Episode 46: Q&A #4 — Faulty Core Beliefs & Personal Responsibility

Hosted by Jodi Hildebrandt.

In this episode, Jodi answers 5 questions from listeners. This week’s questions are about taking responsibility for Faulty Core Beliefs / The Voice (shame).

 

Questions from listeners:

  1. Do we need to remember the event(s) that created our Faulty Core Beliefs, or is simply recognizing Faulty Core Beliefs in our lives enough?
  2. If I’m in a conversation and I feel like I’m not managing messages from The Voice (my shame / Faulty Core Beliefs / triggers), how do I exit the conversation, get centered and come back?
  3. What is the best way to share information about The Voice (shame) and Faulty Core Beliefs, from a loving perspective? What if I share and someone become defensive or threatened, and they shut down and don’t want to hear it? What can I do?
  4. Why do we diminish (shame) ourselves to others, and then allow others to have power over us (shame us)? How do we hold boundaries, be vulnerable, and take responsibility for our own thoughts and feelings?
  5. Cultural & generational shame: How is The Voice (shame) passed down in families and cultures? How can we better identify those shame messages (messages from The Voice) when they are pervasively taught as the norm?

 

Full Transcript

Episode 46: Q&A #4 — Faulty Core Beliefs & Personal Responsibility

PDF Version: Episode 46 (Transcript): Q&A #4 — Faulty Core Beliefs & Personal Responsibility

Welcome to ConneXions Classroom Podcast. We are so excited to introduce to you the opportunity for you to join us in a classroom setting where you will be taught the principles of connection. For those of you who have already joined us on the podcasts, and for those for you who have not, you are now ready to step into an extensive, hands-on, all-star classroom experience to better understand why you are experiencing and interpreting life the way that you do.

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This is a 12-week intensive course that consists of meeting one time a week for two hours. You will be given six workbooks. In each workbook, instruction will be given to you on core concepts of how to live your life from a position of emotional honesty, Reality, Truth, boundaries, validation, being able to recognize your distortions, and how choice plays a central role in all of your experiences and emotional outcomes.

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Come and experience connection. Go to www.ConneXionsClassroom.com, and hit the “Go to Academy” button and sign up. I look forward to meeting you and connecting.

[00:02:48]

Good morning and welcome to ConneXions Classroom Podcast for the week of March 14th, 2015. So excited for you to be here with us this morning. I want to remind you, if you have any questions to go on the website at www.ConneXionsClassroom.com and go to the Podcast section of the website and ask those questions—just write them out and I will answer those in subsequent podcasts moving forward if I can. Sometimes people’s situations need a little bit more clarification, but definitely I can teach principles—principles of Truth—that apply to all of us. I may not be able to address the particulars of your situation but go ahead and ask those questions and I will answer those on upcoming podcasts.

Glad you’re with us this morning. I have a handful of questions around shame, and faulty core beliefs, and how to hold boundaries when you feel shame, and how to not take personal somebody else’s shame. So let’s get right into it.

The first question we have is do we need to remember the event or events that created the faulty core beliefs, or is simply recognizing them enough? So, do I recognize or remember the events that caused the faulty core beliefs, or just simply recognize them?

What I would say to that, is that if you have had some kind of event, experience, trauma where you can remember where a faulty core belief/shame was created, like, you had some kind of experience where you either did something or something was done onto you and you remember thinking, I will never do that again, or this is my fault, or I caused this, or they did this to me and I will never forgive them. Those kinds of absolute statements where shame is present.

Shame, remember, is a distortion of Reality. So, any time we go into absolutes around experiences, especially traumas, if we can go into absolutes, we will get caught in a distortion because in life, there are very few absolutes, like “do not kill.” That’s probably an absolute that could run throughout your life and be pretty safe, saying it is never okay to take another person’s life. But as I’m saying that, I’m thinking about, what about in time of war or someone’s in your home and they’re threatening to harm you? But let’s just assume that for the majority of us, we’re not going to be put into those kinds of situations, so you want to watch your language and see if you’re going into these extreme positions, these black and white, or right or wrong positions, because it will create faulty core beliefs—which are the language of shame.

