also feel and shift and evolve and love because there was no one less likely. I told you I would cry. There was no one less likely to be able to do all of that than me also, I thought, and so we're in this together. And I adore you all. Thank you for listening. My loves.

Anthea: 34:46

Gorgeous listeners. I hope. You enjoy today's. today's. episode. To find. More about our. Featured guests. Have a look in the show. Notes.