How to Let Go of Your Shame [SOLVED PODCAST]

Chances are, if you're listening to this or watching this, there's an area of your life that you feel so terrible about that you just try to pretend that it's not there, that you hide it from others, that you just you you avoid it at at all costs. And that avoidance and that hiding leads to more problems in your life. It causes you to isolate yourself. It causes you to withdraw yourself. It causes you to numb and distract yourself. It probably causes problems in your relationships, yet you're probably not addressing it.

Shame is, it is the, in many ways, the ultimate topic that we all need to address, but by definition, it is the last topic we ever want to address. And so this episode is going to probably have a weird tension throughout for most people. I, I actually imagine that we will lose some people in this episode just for the simple reason that it will become too uncomfortable and they don't want to ask these questions of themselves as we go through all the topics. But fundamentally, as we will see, alleviating shame or healing shame or coming to terms with your shame, whatever language you want to use around shame, it is one of the most important and core aspects of developing yourself or improving yourself.

A lot of what people go to therapy for is to heal or overcome their shame. A lot of what people go to seminars and meditation retreats and self-help conferences is to help heal and alleviate their shame. The reason people go to AA meetings, that they go to check themselves into mental hospitals, a lot of it is around alleviating their shame. And so this is, it is such a fundamental aspect of our relationship with ourselves, our relationship with the world, our relationship with our loved ones. And it is the topic that we hate touching more than any other. So all irony aside, we are about to spend the next four to five hours touching this topic. Touching it in the most shameful of ways or the most shameless of ways, perhaps.

So with that, welcome back to the Solve Podcast, everybody. I am number one New York Times bestselling author Mark Manson, and this is my intrepid producer associate, former academic Drew Bernie. And in this episode, we are going deep on shame. Now, for anybody who's new here, the whole point of the Solve Podcast is to give you a podcast episode that is so well-researched, so deep, so thorough that you will never have to listen to another podcast episode about this topic ever again, ever your entire life. Don't be ashamed of that. There's going to be a lot of bad shame jokes throughout this episode. I can already tell. Hear them already.

Now, to set the agenda or the road map a little bit for the listener. This is a long podcast. It is very thorough. You don't have to listen to it all in one shot. You, you can break it up over multiple sessions. But just to orient you on like how we're going to go about this. Generally speaking, the first half of the episode, Drew and I get into the theory and understanding the concept as deeply as possible. We look at everything from a, a scientific lens, a cultural lens, a historical lens, and a philosophical lens, uh, as well as a psychological lens. And then the back half of the episode is where all of the actionable advice is, the practical takeaways, the things that you could do today or this week or this month, uh, to help solve this problem in your life. So prepare yourself accordingly.

And because it is such a large podcast with so much information, we provide free PDF guides to go along with the episode. So if you want to download the free PDF guide, it's over 100 pages. It has all of our citations and notes. It has all of the research, all the theories, all of the book recommendations. You can go to solvepodcast.com/shame and you can download it for free. And finally, if you are a fan of the show or you get a lot out of this episode, please, please, please subscribe or follow us on the platform that you're listening to us on and leave a review if you can. Podcasting is very weird and that there is not really a way to get a show out into the world or or promote it without doing a bunch of [ __ ] social media stuff that we don't really like doing. So, if you love the show and you wish more people were exposed to it, the best thing you can do to help us is to subscribe and leave that review.

All right, so to begin, I want to go back. I want to go all the way back. I want to, I want us to imagine that we are in a prehistoric tribe. This is like 30,000 years ago, 50,000 years ago. Now, what is life like? Well, we probably live in a small band of anywhere from a couple dozen to a hundred people. It's probably really just half a dozen extended families that roam the savannah together, uh, eating a bunch of grub and worms and, uh, trying not to die of dysentery. Life expectancy was extremely short. You know, Thomas Hobbes had this great famous quote from Leviathan where he said that the pre-civilization man, his life was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. And for a couple centuries, there was a lot of debate around that. But, uh, we, uh, we know for a fact now that, yeah, being a caveman [ __ ] sucked. It was not a good time. Your life expectancy was about 30 years. Most of your waking hours were spent sourcing food. And if anything went wrong that day, you didn't eat. You spent roughly as much time sick as you did healthy. Disease was rampant. You, there were tapeworms, lice, parasites, diarrhea, constant food poisoning, malaria, gum disease. It was a tough time. People were not frolicking through the savannah. Let's just put it that way.

And then on top of all of that, violence was rife, not only within the tribe, but between tribes. There was a lot of, uh, territorialism and, um, you know, raiding and pillaging of, of neighboring tribes. In the prehistoric age, it is estimated that anywhere from 10 to 20% of the population died from murder. So being a caveman sucked. We've established that. I think it's important to really spend a moment thinking about this because it's important to understand how high the stakes were. Let's say you and I go out on a hunt together and you are screwing around and not paying attention and you step on a branch and the g, the wild game like hears us and runs away. Like that's our food for the next week. You just like completely screwed the entire tribe for the next week, right? There should be repercussions for that. It would make sense that we evolved consequences for certain behaviors or infractions or the violation of, of expectations between human beings. Lying or stealing could really result in somebody's death. You know, today we see it, you know, you go to a drugstore and you see somebody shoplifting and it's just like, it's annoying, it's disrespectful, like maybe you like make an angry comment or whatever, but like nobody's dying. In the caveman days, if you stole food from somebody else, like somebody could die, like they could starve to death from the fact that they don't have that food anymore. Um, starting drama with people, disobedience to your elders or to superiors, like all of these things could result in people's death. So like the, the point here is that the stakes were extremely high and living up to social norms and expectations, it was a life or death matter.

And back then, you didn't have an option. Like today in this day and age, you know, it's like, it's very cool and fashionable to sit back and be like, "Yeah, man. Society's not going to define who I am. I'm my own man. I'm going to, I'm going to turn my hat backwards and put my watch on my right hand 'cause I'm my own man." There was none of that. Like if you, back in the prehistoric days, if you didn't have the tribe, you died. You'd be eaten by a predator. You'd be killed by somebody else. You would starve to death. You'd freeze to death. You'd die of a disease alone. It, it was, you had no choice. You had to live up to the social expectations of the tribe. And not living up to those expectations meant you died. It was that simple.

And so we have 80 to 90% of our biological lineage is built off of this software of like, if you don't live up to social norms, you're dead. And so it makes sense that we would evolve a mechanism in our brains to be highly sensitive to the possibility that we are violating social norms and social expectations. To be incredibly anxious around the idea that other people might not like us, that that we would obsess over our reputation or how other people see us because again, for 90% of human history, if you had a bad reputation, that could get you killed. So it is, it is fundamentally a survival mechanism.

So as a result, we all, we kind of have this internal radar inside our heads that's going on at all times. And this radar is always paying attention to how the things that we say or do might affect the people around us and what they might think of us. And this radar is exhausting. I'm sure most people listening to this are, have, are, are very human and and that they can share in that experience and that it is [ __ ] exhausting constantly worrying what other people are thinking about you. But it is completely natural and human and and very fundamental to our, to our evolutionary survival. And part of this radar is that when we detect that there might be something that might turn the people around us against us, we shut the [ __ ] up. We don't, we close our mouths. We don't say a thing. We sit quietly. Just don't rock the boat. That's kind of like the default reaction to this radar when it detects something.

And on top of that, not only do we shut the [ __ ] up and not rock the boat, but we also have this tendency to internalize that this impulse or this thought or this behavior says that there is something wrong about us. It's not a purely transactional calculation of like, oh, if I say this thing, then, uh, you know, John and Mary might not like me, so I'm not going to say that. It's like, wow, the fact that I want to say this thing that is going to make John and Mary hate me, like, I must be a bad person for wanting to say it. And that feeling that I must be a bad person for wanting to say these things or I, I must be a bad person for wanting to violate these norms, that is shame. That is essentially what shame is.

And all of this is important because it's important to understand the context of how important shame is for our survival as a species. Like this is the message that doesn't get communicated in this industry or this space. You know, it's shame is, is universally like, oh, you should feel good about yourself and you shouldn't keep yourself down and you should be open and share everything all the time. And it's like, yeah, in our modern world for people who are suffering a lot or have been through a lot, like that's a good message. In the broader context of human history, it's not only is shame inevitable, but it's like, it evolved for a very important purpose. Yeah. Shame, it doesn't, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense in the modern world, but when you understand it from this evolutionary perspective, then it does. And I think that's a, like, just a grounding self-awareness around shame is kind of like step one in addressing it.

What we're going to see is that this is, this evolutionary story of shame is going to come back over and over and over again. So like when we come back to talking about therapy, it's going to be really apparent. When we talk about culture, it's going to be really apparent. When we talk about family, it's going to be really apparent. When we talk about technology and social media and cancel culture, it's like all of this stuff is going to be extremely relevant and it, and it's going to inform everything that comes after this in this episode. So, and also to your point, it's just knowing how fundamental and universal it is. Uh, it is, it is somewhat healing in and of itself, I think. You know, learning all this stuff, it just, it's just good to know that you're not weird, right? Like, it's a, it's a feature. It's not a bug. It's not, there's nothing wrong with you. Yes. It's, it's, it's part of your DNA. Deep, deep, deep in the DNA. Yes. Absolutely.

The fundamental paradox of shame is that the more you try to hide it, the more power it ends up having over you. And so what you see with shame is, uh, people will will become ashamed of, of an impulse or a desire that they have that doesn't conform to the, the group or the society around them. That will cause them to isolate. It will cause them to try to hide themselves, to, to become dishonest or to portray themselves differently than they actually are. This is the key to understand is that this generates a series of downward spirals, right? So the more you isolate yourself, the more unworthy you feel of the affection and, and validation of others. The more shame you experience, the more you isolate yourself, the more unworthy of validation and affection you feel of others, and so on and so forth.

Similarly, there's another downward spiral with, uh, compulsions and addictions. Um, you know, the more shame you feel, the more you will try to numb yourself or distract yourself from that feeling of shame. So, the more you will indulge in, uh, sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and which will then cause you to feel only more ashamed of yourself because you'll wreck your life even more. And then that causes you to want to numb yourself more. And then it just goes on and on and so forth. And then finally, there's a, there's a, a self-sabotage aspect of this that starts to emerge or show up for a lot of people. And that when they've felt shame for, to such an extent for such a long period of time, they really internalize a belief of like, I don't deserve good things. And so when a good thing does show up, they will find a reason to [ __ ] it up. I imagine everybody listening to this has either, if you haven't done this yourself, you've seen it and a friend or a family member and is like, one of the most heartbreaking things to see is to see somebody literally just look a good thing in the face and [ __ ] it up. But it comes up with people who experience a lot of shame consistently and it's a very difficult thing to break them out of.

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You know, before we, we get deeper into how shame affects our lives, I think it's probably useful to really go through a series of definitions and try to understand, uh, on, on a, a detailed level, um, what shame is, how it's experienced and, and how it's different than a lot of similar experiences or emotions, things like guilt or humiliation or, um, or what's the difference between like say, healthy shame and, and a harmful version of shame, right? So you're right, shame, it's not just a feeling. It's kind of like this. It's a system, uh, a kind of a, a behavioral and a behavioral system that's really deeply hardwired into us, right? Like you've already mentioned, not all shame is bad. Okay. There is healthy shame. And what does that healthy shame look like? Well, a healthy shame is, it's kind of like your moral compass. Let's go back to like our values episode that we did. You know, you have your, your values and the ones that you define. Shame helps you stick to those values. When you get off course, when you, when you, it helps you course correct onto those values. If you've done something that's against your values, in a healthy shame system, you'll have this kind of like internal voice saying, "Hey, some, you need to pay attention here because you're veering off track, right?" That's a healthy form of shame. When it gets toxic, though, that becomes, when it's, it goes from, you know, I did something bad to, I am a bad person, right? Toxic shame is when you start internalizing that and it becomes part of your identity. You're like, you said with that spiral, you know, "Oh, I'm a bad person and so I, if I identify as a bad person, then I don't deserve good things and so when they do come along, I'm just going to ignore them and I'm just going to keep doing all these other bad things and I'm just, I'm not worthy of anything." That's the type of toxic shame we want to avoid. And hopefully throughout this episode, we're going to like find ways to get away from that type of shame because that is typically when people think of shame, they think of the toxic version. They don't think of the healthy version. Yeah. So, uh, those are kind of like the two big categories where you have the healthy versus toxic shame. Okay. Right. Okay.

So to bring this home with like an example, like let's say my value is helping other people. I believe very deeply in it. Right. And then somebody in my life needs help and I ignore them or I just, I'm like distracted. I don't care. I'm being selfish in that moment and then I feel awful the next day and I'm like, "Wow, I am such a piece of [ __ ]. I really should have helped out this person in my life." That feeling then inspires me to say, reach out to them and apologize or, uh, make amends or maybe, you know, make up for it in some way. So like, I think that that sounds like that's an example of healthy shame. It's a healthier version. It's like, it's a corrective measure against like, uh, when, when we don't live up to our own expectations or, or the things that we care about. Similarly, it's like, I would say like, if I don't know, like let's say I, uh, uh, I, I got drunk one night. I, I went on a bender and I like wrecked my wife's car. I would feel an intense amount of shame the next day, even though that's not necessarily like me failing to live up to my value. It's like, I, I broke her trust and I've harmed that relationship. And so it's, there's a corrective feeling of shame of like, "Oh my god, I really can't do this again." Right? So where that turns toxic, I guess, is when you internalize the message of, of like, "This is just who I am. I never help people. I'm selfish. I can't control myself." And you start believing those things, which then makes them more likely to come true. Is, is that, would you say that's accurate?

Yeah. And not only that, it, it doesn't motivate corrective behavior when, when it gets to that point, too. You're just, you just stop. You withdraw. You're not, you're not attempting to live out your values. You're not attempting to correct any sort of injustice that you might have caused or anything like that. That's where the toxic shame, uh, gets, gets toxic really, is that it doesn't motivate kind of that pro-social behavior to, to correct whatever, uh, whatever wrong you did.

Okay. So, what, what's the difference then between like shame and guilt, right? Because I, I associate guilt with the healthier version, I guess. Yeah. So, you need to learn the difference between guilt and shame, or you're just going to end up drowning in both. Well, that, that is a big part of actually the research. I spoke with June Tangney, who's one of the world's leading experts on shame and, and the social emotions. And, um, she, she walked me through to what the big difference is. Basically, what it comes down to though, is that guilt says, "I did something wrong." Shame says, "I am something wrong." Something wrong. Right? Guilt is, "I did something bad." Shame is, "I am bad." Okay. Right. Um, now, she still believed that there is some, like, there is some utility to shame, but she was more of a fan of like, guilt is actually, even though it feels bad, is usually a healthier response and it's usually around your actions. It's not about identity at all. Okay. And a lot of times we use them interchangeably. And actually, I think especially like in, in western societies, we use, we talk about guilt more when we actually might be feeling shame, just because guilt is a little bit more, you know, "Oh, I feel guilty about that. Now let me do something about it." Which is a healthy response typically, whereas shame is, yeah, like, "I'm a bad person for this." Even within the self-defin, like, there have probably been a hand, not many, but there have been a handful of moments in my life where I've had that realization of like, "I am this type of person and I don't like it." Yes. And, and that has actually, that realization has motivated me to change very deeply. And so like that feels like a healthy version of shame of, of like a very, like, "Get your [ __ ] together, Mark." Right. What kind of person do you want to be? Yes. And, and then, and then if you follow up with that and you start living in alignment with those values, then yeah, that probably is a healthy form of shame.

June Tangney, she brought up an example like this in her own life too, and, and I've had these as well. Um, those seem to be kind of few and far between though, you know? So if you're, if you have chronic shame, it's usually not around that. It's usually around every little thing that you screw up and it's like, "Oh, I'm a, I'm a terrible person. I'm a horrible person. I screwed this up. I screwed that up." When it's usually like pretty benign stuff and nobody else really notices, you know? So that's, that's where the toxicity can come in is when it starts to become, like I said, more part of your identity. Yeah. And that's what we, we aim to avoid. For sure. We, we are definitely get, we're getting like very nitpicky here. But like, I do think it's interesting because like when I do think of the healthy shame, yeah. There's some sort of like repeated action over a long period of time followed by this revelation of like, "I, I am this type of person. I didn't think I, I don't want to be this type of person, but I am this type of person and I feel really bad for being this type of person. How do I change this?" Right? I think maybe what you're getting at a little bit here too, is, uh, there's state shame and there's trait shame. Okay. Yeah. I would argue that state shame, which I'll define here in a second, is healthier than trait shame. Okay. What do I mean by this? That state shame is just that you have this feeling like you said, "Oh, I, I'm this kind of person and I don't like this." But it's, and you set out to fix it. It's temporary. You think it's temporary. You, you imagine that it's temporary and that you can fix it. Yes. Trait shame over time though builds up into, "I am a bad person. There's nothing I can do about it."

Shame needs to be also distinguished between things like humiliation and embarrassment. Um, you know, embarrassment, especially to, usually it's awkward. It's an awkward feeling, but it's also kind of funny and you can talk to people about it. Like, like I remember like when I was in high school, I think I was at a basketball game. I went to the bathroom and I came back out, walked across the, the court. No, not across the court. No, no, no. I walked, walked down this like the sideline there, you know, back to my seat in front of the whole audience or whatever. I had a piece of toilet paper stuck to my shoe the whole time. Like, and I go and sat down. Well, I can tell you that, and we can laugh about it, right? Like that was embarrassing. Like, you know, and like all my friends made fun of me and I was embarrassed and, you know, I'm sure I was blushing and everything when that happened, but we can talk about that and find some shared humanity. It wasn't my fault, obviously, just a piece of paper, toilet paper was on the floor, probably happens with things that are like low stakes. Low stakes, not within your control, doesn't really have a whole lot to say about your character, right? Whereas if I, you know, tried to like play off the fact that I cheated on my girlfriend in college, you know, you're not going to sit here and laugh about that with me, probably, if you have a healthy shame system anyway. You're like, "Ah, okay, not cool, dude. You might be forgiving of it or whatever, but it's not like you can, it's not something you laugh, right?" Right. So, that's kind of a, one of the key differences or one of the key ways to think about shame versus embarrassment. Okay. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah.

Then you have humiliation though, too. And that is generally coming from like an external source. Someone's trying to humiliate you or people around you are trying to humiliate you and have you suffer the consequences of that. There's not so much of that internal feeling of, of, of the shame that you have of, of worthlessness or of, of, of unworthiness of some kind. Okay. So, you know, someone tries to, whatever they're trying to do, just humiliate you, make fun of you, you know, like you probably had these. Sure. As a kid, you know, people would try to make fun of you for something and humiliate you in front of other people. I do think you, you could see humiliation as, um, whether conscious or not, it's an attempt of somebody else to inflict shame upon you, right? And devalue you. Yes. It is, it is an attack on your status and your integrity as a person. And, um, and the goal is to maybe not directly to make you feel shame about yourself, but, um, to make you feel worse about yourself, and then shame happens as a byproduct. Mmm. Yeah. Definitely. I think another thing worth bringing up is that, uh, is, is there's a distinction between shame and trauma. I think those two things, especially kind of in the therapy world or self-help space, like those two things get conflated quite a bit because they, they tend to occur together. Like, I think an intense amount of shame can feel traumatic, and also having a traumatic experience will often result in, in a great degree of shame. Um, but they are not the same thing. Like the, the trauma is the event or the experience or the occurrence, may have been in your control, may not have, but it is, it is a harrowing, terrible event that, that is extremely painful. And then shame tends to be the byproduct of that. And, and the shame is the result of all of the narratives that emerge from the trauma. So, I guess one way to think about it is that trauma almost always causes a great deal of shame, but shame does not always, is not always a result of trauma. Shame is often a result of just a bunch of stuff. Well, we'll see. Shame can be about anything. Anything. And we'll get into that. Yeah. Yeah.

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Um, okay. So, that could bring us to maybe some of the neurobiology of shame and kind of what's going on in your body as well. You want to get into that? Yes. My body. Let's get into my body. Okay. I have no shame in my body. Oh, yes. Well, I don't know. You're not as shamerone as me, I guess. So, maybe you haven't noticed this. We're going to talk. We will definitely talk about this my shamelessness later. That's right. That's right. Um, but you know, most of us, we know that it's not shame isn't just like this psychic torture that goes on. It's actually kind of a whole body experience, right? Um, it hurts physically. Actually, it hurts because your brain treats it as an injury. A social injury is much, is treated much the same as a physical injury. So again, like your brain is in this black box. It doesn't know what's going on. Uh, it's only, it's taking in information from all around and it processes this pain in a similar way to physical pain. I wonder if that maybe that explains the linkage between trauma and shame as well, right? Cuz it's like, and in the case of trauma, you experience this physical injury, let's say, and you start experiencing it as a social injury, right? Yeah. Why, why did I deserve this? Oh, what's so terri, I must be a terrible person if they chose me to treat this way or whatever. Yeah. Right. And so I won't get into the weeds too much of this, but we'll talk about a couple of the brain regions here that are involved with that. And, and part of that, that noticing the pain and kind of treating it as a form of physical pain, in a way that's done by your anterior cingulate cortex. Um, it's, it's like your brain can't quite tell the difference between social rejection and like a broken arm, even. Wow. In, in certain ways. I mean, you can, you can think about this too. When you have felt any sort of deep sense of shame, it hurts. It physically hurts. You get like a knot in your stomach, or at least I do. Um, there is kind of just this kind of ambient pain throughout your body that you feel, even too. And that kind of starts in your anterior cingulate cortex, then moves your insula, what's called your insula. Um, this is kind of what, uh, this is the part of your brain that, uh, links the, like the rest of your body to sensations. So like the, the flushing in your face, or, uh, the, the nausea you might even feel for, like, deep shame, that starts there. There's a cascade that follows from the insula that starts there. Uh, and then your default mode network takes over. And I think this is part of like the trauma response as well. So your default mode network, that's when, that's the part of your brain when you're thinking about yourself, when you're thinking about, uh, yourself in social situations as well, or maybe using somebody else's, uh, perspective to view yourself. This is where the rumination comes in too, around shame. And, and so you put, kind of those three together, and you get this shame response, um, that we feel. And it's really not about the fear either. It's not like a fear response. Your, your amygdala, in this case, which is usually associated with a fear response or danger of some kind, it's really not as active as you would maybe predict it to be, right? It's these parts of your brain that are more tuned to, uh, social interaction and social rejection. Okay? So it kind of bypasses that fear response to, to some degree, at least, and it's really focused on the social consequences. And yet, it's, it's also coupling those with, uh, the pain system that we feel. That emotional pain and physical pain are, are tightly linked, which makes sense based on like the evolutionary stuff that we just talked about.