If you need more information about what a faulty core belief is and how it’s connected to shame, please listen to the faulty core belief podcast. I’ll go over it a little bit here in this one but I won’t spend a lot of time describing it or defining it.

So, do I need to remember the event? No, you absolutely do not. If you do, that’s kind of a gift to you because then you can see exactly where it started, when it started, how it started, why it started. And it will make it a little bit easier to start reframing that.

For example, if I’ve had some kind of a trauma—let’s say I was a child and I ran into a snake outside as I’m walking around and I said to myself, snakes are bad and so now I have a faulty core belief: snakes are bad. And so, now I can go back when I have a little bit more maturity, my frontal lobe is more mature, and I can say, you know, snakes aren’t bad, it’s just that when I was little I had no ability to defend or protect myself and so I made up a faulty core—it hit my center, it hit my core, however, it was inaccurate—and it was a belief, a faulty core belief that snakes are bad.

Now, I can go back and say, it’s not that snakes are bad, it’s that I was little, I had no ability to protect myself, it was dangerous, I could have been harmed and I really don’t know what kind of a snake it was so maybe my harm was more psychological than physiological. However, there still was animation there and fear there. And so, all of those experiences around that one trauma were real for me. And so, all of those get to be validated, I get to say to myself that yes, I was afraid and yes, there was potential danger and yes, the snake was considerably large when I was a young child in comparison to my body size compared to now.

I get to say all those things that are The Truth for me, and I also get to reframe the faulty core belief, which is snakes are not bad. It’s just that I ran into it at a time when it startled me, it frightened me and they’re not bad, they just are snakes. That’s all they are. They’re very neutral. And so, being able to take a really large stance, like stepping backwards figuratively, and looking at it from a larger perspective that snakes are necessary—they eat rodents and other creatures that keep the ecosystem in balance and so we need them. And, and, and—you’ve got to make sure that conjunction put in there—they can be frightening and they can startle people.

So, all those things are true and some of those statements are The Truth. And so, it’s very important that I recognize where that faulty core belief is coming from and reframe it. So, if I cannot remember events or an event that caused a faulty core belief, that’s totally fine because faulty core beliefs come in themes. So, the theme of I’m inadequate, the theme of I’m not enough, the theme of I get to have my way, the theme of it’s my fault. Those are themes and they will pop up again and again and again.

So, if I have a theme that says I’m not enough, I might go to the grocery store and not pick out the “right” kind of jelly. I just don’t know which one’s the “right” kind of jelly for my guests. My guests might like strawberry, or peach, or grape and I just don’t know because I just don’t know what is the “right” kind. That would be me saying to myself, my faulty core belief is I’m not enough and so if I don’t pick out the right kind of jelly it then translates into I’m not enough, or I’m not a good friend, or I’m not very loving.

Can you hear that? How behaviors or events in my life will bring up these themes of my faulty core beliefs, which right there I can then grab them and say, “Wow, there’s that theme again.”

Maybe I’m outside trimming a tree and I hear in my head you didn’t trim the tree right. Boom, there it is. I’m not enough. If I was enough, then I’d trim the tree right or appropriately. And so, it just keeps plugging me in all these different areas from trimming to the tree, to buying jelly at the store, to being in a conversation with my friend where I didn’t say the “right” thing or I said something that they laughed at and that evidences to me that I’m not enough. I mean, it just keeps popping up as a theme.

So, I would encourage you when you hear those themes of shame, the themes of your faulty core beliefs, that you will stop and you will language that faulty core belief which is: there is no such thing as not being enough when I’m buying jelly. That doesn’t even make any sense. There’s no such thing as being not enough when I’m trimming a tree. Trimming the tree is just an activity I engage in, and if I trim it and I inadvertently kill the tree, okay, so be it, oops, I made a mistake, I either go buy a new tree or I don’t buy a new tree and it’s a story I tell my children and my grandchildren, that I killed the tree. And, and, and I’m totally fine, it has nothing to do with my value.

