S4E6 Trauma and Shame: Self-Perpetuation

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[Music] welcome to the being known podcast with my friend dr kirk thompson and my friend pepper sweeney we are here to discover and explore what it means to be truly known and we are here today uh season four episode six of the being known podcast and uh today we're going to talk about a very lighthearted subject of trauma and shame um the madness of self per i knew that was going to happen you know it's it happens to the best of us sometimes and i am the best of us because you had it because you had to keep me from saying and it happens to you too yeah i i i can't give you a gap because if i do i'm gonna get insulted i've learned the madness of self perpetuation wait could you say that one more time the madness of self perpetuation and then no i won't sorry about that oh my gosh no it's okay that's why i get paid the big bucks to pronounce words improperly good to be here with you again kurt um so let's jump into this i know uh we want to start off um by talking a little bit about shame uh something that um for those of you who um aren't familiar with curt has written a whole book on um and the anatomy of shame so i it's a it's a great resource uh for you if you haven't had an opportunity to read that book i highly recommend it um and it's a great way to jump into this subject go ahead kurt well you know i i think um you know it's sometimes we might say well gosh uh when it comes to trauma you know and you talk about shame they they almost feel redundant in the sense they're like well what trauma doesn't have shame and i think what we what we're trying to do in this episode is just to highlight um the way shame shows up in particular in those events that we have experienced as being traumatic and recognizing that we can feel shame under certain circumstances in which those circumstances turn out not to be traumatic but shame in many respects uh is often wielded by any situation no matter how large or small as one of evil's mechanisms of traumatizing us and um you know we we talk about the the title of this episode uh trauma and shame the madness of self-perpetuation um we're gonna highlight just a couple of features of shame that stand out in trauma and one of them that we're really going to pay a lot of attention to is this this way that shame tends to you know we encounter it and then it tends to repeat itself we encounter and then we i feel ashamed about something that has happened and then i feel ashamed that i feel ashamed about this and it just snowballs on itself just to review we've we've started with this concept of trauma and the mind in general and then we were breaking that down first we talked about trauma in the brain in our last episode we talked about trauma and the body and with shame trauma and shame we're really talking about how shame plays itself out along all of these lines in our physicality in the activity of our brain how that affects the disintegra how that that shapes and strengthens the disintegration of the mind along the way and one of the ways that we begin to talk about this is just to remind our audience that shame first and foremost is a neurophysiological event it is a thing that begins in our body now we might say well gosh it doesn't didn't really begin in my body curtis began with you know my uncle perpetrating sexual abuse and that's not untrue but the way that we first encounter shame even in that act of abuse even in the act of being mistreated by a teacher being traumatized by in a car accident there's this sense in which my sudden awareness of being overwhelmed as a human being can easily evoke this state of vulnerability we have talked in other episodes about the creation narrative and at the end of genesis chapter 2 this notion that the man and his wife were naked and unashamed that their being unashamed is significant because it's absent in the very place where they could most vulnerably be hurt by it in their nakedness if we were to say well they were fully dressed and ready for work and they were unashamed well no one would be surprised at that but we take note that they were vulnerable and shame was not in play we protect ourselves in no small part because we are aware that at any given moment shame could be in play for us and as it turns out as we've you know in the old playground adage of sticks and stones can break my bones but names will never hurt me as it turns out you know it's often it's just not that it's not true right names actually do hurt me as much if not more than sticks and stones do because those names actually not just because they take place in my mind but because they affect my body as much as sticks and stones do so shame when i experience it when i encounter it is not just an emotional event even though i experience it as such it is an event that i feel but that is mediated through my physicality it takes up residence in our bodies from the last uh episode we talked about the autonomic nervous system quite a bit and we recognize that the autonomic nervous system does a lot of things quite automatically and it helps regulate our emotional states regulates our function but does so through our body and with that polyvagal theory that whole notion of staying within the window of tolerance and the notion of activating and engaging our social engagement system all those things are ways for us to mitigate our experience of shame and to protect ourselves against it and trauma has some features that shame really kind of latches on to that when we are in these positions of great vulnerability being overwhelmed and we don't have access to agency to change that those two pillars that define our perception of trauma shame steps in first of all as a disintegrating force we've talked here before on occasion about how when i'm in that place of shame i can't connect my thoughts to my feelings to my perceptions to my physicality and