The Stories We Carry and the Shame We Hold

In this episode, I open up about some of the deep inner work I've been doing lately. I've been spending time with younger versions of myself, sitting with my inner child, my teenage self, and the parts of me that have carried shame for far too long.

What I've been realizing is that so much of the shame we hold isn't actually ours. It's inherited, learned, projected onto us, or created from experiences that taught us we weren't enough. Over time, those stories become woven into our blueprint, and we start believing them as truth.

In this share, I share some of the practices and techniques that have been helping me gently reconnect with these younger parts of myself, release what I have been carrying, and create a different relationship with who I am.

I also talk about self-love.. An honest look at how we speak to ourselves, how we judge ourselves, and how often we withhold the same compassion from ourselves that we freely give to others.

This episode is an invitation to become aware of the stories running beneath the surface, to bring light to the places that still hurt, and to begin reprogramming the way you speak to yourself. Because healing isn't about becoming someone new. It's about remembering who you were before shame convinced you otherwise.

If you've been carrying shame, questioning your worth, or feeling called to heal the younger parts of yourself, this conversation is for you.

Follow @peacefulbutterflyhealings.com and @rawandembodied

If you listened to this episode and found yourself thinking, "Yep, that's me," just know you don't have to do this work alone.

Helping women reconnect with themselves, heal old wounds, release shame, and come back to their light is a big part of the work I do in my 1:1 sessions. Together, we create a safe space to explore what is ready to be healed, support the younger parts of you that may still be hurting, and help you reconnect with your truth, intuition, and heart.

