What if the secret to happiness is not being somebody, but being willing to be nobody? Imagine living without the need to prove or protect yourself, without the constant drive for acceptance or the fear of failure. What if you could just be real? Life would become effortless, free from judgment, and full of peace. True liberation isn’t about escaping the world—it’s freeing yourself to live in harmony with it. Be done with ego and discover true peace.
While some physical suffering is unavoidable, most psychological suffering is self-created. We do this through resisting reality and clinging to preferences, attachments, and past experiences. By learning to let go of these stored emotional responses and fully accepting each moment without judgment, you can overcome this inner suffering. Embracing the present with openness allows for a life rich in genuine experiences filled with love and deep compassion for yourself and others.
Shame has been called the master emotion because it takes over our bodies and our minds. It can freeze our nervous system. It can place us in a fog, unable to seek help, reassess a situation or reassess what is really going on. Shame defeats our ability to reflect on ourselves, get some support, and move on. Shame can be overwhelming, but if we can look at it clearly and catch it before it takes over, we can cope with it and create conditions that can transform it from an enemy into a friend.
This is not academic to us. We are both well-acquainted with the experience of shame. Co-author of Embracing Shame, Sheila Rubin has been researching shame since she was a shy five-year-old. “In my twenties, I remember having a new job and being so worried about being late for a first meeting that I showed up early and accidentally interrupted a lunch that was happening in the room,” notes Sheila. “I froze in embarrassment. I remember the shame voice saying to me: ‘What’s wrong with me? Maybe they shouldn’t hire me because something is wrong with me.’ Fortunately, while I was holding the door knob, frozen in shame, someone opened the door and invited me in with kindness.”
Embracing Shame co-author, Bret Lyon, remembers that, as a kid, when the gym teacher blew the whistle and said to pick teams. Everyone else was picked first. He still remembers trying to pretend it didn’t matter while he felt like dying inside.
One client accepted extra work even though he does not want to work weekends because he wants to be liked and couldn’t say “no” because it would be embarrassing.
Another client spoke of shame seeping into her mind about the changes in her body since giving birth. She is happy to be a mother, but the changes in her body and the inner dialogue in her mind keep her in shame circles. The differences between how she experienced her body and how she feels now is shame.
Our inner conversations may say a variety of unhelpful things. For many of us, it is the voice of not being good enough. Or we might feel like an imposter. If our partner or boss says that we made a mistake, that may be a trigger for a shame attack.
Here are some clues to know when shame may be operating in your mind and body:
Thoughts: There’s something wrong with me and I don’t want anyone to know. Maybe I am an imposter and I need to hide.
Sensations: Feeling shy, face flushed, brain can freeze, difficulty having a conversation.
Reactions: Embarrassed, going blank, blaming others, using activity to numb, withdrawing. Not able to write or think clearly and not know why.
Coping with shame
If, instead of letting shame take over, we can be with and observe our shame, we can actually begin to learn something from it. We can begin to transform shame from a toxic disruptor to a useful informant, from a devastating foe to a useful ally.
Here are a few experiments to try when you notice shame coming up. Instead of putting yourself down, try one, then reflect on the results and write them down in a journal or in your notes app:
Be kind to yourself. Say something kind to yourself to ease the shame.
Pause and take a breath. Pausing for even a few seconds or one minute can offer a new perspective. How might this allow you to set a new boundary or reframe your story in a healthier way?
Set boundaries. Is there an extra shift you cannot take this week? Can you say stop or politely decline?
Name your feelings. Notice what didn’t feel good in your reaction. Can you talk about what you’re feeling in a different way?
Ground yourself. Tap your feet or feel the earth under your feet.
Get support. Talk to a friend who is kind and who can hear your feelings.
Spend time in nature. Take a few minutes to bathe in nature to refresh and replenish.
Understand that change happens slowly. Talk back to the shame inside yourself for a bit and find if the shame can be a little less toxic. Even a small shift or change can help you move forward rather than staying stuck.
Being friends with your shame can begin to change yourself and your life. When toxic shame lifts there can be access to creativity and new doors can open. The weight of heaviness can be put down and we can have new hope for the future. The reason we do this work is so others can find hope when there is shame and they can transform it and heal it.
Sheila Rubin, MA, LMFT, RDT/BCT, has been researching shame since she was five years old. Along with her husband and colleague, Bret Lyon, she is a founder and codirector of the Center for Healing Shame, and cocreator of the Healing Shame–Lyon/Rubin Method. Through their popular workshops, they have taught thousands of psychotherapists, coaches, and other helping professionals across the world to more effectively identify and work with shame. Sheila is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, a Registered Drama Therapist, and has taught at JFK University and CIIS, as well as being the eating disorder specialist at a hospital and directing Embodied Life Stories performances. For more, visit healingshame.com.
Bret Lyon, PhD, SEP has devoted almost two decades of his life to healing shame. Along with his wife and colleague, Sheila Rubin, he is a founder and codirector of the Center for Healing Shame, and cocreator of the Healing Shame–Lyon/Rubin Method. Through their popular workshops, they have taught thousands of psychotherapists, coaches, and other helping professionals across the world how to more effectively identify and work with shame. Bret holds doctorates in both psychology and drama and has taught at Tufts University, Pomona College, and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, as well as writing and directing plays in regional theater and off-off Broadway. For more, visit healingshame.com.