often i disconnect often i can my my body's memories for example get housed somewhere that's separate from my memory of the event itself and as such i can 10 years later be someplace where i my body remembers something is primed for something and my body starts to have a reaction and of course because i can't i don't always understand where that's coming from i can often be when i don't understand something about a lot of things like i feel ashamed it evokes shame and so i don't just have the reaction shame also takes advantage of that disintegration and because of that i tend to isolate myself even further this is another thing so we have disintegration we have isolation is the other thing that shame takes advantage of shame depends upon isolation in order for it to flourish in order for it to be strengthened and activated it needs me to be cut off from others and cut off from myself isn't shame sometimes the impetus of isolation i mean isn't i mean isn't isn't shame people feel shame and shame causes them to isolate hence the self-perpetuation yeah right that self-perpetuating feature of shame takes place in all three of these well that we mentioned too the disintegration you're right in the isolation that that isolation is something that i turn to to cope with shame in the first place yeah exactly and the very moment that i then even imagine coming out of my isolation to look at you in the eye i can't imagine that it's too overwhelming and so i it drives me further into my isolation and then when something else happens that re-evokes that feeling or that experience i'm once again ashamed i'm going to work even harder somehow i got to work harder to keep that from overwhelming me this self-perpetuation this notion that it begets itself yeah is something that is quite striking in the sense that you know we we talk about joy being something that also begets itself but it requires effort it requires intentionality have great i have great joy being in your presence but i have to it's kind of like we have i have great joy in preparing a beautiful meal that we sit down to and there's great joy but if i want you know that joy if that's going to happen again tomorrow like it's not going to happen automatically like we got to wash the dishes and we got to get the meal ready we're going to work to this my joy of the meal causes me to want to have the joy of the next meal but i had to put work into that shame doesn't require this i feel shame it requires very little effort for that shame to be exacerbated and for it to be strengthened and repeated perpetuated so there's an intensification of the feelings associated with the trauma like the event itself what happened why didn't i do something different why how could i have stopped it all those kinds of things and the shame is infiltrating all of this the very act of turning our attention toward it i want to do something about it but the moment that i do i start to feel it and so i once again want to turn away from it and so when i do all these kinds of things in my mind in isolation in the absence of anyone who's coming to help me it tends to reinforce all of those disintegrating properties including our coping responses at some point my coping responses start to run out of steam and that's when we discover that i can't get out of bed in the morning because it would take too much energy or i find that i'm at work and even though i love my work i can't focus my attention on my job or my relationship with my parents or my relationship between my parents and my children is such that it's too overwhelming and now i'm thinking even like i i don't even want to go there for christmas at all because there's way there's there's just way too much history of what's happened in the trauma between my parents and and me or my parents and my siblings and so forth and it just it's way too much for me and so i turn away from this and disintegrate myself cut myself off from family and even and even from myself and we talked in our last episode about how one of the things that trauma does with our bodies is that it distorts our capacity to perceive things as they really are my perceptions are all off now they don't feel off to me i'm reading the best they can and in fact i'm reading them the best they can in order for me to survive the moments but they just feel off and i assume that what's off is not my perception i assume that there's something wrong in the universe if i could just get my parents to do this if i could just forget myself to do that that i'd be in a very different place and so the way i tell my story about the story you know about the the story that i think that i'm living in it that all gets distorted and that has implications for the choices that i make those choices sometimes happen with everything as simple as like well you know i um i don't tolerate my awareness of what happened to me when i was a teenager or a young adult in this body and so i'm going to make sure that nobody gets close to this body and so i do whatever i can to put on as much weight as i possibly can to keep people from getting close to me or i'm going to make sure that nothing happens to me like what happened to my brother because he was quote unquote lazy according to my dad who would beat him to a pulp and so i'm working 80 hours a week and my family never sees me but my family has the house they need the clothing they need the food they need the vacations you know to the rockies every february that they need but they don't have me and frankly neither do i have me and so i then have all these what we would call microaggressions turned toward ourselves you know um i'm reading a reading a book called gentle and lowly and uh for like me i'll have to have to get the author's name gentle and lowly and he is exploring [Music] jesus words in matthew's gospel in chapter 11 where he says all of you who labor and are heavy laden come unto me and i will give you rest take