Remember, shame and faulty core beliefs are about telling you that you do not have worth, that you do not have value, that there’s something innately wrong with you, and that is just a lie. It is the biggest lie. There is nothing that you can do—nothing—even to take the life of someone else, the most horrendous thing you can think of on this planet, there’s nothing that you can do behaviorally that will take away from your worth. Isn’t that a great thought and kind of a calming thought? That your behaviors are separate from the worth and value that you carry. There is no way to devalue you. It’s impossible.

And so, you get to relax. When I say that, what I mean is you get to stay connected to yourself, you get to critique your behaviors and change behaviors. And you do not get to connect behaviors to the amount of worth, or value, or importance, or love, or lovability that you have inside you. You are divine, you are connected to Divinity, and there’s no way that anyone or anything that you do can take that away from you.

Now, your faulty core beliefs will come in and say, that’s not true, the things that you do do indicate your value and your worth. And that is not The Truth. That is not the Truth. So, as you start recognizing these themes, pay attention to if they’re connected to a faulty core belief and when you hear that belief, when you’re standing there trying to find the “right” jelly, say to yourself, this has nothing to do with right, this has nothing to do with my worth, this has to do with I’m just going to choose a jelly or a jam and if they like it, great, if they don’t, they can give me feedback and the next time I’ll know what to do different to buy for certain people. That’s it. It’s that simple.

However, it is very hard to change those when you have practiced those for years and years and maybe decades. It’s not a simple as, oh, no big deal, and so that’s why you need to 1) recognize that they’re speaking to you, and 2) be willing—and this is where your humility comes in—be willing to be vulnerable and challenge that belief, because if you are not willing to challenge it, it will never leave and as evidence that it’s still there, it will never leave, and it will not stay stagnant; it will become louder and more aggressive towards you.

What I mean by that is it will over into more areas of your life. It will critique you in more areas. You won’t be able to do a whole lot without your faulty core belief coming in and saying you’re horrible, you’re bad, you’re terrible, you’re dumb, you’re inadequate, you can’t do things right, you’re unlovable, you’re mean, you’re unloving. I mean, on and on and on. Please, please, please challenge those.

Next question. If you’re in a conversation and you feel like your shame is not being managed—like you’re not managing your shame—is it appropriate to leave the conversation for a bit and revisit the conversation later?

Great question. So, if I’m in a conversation, what I’d say is I’m being triggered. If I am being triggered, yes, it is absolutely appropriate to be in the conversation and validate the other person and then let them know that what is being discussed is really triggering to you. Now, listen to the language. I am owning, I am taking responsibility for the fact that whatever it is that they’re saying or doing is triggering my shame, it’s triggering any kind of faulty core belief inside me. It’s mine, it’s not theirs, they’re not doing something to me. However they’re describing something or they’re experiencing something, it is then triggering my stuff. And so, to be able to say, “This is triggering to me and I can hear your excitement, or I can hear your concern, or I can hear your fear,” or whatever the emotion is that’s going on, you validate them and you say, “I need to revisit this later. I’ve got to go get centered, I’m having a hard time holding this.”

So, yes, very, very appropriate. And then, I would hope within 24 hours you are getting some help with that. That you go to someone and say, “Wow, I was really triggered by Sally’s story. Here’s what she said. Could you help me find in me my faulty core beliefs and why I was being triggered so much by that storyline? Because it’s not about her, it’s about me.”

Wouldn’t that be awesome if all of us would, could recognize when we’re being triggered and own our stuff and go to someone that is safe and somebody we can trust and have them have enough consciousness and skills to be able to walk us into our own faulty core beliefs and help us reframe them, so that we can get rid of them and then go back to Sally or whoever we were talking to say, “I figured it out. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that story, thank you for sharing it the way you did because boy, it sure touched me and created an awareness in me that now I understand was erroneous or false, so thank you so much, that was a gift for me.”

