Welcome to the Close the Chapter podcast. I am Kristen Boice a licenced Marriage and Family Therapist with a private practice Pathways to Healing Counselling. Through conversations, education, strategies and shared stories, we will be closing the chapter on all the thoughts, feelings, people and circumstances that don't serve you anymore. And open the door to possibilities and the real you. You won't want to miss an episode, so be sure to subscribe.

Welcome to this week's Close to Chapter podcast I am so glad you are joining me here today I am grateful for you, and your willingness to open your heart and mind and soul and work on your growth and expansion of yourself to heal to break generational trauma to be a better version of yourself. So if you want to be a more emotionally available parent, partner, friend, boss, take your leadership skills to the next level, we know that we have to deconstruct what lies within maybe some of the conditioning, the beliefs that you have been taught, brought up with cultural messages that we're getting on social media, from different places and leaders in our life. And it's time to take a look at the reflection in the mirror, not our body image what's reflected in our spirit, asking yourself what do I want? Not what do I think I should do should equal shame. And we're going to be talking about the difference between shame and guilt that universally everybody experiences, how to work through it and identifying when shame and guilt drive you to make decisions. And when you're functioning from a place of guilt and shame and what happens in your life as a result. And I'm going to share some personal examples of how I work through this. I'm going to be using a lot of material from the book by Hilary Jacobs handle. We will tag the episode that she was on. She wrote a book called it's not always depression, I highly recommend you get this book because it's critical to you working through your shame and guilt also highly recommend a lot of Dr. John Bradshaw's book, if you've listened to me a while you know I like his books, there's a book called Healing the shame that binds you. He's really the Pioneer when it comes to putting out this idea of toxic shame and how and where it stems from. He really came before Dr. Brene Brown who talked about shame. And I highly recommend those books as well as any of Dr. Brene Brown's books, I like Rising Strong, the Gifts of Imperfection. Those are great ones to start with. So I highly recommend getting healing the shame that binds you and homecoming by Dr. John Bradshaw. And then it's not always depression by Hilary Jacobs handle and any of Dr. Brene Browns books. Before we jump in to today's topic, I highly recommend you get the journal that's free, that I recommend to anybody on a growth and expansion journey. You can get it for free at Kristen k r i s t e n, d boice.com. forward slash free resources, grab that I also recommend you get on the newsletter. So you continue to take in new concepts, looking within yourself because we know the number one thing to growth is self awareness. Whether you're a leader in your home and accompany and a relationship in a neighbourhood, it doesn't matter. It's so critical to have self awareness. And I work with that with my children as well. Understanding what your feelings are, why you might be feeling them wearing your body you might be experiencing those emotions. The more self aware you are, the more we can have an understanding in terms of why did I have that reaction and then how to work through it. If you're not self aware, it's hard to teach that to your children because you're going to shy away from any kind of talk about emotions. If you're uncomfortable with anger, because people get anger and rage really mixed up. Everybody experiences anger. It's a universal emotion. It can help you set boundaries. Maybe your weren't raised, the anger was okay. Or maybe it was scary and abusive. Maybe you were raised that sadness. You weren't allowed to be sad, you had to be happy. So we wear a smile, and we hide and mask what we're really feeling. So we're really sad when we say everything's great. So it's important that when you're listening to this podcast and today's episode, I highly recommend getting pen and paper or getting your phone up at something to take notes to read really start to dig in to yourself. This isn't about, let me understand everybody else, although that's nice. The most important piece is for you to understand yourself. And then you can take ownership, take responsibility, and decide if you want to do deeper self development work. It's hard to get unstuck if you don't want to face pain, and look within because you're gonna keep doing the same patterns habitually, because that's what the brain likes to do. So want to take a moment to break down the difference between shame and guilt? Why is that important for you to begin to identify? What are you feeling is this shame or guilt? So shame makes us feel something about ourselves as bad or wrong. But guilt tells us when we have done something bad, guilt helps ensure that we don't hurt others. Oftentimes, I'm looking within and saying, I'm looking at my choices. But really, we get guilt and shame mixed up. So for example, today, I