my yoke upon you and learn from me for my yoke is easy and my burden is light you know pap i read that and has been what reading through this book i it's really come to me um i'm actually uh i'm actually really pretty hard on myself all the time now anybody who like my wife would say uh that's not really a mystery to me kurt uh but even shh if if i were to if i were to unpack it i i would say um not i i'm not even aware of the of of the number of micro moments in which i am hard on myself throughout my day death of a thousand cuts which is exactly yeah exactly and you know we have oh by the way amy has just uh chimed in dane ortland dane ortland thank you amy is the author of this book general and lowly you know we we have these traumatic events and what shame does is it reinforces it with us like with this you know with this death of a thousand cuts i i can't tell you like the number of patients that i have i'm thinking of one in particular who's just worked so hard over a long period of time that i've been working with her in which for uh for many years it was it was still difficult for her to not uh want to answer the question if i had only done this if i had only done that what if i'd done this what if i'd done that and even though it is framed as a question well if i had only then might i not have what sounds at first glance like a question is really a statement which is that like i didn't do it right i didn't do it right i didn't do it right there's something wrong with me something wrong with me and this is one of the things that this is this is how shame often piles on as it were in the wake of the traumatic events that we've encountered and you know in ezekiel's text we read of how god is going to take israel's heart of stone and replace it with the heart of flesh and you know you hear about the notion of the hardening of the heart throughout the biblical text we read about pharaoh in the exodus accounts don't harden your heart against the lord your god we hear this throughout the old testament and i always thought like well you know hardening your heart just it's just kind of a matter of uh like well i'm just gonna kind of double down and just not do what god wants me to do that's me hard my heart like i'm going to kind of shake my fist at god i'm going to like no i won't obey kind of that's that's one of the ways that i hard my heart but you know the other way and i think that there's you know there's several ways that we can do this but one of the ways that i harden my heart is through this death of a thousand cuts because it's not somebody else who's out there in the world saying to kurt you didn't do it right you didn't do it right no this is me and what i'm doing is the same kind of hardening that takes place when people kind of over time tamp down with their footfalls a you know a uh you know just a dirt road with enough footfalls hitting the dirt road it becomes hard as rock and with my own internal dialogue i am responding to my own trauma with that same kind of pounding that self-inflicted microaggression i remember uh you know i you know i was i was uh i was like 11 years old and i'm at a church camp and like it's it's the it's the perfect time for hormones and uh adolescent pre-adolescent uh embarrassment to kind of be put on full display like who knew that at quaker canyon camp right that like it you know there there are elements of it internally that weren't very quaker but they felt very much like i was in a canyon and uh i'll all i remember is uh that i i can't remember the guy's name but like so we're 11 years old and it tells you like i'm 59 and that i am going to remember this with this kind of clarity tells you something yeah her name was helen and she was the most exquisite 11 year old right this this this was an 11 year old's version of eve i'm sure and there was and i can't remember the other guy's name but there was some other dude who had a crush and helen and he were a thing and you know i mean even as 11 year old i'm thinking oh gosh i want my helen and so there was another girl there that i i can't remember what her name was uh but i i kind of took a liking to her and so you know with all the courage that i could muster i asked one of my friends to ask her if she might like me because this this is how much courage i had and i remember like i was within earshot of that brief conversation my friend was kind of like you know he was like he was for me and so forth and and and her response was not one of like oh that's so sweet i'm sorry i don't but like you know tell you know i i think he's really loving that like no it was kind of like this uh no now you know this is this is not a traumatic event for the definition of trauma but what i do in my mind from that you know from that moment on it's like oh no okay so i'm learning my lesson like i'm not gonna do that like you don't you don't even you're not not even like by proxy do you not you do you don't say because uh you don't want that to happen but it doesn't keep me from continuing to say it in my head like no you're not wanted you're not you're not interesting right you're not all the words that that we can use and so like we have these middle middle school experiences and then you know like we like to talk about when i was uh i was i was having i was having a conversation with a friend of mine who was an attorney we were in our early 40s at the time and so at this point we were like 10 to 12 years into our profession and he was all he'd already made partner at his firm i mean he's just really bright articulate really effective at what he does and i was doing okay and we were having this conversation about like where we are in our profession and i said you know i'm really kind of getting tired of continuing to go to medical conferences and uh always feel like i look around and think like i must be the dullest pencil in the box i've got to be the dullest pencil in the box and he said i know and