What if the shame you’re carrying isn’t just a single event or moment, but rather layers upon layers built up over years? Dr. Zoe Shaw calls this “complex shame” and she’s found it often resists traditional approaches to healing. Through her own journey and her work as a psychotherapist, she’s discovered why some people seem trapped in patterns of shame while others find their way through.
In this intimate conversation, Dr. Shaw shares her pioneering work on complex shame, revealing how it shapes our relationships, drives achievement, and often leads us to create elaborate facades to hide behind. You’ll learn why common advice about vulnerability and self-compassion sometimes falls short, and discover a new framework for untangling shame’s complex web.
Drawing from her book “Stronger in the Difficult Places: Heal Your Relationship with Yourself by Untangling Complex Shame,” Dr. Shaw offers a practical pathway forward. She illuminates how shame lives in our bodies, why helping others sometimes keeps us stuck, and specific steps we can take to begin healing.
This conversation sheds new light on:
• How to recognize complex shame in yourself and others
• Why high achievement doesn’t eliminate shame
• The connection between shame, grief and codependency
• Eight concrete steps for healing complex shame
• How to maintain healthy relationships while healing
For anyone who has ever felt that no amount of external success could quiet their inner critic, this episode opens the door to profound healing and authentic connection.
You can find Zoe at: Website | Instagram | Episode Transcript
If you LOVED this episode:
- You’ll also love the conversations we had with Lori Gottlieb about understanding your emotional narratives and rewriting the stories you live by.
Check out our offerings & partners:
- Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel
- Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes
photo credit: Cathryn Farnsworth
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Episode Transcript:
Jonathan Fields: [00:00:01] So today’s conversation, it deconstructs something that can be deeply disabling for so many. Shame in it, you’ll discover a surprising insight that explains why some people can’t shake shame, even when they do all the right things. You’ll learn a simple yet profound shift that helps you shed shame and rebuild a sense of worth and belonging, and an unexpected path to healing that doesn’t require you to get uncomfortably vulnerable just out of the gate. You’ll also learn a simple way to spot when shame is shaping your relationships and your choices in ways that you really would prefer them not to be, and what to do about it. If you’ve ever felt like no amount of success quiets the feeling that something inside of you is still not okay, or if you’ve ever wondered why certain deeply human experiences leave echoes that follow you for decades. Today’s conversation offers you a rare kind of clarity. It opens a window into an emotion all of us carry, yet almost none of us understand, and it reveals how it weaves into ambition, relationships, identity and the ways we show up in the world. My guest today is Dr. Zoe Shaw. She’s a licensed psychotherapist, writer, speaker, relationship coach and host of the podcast stronger in the Difficult Places. After 15 years in traditional psychotherapy, she set out to develop a more dynamic way to help women heal. Blending psychology, faith and a grounded, empowering feminist lens, she is also the author of stronger in the Difficult Places. Heal your Relationship with Yourself by Untangling Complex Shame. The book at the center of this conversation, and Zoe brings both deep clinical expertise and lived experience to this work, making her perspective just uniquely resonant and incredibly moving and practical and useful. So excited to share this conversation with you. I’m Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.
Jonathan Fields: [00:01:56] We’ve been having fun starting our conversations a little bit differently recently. So I’m going to try this out on you all. So we’ve been doing starting out with five true or false statements. You may have you may have a strong impulse not to want to answer true or false to qualify to add to it.
Zoe Shaw: [00:02:13] Okay. But the rule is I have to.
Jonathan Fields: [00:02:14] And I promise. As much as you can. That would be awesome. And we will unpack different aspects of these questions as we go in conversation. So don’t worry, we’ll circle back to them in different ways. So you game I’m game.
Zoe Shaw: [00:02:27] Yes.
Jonathan Fields: [00:02:27] All right let’s do this. So statement number one feeling shame is always a bad thing. True okay. Statement number two helping to fix other people’s problems, while well-intended does more harm than good.
Zoe Shaw: [00:02:43] Uh. Um. True.
Jonathan Fields: [00:02:48] Okay. We’re going to get back to all of these. Um.
Zoe Shaw: [00:02:52] This is hard. I love it, though.
Jonathan Fields: [00:02:54] The more successful you Successfully you become, the more your shame goes away.
Zoe Shaw: [00:02:58] False.
Jonathan Fields: [00:02:59] Okay. Shame grows stronger when you hide it.
Zoe Shaw: [00:03:03] True.
Jonathan Fields: [00:03:04] Okay. And our last one. Shame, can cause a kind of depression that’s very different from any other kind of depression.
Zoe Shaw: [00:03:12] True.
Jonathan Fields: [00:03:13] Okay. So.
Zoe Shaw: [00:03:14] Okay. A couple of those were hard. I feel like I really wanted to qualify those or quantify those, but yeah.
Jonathan Fields: [00:03:20] We will dive into them in different ways throughout our conversation. So we’ll have plenty of plenty of time to explore them in more detail. Um, we’re having this conversation in the context of an experience and also something that you’ve given a name to that I’d never heard described before, this notion of complex shame. So I want to dive deep into that, what it is, where it comes from, how we explore it. And, you know, like what we can do with this experience. But a lot of the writing around this and around your book stronger in difficult places. Also, it feels like it comes from a very personal place for me.
Zoe Shaw: [00:03:54] Yeah. So the book about complex shame that I wrote is part memoir, part self-help. And so it is a very personal story. And yet the purpose is to help somebody else overcome their own. Um, I grew up a little black girl in an all white farming community in rural Hagerstown in Hagerstown, Maryland, which created some racial shame just because I learned very early on what everyone thought about the color of my skin. And so that’s just kind of the background for my growing up after age eight. Before age eight, I lived in Washington, DC, which is was extremely diverse and never really experienced any of those issues until until I moved. And when I was 15, I got pregnant. And I was also raised in a very fundamental Christian home, and my dad was a prominent doctor in the community. And when I disclosed my pregnancy, which happened after a while because I hid it for a long time, um, my parents response was, that’s not happening here. And so they sent me away to a pregnancy home in Virginia with the understanding that I would come back without a child. And I was a very compliant adolescent at that time. And I did exactly what was expected of me. And I gave birth unmedicated in a Virginia hospital, and I left my baby in the hospital.