am going through what we call hormones. So if you're a female, well, men have hormones too, so not to exclude anyone, and there is a thing called perimenopause, and I'm entering that season, whether you've gone through menopause, perimenopause, or you're hormonal in any way, it impacts how you feel. And so like clockwork, this might be TMI. So feel free to skip on past. If this is TMI. I hope this is relatable for some of you. There's a headache that comes along with my cycle in their migraines. And so it can be really painful. So not only are my daughter so we're all because I've two teen daughters. So you can imagine all the hormones and we're at the same point, the same cycle. And so my daughter was having headaches and cramps and everything. And so then the next day, I'm having headaches and crickets in heating pad Long story short, I announced haemorrhaging, so I really needed to do self care. I didn't physically feel well. And so that's not like me until I have my cycle. So I nurtured myself through it. I really, really tried to use the most comforting, tender voice because we have a judger part when their shame and Janine Fisher really identified this, we have a judger part that tells us what's wrong and bad with us. And then we have a victim part of us that feels sorry for ourselves, like almost like for me, why is it always so hard for me? Why does everyone else have it easier, but the judger was out and saying, the struggle between shame and guilt. So I had a Pilates class with a friend. And my friend is so filled with empathy and grace and love and care and compassion, because that's who I want to surround myself with in a truth teller. So it's not like there's placating. And so I leave her a voice memo. And I'm like, I Bobby craps, I have a headache. I'm hammered jig, I do not think I can go today. And usually I push myself. And today I thought I cannot do it. So I took a deep breath. I said a little prayer. And I sent her that voice memo. And I gave myself permission to take care of myself. And when I was younger, in college, I would push myself I was sick, I would push I was whatever I would try to push myself through it without taking care of myself because of my guilt says, ooh, I don't want anyone to be upset with me, I don't want to be mad at me. I'm afraid of making bad choices. The shame says I'm a bad person for making these choices. So my shame came up and wanted to kind of say, Ooh, you're not a very good friend, you're not a very good person. And I thought no, and I talked to that tender part, I said, You are not a bad person, you need to take care of yourself. Your body is giving you information, and you need to honour your body by nurturing yourself resting, putting a heating pad on taking care of yourself, so then you will feel better. And if you were a child that didn't get nurtured when you are sick, this can evoke shame and guilt. So for example, in my home, my mom would get upset with me if I was sick. She's like, No, you're fine. You can go to school, when I look back on it in those years when my parents got divorced, and so much work around this. I love inner child work. If you've worked with me or your client of mine, we do lots of inner child work. That's how I'm able to do the self passion and the nurturing. I'm being the parent I didn't get. So if I was sick and my parents went through a divorce and third and fourth grade, I now realise that was Cymatics ism. I was not feeling well because I was not processing emotions. So I get headaches I would throw up at school and my dad would come get me he come out from work because my mom was in grad school at the time, and he would come get me from school. And he was very kind to get me food. And then he go back to work, my mom will get mad, because why she was getting mad is because she was anxious. Now I realised this after all this work, she was anxious, because then her day was going to change, I get that as a parent, now, your day is impacted if your child is sick, so she was going to have to miss work, she was going to have to miss her classes. And she would get anxious and her anxiety was masked with anger, so that I would feel like I was a bad person because I was sick, I would feel something's wrong with me, I'm not good enough, I should be able to handle this. And so the shame grew around sickness. And then when I kids the guilt around so the guilt is I am not doing all the duties like I normally do. So I usually get up, make lunches. My husband's very good about that, too. He will help make lunches to this morning. I said, My period is come like a vengeance. I said, Would you mind making the lunches today? And he said no problem at all. You were asked. And then usually we driving duties because we have two girls with two different schools. And he said I got it, no problem. I can do it while I'm in there feeling guilty, that I'm choosing to lay in bed and rest. And then I'm like, No, this is the healthy decision. I asked for help. That's healthy. This is my process. I'm walking you through my process in real time, because I am just tired of people being like, and then I just offered myself compassion, no, sometimes it works like that. But oftentimes, it's a process. And I want you to hear the real reality