this is a guy like just a wonderful guy and he said like i'm kind of tired of being the guy who even as a partner i'm tired of being the guy who when new clients come in and have a meeting with me right a potential you're gonna be a potential client meeting with me like i'm thinking do we have our conversation and then they say so now can i speak to the attorney now these aren't things that are happening to him this is what this is happening in his head they're waiting for him to ask like when can we now speak to the real attorney these are not traumatic in light of our topic but they're the kind of ways that shame operates such that when we do have traumatizing events this kind of practice takes up residence within my mind and within my body in which i become shame's conveyor belt and we do this over and over and over and over and over again and so if we are going to reverse this process if we're going to reverse this process there are some things that will be important for us to do in order for us to reverse the story as i say by softening the body so when when god says i'm going to give you a heart of flesh it's going to require that i stop trying to get in his way by continuing to pound the living daylights out of myself if ever so microscopically one of the first things that we do is that we need to name the event we name the event so for our traumas we name the event and we name and not just the event of like oh my teacher yelled at me in front of the class like that is an event but i want to name what i i want i we want to get this event down into frame by frame by frame within the movie so i'm not just naming an event i'm naming a series of events that all took place within about 30 seconds i want to name what it was that was said and how it was said and where you sensed it and felt it an image in your body i want to name the event and then we want to describe the manner in which shame accomplishes the things that we were talking about earlier the disintegration the isolation and the self perpetuation we want to name where do in in this moment what happens to my thoughts and my sensations and my images and my perceptions just just to describe it not to give into it and and perpetuate it again but just to pause and describe it and remember from our last episode we talked about how especially in that story that you talked about with your daughter and about how you were able to enable you you helped her stay with and come back to within her window of tolerance strengthening her social engagement system by partnering with her by connecting with her and so we need others who we're going to name this event too in the way that we're talking about do we describe the manner with shame senses that we're like that we just that we feel disintegrated that we sense an image and feel and think how those things are being separated how we want to turn and isolate ourselves we want to turn away we want to name those things what are the things that i'm doing right now to turn away again being careful to recognize that even in the act of naming how i'm isolating i can feel ashamed that i'm doing all these things right that's that self-perpetuation in case you were wondering exactly you're getting better at that word thank you right you're becoming perpetually more articulate what you said you know i just want to say that a couple weeks ago we were having a conversation you and i and amy off air and uh what the subject was doesn't really doesn't really matter but i was i was naming some things about struggle that i was having and and then i turned to start naming myself in that struggle like like um calling myself names basically yeah i remember yeah and the response that the both of you had was so unbelievably helpful for it you know it was wait a minute you know you you paused for me to hear what i was saying about myself and the both of you pointed out sort of a lie that i was telling myself and that co-regulation that the two of you were doing on my behalf and with me um was just so helpful on so many ways in so many layers and um yeah that's that's a well i tell you it's for me doing this podcast that's the the joy of it because i'm it's this isn't just us sitting here and talking to each other this is yeah i mean i'm it's an experience yeah i mean it's it's it's living this out and uh embodying it and yeah um yeah yeah yeah it's um well i mean i i as we've as we've said often here um you know one of the reasons why i so look forward to doing this uh even though we're not in the same room at the same time right i uh look forward to our time because i'm looking forward to feeling the presence of you and amy in my chest and that it it literally gives my solar plexus right through my pelvis too much to it like where i'm seated right down to my feet like a sense of groundedness a sense of like solid and that's comforting this sense of uh being regulated and being comfortable and competent in my own physicality and i um and so uh you know that that story that you just told you know you have uh offered the same uh balm for me on many occasions and um you know this this thing about trauma and memory we haven't talked an awful lot about this but you know we can have these experiences and this is where shame you know we talked last in our last episode about how shame rides on these rails often of the dorsal vagal nerve is non-myelinated which means once it fires it takes a long time to undo it and shame is like this once it fires it's hard for us to just quickly snap our fingers and just get out of it which is why you know saying to someone well you don't need to be ashamed of that is often really quite unhelpful because you tell me this and yet i am and so now i'm ashamed because i am ashamed and i shouldn't be ashamed but i am and this is how it works and so this notion of being present for us of just creating space and identifying like this is the lie but we want you to know that we're with