November 3, 2021 • 11 mins
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hi guys, and welcome back to another new episode of
Couch Talks on You Need Therapy. My name is Kat
and I'm the host and if you're new, couch Talks
is the special bonus episode of You Need Therapy where
I answer questions that you, guys, the listeners, send to
me and you can send those to Catherine at You
Need Therapy podcast dot com. You can email them straight
(00:31):
to me and if it's something I feel like I
can answer, hopefully one day I can get to your
question on the show. And I also keep them anonymous,
so you don't have to worry about any of that.
You can feel safe sending in your question and most
likely somebody has a similar question that you might be
grappling with. It's like, you know, like elementary school, or
I guess any school where people are like more than
(00:53):
one person is wondering that same thing, but somebody has
to be courageous enough to ask it. That's kind of
what this is sometimes, and this feels like times two people.
So I always like to thank the people that feel
and choose to grab onto the courage that they feel
to ask the question because it is a vulnerable thing
and you know this podcast is talking about a lot
(01:13):
of vulnerable stuff. It's literally the whole thing. It's about
vulnerable topics. So I I just want to say thank
you to you guys. Also, before we get into the
question that we're going to talk about today, quick reminder that, yeah,
I'm a therapist, but this doesn't get to be and
can't be therapy in its own right. So I might
lead you there, but this is not a therapy session. Okay,
So let's get to the question today. Now, there's a
(01:36):
question that I chose to answer today and because I
want to address it, but I'm going to kind of
give you the gist of it. Because, like I said,
I keep these anonymous. It's also nice to keep some
of the details out as well, sometimes because I never
want to exploit someone's story. And now I know most
people won't know who it is, but I sometimes just
don't even want people to like feel like, oh, somebody
(01:58):
might know that was me. I personally felt protective of
this question, but I wanted to address it, so I'm
leaving out some of the details. But I'm only telling
you that because unless someone tells me not to share something,
I also assume that you don't mind me reading the
entire email, So keep that in mind. If you do
share some details that you want me to keep private
(02:19):
or you wouldn't want me to share on the actual podcast,
let me know. This person didn't say that. I just
felt protective and I wanted to keep some of it out.
So this listeners sent an email that talked about a
night that she drank a lot. Mind it was entirely
too much and she had to be put to bed
and kind of taken to bed by her husband, who
was visibly upset about it, especially um the next day,
(02:40):
and then the next day a couple of people also
made comments to her about how much she drank. Now
I want to read a little excerpt from her email,
and this is actually her speaking, and she says, even now,
I don't think I will ever be able to let
go of the shame I felt about that night. It
will forever take the memory of that day for me.
While in therapy it was helpful to recognize and understand
the feeling enough shame, But now I still don't understand
(03:02):
how to work on letting go of it. How do
you move past the shame and forgive yourself? What are
ways to start healing? I felt like my therapist wasn't
helpful enough at the time, and I stopped going. Should
I start again? Okay, I will say yes. I think
therapy could really help with this. Now, is your therapist
that you were seeing the right therapist? I don't know.
Maybe it would be help put to talk to her
about the fact that it felt like it wasn't helpful
(03:23):
at the time and why that was. Because sometimes we
want healing to go faster than it really can. So
I can't be the one that says should you go
back to that therapist or not, or what you should do.
But I do think therapy is something that's very helpful
with the reduction and healing of shame. And that's because
just talking about it with a human, face to face
takes away some of the shame's power. Shame is a
(03:44):
feeling that grows and breeds off of silence and secrecy,
and when we remove those two things, it loses the
ability to thrive. Which now this is a good time
for me to talk about the difference between healthy shame,
toxic shame, and guilt. And I actually have a whole
episode on this from last year that I did with
my friend and another therapist another licensed therapist, Cammy Pride.
(04:04):
So you can look at that. I think it's titled
toxic Shame. You can just google you need therapy shame
and it will pop up anyway. So healthy shame. I
know some people are like, shame is bad, Shame is bad.