So evolution, what, often times what evolution does is it takes an old system and it adapts it for a new purpose. And in this case, what appears to have happened was like, that physical pain that, you know, it's signaling to you your brain and your body that, hey, something's wrong, something, there's damage being done here, uh, physical damage that needs to be addressed. Evolution seems to have co-opted that same system and applied it to social pain as well, social danger, social harm that could be done. And this is so interesting because later when we get into the therapy modalities that specifically address shame, what we're going to see is we're going to see both of those things pop up. Is that one, it's a social problem with the social solution that you, you can't really solve shame by yourself. You have to share it with others, right? The second thing is that there is a deep part of the pain or dysfunction that is involved with shame. It's like your conceptual identity, the default mode network, or what a lot of people would call your ego, right? It's like the way you think of yourself or who you are, uh, is being attacked and damaged and, and hurt the same way that your physical body would be hurt. And so your brain sees those two things as, it's basically responding in the exact same way. And so a lot of the therapeutic modalities that we're going to get into are all about like repairing that conceptual self and like integrating it back into social norms in society. 100%. Yeah.

If you've ever mentally spiraled after a mistake, too. Here's what's actually happening in your brain. So, it's this shame spiral that happens. And it goes from kind of like this silent alarm that starts to like a full body reaction in the matter of just a few seconds. But they've actually figured out what this is. Um, so you start out with like within about a half a second, say a shameful event or something that would cause you shame occurs in your environment and within a half a second, your brain, that that anterior singular cortex is already online and it's, it's fired up. Okay? And it's detected this social threat of some kind. That's within a half a second. You don't even know this at this point. That's, that's subconception. You're not consciously aware. Not aware of this at all. Okay? It's subtle. It's fast. It's unconscious. Okay? Then within about two seconds from there, your like higher order cognitive functioning is already shutting down and it's like, just focus on this thing and react in the, and damage control. That's where we're at at this point. Okay? Well, that's within two seconds. Uh, your working memory, it's kind of gone at that point. Your, like I said, logical reasoning, emotional regulation, those are all starting to be shut down because it, it's like a five alarm fire that your, your brain's like, "Okay, there's social threat here." You're, it's like you're describing being triggered. Yes. 100%. 100% like that. Yeah. Within just a few seconds. Then after that, too, there's body hijack. Like I've already talked about this body response that you get. You get the, the, the blushing, maybe the flushing of the face, uh, withdrawal, you sink bad. You maybe want to hide even at that point. That's within just a few seconds. Your posture changes. Um, I think anyway, this is really a signaling to everybody else that you're aware. I, I did something shameful. I'm aware of it. And it's kind of a signal to everybody else that you're aware of it. Within 10 seconds, and then leading out to a few minutes, then you start to have this mental kind of meltdown that we all are familiar with with the shame, right? You completely forget about all your past successes that would maybe mitigate some of this shame that you're feeling, right? You can't imagine that this is ever going to end. Like you can't imagine a better future at this point. Yeah, it, your present shame is just eternal at this point. You're like, "Oh my god, I just want to be swallowed up into a hole and die." You know, that's where this, within a few seconds, you start feeling that. And this is kind of where that default mode network kicks into your inner criticism. The rumination will start within just a few seconds. And then within even, you know, 30 seconds to a few minutes to even a few hours is when you get those reactions, uh, to shame. And so far, what we've talked about is kind of the more the withdrawal that typically happens from shame, uh, and the avoidance. But there's other reactions too that they found, you know, lashing out that can happen as a shame response as well. You externalize the shame. Something outside of you is to blame. And so you lash out at it and you get aggressive with it. Okay, that's one. Uh, going invisible. That's more what we talked about. You freeze, you withdraw, you hide. Uh, you don't look people in the eye. Uh, and then there's another one, too. Hiding the evidence or destroying the evidence, too. Okay, that's another thing. It's more just like you lie about it. You try to cover it up. You pass it off. Oh, it's not a big deal, but you still feel a lot of shame about it. So, those are kind of like the three, three typical responses you get from a shame, uh, a shameful event occurring. Um, and that's within minutes through even a few hours. If, if it isn't resolved and isn't, you know, we talked about that state versus trait shame. If it isn't resolved, uh, and it, it starts to lead bleed more into that trait shame, you start to get lasting damage for this because your stress system has been activated. Stress hormones are, are flooding your body and that starts to have actual physical, uh, consequences on your brain and body as well. At this point, too, this is when your shame system starts to be more hypersensitized too. Yeah. Because these, these, this cascade of chemicals going through your body is going to prime you for the next shameful event and it's going to be a lot easier to, um, get you into that shameful state. Yeah. Um, and you can vividly recall these moments, especially too, later about that and relive the experience too. Uh, which is very common. Yeah. I mean, this again, this is where this starts to bleed over a little bit into the, the body keeps the score stuff, you know, where, you know, Van der Kolk talks a lot about how trauma is not simply experienced in the mind, it's experienced through the whole nervous system in the body and it creates a chain reaction within the nervous system that makes you more prone to being triggered in the future. Um, which then makes it more likely that you suffer even greater consequences and it just, you know, it turns into another [ __ ] spiral. It's interesting that like you see a, a similar, a similar process take place around shame. You know, the more shame you harbor, the more sensitive you are going to be to being shamed further, the more acute and aware of the stress response. Um, the more you will pick up cues in your environment that make you feel bad, the more easily you'll be triggered in the future. And so it really, it's another one of these cases in psychology of just bad things lead to bad things, right? Yeah. The, the vicious cycles that we see. Yeah, for sure.

There, there's even another level of that. So, okay. Just when you think it couldn't get any worse, but wait, there's more. Yeah. Welcome to shame about shame. Shame, right? Yeah. And this especially if you get into that kind of like trait shame and chronic shame, this happens a lot. You feel bad about your shame. You're like, "Why am I ashamed about this?" Now you're, now you're shamed about being ashamed, right? And, um, they call that shame stacking. Uh, researchers do. Yeah. And this is when, when shame starts to feel endless and more of like a part of your identity. That's what happens is it's like this meta shame about, "Oh, I, I feel shame about this stupid thing. I shouldn't feel shame about. Why am I such a worthless piece of [ __ ]?" Right? Like, so it is, it is really just that vicious cycle that you're talking about too. It would seem obvious to me that before you can actually do any of the work on the shame itself, you have to like cut that cycle off at the bud, right? Like you have to, you have to at least eliminate the meta shame before you can start dealing with the shame. Uh, you know, so it's, it's like if you, if you're still feeling bad about the fact that you're feeling bad, you can't deal with the fact that you feel bad. Right. Right. So yeah, so awareness really is that base layer of addressing the shame, for sure. You know, but there, there's also though too, there's this other kind of interesting thing I found. It's they call it the learning paradox of shame. When a shameful event happens, it kind of locks in the details of what's going on. So you do get hyperfocused on the social aspects of the shameful event. Who was there? What the, the looks they gave you, the, the feelings you had around the looks they gave you. All the social information contained within that event is like highlighted and blown up. It's like a flashbulb memory. It's like, I can, I can think back of shameful things that happened to me when I was a kid and it's like, yeah, I remember everybody was there, the faces and everything like that, right? The crazy kind of thing though, I talked about the stress response that happens too, uh, immediately after that. Once that, that shame hits and these stress hormones kind of take over, your ability to think clearly, to absorb new information, your brain just kind of can't do that. Yeah. It, it's kind of weird. So in a way, it's like it creates this flashbulb memory and that kind of helps you down the line and say, "Okay, when another situation like this starts to happen, that flashbulb memory can come right on or at least the feelings of it can come right online and prevent you from doing that again." But you don't really learn from the experience. You don't gain the wisdom from the experience around taking the time to address. Okay, this is what happened. Walk through it. Why did it happen this way? Your brain kind of just shuts that down. And that seems weird, but from an evolutionary perspective, again, it, it kind of makes sense. I, I would say you can't learn from the experience if you're trying to avoid it. Like Exactly. Right. Like a fundamental part of shame is that you just don't want to revisit this. Exactly. Yeah. So the evolutionary adaptation to that though was in smaller groups, it was like, just get the hell out. Withdraw. Get the hell out. Just move on. Move on. Get out of there. It prioritized withdrawal over rejection. And it was kind of like, this is, it's a, it's a safer bet if you just get the hell out and let's not worry about the interpretation or the wisdom or anything like that because if you hung around and you kept being annoying to people, you're just going to get ostracized further, right? Now, in a modern context, that's not as adaptive. That's what ends up kind of keeping us stuck instead. Right. We avoid all that shame. We, we push it down. This is, this is what I do for the most part. If ever I feel shame about something, I find a way to avoid it. Yeah. And instead of addressing it. And, and the stakes are different now as you've kind of mentioned, because again, in modern life, the, the downside of being ostracized socially is, is pretty minimal. Like, it's, it's a nuisance. It sucks to lose friends or it sucks to lose touch with people, but like, it's so easy in the modern day and age to just go somewhere else or log onto a different website or like change your account name or whatever. So like the, the downsides are pretty minimized. Whereas the upside of addressing whatever you feel shame about, like the growth, the knowledge, the wisdom, um, the new information that comes from that is extremely valuable because we, we now live in a society that is moving and evolving so quickly that like you have to be able to grow and evolve just to keep up with it. That, that the incentives have changed. So we now live in a world where you were actually incentivized to deal with this stuff and learn from it. Whereas in the prehistoric days, uh, there was not really any growth to be done. Like, right, you know, if you learn from your mistake, like you're still going to be hungry and being chased by a tiger the next day. So, who cares? Uh, whereas being ostracized from the group is, is immediate death, so you might as well just shut the [ __ ] up and pretend like that was a priority. Just avoid that at all cost. Pretend like it never happened. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

There, there are a couple, too. There's a few, let's, you know, sprinkle in a few of the strategies to do this that neuroscience has kind of figured out. Um, one is, we've talked about this already, mindfulness, a little bit. Train, train your brain to act without judgment when the shame does pop up. That's really, really hard to do. Like we just said, your first reaction is to avoid it. Uh, but instead, maybe try to sit with it instead and be like, okay, uh, engage, engage your brain and slow that spiral down. Okay, that's probably one of the first steps anyways, to just be like, okay, I'm in a shame spiral and then recognizing it, right? Psychological distancing is probably the next.

step. And I don't mean avoiding it. I mean stepping outside of yourself and trying to see yourself from the outside view. When actually, I mean, shame is kind of like it's a way of viewing yourself from the outside a lot of times, right? You're trying to view, you're just saying, "Oh, all these people hate me, want nothing to do with me." Yes. Um, but actually, it's step outside of it. And we've talked about this before, too. Kind of take a more self-compassionate like, see the situation for what it is. Like, this is okay, you messed up. That's fine. But, um, it's probably you're not going to die, right? Like the shame system is is designed to help you survive. And it, you're probably misusing it at this point. It dramatizes things quite a bit and, uh, and kind of deludes you into thinking things are much larger or, uh, worse than they actually are.

Um, I think the huge thing with shame is that like a lot of people don't even know they have it. Like, yes, like it's so pushed down inside of them and it's so repressed and it, and they, they are so distracted from these feelings that like they don't even know it's there. And so I would say, you know, a big piece of the mindfulness is just to like gain an awareness of like, I feel weird around this person or around this situation, and I never realized that before. Go back to those, those three responses I had, right? Do you, do you lash out? Do you, do you get angry when, or do you go invisible? Do you try to deflect or like hide the evidence like I was talking about? Look for situations in your life where that happens and see if there's some shame underlying that. Cuz I think you're right. You don't even realize that that's shame. I think a lot of people who do have like anger issues, especially men, and we'll get to this later, it's because of the sh, unresolved shame, and they're just lashing out because they, they feel uncomfortable about it. Yeah.

But what's interesting is that shame is one of these things that it's a little bit of a Goldilocks situation. Like, here's the thing about shame. If you have too little of it, you're probably a sociopath. But if you have too much of it, you're a depressed wreck. And so the proper amount of shame is actually not no shame. It's a healthy amount of shame. And I think this is something that gets lost in our industry all the time is that every self-help seminar and, and affirmation book and journal or whatever is like constantly telling you like, "Oh, you're beautiful and perfect as you are. Like, just release it and let it go and accept yourself." And I actually think that's a little bit dangerous because you probably should be ashamed of some things. Like, like if I made out with my best friend's wife, like I probably should be ashamed of that. Or if I, uh, if I stole my brother's car, like I should probably be ashamed of that. I don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of that touchy-feely self-help stuff results in a kind of spiritual narcissism because like literally what they're training to do is become shameless individuals. And a shameless individual is essentially just a narcissist. So you don't want to be shameless. You want to have some moral standard that you hold yourself to. But you also don't want to be shameful because when you're shameful, you hold yourself back. You think less of yourself. You imagine that you're not good enough to have all the nice things that you want to have in this life. And so I just, I think it's a, it's a tricky balance for people to, to walk. They either, I think naturally we tend to either want to just go all in on our shame and wallow in it, or we want to become shameless and just indulge every impulse and desire that we might have and not worry about the consequences. If you're shameless, you, you're wading into like psychopath territory, right? Like, you hear people say, "Have you no shame?" Yes. When there's times where you should actually feel that shame. Again, it's not the goal is not to get rid of the shame. It's to develop a more healthy relationship with your shame and to apply it in situations where it needs to be applied, where it's directing you to your values. Yeah. Where it's guiding you along the path that you want, want to be on. I, I think evolution has actually kind of tuned us to that. And in the modern environment though, our shame triggers are going off all the time. So, I think it's, it's a lot easier to be full of shame, uh, than it ever has been before. And then, yeah, the advice to just get rid of it all, that's no, no work. No bueno.

Well, I, I had, I had this mark to bring up later, but we might as well get into it now. Um, which is Donald Nathan's shame compass. So, Donald Nathan was a, a researcher who studied affect theory, which was big in the '80s and '90s. And in 1992, he wrote a book, uh, which had a foundational model for understanding how people respond to shame. And he basically, he put together a compass with four points and it's like, kind of two dimensions. And, um, you know, the first one is withdrawal, which we've talked about plenty already. It's just like, get small, hide, don't talk about it, pretend like it's not there. Uh, the second one is, uh, attack self. Um, so that is punish yourself, judge yourself, criticize yourself. I think there's, this is perfectionism is a result of this. It's like people who feel like nothing they do is ever good enough. That, uh, nothing that they try is, is goes right. Um, that everything they do is they're going to screw up in some way. Um, the next one is avoidance, which I don't like. To me, this is a misnomer. Avoidance to me feels very similar to withdrawal. Um, but when you dig into avoidance, that's where all the compulsivity is. It's, I think a more, a more accurate description would be distraction. Distraction. Yeah. Or numbing. Mhm. Um, so this is, you know, people who develop an alcohol problem or they start partying every night or, uh, they spend all their money, uh, shopping or gambling, uh, or people who become addicted to porn or, or, or sex or whatever it is. Uh, and then finally there's attack others, and that is lash out at the world. Blame the world for your problems. Blame a, a group of other people for your problems. And generally speaking, Nathansson found that like these four things, everybody kind of has their own style. So like the way the compass is laid out is that it's, there's two, there's an x-axis and a y-axis. So, um, on the x-axis, there's attack self and attack others. And then on the y-axis, there is the withdrawal and the avoidance. Withdrawal would just be like, check out and like, hide. Uh, avoidance would be probably more like, numb and distract. And everybody kind of falls in a different place around this compass. Everybody kind of has a different composition of how they deal with their shame. Um, but it's, these are like generally the four ways that that it gets expressed. And, um, ultimately Nathansson argued that like shame is unavoidable. Like the goal isn't to get rid of the shame in your life. His point is, you're going to feel shame at some point. You're going to have things in your life that like you feel really bad about. So how do you become aware of how you're managing them or approaching those things and how do you implement better strategies and healthier strategies to make sure that you're not falling into these? So, yeah, we have these four points on the compass and, you know, each of us kind of slots in in different places. Uh, and also we can move throughout our life like, you know, maybe when you're young, you're very withdrawn and, uh, angry at yourself, but then you grow up and you become very angry at others. And so it's like these things move and shift. And Nathansson's point all along was was really like, you don't get rid of shame per se, but you can, a, turn it from toxic to healthy, and then, b, channel the healthy shame in, like, a more constructive and, and sustainable way. But I'm actually curious. So which of those four points on the compass would you say you primarily inhabit in terms of your shame? I, I do more of the kind of internalizing, blaming myself. I think you're a perfectionist. You're hard on yourself. And I think most people who are perfectionists are like that. I, I've used all four of those definitely through, uh, throughout my life in different, I think in different settings. I used different ones sometimes. I've went away from the more externalizing and the distracting, um, things, you know, not numbing and, and not, uh, lashing out. I've, I've went away from that as I've gotten older. Wanted to just see that that just damages both relationships and your own personal health. But yeah, I think the more, more internalizing and avoiding those are definitely mine. Yeah. Yeah.

I would say as an adult, my, my preferred method of coping with my shame has definitely been distraction and numbing, though. So like drugs, alcohol, partying, sex, just all the things, all the fun, the stimulation. It was interesting when I was reading Nathansson's work, he actually on the list of, uh, ways to avoid or distract your from your shame, he included intellectualizing. Okay. I was going to ask about that, which I was like, guilty as charged. Uh, and humor, which also is, is like makes sense once you hear it. You're like, you know, if you think about comedians, you know, um, or there's like a, the sad clown effect, right? Where it's like, often comedians are some of the saddest people, right? And it, the humor is, is really actually a coping mechanism to, uh, to help them just get through the day. A lot, a lot of comedians through like traumatic events in their lives or, or, you know, hard upbringings or whatever it is, and the way they've done that is to externalize through humor. Yeah. Like, was to deal with that shame. Yeah. So, so okay, you said alcohol and drugs. Do you think, so you don't drink anymore? You don't do drugs anymore. What about like workaholism? Is that part of it too? Because, because damn it, Drew, you, you gave up alcohol and then now you just work your ass off all the time. Not that you weren't working really hard before, too, but. Yeah. Totally. So, okay. Guilty as charged. I, I. But I would say for me, I think the shift has been, I think this is probably a good example of like, maybe unhealthy shame transmuting into healthy shame. So, I look at when I was younger and I was partying a lot and I was drunk all the time. I, I think a lot of that was motivated by like, kind of an unhealthy compulsivity. One of the things that happened when I stopped drinking is that I became aware of how compulsive I am. Like, I think I was in denial of my compulsive nature for most of my life. And it was funny cuz it wasn't that it was hard for me to stop drinking. It was hard for me to not be addicted to other things. And, and I started to realize like, oh, I just, I, I'm very compulsive. Like, it, when I, when I'm into something, I'm like all in. So part of, I guess being sober means that like, I've had to come to terms with that and really understand that about myself and like be okay with that. I'm definitely a workaholic, but I also think it's much better to be a workaholic than an alcoholic or a drug addict, you know, and, and at least now I'm aware of it and, and, and I have people around me who can like pull me back, you know, and say like, "Hey, you're going too hard." Uh, or, or like check in with me and like make sure I'm like okay or whatever. So, I, I would say I'm in a place where it's much healthier and I'm not ashamed about it. Like, I think if you would asked me 10 years ago if I had an alcohol problem, I would probably would have been very defensive and very offended. Whereas like now if you like, when you call like, you bring up workaholism, I'm like, yeah, dude, guilty as charged, and I'm okay with it. Which like, to me, that's, that's the sign that shame isn't there. Like, that's one of the things that Nathansson talks about as well is that, um, part of the attack others is a very intense defensiveness around whatever the shameful behavior is or the shameful aspect is, as well as as lashing out, you know, becoming offended and like seeing it as like a moral affront that like, oh my god, I can't believe you would even suggest such a thing that I, I have a problem, you know? Yeah. Yeah. You don't seem to get very defensive about that kind of stuff anymore anymore. I, as far as I know. Yeah. I don't think I do. Yeah. Um, yeah.

But that's an interesting, like going from like you said, is transmuting from a toxic form of shame to a healthier form of shame happens over time after you get more aware of it. I don't know. Like, I've experienced something similar to that too, where you, I grew up in a very working-class family and this, we'll talk about this a little bit later too, but, you know, shame around money is a very common one. That's a big one for a lot of people. A really big one. A really big one. Especially like in a place like the United States where so much of your identity and self-worth is based on your net worth, right? Like, okay, growing up though, I was very aware of it. Now, you know, we weren't the poorest people in town, but we weren't definitely not the richest, right? And I didn't even want to talk about it for the longest time, right? Like, I didn't even want people to know at all. Like, so I just wouldn't talk about it. Yeah. And it wasn't really until I got to college that I started opening up about it a little bit more and being like, you know what, it, it just kind of is what it is, and I can talk about it at least. Let's just see what happens. Yeah. You know, when it came up, I would bring it up and the thing was is people didn't really care. They were just like, "Oh, that's okay. Interesting. Move on." And it wasn't that big of a deal. So, it made me realize that, oh, okay, this is, doesn't have to be something that's so shameful, and I can address it that way. Yeah. And then how would you say you feel about it now? You know, I probably took it too far at one point, too. Like, like it's kind of like a badge of honor, you know? Um, and I started like, oh, like this is, I'm very proud of this, and oh, you didn't grow up poor, well, you suck then. You didn't, you know, that started doing that. Now I feel like it's a lot healthier though, where it's like, this is something that happened. It was no one's fault. Sure. It, it, it just is what it is. Um, lots of people have dealt with it before. I'm not unique in my suffering, like we've talked about, and I, I feel like I just have a better relationship with that part of my life anyway. Yeah.