you i want you to pay more attention to that and in so doing one of the one of the first things that we're then able to do is to recognize where shame is taking up residence in my life we're taking up residence in my body if i just think of it as an abstraction i only i'm ashamed and i feel it but i'm not noticing where it is in my body then i can't really do much about it but as soon as i notice where it is in my body if i feel it in my chest and i say well put your hand over your chest take a breath now as you take a breath i want you to just pay attention to feeling your hand on your chest and feeling your chest with your hand as you breathe and in so doing we've taken an event in which shame is the neurophysiologically mediated experience and we are changing it we're not ignoring it we're not running away from it we're not dissociating from it we are with it and looking at it and being present with it and in that presence we are moving back into the window with within the window of tolerance we are strengthening the social engagement system because it is the social engagement system and its activation that is coming to a rescue in the middle of our shame and typically our shame acts in such a way that as soon as i have it i jettison get and i'm turning away from everybody so nobody's social engagement system ever has a chance to connect with me right but like you and your daughter in last in our last episode we described and like you and i and amy have shared on so many occasions but once we identify these things we've named the event we're describing the manner in which shame does what it does and we've identified where it takes up residence in our body a next step that is often difficult for us uh and and that is and this and this step takes time uh but i really appreciate the work of dan allender um in in his lifetime's worth of work uh if you don't know of dan allender i would you know recommend that you run don't walk to find his name and the work that he has done uh over the last 30 years but in a number of his works he talks about the need for us to repent of our collaboration with shame and our agreement with the accuser in our willingness to believe the lies that we have taken upon ourselves this is tricky because it can sound at first glance like well kurt are you saying like this is like what i'm feeling and sensing is like it's all my fault and be very clear and say what happened to you what happened to you was responsible to someone else someone else did this like things that happened to you there were other people's responsibilities and that is true and always will be true the challenge for us is that you know if if i had that single event right where when i was 11 years old and whoever she was said something on the trail that i heard that was embarrassing i then respond to it with a certain way of telling my story about myself from then on out and she doesn't have anything to do with that that's all me now jesus isn't standing hovering and saying well kurt that's all you but he is standing and saying i want you to tell a different story and the role that you play in reinforcing the trauma needs to be reckoned with needs to be addressed because i want you not to participate with the trauma i want you not to collaborate with the shame i want you not to live in agreement with the accuser and you know i've i've just been discovering in the last several months the the the the kind of like small infinite number of granular moments and ways in which i agree with accuser i stu to this day i agree with with the accuser i'm not this enough i'm not that enough i'm not i haven't done this well enough i haven't like there's like i i practice agreeing with the accuser and the collective long-term effect of this is the weight that i carry that jesus talks about in matthew's gospel all of you who labor and are heavy laden a lot of that labor is carrying the memory of what happened to me but a lot of that labor is carrying the memory of what i have repeatedly done to myself over and over and over again and so it's important for us to repent and repent means simply to turn around and to make a different choice it does mean refraining and restraining myself from naming these things about myself that i tend to want to name and it's hard for me to stop doing that it's hard for me to stop that but we make those confessions and we name those things with each other and one of the most powerful ways that we can practice doing that is as we've talked about throughout the course of our time on this podcast not just this season but we are we long for our listeners to be captivated immersed and create beauty wherever they are so one of the ways that my death of a thousand cuts can be mitigated is by uh putting myself in the path of oncoming beauty and in those moments when i uh identify and am aware of the things about me that i hate the most it's then when jesus invites me to look upon beauty it's then when jesus invites me as day nortland talks about to consider that he knows exactly what it's like for me to be me yet without sin then he knows what it's like for me to carry the load that i carry and he's not worried nor is he embarrassed by me now this is hard for me to get around in my head but if we are not willing to address the shame that our trauma that often inhabits so much of our trauma it's going to be difficult for us to move forward in healing and i think this is we talk about this being done in an embodied context then we're going to do all these things in and by by this i don't just mean our own bodies that we're doing it in the context of community in the context of other bodies who like you were describing in our conversation a couple you know a couple times back we were off air like that realization isn't gonna come to me or come to you on our own not when i'm stuck down that rabbit hole it's gonna have to come to me from you from outside my head and uh you know i i