Shame is a feeling, and all feelings are they're not
(04:24):
good or bad. Um, they might not feel good, but
it doesn't mean it's it's a bad feeling. Like hurt
doesn't feel good, doesn't mean it's a bad feeling. Fear
doesn't feel good, doesn't mean it's a bad feeling. Anger
doesn't feel good a lot of times, but it doesn't
mean it's a bad feeling. It just is feelings are
not good or bad. So healthy shame helps us live
into cultural norms that are not forms of oppression, like
(04:46):
we wouldn't want to live into those. But an example
of this is like wearing clothes, right, So if I
didn't feel shame, then I would be walking around naked,
and you know, I don't know, maybe you could argue
that we should be able to do that. I am
not going to argue that because I am very happy
that we were clothing personally, But what I'm saying is
it helps us align with what feels true and right
when it comes to like who we are now. Toxic
(05:08):
shame is something that pops up and says I am bad. Right,
that's very different than this like healthy form of shame.
So toxic shame is something that send us the message
I'm a bad person, like the essence of me is bad.
It keeps us really stuck, and it it sends us
the message that we are inherently just like not good.
Where the difference between that and guilt is guilt says
(05:32):
I did something bad, okay, well that's okay, Like guilt
just signals behavior that doesn't align with the things we
want to do. Like I love guilt, and I don't
like to feel it, Like I don't think it feels good,
just like I said earlier, But I like that I
feel it, and I like that I know people who
feel it. Because what it also is it's a great
indicator that we're not sociopaths. Right, Like, so it sends
(05:55):
us the message that we have the capacity for empathy
and healthy guilt and shame or the lack of it
helps us also align with people who we fit best with. Right,
So the things that we feel a healthy shame and
and guilt around, or we don't help us figure out
what our our value system is, and then it helps
us figure out what kind of people do we want
(06:15):
to be around. So the presence of it helps you
identify kind of like what you believe and and what
you don't believe in, what feels right and what feels
wrong to you. So again, I mean just repeat that,
like toxic shame says I am bad, while guilt says
I did something bad or wrong. So it sounds like
you had a lot of I am bad, I'm a
bad person, and I'm actually assuming this this didn't say
(06:39):
that in the email, but a lot of feelings about
like I am a bad person. I can't believe I
did this. I'll never be able to give myself like
x y Z and I think a lot of people
listening can probably identify with moments where we've said that
to ourselves. I like, I'll never be able to forgive myself.
I don't want to be seen like I don't want
to talk to anybody, like oh my gosh, what are
people thinking about me? Like all of us no room
(06:59):
for grace and not a that and I get that
and then at the initial like response to something. But
if we really sit with those feelings and in that experience,
and then we give some time and then maybe we
speak about it with somebody, we can transform and shift
that like toxic shame into maybe a healthy form of
shame that might help us not behave in a way
(07:20):
that doesn't fit with us again, or a lying in
a way that doesn't fit with us again, or we
can help shift it into this healthy guilt that says, hey,
that wasn't you, and that behavior doesn't really align with you,
but that wasn't you. You did something that like you
don't really want to do again. So let's look at
why did you do that? How did it get to
the point that it did. Was that just an innocent mistake?
(07:41):
Like do we need to offer ourselves some grace here?
And like it's not Maybe we're not saying it's okay
you did that. We're saying, yeah, we don't want to
do that again, but we're also not going to keep
ourselves in a prison because we made that mistake one
or two times, maybe even three times. So all this
is to say, healing shame starts with talking about it
and talking about with safe people, so as arapist or
I loved one or a really good friend, family member,
(08:03):
somebody who you know can see you separate from individual
behaviors that you might have done or participated in. Again,
we've all experienced shame. It's a it's one of the
emotions that we kind of are born having access to,
and a lot of us have experienced what you are
talking about here. So I'm gonna go ahead and be
(08:24):
in this with you and say I've also had moments
where I've had such strong feelings of ick after I've
done things and I've behaved in ways that I've thought
I'd never be able to forgive myself for either. And
there are some things that I'm still set with myself
over and at the same time, I know that they
are behaviors and they're not the essence of who I am,
and that is huge. That is a huge shame release
(08:47):
or saying to yourself that was a behavior, that was
a thing I did that is not the essence of
who I am. And one behavior does not dictate the
rest of me. One behavior does not dictate the rest
of me and the rest of my life, Especially if
you have feelings of remorse over it, right, because I
guess I'd get like, that's who you are if you
(09:09):
were like, yeah, there's no big deal, so what I
did that? Like, Okay, that's who they are. But the
fact that we're like, oh, I can't believe I did that,
it's like, oh, okay, well, that obviously doesn't align with
you and that's not you. So I want to encourage
you to, yeah, like go back to therapy if it's
something that you can have access to and and participate in. Like,
if that's something that you can do, Like, I really
(09:29):
encourage you to go back and have some conversations and
dive into some of that stuff. And if therapy is
not a resource that some of you listening to have,
then go to people that you trust and love. I
think also with this is yes, speaking and telling our
story and and releasing silence and secrecy helps really shame.