It's interesting because it's like this is something that comes up a lot and, and there's, there's like this weird kind of spectrum between like shameful and shameless, and I feel like sometimes to maybe part of the process of healing the shame is to jump from one extreme to the other, you know? So, it's like you take the thing that you're so, like, so ashamed of and you wish nobody would know about you. And so then you compensate by being like, you know what, I'm actually, I'm like all in on this thing I'm ashamed of. Not only do you own it, but it's like something that you, like shame other people for not having. But then ultimately, like, really the healthy version of, of any of this is to just like, land back at acceptance, really. And I think you see this a lot, like, I mean, there's like a, I know I've, I've like read studies where there's like a, like a shocking amount of, uh, like sex workers are like sexual abuse victims, and, you know, a lot of people who, you know, experience abuse when they're young, like go into like, you know, uh, the military or combat sports. Like, there's just kind of this like, okay, well, if I can't hide it from the world, then I might as well just double down and make it my entire identity as another way of like, protecting myself. Uh, so yeah, it's, it is interesting how that happens. That's a form of externalization. Yeah. To some extent. For sure. I think it's a version of, of Nathansson's like attack others, right? It's like, you know, [ __ ] you for telling me I should be ashamed of this. Yeah. But it's funny because it's, I don't know, like, there is, there's a little bit of an irony here in that like, generally speaking, the things that we're ashamed of are also the things that make us unique and, and also like, because they're the things that make us the most unique, that they like define us in a, in a lot of ways. So, so it's, you know, you know, I have this old theory that like, the, the, the worst thing about somebody is also the best thing about them. Like, it's, you get this flip side thing. Like, I imagine that that you, there's some of a lot of the good things about you are a result of how you grew up and, and having to go through that hardship and having to deal with like, maybe some of the things that weren't fair about your upbringing or whatever. And like, I definitely feel that about some of the things I was ashamed of when I was young as well. So, it's just funny. It's just like, it's like, kind of funny how that works.

Actually, fun story. I've never told this publicly before, but, uh, so when I was hiring you, and this was ages ago, like over 10 years ago, I remember it was you and it was two other, uh, PhD candidates. And on paper, like all three of you were pretty much the same. You had like graduate degrees in psychology. You were studying neuroscience. I, I forget what the other two were studying, but like, you all like had similar credentials, similar applications, like similar backgrounds. And I was like, really having trouble differentiating between you three. And so when I did the la, final interview with you guys, I asked each of you, I said, you know, you're very similar to the other two candidates I'm talking to, like, what makes you unique? What's different about you? And I talked to you last. So I talked to the other two first, and both of them really struggled with that, that question. Like, they really kind of stuttered and they're like, well, and all of you were academics, so it's like, all of you had just been in school your whole life, right? Yeah. You know, so I remember one of them was like, well, I read this really cool book, and I'm like, okay, so, yeah, all right, that's not really, really working. And then I remember I got on the call with you and I asked you that question, and you immediately were just like, Mark, I grew up in a trailer park. And I was like, done. You're hired. Say no more. Calls over. There's like, there's some weird thing where like, sometimes the thing you're ashamed of, like actually becomes your superpower, right? Yeah. And, um, and that's just, it's a really interesting dichotomy, I think. Yeah. Yeah.

And what it, what it showed me too was like, you, again, anything can be shameful, you know, anything, uh, can be, like we've already said, you can, you can shame yourself or whatever, but that, like, that doesn't, in the modern context, that doesn't ma, like, that, that story of mine, that doesn't matter. It's not, it's not germane to my survival. I'm not going to die because of it or anything like that. You know, our, our shame systems were tuned to survival and, and ostracism from the group and all of that. That doesn't matter now, but my shame system latches on to that. And so, that's just another, uh, example of how it can keep you stuck if you don't address that. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I just had a random thought. I was not planning to talk about this, but I feel like one indication of an area you might, you pro, probably have shame is anywhere you have a chip on your shoulder. Oh, yeah. Like, anywhere you just kind of like, that's a good one. Okay. Yeah. You feel like you have something to prove over and over again, right? Yeah. We were just talking, like, I, I did sports when I grow up. I, I, I actually did sports. It was small town stuff. So, everybody kind of did sports. I was always the smallest guy and I had a huge chip on my shoulder there. I, I was like, I'll show you. But really what it was, is I was ashamed of being so like, small and, you know, so, yeah. Yeah. Agree. Yeah. No, see, I was, I was like, I was the, the geeky artsy kid who was like, pushed into lockers in school. So, I don't consciously feel this, but I feel like it has to be true that like, a certain amount of my career, a certain amount of like the desire to have an audience and be known in the world and put my stuff out in the world is still that, that high school kid, that dorky high school kid who's like, "I'm cool, guys. I, I swear I'm cool. Tell me I'm cool. Like me. Please like me." Yeah. Yeah. We all have some, something like that. Some degree of that. For sure. For sure. I don't even remember who said it, but there's a great quote. Says that, uh, everybody spends their entire lives trying to either prove or disprove who they were in high school. Yeah. You've told me that one before. It's so true. It's so good.

What's interesting though is that I think we're very drawn to people who are shameless. Like there's a certain, yeah, envy. There's a certain freedom that they experience. And like, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade places because I, I do think shameless people are probably extremely vapid and feel very lost. But like, from the outside, there's something seductive about it. And I don't, I don't want to get too much into politics, but like, I think a lot of the allure of Trump is how shameless he is. And I think a lot of the people who support him or admire him, that's actually what they admire. You know, there's this, there was a famous article in the Atlantic maybe 10 years ago, uh, about Trump and it was called cruelty is the point. And you sometimes hear that repeated on the left when people are really upset with Trump's policies. You know, they'll repeat like, cruelty, the cruelty is the point. I would actually amend that. I would say the shamelessness is the point. And I think what the left hates about Trump is that he does all these things with no shame. He doesn't really care about the consequences. He doesn't let other people's opinions like hold him back from what he wants. But I also think that's what the, the people who vote for him love about him is that they feel like they've had all this like shame inflicted on them, right? Forced upon them. Yeah. Yeah. And they look at him and they, there's like a certain amount of like relief or liberation that comes from his shamelessness. Right.

All right. As we wrap up the theory section of this podcast, I want to remind listeners and viewers that there is a PDF guide to this show. We talk about a lot of stuff. There's a lot going on here. Um, and so we have a free book that we accompanies every episode. It's over 100 pages long. It has all of our references, citations. It summarizes every section of the show. Um, you can get book recommendations there and it is absolutely free. So, go to solvepodcast.com/shame. And if you want to start implementing some of the stuff that we're going to talk about in this episode, you can also check out the Solve community. More on that in a second, though.

[Music]

So, we've talked about kind of the evolutionary history of shame, where it comes from, why we have it. We've talked about how it manifests in ourselves individually, how we experience it, how we feel it, and how we cope with it. I suppose I think what's probably the best way to do this is that because shame is a social construction and it is very socially based, I think the way to cover the interaction that we have with the world around our shame is to kind of take it in like a fractal format. I, I think it's probably useful to just like, let's start at the individual, let's break that down, and then we'll like slowly move out, talk about family, slowly move out, talk about community, and then, and finally talk about just broader culture and society at large. Researchers have actually found that there's kind of consistent categories across cultures that people generally always feel shame around or that it's like super common that to to feel shame around. So those categories are physical and mental health, appearance and body image, money and work, parenting and family, sex and sexuality, religion, trauma, and then the last one I just, I called standing out or being different. It, there's kind of a cluster of a few things that show up, but to me, it's just really like being individual, being like going against the grain. I think it's very, it's a natural human tendency to feel that like if you're very different than the people around you, that there must be something wrong with you, right? You know, you've already talked about how money was like definitely, um, a source of shame previously in your life. I, I look at this list and like, I used to be fat, so like, there's definitely some body image stuff in there for me. And I grew up in a very religious environment and I was not, I thought it was all [ __ ]. So, I struggled with that quite a bit for a number of years as well, is just like feeling completely out of place. I'm wondering if, if any of, of the other things on this list like ring true for you. I mean, yeah, I, I, I definitely, I grew up in a religious area as well. Um, I wasn't like, when I was younger, I was actually more in line with that. I kind of fell into line, uh, with the religion. So, I, I felt more shame around like when I wasn't being pious or religious, you know, that was, that was a thing for me. But yeah, the standing out too, um, where I came from, like a smaller area, and there was a lot of pressure to conform to a very narrow image. I think that was a, that was a big one for a long time too for me as well.

One thing that's interesting is that like that's not on here is, uh, emotions. So if we zoom out one level and talk about family, I definitely grew up in a family where like negative emotions wasn't, they weren't really, I don't want to say tolerated, but like, I don't know, the house I grew up in, it was like, you weren't supposed to get angry, you weren't supposed to get upset, everything, like, everything's okay all the time. And so it was, there was, I, I never felt free to express like, a lot of negative emotions. Like everybody in my family just kind of bottles things up and like pretends everything's okay. And it really wasn't until I was an adult that I realized that like anger in particular, like, I, I internalized that anger is not okay, that it's not okay to be angry and to, to get upset about stuff. And I would say that I probably didn't let myself get angry or like feel okay about getting angry until like maybe 30. Wow. Okay. Yeah. It's, um, see, because a lot of times men, like anger is their default emotion, too. So that's, that's interesting. I don't know. I feel like that was one of the only things I could express, I guess, growing up, too, was was getting angry. Yeah. Um, one of the few emotions, especially negative emotions, I was okay to express. So, yeah, that's interesting. I think I felt a lot of shame around that. Like, it just wasn't, it wasn't acceptable. I think that's the word I'm looking for. It's not that it wasn't tolerated. It wasn't acceptable to be. We did talk about that in the emotions, uh, episode that there is a push to conform. There's a pressure to conform to your emotional, whatever the emotional kind of, uh, culture is around you. And it can be a shameful thing if you're not like, if, you know, if you're in the United States and you're not happy all the time, like that can be a shameful thing. Yeah. Right. For sure.

And I think the interesting point about family, you know, family is kind of the closest linkage to you. It's where most of your emotional investment is and especially as a child, it's, it's who you're surrounded by as a child as well. So, so generally speaking, like if you have parents who harbor a lot of shame, then they will either intentionally or unintentionally inflict that on their children, right? So like, it took me a long time and a lot of therapy to realize that my parents also feel a lot of shame around being angry and upset. And so that's why they suppress it and like bury it and they never felt okay. And it's actually one of the reasons why their marriage fell apart is because they never felt at liberty to actually get angry or upset with each other. So they just kept like burying things over and over and over again. Uh, and I think, you know, my brother and I got that from them, or we learned that from them. But to, to do a more tangible example, you know, I had a, I had a, I dated a girl growing up who again, grew up in a very religious area. So like her, her family was very, very Christian, very conservative, and her mom in particular had this like, I mean, it was like borderline like Amish attitude towards appearance. So basically, this girlfriend of mine, like if she, if she left the house with her knees showing, like her mom would basically tell her she was a [ __ ] and shame her deeply for dressing in such a way and would tell her like, really [ __ ] up [ __ ] like, you know, you're going to, you're going to get raped and you're going to deserve it cuz you went out dressed like that. You know, it was like, you know, and imagine being like a 15-year-old girl and like your, yeah, your mom's telling you this, right? So, shocker, she had a lot of shame and issues around her dress, her appearance, what she, like, felt comfortable wearing, what she didn't feel comfortable wearing. Um, which is totally understandable. So it's like, we, you know, we talked earlier about how shame is, shame is not the pain itself, it's the narrative around the pain. Like, you can inherit those narratives from the, your family while you're growing up. Like, if your, if your dad has all sorts of weird shame issues around money or work or something, um, chances are you're going to inherit those narratives around money and work. Um, you know, my, my, the story my stepmother tells me is that, you know, her, her parents kind of had this psychotic relationship with work. They were just like, just very, very like uptight around work and money and everything. And so she grew up being told that taking a nap meant you were lazy and that you were never going to make anything of yourself. And so like, she's [ __ ] 65 and still won't take naps. Can't take a nap. Yeah. You know, cuz it's like, she grew up being told she was a lazy piece of [ __ ] if she took a nap. So, it is pretty wild like how this stuff gets handed down and sticks with us without us even realizing it. Yeah.

And, um, I mean, like family duty too. I, I think that that varies a lot by, between families, you know, like the expectation that you contribute to the family or help take care of the family or whatever it is. So like in my family, every, it's pretty, we, like, independence was kind of a, a main, uh, kind of, uh, value that we had in my family, right? And so, you know, if you're leaning too much on the family, then it's like, ah, you're, you're, you're now a burden. Whereas in a lot of other cultures, it's kind of the opposite where you're, if you're not leaning on the family enough, what's wrong with you? Right? That, that can be a shameful, a shameful act. And I'm kind of navigating that right now. You know, like my parents are getting older. They're having health problems. And they will not ask for help. You know what I mean? Um, and like, I've, I've been feeling some shame around it. Like, oh, I haven't been helping as much. They don't ask for it. They, they act like they don't necessarily want it. Well, the irony is that they probably feel ashamed of asking for it. That's what I realized too, that as recently, I realized that is that they feel ashamed for having to ask their children for help. Exactly. And, and, and I feel ashamed for not helping them. So, it's like, again, this goes back to we need to talk about the shame because if we just would talk about it, we would all be like, "Oh, we're all on the same page here. It's okay." I, I, I've seen that actually come up a, you know, you and I are both at that age where our parents are getting old and, and, you know, most of my friends, their parents are getting old and like, I'm seeing that come up a lot. A, I think a lot of elderly parents like they feel like if they have to ask their children for help, that they failed as a parent, right? Like, they, they shouldn't burden you. Um, because it's, it was their job to set you up for as much success as possible, right? And it's, I mean, that's, it's a lovely thought, but like, at the end of the day, it's your family. I would say that's a pretty, that's a fairly Western American or at least Western thought too, right? Cuz like in East Asia, it's like, no, you're very much expected to take care of and Latin America as well. Latin America, Latin America as well, you're like, you're supposed to go home and take care of them as they get old. So that's going, you know, that's again, the levels going out, like culture affecting the family view, affecting the individual. Absolutely. And what's interesting too is like, I, I think, you know, if you think about immigrants, um, I think you could, you could really get a sense of these kind of these concentric circles of like, let's say you immigrate with your family to another country, you could feel very loved and supported within your family, but then your family's values are completely contradictory to the, the, the country that you're now living in. And so your family feels ostracized and your family feels a little bit shame, ashamed, and, and, and like a bunch of oddballs, and, and so there, again, that dynamic can play out at that level as well.

Uh, zooming out a little bit more, I think you can talk about community. Um, I do think you and I have both talked a little bit about the places we grew up and kind of the ethos and, and standards and morals. Again, I, I had an interesting juxtaposition in that like I grew up in a very, very, uh, conservative exerb of a very progressive and liberal city. And so it, it was, I feel weird telling people I'm from Austin because it's just like my childhood, like, I know how people, what people associate with Austin, you know? It's like everybody associates Austin with like, cool, hip tech. Keep Austin weird. And yeah, it's like South by Southwest and all this stuff, and I'm like, yeah, but dude, like where I grew up, it was like, [ __ ], it was more Texas than Austin. A lot more Texas than Austin, for sure. And, uh, there's like, it feels like a little bit of a mismatch there. Um, but like, I think Austin itself, like has a lot of pride in being the oddball of Texas, right? You just said right, that it's like the slogan of the city is keep Austin weird. And like, the reason that slogan emerged is because everybody else in Texas was like, man, Austin's full of a bunch of [ __ ] weirdos. Like, don't go to Austin. It's a bunch of hippies and, uh, you know, libertines and godless folk down there. It's interesting that you can see this play out on that level as well. And, um, you know, we'll, we'll get into again, we'll get into this a little bit later with the technology section, but, um, I think there's an interesting interplay that happens around this, like say politically, right? Like, there are certain parts of each country that feel like forgotten or left behind, and they get very bitter and, and resentful for it, or they feel ashamed for it, or whatever. I, I think we probably attach less identity to our community or like the specific town or region that we grew up than say our family, um, or ourselves. But again, I think there, there is something there, and it is possible to like feel some degree of shame for where you come from geographically, right? Yeah.

And then finally, you have broader culture and society. And, and it's, you know, I don't want to hang on it too much, but it is, it is incredibly important and impactful. Like our broader, our culture is the water we swim in. In our values episode, we spent quite a bit of time talking about cultural values and the importance, how much they affect us. There is something about cultural values that, um, I don't think you ever completely lose them. Like, even if you move to a bunch of places and even if you move to another country and even if you spend a bunch of time with a different group of people, like just the, like the water you swam in when you grew up, like, it, it sticks with you to a certain extent, no matter where you go, right? Uh, and it's, it's interesting too, because I think you could almost look at, like, culture as like operating systems for groups of people. And I think, uh, you know, each of those operating systems, they're very similar in a lot of ways, but they are like programmed or weighted in different, different ways. And so it's like, again, we talked about this in the values episode, but like, you know, it's like Japan versus the United States. Like the Japanese, like they care about the same things Americans do, but they just weight them and prioritize them in, in a different order. And because those prioritizations are different or show up in a different order, that affects the behavior of the people and, and the emphasis or the priorities of the people there, and so the, the behavior will follow suit. Right. Right. Yeah.

And one of those big divides is like the, the individualist versus collectivist, Yes. Uh, culture, and, and so the sources of shame differ between those. So like in the more collectivist cultures, like East Asia, you know, it's, it's all about, uh, group harmony, uh, respect for your family, honoring your family, and if you don't do that, you bring shame upon your society or your family or your group, right? Whereas like in, in more individualist cultures, Western Europe, United States, North America, it's more about like, are you a personal failure? Is more of a source of shame. And it, the group harmony isn't so much emphasized, right? It's like, if, if I do something shameful, it's my brother's not going to walk around feeling terrible about it probably. Whereas like, in, if we were Chinese or Japanese, maybe he would. Right. Right. Like, in the United States, you never hear, like, you have brought shame upon your household, right? Like, that's not, that's not really something we think about. It's more like you failed in some way. You failed to live up to your values or your goals or whatever it was. And it's a personal failure. And it's personal shame. It's not so much shared with the group. So, and, and your shame is yours to deal with, too. Don't put it on anybody else. Yeah. Right. That's a big one, too. That's true. Yeah. Because I guess in those collectivist cultures, you can rely on the people around you to kind of like shoulder some of that, that burden, some of that. It's, it's a collective shame. It's a collective effort. Yeah. Whereas, and so your parents can like dig you out of it or your siblings can dig you out of it. Whereas in the US, you're, you're [ __ ] out of luck, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No system is right or wrong, and they just serve different functions, right? So, yeah. Yeah. Totally. Yeah.

Well, I'm curious actually. So, uh, we're sitting here, we're like talking, we have this whole episode about shame and, and culture and life experience, and here we are, two boring white dudes from middle America when we have like two amazing case studies in the room with us, right? Sitting behind the cameras. If they're willing to come on and talk for a minute, Massa, you want to come on? Come here. Take my seat. Take my seat. Get out of here, Drew. Don't be shy. Don't be shy. I'm so shy. No, you're not shy at all. Don't even pretend. Didn't even have time to do her makeup or. Yeah. Oh, you must be so ashamed right now. I'm so ashamed. See, it's the appearance and, Yeah, the body image thing. No, I, I wanted to bring you on because you have an interesting life story. You're an immigrant. You're Persian, so you grew up in a different culture. I'm, I'm just curious like what, what sort of shame have you had to struggle with or deal with throughout your life? What have been some of the obstacles you faced? Well, I think one of the biggest ones growing up was being in ESL in like elementary school and middle school. And like, I remember I would be in class and the ESL teacher would come and like grab me and like three other students and we'd have to go do ESL. And like, I remember walking out of the class and just feeling so much shame that my English wasn't as good as the rest of the kids. Even though I didn't really have like an accent, but it still wasn't like on par with everyone else. So I felt a lot of shame around that. And then when it would come to, you know, parent teacher nights and my parents had to come and they didn't understand fully what the teacher was like explaining to them or they were talking back with broken English. I remember just being like, "Oh my god, like someone take me away. I can't deal with this." But, you know, now, um, I'm so proud of my Persian heritage and I'm so proud of my parents for like, you know, moving from Iran here and starting a new life. And they had to actually do this twice because we went back to Iran when I was nine and had to do this whole process again. So, I had to go to ESL twice. I was like, "Not this again." when we came back in, um, from high school, I had to go back and I'm like, "Oh, here we are back in ESL." But, you know, um, I got to learn about my culture when I went back. So, it was all a great learning experience. Did you ever, was there ever like friction between growing up here and your Iranian parents and like what their expectations for you? Was there like shame that happened there? Yeah, lots. So, um, I remember I wasn't allowed to wear a bikini for the longest time because they were just so trained to like, we, I mean, my parents didn't even get to go to the beach growing up in Iran because of the revolution and everything that happened. So when they came here, they were trying to still enforce those kinds of, um, perspectives raising me. So they wouldn't allow me to wear bikinis or like short skirts or anything like that. And like, that's all I wanted to do. I was the biggest girly girl. I just wanted to look cute. So I remember when, uh, in school when they took us to the pool for like a field trip, I had to wear this like really ugly bathing suit and I remember I cut it and I made it into a bikini so that that I was like the rest.

of the kids. And I had so much shame around like, you know, what my parents wanted me to wear or like, um, they, they would just, you know, be very restrictive. Um, and, uh, I wasn't allowed to go to parties. So I would lie to them about doing graveyard shifts at McDonald's because that was my first job. And then I would go to the bus stop and like go to a party and then come back at 3:00 a.m. and tell them to come pick me up. So, yeah, um, there was a lot of shame around the rules and regulations that my parents would put on me raising me and, um, how I wasn't allowed to do the things that the rest of the like North American kids were allowed to do. Yeah.

And when did the, the shame flip into pride? Like, when, when would you say that happened?

I would say in university. Okay. Um, that's when I really realized how, you know, special my culture is and that my parents were just trying to do the best that they could, raising me with like, you know, limited knowledge about, you know, what it's like to live in a free society that you can, you know, do whatever. It's not dangerous to be wearing a bikini or it's not dangerous to, um, go to a party with guys and girls, like, as long as you know there's a chaperone or something. Um, so, you know, they had to learn that and it was a lot easier for my sister. But as I got older, I just, I just understood where they were coming from.

Gotcha. Yeah. Cool. Thank you. Thank you, Jess.

Oh boy. Get over here, Jess. Mark, this is weird. It's not weird, Jess. I'm, I'm so comfortable being behind the camera. That's why this is weird. Jess Choy, our, our intrepid director of photography. Always behind the camera, now in front of the camera. Wow. I must have done something good in my past life.

You, no, you're a wonderful person to talk to for this episode because you have a very interesting history. Yes, shame and I are very familiar with each other.

Why is that?