remember this experience of of one patient who had had you know just a this uh we talked about it a little bit in in the soul of desire but they were a person who just had a terribly traumatizing set of circumstances uh that had her telling the same narrative over and over and over again that she just wasn't going to be enough to she wasn't going to be wanted by a man she wasn't going to be let alone wanted by a church community or let alone you know this community of people that she was in our confessional community and uh i think we talked a little bit about this situation before but in the course of the confessional community um she there was a throwaway comment that she made that one of the other gentlemen in the in the group picked up on is that she had you know was a painter at one point in time and uh her story is one in which over the course of time her being seen soothed safe secure and naming her traumas and doing the embodied work over time and not allowing shame to have not even a square inch of life that over time uh this other group member continued to come back and revisit this question about like i really want to see one of your works and as we've said on a previous episode and is reading the book you know she now has work displayed in many different places because someone came for her and that trauma that was using shame as a primary weapon [Music] in the context of community didn't just find a way for her to reintegrate and come back to baseline and just no longer feel bad but it enabled her and even commissioned her to be doing things that she'd never really done before so i think for our listeners uh we want to be people who are unafraid of our shame and who know that jesus is coming for all of it has come for all of it is sitting in the middle of it and is simply waiting for us to turn our eyes toward him so that we can together do something about it and as such begin to recognize the way in which the trauma that has affected our bodies and our brains in fact our entire minds can not only be healed but can be regenerated to create beauty and goodness in ways that we've never imagined possible yeah you know and um in your book soul desire and in our uh season three of the podcast we talked about a lot of this stuff um in depth and talked about the three things of dwelling uh gazing and inquiring and um you know it's just more and more it's coming back to me that this is the key that um that if if you can find a place with for you know to come who you are with your shame with your trauma and everything else where you can tell your story more truly you can dwell with people they're going to stay with you and sit with you in it that you're going to find you're going to do this for others and they're going to do it for you as you inquire with them and you ask them questions about about things and then you're going to sit in one another's gaze and um and together you know is the only way it can be done and we've also talked about the fact that it's not easy it takes courage to do these things and you know if i've heard it once i've heard it a thousand times i've said it myself you know but i've gotten hurt you know i've shared things with people and they've you know they've shared them with other people when i really you know we were supposed to be confidential and i've um i've heard back that people were saying thing you know all that stuff we've all been hurt by other people and and i love the illustration that you had it's like it's like putting the bucket down the well and bringing it up and it's dry but you got to keep putting the bucket down the well and bring it up and eventually you know you'll find the people that you can sit with that you can dwell with that you can do this work with you can share your story with as truly as you can and uh it is it is it all leads to beauty um yeah so kurt i know you have um exercise application we can we can do this week to help you know help us understand a little better within ourselves what what we're talking about here so for exercise this week a simple way to get at this would be to consider one event in which you experience shame that you recall has registered in your body and be attentive to what that embodied experience was like so you can write about that experience and how you recall responding to it we talked already about how would you how did you find yourself disintegrated in other words from what you were sensing [Music] separated from what you were imaging and feeling and thinking how did you find yourself experiencing being in isolation in what way do you recall that the shame became self-perpetuating how did you find yourself to be practicing what we're calling these self-inflicted microaggressions and wounds in response to the event i should have known better i shouldn't have done this i should have done that and those microaggressions just continue on and on and on and then really pepper to your point who has provided for you an embodied experience of the reversal of those events and if you can name someone consider writing to them and thanking them and if you can't name someone consider one person that you trust and consider sharing with them the things that we've been talking about here because in the end we really do believe that that kind of work really is the basis for what you were talking about just a moment ago pepper this notion that we flourish as humans when we find ourselves in places where we are able to dwell able to gaze and able to inquire for the purpose of creating beauty and goodness even in the face of tribulation even in the face of our traumas [Music] kurt as always time well spent i appreciate you so much i know that right right back at you man right back at you yeah all day every day yes stick around everybody if you're on youtube we've got a conversation coming up with amy uh who always enlightens us about what we're trying to say she makes it so much better than what's come