EP2 - Unshaming Your Body, Your Self & Your World–A Conversation with David Bedrick

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What if shame isn’t a flaw, but a signal that something essential in you has been pushed away? In this week’s episode, Aimee sits with David Bedrick, therapist, author of The Unshaming Way, and a passionate advocate for psychological truth-telling. 

They explore how shame disconnects us from our experience, distorts our emotions, and shapes our identities from the inside out. Through somatic awareness, storytelling, and radical compassion, David invites us into the process of unshaming—not fixing ourselves, but fully witnessing and embracing the parts we've exiled.

David takes us through:

- Why shame cuts us off from empathy, truth, and genuine accountability

- How trauma and unacknowledged pain become embedded in the body

- The power of somatic language to access “unshamed experience”

- What it means to witness, rather than fix, someone in pain

- Why reclaiming emotion, desire, and personal narrative is essential to healing

- How unshaming returns us to wholeness and expands our capacity to love, feel, & act

And so much more!

David Bedrick, JD, Dipl. PW, is a teacher, counselor, and attorney. He grew up in a family marked by violence. While his father’s brutality was physical and verbal, his mother’s denial and gaslighting had its own covert power. This formative context introduced David early to the etiology of shame and instilled an urge to unshame.

Professionally, he was on the faculty for the University of Phoenix and the Process Work Institute in the U.S. and Poland, and is the founder of the Santa Fe Institute for Shame-based Studies, where he trains therapists, coaches, and healers and offers workshops for individuals to further their own personal development.

David writes for Psychology Today and is the author of three books: Talking Back to Dr. Phil: Alternatives to Mainstream Psychology and Revisioning Activism: Bringing Depth, Dialogue, and Diversity to Individual and Social Change. His new book is You Can’t Judge a Body by Its Cover: 17 Women’s Stories of Hunger, Body Shame and Redemption.

His new book, The Unshaming Way, was published by North Atlantic books in November 2024.

Connect with David:

Website: https://www.davidbedrick.com/ 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/david.bedrick/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DBedrick 

Order The Unshaming Way: https://a.co/d/dYTwNa7

Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/contributors/david-bedrick-jd-dipl-pw  

Connect with Aimee:

Instagram: @aimeetakaya 

Facebook: Aimee Takaya 

Learn more about Aimee Takaya, Hanna Somatic Education, and The Radiance Program at⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠www.freeyoursoma.com⁠⁠⁠.⁠⁠

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A: Hey there, listener. Have you considered the physical impact of one of the most challenging experiences that human beings go through? Today on the podcast, we're going to be exploring shame and particularly unshaming. 

What does that mean? Why is it necessary? And what kind of impact would it have on our world if we were to able to live with less shame held in our bodies, held in our hearts, and in our interactions with others? I've got David Bedrick, author of the book, The Unshaming Way, and we are going to get into it today. So stay tuned. 

A: Every day, there is a forgetting, and every moment there is the possibility of remembering. Remembering who you truly are, awakening to your body, to the inner world, to the experience of being alive. Here is where you find the beauty, the joy, and here is where you free your soma. I'm your host, Aimee Takaya. I'm here to help you move from pain to power, from tension to expansion, and ultimately from fear to love. 

A: Hi David, it's so nice to finally meet you. I've been following your work for a while, and I was really excited when I got a yes to be on the podcast. So, thank you so much for being here today. 

D: You're welcome. It's a good day to spend some time talking. 

A: Yeah, absolutely. I feel like as someone who's been exploring this issue, I've heard a lot of different philosophies and ideas about shame. Particularly, I think that right off the bat, we'll say that a lot of religions tend to see shame as not a bad thing. 

That's something that we should have, that there's a function to it. I've heard at different times both sides of the spectrum about how shame is this natural thing that tells you you're doing something wrong versus shame that has been instilled in us through our parents, through our ancestral lineage, and doesn't necessarily have a function anymore, but it's just this pattern that we're now oppressed by in our psycho awareness and in our physical bodies. So right off the bat, I would love to ask you the question, do you feel that shame has a function? Do you feel that shame is in any way necessary? 