Well, I was born in the United States, but, um, I, I was born to South Korean immigrant parents. And so I think just growing up, like, it was tough because I had a lot of these expectations placed on me, you know, growing up, um, in a Korean household. And for example, like being obedient was so important. So anytime like I spoke out, I felt shame and my parents would say like, no, you can't do that. You have to just say nay, which in Korean means like yes. So no matter what you thought, even if you like disagreed with what an elder was saying, just say nay over and over. And so I felt a lot of shame about like speaking out, but then I would go to school and I would want to like speak my mind and like speak up and then it would, there would be this weird like contradictory feeling inside of me. So that was hard growing up. And then to add another layer to that, my dad is a Christian minister. So there was a lot of shame with that because he put a lot of pressure on me to, you know, live up to these Christian values and standards and always be an example to all the other kids in the church. And I always felt like I wasn't good enough, like I could never be holy enough or, you know, pious enough. And so there was a lot of shame with that. And then I think it had this like really weird pendulum effect on me where I wanted to like rebel and like do the opposite of things and then I felt shame with that. So, yeah, it's shame and I are very familiar with each other.

It's hot in here. God, unnecessarily. She's like, I'm suddenly sweating. The same people. I'm suddenly sweating very intensely. Um, I don't know how you do this. Mark, are you comfortable talking about your sexuality?

Yeah, I can talk about that. Yeah. So, um, I identify as a gay woman. Um, that has been quite a journey because on one hand, I feel very fortunate because I grew up in the United States, which, you know, in the US for the most part, at least the areas that I grew up in, like were very like, you know, people didn't care if you were gay or not. However, like growing up in a Korean household, like sexual orientation or like sexuality is not something that was talked about. And so, this is something recent that has happened. So, like my parents and I are not on speaking terms. And so, and, and it's because I chose to marry a woman. And I, I came to this point in my life where I had to decide between like, do I want to live my authentic life and choose my own happiness, or do I want to dance around and be someone that I'm not for the rest of my life just to make my parents happy and, you know, just my extended family happy to live up to the image that they have of me. And that was really, really hard. Um, I cried a lot and I don't typically cry. Like, I think my wife is the only one who has seen me cry. Yeah, I can't let Mark see me cry. So, that, that's been my recent journey. And I, I feel a little like some shame around that because obviously like I grew up being told from my parents, hey, like family is everything. Um, you know, you have to obey your parents. You have to make your parents proud. It's like others don't matter in the world. Family is everything. And I basically did the opposite. And that's been really hard. Yeah.

Yeah, it takes an incredible amount of courage to do that as well.

It doesn't feel like it does. And at this, that's why it's so polarizing. The feeling like I'm proud of myself, but I also feel so, so much guilt around what I have done, right?

And I think that's natural. It's, um, we haven't gotten yet to kind of the process of working through shame, but it's, you know, Drew mentioned early in the episode that shame has this weird thing of kind of warping your perception of yourself and, and, and like not allowing you to see the full context of what's going on. And so it, it, it creates this weird kind of funhouse mirror effect where it's like internally everything looks like dark and terrible and wrong, but externally people are like, "Wow, that must have been really hard. Like, good for her." You know, and it's kind of sick and messed up how like that plays out in all of our heads. Um, but it is, it's part of it. But thank you for coming on and sharing. I appreciate it. Thank you, Jess Troy, everybody. That was hard.

All right, welcome back, Drew. Before we move on to the actual advice, I do think there is one quick topic that we can't really do an episode on shame without touching or covering to a certain extent, and that is how technology has messed everything up.

Yeah. Yeah. So like if we return to this idea that shame is a moral mechanism that evolved within a tribal society to keep people in line and and obedient and, uh, working together. If we, if we accept this idea that of Durkheim's, he called it the collective conscience, uh, of the moral standards and, and norms that are enforced on everybody. Well, what happens when technology basically turns the entire planet into your tribe? It basically scales shame to infinity and beyond. Now, here's the thing. Everybody kind of understands this, uh, implicitly, but yet we don't change our behaviors, our actions around it. Social media is not real life. It's basically a shame machine that is on 24/7. And part of this is because when we are online, when we are scrolling through our our Instagram or TikTok or whatever, our brain doesn't understand that these are strangers. Our brain doesn't understand that these people have no relation to us, that their lives have no implication on ours. That the things that they say or do, uh, will affect us in no way, shape, or form. When we see a human face talking to us, like it is our primal wiring, just understands that this person is part of our collective or our group. So those moral mechanisms inside our brain that are, that, that radar that is constantly trying to detect social infractions and that causes us to feel ashamed about ourselves, it is on overdrive all the time, every day, 24/7. Now, what makes us even worse is that the things that live online are permanent. So there's all these statistics about how young people, they're going out less, they're drinking less, they are dating less, they are doing drugs less, they're partying less. I think a huge part of that is, is there's just this intense risk aversion that happens in the real world when you understand that even the slightest mistake might be filmed and recorded on a phone and it might live online forever. And this is not a made-up exaggerated thing. There is this concept of cancel culture that has, uh, taken over over the last 10 years, and it's a very real thing. A couple examples here. There's a story of in 2010, a college student at Rutgers named Tyler Clementi, uh, his roommate decided that it would be funny to secretly film him with a webcam, uh, while without him knowing. And so his roommate would leave the room, he'd leave the webcam on, and then he'd go, you know, down the hall to his friends' rooms or whatever. And then they would sit and watch what Tyler would do when he thought nobody was looking. Well, it turned out one day Tyler brought in a boy and started hooking up with him on camera. And he was in the closet at the time. Nobody knew he was gay. And so suddenly this is being broadcast to the entire school. It's being put online. It starts getting shared by everybody. The next day, Tyler jumped off the George Washington Bridge and killed himself. There's another story. Uh, there was a woman who was bird watching in Central Park. Um, and a man came over and started harassing her and her dog, uh, and threatening her and threatening to, uh, hit her dog. And so she pulled out her phone and started calling the police. And then he pulled out his phone and started recording her. Well, it turned out that the same day that this happened, George Floyd was murdered. And everything was going crazy on social media about George Floyd and violence against African-Americans. And it turned out that the man recording the video was African-American filming a white woman calling the police on him for, for threatening her dog. And sure enough, she went viral. She, she became the Central Park Karen was, was what she, she became labeled. And it went to such an extent, she lost her job. Uh, she lost her friends. She lost her apartment. Um, she had to move to Canada because she was getting, she got doxed. Um, she had people showing up at, at her place. Um, she got death threats. Uh, she had to like delete all of her accounts online. She had to move to another damn country. So, like this shit, it's shame on steroids. Any potential infraction, social infraction, any violation of the group norm or the social norm, uh, that triggers that, that shame response in us, it can happen at any time. It can happen anywhere and it can scale across thousands or millions of people. And so I think this is an interesting angle to understand, um, I guess, kind of the relationship between technology and anxiety that we've been seeing over the, the last 10 or 20 years. Uh, I think it's an angle that, you know, you and I have covered this topic to death and back. But it, it was interesting prepping for this episode because I think this is an angle that I never thought of it in these terms, right? You know, it's like we, we have this biological machinery to like be sensitive to what our peers and our tribe thinks about us. And so if you technologically scale that tribe to the entire planet, then it makes sense that you're just going to live your entire life absolutely paranoid, uh, of anything and everything you do.

I think when you live in an environment like this, that with with stakes that high, I think there are two things. There are two kind of logical reactions to that reaction. Number one is, if you can't beat them, join them. Which that is basically become part of the shaming mob. Right? Become one of the enforcers online. Like join in with the outing of people and, you know, take part with glee, the harassing of the people that you think are are morally corrupt or or ruining society or whatever. And then option number two is to just stop giving a shit. Is to essentially become shameless. And we kind of, this returns us to that point that we talked about earlier, how being full of shame is not healthy, but being completely shameless is also not healthy. When you're full of shame, your life is just this miserable, constantly judgmental morass of like anger, violation, threat, paranoia. And then when you're shameless, you're, you're basically just, you're like a selfish nihilist. And I kind of see these two poles, uh, have like they define internet culture. You know, one pole is the cancel culture pole, and then the other pole is the, I would call the troll pole. The troll pole. The troll pole. Like I think a lot of different angles we could talk about this, but the left in many countries has kind of adopted the the sanctimony position of like, join the mob, join the self-righteous mob, right? Pile on. Pile on. Yeah. And, and then the right in many countries has taken up the troll side, which is like, you know what, kind of the point is to kind of just be an ass, right? Is to kind of like stick your finger up, middle finger up in in the left's face. Uh, and this isn't really a functional way to like run a culture or run a society. Yeah. Yeah. Or interact with any other human being, really. Yeah. Yes.

So what can we do about this?

Um, basically, I think the, the most important thing is to understand that when you go online and when you choose what content to engage with and who to follow and who to subscribe to and who to listen to, you have to understand that you're not, this is not simply entertainment. You are choosing your, your new tribe. The information and the personalities that you choose to let into your life, you are essentially constructing your own tribe from the people in the world. And when you construct that tribe, you have to understand that you are going to start adapting and, uh, living by the values and norms of those people that you follow. It's just, it's just human nature. And so be very, very careful and conscious of the people that you choose to follow, the people you choose to subscribe to, the content you choose to engage with, because each, each time you do that, you are voting not only for the information that's going to live in your brain, but you're also voting for the morals and values that you're going to slowly adopt over time. And if you follow shitty people with bad, bad values, then you will slowly morph yourself into a person with bad values. Right.

What, what about the? Okay, so I've taken kind of the extreme position on this and just kind of I don't really do social media anymore because what I found was it's actually very hard to, uh, kind of curate and choose your tribe online because the algorithms and the billions of dollars and the super smart people that are behind them figure out ways to put that shit in front of you still. You know what I mean? Yeah. So what, what do you say? Like, most people aren't going to be like me and kind of just be a, you know, a Luddite here and get off social media?

Yeah. I, I mean, yes, get offline as much as possible because when you get offline, you, you, you, you revert back to the social mechanisms in your brain that your brain was actually evolved and built for, right? So, that's what I found happened. Yeah. So, it's like when, yeah. When you're in person with a group of people, you have a, a healthy shame radar. You have a healthy sense of like norm violation and, and understanding the the consequences in a reasonable way. When you're online, all those things get distorted and messed up. So the more time you can spend offline, the better. At the same time, I understand that, you know, it's, it's not reasonable to ask everybody to get offline all the time. And you're right about the, the social media companies, like it's, it's the for you algorithms are are designed to, uh, are optimized to to play to many of your worst instincts. So you have to be very assertive and conscious with the way that you use the technology. You have to kind of enforce, you have to have an understanding of what who you are and what you care about and the people you care about and then actively enforce that onto the apps and algorithms that you use. Right. Yeah.

Well, one thing about the, the digital stuff, the online stuff, I think, um, you know, you mentioned the permanence piece where, you know, something you do online, it can come back to haunt you, um, you know, years later, decades later, even at this point. Um, that I think, you know, when we, when social media first kind of came on scene for us anyway, like the mid-2000s to late 2000s, Facebook was kind of the only game in town, right? And you remember this, it was all a bunch of college kids. And, um, it was just, it was like, this is where you learned where the parties were, you put part pictures of you partying with people, and like it was fun because it was all just a bunch of college kids at the time. When it started to change was when you started to hear, oh, employers are now looking at Facebook, right? This is what they call, um, audience, audience collapse, right? And so, uh, that's one thing that our shame systems are actually tuned to different audiences. Yeah. And they can only really handle one audience at a time. But when you're online, and especially like a, a platform like Facebook, where there's people from all ages, um, and other platforms, too. I don't want to sound like too much of an old person just talking about Facebook. He's such a boomer. I know. Um, but you're, you're, you're now you now have an audience that's composed of like, yeah, you have your friends, but then you have co-workers and even bosses. Maybe your grandma, or, you know, your parents are on there, whatever it is. And those audiences get collapsed into one. And your shame system is not attuned to that. Your shame system is very attuned to different audiences. You know, we talked about the different concentric circles that go from individual to family to community, society, right? Your shame system is tuned to that. Online, all of that is collapsed down into just one audience. Yeah. And so there again, that's just like, you, you staring back at it's something that your brain, yeah, Paleolithic brain is not, it doesn't know what to do with it. And I would add on top of that, right? Like we talked about how again, the concentric circles, we kind of ended on society and culture, you know, it's American culture, or if you're from China, Chinese culture, German, if you're German culture, if you're German. When you're online, you're being exposed to every culture everywhere. And so there's just contradictory norms all over the place, and that's so you start seeing this weird bleeding over of different norms into different into different areas that like don't make sense. And it, it, you have to be very, you have to be careful about that. Like, it, it just adds another layer of confusion to everything.

[Music]

All right, so that wraps up kind of the theoretical portion of the episode. Um, now we're going to dive into application takeaways, advice, exercises that the listeners can do. Um, but before we move on, I just want to remind everybody that we have that free PDF guide. If you really want to follow along and do a lot of these exercises as we talk about them, the PDF guide is indispensable. You can go to solpodcast.com/shame. Also, if you actually want to implement this stuff into your life, if you want kind of a a curated version of this episode, if you want to do these exercises at a predetermined pace in a predetermined order that will help you overcome your shame, you can join our community and take part in the 30-day track there. To do that, go to community.solvepodcast.com. Also, if you don't want to do it with the community, you just want to do it on your own, we have options to do that as well. So go to community.solvepodcast.com.

All right. So I think as we get into the application portion of this, I think probably the, the best place to start is to help people get an understanding of of where their shame comes from. And one of the biggest determinants of where our shame comes from is what age we were when certain things happened to us. So, I think just to set the stage for everything else that we're going to go through over the next hour or two, it's probably worthwhile to kind of talk through the developmental stages, uh, of a of a young human being and like where they're susceptible, what sort of problems emerge at at different ages, and then from there we can start moving into therapeutic modalities and, and things that people can actually do, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So understanding that how shame develops from an early age is going to help you pinpoint some of those sources, like you said, right? So, um, it's important to go through this. So it might seem a little theoretical, but there's actually a very practical implication to this. So as I'm going through this and kind of describing these different stages, just think about, think back to maybe you can pinpoint some of these things or how you were, uh, raised and, and how that influences what kind of shame you feel now. Okay. So to start it off, so this, a lot of this comes from, uh, a book by Michael Lewis, not the guy who wrote The Big Short, right? Different Michael Lewis. He's a, a pediatric psychologist, uh, psychiatrist, actually. Uh, it's called Shame: The Exposed Self. And then Jun Tangni also has a book called Shame and Guilt. And a lot of this comes from that. So if you, if you're nerdy enough to want to go look up those, you can. Um, but shame, shame really, it starts early, obviously. Uh, but even before we have words for it. So about a year and a half to two years. Um, this is when an infant or a toddler will develop, um, kind of like a self-recognition. So they can look into a mirror and they, and they know that, oh, that's me. Okay? So they have the self-concept already. And that's kind of a precursor, a prerequisite to shame, right? You have to be self-aware and, and, and know that you're a person in the world, right, before you can develop shame. But even at that stage, even though they're not probably, as far as we can tell, not feeling shame, they're still treating emotional disconnect from the people around them, their their caregivers, their parents, they're still treating that disconnect as a threat. So any sort of like, um, uh, neglect or, or anything that happens at that stage is still like, it's salient to, to an 18 to an 18-month to a 24-month old toddler. Right? So that's kind of, that's the baseline. That's where it can kind of all start even too.

Now, by the ages of about two to three, between two and three, you start to see shame behavior. So you see, see a toddler that does something wrong, right? They, they'll, they'll immediately like shrink. They'll sh, they'll, they'll throw their head down. They'll pout a little bit. Maybe they'll try to hide. They cover their eyes. This is where all the shame behaviors start to, uh, come out. And this is also where they think that like parenting really plays a big role in shame at this point. Okay. So if at this stage between two and three, you're getting these, uh, like negative evaluations on yourself, like, oh, no, you're, you're bad. Don't do that. You are bad. Right? That's that toxic shame we've talked about before. This can start to take root there. Okay. As opposed to if you have parents who are a little bit more like, you did a bad thing, hey, don't do that. It, that's a bad thing to do. Just let's not do that. Yeah. Okay. You can, there's that's where the, uh, internalizing starts to happen. Um, an infant, even as or a toddler from two to three can start to internalize at that point. This is also usually when like toilet training, um, starts. It's usually around this time. Yeah. And depending on how, kind of well that goes and how good of a teacher that the, the toddler has, that teaches them how to feel about their mistakes, right? If they, they have an accident, uh, you know, on the floor in their pants or whatever, and do they get scolded for it?

It's funny because I, I remember being in Psych 101 in school and like learning about Freud and of course Freud talked about the anal fixation and like obsession with poop and everything. And I remember just thinking like, that's so weird. Like, who would h, who would come up with that?

I know, right? But you're actually connecting the dots right now, which is like, out of context, that is weird. Yeah. Yeah. It does. It does actually, like, especially from a developmental point of view, and especially once you understand things like attachment theory, like that age, that that age of like two to three years old is like such a, such a critical period in the child's life of like their self-standing and, and feeling worthy and, and feeling secure. And then it's like, yeah, one of the biggest challenges that they face during that time is managing their own poop. So yeah.

Go on. As, um, I have a lot of friends who have either just went through that two to three year period or are going through it right now. And you watch this and these kids, they are, they're growing so fast. They're learning so fast. So you can really see, and, and the toilet training is like a big part of their life. They'll talk about it with you. They'll tell you, "Hey, I pooped. It was awesome. You want to come see it? Like, come look at it." You know, so they don't have shame around that.

I still do that. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Yeah. He makes me, he makes me look at it. Um, this is such a critical period. If you've ever spent any time around some, like a kid who's this age, you know how critical of a period this is. They, their personality is starting to come really come through at this point. They're, you can tell just like how upset they get when they do mess up, and the way that their parents and people around them respond to those mistakes makes a huge, huge impression at this stage. Okay. The, the, the shame, it can be hardwired in at this point, though, too, uh, to like, to a point that where it's like being imperfect is unacceptable. That, that can even register for a two to three-year-old at this point. So you can see that like, this stuff, like, yes, there are these critical periods. There, there's some good news at the end of this, too. It's not all, you know, there, there's some ways you can mitigate this as well, but, um, it is a very critical period for the shame.

And by the time you get to like three to five years old, this is when you start to internalize the shame. So, it's not just coming from the outside at this point. You, you hear the voices of your caregivers or your parents in your head, right? Even when they're not around. And this is where you're starting to kind of self, uh, police with shame internally. And I think just to kind of contextualize this for the listeners, you know, they, they have a sense of self, but they don't have a sense of like, of people or experiences persisting while they're not there. Right. Right. So they think they can cover their eyes and, Yeah. They, they think they can cover their eyes and you can't see them. Right. So they don't understand that you have different perceptions than they do. Um, and, and interestingly, as a result, like any trauma or neglect that happens around this, this stage, it's very, um, it's very like corporeal. Like it's very like people, people who children who suffer a lot at this age, they, they tend to be the ones who grow up with like issues around dissociation, um, you know, numbness, loss of, of sense of different parts of their bodies, uh, like just a fundamental inability to connect to their own emotions, recognize their own emotions, or recognize emotions in others. Um, so it's like a very, it, I guess one principle to keep in mind through this whole section is just that like the earlier you go, the more fundamental the damage is. Um, and, and, and like everything else gets kind of built on top of it. Um, and so at this stage, it is, it is like, it's almost, it's not even unconscious, it's like preconscious. It's just like, it's just like a basic ability to like recognize your own sensations and feelings in your body, um, and understand and even know that you're feeling bad, much less like understand why. Right. Right. Yeah.

And then by the time three to five, you start to internalize a lot of that, like I was saying, you get, you get some of that narrative of like, oh, I feel bad, I must be a bad person. Right. Right. That's kind of where the seeds of the narrative start, at least anyway. And interestingly, too, at this point, too, children can start to distinguish between shame and guilt. Like they, they can, I mean, it's, they don't have a concept of it necessarily, but they, um, I, they've found that there's actually like the feeling is is different for them at that point. So a lot of people, a lot of psychologists will say it's probably healthier at this point to to push them towards a more healthy guilt than it is to shame at this point. Right. Right. And that, that's where the, you did a bad thing, not, you are a bad boy or you are a bad girl comes in. Exactly.

There's also around this time, you know, children are really testing out their boundaries for independence. Yeah. At this point, too. And so that again, that's kind of a foundational layer that gets built upon as well. If you can build like, kind of a healthy sense of independence and trust, like you, you show that you trust the kid to manage their own, uh, self in whatever capacity that they can at that point, that starts to build a little bit of self-confidence in them at that point, and they can kind of build on top of that. But if they're too controlling and criticized too much, then that can internal, again, that internal shame really does get identified with the self at that point. That's where that really starts at that point. Um, and, and children at that point, too, will look to other people to take the lead because they're so ashamed of of their own thought processes, their own decisions that they make.

Okay. So that was three to five. By about five to seven, this is when the narratives really start to take hold. So they took seed back at like three to five years old. The seed starts saying, "Okay, I'm a bad person. Is that right?" By five to seven, they've got a full story about who they are. And if it's a shameful experience or if they've experienced a lot of shame up to that point, then they have this like self-identified shame that they have. Okay. Um, so again, the whole, I made a mistake, even when mistakes happen, comes to, I am a bad person. So that's when they start to internalize shame if they've had a lot of those types of experiences. This is also when children get to be more curious about bodies, right? You know, these like five to seven-year-olds, um, sometime, especially around, you know, four to five, they might still be kind of interested in or they're okay with being naked, right? Like you go to somebody's house and they're like four or five-year-olds like running around naked. By the time they get to five, six, seven, they start to kind of like, "Oh, I'm naked." And they're a little bit more self-conscious about it, right? Or they start to explore, um, they'll ask you kind of embarrassing questions. You know, be at a grocery store and you hear some kid, you know, talk to their mom like, "Mom, like, why is my butt hurt?" You know, or whatever it is, like, or what, you know, what's, why do your boobs so big right now? Or, you know, whatever it is. They'll say weird things like that. And, um, how caregivers react to that can really set up, um, whether or not you are shameful of your body or someone else's body or bodies in general, or touch, or, you know, physical intimacy. That can really start at this stage too. Interesting. Yeah. And like harsh reactions to that will, will make it more likely that somebody is more ashamed of their own body or, you know, sexuality, whatever it is. And that really starts in about the five to seven-year-old range. Yeah.