out of our mouth so um i know for that people are like people are like waiting could we just get to amy can we please get her get her on here you know you know that people are on youtube if they had the data it would be a fast forward all the way through you and i think that we're right i know how long hey wait how long is that to the chase oh it's about 10 minutes it's about it's about 10 minutes long really yeah yeah the important part the best part is at the end yes all right man thank you so much next time right yep love you too [Music] okay so immediately i thought of a story the things okay what hit me first was like kurt when you said joy takes effort and if i'm preparing a meal it takes a lot of effort if that's the place i'm looking to create joy but so there are other ways yeah um but that it takes work but then shame like it doesn't take much work at all wow um and that i have a story one of my friends little girls she was walking so do you walk it too or yeah so maybe it was a little she was walking but like toddling yeah and in my neighborhood there are people have put up swings like on their trees out front for everybody to use as they want so i took her i would take her to the swing i took her to one of the swings and it was one of those where you buckle her in like a little bucket thing yeah yeah and i i was pushing her she was swinging and the rope oh she was fine she's fine i will start with that she was fine but the rope broke and she and the little bucket went flying and immediately and there was a brick wall that she was headed right toward and you know just immediately my world sunk i thought did the airbags deploy yeah i wish we had airbags oh my gosh yeah i'm watching this and like i'm like i'm feeling this right like yeah so i go get her and i just scoop her up she's not screaming and then i'm like well maybe you should be screaming why aren't you screaming you know she ended up to be 100 fine but it took me forever in that moment to i mean in that day to just come off of that right but then after that i felt so much shame about like how could i let that happen and why didn't i i mean i don't what could i have done like gone and checked all the swings and then i was angry why don't you people check your swings like and i had two thoughts about that one the ease of getting back to that shame is like all i have to do is think about that swing and it doesn't take much but the two things i thought is it's lingering and like kurt when you talked about the lies like what lies do we believe the fabulous thing is there's work that and it's work that can be done like identifying the lies that we believe we have to work at that thank god there's work to be done and then then like having a community have a trusted one or a trusted group then as we share little shames and we see someone look us in the eye and tell us the truth of it and accept the truth then i anticipate that the next time i maybe share a little bigger shame that's right and it perpetuates this whole other experience right right right and you know i one of the things though too that's really interesting you know we one of the phrases i give patients is you know you're gonna you can work hard and stay in prison or you can work hard and go free but like hard work isn't an option like you're gonna you're gonna work hard right but the kind of work that you do to stay in prison or to go free is categorically different kind of work yeah you're going to burn energy but it's going to be a very different kind of energy that you're going to burn and so you know one of the things that happens is like yeah we do we share these small we share these smaller shames and then we to have the courage to share the next level right and somehow we think that oh okay i've done this okay i can do this all right and then you get to the next level and you're like wait a minute i thought it would actually be easier yeah and it feels more difficult and in fact it is but this is where like we say like evil evil is is is awake and active 24 7. like he is not going to bed evil will want to say well kurt if you really had made progress then this this should be easy it wouldn't be hard yeah it would be hard without recognizing that no no no no no actually if i give in to shame the next time something like this happens it will be easier for me to give in even more to shape it will take even less effort for me to capitulate to that this so it's kind of like if my choice is to stay on the couch instead of going to lift the next time the option is there it will be even easier for me to stay on the couch whereas if i go to choose to lift i lift but if the next time i go to choose to lift there's going to be more weight on the bar yeah and you know what amy and i've talked about this before that um when you're when you're in a season and you're really working out and you're taking care of yourself and you feel so good right because you know the endorphins and you're just you know and it's it's like why aren't i why do why do i ever not do this right and then you stop for whatever reason you get hurt or something you stop yeah right it is the hardest thing in the world to start again even though you have the the memory of how awesome it was it also is hard it also to get to that place it's work to get you know to even get to those feelings but it's like it's the heart once you stop it's so hard to start again even yeah well it takes six months to get fit in six minutes to get out of shape exactly oh i had the flu now this world that we're living in where shame perpetuates itself joy you got to work your tail off to have any what's what is the deal what's the deal what is the dinner right i i've i've got i'm i'm i've got questions for jesus yeah right well you know it's funny that the um uh we this happens a lot with our patients this this notion that you know they're they're doing all this progressive work i i can there are a number of