Zoe Shaw: [00:05:10] She was adopted, and I went back home to pretend like nothing had happened. And so that was the beginning of what I call complex shame. So I had, you know, some shame about some other things. And then there’s this religious purity shame. And then there’s this scarlet letter thing that I did, and then there’s the, you know, abandoning of my child. And so my shame just kind of balled up. And I learned to push it down. And I did a really great job of pushing it down with accomplishments. I was a very accomplished athlete, got a scholarship to UCLA. I was eventually coached by Olympic athletes, Olympic coaches. I doubled down academically, did very well, got my bachelor’s, my master’s, my doctorate, and, you know, started off a great career. Ultimately, I had my first kept daughter, and she was born with a very rare genetic disorder called Prader-Willi syndrome. And that’s where my dam of shame that I had really kept so strongly began to just crumble. And I really believed at that time that I was being punished for giving my first child up for adoption, and that not just I was being punished, but my daughter was being punished as well. And so I spiraled for quite a while. At the same time, I was still outwardly looking great, practicing, helping other people.
Zoe Shaw: [00:06:26] You know, now doubling down as a mom with special needs, trying to figure out how to take care of my daughter. Um, and I’ll fast forward it to, you know, a time in my life where I began to try to understand this shame, name this thing that I felt, and understand why some other people, other clients also weren’t able to overcome it when some people that had shame were able to. So part of that, that little impetus for me was a book I read called You Are Your Best Thing by Tarana Burke, and in that book she outlined what she was talking about, this, this deal that she was trying to do with Brene Brown’s theory of shame. And she’s like, I tried that. I tried that vulnerability and external compassion, and it didn’t work. And Brene Brown actually wrote a foreword in Toronto Books book and said, my research is sound. I know my research is sound, I know it works, and yet lived experience trumps research. So there’s something going on here. And that’s when I began to really try to explore that something. What is it about this particular type of shame that is not easily healed by the Brene Brown kind of antidote? So that’s how I came to understand and name complex shame. And we can talk about that.
Jonathan Fields: [00:07:42] And it makes so much sense. Right. You know, because what you’re describing is just layers and layers and layers and years and years and years. And it’s not like one thing where you point back to, oh, there’s this one thing that happened to me or that I was involved in or that I actually did when I was younger. Where I can point to this, I feel a deep sense of shame. I kind of know what it is. And, you know, if I decide I want to unpack that or do the work, then I can unwind that and and voila, like, I’ll hopefully feel better. Yeah. This is you know, it’s like one thing just piles on top of the next and the next and the next. So it’s almost like you look at that and you’re like, where do we even begin? Even if you can identify the pieces of that puzzle. Um, so, you know, the word complex is fitting, but you also said something I think is really important. It relates to one of the opening questions that I asked you, which is this notion that you became really accomplished. You know, you’re like, you’re doubling down. You’re doing incredibly well in school. You’re an elite athlete. You’re checking all the boxes of a, quote, high performance, highly productive, highly successful life. This didn’t fix any of it.
Zoe Shaw: [00:08:49] Oh, no no, no. Shame doesn’t fix any of that. We run and rerun and rerun until eventually it does catch up with us. I think what people need to understand when it comes to complex shame is that first, they need to understand what guilt is, because a lot of people don’t understand the difference between guilt and shame, right? And so many people do. But I’m going to just unpack it for a second if I can. Um, guilt is a healthy emotion. Mostly that is extremely beneficial because it drives change. So guilt is an emotional state and a feeling that says, I have done something to break my moral code. And when you’ve done something that breaks your moral code that you feel is wrong, you feel that sense of guilt and it’s a motivator to change. So what you can do with guilt is you can go back and you can try to repair. Now, we can’t always fix things, but we can try. And then if we can’t fully repair, we can then make a decision. I will not do that anymore. But shame is different. And also why I answered that question. That shame is always unhealthy. I think you answered asked a question similar to that, because shame is an emotional state and physiological state, and a message that says I am wrong, I am unworthy. It’s attached to our identity, right? And so if that is the case, there is nothing for you to do but hide. And so shame is an emotion that makes us hide, and it is always unhealthy. So complex. Shame though is an emotion is shame that is not alleviated by being by talking about it and then having somebody else validate you, give you external compassion, which works for most shame.
Zoe Shaw: [00:10:27] So if you have that experience of I talk about it, I’m vulnerable. This person says, I get it. Me too. Or it wasn’t your fault or I understand. And what happens is, because your shame is so attached and so many different ways to other things, Your internal experience is, oh, but you don’t know. If you really knew, you would not be giving me that validation, right? Or that compassion. And so our shame stays the other way. That complex shame stays is because, especially for marginalized communities, they will express vulnerability. And then what happens is they’re gaslit and someone says, oh no, that didn’t really happen. That wasn’t really your experience, right? And so there’s shame just goes deeper. And so that is how we experience and and how how complex shame goes deeper externally. Now internally people with complex shame tend to be internalizers, which means we tend to basically our temperament is that we will take on the blame and the burden tend to also be very high achievers. Right? Um, people who don’t experience complex shame but may experience another type of shame and toxic shame tend to be internalizers where they’re projecting their shame outside. They’re not. They’re still feeling it, but they project it out. But with complex shame. They tend to be internalizers. On top of that, they also tend to, because they’re internalizes, become codependent. And there’s just like a a cascade of things that can happen with complex shame.
Jonathan Fields: [00:11:58] Yeah. I mean, there’s so much to unpack there. Um,
Zoe Shaw: [00:12:00] yeah, it’s a lot.
Jonathan Fields: [00:12:01] The distinction between guilt and shame, I think is really helpful. It’s almost like one guilt comes with almost this. Okay, so I feel something and there’s an activation energy to like it’s going to motivate me to actually see if I can make amends, do something, change my behavior, whatever it is. Whereas shame, there’s it sounds like what attaches is it’s like a sense of futility, almost.