And then we get to adolescence, Mark. The best. The best, right? Remember this? So much fun. Oh my god. If only I could be 13 again. Oh god. Can you imagine? Oh, I, I imagine you feel the same way. That was just such an intense period of your life, right?

It's so intense. Yeah. Very emotional. Super emotional. Lots of ups and downs. Very insecure. Your brain is reorganizing itself during adolescence. And a big part of that reorganization causes you to obsess over the judgments and perceptions of other people at this point. That's why you're, that's why teens are so self-conscious and so hyper aware of any sort of social, uh, rejection or social faux pas they might make, whatever it is. This is the stage where like your brain is like, it's quickly, quickly rewiring and it's trying to figure out where they stand in the social hierarchy, their social value. Again, shame is attuned to social devaluations and so the shame system during this period is hyper, hyper online at this point. It even gets to the point too, the shame system is so sensitive at this point that, um, teenagers, you know, adolescence and teenagers will start to detect threats that aren't even there. So every little look, every little word, every little, you know, somebody didn't like something on their social media, whatever it is, they perceive that as a social threat at this point. So everything is just, it's turned up to 11 at this point. Any of those embarrassing moments, I, I know some of the most like shameful and embarrassing things I can think of happen during this time. And it's just because your, your brain is wired to remember those and not repeat those mistakes at this point. That's kind of the, the trajectory through, uh, childhood, anyway, in adolescence. Yeah.

And I, I think a really important thing for, for people to understand with these different stages is that we talked earlier about how when you feel deeply ashamed of something or you have like a very shameful or traumatic experience, your brain kind of gets stuck in that moment and you don't, flashbulb memory of it. Yeah. Yeah. And you don't really evolve or grow out of it. And, and so that applies to all of these as well. So if you, if you have a very intensely shameful moment, say when you're between five and seven, you'll kind of like from an emotional maturity point of view, you will kind of get lodged in that five to seven range. Yes. Until you go back and fix whatever that is that that really messed you up back there. Same thing at, you know, three to four years old. Same thing at at adolescence. And so, you know, I think we all know certain adults who, uh, will act like children when they're, they're emotionally triggered. And this is really why. It's because when you trigger somebody, you are basically kind of throwing their brain back to that moment where they were traumatized or or violated or or ashamed in some intense way, and they are like replaying or reacting that moment in time at that same level of, of cognitive development, that same level of self-standing. And so, you know, just think of that in terms of like whatever you're struggling with, um, the, the deeper it is, the further back it goes. If it is on like a fundamental visceral level, like that probably goes back very early in childhood. If it's just kind of this like deep sense of of failure and, and inadequacy that, like you don't really have any sort of logical or rational explanation around, you know, that probably goes back to that, that toddler era. And then if you have like very specific insecurities around specific, uh, experiences or groups of people or whatever, you know, social anxiety, codependence, avoidance issues, like that probably goes back to like bad adolescent experiences. Um, because that's that's much more, it's much, much more about your social identity than like your relationship with yourself. Yeah.

And this all, I mean, it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, right? Like, it seems kind of cruel, right? Like it's like, "Oh my god, I'm stuck in when I was five years old and this thing happened and I can't get out of it." Like, why would, why would our brains be be, uh, designed that way, right? But what it is, you know, your brain is trying to figure out what kind of environment it's in and what it has to prepare for, right? And, and so it uses those early experiences as a template. Now, that makes a lot of sense in like a, especially in like a small tribal, um, society. That was our evolutionary, uh, past. That's where we evolved these things. But in a more modern society, it's, what the good news is, is that you don't have to stay stuck back there, right? You can, that, like your environment can change and you have a lot of control over that. And so, I just want to emphasize that it's not like you're not doomed based on this stuff, okay? And not only that, like if you're a parent, you're listening to this too, and you're like, "Oh my god, I've screwed my kid up so much." Well, yeah, you probably have, but let's just, let's just be honest. News flash, every parent screws up their kid in some, shape, or form. Yeah. The good news, though, is that, um, repair goes a long ways. So, even if you have like, kind of, you know, probably shamed your kid at some point, um, going back to them at some point and either, you know, you apologize for that, or you just change how you treat them in these situations and you push them more to, hey, that's a bad thing. Don't do that. Rather than, you're a bad kid. Uh, that goes a long ways for kids, too. Kids are very resilient and still very flexible. So these things don't just, you're not set, set in stone if they do happen this way. It could take some work to get out of it, though, too. Yeah.

All right. So there, there's kind of a, a history or lineage of therapeutic modalities that address shame directly. And, uh, I think it's worthwhile to kind of go through them, understand what the originators were were thinking at the time, like what, what led to to their decisions, what those practices are, um, and where they help and, and where they come up short. Uh, and so, of course, every episode, what is a solved episode without a section on Freud? Uh, I believe we're now like five for five or six for six or something with him. Like, I think he is the one person who has showed up in every single, uh, uh, solved episode, but you can't really have a psychology podcast without talking about Freud. So, it's, it's very hard to to avoid him. So, Freud, of course, uh, was the originator of talk therapy and his school of thought was called psychoanalysis. And his whole thing was about digging into people's unconscious thoughts and fears and emotions and motivations and then just bringing them conscious. He, he noticed that there was a healing effect when people, uh, became more aware of all of the the impulses and emotions that were going on inside them, inside of themselves. Once they were aware of them and they were able to put language around them, it seemed to liberate them in a lot of different ways. And at the time Freud was working in, uh, 19th century Europe, the cultural norms at the time were extremely rigid. That you were, you were really not supposed to show emotion. Uh, sexuality was extremely taboo. Um, everybody was very buttoned up, very conformist. Uh, there was a lot of judgment and shame everywhere. And so most of sha, most of Freud's early patients, you would classify as highly shamed adult women. Mhm. As a result, I think, you know, a lot of his discoveries or a lot of his ideas, I think, were very much, uh, biased based on that, that self-selection bias of just like most of the people coming to him were were like wealthy or middle-class women, uh, who are very repressed. And so he, like, like many scientists do, erroneously extrapolated from this small segment of the population that he was working with and then and then made all these kind of grand proclamations about human nature and whatnot. But one of the things that he noticed is that most of these patients that came in were like, they, they had deeply repressed emotions. Deeply repressed. Many of them were very sexual. Many of them were anger, sadness, uh, guilt, and things that they had not talked about ever with anybody, things that they had buried for decades. And what he noticed is that when you find, when you got these people to open up and finally start talking about it, um, there was kind of this, this sense or feeling of liberation that happened. Now, what's interesting about psychoanalysis is that it, he never really came up with any game plan of like how to deal with these emotions. And sure enough, by like the 1910s, even Freud himself started to notice this as a problem. He, he even wrote, uh, he, he wrote in one of his books at the time that he noticed that that a lot of his patients who experienced the, uh, the release of repressed emotions, it actually caused them to leave psychoanalysis because the emotion that came up was just so uncomfortable and so messy and ugly and, and like they didn't know what to do with it, and they were just like, you know what, I think I'm going to be fine. I don't need to, I don't need to do all this stuff. Uh, and, and so Freud kind of lamented the fact that like most people wouldn't actually stick with it long enough to like sort through all of the the baggage that they had been carrying around, and he never really got around to like game planning like what to do with that baggage.

So one of the acolytes of Freud, a psychoanalyst in the 1920s and 30s, was a man named Carl Rogers. And Carl saw this as like the central problem of psychoanalysis. He's like, "It's great that you can dig up all these buried emotions and all these repressed feelings, uh, and all this shame and guilt that you've been carrying around your entire life, but what are you going to do with it? You have to find some, like, there has to be some sort of like solution waiting for you when all that junk comes up." So, Rogers created what what is known as person-centered therapy, although today some people just call it Rogerian therapy. Uh, and it's built on this radical idea that that people are are naturally driven towards growth and healing. But they just need to be provided the right context and emotional environment. And so Roger's goal was actually not to, uh, solve, dig into everybody's psyches and like excavate all these unconscious feelings or emotions. His goal, the, the goal of person-centered therapy was simply to create the emotional environment that was full of enough trust and safety that people would start kind of unloading their stuff on their own naturally. And so he actually took kind of a radical approach to therapy, which is that the therapist is actually not supposed to ask questions. The, the therapist is, it's actually patient-directed. So the therapist is simply there to support, to make observations, to maybe make suggestions of like, well, have you considered this, or what do you think about that? And, and then let the patient really direct the narrative and, and direct where

Everything goes. And for Rogers, by far the most important thing above all else was that there was radical unconditional acceptance. Everything is fair game. Every horrible thought, feeling, ugly experience, trauma, neglect, everything is okay. There's no such thing as a bad thought or feeling. Just get it out and and and let's let's work with it. Let's talk about it.

Rogers actually found a lot of good success with this. He he's got a fantastic quote that I believe we've we've mentioned on the show before. Um he said, "The curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am, it only then can I change." And Rogers, from all of his work with his clients and patients, he developed this this concept called incongruence. And because he, what he noticed is that generally speaking, a person's level of suffering is proportional to the mismatch between their self-concept and how others see them. And gen, so if somebody comes in and they see themselves as like, "I'm a loser, I suck at everything, nobody's gonna like me," but they're actually like a very successful, well-liked, popular person. He argued that it's it's the incongruence between the two that is the problem. Uh, and it's not, you know, specifically how the person sees or feels about themselves. Because, and I like this, because it it also addresses the fact that sometimes people who who harbor a lot of shame, they compensate by overestimating themselves, right? You get kind of like the narcissistic defense mechanism or response to feeling a lot of internal shame. So, he also noticed that people would come in and say, "Oh, I'm I'm the best. Everybody wants to be like me. Everybody's jealous of me." And meanwhile, it's like, you know, it's it's this loser who like, you know, has nothing going on in his life, has no friends, whatever. So, for Rogers, it was really just trying to get people's self-concept back to uh to reality, to match that reality. And and um and he really believed that that ultimately just came came down to people having the time and space to work through all these questions and problems themselves.

Now, the problem with that is that you need patients who are willing to put in the work. Yeah. Yeah. And the fact of the matter is is that the majority of people uh either are not willing to put in the work or even if they're willing, they don't know the right questions to ask. They haven't thought about these topics deeply for long periods of time. So they don't they don't notice the the paradoxes and uh, you know, the contradictions and and and like the the the faulty assumptions that they're they're walking around with. You, it reminded me when you were talking about the self-led or the the patient uh part. It reminds me of Goodwill Hunting. Yes. You know, when he goes into the first session and Robin Williams just sits there and and he just sits there and they don't do anything. It's very a whole hour of just sitting there staring at each other and they leave. That that's actually a great example that that's very Rogerian. Like he, that whole, I forget the the name of the therapist in that in Goodwill Hunting, but Robin Williams' whole character is like very Rogerian. And what's interesting is that, you know, kind of coming back to the uh, the different stages of development, right? Like each of these therapies kind of properly addresses one stage and misses the mark on the others. Psychoanalysis and and like a Freudian approach is probably very good for people who are just like completely unaware of why they feel bad, right? It's like, you just get them on the couch talking and like eventually stuff's going to start to come up. You're 90% of the way there. And and and we can like we can start digging it out, you know, and and I think for people who maybe experience a lot of shame at a very young age, you know, before they have an ego identity, before they have any sense of like social standing, before they've spun up any narratives about themselves, uh, you know, a a Freudian approach can probably be very useful because it's like it's really designed to deal with a lot of that messy unconscious kind of irrational aspect of ourselves. Rogerian therapy, I think, is is probably more appropriate for uh, you know, people in those like the toddler phase or like the young childhood phase where they they have a sense of self, but it's like they don't have a clear understanding of the world or their relationship with the world. And so anything, any any sort of trauma or pain that happens in that stage of their life, they just they internalize it. They're just like, "I'm worthless. I'm [ __ ] Nobody loves me. I'm going to be alone forever." And it's and so, interestingly, I think Matt Damon's character is very much that. Like he has this this deep wound inside of him from being an orphan uh that nobody nobody has ever really addressed. And everybody's tried to approach him intellectually and he's just too smart. He can deflect them. But it's like when Robin Williams' character shows up and he just he has the Rogerian approach of just like, you know what, I'm just going to sit here till you start talking. Uh, that's the thing that eventually breaks through to them. Yeah.

But unfortunately, most of us are not Will Hunting. So, uh, we're not math prodigies. And and most people like they they don't have the time, patience, or energy to sit and do that that level of work for that that period of time. Uh, and so this started to frustrate a number of people. And along came Albert Ellis. And he came around in the 50s and 60s. I think he was aware of the Rogerian approach, but he actually decided to take the completely opposite tack, which is he he decided, "Let's intentionally get patients to experience their shame and their insecurities." Because then, once they experience it, they're going to realize that it's not nearly as bad as they thought it was going to be. And so, he, it's here with Ellis that you start to uh get some of the the the early uh progressive desensitization that later on ended up in CBT. Um, you know, so he he would do things. He would he would take patients who say had like intense social anxiety and he would make them go out in public and embarrass themselves. And and then they would embarrass themselves and he'd be like, "See? Nothing happened. You're fine." "Your face is like lighting up. You love this. Love this [ __ ] I [ __ ] love this [ __ ]" I mean, I even made YouTube videos doing this with people. So, like, it's like so liberating when it works because it's, you know, as we've talked about, like shame has this funhouse mirror effect of like amplifying or exaggerating um the negatives uh in our perception and and like downplaying the positives in our perception. So, Ellis was just like, "You know what, man? You got to feel some pain. We got to we we got to make you suffer a little bit." Ultimately, Ellis believed that uh, you know, most shame is is just it's really rooted in unrealistic or or contradictory expectations of the world. So if you take somebody who like believes that they are always supposed to do the right thing no matter what, they're supposed to like get a 100 on every test and succeed in everything they try. His approach was a much more intellectual approach of like, "Well, let's let's let's find the the contradiction in that." You know, like, "What like what makes you successful at something?" "Oh, well, you learn you learn from mistakes." "Well, what how do you make mistakes?" "Well, you fail at something." "Oh, okay. Well, interesting. So, it sounds like you can't actually be successful at something until you fail at it. So, it sounds like this idea that you should do everything correctly all the time is just faulty. Like, it's built off of faulty assumptions." So, he would approach everything from a very intellectual angle.

And I'm going to throw out a a shout out, a very obscure book um that I read maybe 10 or 15 years ago. I I I I read it in my 20s and I loved it. Uh, it's by a clinical therapist named Peter Spinagotti or, I believe that's correct, Spinotti. It's called "Explaining Unhappiness." And it was such an interesting book because the author was very much like a Albert Ellis type person. And he he believed that all unhappiness was rooted in an unresolved contradiction. And so, and the whole book is just examples from his his sessions with his patients of like them coming in with like very kind of complicated, what seems like complicated, messy life situations and then him simply like digging and digging and digging and then finding a contradiction and being like, "Oh, well, that doesn't make sense." And then the patient realizes it doesn't make sense and it like completely changes the perception of everything that came before it.

What's like an example of that that? Can you think of one? Take somebody who like thinks that they should be making making their partner happy all the time, right? And it's like and they feel like they're overextended and they're doing so much and they're unappreciated and all this stuff. And it's an Ellis approach um, a alleian approach, an Albert Ellis approach to it would be like to sit there and be like, "Well, uh, what are the things that make your partner happy?" And you know, maybe the person lists them off and it's like, "Okay, what about those things makes makes them happy?" "Okay. Um, what are the things that make your partner unhappy?" "Okay. Well, how much control do you have of those things that make them unhappy?" "Okay. Let's imagine a perfect world where you're able to make them happy at all times. Like, what are what are the preconditions to that world?" "Like, oh, oh, you have literally no life of your own and you are unhappy all the time." So, okay, there seems to be a contradiction going on here, right? So, it's like it's just kind of like working with it's a very intellectual approach uh to issues. In many ways, it was kind of a precursor to CBT. You know, CBT was like very much a therapy that um uh, you know, saw challenging people's thoughts as like the easiest entry point into breaking their their spiral of behaviors.

What's interesting with both Carl Rogers and Albert Ellis, uh, like I think there's a lot of profound truth in both of them. Um, and they're both incredibly influential on future modalities. What's interesting is that they're not scalable or repeatable, right? So, it's like in both cases, you're you're essentially completely reliant on an exceptionally talented therapist to make it work, right? So, it's like in Rogerian therapy, you need a Robin Williams from Goodwill Hunting to like really move the needle for people. Like you need an exceptionally emotionally attuned and non-judgmental and thoughtful therapist to like make that space and like keep you keep nudging you forward. And similarly with with Albert Ellis's uh method of of therapy, you need an incredibly intellectually sharp therapist who's like excellent at catching paradox and contradictions and like challenging assumptions and noticing blind spots. Kind of a brilliant person sitting across from you challenging everything you say, you're it's gonna be hard to get mileage. And I think really the reason that CBT took off the way it did is that the brilliance of Aaron Beck is that he saw that you need something you need a framework that's easily repeatable that you can hand off to any therapist and they can apply it just as well as the person who invented it. That you're not relying on the skill or talent of the therapist, that you're simply you're relying on the framework. And I think because of that, that's why it's become so popular and so prevalent. And also, it's it's allowed people to iterate on the framework and make it better over time.

So when we get to the 1980s, you know, Freud Freud made a little bit of a comeback in the 70s and '80s. Sometimes it's called neorudianism. You know, there was a hot moment for maybe about 10 years where where therapists like really got back into psychoanalysis and they they got really into like repressed memory and like helping people like discover things they forgot as children because of their trauma and all this stuff. They drag the couches back into their offices. Exactly. Exactly. It's like, "Get back on the couch, [ __ ]" And and around the same time too, there this concept of reparenting emerged. So, and again, this is kind of a response uh to the the original Freud's original problem of like, "Okay, what now? Like, we dug up all the shame. We dug up all the the the ugly mess and the emotions. Like, what do we do with it?" Uh, and this concept of reparenting is it it kind of comes back to this this this realization that like, let's say you get you somebody comes in, they're harboring a bunch of shame and self-loathing. It originates from, I don't know, say when they were five, their their dad walked out on them or something like we talked about earlier. It's like when when that that that that shame gets triggered, they kind of revert somewhat to that 5-year-old emotionally and they they maybe they have outbursts, maybe they are uh like super insecure, maybe they need tons of reassurance uh and validation from the people around them, much like a 5-year-old would. Uh, so the the neorudians looked at this and they said, "Well, when that when that patient is in that moment, when they are kind of inhabiting the 5-year-old, that's when you go in and you like reparent them. That's when you like, as an adult, you you can help them. You can, you know, bring a family member in or or maybe like somebody trusted in and you can like actually start treating them uh in a way that they needed to be treated in that moment, or maybe even train the patient themselves to to parent themselves in that moment."

So around the same time in the 1980s, uh, there was a really popular self-help book called "Heal the Shame That Binds You." It was written by a man by the name of John Bradshaw. And Bradshaw really pushed this this idea of like healing your inner child. It's like going in, going in, tapping into that that ashamed, traumatized 5-year-old. See the world the way they see it. Feel the world the way they feel it. Go back to that moment right before the last time you saw your father. Think about how you're feeling in that moment. Now imagine like what you wish how how you wish your mother reacted, what you wish your father said to you before he left. Like replay all those things in your head and like really get people back to that moment so that they can then use their present day adult knowledge and self-acceptance uh to kind of reconfigure the experience in their head, like really rewrite that story in a lot of ways. And this sort of practice is still extremely prevalent in the personal development space today. I mean, there's like literally thousands of life coaches that like still do stuff like this. And and I I still run into people all the time who are like, "Oh, I I did like inner child work at a retreat last year and it was life-changing and blah blah blah." Um, Bradshaw also had this cool framework which I I don't know where he got it. You know, he wasn't a a a therapist or a psychologist, but he he had this like really cool framework around like family systems and um and how, you know, when you live in a dysfunctional family, like people take on different roles and there's kind of a balance that has to happen. And this is where the the classic concept of like the golden child comes comes out or like the rebellious child shows up. And um and he was like very clever at spotting like different patterns and dynamics that often emerge in people with like really [ __ ] up childhoods and family life.

And eventually, this all kind of got rolled into I guess a more codified framework by a man named Richard Schwartz. He created a modality called Internal Family Systems. And and it is blowing up right now. Uh, it's relatively new. It's like uh, you know, I'd say it's really only been around for a couple decades. Well, he started in the 80s, but he was laughed off stage until the like late 2000s. Yeah. But Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, it's coming to vogue in the last 15 years. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, it's it's he it sounds like he started around the same time with the Neoridians, but yeah, it's like nobody took it seriously until until uh recently, but um, it's it's really becoming a thing. And and IFS is super interesting because it it it's similar to the reparenting thing. It it like it asks you to roleplay as different aspects of yourself. Yeah. Different parts, right? Yeah. So, it's like, "Let me speak to ashamed Drew, right?" Or let let me speak to alcoholic Mark, right? That'd be a great podcast, by the way. Uh uh, you know, and then it's like have different the therapist will have different conversations with the different aspects of the patient. And it's really fascinating. The human brain is just so [ __ ] fascinating. It's really fascinating that like by role playing, you you actually kind of do trick your brain and your unconscious into like resolving a lot of emotional baggage. Uh, and you can achieve a lot of that self-acceptance and a lot of the uh, you know, resolving different paradoxes and stuff that Albert Ellis and Carl Rogers were trying to do. So, yeah, with IFS, yeah, I'm a big fan of this. You know, this um, I'm a big fan of this. I've never actually done it with a therapist, but just using it kind of, I've read the books, you know, and used it in my own life kind of. And I think that this is really useful. Like you said, it's you can you can have a conversation with different parts of yourself. And for me anyway, especially if you're really, like I'm a shamer person and if you do identify with your shame, I think something like IFS where you're talking in this parts work, where you're talking to different parts of yourself and figuring out how the different parts of yourself fit together and work together with you or against you, however it is. If you find that shameful part of you, for me anyway, it really helps me uh kind of like look at it from an outsider's perspective and not identify with it so much. So you can deal with it. Then you can start asking it questions. This sounds crazy if you've never done this. Okay, I I understand how crazy this sounds, but like you said, the human brain is just fascinating. And you can do this. You can have a conversation with that part of you. What What are you trying to protect here? Why are you what are you so afraid of that you're using shame to keep me from keep me stuck, right? You can have that and it really detaches you from the shame long enough so you can address it. So that's that's been my experience with it. Yeah.