of the process to working through shame and guilt. So I'm laying in bed feeling guilty. And then I thought I can't do it. And it's okay for me to ask for help. He's a wonderful father. He's not everybody has that I realised. So I want to caveat this. Not everybody has help not everybody can have access to resources. So this is one of the privileges that I own, that I can and he is available and willing to do it. If you're a single parent, if you have different circumstances, this isn't always the case. So I want to acknowledge that. And more importantly, I want to just know that I see you and acknowledge that. And I want to have a real life example of how to work through this. So I'm in my bed working through this guilt and shame. And I realised a lot of it goes back to my mom, because my mom did not get up with me for school really ever that I remember, at least once I hit third grade and above, I was on my own, did my own breakfast, made my own lunch by myself on the bus did it all. So it brings me back to that same feeling of oh, am I my mother doing and my mother wasn't all bad, of course, this feeling of neglect? And I'm like, Absolutely not. I'm a very emotionally available parent and my perfect tech. No, it's okay. They understand they have periods too. They get it. This is part of something they experienced too. And I was able to walk my younger part of myself that felt like I was a bad mother. And I should shed a shame. s h o u LD should have changed it to a could and I guess I could get up but that's not going to be in the best interest, I'm going to be short, I'm going to be irritable, I am not going to be emotionally present. If I have to do it, which I've done it many times when I had to do it for many different reasons. If marks travelling Mark couldn't help. Whatever my husband, I had to do it, you push through because you have to do it. That's part of the process. I didn't have to do it today. I could take time, I could nurture myself through it. So I'm talking to myself as if it's the most compassionate person on the planet. It's the parent that you want it the emotionally available, compassionate parent, what does that look like? It's like, Oh, sweetheart, ah, I know how hard that is. When you don't feel good. It's okay to rest. Take care of yourself. Mark's got it, the girls are fine. This is what healthy looks like you're modelling for them what it looks like to ask for help take care of yourself, and rest and nurture yourself through it. On top of that, my friend after I left this probably very painful voicemail message because I was in pain at the time, she left me the most compassionate message back. And I almost want to read it to you to model what it looks like to have so much compassion for a friend and empathy. Because that's some of the most important pieces of this work is knowing how to show empathy, how to show up as a friend and how to show up as a partner, a spouse, a parent, she wrote this back, and this is based on my voice memo to her she wrote this back. Oh, Kristen, I'm so sorry. I have so much empathy for you. I'm sending you prayers that the medicine works for your migraine. That's I told her I took the medicine and cramps and that your flow diminishes quickly. And then she said I have a very light day today so please let me know if you need anything one anything. I love you so much feel better soon. And that seems simple. But at the same time didn't we want that from our parents that compact Mission not to try to fix it not to try to of course, sometimes if you're sick, you need certain things you need medicine go to the doctor being taken care of. Ultimately what we want from others is to be seen, known and understood. And if we can offer that when we're in shame and guilt to ourselves, it's icing on the cake that my friend offered that to me, it was such a gift, so lovely, to offer it to yourself, because you live with yourself, you're with yourself all the time. So if that judger comes online, when you're in shame, saying you're a bad person, there's something wrong with you, you're defective, you're not good enough, that compassionate, tender, nurturing part of you that you have to work on accessing, growing, teaching, how to be compassionate to yourself is the antidote to shame and guilt. And it's taken me a long time for me to access that part, nurture it, grow it. And now what I've learned over the years, working with people with religious trauma, spiritual trauma judger that they seek God is the judger, which only perpetuates shame. So if we were taught that God is a big judger, then it's even harder to access the shame. So we're afraid we're going to hell, we're afraid we're a bad person, we're afraid we're not a good Christian, or whatever religion it is. And I've realised that is not it at all. God, Light universe, Holy Spirit, whatever that looks like for you is the most compassionate, loving, kind, caring force there is. And if you hear anything differently, that is coming from someplace else, somewhere else, some teaching, some conditioning, some voice, some parent, grandparent, coach, teacher, bully, that might have unhealthy relationship that might have stuck in your head, that is not the most loving force, because love is what the purpose