Zoe Shaw: [00:12:22] Yes.
Jonathan Fields: [00:12:23] Like there is nothing that I can.
Zoe Shaw: [00:12:25] This is just who I am.
Jonathan Fields: [00:12:26] Yeah. Because because as you describe it, it lands as an identity level thing. And it’s like, if this is just who I am, there’s nothing I can do. Like, this is just like. So there’s nothing that I can, you know, there’s not an action I can take or a behavior I can change that’ll make things better or me feel better. It’s just me, which is brutal. I mean, I mean, because it feels like you just can’t ever get out from under it, like, this is just me for life. It’ll never change. Um, the Internalizer and the externalizer is really interesting too, but, like. And I want to make sure I’m getting this right. It sounds like what you’re describing was complex. Shame often leads to extraordinary, extraordinary effort in trying to succeed in the outside world. Um. And is that. How does that square with the sense of futility is that you trying to redirect some energy and saying, like, If I’m never going to get rid of this feeling of emptiness or whatever it is that’s attached to the complex shame, at least I can try and counter it by being wildly successful in all these other domains of life. Like, what’s your sense of what’s actually happening there?
Zoe Shaw: [00:13:38] Right. I don’t know that it’s a sense of countering it. It’s. It’s a desire. Deep desire to hide. And so because shame makes us hide in all aspects of our lives and our relationships and our work and our life. And so if we’re hiding, then we have to create this false sense, this false, like this facade. And we want it to look good. Right? And so that’s the driver of all of the external achievement. That is the driver of trying to kind of hustle, as Brene Brown talks about for your worthiness because you’re hiding who you think you really are. Yeah.
Jonathan Fields: [00:14:16] So do you have you seen in practice then people building these, like avatars, wildly successful avatars of themselves. So people around them, like, I can’t. They’re so incredibly successful in work, in life, in all these different things. And then. But the person on the inside is like, but I’m still carrying this complex shame as that gap widens as more and more people see them as more and more externally successful in all these different domains of life. But the gap widens because the shame is still there. Like as that gap builds, does that in any way deepen the pain of the shame?
Zoe Shaw: [00:14:53] Oh, absolutely. It does deepen the pain and the shame. Um, because like you said, the gap is wider and it just becomes more and more isolating because you’re just, you’re you’re adding so many layers to this facade because then we, we, we have to perform like everyone expects us to. Right. And the performance just gets bigger. And so it does. It creates this chasm that’s steeped in isolation and a deep sense of unworthiness.
Jonathan Fields: [00:15:23] Yeah. And it’s almost like these people. The further the more successful that avatar of you is viewed by other people. It’s like there’s got to be a voice inside of you that says, the more people really don’t know who I am. It’s like farther and farther from who I truly am. But. But even like that sense of who I am is actually not right.
Zoe Shaw: [00:15:44] Right. And. But then the. Stakes are higher.
Jonathan Fields: [00:15:46] Yeah, right. Yeah.
Zoe Shaw: [00:15:47] The stakes are even higher. And so you must hide and protect even more, right?
Jonathan Fields: [00:15:52] You’ve got more to prop up now.
Zoe Shaw: [00:15:54] Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah.
Jonathan Fields: [00:15:56] I mean, so that just layers on top of like, all of the, the weight of the initial sense of complex shame.
Zoe Shaw: [00:16:02] Mhm.
Jonathan Fields: [00:16:04] And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Where does. I mean I guess it’s different for each person. And my curiosity is like where complex. Well actually let me back up a second. Um complex. Shame. You described another type of shame. Toxic shame. Tease out the distinction a bit more for me.
Zoe Shaw: [00:16:23] I will. Um, so toxic shame is a type. And sometimes we can think about. If we think about toxic shame, it’s kind of on the spectrum of complex shame because it comes complex shame comes from these toxic messages, right? But toxic shame is a little harder to untangle than complex shame. And toxic shame is really demonstrated with that external, um, kind of that projection onto everybody else, if that makes sense. So toxic people will often connect with internalizers who have complex shame, and you create this really unhealthy dynamic of maybe this narcissist with this codependent, if that makes sense. Um, so when we think of some of the most severe personality disorders, uh, a basis for them can be that toxic shame. And it’s not uncurable it is. It’s not the work that I do. I really work in this complex shame area. And so if you look at this kind of, you know, pendulum or spectrum of simple shame, and then there’s complex shame. And then there’s toxic shame. Most people don’t have toxic shame. And it is created by usually very severe, um, early abuse and severe attachment and attachment issues and neglect. Whereas many people who may think they have toxic shame actually have complex shame.
Jonathan Fields: [00:17:52] Um. Do you feel like you’re more likely to become a victim of other people’s mal intent or bad behavior? If you’re somebody who travels your life with shame?
Zoe Shaw: [00:18:07] 100%. And that’s why I talk about the fact that complex, that complex shame and codependency go together.
Jonathan Fields: [00:18:14] Talk to me about that more.
Zoe Shaw: [00:18:15] So remember, if shame makes us hide, which it does, then when we get into relationships, we tend to hide in those relationships because we already have a sense of deep unworthiness. So a couple of things happen. We will connect with people who are not also seeking extreme emotional intimacy because that feels a little scary to us, right? The other thing is that when someone loves you, when you have complex shame and you’re hiding. There is a part of you that still feels very unloved because you subconsciously maybe think they don’t really know me, right? If they knew me, they wouldn’t love me. And so then you are responding to them as if they don’t love you and it becomes this just very unhealthy cycle. And so what can happen is that because you are often trying to prove yourself and control your own emotions when it comes to shame, we can get into these codependent relationships where we spend all of our time abandoning ourselves to try to create this, this emotional response in someone else. And so we can. People who who tend to have complex shame will hook up with people who don’t care about us as much, if that makes sense. And then we are in a codependent way, trying to control their emotions by behaving certain ways, by giving them things that you know, they’re they’re requesting. Even if we are abandoning ourselves in the process. Because what we are trying to seek is that validation. But it’s hard to seek when you’re not even being real.
