- Hey, everybody.
I have Dr. Alexa Altman back here with me.
If you haven't watched our video we did previously,
we talked about the difference between shame and guilt,
toxic and healthy shame.
But today, we're here to talk about shame resilience.
(upbeat hip hop music)
So, in our last video together,
we talked about eh difference between toxic shame
and healthy shame.
So, if someone does have toxic shame in their life,
how do they even know that it's toxic?
- Right. - How do they move from that?
- Right, I think it's such a great point
because toxic shame, as we said in the previous video,
it becomes almost like an identity.
It's like the clothes you wear.
It doesn't feel like it's a state.
It feels like it's just who I am, right?
So, what does shame look like?
First thing to build shame resilience is to identify it.
Recognition.
And shame can look cognitively, like, mentally,
it looks like I'm not good enough,
I'm flawed, there's something wrong with me.
And, let me just say, as a human being,
we all vacillate between those states.
- Yeah, it's almost like part of that negative self-talk
that we all have at different parts of our life,
especially if we're trying something new or different.
But, if someone has a lot of toxic shame in their life,
would be this what they operate out of most of the time?
- Exactly.
Exactly, and then, often spend a lot of energy
defending against it,
which is, I'm going to shame other people
or I'm going to withdraw and go into my shame hole,
or I'm going to deny or ignore it in some way.
- Yeah. - Right?
- It's like all of our defense mechanisms come out.
- Also, it's important to say,
the shame state, what it feels like in the body,
that's another part.
Sometimes, people don't have the thoughts,
they just feel it in their body.
- Yeah, almost like with trauma,
we talked about body memories. - Yes.
- Where you can just feel it,
but you maybe don't even have an actual memory,
maybe it's repressed at that point
but you still experience it.
Is this kind of similar? - Yes
- You just act out bodily?
- Bodily, which feels like solar plexus, like in the chest,
you feel tight, you can't breathe,
often times with shame, because there's so much cortisol,
brain is super foggy.
- Oh, interesting. - So, you can't
put thoughts together, which means you feel
even more inadequate.
- Yeah, and then, builds on the shame.
It's like snowballing. - Snowball.
And, it's the seed of addiction
'cuz we're trying to avoid and soothe
and diminish all of that. - Yeah, like numb it out.
- Numb out, right. - Yeah.
- So, in building shame resilience, it's important to know
what those indicators are and I say,
writing a story and narrative.
So, part of shame recovery is, I need to write out
my shame story. - Yeah.
- And that is, what does shame look like?
What does it smell like?
What does it taste like?
Draw a picture of it.
Because, in order to understand shame,
we have to externalize it and create some story.
Even if you don't know what created it in your life,
often early life experiences that we talked about
in the previous video,
but it's important to know that this was something
that was handed down to you.
Often times, toxic shame is trans-generational.
You see lots of generations of shame.
- Well, yeah, because if our defense mechanisms
are to shame others or to ignore,
you can see how it can build.
Or even addicts.
We know that if we have a parent or close family member
who's an addict, we're more predisposed to act out
in that behavior as well 'cuz we're learning
our coping mechanisms. - Exactly.
And so, Brené Brown talks a lot about
what's a hostile environment to shame
and I love how she says that.
What's hostile to shame is empathy
because shame survives on secrecy,
judgment, and darkness.
So, we have to bring shame into the light.
So, on top of building a shame narrative story,
is to tell somebody.
- Yeah, and have empathy for your own shame
and your own experience.
So, if someone struggled to write a narrative,
meaning like in a story, could they just talk about
what the experience is?
Does that make sense. - Yeah.
'Cuz, in a way, you're starting to build
a little bit of structure.
- Okay, so almost like, we're starting to shine
a light a little to see, okay, it looks round,
okay, it's dark or it's light, or it's whatever.
We're describing it and then, maybe as we get more into it,
we could write the narrative of when it started
and how we felt and all that.
- I love that because, in a way, it's like, you know,
in the dark, when you're a little kid,
how the corner of the room, it looks like there's a monster
and then, you turn the light on and you're like,
oh, that's my dirty clothes from the day?
- Yeah, totally. - So, I think, in a way,
it is the beginning of that light
and then, realizing that the monster only lives in the dark,
but one important thing, if you're gonna shine the light
on something and you're gonna tell somebody,
you have to be very wise about who you tell.
- Yes, be very picky.
- Picky.
Looking for someone who's non-judgmental,
empathic, can give you proper kind of attention,
which can be a therapist. - I was gonna say
it could be a therapist.
It sounds like a lot of therapists,
but it can also be like a really close friend
or a family member, someone who you've entrusted
with your emotions and your experience for a long time.
- Yeah. - Right?
- Yeah, exactly.
- Yeah, 'cuz I could see that, when we finally,
if we're looking--
So, we're going back to Brené Brown's description,
if we're trying to find the things
that shame can't live in, essentially,
then we need to find empathy and we need to go searching
for the light and things like that
because, if we go and find the wrong person,
we could just build the shame story
like we're writing a whole other chapter, essentially.
- Yeah, again, I think it's a great point
and I think it's a great point that you make,
and I think one thing that happens when you're ready
to take on shame is you're really saying,
I'm willing to be courageous
because you have to be vulnerable and authentic
and it's almost like showing somebody your guts, right?
- Yeah. - You're like,
this is something that I have to show you
that I feel like is gonna be super icky.
- Yeah. - And, you're not
going to love me because I wasn't deeply loved at one time
and I have to risk maybe that happening again.
- Yeah, and that can be super scary.
- I just feel scared talking about it.