That would be so sweet. And the Truth is, is that it can be a possibility. And, and, and—all of us would be needing to be that conscious, all of us would have to be willing to be that conscious, all of us would have to be willing to be that responsible for ourselves, and also we’d have to be willing to not enable other people. For example, we’d have to allow other people to be responsible for themselves.

So, as I’m sitting here talking and I’m triggering someone, I say, “Wow, I’m really triggered.” It’s really triggering to me to know that I’ve just triggered you, so a lot of us will go in and we will be codependent or we’ll going into a rescuing position and we’ll go try to “help,” or “save,” or “fix” the other person, and that is just not helpful. We need to learn how to play a supportive role for that person without taking their triggers away from them, without making their triggers go away, because then they don’t learn what the trigger was connected to, which oftentimes, if not every time is, connected to a faulty core belief.

Great question. You’re in a conversation, notice your triggered, own it, go someplace where you can get some feedback, come back, own it with the person, and if you want, you can share it, like, “Wow, here’s what I got triggered by. Thank you so much for that (what I’d call) gift,” because it really is, what a gift that I can be interacting and have something or someone say or do something that touches in me a lie, a distortion, and then I can go find the Truth in it. That really is a beautiful, beautiful gift.

Next question. This person says, I’m really struggling on when to share this information with other people. I feel like this is such a gift that I’ve been given but when I bring up aspects—specifically shame—the other person shuts and doesn’t want to hear it. What is the best way to share this information from a loving perspective?

Here’s this person, they are sharing this information and the person they’re sharing it with sounds like they get triggered, we were just talking about that. And so, when someone gets triggered, here’s what you do. When you are sharing this information, the first thing you want to do is you always, always, always want to validate over and over and over again. If you don’t know what that looks like or what it means, again, go listen to the podcast on validation, vulnerability, and risk. I go into great detail about how to validate because what’s happening is that the person that is shutting down is feeling vulnerable for whatever reason. There could be a billion reasons why they’re feeling vulnerable. They might be feeling scared, or threatened, or intimidated, or they might just think you’re crazy. Whatever the reason, they are feeling vulnerable and so they’re shutting down. What they’re saying to you is I am not ready for this information. You’ve got to read that, you’ve got to be sensitive enough to understand that and read that.

And so, when they are sharing that with you either overtly or covertly, you need to create safety for them and with them. The best way to create safety is to validate, so you could say things like I really appreciate you talking with me, it’s been really enjoyable getting to know you a little bit better. Or you could say, it sounds like you’re really struggling with that decision that you’re trying to make, if you need any support, I’d be more than happy to sit and listen and just kind of bounce things off me. Or I’d love to share my expertise in this area if you need any support around that. Or I’m so sorry you’re struggling. Or what I heard you say was… and then repeat back what they said.

Those are all statements of validation because what I’m saying to the person is I see you, I see you emotionally, I hear where you’re at emotionally. I may not agree with what you’re doing or how you’re going about something, and, and, and I don’t need to. I just need to hear where you’re at emotionally and be able to language back that I see it. It’s like, I see that you’re struggling, I see that you’re sad, I see that you feel stuck, when I hear you say you’re so upset at your child lying to you, I hear that, I know what that feels like, I’m so sorry.

Those are all statements of validation and so when we validate someone and we stop pushing our agenda—and our agenda might be to point out what they need to do to change or to point out why their choices continue to cause pain for themselves, or to point out that they’re in shame, or point out they’re in drama—that is not what they are ready to hear at that time. And so, you get to be patient, you get to be long-suffering, you get to be loving.

So, the person said how can I share this information in a loving manner? Well, you meet the person where they’re at and that is called love. If you have an agenda and you’re trying to make them change or make them come to where you are, then you are not engaged in an act of love because love is selfless, love is about giving, love is about sacrificing, love is about meeting the person where they are. That’s what love is. Love is not threatening, or intimidating, or coercing, or blaming. It is quite the antithesis of those things.