Jonathan Fields: [00:19:50] Yeah. And then if you have someone who’s driven by narcissism or some other, it becomes this vicious cycle that just kind of keeps spiraling down and down and down. They’re getting more control, more dominance, more of what they want and crave. And you’re losing yourself more and more and more to the relationship. Does that make sense?
Zoe Shaw: [00:20:05] That’s 100%. Yes, that makes sense.
Jonathan Fields: [00:20:08] Um. Um, how do we navigate this?
Zoe Shaw: [00:20:13] Yeah, that’s such a good question because I talk about complex shame and I know it’s such a difficult, not fun topic to talk about, but I love to talk about it because there’s so much hope. There is hope in being able to untangle this and live a life free of shame. And when I say free of shame, it’s really learning to maintain shame and live with shame in a healthy way. And so, I mean, I created eight steps that I have in my book for untangling complex shame. It’s not something that happens overnight, but one of the things that I have found specifically for complex shame is that when we are are feeling a sense of shame, and we do this as caring people and therapists do this in a therapy room all the time, is that we want to care for someone who expresses shame. We want to exonerate them from blame. Right? And the problem is that doesn’t work. And so when therapists are working with people who have a lot of shame and trying to get them to understand it wasn’t your fault and you didn’t know and you did the best you could. Our brain doesn’t work that way. And so what we have to do with this shame, actually, because our brain does that whole thing of, oh, but you don’t know. And so what we have to do with that shame is we have to really number one, we have to go back and figure out what are those toxic messages that we are repeating to ourselves, where did they come from? Because when we leave toxic relationships, we often think that we’ve left it all behind.
Zoe Shaw: [00:21:35] But what we do is we just pack it up and we start saying them to the same words to ourselves, right? We carry it ourselves, and then we co-sign with people in our lives who who also agree with our shame. Um, and so what we have to do is we have to begin to look at the things that we blame ourselves for. And sometimes they’re accurate and often they’re not. And that’s okay, because it doesn’t really matter. Our brain doesn’t know the difference. And so we have to really start to take apart all the things that we blame ourselves for. And then we have to work on forgiving ourselves for the choices we made. For the choices we didn’t make, were our weren’t our fault. Because when we do that, we’re aligning with the way our brain works. And so if we work on forgiveness and the best quote that I love for forgiveness is a Lily Tomlin quote, and that is forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past. And I love that because it’s not attached to a person. Right? It’s not attached to anyone else. It’s not attached to yourself. But we really can’t do that until we start to understand that all behavior makes sense in its context. And when we can apply that to ourselves and recognize that we did all the things for a very good reason, and yet we still blame ourselves for them, and therefore we have to untangle them and we have to forgive ourselves.
Zoe Shaw: [00:22:56] Then when we’ve been able to kind of untangle all the blame, which can take a while depending on how much shame you’ve attached, like a snowball rolling down a hill, then you can apply the simple shame concept of becoming vulnerable and hopefully receiving external compassion. But the thing is, is, once you’ve given compassion to yourself when you’re vulnerable, you don’t need it from anybody else as much anymore, right? Because you’ve already given it to yourself. And so then there’s also maintenance when it comes to untangling shame. And the reason why is because we feel shame just like trauma inside of our bodies. And so shame is both a mental, psychological and physiological state. And so we’ve got to have physical practices of purging or purging shame. And we also have to recognize that shame in our society will always be. We use it in our society as a tool to control. The problem is it doesn’t work. We it looks like it works, but what actually happens is shame goes underground. And so I experience shame on the daily. But when shame comes to me, number one I notice it. So we can notice shame. Because anywhere you get that sense of oh, I don’t want people to see or oh, I need to hide. That’s where your shame is.
Jonathan Fields: [00:24:17] And that was one of my curiosities also. I was like, how do we actually know when this is what we’re, we’re experiencing and that so that that one question is really poignant, I think.
Zoe Shaw: [00:24:27] Yes, yes, wherever you are hiding, that’s where shame is. And so when it shows up and you get that sense of, oh, I don’t want them to see, then what you have to do is pay attention to it and name it. And I go, oh, I know what that is. That’s shame. And instead of doing what shame wants me to do, which is to hide, I’m going to do the opposite and I’m going to speak up, or I’m going to open myself up. And I often will imagine myself when I’m feeling shame, like I’m standing literally on the side on the bank of a river, and shame comes right down and I see it and I acknowledge it, and I do the thing it doesn’t want me to do. And then I just watch it float down the river. It’s not about getting rid of it. It’s about understanding how to incorporate it and maintain it in your life.
Jonathan Fields: [00:25:13] Hmm. I think that’s really powerful. Um, it there’s really interesting similarities there. I feel like to, um to ifs. Internal family systems, which is becoming super popular, where you’re sort of looking back and you’re saying, okay, so like there’s this part of me, you know, like that that has existed often since I was a kid that became alive because in the moment that it was there in the circumstance I was in my life. Yeah. It was trying to help protect me or, like, survive something hard or like I was doing the best I could at the moment. And the intent of that part of me was, was good. It was like, I need to keep you alive. I need to keep you safe. I need to do whatever it is, even though the behavior might, in hindsight be like, oh, that was actually really destructive in the long term. But I love that you’re sort of like looking back and acknowledging, you know, like, um, this is not about looking back in the past and saying how awful the decisions I made were. The behaviors I took were this is actually saying, like, there was a really hard moment or a season, and I had the resources and the skills and the relationships that I had then. I’m different now. Like. And I’m surrounded by different resources now. I did the best that I could and sort of saying, okay, so we kind of need to start there and stop beating myself up for being the person I was when I, when I was in that moment.