of all of that spirituality is supposed to be love, light, evolution and growth. And so when we look at guilt, guilt keeps us in check. So we can live harmoniously with other humans. In other words, it can mirror back to us some really important areas of growth. So good shame. I mean, shame and guilt are teachers for me, when I studied what's called the change triangle that is really born out of what we call a ie d P model. And basically what that essentially is it goes through how to work through defensiveness and it indicates that shame, anxiety and guilt are inhibitory emotions, they're actually keeping us stuck because we're underneath those emotions is core emotions. And if you've seen the movie Inside Out, or you've listened to this podcast, you probably know the core emotions but I want to go through them again. They are anger which can also be a secondary emotion what does that mean? That means you can use it to cover up deeper emotions to protect yourself so we have anger sadness fear, which is under the root of a lot of these things fear we're not enough fear we're going to be abandoned fear we're going to be rejected judged not accepted, not liked not belong. We're gonna be all alone. Fear disgust, which a lot of people have real fear over even going to discuss but it's a core emotion, joy, what sometimes we forebode joy because we're waiting for the next shoe to drop excitement in sexual excitement. Obviously, sexual excitement was not in the Disney movie Inside Out, they are coming up with a sequel by the way. So later on, I think this year next year, so be looking out for that. But the change triangle says is basically we have these defences, these are protector parts that protect you from feeling less than so that doesn't want you to feel shame, anxiety, guilt, any of those doesn't want you to feel that. And so it tries to protect you from that. So that can be addictions that can be rage. We can gossip, try to hustle far worth worth perfectionism. workaholism. I mean, there's many defences that are listed in the it's not always depression book that I highly recommend you be aware of your defences. Super important. When you feel anxious when you feel shame when you feel guilt. What do you do? Do you go down so if you're looking at the change triangle, in the upper right hand upside down triangle in the upper right hand side is actually it's yeah, in the upper right hand side we have defences and knowing your defensive when someone says you're so defensive, that really is an indicator you need to explore some of the survival stage you were in as a child, maybe you shut down maybe you withdraw. Maybe you go into contempt or criticism stonewalling. We know those kill relationships. Those are the four apocalypse or relationships perhaps Childhood you did that to protect yourself. On the other side of the upside down change triangle are anxiety, shame and guilt. Those are inhibitory emotions, they inhibit you from moving forward. They keep you stuck if you don't nurture and work through them as we go down the funnel, the tip of the triangle, since it's upside down are the core emotions. That's the key to moving through to get to the other side to get to the seven seas, calm, clarity, connection, contentment, we are more connectable, we're more processing emotions. But if I'm eating my emotions, drinking them, getting on social media moving away from them, I mean, not all of those things. But sometimes we need to take a break from something, maybe we're reading a book, listening to a podcast, we're really trying to understand it, maybe we're going for a walk, those things can be healthy, because they're moving us towards working through something. If I am turning to alcohol, wine, for example, beer, whatever that looks like, and I'm moving away from what I'm feeling, because I don't want to process the pain, I don't want to feel it. Because I'd never learned how to do that in a healthy way, then I'm going to probably stay stuck. And then I'm going to go between shame, guilt and anxiety back to Defence, back to shame, guilt and anxiety back to Defence. I'm just going to teeter totter up at the up top of that triangle, back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth, I will feel stuck, I will probably pass down shame, guilt and anxiety, unconsciously to my children to other people around me, until I take ownership of it and I start recognising my patterns. Everybody has anxiety, shame and guilt. Everybody has defences. And guess what everybody has core emotions. No one gets out of this as part of being a human be what I'm inviting you into is becoming more aware and a willingness to work through it. And so sometimes guilt helps us to say, Okay, we need to make a change, shame can take us down to the dark abyss. So sometimes we feel guilty when we haven't done anything wrong, except perhaps evoke feelings and others, we feel like oh, I hurt them. And that's okay to vote. It's my delivery, right? Am I taking responsibility for how I'm delivering something. And when using the Change triangle to help with guilt, it can start separating guilt for when we actually do something truly not okay. And guilt for when we haven't done anything objectively bad. But we feel like we have or someone