So, meeting them where they are, that is loving. Validating them where they are, that is loving. And you be patient until they say, “Tell me about this shame. Tell me about how you think I could get out of this situation or I could see it differently. Share with me what your feedback is. If you were in my spot, what would you do?” Those kinds of statements are indicators that they are now validated to such a degree that they feel safe and they feel a level of trust with you. And so, they are now ready to hear whatever it is that you have to share. Be patient with someone and don’t push this information on them. Be an example of living without shame because when you’re validating, you are not in your shame.

Next question. Why do we diminish ourselves to others and allow others to have power over us? They said this only leads to resentment eventually and I become more shamed.

The question—why do I diminish myself to others or allow others to have power over me?

Well, the reason that we do that, unfortunately, is because of our own belief about ourselves—the way that we view ourselves. So, when we diminish ourselves to another person, we are not living in the Truth about us because we are not less than someone else. But isn’t it interesting that I will diminish myself in front of someone else to maybe feel accepted, to be part of the group, to feel more comfortable, to let the person know that really I’m not that important and so I feel more comfortable? Like maybe I’m in front of a group of people and I’m speaking and let’s say that I’m super overweight and so I kind of poke fun at my weight so that nobody else will do it first. It’s kind of like, I already know this about me so let me just get it over with and tell you how uncomfortable I am about my physical appearance so that you don’t do it, you don’t shame me, I’ll just shame myself.

That’s one of the reasons why we diminish ourselves, and when we diminish ourselves, what we’ve just done is we’ve told other people that I give you permission to diminish me as well. You can talk down to me, you can be sarcastic with me, you can poke fun at me, you can be denigrating towards me and I’m okay with that because I don’t have value.

So, yes, as this person said, that leads to resentments because resentment comes after I have lived in a state of shame or I’ve lived in a state of having expectations that didn’t get met. And so, that just will follow. Another way to say it is, I get super vulnerable, and when I’m vulnerable, it’s really easy to go into resentments. So, I have just created my own vulnerability by diminishing myself, by poking fun at myself. Now, is there a time and a place to poke fun at self? Yes. Yes, you can do that, but not in shame.

If I lived a life or I’m living a life where I really am taking care of myself, and I honor myself, and I value myself, and I speak very rarely in terms of shame because I’m holding myself accountable around all that stuff… I just did the other day actually, I was walking up my steps at my house and I was in my high heels and I had this long flowing skirt on, and I stepped on my skirt and I ripped it. I ripped the bottom of it like a fourth of the way off. I was like, oh, my gosh, I cannot believe I just did that. And in my head I was so frustrated at myself and I think I called myself a klutz in my head. I didn’t say it out loud to anyone, however I did hear myself say that and when I said that, I knew I wasn’t a klutz, it was more like I just got frustrated.

And so, as long as I’m willing to take responsibility for the way that I talk to myself or the way that I talk to others, and that I really don’t believe that I am a klutz, I can say that every once in awhile to myself. But you’ve got to be very careful because there really isn’t ever a time where that’s healthy. I mean, to call myself or anybody else a klutz is just not very healthy. But you can poke fun at yourself, like if I were to trip down some stairs, I’d get up and say, “Ta-da.” That kind of poking fun where it’s in jest and you can be humorous about oneself. But there never is a time when you can be aggressive towards yourself, it just is not healthy.

We do not like to be vulnerable, it scares us to be vulnerable and so that’s such a hard thing for us. When we get vulnerable, it’s really easy to go into shame, trying to protect ourselves.

Another question. The question is about cultural or generational shame. They said how can shame be passed down within families and cultures? And how can we better identify those shame messages when they are pervasively taught as the norm?

Wow, what a great question. Absolutely, cultural and generational shame happens, it’s not that it can be passed down, it is passed down. In every single family, it’s passed down. In cultures, it’s passed down. In religions, it gets passed down. In any kind of group of people where people gather as a group, shame is passed along from one person to another.

How does that happen? Well, we’ve talked a lot about that. So, when I open my mouth and I shame myself or I inadvertently attempt to shame you and even say like, “Shame on you.” We use that language sometimes, it’s kind of an older generation type of language, you don’t hear it a whole lot now. But maybe 30, 40 years ago, they used that a lot. But there’s lots of ways to shame someone without literally saying, “Shame on you.”

