How to Get Out of a Toxic Shame Spiral

[00:00:00] **Rachel:** Today. I’d like to talk a little bit about shame and what happens when we don’t think that we’re good enough. Because I’ve been saying a lot of podcasts recently, particularly in 2023 around shame around fear around guilt and this all stems from my belief that we get burned out, not because of external circumstances, but because of our internal mindset, because when we try and say no, when we try and set boundaries to allow ourselves to keep ourselves well, fit, happy, connected, the thing that stops us is this feeling of over-responsibility and the feeling that I must be all things to everybody. And at the root of that, It’s a feeling that I’m only worthwhile. If I do well. If I’m achieving. Which then means that if we don’t achieve, or if we do something wrong, we feel this crippling shame. And if you want to hear a little bit more about my ideas on why it’s so difficult to say no on shame on guilt and have a listen to some of the quick tip episodes we did last year.

[00:01:05] But this year I’d like to explore this theme of shame a little bit more because it’s very complicated. It’s very multifactorial. It’s got lots of causes. It’s got lots of manifestations. And I think that we’re going to keep getting stuck and keep self-sabotaging until we really get to the bottom of it. Of why we feel so much shame and bought, we can do about it.

[00:01:29] Now, I would love to tell you that there was one really easy, really simple solution. And there isn’t, I’ve looked around a lot of this. I think we need to look at a lot of different things. This is a You Are Not a Frog quick dip, a tiny taster of the kinds of things we talk about on our full podcast episodes. I’ve chosen today’s topic to give you a helpful boost in the time it takes to have a cup of tea, so you can return to whatever else you’re up to feeling, energized, and inspired. For more tools, tips, and intoo.Hts to help you thrive at work, don’t forget to subscribe to You Are Not a Frog wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:02:09] I think I have quite a lot of secret shame. Actually, it’s not that secret. It’s probably on the surface quite a lot of the time. And the reason I realized this was I was at a conference last year, last September when I was really feeling very burned out. Um, we’d had lots of things that have gone wrong in the year. There’ve been a lot of pressure and I hadn’t been looking after myself. I’ll be talking about that in a separate episode.

[00:02:33] But during this conference, I attended a workshop on identity and personality and the person leading the workshop said to us, right, I’d like you to imagine that you are a bottle of pop. What would it say on the bottle? How would somebody describe you in one sentence? And the first thought that popped into my head was taking small doses only.

[00:02:55] And when I wrote that town. I looked at it and thought, goodness me, how come that’s below the surface, rather than all the good things that people say about me? Rather than thinking about the people that love me and why they love me? Why is the first thing that I come to take in small doses?

[00:03:14] Because I think that in society, we have this idea that you only feel shame if you’ve been bad, if you’ve been immoral or done something wrong. But the reality is a lot of us feel shame when our actions clash with our deeply held values. And a lot of the time our actions have to clash with some of our deeply held values. Because if our deeply held values are I will always be there for everybody and help everybody out, what happens when you can’t? Or I must be kind all the time and self sacrifice so that that person is okay. Well, what happens when we have reached the end of our tether and we’ve got nothing left to give. And if our value is I always put other people first, then we can never say no to anything. We end up just being everybody’s back in call, serving there once, rather than their needs and feeling really bad when we ever express our own needs.

[00:04:11] So actually my idea is that shame is not related to us being bad or morally wrong. It’s actually related to these unrealistic expectations that we have that we must always be perfect. And this has been sustained for a lot of our lives by this thought that I am what I do. I am what I achieve. And for people in health care, particularly people who are high achieving and have been like that all their life, this thing that you are known by what you achieved, by what you do, by how good you are, means that whenever we don’t measure up to this theoretical stage, this theoretical attainment, that we feel really bad. And it means if we make any silly mistakes, any human mistakes, everybody makes, we beat ourselves up about it as if we’d done something morally very, very wrong. Let alone the fact that many of us are experiencing moral injury at the moment because we can’t look after our patients and the way that we wanted to, because the resources aren’t there, it’s out of our control. But we take all that on. And consequently, we feel that we are bad that we have done something wrong and that leads directly to shame.

[00:05:18] You see, shame is all about the fact that we are not good enough. And that is directly related to the thought that I am not enough. So when I went back to that thought about taking small doses only, what did that mean? That meant that I felt that I was too much for people, that there was something defective in me, that if people spent too much time with me, that gets sick of me. They get tired of me that I would overwhelm them. Toxic, right? If I’ve got that buried deep down.

[00:05:49] And that got me thinking, well, why do I think like that? What on earth has caused me to think about that? You know, I know that people listen to the podcast. I know that people liked to come and hear me speak. So why am I thinking people only like me in small doses? But then I look back to when I was a child and some of the things that were said to me when I was a child, I was quite impulsive. Um, I have ADHD. So, you know, I was always on the go. I liked to have fun. I can be quite loud. I can be quite extrovert. And the people that didn’t like that often criticized me. They called me tactless, which yes, I can be tactless and I was very tactless as a child. Of course you, our children are tactless, right? And as a teenager, I learned that you can’t just blow out everything that comes into your head. But I’ve taken that criticism with me, that thought that I can be tactless and hurt people a lot. When I actually looked for the evidence of that right now, I don’t really see it.

[00:06:44] I grew up in a very lovely family, but it’s fair to say that busy-ness was a badge of honor. We all achieved a lot. All my uncles and aunts were very high achieving, and we were described and judged by what we’d achieved and how busy we were. And this Protestant work ethic was very, very strong. Which meant that when I became a junior doctor and I was working all hours God sent and I wasn’t enjoying it, I thought there was something wrong with me, that I had failed in some way. And when I started looking around to do a bit of a career change, I felt a deep sense of shame that maybe it was because I couldn’t hack it, I wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t achieving enough, even though the evidence was totally to the country. I had achieved a great deal. And I was still achieving. It’s just, I wasn’t enjoying it.

[00:07:30] We’ve had these very, very difficult stories ingrained in us from an early, early age. And unfortunately in our work at the moment, there’s nothing. That changes. That there’s nothing that says actually, you know what? There’s a different way to be. There’s a different way to feel.

[00:07:46] The problem with this is that if we are motivated by shame, by the feeling that we are not good enough, it means that we spend our whole lives, trying to prove that we are enough. But shame is never satisfied. We can never achieve enough to make ourselves feel that we’re okay. And even when we get to the next ladder, when we get to the next version of our job, that we promoted, there are still loads of things that we’re going to muck upon and get wrong, and then we will beat ourselves up. We will see all the negative stuff that we’ve done wrong, all the mistakes we’ve made all the times we haven’t acted at our best. Versus the times when we’ve done really, really well.

[00:08:22] And this makes us work even harder. It keeps us up at night. It makes it impossible to say no to anybody. But if we get this right, if we’re able to recognize a name those shame stories that go on, it frees us up, doesn’t it? No longer, are we a slave to what other people think. How much I achieve how good I am and how much I have. We start to think about actually, who do I want to be? What do I enjoy? What do I love doing? And we can start to loosen the hold that shame has on us.

[00:08:55] And actually, if that happens, we’ll actually be nicer to be around. We’ll be a better parent, a better colleague. If you can get away from this guilt and the shame that we’re not good enough, that we are not enough, you’ll be freed up to actually look at the real issues. To do the things that really are, and you were saying a genius and say no to the things that really don’t serve you or the people very well.

[00:09:18] But this is easier said than done and I’d love to say that there was some magic wand that you could wave to just get rid of all the shame, just like that. And I know that that doesn’t happen. And everything I’ve been exploring recently has been different takes on how we can start to change our mindset in order to get away from these shame stories that we tell ourselves. And I’m seeing some therapy at the moment, and that’s really helpful, particularly it’s helpful in recognizing when these stories pop into my brain.

[00:09:44] Now in that workshop, that was, you know, quite a big realization for me, but I realized that there are little ones, little versions of that going around my head most days, if I’m honest. But I’m getting there. And by taking very small steps, I’m finding that actually life seems to be getting easier. And I’m beating myself up much less. And consequently, I’m giving other people a break as well. Because this is in service to other people. It means that your kilter loved them better. You’re just being nicer to be with and who doesn’t want that? That’s got to be better for humanity, right?

[00:10:18] And one of the reasons I know that I am getting a bit better at, this is something that happened a few weeks ago. So I’ve been in Norfolk, um, setting some brainstorming around a new course that we’re producing. And I had to go and pick up my daughter. She’d been in a school play. And on the way home, I was going to go and pick her up and bring her home. I had vastly underestimated the amount of time it would take me to drive to my daughter’s school and the performance actually finished earlier so I had even less time than I thought I had. And I’d been on a webinar. I’d stayed later on the webinar. It’s a chat to some of the attendees and I left late. I can be a little bit time blinds and I definitely don’t leave myself enough time. Okay, most of us do that, don’t we?

[00:11:00] But that’s always driving along, I got a call from my daughter and she said, Mom, where are you? I was still half an hour away. And she was standing in a pitch black car park at school. You can imagine how I felt. I felt utterly awful. My initial thoughts were What have you done? You are such a dreadful mother. How could you leave your daughter in the car park like that? This is awful. Nobody else would do that. You’re so terrible. And you can imagine the sort of things I was saying to myself.

[00:11:31] Now, before everyone gets really worried. Yeah, we sorted it out. She went back to the school, she sat with a teacher in an office until I was able to get there. So she was safe there. Part of my worry, yes, was for her safety and making sure she was okay. But once I knew she was okay, what then happened? I kept ruminating about it. The stories got even worse. I thought to myself, I can’t possibly find my other half. He’ll be really annoyed with me and he’ll criticize me and tell me, I should have left earlier, even though I was criticizing myself and I knew I should have left earlier.

[00:12:03] So I started feeling really, really defensive about it. Cause that’s the interesting thing about shame. Isn’t it? When we know we’ve mucked up or made a mistake or been less than perfect, you don’t go Oh yeah, oh my goodness, I just mucked up. We, we dig in, we entrench our position and we get really defensive and we start explaining it away and telling other people why, in fact, we are right, even though we know full well that we’ve done something wrong. Weird, isn’t it? A sort of self protectionism that we have. Whereas just owning it and going, yeah, absolutely, I effed up there, I’m completely wrong, I’m really sorry. Oh, my goodness. How freeing is that?

[00:12:41] Anyway, I’m driving along. It’s howling wind, howling Gale, and I’m got my foot down to try and get there on time. First of all, I think, well, this is ridiculous. I’m not going to kill myself, uh, by, by trying to get there one time. I thought, okay, what do I know about this? What’s my therapist told me? But if I learned through all these podcasts about how to get out of this shame spiral that I’m just in now? It’s heading myself. I’m such an awful mother. And I’ve always been like this and why can I just cook got away on time? Et cetera, et cetera.

[00:13:08] Well, I started to remember some of the tips and the techniques, and I’d just like to share them with you now, just in case it’s helpful for you when you start to get yourself in a bit of a shame spiral.

[00:13:16] So I’ve attached it to the word shame, ’cause it’s easier to remember.

[00:13:20] First of all, share it with other people. Brene Brown says that if you get shame out into the open, It just cuts it off at the knees. That’s why you feel so much better telling someone about a mistake you’ve made. Fessing up to it. And all just going, oh, look that happened, I’m sorry. Or even having a laugh about it, it’s so, so important. And I remember. A podcast.

[00:13:42] I did a while back about the second victim. Uh, we had a GP registrar on and she had had an incident where one of her patients died by suicide. She felt awful about it. And it wasn’t until she had shared it with other people and someone said, you know what? That happened to me, that she started to feel better about it. We need to know the other people that have experienced the same. We need to get it out there.

[00:14:07] So the first thing. I did, I phoned mother half who actually already knew about it ’cause my daughter had phoned him and I said, I’m really sorry, I absolutely mucked up. I’m feeling really ashamed myself. I should have done this, that and the other. And did he berate me about it? No. He realized, he realized how bad I was feeling about it. He said, don’t worry, we’ll get it sorted. And immediately I started to feel better. So share it with other people, you’ll feel a huge burden lift and also you can then brainstorm solutions if you need to.

[00:14:35] So H stands for hangout with useless friends. Now, there’s a reason I say this. I was listening to a podcast and they were talking about very rich, very powerful people often find it difficult to find people who are unbiased, who have really good intentions towards them, who don’t need anything from them. So often if you’re talking to colleagues, work colleagues, even if they’re friends, they have a bit of a vested interest in you covering the rotor and you being there to do that surgery. But your useless friends don’t really need anything from you. They don’t want you to give them money. You can’t promote them at work. Uh, you can’t cover any of their work so they can give you that unbiased opinion. So when you do share that thing that you’ve done wrong, that mistake, boy, they can help really put it into perspective and just say like, don’t know what you’re so worried about. And of course anybody does that. Yeah, I can see that. And that can be really, really helpful. The other reason why useless friends are helpful they love you for all sorts of different things. And that really helps with identity, which I’m going to come onto in a minute.

[00:15:37] The next thing is, awe. How can you get out these shame spirals? Well, getting to a place where you’re experiencing things that are beyond yourself is really, really helpful. Now as always driving down those cold blustery, winter roads and Norfolk, I was watching the trees shedding, all that leaves. It was beautiful colors. I was watching the rain coming to, and I was like, actually, this storm is really big. I’m this insignificant little blob moving through this storm. It’s not just all about me, whether I’m a good mother, whether I’m a bad mother. There’s so much beyond this.

[00:16:11] So if you can get out into nature, look at a sunset experience, beauty, and just see that there is something beyond this, this small problem that you’ve got, or this thing that you’re obsessing about, that could be really great because it helps get you some perspective.

[00:16:24] So we’ve looked at share things with other people. It cuts shame off at the knees. We’ve talked about hanging out with useless friends. It can really help you put things in perspective and they have no ulterior motive about that. We talked about awe. Looking at something beyond yourself, getting the bigger picture, which really helps put stuff into perspective.

[00:16:42] Next thing is M. Multiple identities. I’ve already been thinking about identity. Because at the root of. Shame is our identity. Because if we are only judging ourselves by what I achieve, by what I do, it means if I can’t do that anymore. What on earth identity do I have? And this lack of other identity apart from total doctor identity or total lawyer identity, this is what keeps us stuck in toxic jobs, in toxic roles with all this weight of expectation on us.

[00:17:16] So how do we have an identity apart from what we do? Can we ever have an identity apart from what we do? I think we can. But I’ve been really struggling with this, thinking well, what does that mean to have an another identity apart from what I do, and I had somebody talking about. Having multiple identities. And that really helped me, because we don’t ever want to throw all our eggs in just one basket. And you might be someone that’s maybe got your eggs in two baskets. So, total doctor identity and total mother identity or total father identity. And that means if anything’s going wrong in one of those areas of your life, that’s really tough. That’s like half of your personality, just crumbling right there.

[00:17:59] But what if you have lots of different identities? And if you start to list some of the things that, that you are to different people, you know, I’m a bad tennis player. I am a mother. I’m a partner. I am a gardener. I’m a podcaster. I’m a speaker. I’m a manager. You know, I’m a friend. There’s those different identities there. And we all act slightly differently depending on what identity we’re in.

[00:18:24] And the idea is that if you can shift between these different identities and have as many as possible, so you’re not fully identified with just one, it’ll be a lot easier. Because yes, I may have mucked up that in the mother identity, but that’s not what I wanted to do. That’s not the sort of mother I want it to be, but you know what? That hasn’t changed my identity as a speaker or podcasts or a friend. It just means I made a mistake in that area. And it means that the mistakes we make aren’t so all consuming. So our whole life.

[00:18:56] So multiple identities can be really, really helpful in this. And also if he wants to make any changes in your life, this holding on really tightly to particular identities, that is a thing that’s gonna stop you. Cause it’s scary. To lose an identity that we’ve been clinging on tightly to all our lives.

[00:19:17] And finally E E stands for empathy and understanding, and that is towards ourselves. You know, is it possible to be empathetic to ourselves when we already know how we feel? Well, I think in a way, yes. Because I think a lot of the time, we’re feeding the way we’re feeling and that’s false because it’s our mixer telling us as a threat. So I was feeling absolutely dreadful about leaving my daughter stranded, because my amygdala was getting Threat, threat, threat, threat to your family, threat to your family. You’re dreadful. Do something about it. If I look at what led up to that it’s stuff I do all the time. Being a bit time blind, letting things run over a bit, not quite leaving enough time. None of them are dreadful in themselves. It just, they’d all conspired to cause a problem for my daughter.

[00:20:02] Now actually, if I’m going to be compassionate to myself, I need to start talking to myself. Like I would talk to a friend. So this is where self empathy and self-compassion comes in. I was able to just recognize that very, very critical inner voice that was berating me. And it went on forever, but I stopped. I said, okay. What would I be saying to a friend right now? And I’ll be saying to a friend. Oh, yeah, he didn’t leave enough time. We all do that sometimes. Next time. Leave longer. Of course you’re feeling awful. Nobody wants to, it’s also to be stranded at school. Don’t worry about it. You can do better next time. It’s not the end of the world. It doesn’t mean that you’re a dreadful person.

[00:20:45] And then I was able to put in some of the things I’ve talked about before, particularly the RAIN therapy that Tara Brach talks about a lot. So recognizing the emotion I was feeling. Recognize. I was feeling awful. I was feeling really sad. I was feeling angry at myself and I was feeling really upset. And once I, I recognize I was feeling upset, I just let myself feel it. I had a little cry. I thought I’m feeling really upset because of this. Let that emotion move through and I acknowledged it. I investigated where it came from. And then. I went to the final step of RAIN, which is nurture. N for nurture. What do I need now? Okay. I need just to get to school safely, to apologize to my daughter, to have a chat about how it wouldn’t happen again, and just be kind to myself. So I ended up just putting on some music and, you know, just listening to some nice stuff, because that’s what I needed then. And I needed to drive safely.

[00:21:42] So empathy, understanding and self-compassion, and I always find that the best thing to start off with, and I’m saying that it’s just using the phrase, of course. Of course you’re feeling like that. Yeah. Anybody would, if that had happened to them, Of course you are. Of course you were late. You hadn’t really planned and left enough time, but you were trying to serve those people on the webinar better. Of course you’re feeling like this. That is understanding that is empathy. And that is self-compassion.

[00:22:12] So next time you find yourself in a shame spiral, going round and round around about something you’ve done that may have caused problems to others, probably hasn’t in fact, it’s probably something very little, then use that shame acronym.

[00:22:25] Think about how you can share it with others. How are you going to hang out with some useless friends who can give you a much better perspective? Think about how you can get beyond yourself with a sense of awe that can put this thing into perspective. Think about what multiple identities you, you have that you’re doing really well at that actually things are going well for, that doesn’t mean that you’re a dreadfully bad person. It just means you’ve made a mistake in one little area. And please, please, please practice empathy and compassion with yourself using the phrase of course, you’re feeling like this. Look at what’s just happened. And look at what you’ve had to do over the last few days and look at everything you were juggling and putting up with. You’re actually doing a brilliant job.

[00:23:07] So why don’t you download our pod sheet, which is going to tell you all about the SHAME method of sort of getting yourself out of the spiral and just fit in some things that you’re going to do. Next time you get into that shame spiral.

[00:23:19] And please remember that you are trying your best. Nobody wakes up in the morning, thinking I’m going to be a psychopath today. Well, not many people. You are good enough. You are trying your best. And you are valuable as a human being.