Zoe Shaw: [00:26:40] That’s beautiful. That’s absolutely beautiful. Because you’re right, it’s about looking back and going, oh yeah, that made so much sense. That made so much sense. And that part that you’re talking about, I call it The Phantom critic. The Phantom critic purpose is to protect you. And sometimes when I’m talking to my clients, I will I will say, imagine a soldier on a battlefield and everything that soldier needs, right? The armor, the guns, the grenades, all that stuff. But the soldier comes home off the battlefield. And if that soldier goes to the mall and carries all that stuff, bad things are going to happen. It’s not going to go down very well. And we do that with our defenses too, because yes, all those things that you did to hide and the ways that your phantom critic and your shame served you no longer serves you here. And it doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s just no longer serving you. Right. And so if you can kind of recognize that, oh, yeah, it makes sense why I developed that unhealthy pattern. And now the Phantom critic wants me to continue it. But I also have this thing that I call the courageous truth teller. And the courageous truth teller does tell me the truth, and it also lifts me up. And it’s also courageous. It’s that courageous part of me that speaks the things that I’ve been taught not to speak right, that does the scary things that will actually move me towards health.
Jonathan Fields: [00:28:09] Hmm. How do you summon the creative truth teller to help out?
Zoe Shaw: [00:28:15] I always say that that courageous truth teller was always there. And so for people who have complex shame, there’s that little spark. If you think of all the toxic messages that you’ve heard in your life, there’s that little piece in view that goes, that’s not true. I know it’s not true, but it just gets snuffed out by all the bigger messages. Right? And so it’s really about going back and thinking about what did you know before you got told all those toxic things. What is it that you actually know deep down that’s scary or you can’t trust anymore because of bad decisions that you’ve made? That flame, that courageous truth teller is inside all of us. We just have to uncover it. Get all of those layers out so that that spark becomes a flame.
Jonathan Fields: [00:29:02] Mhm. I wonder if they’re stilling practices that can sometimes be helpful in letting, letting, letting that quiet voice start to peek its head out a little bit. Um, although those same practices. Right. If you’re somebody who’s sitting in shame. Um, my guess is, and I’m curious whether you see this in practice, that the last thing you want to do is create stillness, because the voice of shame just says like, oh, I have room. I’m coming out.
Zoe Shaw: [00:29:28] Yes, yes. I think that especially for my clients who have complex shame, the most scary thing is to ask them to get quiet.
Jonathan Fields: [00:29:36] Yeah.
Zoe Shaw: [00:29:37] Because that’s exactly what happens. And often, you know, all that running and achieving and all of those things that I talked about earlier, it keeps us busy such that we just kind of put our heads on the pillow at night and black out because of all the busyness as opposed to sitting and stillness. And then we have to actually deal with the things that our brain, um, needs us to process. So yes, it’s still important, though it’s a matter of recognizing that it’s a big, messy closet and I’ve got to take it out and it’s not going to feel good in the moment. It’s not. And not only is it not going to feel good, but it might feel really scary, but also over time, when you continue to do it, you will start to kind of slough off those layers.
Jonathan Fields: [00:30:19] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. In that same vein, bouncing back to one of the questions I asked you in the beginning, um, about fixing others, I wonder if sometimes somebody who’s, like, sitting with shame, like, especially complex shame might and as they’re sort of like building out their avatar of success, you know, and and also at the same time, I would imagine figuring out anything they can do to distract themselves from having to actually just be with this feeling and figure out what to do with it. That there’s there would probably be an impulse to say like, oh, like my cousin, my sister, my partner, my mother. Like they’re all dealing, they’re struggling, they’re making all these weird decisions. They’re like, they need my help. They need my help. I can help them. I can help fix them. I can help fix the problem, the solution. And. But it’s probably complicated, right? Because on the one hand, maybe you really can be of service to them. Maybe you can be there for them and help out, and it’s really valued for them. And at the same time, maybe it’s also you redirecting the energy that really, really needs to go towards your own feelings at the same time. And that’s, that’s giving you a reason not to actually have to just sit with what you’re feeling. Does that land?
Zoe Shaw: [00:31:36] Oh my gosh, that’s so good. And that’s why it was so hard for me to answer that question.
Jonathan Fields: [00:31:41] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Zoe Shaw: [00:31:41] Because I’ve fashioned a life out of helping other people with their problems. And so for me to say, no, that’s not a good thing. Um, but the reality is, is that, well, it’s a couple things. My tagline is, we’re not fixing them. We’re fixing you. And that changes everything, because most people come to me, and what they want to do is fix the people around them. Right? Because they imagine and this is that codependent part. If I can make them okay, then I will be okay. And then the other thing with that codependency, which is also why I say your closest relationships cannot be your charity projects. We have to be able to experience reciprocity in our relationships to have health. And we have a drive often when we have complex shame to heal and fix other people around us because it makes us feel good, and it also distracts us from the very thing we need to do ourselves. So the answer is yes, yes and yes. And what we need to do is do the hard part of demanding reciprocity in a relationship, because we believe that we are worthy of having that, and we can kind of channel all of that energy in other ways in our lives. You know, we can be altruistic and philanthropic outside of our closest relationships, but we need to be able to have those healthy dynamics in our relationship, which is hard to cultivate sometimes when you have codependency.
Jonathan Fields: [00:33:12] Yeah. Do you feel like when you’re in it. Right. Like, let’s say you’re dealing with complex shame and you find yourself really channeling your energy out towards helping others, fixing others, especially people who are close to you. Do people easily have the capacity to distinguish between whether they’re doing this for healthy reasons or dysfunctional reasons?
Zoe Shaw: [00:33:31] My first, my my my first response is. No, no. They don’t.
Jonathan Fields: [00:33:36] How do they wake up to that? Like how? Like what? What can you start to ask or notice internally to start to say like, is this actually me avoiding what’s really important for me to sit with right now? Or is this actually me just really, genuinely sharing a loving heart and a service heart?