Check out www.peacefulbutterflyhealings.com to book your appointment. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Ryan Embody Podcast with Andrea Stamp. I believe in the power of our voices. And when we speak from the heart and embody love for ourselves and others, something shifts within us and all around us. This space is for real and honest conversations around spirituality, energy work, motherhood, womanhood, and what it truly means to live in alignment with who you truly are. No fluff. I'm not here to be perfect. I'm here to be authentically me and to remind you that you get to be too fully and unapologetically. Welcome back to Ron Embodied with me, Andrea. This week um I had just a lot coming up for me. And um, you know, when you're in the process of like, I feel like rebraining your entire existence and stepping into really listening to where my soul wants me to go and all of these things, you have a lot of things come up. And this week I thought that perfectionism was one of them that was coming up because I, you know, Virgo Moon over here has a tendency to really want to make everything perfect before she puts it out. But I've worked on that a lot. So I was like, this just that's just not it. What is this? So I went a little bit deeper and I started realizing that shame, excuse me, shame has been wanting to come to the surface and be witnessed and acknowledged. And this is just stuff from my past. And um, I am doing an advanced training right now, just so I can hold space in even a bigger way for my retreats, my one-on-ones, everything. And what we're really doing deep diving on ourselves right now is we are diving into doing this inner child, inner teenager, past life, all of these different deep dives so we can start to understand where there may be fragmented pieces of us that are not wanting to be seen, thinking that they're too much, you know, all of the things. So I think what's been happening is since I'm doing all of this inner work so I can embody it and integrate it for my own work, I am starting to notice that there are some shit that I shoved way down in here that is ready to come to the surface so it can move and shift, alchemize, and get the fuck out of my body. And what's come to light when I did my last like deep dive, it brought me to the age 17. And what she had explained to me was that she was really afraid to be seen because she was holding the shame of a really dark period in my life, and she was holding it for the year 18, 19, 20, 21, 22. And she was like kind of holding it, and I asked her why she was holding it. And it she explained to me that's because it's where it began. So I thought for today's podcast, it would be helpful for some people when they are starting to process their own shame because shame is crazy, right? It's like it's one of those things that we can shame ourselves that we didn't show up right. We can shame ourselves for being a bad mom, what we think we're being a bad mom. We're not. Um we can shame ourselves that, you know, we did these things when we were a teenager. So obviously we're a horrible person and we must hold on to it for the rest of our lives. Not true, by the way. Um, we can shame ourselves, and I think I can't speak for men, but for women, I think that we deeply hold shame from so much in our life. And we also hold the shame that a lot of people put on us as well. And it can be really hard to start to break through that and start to understand that we don't have to hold on to that. We don't need to keep telling ourselves to be so hard on ourselves and beat ourselves up and shame ourselves for the rest of our life. So, story time. So back when I was 17, it's when I started to really fall into this um pattern of disengaging, really wanting to be numb all the time, starting to lie continuously all the time, like religiously to my family, um, for no reason. Skipping school. Um, I did have an older boyfriend back then, and I think we break up around like 18-ish, but I continuously just um fall into these deep patterns of different forms of escapism, whether it be with drugs, alcohol, sex, whatever it is. I want it all. And when you're like that, especially at that age, especially when I was younger, you get a lot of shame put upon you that you are a slut, you are a drug addict, you are a loser, you don't go to school, you are this, you are that. And so some of these things, you know, were definitely like I definitely was numbing out and I was definitely doing these things. But I think in reality, I was just a lost little girl that didn't know how to be comfortable in her own skin. And she was very self-conscious and she cared way too much what people thought about her. And so this was an easier way for me to at the time, what I justified in my head, this was an easier way for me to socialize with others. This was a way to get boys to like me. This was a way to feel pretty and special and all of these things, because when you are stoned all the time, or when you are drunk or you know, doing drugs, you always feel this like you feel so much prettier and amazing. You don't the next day, by the way, because that's when the shame comes in. So for about five years, it's a pretty dark space. And so I think during that time, and I don't want to elaborate with every little tiny detail of the story, it's not important, but what is important is during these times, I experienced the most darkest parts of myself. And I think a lot of people witness a lot of darker pieces of myself during this time as well. So there's not only personal shame that I put on myself, there's also the shame of the people that were around me that were witnessing it. And in everyone's defense, they just loved me. But I don't think that they understood that at that time there was a lot of shame that was put upon me instead of love. And so unfortunately, our little human bodies with their nervous systems and all of their things, they can take that as that they were not seen, they were not loved, they were not held, they were not real, you know, received the way that they needed to be at that time, and that they needed a little bit more support so they could get through some of these things. So, what I naturally felt like I had to do is that I had to do everything by myself. I had to make really hard decisions when things happened to my body. I had to really pull myself out of that gutter by myself, which again, there's nothing wrong with that. I just think that sometimes our humanness, we need a little bit more support instead of being shamed. So, again, I think what I did and what's coming to the surface right now to be acknowledged and be witnessed, so I can