So, yes, where there are people, there is shame. Where people gather, you will have their own unique flavor of shame passed along to whoever interacts with them. With that being said, that is one of the reasons why it is so important that everyone on the planet learn about their own shame messages, their own faulty core beliefs, because until each of us lives in a way that is responsible and learns how to be emotionally honest with myself, I will not be able to stop this shame from moving forward. I will continue to pass it on to the next generation. It just will happen because it’s inside me. And as much as I will try not to pass it on because I didn’t like the way that I was treated, the way that I was talked to, I will inadvertently pass it on just because it’s inside my psyche.

A lot of people will say, “Oh, I will never do this. My parents always made me eat everything on my plate, and I couldn’t get up [from the table].” That rigidity, right? That’s shaming. So, this person as they grew up, they let their kids eat whatever they want and so they don’t have any boundaries in that direction. And that’s shaming too—it goes from shame (which is kind of the self-denigration, or rigidity, or controlling kind of shame), to the other degree of shame, which is, there are no rules, there are no boundaries, you can do whatever you want. And these people who are trying to not do what was done to them, just swing the other direction and shame their children in the other direction, which is like I said, no boundaries, no rules, you can eat whenever, whatever you want, we’ll make two or three meals for everybody so that everybody can have their own things that they like because they’re entitled to have whatever they want. That’s shame, too.

So, the only way to get out of this is that you must be conscious, so if you came from a family where food was really controlled, then you get to learn the messages that were taught to you and heal them. Not swing the other direction and just have no boundaries around food.

So, the way you heal that is you say, “Wow, my parents were raised in an environment where there wasn’t a lot of money and so their fear was coming out around wasting food. Oh, well that makes sense, it wasn’t that they were trying to be controlling or rigid, it was more that they felt afraid that it was so much work for them to earn money to buy food that they wanted us to appreciate that. Oh, okay, so that makes sense now.”

Now, it’s not just me reacting, it’s me being thoughtful about why my parents behaved the way they did. And I can reframe that and say, “Oh, well, I don’t really have an issue with not having very much money and so me buying food doesn’t have to go be a fear-based experience, I can relax around that and so I don’t have to feel so rigid because I’m in a different experience than they were.”

And when you’re able to hold that and see the Truth, then you don’t have to swing the other direction and just react. So, there are billions of examples of that, where I was raised in a certain environment, let’s say I had a mother that was a yeller and I thought I will never raise my voice to my kids, so then I never discipline them, I never show any displeasure, I never appear sad—I’m not going to do what my mother did to me, right? So, then the child grows up never knowing that their choices and their behavior affect people because I don’t share with them how it’s affecting me. So, then they get raised in an environment where they’re very entitled. I mean, they have no problem doing whatever they want because nobody ever says, “Hey, that negatively impacted me.”

That’s how shame gets passed along and if you are a connoisseur of the Bible, shame started with our first parents, Adam and Eve. Eve was shamed, if you will, and in the Bible, it talks about she hid herself out of fear and shame, like self-loathing, like I am bad. I’ll say to people. this all started with her, all this multi-generational and cultural shame. I’m kidding obviously but it’s very interesting that that was one of the acts on the planet where shame was present and it has been passed down since that time until it came to us.

You’re probably sitting there thinking oh my goodness, I’ve passed this along to my kids, what do I do? Well, the Truth is, you have, and that’s okay because you’re human. And so, depending on where you’re at in your roles as being a parent, maybe you’re raising children still, maybe you’re children are grown and raised—you get to model for them. If you still are parenting a child, you get to say, “Hey, I’m sorry, that was inappropriate. Let me go back and reframe that. It’s not that you have to eat all of your peas, I’m reacting from when my parents did that with me and I don’t need to have such a knee-jerk. I understand you’re not really a connoisseur of peas, and why don’t you have just a couple of bites and we’ll call it good?” Or maybe you just say, “You know, don’t worry about it. You can have some other vegetables.”