(09:49):
But that doesn't mean we have to tell every detail
of our story to every person in the world. We
can feel feelings of release from shame from even just
telling one person. We don't have to go on national
TV and tell our story to release shame, because that
sometimes can feel like somewhat like exploitive and maybe not
authentic sometimes for for people. But when we're connecting one
(10:12):
on one with somebody and we're saying hey, I know
you're seeing me and hearing me, and we're having this
like intimate moment, that can be a bigger release than
sharing it with a large group of people. So it's quality,
not quantity what I'm trying to say there. So I
hope that was helpful to you, um, the listener that
sent that in, And again, I wanted to empathize with
(10:34):
you because I know what that feels like, and it's
a tough experience to sit and it's it really is tough,
and I don't like that we have to go through
kind of those things. But at the same time, it
does help us live deeper and and become deeper into
who we really want to be and know as ourselves.
So I hope that was helpful, and I hope that
some of the people that have had similar experiences but
maybe haven't sent that question and got a little something
(10:56):
out of that. And as always, guys, thank you for
listening and thank you for sending in your questions. They
means a lot that you trust me with parts of
your story. So thank you. I hope you have the
day you need to have, and I will talk to
you on Monday. Get excited because Monday, I'm going to
share my findings and my feelings about the Instagram experiment
(11:18):
that I did where I unfollowed everybody and I'm just
now getting back to following certain people back and I'm
back in the game seeing what people are doing with
their lives. And I'm going to share with you what
I found throughout that and what that felt like and
kind of what I'm making of it. So stay tuned
for Monday's episode, and again, have the day you need
to have. I will talk to you guys soon.
Hi guys, and welcome back to another new episode of
Couch Talks on You Need Therapy. My name is Kat
and I'm the host and if you're new, couch Talks
is the special bonus episode of You Need Therapy where
I answer questions that you, guys, the listeners, send to
me and you can send those to Catherine at You
Need Therapy podcast dot com. You can email them straight
(00:31):
to me and if it's something I feel like I
can answer, hopefully one day I can get to your
question on the show. And I also keep them anonymous,
so you don't have to worry about any of that.
You can feel safe sending in your question and most
likely somebody has a similar question that you might be
grappling with. It's like, you know, like elementary school, or
I guess any school where people are like more than
(00:53):
one person is wondering that same thing, but somebody has
to be courageous enough to ask it. That's kind of
what this is sometimes, and this feels like times two people.
So I always like to thank the people that feel
and choose to grab onto the courage that they feel
to ask the question because it is a vulnerable thing
and you know this podcast is talking about a lot
(01:13):
of vulnerable stuff. It's literally the whole thing. It's about
vulnerable topics. So I I just want to say thank
you to you guys. Also, before we get into the
question that we're going to talk about today, quick reminder that, yeah,
I'm a therapist, but this doesn't get to be and
can't be therapy in its own right. So I might
lead you there, but this is not a therapy session. Okay,
So let's get to the question today. Now, there's a
(01:36):
question that I chose to answer today and because I
want to address it, but I'm going to kind of
give you the gist of it. Because, like I said,
I keep these anonymous. It's also nice to keep some
of the details out as well, sometimes because I never
want to exploit someone's story. And now I know most
people won't know who it is, but I sometimes just
don't even want people to like feel like, oh, somebody
(01:58):
might know that was me. I personally felt protective of
this question, but I wanted to address it, so I'm
leaving out some of the details. But I'm only telling
you that because unless someone tells me not to share something,
I also assume that you don't mind me reading the
entire email, So keep that in mind. If you do
share some details that you want me to keep private
(02:19):
or you wouldn't want me to share on the actual podcast,
let me know. This person didn't say that. I just
felt protective and I wanted to keep some of it out.