told us we have, for example, guilt we feel for having a particular need preference, thought or emotion. Knowing which of those two types of guilt we are experiencing is the first challenge. We work with each kind of guilt in a different way. And so what does that all mean? That all means that when and this is taken directly from that excerpt is taken from, it's not always depression, and she breaks down, that guilt is often from us as children. So if we were in a certain religion, we might have used guilt to instil fear so we would feel bad and not make the decision again. And sometimes what it does is we take over responsibility for other people's emotions, that's not our jobs, especially our parents. So when we were blamed for things, for example, let's say your mom said, Well, you hurt me, your sadness hurts me, then you're gonna be like, ooh, that's not okay for me to feel sad that I'm gonna feel guilt about it. And then guilt often leads to shame. That's the other thing. They're like partners, so to speak. Guilt makes us feel shame, that I'm a bad person. I feel bad about hurting like my words, which is a choice. Hurt my mom, I didn't choose to hurt my mom. But I said a certain thing. My mom probably has unprocessed trauma, feelings, that she's not processing. And now I feel responsible. And I feel like I'm a bad person. And I feel anxious. You see how those are tied together is so important. We start recognising how these all work together, and how you have developed shame. And one of the things I think was really important that she shares in the book and I want to go back to it I had it marked. There's so much to say on it. But oftentimes shame we didn't come in with shame. Shame was developed over time and from our childhood. So there's nine ways to begin working with your shame and this is from it's not always depression, I wanted to highlight some of these. Number one you are not born feeling shame about yourself know that shame is learned. Number two, know that shame is not your fault, even though our shame tells us it is. Number three know that as adults, we can learn skills and get help to handling shame. Like learning to manage rejection, we can gain enough confidence to take chances and come out of hiding. There was always hope. Number four know that you can surround yourself with friends and partners who acts accept and love you for you. You can find people with whom you can safely share your accomplishments and failures, you can find people to share joy and excitement, you can find people who share your interest in being real and authentic. So shame likes to stay in the dark, and stay in hiding. So the more you hide, the more shame grows. And Dr. Brene, brown talks about this, it's like taking it in a petri dish. And if you don't douse it with light, it grows, shame, then when you douse it with the light ceases. And so we want to bring it to the light, whether you're talking to a therapist, you're starting to write it in your journal about how you feel defective, not good enough, bad wrong, however, that looks for you. And then starting to process the emotions that lie underneath it. We start then learning healthy ways to cope with it by crying, getting it out, journaling, walking, EMDR, eye movement, desensitisation reprocessing that you can do with a therapist, maybe you're doing some somatic experiencing, that's body work. Maybe you're doing some self care, music, pets, I mean, there's many ways, listening to something inspires you podcasts, there's many ways to work through shame. But if we keep it in the dark, and we hide it, which is exactly what Shane wants to do, then we don't have hope of moving through the shame, because we don't want to face it. So let's say for example, I have this belief at a moment in time, I'm a bad parent, if I keep that in the dark, and I don't acknowledge that I'm feeling that and say, Oh, I can feel the shame and my body, I feel flushed. I feel like I want to shrink, I feel like I want to hide, I feel like I am not equipped for this, whatever the negative belief I have about myself, if I don't tend to it, which is for me, it's journaling. It's maybe going to therapy, it's talking to a friend, it's listening to a podcast, it's all these things going for a walk, connection, talking it out with my husband, a friend, whomever it's dealing with it, then I can move through it and get to the nurturing part of myself and get myself through it. If I just want to bury it, numb it get on social media, move away from it, then it grows. I've just buried it, I haven't dealt with it. I've just buried it. And shame is begging us and guilt and anxiety to tend to it to acknowledge it just like with our children, whether they're adult children or their teens, or they're young, they simply just want you to offer empathy. And listen, if they want your feedback, then you can offer it if they want it. They just need you to listen, hear them, look at them tenderly and compassionately. Of course, if they're being yelling and cussing you out or something you can say it's okay to be angry. It's not okay, how you're delivering that anger. Maybe they need to hit a pillow. Maybe they scream in a pillow, maybe they need a break something. And I'm not kidding. Like, if