And so, you’re willing to be more flexible. The point is, is that you’re being conscious. That’s how you stop passing this stuff along, is that you must be conscious of why you’re doing what you’re doing, you’ve got to critique it, you’ve got to be aware and awake. If you are not open or paying attention, you will not hear this stuff. You’ll just react to it. You’ll just react. And if you are reacting, you will be in shame I guarantee you, because the only way to stop shame is to recognize when it’s present, which means you have to be conscious.

And so, that is how you stop it. After you’re conscious, then you reframe it. That’s number two. Number one, you have to be conscious. Number two, you have to reframe. You have to say, Wow, I’m knee-jerking, I’m trying to be rigid towards my child eating their peas, I’m in a different spot, they’re in a different spot, they are not being defiant towards me by not eating their peas, though my parents felt that way about me, that does not mean that that’s what the Truth is, they just don’t like them. And they get to not like them. And I get to honor their feelings and their taste buds and get to let them know that it’s safe to not like something and I will respect that—because that teaches them that they matter, that they’re important.

Number one, conscious. Number two, reframe. And then, number three, you change the behavior. You language it different, you behave it different so that you’re behaving it in Truth, which is, by you not eating your peas, you’re not threatening me. That is the Truth. Shame would say oh, you’re not eating your peas, you’re trying to be defiant towards me, or you’re not obeying me, or you’re not respecting me and that is just not accurate.

The Truth is, is that they don’t like it. Or maybe the Truth is, is that they are trying to be defiant, but that’s okay, they’re not doing it to hurt you, they’re doing it to assert themselves and this is the way they’re trying to do it, so don’t take it personal. Shame takes everything personal. It is not personal.

So, be conscious, reframe, and then behave differently. That’s how you get out of shame, that’s how you stop this cultural, generational shame from continuing. If you’ve already raised your kids and you don’t have the kind of influence that you used to have over them, that’s alright, you can model it for them. Every time you interact with them, you can do something different. You can go back and apologize and make things right with them. You can say, “Hey, I was super rigid around your food intake and I am sorry. I was just reacting to my history of my childhood and I feel so badly about that. And I really would hope that you could let that go and forgive me for that. If you need to talk about it five times, five hundred times, let’s do it because I was wrong in shaming you when you were eating.”

So again, you can always go back and clean that up. Now, the person may not be willing to hear your apology, they might be in their shame, they may not be willing to hear your apology, they may not be willing to let go of their angle, they may say, “I’m going to hold onto this angle the rest of my life, you did this to me, it’s your fault.” And that’s really unfortunate if they do, because the Truth is, is that you did the best you knew how to do, you had no idea you were reacting to things that you were reacting to, and we all need to have some patience and have some compassion for each other and give each other some room to be human, to show up in shame, and let things go, and surrender things, and allow people to move forward.

That’s at least my angle anyway. I really feel like that is super important because you know, we all inadvertently hurt each other and I know for me personally, there is no one in my life that I intentionally would want to harm. However, I have done things to my children and I’ve done things to my relationships that have injured them, have harmed them. And I feel very badly about that, I feel remorse for that, and I want to make things right with them. And it’s really unfortunate and very sad when the other person is not willing to go there as well with you.

However, if that is the case, then just be patient with them, validate them, own your stuff, over and over and over again, own your stuff—not in shame, like I’m a terrible, horrible person because I affected you that way—it’s more of I did the best I knew how to do, yes I did hurt you, yes I did do those things and I want to move forward with you. Can we do that? So, just stay patient with them as they work through their own shame, their own faulty core beliefs, their own fear, their own defensive “protections,” and the hope is that at some point, they’ll drop that defense and they’ll be willing to heal with you and forgive you as you forgive them.

That’s how you stop this shame from moving forward in cultures, in groups, in families.

Alrighty, what a powerful topic, talking about shame. I hope you’ve enjoyed this, I hope this has been, very, very helpful. And again, if you have any questions, go on www.ConneXionsClassroom.com, put your questions down underneath the podcast link and I will do my best to answer those questions on upcoming podcasts.

Take care of yourself. Until next time, stay connected. Bye bye.

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