alchemize and move it and shift that energy so I can be able to really open up in this more expansive way, um, I have to start acknowledging the huge amount of shame that I put on myself and where I stuffed it into my body and told myself that I'm a strong-ass woman and that I can do this. So as these times go through and I have been doing all of this healing work lately, I notice where I was so mean to myself and shamed myself. And I think if we can really look at this from a bigger picture and step outside the box of ourselves, we can start to realize where that shame can begin to cause so many other factors. It can help us start to feel like we are not loving ourselves enough. Um, it can show up in a lot of self-criticism. And it can really start to cause all of these problems later in life because we don't think we're good enough. We don't think that we are able to hold space for others if we have any sort of past, which is such bullshit. Um, I think it actually qualifies you more. But I think that we can start to shift our shame and realize that these things did happen and that we get to acknowledge that they happened in our lives, but then we can also acknowledge that they do not need to dictate how who we are today, because it's not who we are today. And these things have happened, but they don't get to tell us how to be now. And so if we can go back into these patterns and acknowledge where things are coming from and doing it in deep healing work, deep therapy work, hypnosis work, nervous system work, whatever it is that you find that can work for you, and you can go back in and just reprogram your entire existence back then. So a lot of the trainings that um I have been working through, and some of the practices that I have been doing with my own clients is that we can go in to these areas of that time and be able to sit with this person, this version of yourself that feels unsafe, feels the shame, feels that they can't be seen, that they're hiding from you, and be able to go in and be with that self, that part, that part of your life, and be able to talk with them and work through it with them and be able to really allow them to feel seen, to feel heard, to feel safe, to be able to express what is going on with them, why they feel like they need to hide, why they have to have all of these things going on for them, and then be able then to eventually, if they feel safe and when they feel ready, to be able to take them out of that situation where they continue that pattern of shame, that pattern of hate, that pattern of self-loathing, victimhood, hiding, not wanting to be seen, being afraid, all of those things, and being able to remove them from that situation and taking them to a different place, and then being able to completely collapse that, disconnecting the cords and removing that from replaying over and over and over. It's like a total repattern, um, repatterning in your blueprint so that way you can start to step forward without that continuously doing it. And you know, um a lot of friends that I've known in my life have been able to do this through general work, have been able to process through um, you know, hypnosis and all of these different things. So find what works for you. This just has worked for me, and it has been so helpful for me, especially the more that I've been able to practice it and been able to embody it. I'm able to witness where things are happening in my life, whether it be shame, whether it be this, and be able to understand where the pattern is coming from, understand where the emotion is coming from, understand where the memory is coming from, and be able to dive a little bit deeper in there and then be able to shift it, give her the support that she needs and tell her that she is safe now and that she is good, and be able to then re-like collapse that, disconnect the cords from that memory of that continuous story that I was a bad person. I was a drug addict, I was whatever, X, Y, Z, and that story that I played behind myself, and that I am not worthy to hold space for other women because I did these things in the past, or I hurt people. So I'm not worthy of being able to help women right now. It's that shame, that that deep pattern that I want us to be able to really reprogram and realize that it is not the truth. We can move these stories and understand that we are not bad people. And, you know, I think that doing this work, this inner work, is going to be, you know, a lot harder when things have happened to you, whether you've been sexually abused, whether you've been in an abusive relationship or you were abused as a child, these are going to be harder things to release those things, because I think that there's still shame hidden there. There is fear and there's scarcity and there's all of these things and safety, but there's also shame that we put upon ourselves that sometimes we blame ourselves that those things were our fault and they are not our fault. And so being able to sit and witness these things and start to acknowledge and understand and resetting and reprogramming our brain, our nervous system, all of these different things to be able to be okay now and know that we don't have to live in that shame and in that guilt and in the stories and everything that we tell ourselves. We can do the work and then be able to just continue to like blossom even more than we are now. When we reprogram these things and we shift them, it gives us the space to be able to step into some of the things that we are meant to in this life, even if it's to give us the courage to be seen more, teach more, you know, sing more, dance more, and bring more joy into our lives. And so for me, when I started doing this advanced training, it was important for me to really start to practice it on myself so I could understand where these patterns of shame were coming up for me. So I can be able to really help women even more in the future be able to start rewiring and reprogramming these things within themselves. And you know, we can talk sometimes until our face is blue, and sometimes it's just not enough. Sometimes we have to do that deeper, and that's sometimes most of the time. We have to do that deeper work to just see where things are coming from. And as you begin this work and you start doing it even more, it will become faster. You will start to understand things quicker. You will be able to bring things to the light, to your like awareness right here, and be able to shift it without living in that shame and allowing yourself to repeat those patterns over and over and over and over again. So I just feel that it's important for you to understand that shame is a part of an emotion that comes through when things have happened. It's also a big thing that we do to ourselves, and we can change that by changing the words that we use when we talk to ourselves and realizing that shame is just another form of not loving ourselves. And how can we shift our perspective? How can we shift our wording when these things start to come up? Even if it's shaming ourselves for feeling like we're not showing up perfect as a parent, um, perfect as a partner, perfect at everything that we do. So I think this is why I thought I was gonna come on and speak about perfectionism, because that's kind of what I kept hearing, is that I shame myself for not being perfect. So, how can we start to just do this deep inner work, even if it's not having to dive deep into your childhood, even if it's just changing the words that you use every day when you are talking about yourself. Shift how it is. Like I get to do these things. I, you know, instead of apologizing every time that you have these things, say thank you for waiting for me. It's just those different perspectives of being able to shift how we want to feel every day and how we show up for ourselves and how we love ourselves and how we do these things. It begins to soften that shame and release it because we don't need to put all that shame onto ourselves. It's just not necessary. We get to dust our bee and our hearts and understand that shifting all of these things and doing the deep inner work is so important for us so we can show up as our best selves, so we can show up in that light, so we can show up in our joy, so we can show up in all these different things because that is how we like expand. So there's something that I really wanted to share today because as I was like processing this this week, um, I found this in um a book that I was just called to read this week. And it's the book of awakening, having the life that you want, being present to the life that you have by Mark Mepo. I'm sure many of you have heard about this. But it was the energy of being real. And he is basically talking about the mana, is a term originally used by Apolynesian cultures to describe an extraordinary power of force residing in a person or an object, a sort of spiritual electricity that charges anyone who touches it. Carl Jung later defined this term as the unconscious influence of one being on another. All right, so it continues on, but what I really want you to hear is this piece. He suggests that being who we are always releases an extraordinary power that without an intent or design affects the people who come in contact with such realness. The beauty and the simple truth of this can be seen and looking at the sun. The sun without intent or will or plan or sense of principle just shines thoroughly and constantly. By being itself, the sun warms with its light, never withholding or warming only certain things of the earth. Rather the sun emanates all the directions all the time, and things grow. In the same way, when we are authentic, expressing our warmth and our light in all directions, we cause things around us to grow. When our souls, like little sons, express the light of who we are and emanate what Jesus called love and what Bita called can and Buddha called compassion, the roots of the community lengthen. So I know that it doesn't have exactly like a point of what I was saying. But for me, when I read it this week, it just reminded me that when we can start to shift our shame and our judgment and our self criticisms on ourselves, and we just shine and we just get to be ourselves, and we get to share all expressions of ourselves, and we get to be our authentic self all the time. And we just Allow ourselves to really honor the things that are coming up for us, whether it be our, you know, anger or or frustration or our joy or anything, but we're able to sit with it instead of living there and being able to express it and then becoming the sun and shining it out, our authentic self out to all parts of everything all the time, and allowing our heart to lead instead of our mind and instead of those things that we've embedded into our lives, telling us that we are not enough and that we have to continuously live in this shame and this judgment, almost like this self-punishment, releasing that and knowing that no, that is not our truth. It is not our truth. We get to process these things and we get to release our shame and we get to understand that that is not who we are. It is just a feeling that is coming in that we get to move and shift, knowing that it's not truly who we are, that we truly are the sun, and that we get to shine out to all parts of ourselves and allow ourselves to be an expression of all the things because that's who we really are as a human. That's what makes us so special. It's what makes us who we really are. And so, yes, those things happened in my past. Those things happened in all of your past, and that is where they get to stay. They get to come up to be witnessed so you can help yourself be seen more or heard more or have things soften so you don't have to have these feelings, but you don't, you get to acknowledge that you get to be the sun and be all of those things. You get to be all of those things and be in your heart and shine out into everything. And so there was one more thing on here that I really just wanted to because it was just so beautiful. It just said, in this way, without any intent to shape others, we simply have to be authentic. And a sense of mana, a spiritual light and warmth will emanate from our very soul, causing others to grow, not towards us, but towards the light that moves through us. So if we can just find that way to fully anchor that feeling and change the way that we talk to ourselves and do the deep inner work and release the things that are just not serving us anymore. And I'm not asking you to bypass, you know, but I'm also asking you that if it's little things that you are shaming yourself for and you're doing these things, you do not need to deep dive on everything. You can go in and be like, you know what? I feel like I am shaming myself today and being really hard on myself today. I am actually going to go for a walk, or I'm going to go and move my body, or I'm gonna do a little bit of breathing technique, sit down and meditate, whatever it is for you to shift it. Because it is not your truth. It's not your truth. Okay. That's all I wanted to share with you guys today. I hope that you have a beautiful day. And if this resonated with you, please like, share, share the podcast with anybody that you feel that it would resonate with today. And um, yeah, I hope that you have a beautiful day.