[00:00:00] Welcome to Move With Deb. I'm Deb your friendly neuroplastician. And this is a podcast that explores the relationship between the body and the mind from a health at every size, judgment, free perspective. I teach you how developing a new internal conversation based on curiosity, self friendship and simple neuro-plasticity techniques can rewire your bodymind out of pain and emotional overwhelm to help you build the rich full life that you want to live. Disclaimer, this is not a replacement for medical care.
[00:00:50] Hello and welcome to move with Deb, the podcast Today I wanted to reflect on some things that have been showing up for me and for my clients. So maybe just take a little journey with me through this. So I'm thinking of calling this kind of catch and release shame.
[00:01:11] So what changes when you give yourself permission to enjoy what you enjoy? I have to say, one of the things I'm enjoying right now is watching N C I S. And I kind like I even cringe when I say it. I can hear this hesitation in my voice and I feel very embarrassed to admit that, I'm actually really enjoying this right now.
[00:01:38] And I'm noticing wanting to hide or minimize or even when I go to watch television, I have this narrative that I should be doing something else. You know, certainly productivity pressure gets in there. I should be doing something productive. I should be doing something, you know, good for my body, my job, my relationships, whatever.
[00:02:05] What I am doing is something that I'm enjoying and therefore, if I let myself really enjoy it, it would be good for me. So, How do you motivate yourself without only using shame thoughts like, I should be doing something else, or I am being wasteful, or I'm wasting time. And that was a, a kind of a thing that was coming up with a client of mine is this belief that they were behind or that they were wasting time and it was showing up in their desire to work on their business. It was minimizing that desire because what was coming along were these thoughts of shame. And of course shame is very uncomfortable. And usually when we feel shame, we have a whole series of responses to it. Oftentimes that is to avoid, avoid the thing that's causing us shame.
[00:02:59] And yet, What if the answer is just to catch and release the shame, right? Move away from avoidance so that we can take the actions that feel empowered or desired, or even ask ourselves, is this what I want to be doing right now? And giving ourselves a choice in the matter and breaking up that long practice series of conditioned responses of the habitual patterns and the ways that we have learned, all throughout our lives to deal with this experience of shame.
[00:03:36] Because shame is a strong, embodied response. And we all have it. It's a very human experience. There's probably a strong biological function to it. It definitely causes us to take action or inaction, and I consider inaction a form of action, right? We are taking action away in the opposite direction from the thing that feels shameful.
[00:04:05] So my invitation for you is just to start this practice of I notice. Play the I Notice game to become aware of the subtle shaming that's happening and work to catch and release shame, and then amplify pleasure and enjoyment. If there is something that you are enjoying, but it feels embarrassing let's investigate that.
[00:04:30] I had somebody on a call and we were working on embodiment and sexuality and, um, calling up desire. And one of the things that she was telling me about was, you know, kind of feeling embarrassed that her desires were, these are my words, quote unquote basic. She's a heterosexual woman in a marriage to a man and she really enjoys missionary position, sex. Among other things, the kind of embarrassment or the shame story around that, around being basic, around not being cool, around liking something that has some qualities of being old-fashioned were interfering in her ability to seek what she desired. And really enjoy what she enjoys. So this subtle shaming of pleasure, the shaming of things that we enjoy. I mean, certainly people make fun of people's taste in music all the time, and I hate that.
[00:05:41] Could we just stop that right now? Like, let's just stop making fun of what people like to wear. Making fun of what people like to eat, making fun of what music they like to listen to. Um, or you can just join me in the, like I'm very uncool club, uh, where I like to listen to musicals. What we enjoy is, is you know, partly us, our own autonomous, integrative self, and also supported to us by the culture that we grew up in and we're in existing in now.
[00:06:15] But we can make it complicated, but we can also make it simple. Like what would change for you if you gave yourself permission to enjoy something without worrying about what somebody else thought about it?
[00:06:30] So we're trying to catch and release shame and in mind body work shame might look like fearing the future, future injury or future feelings, right? So we're not gonna go out for a walk today because we might possibly feel shame, because we might possibly come in contact with a strong, unpleasant emotion or feeling or sensation.
[00:06:56] We can get derailed by our thinking because what happens is shame is usually a very strong embodied feeling. And then we have a thought about it, right? And oftentimes the thought is confirming. We use that strong negative emotion or sensation of shame to affirm yes, I am correct in avoiding this. And so we create this feedback loop that maintains the avoidance. And so that thinking is only trying to keep you safe, but not letting yourself try something because you know we predict, we already know how it's gonna go. And usually that's badly because do we ever say, I already know how this is gonna go, it's gonna be amazing!
[00:07:43] Often not. So when we have this predictive, like I know how it's gonna go, we often don't try and then we suck our own energy or motivation out from underneath us. And so when we say your body is talking to you, it's not blame or shame, but listening might feel like struggling through the first layer of that.
[00:08:07] So same in relationship coaching. To effectively communicate, we need to be able to hear and think and feel settled in our bodies. When we are activated and in a fear response cycle, it is hard to be present enough to know what the fuck is going on. And so this is why practicing embodiment skills, somatic skills, nervous system tools, putting ourselves in these experiences of coming in contact with shame, so that we can start to neutralize that, that high emotional, physical arousal that we experience so we can keep our prefrontal cortex, our thinking, our awareness mind on, so we can be aware of what's happening around us. Not just what's happening inside of us.
[00:09:01] But what what's happening inside of us is important for sure. But we, we need to add in a step, that self-awareness step, that awareness with self-compassion and love step. These are important parts of this embodying safety process. And we can do it with this catching and releasing shame. So that's my invitation to you because on the other side of catching and releasing shame is really allowing ourselves to feel pleasure and enjoyment, connection and desire for the things that we like.
[00:09:40] And that changes our lived experience, that changes our physiology. When we can feel more good, more of the time, that really matters. And we can practice that. And we can practice that and hold that precious regardless of what is happening in our lives and around us. You know, that matters too. But it is very hard and can be very confusing when we have this kind of mismatch where you're like, cognitively, I know, or in my mind, or logically.
[00:10:20] If you ever hear yourself saying that logically, I know this, but it feels this. That's this kind of cognitive somatic mismatch. So we can be perfectly safe. We can live in a lovely home, we can have a relationship that we enjoy, but it doesn't feel that way. We can have people saying words of love and affection and appreciation to us, but we don't feel it. And that is an important gap to learn to bridge because the feeling part is our responsibility, at least to ourselves, if not the people in our lives. So learning how to enjoy things, learning how to feel feelings on purpose, that is a skill that we can cultivate and practice. And you know, if you want a guide, if you want somebody to work with, if you wanna understand the way that I see the mind and body working together, please hop on a curiosity call with me. I would be so happy to talk to you. And you can also start this process on your own. Just start by noticing the strong sensations of shame. We don't have to rush into fixing. We don't have to make everything better, right away. Just invitation to start to notice what is happening when you feel shame, and can you catch it, notice it, release it, and then let yourself enjoy what you enjoy. Thanks for listening. Bye.