you have something old you don't care about, let them get it out. In a healthy way. Of course, this isn't like something I'm advocating for but I'm looking at, are we teaching ourselves, re parenting ourselves and teaching ourselves it's okay to have feelings. It's what we do with them that matters. And what we do with them is we need to attend to them, acknowledge them, nurture them, process them. We have lots of inner child podcasts on closed the chapter, I encourage you to listen to those I am telling you, inner child work is imperative to your healing. I feel passionate about that. Because I've lived it, I've walked it, I do that if you're not doing the inner child work when you get activated by somebody, or somebody doesn't invite you, or it triggers you when they say something or kid, your friend, your partner. It's up to you to do that work to look at why is that triggering you and how you're going to handle it? Do you need to? What does that remind you? Do you need to explore that? And then maybe you need to set a clear and direct boundary. So shame often says I'm not worthy enough or I'm going to make them mad. And we feel guilt makes us feel responsible for other people's stuff. We have to separate is that morally my issue? Or is that someone else's issue I've had many clients recently have the realisation that their parents shame got transmitted to them, and their own weight issues got projected onto their child and it really wasn't their issue. So maybe they watch their mother, yo yo diet, going from the Atkins till no carbs, no sugar, I mean, the list is endless weightwatchers and not that there's anything wrong or bad about those. It's that there's also emotional work that has to be done that has driven that yo yo dieting. That's a whole nother episode, because it takes tenderness it takes acknowledgement of your own pain messaging that you've been given the inner critic, the judge or part to move through shame and guilt. Universally, so much of that right now always has been. Now we have a term for it. So let's keep going down the nine ways working with your shame. Number five is practice changing your habitual reflex to shrink and hide. And that's your protector part wanting to protect you slowly start experiencing with expansive feelings like joy, interest and excitement when they arise. By acknowledging them. Notice if you immediately dismiss good feelings. I think this is huge, because we're afraid, like I said, afraid that something bad's gonna happen. The next shoes gonna drop and that fear got embedded way long time ago. That's why I tell people get off the news. Stop watching the news. And sometimes I recommend no crime shows. If you've had a lot of trauma, those crime shows activate the nervous system, just like the news does. It embeds fear. That's the purpose of the news, sensationalism to embed fear. It creates a lot of anger as a result because it's covering up the fear. We're trying to protect ourselves with the anger. Number six of the nine ways to begin working with your shame, no that arrogance, contempt, perfectionism, pretences, bullying, behaviour and aggression in general, are often a cover for the underlining shame and trauma that has not gotten processed, acknowledged, seen. So you got to recognise is someone shame activated and I know, in our marital dynamic, I go more towards anxiety, a mark goes more towards shame. And now that we know that we can acknowledge each other's process and I can say, oh, did that just trigger your shame? And he's able to say, Yeah, I can say, Oh, my goodness, I can see that, tell me more about it. And then I take responsibility. Maybe my words were sharp, critical, too intense. That's my responsibility. I can't control what might get them voted him, but I can manage how I talked to him. What are my words? What's my intensity of my voice? What's my facial expressions and body language that is on me, I can't take over ownership of what is his stuff, I can only own what's mine, and communicate, we can communicate about it. Number seven, practice offering compassion to the part of you that feels ashamed or bad, and the moments you are hurting the most. That's what's needed. I'm telling you, it is the answer. And if you knew that there was this loving energy out there, the Holy Spirit that loves you so so much, and knows you're going to make mistakes, those that you're not going to be perfect, because we are created as human beings for a reason. So we can have empathy and connection with other people, if you knew that and could internalise that, but we weren't raised like that we were raised with this is the right and wrong behaviour, black and white. This is good. This is bad. This is right, this is wrong, all or nothing. And it doesn't work like that there's so much grey. And when we get more comfortable in our window of tolerance for the grey increases, we start healing, we start expanding, and we're less afraid of rejection and abandonment, because we're healing in those inner child parts that were neglected, abused, abandoned. All of the our parents trauma histories, we're offering that to ourselves, I am telling you, it is essential to feeling more secure and confident with yourself, inner child work. Number eight, practice working