So this listeners sent an email that talked about a
night that she drank a lot. Mind it was entirely
too much and she had to be put to bed
and kind of taken to bed by her husband, who
was visibly upset about it, especially um the next day,
(02:40):
and then the next day a couple of people also
made comments to her about how much she drank. Now
I want to read a little excerpt from her email,
and this is actually her speaking, and she says, even now,
I don't think I will ever be able to let
go of the shame I felt about that night. It
will forever take the memory of that day for me.
While in therapy it was helpful to recognize and understand
the feeling enough shame, But now I still don't understand
(03:02):
how to work on letting go of it. How do
you move past the shame and forgive yourself? What are
ways to start healing? I felt like my therapist wasn't
helpful enough at the time, and I stopped going. Should
I start again? Okay, I will say yes. I think
therapy could really help with this. Now, is your therapist
that you were seeing the right therapist? I don't know.
Maybe it would be help put to talk to her
about the fact that it felt like it wasn't helpful
(03:23):
at the time and why that was. Because sometimes we
want healing to go faster than it really can. So
I can't be the one that says should you go
back to that therapist or not, or what you should do.
But I do think therapy is something that's very helpful
with the reduction and healing of shame. And that's because
just talking about it with a human, face to face
takes away some of the shame's power. Shame is a
(03:44):
feeling that grows and breeds off of silence and secrecy,
and when we remove those two things, it loses the
ability to thrive. Which now this is a good time
for me to talk about the difference between healthy shame,
toxic shame, and guilt. And I actually have a whole
episode on this from last year that I did with
my friend and another therapist another licensed therapist, Cammy Pride.
(04:04):
So you can look at that. I think it's titled
toxic Shame. You can just google you need therapy shame
and it will pop up anyway. So healthy shame. I
know some people are like, shame is bad, Shame is bad.
Shame is a feeling, and all feelings are they're not
(04:24):
good or bad. Um, they might not feel good, but
it doesn't mean it's it's a bad feeling. Like hurt
doesn't feel good, doesn't mean it's a bad feeling. Fear
doesn't feel good, doesn't mean it's a bad feeling. Anger
doesn't feel good a lot of times, but it doesn't
mean it's a bad feeling. It just is feelings are
not good or bad. So healthy shame helps us live
into cultural norms that are not forms of oppression, like
(04:46):
we wouldn't want to live into those. But an example
of this is like wearing clothes, right, So if I
didn't feel shame, then I would be walking around naked,
and you know, I don't know, maybe you could argue
that we should be able to do that. I am
not going to argue that because I am very happy
that we were clothing personally, But what I'm saying is
it helps us align with what feels true and right
when it comes to like who we are now. Toxic
(05:08):
shame is something that pops up and says I am bad. Right,
that's very different than this like healthy form of shame.
So toxic shame is something that send us the message
I'm a bad person, like the essence of me is bad.
It keeps us really stuck, and it it sends us
the message that we are inherently just like not good.
Where the difference between that and guilt is guilt says
(05:32):
I did something bad, okay, well that's okay, Like guilt
just signals behavior that doesn't align with the things we
want to do. Like I love guilt, and I don't
like to feel it, Like I don't think it feels good,
just like I said earlier, But I like that I
feel it, and I like that I know people who
feel it. Because what it also is it's a great
indicator that we're not sociopaths. Right, Like, so it sends
(05:55):
us the message that we have the capacity for empathy
and healthy guilt and shame or the lack of it
helps us also align with people who we fit best with. Right,
So the things that we feel a healthy shame and
and guilt around, or we don't help us figure out
what our our value system is, and then it helps
us figure out what kind of people do we want
(06:15):
to be around. So the presence of it helps you
identify kind of like what you believe and and what
you don't believe in, what feels right and what feels
wrong to you. So again, I mean just repeat that,
like toxic shame says I am bad, while guilt says
I did something bad or wrong. So it sounds like
you had a lot of I am bad, I'm a
bad person, and I'm actually assuming this this didn't say
(06:39):
that in the email, but a lot of feelings about
like I am a bad person. I can't believe I
did this. I'll never be able to give myself like
x y Z and I think a lot of people
listening can probably identify with moments where we've said that
to ourselves. I like, I'll never be able to forgive myself.