Zoe Shaw: [00:33:54] Yeah. Great question. There’s a couple of things. The first, remember I talked about that reciprocity that’s important in our relationships. If you are giving giving giving and you tend to have this ha like routine or like a pattern of I’m doing all these things, I’m caring for these people, I’m giving and people don’t appreciate me, right? You tend to feel this resentment because you have this expectation that if you give and give and give and fix that, they are going to give it back to you. And it often doesn’t happen. That’s a sign that it’s unhealthy. Right. And you might think I’m just and I hear this, I’m just such a great person. I just love people. And then they just never love me back or they never care about me. Um, the other thing is that I want you to think of this, of these two words self-sacrifice and self-abandonment. They are two very different things. And we are called in relationships to sacrifice sometimes. Right. That’s part of being in a healthy relationship. But what is not healthy is self-abandonment. So we can give out of our love for someone. But when we are abandoning parts of ourselves in order to give, then we’ve crossed the line. And it’s not healthy. Even if we feel like it’s altruistic, even if we feel like we’re just being nice or I’m just very empathic. When you begin to abandon yourself, then you’ve crossed that line.
Jonathan Fields: [00:35:27] Now that makes a lot of sense. Which also makes me curious about, um, grief in this context. And grief, probably in a bunch of different ways. One is literally grieving the loss of your true self. Like, you’re the essence of who you are, but also probably in so many other ways. Take me into like, how grief winds into this conversation and the experience of of complex grief or complex shame.
Zoe Shaw: [00:35:53] complex Shame. Yeah. Um, you know, grief, like sadness, like depression is just an expression of loss, right? I’ve lost something. And we can’t really have shame without grief, without without that sense of loss. Because that shame is the sense of something is I’m unworthy. Something’s wrong with me. And so we grieve this idea of a self that is accepted, right, of a past that is accepted. And so grief is absolutely a part of it. Now we know and I have issues with the Kubler-Ross. Um, you know, kind of, you know, the whole grief thing and acceptance, although there’s some truth about acceptance that has to happen in the process. But I think it’s really more about learning to weave grief into the tapestry of our life. Learning to accept those losses, um, because otherwise we’re just going to keep in this cycle of trying to change the past. And when we keep in that cycle of trying to change something that we can’t possibly change, then we stay stuck in the grief. But grief and shame absolutely go together.
Jonathan Fields: [00:37:06] Yeah. I wonder if part of the grief also is. I’m curious what your take is, that you kind of look at it at the world, or you look at your life and, and you kind of think to yourself, I could have been living differently. I could have experienced this. I could have had that. I could have had a very different life. And it’s almost like you’re grieving the life that you, some part of you believes that you could have had or created. And even looking forward, that is is ahead of you, but you don’t feel as accessible. It’s almost like your future grieving a life that you believe you can never have. Does that land at all?
Zoe Shaw: [00:37:43] Yeah. If you were worthy, you would have had been able to have all of those things. That’s 100%. And then there’s that. That preemptive grief when we are sitting in that place of it could have been or I could have, I remember, I remember. Distinctly when I met my daughter, my daughter, that I placed for adoption, and I reunited with her. She was 18 years old, and one of the first thoughts I had when I picked up the phone and I heard her voice on the other side of the phone was, oh my gosh, I’ve lost my chance. I had dreamed for so many years, like this fantasy, that I’m going to go find her and I’m gonna, you know, bring her and parent her and mother her. And somehow it was clearly a fantasy. But I remember distinctly that that thought just flit through my mind as I’ve lost that. And so even in the reunification, there was the grief of her childhood is over. It’s done right. And so and it continues. Because then, you know, we go into the next season of life and all the things that I continue to lose when it comes to that, that fantasy of what could have been. Um, and so grief is a part of it. It’s a part of shame. And, and we have to learn how to weave it, how to weave it into our lives. Because there can still be joy with grief.
Jonathan Fields: [00:39:12] Yeah. And it’s like if you talk to anybody, if you’ve known grief yourself, like through any number of losses or, you know, people who have known it profoundly and deeply, pretty much everyone shares, you know, this isn’t something you get over. Right. This is something that becomes a part of you. Yeah, yeah. This is something where, you know, like, if you’re fortunate and you have support and you have skills and you learn how to be with, you know, this is just what you move forward with rather than something you get over with. And it’s, you know, sometimes it brings you to your knees like at unexpected times. And over time, more and more and more, you just, you know, like you learn to sort of like, live the life that you want to live with it, not because it’s in your in your rear view mirror, but just because you’ve learned how to live with it. Um, but it makes a lot of sense that this would be a part of this experience of complex shame. Um, and at the same time, as you describe, that doesn’t mean that just because you’re carrying grief with you, that you can’t then live beautiful, joyful moments and a fabulous life moving forward like this is just going to be a part of the fabric of it.
Zoe Shaw: [00:40:19] Yeah. And you know, when we get into that bargaining thing that you’re talking about, like it could have been in the what if i like to use the word maybe. Maybe not. Because we imagine if it were this way then this would have happened. But that’s not of course we know that’s not necessarily true. And so when I start to go there, my answer is maybe, but maybe not. And sometimes that just allows you to have space to feel it. And also recognize that it’s also a fantasy. And also but I’m living this life here now and this life is and can be good.
Jonathan Fields: [00:40:54] Yeah, I love that simple prompt. Just saying. Maybe because the truth is, you have no idea. Oh, maybe it would have been a whole lot better. Maybe it would have been a whole lot worse. Maybe it would have been kind of about the same. It’s like this is just reality, right? But, but we project out in the future and we’re like, what is the maximum loss that I could imagine and like, let me, let me make that the basis of my shame.
Zoe Shaw: [00:41:15] Yes, yes.
Jonathan Fields: [00:41:17] Yeah. You a little earlier in our conversation, um, shared that you have sort of developed these stages of healing. You kind of thumbnailed them a little bit. Can we go through them a little bit more detail? So somebody sort of like joining us can start to think, okay. So this is sort of like the the process that I might start to think about um exploring.
Zoe Shaw: [00:41:37] Yeah. So the first stage of complex Shame is of course, that initial shaming experience. And sometimes we can think back to it. And because, you know, we can have so many, we start to experience shame at 18 months, by the way, so nobody can remember the first time yes, they experience shame.
Jonathan Fields: [00:41:55] Before we even go for it. How does how do we know that? Like, how do how do we like measure somebody experiencing shame at literally like 18 months?
Zoe Shaw: [00:42:02] That’s a great idea. I mean, that’s a great question. So remember I talked about how shame is a physiological experience. And so there’s been research that has been done that has watched mothers interacting with their children and really having shaming conversations like, and it’s not even conversations. And that’s what we have to also recognize is that shame is put upon us by something sometimes as easy as a frown. Right? A shake of the head, a glare, um, a whisper that we don’t even hear. And so research has been done that has watched mothers essentially shame their children, which moms do. Um, in 18 as early as 18 months, you will see the physiological response of the kind of the downturned head, the shoulder, the slump, the turn turning away. Right. Um, children as young as 18 months feel shame.
Jonathan Fields: [00:42:54] Um. In this context, what parent hasn’t thrown a glance or done something, or just gotten pissed off in a moment because you’re exhausted and overworked and burned out and stressed and you just kind of lose it for a heartbeat. Like, this is it’s probably important also to sort of like just slide in here that like, we’re not blaming the parent or the the person in this situation. We’re all just showing up doing the best we can at like with what we have at any given moment in time.
Zoe Shaw: [00:43:22] Right? Yes. Every single parent. And like I said, it is in the air that we breathe as a society because we’ve also been taught that it works. And moms, parents, we want our children to be functioning parts of society. We want them to do well. And so we feel like that’s a good way to change behavior. It’s not. And, you know, I have five children. I have shamed every single one of them multiple times, I’m sure, which is why I’m writing another book called Get Over Your Mother, not just for me or other people, but for my children, too. Um, so yes, it is a universal experience. And so the first stage is that initial shame experience and then understanding what that is. And sometimes it’s kind of the bigger like the ones that I introduced at the beginning of our conversation. And so then what happens is as a result of the shaming experience, we have self-hate, we have self harm. And so that self harm is part of that hiding and running. And there are different ways that we can self harm sometimes. You know, it’s it’s socially sometimes it’s physically harming ourselves or addictions or things like that.
Zoe Shaw: [00:44:26] Sometimes it’s just sabotaging relationships or or sabotaging ourselves and other aspects of our life, career, things like that. Um, and so then the next stage is if you get to that stage would be self awareness. And that’s where you begin to become aware. I have this thing right. For me, it was kind of that dam in the NICU that broke. Um, and so when you begin and maybe it’s somebody listening to this conversation right now. Somebody realizing, oh, that’s what’s going on with me. So then there’s self-awareness. But that’s not the healing, right? That’s just becoming aware of it. And so then we have to do that thing that I talked about earlier is deconstructing the blame that step five is deconstructing the blame, where you start to with someone yourself in a journal or with a therapist, really begin to untangle all of the ways that you’ve blamed yourself as a result of your shame, and then you need to become vulnerable. So once you’ve deconstructed it, then you can take the steps to speak about it. And that’s hard.
Jonathan Fields: [00:45:29] Yeah.
Zoe Shaw: [00:45:29] We don’t want to do it before.
Jonathan Fields: [00:45:31] Right. And this is also different from this is what you were describing earlier in our conversation, where some of the sort of like the, the common approach to, I guess a more simple shame is like, oh, we start with vulnerability.
Zoe Shaw: [00:45:41] Yes.
Jonathan Fields: [00:45:41] And you’re saying in a more complex shame. No, that’s actually there’s a whole bunch of things that we need to actually start to explore and, and know and become aware of before we get to that step of vulnerability.
Zoe Shaw: [00:45:53] Yeah. And the hardest part of it is that deconstructing. Because if you become vulnerable beforehand, your shame will just dive deeper. And so you’ve really got to work out that vulnerability, that deconstructing.
Jonathan Fields: [00:46:05] Are there on the deconstruction side. Are there. I mean, yes, I would imagine it’d be super helpful to do this in partnership with somebody who has a set of skills to be with you. Are there questions or prompts we might ask of ourselves to begin the process?
Zoe Shaw: [00:46:20] Yes. Um, and I do outline some of those in my book as well. The first is just asking yourself, what do I blame myself for? Not is it worthy of blame? Not is it my fault? Simply, what do I blame myself for? When we look at each of those shaming experiences and I would ask you to just write it down, write them all down without applying any kind of decision about whether it’s your fault or not. That’s really the process of deconstructing that blame, and it can take a long time when our shame is really tangled up. And so then it’s vulnerability. And the thing is, is that what you you want to work on is making sure that you’re being vulnerable in the healthiest spaces, which means you’re being vulnerable with someone who you can trust will hold your shame, will hold you in a healthy way. And so maybe that’s a clergy. Maybe that’s a therapist. Maybe it’s a close friend. Um, and, and when it comes to vulnerability, there’s some little steps there too. Because if we don’t know that someone’s trustworthy, then we need to start with baby steps. We need to expose a little and see what the response is. And then see also if they reciprocate and then expose a little more and then see what the response is, such that we’re not getting ourselves into a place where we’re going to have that kind of unhealthy interaction. Yeah.
Jonathan Fields: [00:47:38] And then before we get to the next one, when you’re doing that sort of like it’s like you’re microdosing vulnerability, right?
Zoe Shaw: [00:47:44] Yeah, I love that. Um, I think I’ll steal that one. That’s great.
Jonathan Fields: [00:47:48] Do you think it makes sense to do it in the context of this thing, that you feel sort of like the more complex, shameful, or you kind of like picking something a little simpler just to kind of put it out there as a litmus test to see how somebody responds before you really sort of like, circle around to like, oh, this is what I really want to get into.
Zoe Shaw: [00:48:04] Yeah, I would say do it on start small like when you I love that term micro-dosing vulnerability. Start with something that may surround the thing that you feel shame, but maybe it’s not as heavy as the the deeper things, if that makes sense. I would say something like tangential to that.
Jonathan Fields: [00:48:21] Got it. Okay. Where do we go from here?
Zoe Shaw: [00:48:23] Yeah. And so then it becomes forgiveness. And that’s where you work on accepting, um, that, you know, giving up all hope of a better past for each incident that happened, regardless of whether it was your fault or not. You need to work on forgiving yourself for what? Whatever happened and whatever small part you played and what happened?