It is super fascinating and it and it's like there are just recently, the last few years, there's some like like clinical studies that are coming out about it, you know, like we're finally getting some like efficacy scores on it and it's actually great. Like it's it turns out it's really good, especially for people who suffer from like PTSD uh and and shame. Like it is super effective. So it's um, yeah, it's kind of the the exciting cutting edge of of all this stuff.

All right, last one I want to talk about. It would be impossible to do this episode if we didn't talk about Brené Brown. Uh, I wish we had had a chance to talk to her. She does not talk to anybody anymore. So she doesn't have to. She doesn't have to. When you when you've sold as many books as she has, you don't have to talk to [ __ ] anybody. So good for her. Uh, but it was actually really interesting cuz like I've read all of I've read all of her books. Um, and obviously I've read about her research in her books, but it it was interesting prepping for this episode because it was the first time I actually went and looked at her papers and I never actually looked at her research and it was it was like it was actually super fascinating. First, the first thing I didn't I didn't know um is that uh she got her PhD in social work. She was she's like not a psychologist. I always thought it was weird when she talked about her research. She talked about interviewing people and I was like, "What psychologist still interviews people like like social workers do?" I'm like, "Oh, yeah, social work." So Brené Brown was a a PhD in social work and she she was um she was doing a bunch of work down in Texas and she just made a really simple observation in the early 2000s, which is one of those things that it's like it's so obvious in hindsight that you kind of just like slap your forehead and you're like, "Well, no duh. Like, what the hell is that?" She realized that like through her research and her work doing social work, like she was meeting and speaking to literally hundreds and hundreds of very troubled people. Like and and not troubled people is like therapy patients, troubled people is in like, "I just got out of jail" or uh, "I just tried to kill myself" or like, you know, "My wife just died," you know, like it's it's like really rough situations. And she couldn't help but notice that like these these there was just so much shame in these people. Like every single person she talked to, there was just like was just rife with shame. Like had deep deep pain and and trauma in their background that they were like very, very, very ashamed of talking about. And she looked around, she she looked at a lot of the psychological literature and she's like, "Wow, there's like no good research on this. Like nobody's actually studied this in depth." And so she decided to be the one to study it. And it makes sense that somebody who comes from a social work background is the one who kind of stumbled into all the stuff that she stumbled into because shame is a social problem. It's it's a problem of social acceptance uh of familial acceptance. And therefore, it requires social solutions. Like you can't just sit by yourself and resolve your shame. Like you have to go live it. You have to surround yourself by people who accept accept you for who you are or accept the new version of you. Uh, you can't you can't just like intellectualize your way out of shame. And and so I think her understanding of um of how this actually gets resolved and improved uh is really key. And it makes sense that psychologists would miss it. Um, so the the key tenets of of Brené Brown's work, and by the way, if you haven't read her books, go read all of them. They're they're excellent. They're fantastic. She talks about the importance of vulnerability and just sharing everything openly. It's like it it really is, it's cliche, but sunlight is the best disinfectant. And when it comes to shame, it's it is like the best thing you can do for whatever you feel ashamed of is to talk about it with somebody. Be because it's just it relieves the burden, even though that's the opposite of what you want to do. It is. Yes. It's what you need to do. Yeah. Exactly.

The other thing she found is is owning and taking responsibility for it. Um, you know, most people's tendency with the thing that they're ashamed of is to blame somebody else. It's like, "It's not my fault. It's like I I was a victim. I this horrible thing happened to me. Like these people are awful." Um, and that all might be true, by the way. Like this is this is I talk about this in my book. There's a the fault responsibility fallacy. Like all of those things can be true. You could totally be a victim. You could be surrounded by horrible, horrible people. But you still have to own your experience. You still have to say, "This is who I am and this is what I've lived through and I'm going to take responsibility for it and move forward." And then of course her uh uh the the other tenet is just ask for support. Find support. Find other people who have suffered in the same way that you've suffered, who are ashamed of the same thing that you're ashamed of, who understand what you're going through. And find people who who can sympathize with you.

You want to hear something really funny? So I was returning to Brené's work. I read all of her stuff, you know, back in the early 2010s when it came out and was a big fan of it. But returning to her work and kind of going through her tenets and like revisiting a lot of her advice, I realized that there is actually a framework that encapsulates everything that she recommends and it's been around for over a hundred years. Do you want to guess what that is? I'm blanking. Alcoholics Anonymous. Oh. Oh, sure. Which oh [ __ ] yeah, when you think about it, you're like, "Oh yeah, duh. That totally makes sense. That totally makes sense." Especially when you come back to the fact that like addiction and compulsivity is like very much rooted in shame, very shame-based. Yes. So when you look at the 12 steps, what's step number one? It's the share problem. Share it and own it, right? It's like, "Own the [ __ ] problem. My name's Mark, I'm an alcoholic." Right? Step number two is like, be vulnerable. Share share your experience. Talk about your story. Talk about all the [ __ ] up stuff you did. As you go through the steps, it's like you basically see uh Brené Brown's recommendations like repeated over and over and over again. And in fact, the entire framework around AA is basically just it is one giant shame alleviation machine. It is like, "Let's get all of the people who are shamed who have the same problem and have similar shame in the same room. Let's create an environment." Carl Rogers, right? Let's create an environment of of radical acceptance. Uh, let's get everybody to be vulnerable and share their stories. Let's get people to make amends with the people that they've wronged and take responsibility for the the actions that they've done. And then let's let's keep each other accountable. Let's let's challenge each other's [ __ ] and faulty assumptions, rationalizations for their bad behavior, which is the Albert Ellis method, right? And and by the way, you're here for life. Like you it's there's no exit, there's no off-ramp, there's like you're in it till the end together. And um, yeah, I I I like that epiphany hit me when I was uh revisiting her stuff the other night and I was just like, "Oh my god." Yeah, cuz what what is addiction if it's not like trying to escape who you are, right? Which is ob like completely shame-based. You're so ashamed of and you hate yourself so much that you're just trying to escape that through addiction, through through using. So yeah, I didn't I don't think that and AA is really Yeah, it's just it's a it's a giant shame alleviation framework. Yeah. Essentially. Wow. I didn't think of that. That's a good one. Yeah.

All right. So, those are kind of the four or five modalities that I wanted to touch on. Um, you know, as we get into, we're going to we're we're going to talk about uh different tools and exercises people can use to to work on their own shame. And then uh and then we'll wrap up with kind of like a a framework or a process of shame alleviation, kind of like the steps or the stages that that people go through. And then we'll contextualize all of this stuff in those steps and phases. Uh, but I I I think all all of these modalities are useful in their in their own context and I think they're useful for different aspects of the problem. Uh, and yeah, we'll we'll we'll keep revisiting them as we move forward. [Music]

All right, Mr. Bernie, what can we do? Give us some actual like tips and exercises, takeaways that we can do. What are the questions we should be asking ourselves? Absolutely. Yeah. So, as we've covered so far, we do often just avoid shame at all costs, right? Like we just find ways to not feel it, to distract ourselves, to numb ourselves, whatever it is. Um, but the first step in addressing shame is being aware of it and and uh gaining a better awareness around your shame triggers, your sources of shame, and how you react to shame and all of that. Okay. So, I'm going to go through uh a couple of ways it's going to bring up some awareness. And then we'll go through a few ways that you can deal with your shame. So, we just talked about the therapeutic modalities and that's if you need that, obviously get to that stage too. These are some things you can do just now in your own life and on your own. Um, so while I'm going through these, you know, write them down, just listen, whatever it is, or download the PDF guide at solpodcast.com/shame. You beat me to it. solpodcast.com/shame. You can figure this out, too.

Okay, so the first kind of step here in understanding the programming, your shame programming, right? What are your shame triggers? So, the first question there is like, "What consistently triggers your shame?" Now, is it is it failure? Now, that's a big one for me. Yeah. um conflict. There's a lot of people who like when they get into conflict, they feel shame around the conflict because they think they've done something wrong when it's just a a miscommunication. Maybe maybe at work, you weren't chosen to be on this team or whatever it is because now you think you're a horrible person and you're not good at your job. All of that not being perfect. That's another one too. Big one for me too. Perfectionism, right? Go through what is it that consistently triggers your shame response. Again, if you're not really aware of your your shame though, if you if you avoid it a lot, this might be a a kind of a tough step. But really pay attention. Yeah. I I would say the things to look out for if you're you're unsure where where your shame is. I would look at uh where do you have a chip on your shoulder? Like where where do you what what triggers your anger? What makes you feel like you need to prove something to people? Uh, what makes you feel sad irrationally? Um, what makes you mopey and maybe a little bit depressed? Withdrawal. Yeah. Where do you find yourself constantly needing validation from others? What are you constantly looking for approval for? And then finally, look at what are the things that really really make you want to check out and numb or distract yourself. Like so what are the triggers for that as well? So it is just looking at where those behaviors will crop up consistently like that will probably be like an arrow pointing towards something you're shameful about. Yeah.

And then I once you do kind of identify those triggers, like to to start addressing them, are they signaling like real harm or is it just like a cultural expectation or an expectation put on you by someone else that's not really serving you? Because I think again, there's so like our shame systems are are highly tuned to social rejection within small groups because that meant death at one point. Today, our shame systems seem to be like again, they can be anything haywire. Okay. So just like, does it make sense? And you know, you're probably not going to resolve it right there, but at least you're kind of planting the seed to say, "Okay, maybe this isn't serving me so well, right?" Like, "Who taught you that that that mistakes in that area mean that you are less than." Right? Like, usually you can come up with an explanation for, "Okay, this isn't really serving me here um, even though this is triggering my shame a lot." Okay, so that's the first step is the is noticing your shame triggers.

Okay, the next is like the shame intensity. This is like the volume knob. How how intensely do you feel shame? Um, again, if you try to avoid it a lot, you probably don't feel it a lot, but if you sit with it for a second, it probably like it'll ramp up really quick. So like, you know, how loud is that shame? Um, or or the other thing too is like, do little things like, you know, missing a deadline or saying something kind of stupid in a social situation, do those cause like a huge amount of shame or a huge shame response to you? Is it disproportionate to like what's actually like the actual threat that's being uh levied upon you? So just a a quick small thing on that. Yeah. The funny thing is is that a person who has a lot of shame around something, they would argue with you. They're like, "But it's not a small thing. It is." Oh, yeah. If you miss a deadline, that's that's huge. That's your reputation. That's that's people depending on you, you know. So, it's it's you have to and I I think we're going to talk about this in a minute, but it's like this ability to kind of zoom out and like see proportionality of like, "Okay, yes, missing a deadline. It's a bad thing, but like how bad is it? Like on a scale, like is anybody dying? Is any is like is the world ending or or is it just like, oh yeah, that's really annoying or you you let somebody down, you know?" Right. Yeah.

And we will we will talk about how you kind of zoom out and we can address that a little bit more. Um, the other thing on the intensity side is like how long does it last? So now you're getting an idea of your shame response, right? Does it does it stay around just for a few minutes, hours, days, weeks, years? You know, I go back sometimes, like I said, there's things I'm ashamed of that happened when I was in fifth grade or whatever it was. That's part of my shame response and that's something I I have to be aware of. And do you confuse shame with guilt a lot too? So we've talked a lot about the difference between shame and guilt. And part of that is it comes into the intensity part because you know one of those again, guilt is "I did something wrong." Shame is "I am a bad person." Which one do you kind of go towards? Because uh if you go more towards the shame, "I am a bad person," it's usually a lot more intense than that guilt feeling that you feel like you can actually address.

Knowing your shame patterns too. This really helps if you if you notice the physical sensations uh that you get around shame. So drop into your body. What is your shame response like? What is your shame pattern like? I know for me, like I get the I get the blushing. I get like if I'm shameful, I get like red face. I remember when I was in I think it was like sixth or seventh grade. I was in a home class. They had just painted the uh the desks. They were like these desks where two people would sit at these tables, basically is what they were. They just painted them this nice new paint and I carved my name into it, you know, like a real dumbass. Like who else would it be? It's the guy who wrote his name there. And I got like called out right in the middle of class. Mrs. Deetsz. She was so pissed off and I remember I I got really ashamed of it. My my uh friend turned to me and goes, "You are beat red right now." Really? Yeah. Yeah. So like noticing those kind of things, a tightness in your chest or numbness. I know I get like tingly. I get I get very my stomach just I feel like stomach issues are a common one too. I feel like nauseous like when I Yeah. And then from that, like what what thoughts follow that too though, right? So this is part of your shame pattern as well, like, "Oh god, I'm such an idiot. I'm worthless. I'm a piece of [ __ ] uh, these people are going to leave, these people are going to hate me, I'm never going to I'm going to die alone." All of those things that follow from that. And then what is your behavioral response to that too, right? Do you like we talked about, do you do you hide? Do you over apologize, overexplain things? Do you lash out in anger? Like um, so understanding that what your shame pattern is can help you at any of those points too to kind of either stop it or step back and examine it, which we'll again, we'll get here to there in a second. Okay. I make jokes. Oh yeah. Deflection. That's another one too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You try you try to minimize the shame by by making jokes about it or making light of it, saying it doesn't matter, dismissing it. Yeah. Yeah. That's a big one, too. Y.

And then the last part of this awareness kind of uh uh menu we're going through here is the sources of your shame. Try to identify. So, we went through, you know, the development of shame. Maybe it was something early uh in your life where you got stuck in that. Um, who can still trigger your shame now too? And can you tie that back to an earlier stage in your life? Like your parents, maybe just a look. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, maybe something like that. A comment that a spouse your spouse makes. Maybe um silence, like people just like they're silent in a situation and that makes you like, "What's going on? Am I a bad person?" Because they're not responding. Your parents, your bosses, your partners, some version of yourself from the past even too that might be kind of attacking you. Where where do where's your shame? Where's the big sources of shame in your life? Identify those. So again, this is a the first step in addressing those as well. Yeah.

It is I want to add to that that like again, your unconscious mind does not differentiate rationally between individuals. So like or time or time, right? So it's like let's say let's say you have a you had like a horrible experience with uh a boss when you were young and like extremely like just toxic workplace or something. You will probably have triggers around your shame with every boss that you have after that. And you will make assumptions and associations with every boss you. You could have the nicest boss in the world, but because of that piece of [ __ ] that you had when you were 15 or 18 or whatever, you will still make assumptions and associations. This also plays into effect uh in in marriages. Let's say one person in a marriage uh has like a deep trauma or a lot of shame like around their father. Well, to their unconscious mind, a father is a father. It doesn't It's not just their dad. It's like everybody's dad is just as awful and just as much of a piece of [ __ ] And so, they will get triggered around their father-in-law. They'll get triggered around uh, you know, their their brother's father-in-law. They'll get triggered around their best friend's father. You know, it's like it's just this like class or category that lives in your unconscious mind that that can like, you know, set the trip wire at any moment, right? Yeah.

And and kind of along with that. So these these sources and these people um that might trigger some of your shame uh in your life, start to plant the seed here. Like, do these people actually do they live by the values you want to be you want to live by that you respect that you want reflected back in your life? Like do they do they want your are they interested in your growth? Are they invested in your growth or they just want obedience from you too? Right? And so that starts to kind of plant the seed that we'll see later too about kind of tuning your own shame system to your own values. Okay. And that that starts with the sources of shame. Like, have they actually earned the right to have that much emotional control over you? Start to ask those questions at this stage. Like, "Why are you trying to prove something to them?" Exactly. "If you don't even respect their perspective?" Exactly. Yeah. And you'll find that a a lot of times it's either people you don't know very well, so why bother? Or they're people you don't really like too, so why bother? At the same time, just kind of planting the seed there. Okay.

I mean, sorry to No, go ahead. Uh, again, that shows up with family stuff, too. Like, family stuff is huge ever around this world. Like, you you see I see, and I did this for years, too. Like I see so many people spend so much energy and effort like trying to prove something to one of their parents or a sibling or whatever. And it's like they've done it for so many years and it's so automatic to them. And then if you actually sit down and talk to them, it's like they don't respect that that family member's perspective at all. They don't like they don't identify with their values, yet they're still trying to prove that they're right all these years later. I guess it was kind of a source of shame for me for a little while. But, you know, I'm a 40-year-old single guy, no kids, you know, never been married, all of that. And I there I actually haven't had a whole lot of like pressure from my family. Not my parents. My parents are like, you know, "You do you. That's fine. We either way, we accept that." But there's like people in my extended family who I know like I've heard comments either behind my back or to my face. And for a while, it kind of got at me. And then I realized I was like, "Oh god, you're in a horrible marriage yourself. Why would I care what you think about me?" You know, that's so that was a small source of shame that I had for a little while. I'm completely over that now. I I don't care who thinks what about that about me. I think women get that really hard. Yeah. Yeah. Way more difficult for women. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Both the marriage and the kid thing. It's like there's just so much pressure and shame that's like pushed on them around that. Yeah. You know, they've given up on me. So, yeah. Yep. I get it. You're You're just the eternal uncle Drew. That's right. I'm okay with that.

Um, okay. So, those those four areas, kind of like that's your your shame programming, right? The the triggers that you have, the intensity that you feel the shame, the patterns that you go through, and then the sources, those those sources that you can identify. Okay. So, again, we're usually so often just trying to avoid shame that just this level of awareness, like getting this uh a grasp on this, that's going to take you a long long way in addressing your shame. And just being able to kind of like step outside of it and look at it. um a little bit detached, which is kind of what I want to talk about next.

Okay, there's this kind of old Stoic practice and they call it the view from above, right? So, if you would imagine yourself kind of leaving your body, we're going to get a little little out there. Are we getting woo woo? No, it's Stoicism is not okay. This isn't woo woo if it's Stoicism. Right. But they they had this practice of like, you imagine you're leaving your body. You're you're viewing your body from above. Okay, you go through the ceiling. Oh, okay. Go out into the sky. Okay. Out into outer space. This is the woo woo part. Okay. But then you become one with the cosmos. Become one with the cosmos. But then turn around and look back. Look back at the planet. Look back. But before you become one with the universe, just look back at your physical body. One last look back to that little blue dot you see and and imagine yourself, you're sitting back on the on Earth with your shame on this tiny little speck in the in the infinite universe. Right? This is what the Stoics called this this view from above. Okay. Uh Marcus Aurelius, the the famous Roman emperor, he used this technique. He he journaled about it in "Meditations," his his book, uh, especially when shame hit. Now, you can he was at the time one of the most powerful men in the world. Um, and he still felt shame around things. Now, the things he felt shame around were like what emperors felt shame about, right? But he would remind himself of this. He would do this and he would zoom

Way out. And and just imagine that he was this tiny speck of dust, right? Mhm. And he realized that, you know, empires rise and empires fall. What seems to be a catastrophe in his life today would just turn into a footnote at best tomorrow, most of the time. When you zoom out far enough, the lesson was all of these things that we tend to just obsess over just kind of disappear. And I know again, this sounds a little like woo-woo, whatever, but really, when you do zoom out and if you can detach yourself from these like deep feelings of shame, you start to realize just how trivial most of it is. Most of us are not of shame because we've murdered someone or, you know, caused really irreparable harm. It's usually over a stupid, I said something stupid, or I wore something weird, or nobody, nobody picked me for kickball when I was eight. Right? Zoom out a little bit. Yeah, it's it's okay.

Well, you know what's cool? There there is not woo-woo at all. There's a there's a thing with astronauts called the overview effect, which is that they find astronauts report that when they first get out into space and they see Earth from space, they have this feeling. They have this feeling of like, oh my god, like none of that [ __ ] matters. None of this stupid stuff. None of this stuff matters. Oh my god. Right? And it was actually really interesting on on our old podcast. I I had a chance to interview Katie Coleman and I asked her, I was like, "Is the overview effect the real thing?" And she was like, "Absolutely thing." Yeah. Yeah. You don't see You don't see all the shameful thing. You just see, oh my god, we're just this tiny little speck. Yeah. Just floating. And the universe really doesn't care if you you had this like terrible presentation at work. It doesn't care if you said that stupid thing in fifth grade that I obsess over still, right? It doesn't care if somebody didn't like your social media post or they posted some nasty comment on it. The universe might care though about whether you did the right thing, whether you lied or whether you were honest, whether you were cruel to someone or whether you were kind to them. If you betrayed the principles that you live by, that actually matters, right? Okay. Not that all that other little stuff. So, the zoom out kind of helps you with that. Yeah.

Um, this is this is what the the Stoics they called it the gift of perspective. Yeah. Right? It doesn't mean your shame is meaningless. It doesn't mean it doesn't carry any weight. It doesn't mean it's not important. It doesn't mean you shouldn't pay attention to it. It just means that you need to have a stronger noise to signal ratio or signal to noise ratio is what it is. Feel shame when it's when you are deviating from your principles, from your values, from who you want to be. Yes. Sure. Forget the rest. Yeah. And that's really the biggest uh that the biggest takeaway from that that view from above. This takes some practice. It um if you do it repeatedly, you start to see it more and more. Um in the little thing, especially in the little things that that cause you shame. Um, you know, like I talk about when growing up poor and that was shameful like that. It just doesn't matter now and it and it shouldn't. And I don't know, I've gained a lot of perspective from that anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's it's interesting. I think you can do this both from like kind of a physical zoom out and I think there's like a temporal zoom out as well. This reminds me of a story that uh uh like Will Smith told me once. He was talking about his divorce with his first wife and uh he was like devastated by it. She she filed for divorce from him and he was just absolutely devastated. Like he his world was collapsing and um he became like really really depressed and and and like bummed out about it and like didn't know what to do and he started to like hire all these lawyers and she was hiring all these lawyers and like and they had a son and he was like, well, I'm going to fight her for for for my son and like I'm not giving her custody and she's not getting all my money and like all this stuff and it was it was about to get like really contentious. And I remember he told me he was still doing Fresh Prince of Bel-Air at the time and Quincy Jones, who's the executive producer, and Quincy Jones was divorced like five times. And uh he was like having a really like, you know, panic attacks and all this stuff. And so he was like having a really bad night one night and he like called up Quincy Jones and he was like, "Man, Quincy, I'm getting divorced. Like I don't know what to do. I'm like, I'm a total wreck." And and he's like, "What did what did you do, Q? Like, tell me what you did." And Quincy's like, "Oh man, give her half your [ __ ] and just move down the street. Like he's like, you're going to be best friends in five years." And he is now, right? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, they're really good friends now. And yeah, it's like Quincy was like he was like, "Yeah, man. Like half my ex-wives live on my street. Like I see them all the time." What was like Oh. Oh, okay. That's a lesson in perspective. Totally. You can you can make it horrible if you want to. If you want to. Yeah. You you can take the smallest thing and make it as big as you want, but you can also take a big thing and make it as small as you want. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

So, that is again the gift of perspective. Now, there are some other tools too I want to go over. I have like three or four of them here we can go through um that also really they're perspective shifting as well. So uh one of them is like the timeline technique and we've already kind of touched on this, but you know, when you are experiencing a shameful event, ask just stop and ask yourself, okay, is this going to matter in 10 minutes? 10 days? 10 years? Yeah. Almost always, at least two, if not all three of those answers are going to be no to that. And so like, it's not that your shame again, it's not your shame isn't real in that moment. It's just that it's probably not worth your whole nervous system being dedicated to it and uh for an extended period of time. Right?