In your willingness to take the risk of love, to feel it all, to truly allow another to matter, and to expose yourself to the joy and heartbreak of this life, you come face to face with the most devastating fear that you’ve ever known, but have never been able to articulate: that you are loved.
For when you are truly loved, when you are entirely seen, when you are fully held, it is the end of your world as you know it. Things will never be the same. You will never again be able to pretend that you are other than precious and whole as you are. The implications of this are dizzying if you let them all the way in.
It is so exhilarating to be seen and held in this way, but it is also terrifying as you are fully naked now, utterly raw, and achingly wide open. Your life is no longer your own in a sense, and it has been given to your raw, shaky tenderness. This is your refuge now, the golden bridge through which you will connect with hearts everywhere. Give everything to know this bridge!
Even the soft spring breeze feels as if it might be too much, for it goes right through your skin to touch your heart. A sunrise, the longing of a little baby to be held, the spring wildflowers, the honey-infused ice coffee you just spilled on your laptop, the blue eyes of your sweet lover—you may never be protected again. Ah, that’s fine—it isn’t what you really wanted anyway.
The particles of love are interpenetrating your entire sensory world and you are just not sure your heart and nervous system can take it. Oh, friend, you are on the right track.
You are free to be who and what you are now—no longer tied to a past you thought you wanted, no longer bound by the limited and that which is less than whole—willing to risk it all for love, and free to be the fearless wildness that you are.
Gorgeous photography by Robert Maschke – https://www.robertmaschke.de/
During this morning’s run, I was talking with my friend about the fear and frustration we’d both been feeling about Ferguson, Missouri, among other places. What can we do? we asked each other. If it came down to it, would we be able to stand against the so-called authorities armed with tear gas, guns, and hoses?
I told my friend about the only time I’d come close to anything like it. The KKK was marching in a little town a few miles east of my college campus, and a small group of us organized ourselves in protest. We brought in advisors to teach us how to remain calm in crisis. We knew our history; we’d seen the footage; we were afraid. We also knew that remaining silent wasn’t an option. We boarded the bus in silence, and when we got there, we linked arms and lined the street peacefully, waiting for the hate group to come streaming up the road. It was summer then, but I remember feeling a chill that raised gooseflesh on my arms.
A few minutes later a pathetic bunch of ragtag malcontents rounded the corner—the odd skinhead here, old grizzled men there, and bored teen goths sprinkled in—all spewing the tired epithets we’d heard before: “____ go home… .”
After our protest, we boarded the bus and headed back toward campus.
Once returned to the relative safety of familiar surroundings, we’d talk about how sad the hate group looked. Their outfits didn’t even match! we’d laugh. They weren’t even marching in step together! Weren’t they supposed to be organized better than that?
But this morning, we weren’t laughing.
Every time events like these erupt, I wonder what there is to do about it. Up to this point, I’ve signed petitions, I’ve written essays and articles, made calls, protested, volunteered, minded my business, went back to bed, wrung my hands, paced the floors, pumped my fists, prayed, held loved ones close, fundraised, danced, run, sung, and sweated for the cause. I’ve cried, fretted, and did it all again. And I’ll keep on doing it.
I recently turned to a memorial delivered by Dr. Howard Thurman in the aftermath of Dr. King’s murder. I was searching for words to articulate the frustration, pain and loss of another senseless killing and the ongoing struggle for equality and peace for so many in America. The Living Wisdom of Howard Thurman remains painfully, powerfully, resonant today:
Tonight there is a vast temptation to strike out in pain, horror, and anger. Riding just under the surface, all the pent up fury, the accumulation of a generation’s cruelty and brutality. A way must be found to honor our feeling without dishonoring him whose sudden and meaningless end has called him forth. May we harness the energy of our bitterness and make it available to the unfinished work which Martin has left behind. It may be—it just may be—that what he was unable to bring to pass in his life, can be achieved by the act of his dying. For this there is eloquent precedence in human history. He was killed in one sense because mankind is not human yet. May he live because all of us in America are closer to becoming human than we ever were before.
I wish I could tell you of the tremendous love and worry I feel for my brothers, for my beautiful nephews, especially, and for the precious children of my friends.
Today, I’m open to new ideas—to whatever helps me keep my heart open, my love alive. It’s an imperative for me because I am the beneficiary of an irreducible truth, which is this: love is all there is.
We need an updated and broader narrative with respect to the field of psychedelics. While legitimate clinical research and societal openness to these remedies may be on the rise, so too is the confusion and misinformation. Therapist and researcher Sean Lawlor has emerged as a leading voice in articulating a new understanding of this long-maligned field of therapy and healing.
Here, Tami Simon speaks with Sean about his new book, Psychedelic Revival: Toward a New Paradigm of Healing, in a nuanced conversation on: the various categories of plant medicines and psychedelics; the risk of destabilization or “psychotic break” through overdosing; ketamine; working with the body to process challenging emotions, memories, and experiences; the differences between MDMA, ketamine, DMT, psilocybin, ayahuasca, and other substances; meeting trauma from a place of love; personal responsibility in the use of psychedelic-supported therapy; turning toward and meeting as fully as possible whatever we experience; overcoming shame; factors and approaches that support lasting transformation via psychedelic-assisted therapy; psychedelics and the brain’s neuroplasticity; discernment and reasonable expectations; intuition and the healer within; microdosing; and more.
Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.