with your shame part by asking it as though it were another person you're talking to? How did you learn to feel ashamed? From whom? Or where did you get this message, then be patient and listen to your shamed part, it might tell you something new, it has a voice. You have a younger part that has a voice that didn't get to have a voice. A lot of us were conditioned out of our authentic voice. And we're trying to find your voice. You're not going to find your voice through your children by living vicariously through them or your grandchildren. That's just icing on the cake to have more joy and connection. You're going to find your voice by doing this deeper work by healing your trauma in your pain, in your shame in your hurt by stop making other people responsible for saying things just the right way or making you feel loved. Yes, we want that to happen. You are the most important healer in your life. Someone else isn't going to come in and heal you. You're going to do that by going to therapy by doing these healthy strategies by facing your past. And people get so scared about that. And I'm like, Hey, everybody's got a past. Listen, everybody does it. When I say by facing it, all I'm saying is, let's have that little boy or little girl, little soul inside. Whatever identity you have, have a voice be free, we get to freedom through truth, telling the truth about how we feel not bullying or vomiting on somebody to yourself. And then that healthy part of yourself can repair it that part and say, Oh, honey, thank you for sharing that with me. That's what we need to do. As parents, thank you for sharing that with me, that took a lot of courage. I can imagine how painful that's been for you listen to this podcast over and over, or listen to close the chapter to really, and I'm not saying this is the only end all be all to just start really working on that part that can repair it yourself. And number nine, the last one on working through your shame is practice finding and validating your core emotions, you have felt as a result of being shamed either in the past or in the present. And we shame ourselves. And we can stop that pattern. We can stop shaming our kids, even though we unconsciously do it. What I do do it, I really try to own it. And shame is a word and guilt and the difference. I've taught my children. So we use those words. And I'm like, Oh, should I have taught you about che? Because now they're like you're shaming me, Bob. And I'm grateful that they can tell me but that can evoke my own shame and guilt. So it's important to teach yourself and recognise shame and guilt and the difference. And then teach your children that guilt is about your choices and your behaviour. And shame is about yourself feeling like a bad person and not good enough. They kind of work hand in hand and then how that creates anxiety. And then how to work through that is this nurturing, loving part of you, offering self compassion and empathy? offer it to your children, offer it to others, when you offer it to yourself, it's going to flow freely through you to other people. That's why people get drawn to you because you're not enabling them. You're offering a tender compassion, so I can speak truth with love and grace, and offer empathy. It's not an either or some people think well, I don't agree with what they said. I don't either sometimes, but I can offer empathy to what they might be feeling. And I can also speak truth with love and grace, they don't cancel each other out. I hope that this was helpful to you today to understand the difference between the two to start recognising how to work through shame and guilt. Because we can have mom guilt, it can have dad guilt, it can a parent or guilt, we can have guilt about our behaviour. And then we can have shame about who we are. And it's important that we be intentional with working through that you can heal it, it's not just going to disappear. I want to make this clear. You're just never not going to feel shame and guilt. No, you will. It's part of being a human. It's how do you recognise it, acknowledge it, and nurture it to move through it to get to the other side. And then be willing to do some deeper work if necessary. Some deeper therapy, work some inner child work, and grab the books. That's a place to start listen to this podcast. It'll help you on your journey. You might not like every episode. That's okay, skip on through. I've got some new guests coming up in the next couple of months. And I hope it expands you helps you evolve, grow and deepen your self awareness and self development so you feel better and more confident and clear and compassionate towards yourself and others. Thank you for joining me today.

I'm cheering you on on this evolution. Thank you so much for listening to the close the chapter podcast. My hope is that you took home some actionable steps, along with motivation, inspiration and hope for making sustainable change in your life. If you enjoyed this episode, click the subscribe button to be sure to get the updated episodes every week and share it with a friend or a family member. For more information about how to get connected visit kristendboice.com. Thanks and have a great day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai