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Ep. 45: Letting Go Of Guilt & Shame - Forgiveness & Learning
316 Plays3 years ago
When people are stuck in a cycle of guilt and shame, they tend to approach life from a fearful place. This gets in the way of how you feel about yourself, it can affect the quality of your relationships and sabotage learning.
In this episode, you will learn:
- How to escape guilt and shame.
- New ways to view yourself, your behaviour and your relationships with others.
- Attitudes that help you enjoy discovering new ways to learn and grow.
Kellie Smith is a Master Hypnotist Society trainer and hypnotist, and the Director of Winter Garden Hypnosis in Florida.
You can connect with Kellie at https://www.wintergardenhypnosis.com.
To find more free resources to make your life better, discover more about how hypnosis can help you, and what it takes to become a professional hypnotist, visit www.hypnosistrainingcanada.com.
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Transcript
Impact of Childhood Shame and Guilt
00:00:00
Speaker
Did you grow up thinking that you were just a bad kid or you are a bad person? I mean, is that the feeling inside? Because that could be that you amplified being instructed or taught about something, or it could be that you were a victim of shaming and guilt either purposefully or not.
00:00:25
Speaker
And so often in families, shame is the only language a person knows to correct behavior. It's the only tool in the tool belt of the parenting.
Podcast Purpose and Approach
00:00:38
Speaker
You want to transform yourself and improve your life. You long to help people. You wish to become healthier, happier, and more successful.
00:00:48
Speaker
This show is your opportunity to learn how to use hypnosis to make your life better. Each week, hypnotist Robbie Spear Miller interviews people who have already changed their lives in amazing ways with hypnosis. These models can help you discover your path to making the most of your life. If you want to learn how hypnosis can help you reach your goals, this show is for you.
Consequences of Guilt and Shame
00:01:14
Speaker
When people are stuck in a cycle of guilt and shame, they tend to approach life from a fearful place. This gets in the way of how you feel about you, and it can affect the quality of your relationships. It can also sabotage learning. In this episode, you will learn how to escape guilt and shame, new ways to view yourself, your behavior, and your relationships to others, and attitudes that help you enjoy discovering new ways to learn and grow.
00:01:40
Speaker
Today, I'm really excited to have this conversation with Kelly about how guilt and shame impacts our lives.
Understanding Guilt vs. Shame
00:01:50
Speaker
What I've found through working with tons and tons of clients over the years and also with myself is that if we're caught up in a sense of guilt or shame, it can affect our relationships.
00:02:00
Speaker
It affects how we feel about us, and it also affects how we learn. So our ability to handle life in a more useful way is really a powerful thing. So if anybody who's listening to this has struggles with guilt or shame, or you know people who do, I hope that this is helpful for you. And before we start, just to clarify that guilt usually is about something that we feel like we've done wrong.
00:02:29
Speaker
And we feel like we violated our own standards. And a sense of shame is when we feel like we violated somebody else's standards. And getting stuck in these feelings can really drag us down or keep us away from moving forward with our lives. So welcome, Kelly. I'm excited to explore this topic with you.
Kelly's Experience and Insights
00:02:51
Speaker
And why don't you start by sharing a little bit about how you've grown through this yourself in terms of your life, like where have you noticed that maybe guilt or shame was playing a role and how did you change that for yourself?
00:03:08
Speaker
Sure. Well, I like so many people have or had, but still have a little, a very strong conscience that is a little bit overbearing. When a person is brought up in their no fault of the parent, they probably didn't know any better,
00:03:37
Speaker
The parent is going, you're a bad person because you did this. Shame on you. How could you do this? Then it creates shame in the child versus showing them, hey, look at this behavior. It's not helpful to you because of this. This behavior is wrong. You're a good person. Your behavior is wrong. And then it creates a distinction between your value and then your actions.
00:04:07
Speaker
Most of us really didn't have that because there's no parenting manual that anybody gets. And I didn't grow up any different than what I just described.
00:04:18
Speaker
And I'll add to that, if it's all right with you, I want to add to that that sometimes it's also the perception of the child because the parent might be giving that message. But as a child, you're so dependent on your parents for survival. So subconsciously, your mind is wanting to make sure that your parents stick around. So if there's any sense and perception
00:04:41
Speaker
on the part of the child that they might lose their parents or things could change in a way that would affect them, then they're more likely to get caught up in this, even if the parents are handling it in the way you're describing that is healthy and helpful.
Children's Perception of Shame
00:04:58
Speaker
So I think it's very interesting how
00:05:01
Speaker
children can come up with all kinds of perceptions that aren't necessarily there. And sometimes the parents, you know, even well-meaning parents can, they were brought up a certain way or they don't know any better. Sometimes they really do, the parents really do have problems or they're stuck in problems. So it can be a whole range of different circumstances.
00:05:24
Speaker
So I think that the point I'm trying to make is that the perception of the child about it is the most important thing here that determines how people feel. Right. That's very true. It can be amplified in some people. Just no fault of the person saying the things, but it's the hearer is hearing it really loudly or feeling it like a knife through the heart.
00:05:52
Speaker
Um, so that's a, that's a good point as well. But, you know, if you're listening to this or watching this, I do have a question for you. Did you grow up thinking that you were just a bad kid or you were a bad person? I mean, is that the feeling inside? Because that could be that you amplified being instructed or taught about something, or it could be that you were
00:06:23
Speaker
a victim of shaming and guilt either purposefully or not. And so often in families, shame is the only language a person knows to correct behavior. It's the only tool in the tool belt of the parenting.
00:06:44
Speaker
Um, I was just talking to someone yesterday in the clinic and she said, well, I got a doozy. You know, my dad is Jewish and my mom is Catholic. So, you know, guilt central over here. And so, um, certain cultures or religions, um, or even just the cult of family, uh, can be really, uh, shaming and have a lot of guilt associated just with the whole family. It's kind of how the family.
00:07:14
Speaker
gets along with one another. They could out guilt each other, you know, it's like competition for it. Right. It's a way of holding other people hostage to do what you want them to do. So it really can be come something you use to control other people or control yourself in a way that's unhealthy. Yes. And that's a great point because I did want to mention that that the tool of guilt and shame
00:07:44
Speaker
are tools, they're actually tools meant for a purpose to install a conscience in a child very young. And once that conscience is installed, it really shouldn't be used anymore. But it is used and it's used a lot. It's even used when the child becomes an adult. I mean, if you're listening and you're an adult, you may have
00:08:11
Speaker
had your adult parents try to make you feel guilty for things as an adult. It's very common. Yes. Yes.
Guilt and Shame in Adulthood
00:08:22
Speaker
And it's really unfortunate because you don't get an actual relationship with one another. All you have going back and forth is guilt and shame.
00:08:35
Speaker
It's very sad. And then the only reason why you connect with one another is because you feel guilty for not doing it. Versus, hey, I'd really like to know what my mom and dad are up to, or my sister, or my brother, or my aunts and uncles. I'd like to know how they're doing. It's obligatory. And then like you said, you're controlled by it.
00:09:00
Speaker
So if it was something that was used a lot in your house growing up, then you become very vulnerable to being controlled by it. And that can be a huge, huge problem for you in relationships as an adult and how you manage your own personal life, your goals, your habits. When you're making changes inside of yourself, you have a whole concoction of
00:09:29
Speaker
guilty, negative self-talk to try to correct, try to correct, or just avoid correcting at all, because it just is all just too painful to face. That's another approach. So even when people have done real things like, you know, broken the Ten Commandments, killed people, or done really, like truly bad things in the world, most of us, you know, do things like
00:09:58
Speaker
choose not to pick our parents up at the airport and are guilted for that or whatever. But there are people who've done really, you know, things that really are awful things in life. It's useful for them to be able to heal up from the guilt and shame as well because anybody stuck in this, even if they did something terrible, is living in the past and they're feeling never good enough.
Healing and Self-Worth
00:10:24
Speaker
And an example of this is I once had a client who he had been in the Canadian military and he was over in Somalia when they had the genocide there in the 90s. I believe it was in the 90s. And so he, and I don't know any details, but I know he saw horrible things and did horrible things and claims that when he came back here, he was a hired gun, like from the movies.
00:10:50
Speaker
Who knows, right, if this was really true. But the bottom line that really was true for him is that he felt so terrible about the terrible things he'd done, that he didn't feel worthy of love. He was abusing his own body because of it. He was with this woman. He was a total angel and he knew it, but he couldn't treat her well because he felt so horrible in himself.
00:11:17
Speaker
So when people get caught in this, it just creates more suffering. And so we want to be able to grow through it, even when people really have done terrible things, which most of us have it. Most of us have done the everyday things. So just to have some perspective about that, I think a lot of people feel like they can never live it down or that it makes them a bad person. And so I think that's an important
00:11:45
Speaker
point to make for people.
Overcoming Subconscious Blocks
00:11:49
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. If someone who has actually killed other people in battle and war where rules are different there, right, can forgive themselves, if they can feel deserving of being in the place they're at in a loving relationship, then shoot, we all should.
00:12:08
Speaker
We all should feel that, you know what, I do have the right to be here in this wonderful place, or I do have the right to chase being in a wonderful place. I think that that holds a lot of people back. It held me back for a long time, a long time. I wouldn't chase something amazing and magical. I mean, I would maybe visualize it from time to time and think, wow, that'd be really neat.
00:12:36
Speaker
Anyway, just go do my, just go do my life. And because subconsciously I just didn't even believe that was possible. Cause I didn't believe that was me. It wasn't, I was sitting there going, I don't deserve that. I just was like, that's not me. Right. And I learned it can be, it doesn't, it's not about me expressing who I am in the moment. It's about what is that? What do I want and how do I need to feel in order to get it?
00:13:07
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And so the way I did this in my own life in the past was that I would get so focused on avoiding feeling guilty or ashamed and doing the activities that would keep me away from that, that I wasn't actually choosing what I
Transformative Power of Hypnosis and NLP
00:13:23
Speaker
wanted. It was just avoidance of disappointing people or not being a bad person. And so then you just end up running in a circle your whole life if you're stuck there.
00:13:37
Speaker
Mm hmm. You become very vulnerable as a person to be used by guilt and shame and then everywhere in your life you're tiptoeing around trying to avoid the landmines trying to avoid mistakes trying not to hurt anybody trying to not be at fault. And then it's just there's no possibility for you to grow into what you need to do because your mind is so fixated on trying to not be wrong all the time.
00:14:06
Speaker
And so if you can accept the premise that NLP teaches, which is there is no such thing as failure, there is only feedback. So you're looking at life and the feedback that life gives you, and sometimes feedback if it's from a good, intentioned person. And you can go, okay, well, this feedback, you know, life would look better this way.
00:14:34
Speaker
And you have this attitude of, yeah, I'm learning something new, not shame. Why didn't I know it? Or there's no such thing as a mistake. There are only outcomes, the outcomes in life that happen from our choices. And if we don't get the outcome we wanted, we can just make a new choice. But skipping right over that part of feeling bad about yourself, because it actually has never helped you.
00:15:04
Speaker
to get your goal. Have you noticed? Every time you, let's say, you know, a common thing that we do obviously in the clinic is weight loss. So this comes up all the time. People who beat themselves up because they had, they went to a party and they had a few bites of cake. And oh my gosh, they beat themselves up and they think they failed and they come back into their session and they say, oh, you know, I screwed everything up. Well, then what happens is they feel defeated.
00:15:33
Speaker
They feel like they've lost everything. They want to give up. They give up and then they never succeed. So this is a cycle that people go through. But when they're learning the skills of hypnosis and LP and self-acceptance and not feeling shame and guilt, then they just go, oh, look, hmm, that was an outcome that won't, it doesn't get me where I want to go. So, uh, tomorrow I won't have any cake and the next time I go to a party, maybe I'll just bring some fruit or, you know, whatever. This is just an example. But, um,
00:16:05
Speaker
And Kelly, I'd like to add to that that sometimes we get feedback from people who are not well intentioned, but the feedback is actually useful. So that that can happen as well. Or sometimes we believe they're not well intentioned than they are. For example, I had a weight loss client once who did beautifully, she lost a ton of weight, she looked amazing, she looked like a model. And she went to a wedding and everybody was like, wow, and giving her all these
00:16:31
Speaker
compliments, and it was just too much for her. The pressure of that was too much for her. And she was reading into negative intentions of people, like if they would give her a compliment, she would feel like, Oh, so I looked fat before and she'd get all insulted about it. And they, who knows, they might have been good intention, they might not have been.
00:16:51
Speaker
Regardless, for her to be able to learn from that and realize, hey, I have a fear of scrutiny and the way I used to interact with this was really unuseful, what would help my outcome and what would help her outcome is to feel confident celebrating how awesome she looks and keep going.
Learning from All Feedback
00:17:10
Speaker
So I think that's an important point to make because sometimes it's true that sometimes people aren't well intentioned, but we can still learn from what happened. So people just throw everything away from what happened that they may miss out on some really useful lessons, either from the feedback itself or from how they are relating to the feedback, how they're interpreting it. Yeah, that's a good point. Very good point. And, um,
00:17:39
Speaker
If a person is giving you guilt and shame feedback, you can just assume they do not have the right intentions. Just assume that. Maybe there's something to learn from it, because you can learn from a wrong-intentioned person as well, like you said. But let that be a red flag.
00:18:06
Speaker
attempting to make you feel that way. Not good, danger, danger, warning, walk away, look at the situation in the total context, see the intention behind that person and then, you know, take it or leave it because that's never, that's never something that one person should do to another unless they are a parent.
00:18:36
Speaker
installing a conscience in a young child. So one more thing to add to that is that if something like that is happening, you also want to stand back from it and look at it from an outside point of view and say, Hmm, is this other person trying to make me feel guilty or ashamed? Or am I doing that to myself? Because sometimes if we were raised that way, we're wearing those glasses of looking at everything through guilt and shame. So somebody might be wanting to give us feedback.
00:19:06
Speaker
and we're interpreting it that way, because that's what we're used to. Yes, very good point. Yeah. So obviously, you and I have different life experiences. So we're bringing both points together that are right. So this is cool. Yeah. And I think that's really important so that whoever listens, hopefully they can relate to one or the other or both of our experiences with us.
00:19:34
Speaker
Yes. So how does the fear of shame impact how people end up in denial? Well, you know, you if you're afraid of shame, you do not want to ever be at fault ever, ever, ever. You know, in the new people making Virginia Satir, she talks about the blamer placator, computer distracter coping stances. And in the blamer,
00:20:04
Speaker
that subconscious benefit to blaming other people is to avoid being at fault. And so when you're doing that coping stance where you're not, it's not my fault, it's not my fault, you would not be able or willing to look at when you are doing something that's incorrect or needs to be corrected.
00:20:30
Speaker
So you're in denial, you're dissociated, you're not paying attention, you just don't want to face it and you're not leveling. So this is a bad cycle, right? Because shame, denial, you walk around like a zombie. So the mood to have instead of shame
Adopting a Learning Mindset
00:20:53
Speaker
is the mood of discovery. So when I was a kid and I grew up in Orlando and my parents would take me to the science center and I loved going to the science center. They had this area where they had this like bulb with these electronic
00:21:12
Speaker
fingers that came out, I don't know, they were like electricity. And you'd put your hand on it and it would all come to your hand and then you'd lift off and it would just disperse again. That was so neat. And then you had this other thing where it was like a circle of soapy water with a hula hoop and you'd stand on the platform and they'd pull it up and you'd be surrounded by a bubble. Your whole body was surrounded by a bubble. I just remember like being in such wonder and awe and discovery and learning.
00:21:42
Speaker
Wouldn't it be amazing if when you were trying to learn something new or changing yourself or realizing you were stuck in an old habit, that's the mood you were in. You're in the science center discovering something so cool that's going to help you in the future. That's a way better approach, isn't it? For sure. Yeah. Sounds like a lot more fun.
00:22:09
Speaker
Kelly wants me to be sure to clarify for you something very important. If people have used guilt and shame against you, or you have used guilt and shame with yourself or others, forgiveness is an important part of healing.
Exploring Forgiveness
00:22:22
Speaker
Podcast episodes 32, 41, and 42 all explore how to experience forgiveness, so check them out.
00:22:29
Speaker
and join us for part two of this podcast where we will be exploring more about letting go of guilt and shame and suggesting how to build new choices into your life. To find out more about how hypnosis can help you or what it takes to become a professional hypnotist, visit hypnosistrainingcanada.com. Remember to click the button to subscribe, share the podcast with a friend, and please leave us a review so you can help others benefit from the podcast too.
00:22:58
Speaker
Until next time. You've been listening to The Hypnosis Show with Robbie Spear Miller. Tune in next time to learn more about how you can change your life with hypnosis. And if you are interested in learning more about training opportunities, go to hypnosistrainingcanada.com and schedule a free consultation.