- I know, I'm like, ooh.
But, I feel like, the truth is, that with practice
everything gets better
and I know I always say it's a process, not perfection,
or we're slowly working through,
but I think, with this in particular,
starting slow, going at your own pace,
and being careful and selective,
and finding that person,
and it's not like all or nothing,
like we have to verbally vomit all of our guts out, right?
We can start slow with, like,
I used to have this hard time and I still feel some of that
and starting with just the experiences
we have in the current before we can take it back.
- Yeah, I'd be interested though,
'cuz I'm curious what people's shame stories are.
At least, the parts in your community
are people who are willing to share a little bit
because I think what we see is, we all have them.
- That's the truth and that's why we even feel, like, ooh,
'cuz everybody has that.
So, leave in the comments, if you feel able,
if you feel courageous enough, if you feel safe enough,
sharing a little bit about your shame story.
- The thing is with shame, it's sticky.
What I mean is that we develop, often, shames early in life,
like pre-verbally, and so, it can be as quickly
as a feeling that overcomes me and that's often what it is
and I just feel so bad, right? - Yeah.
- I feel so bad and I wouldn't dare talk about it
because I don't even know quite why I feel so bad.
- Yeah, and so, just to take it a little further,
so, if so we're gonna start identifying our shame,
we have our narrative that we're slowly putting together,
maybe building with a therapist or a friend,
from there, because for me, conceptually, I'm like,
so, how would I, maybe, tell Sean my shame story?
What does that really look like?
- Yeah. - Do you know what I mean?
- Exactly.
So, it could look like something,
if you know what triggered it,
like, my boss yelled at me or my boss gave me a review
and he said 30 things that I did well,
but one thing that I did awful.
- And we focus on that awful. - Right.
We focus on the awful and I feel like I'm incompetent
and I feel like I'm a loser and I feel like
I'm gonna lose my job.
So, that's part of it, the sharing those inner secrets.
- The conversation that we have with ourselves.
Saying it out loud. - Exactly.
- And the empathic listener is, I hear you, I love you,
no matter what happens, I'm here
and it's like, I get it.
I get it, we all go through that and I'm here.
I'm not going to say your experience is wrong or bad
or you shouldn't feel that way,
I understand what happened, and then,
I think this is where the magic happens,
is then deconstructing the story.
Let's deconstruct it all,
let's figure out exactly what led from your boss saying
you did one wrong thing to you feeling
like you're the worst employee.
- Yeah, where's that tie?
- Yeah.
- Because, essentially, then what we're doing,
just to give you a little therapist insight,
is we're taking it from the present to the past
because what happened in the present--
This is something that I always keep in mind, myself,
is when my reaction is larger
or more emotional than I really think the actual thing
that happened warranted, meaning I am overreacting.
That's not a nice thing to say,
but I'm saying this to myself.
Sometimes I overreact. - It's like overdetermined.
- Exactly, and so, when I know that that's happened,
it's really helpful for me, then, to think,
what is it that I'm really upset about
or what was it that really happened?
Because this is way more than I should be upset, right?
- Exactly.
- Yeah, so that's kind of what we're doing
is, first, talking about the story and what happened now
and then, untangling why it was such a trigger.
- And, something I really like,
you know when you walk into your house
and you're like, okay, so my keys and my wallet
go on this one table so I never lose them
and that way I can organize in our hippocampus,
that part that's involved with memory,
loves when there's a place for something.
So, I have a shame notebook,
so you write down your shame story, your shame picture,
this is what it smells like, this is what it tastes like,
this is what it looks like, this is who I talk about it
with when I'm in it because, the truth is,
when you're in shame and there's all that cortisol,
you forget, it's like where you forgot to put your wallet,
you forget. - It's foggy.
- It's foggy, right.
- So, unless we write it down, we can forget.
- That's right.
- And then, as we continue to tell our story
and we continue to talk about it, write it out,
is that how we build the resiliency?
Like, in our old videos we did,
if you haven't watched those, I'll link those
in the description, as well,
but we talk about resiliency and it's like a muscle
and we're building it. - Yeah.
Yeah, it's the vulnerability authenticity muscle,
which is, I don't have it together right now
and I just need to share with you
how I don't have it together right now
and we don't do that a lot.
- No, and knowing that's also okay.
- Yeah. - Because most people
feel like that most of the time.
- Right.
Right, that is not a weakness. - No.
- This is actually a strength.
- Yeah.
- So, building the resilience is really redefining
that vulnerability as a strength.
- Yeah, and I think a lot of that is just
how we talk about it to ourselves and to others
and embracing the vulnerability
and being okay with authentic selves.
- Yeah, and changing the landscape of mental health.
- Yeah, totally. - Which, you would
know a little bit about,
and so, I think in a way, changing the landscape
of mental health, which is saying, I'm struggling,
this is really hard for me, I don't have it together.
Women tend to feel like they have it all together
all the time and feel like, I can't be weak.
- Yeah. - Right?
And I'm like, well, actually, if our resilience
depends on that level of vulnerability,
we might be working the wrong muscle.
- Yeah, we might actually be fighting against ourselves.
- Right. - Yeah.
Fascinating.
So, like Alexa said, if you have a shame story
that you feel safe enough in our community to share,
leave it in the comments
or if you have a way that you express your shame story
or something that's helped prompt you, let us know
because we all learn together
and I wanna give you a huge thank you for coming by
and sharing all of your knowledge.
I hope you found this helpful.
If you liked this video, give it a thumbs up
and make sure you subscribe because I put out videos
twice a week and you don't want to miss them.
And, we will see you next time.
Bye.