This is actually this is similar to another Stoic practice, which is negative visualization. Yes. Which is like really sit and imagine the worst-case scenario and then ask yourself, how bad is the worst-case scenar heard about it a long time ago, but when I started using it, I'm like, oh, that's not so bad. I I just imagine the worst, absolute worst-case scenario, and almost always it's like, oh, that's not so bad. I can deal with that. Yeah. Yeah. I I think about this uh when I do public speaking. I've had like one nightmare public speaking gig. Oh yeah. In my career.

We can go on. What was this? So like early when my first book took off, you know, all these like speaking gigs started coming in and like at the time, like you don't you don't know anything, right? So you I just started saying yes to everything. I was like, "Oh, wow. Okay, cool. Yeah, I'll take I'll take some money." Like give a talk for all this money. I'll talk for 30 minutes and take some money. And so I just started saying yes to everything. I didn't think about it. I didn't think about where it was, who who the audience was, like what who it was to. And so I I came up with like this like really kind of quirky, clever, funny talk based on my book uh that dropped f-bombs everywhere and was making like all these silly jokes and you know, all this stuff. It was basically it was a talk made for my audience, not understanding that most of the people who were going to be hiring me to come speak were going to be like corporations, uh, you know, like of industry groups, conferences, you know, all sorts of different different people that like I had no awareness of. So anyway, it was like there was kind of this learning period early on where I had done understand of like, oh, okay, when like uh, you know, some industry conference brings you in, like you should probably ask like figure out who they are and then like adjust your speech or your talk based on who they are. I I hadn't figured that out yet. And so I remember I got invited to uh uh like it was like the insurance broker convent like the Tennessee insurance broker convention or something like that. Like it was just like the most most mundane corporate [ __ ]. Let's bring the guy with the [ __ ] book in. Exactly. They're asking for it at that point. Seriously. Well, and this is the funny thing, like another thing I didn't understand at the time is that people who book speakers uh often have nothing to do with the event. So like a lot of times what the event will do is that they will just go hire an agency and they will say, go get us five speakers, and the agency won't know [ __ ] about the organization either. So the the agency is like, well, I love that Mark Manson guy. He's really funny. Like, let's go get him. Some guy read your book and he like didn't know. Exactly. That's exactly what happened. So uh so the the, you know, the insurance broker the insurance broker association of Tennessee like also didn't know what I that I was coming or what I was about. So anyway, uh as you can imagine, I get I get there. It's it's in like Knoxville, Tennessee or something. And uh as you can imagine, insurance brokers in Tennessee do not have the same perspective on life that I do. And they do not speak the same way that I do. And they do not find the same things funny that I do. And so I proceeded to go up there and give this talk just like laden with f-bombs, disappointment panda. Like I was I was like ripping on Trump. Like I was doing all this stuff and just like the room is dead silent the entire time. It's like wall-to-wall dudes in business suits like twiddling their thumbs looking at me like, how long how much longer do I have to sit through this before this guy gets off the stage. It was awful. You could hear a pin drop. And uh and I survived. It was fine. Yeah. Now you know what like comedians who bomb feel like, right? And they they carry on. And they're like, "This isn't going to matter in 10 days. I'm on to my next one." As mortifying as it went, like I could not wait to get out of that building. Like as soon as I came off stage, like be it. I was like, "I'm getting I'm going straight to the airport, right?" You know, and I I don't ever want to see these people again. But it's funny cuz it's like ever since then, anytime I have to like get up on stage or give a big talk or like go to a big event or something, I just remind myself of the insurance brokers in Tennessee. Like it can't be that bad. There's It's impossible to be worse than that. Okay. Okay.

Well, okay. So, so somewhat related to this one then too is actually what they call the deathbed test. Okay. Okay. So, Oh, I like this. Yeah. Imagine yourself at 90 looking back. What do you wish you would have done more of? Like, um most people this age are going to say like, "Oh, I'm I'm so glad I never looked awkward." You know, like you can't imagine that. When I I talked to June Tangney, she's done some work with the elderly, too. And she's like, I'm went into nursing homes with a bunch of 90-year-olds, you know, to 100-year-olds, and I asked them about shame and guilt and stuff like that. I was like, you know, what do you what do you still feel shame about or whatever. And she's like, the vast vast majority of them will say shame. I I don't have time for that. Yeah. Who gives a [ __ ] Like, I don't care that, you know, that stupid thing I did, whatever. Like, I care that I had a good family life or that I tried this thing or that thing or whatever it was. They don't regret, you know, you they don't regret loving somebody deeply and and being hurt by it. They don't regret that. They don't feel ashamed by that at all. Um, they don't feel shame about speaking up when they should have. They don't feel shame about taking big risks, you know, or making a mess of something and then having it turn out okay. Like they don't feel shame about the things that you think they would. It just doesn't happen. So if you can kind of imagine that, and I've done this before, too. You imagine, okay, I'm old. I'm on my deathbed. Shame is not going through my head at all. It's just not. Yeah. And and and hopefully you you can get to the point where you're not you feel that same too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm reminded of another story. Yeah. Just the elderly thing because I I do think this come kind of comes back to like the temporal zooming out, right? It's like I think I think in a lot of ways what wisdom is is just like being around long enough to know what actually matters and what doesn't. Yes. And uh it reminds me of like I remember uh in college so I wrote about in Subtle Art how like my my college my first girlfriend like left me and cheated on me and then left me and it was yeah my my 20-year-old heart was absolutely devastated. It was funny. I remember I went and visited my grandmother. Uh it was either at Thanksgiving or Christmas that next Thanksgiving or Christmas. And um my my grandmother like lived a pretty wild life. Like she was a she was a wild woman. And and I remember I hadn't seen her in a while. And so she was like asking me, she's like, "How's college?" And you know, "Do you have a girlfriend?" or whatever. And I like I was like, "Oh, I had a girlfriend, but it ended horribly." And she was like, "Oh, no, honey. Like, tell me about it." And I like told her the whole story, like this whole heart-wrenching like, "Oh, I thought we were going to be together forever." And I we were long distance and I was driving hours to go see her and all this stuff. And then it's like, and then she was cheating on me and then she left me and I now I'm devastated and I'm never going to love anybody again." And I remember I was like at the time I was shocked because she like she just looked at me and she smiled and she was like, "That's wonderful." And like she really meant it. Like she actually meant it. Like she was like she's like, "I know you're hurt, but like, it's wonderful you're going through this." Like that was kind of her attitude towards it. And uh now that I'm older, like I get it. It's it's like, yeah, you're living like you're you're getting to the both the joy of your first love and the incredible disappointment of losing it. Like that is May you be so lucky. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

So, we're going to wrap up with kind of like what the process of alleviating shame looks like. And I I do think that is kind of the end point is almost this like gratitude for living through it. We talked earlier a little bit about pride. I think it's kind of adjacent to that, but it's it's kind of like a uh it's like you said, you know, or or Jun Tangi said with with the elderly people, it's like it's just this like satisfaction of like, yeah, I got to live through that. Like that's that's part of who I am. That was part of it. Yeah. Yeah. No, for sure.

Related to that then too is this next one, the the what I'm going to call the universal human test. Okay. We've we've already mentioned this to some extent. Shame is not a signal that you're broken, that you're there's something wrong with you. It's a signal that you're a human being. It's a very ingrained part of our nature. Uh, it shows you care and and I know it's like, oh, caring about what other people think, but you should care about what some people think at least. And the the point is to fine-tune that system. But the whole point is is that this is part of being human is that you make mistakes, that you know, maybe you do I don't know, fall apart in public and cry, or or you, whatever, you forget somebody's name at a party, you say something stupid, you wear something stupid, you have you have this ugly body that you know, farts and poops and pukes and breaks out and all that, right? I definitely do. Let me tell you about it. Best part of being human though, that just that makes you human. It doesn't make you broken. It doesn't make you some alien species. I mean, I would go further. Having a dysfunctional family is there human. Having health problems is human. Um, having your heart broken is human. You know, suffering trauma is human. Like nobody gets through life without suffering trauma at some point, you know. So, it, it is Yeah. The the the common humanity piece is is extremely important, right? Yeah.

The last one and maybe maybe the most important though too is the growth question. Okay. Um, is the shame that you're experiencing, is it helping you grow or is it keeping you stuck? So we've talked about the difference between that healthy shame and the toxic shame. Right? Healthy shame is, um, you know, I did something that doesn't reflect who I am. Now, how can I do better in the future? That's a healthy form of shame. Yeah. Um, toxic shame just says, I'm a piece of [ __ ] and I'm not even going to try. So one leads to like repair, the other one leads to paralysis. So being able to kind of nudge yourself one way or the other. Try not to get stuck in that. We just talked about the developmental stages you might get stuck in. Be aware of that. Know the difference um there between the healthy shame and the and the toxic shame. And try to, if you can, just start nudging yourself more and more towards that healthy shame. Is it helping you or not? Because if it's not helping you, then this is something you need to address, right? Yeah.

So, those are kind of the the four other techniques techniques on top of the view from above that we talked about that can really help you start to address your shame in in lots of different contexts too, in lots of different situations that you might be finding yourself in. Yeah. Cool. Yeah.

So, the way I'd like to wrap this up is, you know, usually we do like an 80/20 uh at the end of episodes where we talk about the the 20% of the advice or or content that will get you 80% of the the result. That doesn't feel completely appropriate for this one just because probably because it's not talked about a whole lot. It's not like procrastination where there's like literally a million pieces of advice to sift through. Shame is pretty much like there's kind of just one track you're on and it points in one direction and everybody kind of goes through it. And so I I would like to wrap up with just kind of walking through what the process of alleviating shame looks like, what the experience is like at each stage. Um, and kind of relate it back to a lot of the different things that we've talked about throughout the episode. And I also want to, I guess, just preface this by saying that like this process, it this is like this is not something you solve in a month or a year. Uh, this is a multi-year process. I think if you talk to anybody about like a a significant shame in their life that they've overcome or worked through, it is something that it has taken them many many many years, if not a decade or more. Definitely. Yeah.

When I was looking at like okay, what is a kind of coherent framework to we've talked about all these different modalities, we've got all these different exercises and toolkits, different kind of Stoic practices. Um, we've got the developmental angle, we have uh, you know, all the evolutionary understanding. Like what is a framework that uh can house everything in kind of a coherent way that people can kind of move through? So just like full disclosure, this is a framework I made up myself. Um, but I think it's pretty cool. So there's this framework of of skill acquisition, which is like whenever you're trying to pick up a new skill or learn something, you start at unconscious incompetence. So basically, you suck at it and you don't realize how much you suck. And from there, the first step is to move into uh conscious incompetence, which is basically you understand how bad you are at it and what you need to do to get better. And then from there, you move to conscious competence, which is like you understand how to do it well, but you still have to think about it and focus on it. And then from there, you move into unconscious competence, which is that you're good at it and you don't have to think about it. It's automatic. You've built all the right habits and uh and skills.

So, I'd like to apply that to shame, which is that it kind of this four-step process of unconscious shame to conscious shame to conscious acceptance to unconscious acceptance. Like that's the path that we want to get through. So, the first stage would be unconscious shame. And this is what we've talked about quite a bit where it's like you have these these wounds, these traumas, this pain, this shame that you're harboring and carrying around with you and you're not even aware of it. And basically, this is kind of your default state of feeling ashamed of yourself. And your triggers are automatic. Your identity is completely tied to it. You don't see any of the contradictions or faulty assumptions that you're operating off of. It's like this is just the water you're swimming in. Life sucks in this certain way and that's the way it's going to be. And the goal with the first stage is to simply get you to be aware. And I think a lot of the tools that you just talked through um are a useful way to do that. Um asking yourself questions about where do you what situations do you find yourself lashing out in? Where do you feel like you have a chip on your shoulder? Who are you constantly seeking validation from? Who do you feel insecure around? Um what situations or contexts trigger a lot of negative self-talk? Um when are you like very hard on yourself or judging of yourself? And just like make note of those things. I think there are different methods to do this. I think journaling can be a really useful method uh to to try to find these things. Obviously therapy is very good for this. Um, if you're like really a blank slate and just have no idea, you just feel bad all the time, you have no idea why, you know, it's you probably something more like a Freudian or Rogerian therapy is going to be useful. If you have a little bit of an idea of where your shame is or where your wounds are, then probably something more modern like an IFS or a CBT might be a little bit more helpful. But basically, it's it's the goal in stage one is to just get the conversation started with yourself. Where are my weak points? Where are my triggers? What sets me off? Where do I feel inadequate all the time? What situations make me bad? What people make me feel bad? And and just start ask, you know, trying to look at why. Also look at compulsive behaviors. Uh if you're drinking a lot, if you're partying a lot, if you're doing drugs a lot, like what are you avoiding? What are you avoiding? Like what what contexts are you like inspire you to feel that way? Um, there are an infinite number of ways to avoid yourself in your life. Um, and there are in this day and age, it's it's easier than ever to indulge in compulsive behaviors. So one of the most useful things you can actually do is like if you feel like you might be doing something compulsively, just remove it from your life for a few weeks and see what happens. A, see if you can first of all, just see if you can't like that's a [ __ ] problem. And then B, see what emotions come up, right? Like, you know, put the PlayStation away for a month and see what happens when you like sit by yourself and try to read a book or uh give up alcohol for 30 days and see if you can actually do it. A, it might be harder than you think and then and then B, it's it's stuff will probably come up.

This is something that I noticed without expecting it. Uh, when I was trying to lose weight, I had a real hard on. We did a full episode on the old podcast on my weight loss journey. I hit a point in that journey where there were like certain foods that like I just really had a hard time not compulsively eating or like I I would kind of get these like frantic triggers of like, no, no, I have to have, I have to have this, or like I have to have, I can't go to bed hungry, or I have to have a snack. I have to have this much protein or whatever. Uh, and I would get like actually like very anxious and worked up about it. And um, and I remember talking to my coach at the time and he was just he just started asking me. He's like, "What like what are the emotions behind that?" And uh, and I was like, "Honestly, it's like panic." He was like, "That's really interesting actually. Like where do you think that comes from?" And he and I, like he's not a therapist or anything, but like he and I like we had a good 20, 30 minute conversation where we realized that like when I was a kid and my home life was falling apart, my parents stopped cooking and there were like there were like literally days where like it'd be 7:30 and there's no food anywhere and I'm like, you know, I'm like 11 years old and I'm hungry and I have no idea like I I don't know how to feed myself. I I would like start digging through the fridge and like start looking for things to eat. And and so like I I think I I developed like a pretty [ __ ] up relationship with food. Um, just because of like the unpredictability it ended up having in my childhood. And um, and of course food is another way to numb and distract yourself and um, and and and indulge pain and everything. And I I think there was a lot of that involved in it as well. But it like that's that's just an example just from like the last few years of my life of realizing like, wow, yeah, I do actually I'm I am a I'm like very compulsive around certain foods and then B, like there's emotion tied up in that, like there's like baggage there. Yeah. Yeah.

So once you start figuring these sorts of things out, this will lead you in stage two, which is the conscious shame. So it's basically it's like you have the shame, you know there's something [ __ ] up going on. You still haven't really done anything about it and you don't know what to do. don't know what to do with it. You you feel it, you know it's there, it's holding you back, messing up your life, but like, oh my god, what do I do? This is where I think uh Brené Brown's framework really like shines. So, she has this like four-part process that she recommends that people go through. The first one is name it. Uh, we did a whole episode on emotions a few months ago and we we had a whole section about like the power of naming emotions and how it like lessens their power over you and it helps you like manage manage them and deal with them and this like crazy intersection that happens between like linguistic understanding and emotional experience. Naming your emotions is just across the board one of the most useful things you can do, you know, and whether that's through journaling or therapy or talking to a friend or whatever. It's just like knowing how to describe what you're feeling is just one of the most helpful things for any problem. So step one in her framework is name it. Second one is claim it, which is this is the ownership, right? This is the let's say I feel awful around my dad. I feel like he makes me miserable. Um, we have a horrible relationship. Whatever. uh, just owning that like it, it, there's such a especially when you're ashamed, there's like there's just this tendency to want to be like, it's his fault, it's his fault, he he sucked as a father, uh, I deserve better, blah, blah, blah, you know, turn that around and say, well, this is the this is the father I have, so like, what am I going to do with it? Like, this is I need to own this because part of this relationship is mine and I can't just sit around forever hoping and waiting for him to change. Right? So claim it, decide that it's yours, decide that you're responsible for it, that you you are empowered to do something about it. And then the next step in a framework is reframe it. So this is anything from the classic like, you know, saying, "Oh, I I I'm an anxious mess." Say, "No, I'm a person who has a lot of anxiety." Um, you know, not labeling your identity with things. Not fusing your identity with it. Yeah. Yeah. Like really drawing that separation between what you experience and who you are. Um, you're not a failure. You are just somebody who failed at a thing. Um, you're not unlovable. You're just somebody who is not in a relationship right now. Um, and and like find the healthier versions of stating the same thing. I think this is really where the Albert Ellis stuff kind of shines. um, really examining uh, some of your assumptions uh, or or questioning some of the the beliefs that you're carrying around, some of the stories that you're carrying around. Uh, CBT also has um, a list of cognitive distortions that tend to show up uh, around people who are struggling with anxiety or depression. I would say that those cognitive distortions probably show up a lot with pe with people with shame as well. Uh, one of them is uh catastrophization. Uh, one of them is black and white thinking. You know, these are things that people tend to buy into without realizing it, without questioning. U whereas if you zoom out and start asking yourself, well, wait a second, is this really, is is bombing this talk really is bad? Like, is this really going to [ __ ] up my career? No, it's not. Um, is breaking up with my partner like really going to ruin my love life for the rest of my life? No, it's not. I'm not always gonna feel this way. Like, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And then finally, the the last step in her framework is reach out. Reach out to people uh in in your support network. Re reach out to people who understand what you're going through, who can empathize or sympathize, who care, um, who are who are willing to listen. Basically, get that emotional and social support. You know, in our emotion episode, we talked about how important relationships are for emotional regulation. I think with shame, it's doubly so because uh not only is shame like experienced emotionally as something that's like very unpleasant and difficult to deal with, but shame originates in social experience. So having that social support is like a double whammy of benefit. Like not only are you getting emotionally supported in the moment, but you're also getting validated by somebody that like, hey, you're not [ __ ] up, you're not a bad person, you still do, you deserve love and affection. Um, so yeah, definitely like reach out, look for people who will be supportive. Yeah, shame is a social problem, so it needs a social solution to it, too. Like just like an emotional problem needs an emotional solution, not an intellectual one. Correct. You have to have that social side to it at the end of the day. Yeah.

The goal with this stage is really just, you know, now that you're aware of the irrationality and the compulsivity in your life um is recognizing how unsustainable it is that like you you can't continue this way. it's ultimately just going to be self-destructive. Um, and and there are all sorts of different ways that this can show up for people, right? Like, you know, so I mean, for somebody who's an addict, obviously like addiction is unsustainable. But for somebody who is a codependent and trying to people-please everybody, make everybody happy all the time, that's unsustainable. You can't maintain that for the rest of your life. Somebody who's a perfectionist, wants to do everything right and correct and never fail at anything, that's unsustainable. So like however the shame is showing up for you like I think the big understanding and realization of stage two is like is really getting that like this cannot continue. I have to act differently. I have to do something different in my life and I have to find different people. And then that leads us into stage three, which is the conscious acceptance. I think conscious acceptance is probably like the hardest stage of this whole process. This is the work. Yeah. This is the work. This is like This is like the thankless clocking the hours in in the coal mine to like dig yourself out of a bunch of [ __ ]. It's It's kind of easy to get stuck in stage two actually. I think. Yeah, you're right. Because stage three is so hard. It is the work. Yeah, it is the work. I also think I mean, and this isn't just with shame. I think this is just personal growth in general. Like there's a sense of accomplishment that comes with awareness and a lot of people get satisfied with that. It's a false sense of accomplishment, right? It's it's you know, it's it's like the person who goes to a five-day seminar and like learns all these things about themselves and then goes home and does the exact same [ __ ] they did before they left. It's uh awareness isn't really worth anything until it like changes behavior. Um, and stage three is where the behavioral change comes in. I think this is the hardest stage for two reasons. One is uh, a, it takes courage. The nature of shame is that it causes you to think that something is wrong when it's not. And so to act despite that requires a lot of a lot of courage. It it requires like a certain amount of faith that like this is going to make things better. It doesn't feel like it. It doesn't feel like anything's going to get better. It feels like things are going to get worse, but like I have to do this uh otherwise nothing is is going to change or get better. And then the problem is is that even once you've done it, it still doesn't really feel better. Like like I think a lot of people uh and I think this is wishful thinking, but I think a lot of people like there there's this desire for this like kind of joyous epiphany of like, oh my god, I struggled for years with drugs and alcohol and then one day I decided I need to be different and I've been happy ever since and it's like, no, it doesn't work that way. Like it's still, in fact, in many cases, because you're removing yourself from uh an environment or certain behaviors, like it, it gets even harder because It's it's now you're in new territory. Now you're like dealing with feelings and thoughts that you've never dealt with before. Maybe you've removed yourself from people uh that you're used to being around and so you don't know how to to cope without having them there. Um, and so you kind of end up with this like intellectual emotional schism. And uh, you know, we talked to Jess earlier in the episode and and I, she described this really well of like, intellectually she knows she's doing the right thing, but it's like emotionally it's still hard and it's still like there's this lag time that persists for for years uh before it's like your new sense of self kind of catches up with uh the choices that you've made. Right?