Zoe Shaw: [00:48:47] And then.
Jonathan Fields: [00:48:49] Big question. Right. How like because so many people are like, you got to just let it go, man. You got to just forgive yourself. It was in the past. Like how? Like how do we actually do that?
Zoe Shaw: [00:48:59] It’s a process. And it does start with really going back and understanding. I mean, I will take a client all the way back to as early as they remember and all of the choices that they made. And I’ll explain to them that whole concept of, you were born with a temperament that is innate in you. It’s born like, you can’t change that. It’s a part of who you are. Your temperament interacts with the environment that created a personality. All of your life experiences. Right. Um, led you to make these decisions. So let’s go back early on and let’s look at all those decisions you made. And how can we make them make sense? Because when we begin to truly understand and you can begin having conversations with yourself, that’s like, oh yeah, that makes sense. I know why I did that. I know why the crazy man robbed the bank in the movie, because we got to go back and see the very beginning of the movie, and now it all makes sense. We’re not talking about right or wrong. We’re just talking about understanding your behavior. Right? And when you can begin to understand behavior, and when you can really look at the reality that we cannot change, and your inability to accept and your inability to forgive is a decision. I’m still trying to change the past. I’m still trying to change that.
Zoe Shaw: [00:50:10] And so it’s not easy. I know it’s not easy, but if you recognize that the only thing we are doing is trying to change a past, that will never change, then maybe you can decide. There’s something in my future that I want to be different, and I can’t change that. But I can affect the future. And part of that is being able to accept what is so that I can move into the future with health. Once again, a process. It’s not easy. And then we move into to acceptance in that way after forgiveness. Right. Which is kind of what I was just talking about. And then there’s the maintenance phase, because the healing happens in the forgiveness and the acceptance part. It doesn’t even happen in the vulnerability. It doesn’t even happen in deconstructing. It’s really the forgiveness and acceptance. And yet shame will never go away. And so you need to create a maintenance process that includes body purging, physically purging shame from your body because we do hold it in our bodies. And when we are aware of that, and we pay attention to ways that we can daily physically release shame, whether it’s through yoga or walking or movement combined with talking, combined with paying attention to where it is and knowing where it’s asking you to hide, then you’re on, on the way to some freedom.
Jonathan Fields: [00:51:29] Yeah, I mean, that sounds really powerful. And it ties in also with, you know, I think so many people are familiar with Bessel van der Kolk work now. And, you know, the body keeps the score. It’s like we know that, you know, with him it was, in the context, largely of trauma, right? And you’re saying shame lodges in the body, too. And for us to really be able to process it, we need to actually be moving our bodies so we can sort of like make that a part of the experience as well.
Zoe Shaw: [00:51:52] Yeah. Shame, grief, trauma they all kind. Of are interwoven.
Jonathan Fields: [00:51:57] So let’s say you say yes to everything that we’re talking about, and you’re moving through this experience and you’re really starting to resolve a lot of things, and you’re moving forward and you’re no longer feeling the need to hide behind, like all these like representations, like the avatar that you’ve created of yourself, the character like that. People have known you as that person, but you’ve also built a life. You’ve built a community. You’ve built friendships. Those friendships aren’t actually with who you know yourself. To be there with that, that character of who people think you are as you do your own healing, and that character no longer serves a purpose and starts to fall away, and the real you starts to show up. Do you see people having to create new, new communities, new friendships, because the old ones aren’t going to survive the process?
Zoe Shaw: [00:52:50] I’m always hesitant to talk about this because sometimes it can feel too scary. To be honest with you. Um, and the answer is yes and no. So let me start with no. The no is because we often imagine that we’re doing such a great job hiding that no one can really see who we are. We’re usually not. And so, although we will internally be different, other people don’t always experience us as so different. Or what they actually see is, wow, I always knew that about you. I always knew you struggled with that. You just thought I didn’t know if that makes sense. And so and I’ve definitely had that experience. And so we don’t necessarily have to lose our relationships. Right. Because all we do is we begin to create the emotional intimacy that we were sabotaging ourselves from experiencing to begin with. And we can have that in those relationships that exist now. Now the other the other kind of tricky part is that when we are in very unhealthy relationships, and especially when we are codependent and very unhealthy relationships as we heal, if our counterpart, if our partner, you know, if our friends are not on that same journey with us, then the relationship cannot often tolerate the health that you are experiencing. And, um, I mean, for me, it did culminate in a divorce. I did have to eventually end my my marriage. Um, but it doesn’t have to happen for everyone. And I know that that can feel very scary. And that could be a reason why someone says, well, I don’t want to lose my my marriage. I don’t want to lose my, my friendships. So I’m good. I’m just gonna stay right here. But what I can tell you is that the longer we sit in shame and the longer we sit in unhealthy relationships, the less health we have. Over time, it doesn’t get better and it doesn’t even plateau. It gets worse. And when you are able to live in a place of freedom, the joy and the peace and the health that exists is worth potentially losing relationships that you already know are not healthy.
Jonathan Fields: [00:54:59] Hmm. That feels like a really good place for us to come full circle as well. So in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?
Zoe Shaw: [00:55:10] Um, living a good life is honestly allowing yourself to release the burden of shame to talk and say the things that you’ve been taught not to say.
Jonathan Fields: [00:55:20] Hmm. Thank you.
Zoe Shaw: [00:55:21] You’re welcome. Thank you so much.
Jonathan Fields: [00:55:25] Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode Safe bet, you’ll also love the conversation we had with Lori Gottlieb about understanding your emotional narratives and rewriting the stories you live by. You can find a link to that episode in the show. Notes. This episode of Good Life Project. was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help By, Alejandro Ramirez, and Troy Young. Kristoffer Carter crafted our theme music, and of course, if you haven’t already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project. in your favorite listening app or on YouTube too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did because you’re still listening here. Do me a personal favor, a seven second favor, and share it with just one person. I mean, if you want to share it with more, that’s awesome too. But just one person even then, invite them to talk with you about what you’ve both discovered to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter, because that’s how we all come alive together. Until next time, I’m Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project..