people that are coming to mind they're doing all this work that is just that is demonstrating you know their yeah but they're basically you know they used to like they couldn't even they they couldn't lift the 45 pound bar let alone put any weight on and now like they're benching 200 right this is what they're doing right and the next thing comes along and you know now it's 205 it's on the bar and they're like this isn't supposed to be this hard and the thing is like there is so there's there's the work of the extra weight and then there is the work of changing the perception of what increasing the weight actually means with my left brain i can know oh yeah yeah if i'm benching 200 and i before i could only i couldn't even bench the bar like that's that's a sign that's a good sign but like in the moment when you put 205 on the bar like this doesn't like why like it is so easy for me to reactivate old neural networks that equate that there is something that i cannot do well in the moment it echoes old stories it echoes old stuff old traumatic events and this is this is some of you know one of the some of the news that we work with with patients of trauma is to say uh i just want you to know that you can make real gains you can move toward places of flourishing and not to be surprised at what might happen somewhere down the road when you're in a much healthier place and something happens and it it feels like the world is falling apart again i may have told this story before my friend byron with whom i played basketball with for 20 years two times a week and uh one night we're playing and he falls he uh under the basket and he shatters his elbow and for you know many of you may know it's like it's one of the worst fractures that a human can have in many respects for a lot of different reasons he has surgery and he reworks it and he's fine and so but you know it's six weeks or whatever it takes him to get you know rehabbed and everything back and uh so he's fine a year later we're playing oh no and somebody just dings his elbow it's fine like his elbow's completely healed it's fine dings his elbow and it drops him to the floor because the bone fracture lines like the nerve endings take time to completely re-knit anyway the bone remembers and in that moment it feels like 12 months ago when like you just wanted to cut your arm off and this is kind of what trauma can sometimes do which is why it's really important for us to have community around us all the time that can say oh yeah that's what this is and look at us you know watch my listen to my voice look at my eyes we're with you write this sense like i think about luke's rendition at the end of jesus temptations in the desert luke's rendition says and the devil left him for another time that there was going to be another time coming and after you've been through all that and they're i mean i think this is true for each of us that even as we are on the road to healing of our trauma that along the way there will be moments when things can re-ignite and reactivate old remembered experiences that feel that feel like unto that that have resonance with old things and that can tempt us to think we're just headed down the same rabbit hole but in fact we don't and we're not right and we don't have the flashback and the thing that uh you know used to if it woke me up in the morning it was it was with me all day now i think about it during the day and it bothers me a little bit but it's not doesn't keep me from going to sleep at night and so these kinds of things can can you know we definitely can find healing but that healing can take time and even in the process of that healing practice uh you know evil will want to use shame every opportunity it gets even to kind of like distort our interpretation and perception of the healing process itself and this is why we need community to be able to say yep that makes sense uh but we are here and we're not leaving the room and we want you to pay attention to us not that thing that's banging around in your head we saw you when you were laying on the floor in a fetal position and now you're standing up straight let's count every victory right no i joke but really it's like you need people that are seeing you on your journey so they can point those kind of things out to you when you think you've not made a difference you know when you're right yeah they have a different perspective yeah right and to your point kurt like like the idea that it it's hard work so you it we just want to do the right hard work right it's hard work to ignore shame and to try to dodge and weave it's like somebody said and i i have to look it up it tastes like salt does that mean anything to either of you uh it feels familiar it's i'll have to look it up but it's the idea that it's rich it's if if it tastes like salt that's good that's life-giving it's the right kind of pain it's the right kind of work it's like kind of hard yeah yeah yeah it's good it's good that's from my book that has yet to be written it's entitled the rim of a margarita glass subtitled it tastes like salt i'll have one well it is friday i'll have one and then another i think yes hey you guys thanks for today this was really nice that's great this is really great um yeah right on yeah thank you good [Music] this podcast is produced by kurt thompson pepper sweeney and myself amy chella audio production and editing is by keaton simon's production and editing is done by mark gould if you'd like to connect with us you can find us on social media at being known pod if you like this podcast tell a friend if you love this podcast tell everyone you know and please like rate and review wherever you listen be well be now you
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Channel: Being Known Podcast
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Length: 60min 33sec (3633 seconds)
Published: Wed Apr 06 2022
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