The progress doesn't feel like progress at this point, right? Because again, like you said, it's these are things you've never felt before. So you don't it doesn't feel like progress, right? And it's and and it's like, you know, ultimately shame is it's tied to the self-concept and self-concept doesn't change quickly or easily. Like it's there's a there's an inertia to it, right? So it's like if you've if you've seen yourself as a worthless piece of [ __ ] for for 25 years, that's not going to change in a week or or even a year, right? Like you there's going to be residue of that for many years and it's going to be like a very slow gradual process to come out of it. Uh, I think the the other reason this this part is so hard is that it forces very difficult trade-offs in your life. Um, you're often forced to give up friendships, relationships, uh, careers, hobbies, interests. It can suck. It's like there's a lot of collateral damage that can often happen. I know like when I quit drinking, the hardest thing for me wasn't actually giving up drinking. It was being bored. Like feeling like I had nothing to do. Like I I hadn't realized or appreciated the the extent that like my entire social life revolved around drinking. Like pretty much everything I did for fun, I drank while I did it. And then when I stopped drinking, like 80% of that [ __ ] stopped being fun, right? So I'm like, "Oh, what do I do now?" So I was just bored. I was like intensely bored for like 12 or 18 months. And it was it was like very difficult to deal with. And it was and again to the self-concept piece, like it was very disorienting and trying to understand who I was without alcohol. Like, wow. Like a lot of the things I enjoyed doing, I don't enjoy doing anymore. A lot of the people I enjoyed hanging out with, I don't enjoy hanging out with anymore. So like who the [ __ ] am I? Like you you need that time to like rediscover who the new version of yourself is and that's very hard. Uh, there is a framework that we haven't totally we haven't talked about yet. It's almost like the the modern version of Carl Rogers uh person-centered therapy and that's Kristen Neff's self-compassion framework, which I know you're a huge fan of. Um, so basically uh, you know, like the super quick version of this is that for decades psychologists have talked about self-esteem, um, which is basically, you know, having high self-regard, believing good things about yourself. And I think psychologists, you know, they saw that they looked at people who suffered a lot, were very depressed, high anxiety um, and they saw that they had very low self-regard. I think in many ways, shame is very similar to low self-esteem. Like they, there's like a pretty big overlap there. Uh, the problem is is that there are plenty of people with high self-regard who are uh miserable pieces of [ __ ]. So it's self-esteem, like the the outcomes of high self-esteem are like not what they were thought to be initially. Uh, and so in the late 2000s, uh, Kristen Neff came out with her work around self-compassion, which, um, she proposes like probably a better measure of like how somebody really feels about themsel, which is essentially it's not looking at, uh, how how good you feel about yourself. Uh, it's it's like how compassionate are you with yourself, especially when things are not going well, right? Because what you find is that a lot of people with high self-esteem, when things don't go well, they get very upset and they they like blame themselves, blame others, like lash out at people. Whereas like somebody high in self-compassion, they'll be like relatively steady and stable during hard times. Uh, and so there are three parts of self-compassion. First one is mindfulness, which is just the self-awareness piece. Second one is kind self-talk. Um, she talks a lot about how like talk to yourself the way you talk to your best friend. Like most people talk to themselves horribly. They're like insanely critical and judgmental. But if you think about like imagine your best friend was going through the same problem, like what would you say to them to encourage them and support them? Okay, now say that to yourself. And then the third one is we talked about the common humanity piece. It's just like understanding that like there is no such thing as a personal problem. Like every single problem that exists is being experienced by thousands if not millions of people uh on the planet. And like there's nothing special or unique about what you're going through. And that's a good thing because it it means that there's nothing uniquely wrong with you or or or broken with you or whatever. So yeah, the conscious acceptance piece is really it's about stepping into that new life, finding the social support, people who will validate that new life, and then really just letting time take its course and like practicing that self-acceptance, the self the self-compassion, you know, not falling back into the compulsive behaviors and the avoidance behaviors and the, you know, the lashing out. Um, and really really trying to stay on the straight and narrow um over the long haul. And that eventually ideally gets you to stage four, which is just the unconscious acceptance. And I think really, you know, we when Masa was on here, we talked a little bit about the the pride of like, you know, the thing that she was ashamed of early in her life, now she's very proud of. And I think, you know, when I when I look at some of the things that I was ashamed of in my life, I I don't know if pride like some of them I there is some pride, but I'll give you an example of something I don't I'm not proud of, but I'm still like I'm happy I went through. Yeah. Um, you've accepted it. Yeah. Yeah. So, I had a lot of shame around sex and women when I was young. A lot. And a lot of that has to do, I mean, probably dysfunctional family life. Um, you know, I spent my whole adolescence with a single mom and then first love cheated on me, left me. So it was just like a series of like very kind of unhealthy dynamics in my early life, particularly around women. Um, and it's, you know, I came out of that breakup, uh, extremely hurt, lots of shame, lots of feelings of inadequacy, failure, um, lots of anger, lots of lashing out, like lots of like, women are the problem, you know, all women are like, oh, they're such they're so selfish, they're such [ __ ] all this stuff. And I went through like a very ugly period of um, I guess like it's interesting, like it was both womanizing but also like intense uh resentment and avoidance. Like it, it was a very weird thing. And I think shame causes this dichotomy in a lot of people, right? Where it's like you're kind of obsessed about something and and your whole life revolves around it, but you're also like resentful of that obsession and and like kind of hate the fact that you love this thing so much. And I definitely felt that way around like women and sex and dating. Like I just I I had an unhealthy relationship with romantic relationships. Like I was obsessed with them. I was constantly dating tons of women. I was cheating on most of them. Um, anytime any of them wanted to get close to me, I like just bailed. I was very selfish. I was not compassionate. I was I was a awful boyfriend. Uh, and and at the time I kind of didn't care. It was just like it's like this hole in it was like trying to put water in a bucket with a hole in the bottom. Like it just I had I just had to keep pouring, you know? I couldn't stop to like look at what was going on cuz I had to go find more water to pour in my bucket. Eventually like that obviously like I I just kind of like left this war path of failed and and and dissatisfied relationships.

Behind me, and after enough years passed, you know, you basically, when it comes to relationships, especially romantic relationships, like there's this, there's this realization that I think hits most dysfunctional people at some point, where it's like, you, it's, it, you reach a point where it's impossible to deny that like you're the problem, you know? Like, at at a certain point, it's like all of your [ __ ] up exes, they only have one thing in common, and that's you. And wow, like, how, what are the chances that every single person that you happen to like, get with, is like [ __ ] up in the exact same way for every woman on the planet? Yeah.

Like, it's like, you know, coming back to challenging, you know, Albert Ellis, challenging faulty assumptions, pointing out contradictions, like, uh, pointing out where like beliefs are not realistic. Um, you know, I, I, I definitely had some like hard and sobering moments around that. And I also just realized like how unsatisfying it was. Like, I think I eventually, you know, through quite a bit of therapy and working on myself, and I mean, it was to the point where like my career, I became a dating coach because I was so obsessed with this. And, uh, and through my work as a dating coach, and like reading and studying everything around relationships and understanding it, and like going to therapy, and then also like just the track, like the horrible track record of, uh, failed commitments. I finally kind of came into stage three of realizing like, uh, I can't keep doing this. Like, I have to do something differently.

And, um, I had like very intense attachment issues, lots of avoidance. And, uh, I remember, you know, I was 27, 28, and I, I realized I'm like, "Okay, I think I need a relationship." And whoever it is, like, I'm going to do it right this time. Like, I'm not going to, not going to be a selfish piece of [ __ ]. Not going to cheat. I'm not going to like, just bail whenever I feel like it. I'm gonna stick around, and it's gonna suck, but like, I'm gonna stick with it as as long as like, I, I like her. And, you know, there's not a problem. I'm not going to create one. That was the agreement I made with myself, is like, if there's not a problem, don't create one. If there's a problem, okay, cool. You can bail, you can do, you know, you can break up. You can do whatever you you need to do, but if there's not a problem, don't, don't make one.

And it was funny, 'cause the next couple women I dated, like, it was really, really hard. Like, it was very unsatisfying. Like, it, like fighting those urges and proclivity, like, it would just like, uh, this sucks. This is, this is boring. I kind of want to go, but I wouldn't let myself. And then, uh, you know, and then finally, I, you know, shortly after that, I met my wife. And, and, you know, through the early period of our dating, like, I worked through a lot of that stuff. But eventually, you know, you, you come out the other side. And as you talked about early in the episode, like, I think the healthy place that you land is like, you don't, you don't feel a need to avoid it, but you also don't need to indulge it. You know, if like peak shame is both obsession mixed with resentment, like peak health is just like acknowledging without needing to to indulge.

And, um, you know, I look at that period of my life. I, I think I do have a healthy amount of shame around a lot of my behavior when I was young. Um, there's definitely some regrets in there, but I also, like, I don't know. I don't revel in it. I don't obsess over it. It doesn't eat me up. Yeah. It's not, it's not, uh, it's not avoiding it. It's not indulging it. It's accepting it at a certain degree. And that's kind of the goal, the self-compassion, right? The goal of self-compassion is self-acceptance around these things. And that's, yeah. That's where you land. I think that's where you want to end up. And it's interesting too, 'cause it's like when I was kind of working through stage three, there was a period, I, I actually remember it distinctly. So when my wife and I got engaged, I went through, there was like a year or two, I felt like deep regret around a lot of my behavior when I was younger, previously. Yeah. Yeah. Like deep regret to like the point where I'm like, a lot of shame, a lot of like, I can't believe I was that person. Like, what was, what was I thinking? Um, so yeah, if you're listening, you dated me in my 20s, I'm sorry. I'm just going to put that out there. You know who you are.

Do you ever? Okay. Do you ever have these like really weird, I guess you would call them anti-fantasies where all your exes show up in one room and they're like, they're like, let's do this? 'Cause I have those. I have shame around that too. So anyway, we won't, we don't need to get into that. But yeah. Do you want to share your four-stage process? Do you have anything that you're willing to? I could. Yeah. Yeah. This has happened. So I already brought this up, and one of the big sources of shame in my life was that growing up without much money, growing up a working-class, kind of poorer family for the longest time. Like I said, I just avoided it. And that was like, like that stage one where I just wasn't even really, if I was aware of it, I would tamp it down as soon as I could. Like, we're just not going to think about it. I'm going to act like it doesn't exist. So when you say avoid, like, you mean like not, not just emotionally, but like, would you have friends over? Would you like? Oh, no. No. I wouldn't want my friends to come over. No. I always want to go to their house. Yeah. That's what I always wanted to do. So I would do that kind of stuff. But, but that would bubble up, you know, 'cause then you, you know, you'd say, "Oh my god, they got like four bags of chips and we don't even have any chips at home." And like, that kind of stuff would pop up. So when it would bubble up to the surface, I would just, you know, deflect or act like it didn't, wasn't an actual issue or act like there wasn't a problem at all. That was for a very, very long time. That's kind of how I addressed it. Um, there just wasn't a, there wasn't awareness around my shame about it. I, I didn't know I was ashamed of it. I just, I just blocked it out. That's what I did for the longest time.

When I kind of woke up to it, though, I would say late teens, early college, um, early university, I kind of woke up to, okay, I, I have a lot of issues around this. This is causing me, um, a lot of shame for one. I'm shameful around it, and it's causing me to, um, it's hurting my relationships at a certain point, too, because I just wouldn't, I wouldn't engage with people if I was like, "Oh, they won't understand this, so I'm just not even gonna." Yeah. I, I, I don't, I didn't know what to do with it. I was aware of it, like at stage two. I was aware of it. I didn't know what to do with it for the longest time. I started opening up about it, uh, a little bit later. I think part of that was is that I kind of ran around with a crew who grew up fairly similar to me, pretty working class, u in college, and we started kind of talking about it. We started talking about that kind of weird [ __ ] you do when you're when you, when you grow up like that, and it became a little bit more like, oh, okay, this is, there's a common humanity here that I can find with other people. Um, it still, it just sucked, though, still too. Like, it's that stage three where it's just like, God, I, like, I'll talk about it, but this is, I don't know what to do with it. I'm, I'm not, I'm still not comfortable with it. Yeah. I still get very ashamed about it. Uh, I didn't know, I especially didn't know, and this still comes up too, I don't know how to act around people with money sometimes. Like, I just, like, I get very hyper-aware, like, oh, I didn't grow up like these people. Yeah.

I was going to say, like, have you noticed any change like as you've become successful throughout your your life and your career? Like, in, has that changed your relationship with it at all? Like, um, yes. Yeah, it has. Um, because I think at one point, anyway, I did go, it went from, it went from a source of shame to being that badge of honor. And I, and that was, I, I would say I was indulging it at that point. Like, I kind of went a little too far with it, and I was like, well, screw all of you because, you know, you had a leg up above me, and look where I got. So screw you. I'm, haha, look at me, right? Not that I'm like filthy rich by any means or anything like that, but like now that I'm comfortable there, there is a new relationship around it where it's like, yeah, that was a part of my life that I got over. That's, and that's great. Now sometimes I experience shame around like, well, I was one of the lucky ones that got out of that, right? Like, so there's a new source of shame around that where it's like, because there were, there's a number of things that have happened in my life that were just fortunate. I, I can look back and like, that was just a lucky break that I got. Yeah. And somebody else who was in a very similar position that I had didn't get that. So now I have some guilt and shame around that too. That's kind of a weird layer to it, you know. But I think eventually, you know, it just, instead of indulging it and going into that whole, you know, I, I take this like kind of, I don't know, unwarranted pride around it sometimes. Uh, now it's just like, that was just, that was a part of my life that was nobody's fault, right? There was nothing that, um, nothing that I necessarily did to deserve it. Um, but at the same time too, it's just like, it is what it is. Some people, that's just the luck of the draw, right? And it could have been a lot worse. I, I feel that too. Like, it, I, you know, it wasn't that I, it, we weren't like necessarily going hungry. There was definitely times where we thought this might not work out so well, but, you know, at the end of the day, it was okay. So now it's just like, yeah, that's just something I went through. That's, that's what it was. It was just, I got to that acceptance part of it, right? I think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Takeaways. Yeah. What are your biggest takeaways from the from doing this episode? Yeah. So, I was, I was thinking about this, um, making this podcast, not just this episode, but this, this podcast in general. Doing the podcast, doing the old podcast we did, too, doing the Subtle Art podcast, doing this podcast has kind of been one big exercise in shame for me, I think. Right. So, so much of my shame was wrapped up in, uh, like perfectionism, you know, we've talked about that. Um, and we, we've talked, you and I have talked about this a little bit before, where, you know, you've been practicing this for 15 years, and I kind of just, I was in the background, and I understood these things from an intellectual standpoint. Yeah. It's probably worth it to point out to the audience that like, you and I never planned for you to do this podcast. We were going to do a podcast and we were, Yeah. Yeah. Like the whole reason Mark and Drew even happened is when we were like preparing pilot episodes of the Subtle Art podcast, you know, because we were thinking maybe I'll do some solo episodes, and I was like, well, why don't you ask me questions? And then like, you and I just had this chemistry, and it went really well, and we were like, well, maybe we should just do that. So, yeah. So, like, for, just to set up, set context for the audience, like, Drew had no aspirations to like be on camera, behind the scenes guy. We never had the conversation around it. It kind of accidentally happened. Like, of all the pilot episodes we did, the one you and I did was like, by far the best. And then the team was just like, "Well, [ __ ] Drew should be your co-host." And, and we were like, "Okay." Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, "Okay, you want me to do it? I'll do it." And, and what I didn't realize, just though, was, Yeah. I have that, that shame around perfectionism and being perfect and all of that. And then to see yourself screw up. Not only that, but like early on, too. I don't know anybody out there who's ever tried to be like on camera or listen to even just a microphone. It's awful. At first, it is jarring. It's so bad. I'm, I'm pretty used to it now, and I'm just, I'm more forgiving of myself now. But God, at first, I was just like, you look at yourself and you're like, that's how I behave. That's how I look. That's how I sound. People see this every day. People see this, or like when I, you know, I, I'm not the best public speaker when that comes about, like I make mistakes when I talk, and I feel, oh my god, I'm stupid. It's not perfect, and there's a lot of shame around that, you know.

I was sitting there last night doing some last minute prep for this, and I kind of caught myself in one of those moments where I was like, I love my job right now. Like, I was just like, I love my job. I'm doing something awesome. I'm doing something I really, I was coming up with like cool stuff and creative ways to think about things and talk about things, and I was like, I really love this about my job. And I realized at that moment, I was like, I had to sit with all of that shame. I had to go through that. You had to dig through all of that [ __ ] to get to those nuggets. It's almost, almost anything worth doing in life, it's on the other side of all that shame that you've put up in front of you. Yeah. And you, there's, there's just no other way around that. There's just, you have to sit with it. You have to work through it. There's no way around it. You're going to sit here and think about, okay, how can I maybe do an end around here? and and bypass the sitting with the shame and going going through those and going through these four steps that we've talked about, right? This four-phase process. There's no way around it. Yeah, you can't. There's no shortcut. You have to sit with this [ __ ] and you have to deal with that shame. You have to put up with all the stupid comments of people who have never filmed themselves and never tried to do anything and realize that, oh, those aren't the people I care about. Going back to your shame radar, those aren't the people that I care about. And you, but it sucks going through that. It's very, very hard. Um, and so this whole podcast for me has been one big lesson in shame where to, in order to get to those little nuggets, like I said, those little nuggets of, oh, I'm doing something that I really enjoy, that's all on the other side of the shitty shame that you have to sit with. So, that's been my biggest takeaway anyway. Very cool. Yeah. How the [ __ ] am I going to follow that up? That was so much better than what I was going to say. Okay. Well, what do you got? [Music] Um, take us home on a strong note here, Mark.

One thing I've noticed the last few years, so you know this, but I'm going to describe it for the audience, which is that, you know, 2015 to probably 2022 was the book phase. And it was pretty much all my focus was on my books and tours and a movie and doing the stuff with Will and, um, I wasn't really paying attention to the internet stuff. And then in 2022, I kind of came back to the internet business and I looked around and I realized like, wow, things have changed and grown a lot. Uh, and I like this seems really cool. I'd love to to kind of update my internet business and launch a podcast and do a YouTube channel and get on social media and like really like do it, do it the right way. Like, you know, start marketing myself well and, uh, you know, build audience on different platforms and, and like ultimately that, that it's basically what I did in the blog phase, just scaled out across a bunch of different platforms. And, and like I love that. I love this. I love doing. I actually like doing this much more than I do writing books. Um, a side effect of that that I didn't realize is that I to do that, I started spending a lot more time on YouTube, listening to podcasts, and on social media than I ever was before. I was never a big social media user, uh, personally, but the last two or three years, I've been using, I've been on it all the time, and I have noticed it affecting my brain. It's initially, I noticed it in, in mostly like attention span stuff. Um, it was harder to get through books or stick with books than it used to be. Um, felt a little bit more ADD than, you know, I mean, I have ADD, but it was definitely like, it was kind of agitating my ADD in a little bit, uh, in, in a few different ways. And when we were, so when we were prepping for this episode, you know, we had this, this section marked for technology. And, um, and you and I, we've done a million podcasts and segments on social media and mental health and technology and interviewed Jonathan Haidt. So I wasn't expecting a, a lot. I was like, "Oh, cool. It's the technology, social media thing." But coming at it from the shame angle and like really understanding it from that, like shame as like a tribal mechanism to, uh, create order and stability within the group, and then seeing how social media and technology like scrambles that, and then like also just from my own experience the past two or three years where like I've noticed my brain and attitudes changing around certain things, um, and mindsets changing around certain things. Uh, and, and the, the, the thing that I said in here of like, when you're getting on social media platforms, you're choosing your own tribe without realizing it. You're, you're essentially choosing what, what you define as shameful and and shameless without noticing it. That's really stuck with me, like, as we've prepped with the episode. It's like made me think, um, because it's like I've been giving the advice forever of like, curate your feeds, be conscious of who you follow. Like, don't, you know, like, do more stuff in real life. But like, to your point, so much of your social media experience is outside of your control, and so much of what gets syndicated is also outside of your control. Um, and so you're really like only following and seeing the content that's presented to you. You're not seeing the minds and people that are not presented to you. You're not seeing the ideas that are not presented to you. Um, and so, you know, it might not be enough that advice. Like, I think maybe a little bit more real life time is, uh, is in order. Yeah. So, yeah, like use your shame system as it was intended, you know, bring it, bring it down to earth and in real life, and then it functions in a much more healthy way associated with that, right? Like, it's because I've been spending, because my focus on the business has been so much on this side of the business, I've noticed too that like my standards and norms are getting like skewed and [ __ ] up, right? It's like, I, I'll like, I'll see somebody with like, you know, 3 million followers post something similar to like something I posted, and I'm like, well, why does he have so many f like, like all those stupid [ __ ] narratives start showing up? It's like, well, why does he have all those followers and I don't? And I'm like, dude, what, what gamer? Like, are you a child? Like, how old are you? Like, how, how long are you going to keep doing this? It never ends. I think actually doing this episode, if there's any takeaway for me personally at the moment, um, I, I think I might, I might get a little bit more conscious with like, tighten the information diet, right, as it were. And, um, and yeah, really like focus on on on real, real life tribe over, uh, digital tribe for sure.

All right. Well, that's it for this episode. Thank you all for coming on the shame train with us. Uh, again, if you want to work through some of this stuff, do some of these exercises, uh, and also have the accountability and supportive community, check out the Solved Community. It's an amazing group of thousands of individuals who love the show, who follow the show, who try to implement everything into their lives as they go through each episode each month. You can go to community.solvepodcast.com. Check it out there. Also, PDF guide, go to solvepodcast.com/shame. Uh, you can get everything there. Everything that Drew and I talked about today, uh, all the takeaways, the research, um, and summaries of each of the sections. And then finally, if you love the show, if you've enjoyed this episode, please follow the show on whatever platform you're listening on, uh, and leave us a review. It is hard to get a podcast out there, especially a podcast, a five-hour podcast about shame. It's not the sort of thing that just gets, goes viral randomly. So, um, the best thing you can do to support us, if if you're not interested in the community, um, is to simply follow the show on your favorite platform and leave a review for us. I am Mark Manson. This is Drew Bernie. We will be back next month. [Music]