I don't want to be seen like I don't want
to talk to anybody, like oh my gosh, what are
people thinking about me? Like all of us no room
(06:59):
for grace and not a that and I get that
and then at the initial like response to something. But
if we really sit with those feelings and in that experience,
and then we give some time and then maybe we
speak about it with somebody, we can transform and shift
that like toxic shame into maybe a healthy form of
shame that might help us not behave in a way
(07:20):
that doesn't fit with us again, or a lying in
a way that doesn't fit with us again, or we
can help shift it into this healthy guilt that says, hey,
that wasn't you, and that behavior doesn't really align with you,
but that wasn't you. You did something that like you
don't really want to do again. So let's look at
why did you do that? How did it get to
the point that it did. Was that just an innocent mistake?
(07:41):
Like do we need to offer ourselves some grace here?
And like it's not Maybe we're not saying it's okay
you did that. We're saying, yeah, we don't want to
do that again, but we're also not going to keep
ourselves in a prison because we made that mistake one
or two times, maybe even three times. So all this
is to say, healing shame starts with talking about it
and talking about with safe people, so as arapist or
I loved one or a really good friend, family member,
(08:03):
somebody who you know can see you separate from individual
behaviors that you might have done or participated in. Again,
we've all experienced shame. It's a it's one of the
emotions that we kind of are born having access to,
and a lot of us have experienced what you are
talking about here. So I'm gonna go ahead and be
(08:24):
in this with you and say I've also had moments
where I've had such strong feelings of ick after I've
done things and I've behaved in ways that I've thought
I'd never be able to forgive myself for either. And
there are some things that I'm still set with myself
over and at the same time, I know that they
are behaviors and they're not the essence of who I am,
and that is huge. That is a huge shame release
(08:47):
or saying to yourself that was a behavior, that was
a thing I did that is not the essence of
who I am. And one behavior does not dictate the
rest of me. One behavior does not dictate the rest
of me and the rest of my life, Especially if
you have feelings of remorse over it, right, because I
guess I'd get like, that's who you are if you
(09:09):
were like, yeah, there's no big deal, so what I
did that? Like, Okay, that's who they are. But the
fact that we're like, oh, I can't believe I did that,
it's like, oh, okay, well, that obviously doesn't align with
you and that's not you. So I want to encourage
you to, yeah, like go back to therapy if it's
something that you can have access to and and participate in. Like,
if that's something that you can do, Like, I really
(09:29):
encourage you to go back and have some conversations and
dive into some of that stuff. And if therapy is
not a resource that some of you listening to have,
then go to people that you trust and love. I
think also with this is yes, speaking and telling our
story and and releasing silence and secrecy helps really shame.
(09:49):
But that doesn't mean we have to tell every detail
of our story to every person in the world. We
can feel feelings of release from shame from even just
telling one person. We don't have to go on national
TV and tell our story to release shame, because that
sometimes can feel like somewhat like exploitive and maybe not
authentic sometimes for for people. But when we're connecting one
(10:12):
on one with somebody and we're saying hey, I know
you're seeing me and hearing me, and we're having this
like intimate moment, that can be a bigger release than
sharing it with a large group of people. So it's quality,
not quantity what I'm trying to say there. So I
hope that was helpful to you, um, the listener that
sent that in, And again, I wanted to empathize with
(10:34):
you because I know what that feels like, and it's
a tough experience to sit and it's it really is tough,
and I don't like that we have to go through
kind of those things. But at the same time, it
does help us live deeper and and become deeper into
who we really want to be and know as ourselves.
So I hope that was helpful, and I hope that
some of the people that have had similar experiences but
maybe haven't sent that question and got a little something
(10:56):
out of that. And as always, guys, thank you for
listening and thank you for sending in your questions. They
means a lot that you trust me with parts of
your story. So thank you. I hope you have the
day you need to have, and I will talk to
you on Monday. Get excited because Monday, I'm going to
share my findings and my feelings about the Instagram experiment
(11:18):
that I did where I unfollowed everybody and I'm just
now getting back to following certain people back and I'm
back in the game seeing what people are doing with
their lives. And I'm going to share with you what
I found throughout that and what that felt like and
kind of what I'm making of it. So stay tuned
for Monday's episode, and again, have the day you need
to have. I will talk to you guys soon.
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