D: Part of what you're bringing up is a definitional problem, and you're laying out very well. Shame was initially a Judeo-Christian moral thing. And what people meant by that is exactly what you said. Wouldn't it be good if I hurt somebody if I felt a little bad, and I didn't only like that I treated somebody or a community in a way that was hurtful? 

So when psychology started investigating shame, so now you have that moral notion, now psychology comes in and says, let's study this thing called shame, well then there's no studies that say shame is good, we're helpful, none, they're all toxic and non-toxic, toxic and healthy shame. 

That confused the matter quite a bit and didn't allow psychology to do a good job in defining, saying what to do about it, where it comes from, that's a science question. What is this? What is it actually we're talking about? Somebody should define that the moral ideas don't have to; they can just say it's a bad feeling about oneself. So to clear that up, if I've done something morally reprehensible, it's normal, natural, and good that I feel something, guilt, remorse, empathy, oh my gosh, Amy, did I hurt you? 

Wanting to repair, apology, accountability, ooh, I did something, I should do something, responsibility, all those words are fine. I would suggest to the moral ideas, let's replace it with those ideas because shame itself as a variable, disconnects a person from their experience. 

So if I've hurt you and I have a lot of shame, I won't care anything about you, zero, I have no connection with my empathy, I have no connection with remorse, I have no connection with feeling pain that I've hurt you, but none of those happen. Shame disconnects a person. So if you actually look at shame as clearly defined, not as a moral variable, but as a psychological variable, there's absolutely nothing good about shame; it doesn't help a person be moral or anything. 

A: Interesting, I love this distinction that you're drawing here. So one way that I began to understand more deeply as you were speaking was that perhaps when we feel this shame rather than these other things, remorse, regret, desiring to make it right, those kinds of things that we would describe as someone's conscience perhaps, in the sense that shame, as you say, disconnects a person from themselves and also from others.

Is it kind of that those things, the remorse, the sorrow, the regret, they come with a kind of outward energy that wants to amend versus a shame feeling, and I'm speaking from my own somatic experience here, comes with kind of like an inverting and a sucking in kind of feeling, where we're no longer present and available to make something right? We're like dropped down into like a flat line kind of energy or like, you know, dropped into the abyss, and we're inaccessible now, feelings, emotions...

Like you said, empathy might be inaccessible when we're kind of like in that inverted state versus these other words that you're using, these other experiences, they have kind of a compelling, you know, I want to do something to make this better. Shame can actually prevent us from even acknowledging that we've done anything wrong. 

D: Shame can prevent us from acknowledging or knowing. If I'm filled with shame from hurting you, and I want to do something about it, it's not because of you. It's not because I care about you. It's not because I have remorse or a guilt, or you matter to me. 

It's not because of that. It's only because I have a painful, inner experience I'm trying to deal with. In a sense, when shame is my at my world, you don't exist. Okay, it's just in my shame. It may act like you exist, but it doesn't. So let's say we take an extreme example. Let's say a person is sexually hurting, injuring, and abusing children. Shame will be a deleterious thing for that person to experience. They'll disconnect from the experience. They don't know what they're doing. And maybe that person will say, oh, I'm really sorry. 

I'm really sorry. That will mean nothing in terms of their future behavior, not just a little bit, zero, because there's no connection with that. So a person can sit and show feelings of suffering a lot, but they are unaware of what did I do? When did I plan that? What part of me is at play here? How do I stop myself? What is the need that I have? All those deeper questions that are required for a person to actually make a genuine change are absent. 

A: Well, this explains why there's a lot of repeat offenders and why people can go through the motions and even do or say things to show that they're sorry and then just do the end up doing the same thing again, because there's a deeper compulsion going on that you like you said, it's not about what I did to the other person or the cause or effect. It's more about how do I contend with and deal with this painful feeling inside of me. So it's really a more self, it's self-involved again, this kind of idea. 

D: It's totally self-involved. Yeah. And then when the event happens again, that's a strong example to use, but then when the event happens again, meaning the perpetrator has another opportunity for that connection, for that violation, that person does not connected to their own sense. They're not connected to what do I do? How do I handle this? What am I needing? 

How do I approach this? There's no inner relationship that's formed around the issue. It could be a smaller thing, right? We don't have to be as gross as that, just so we don't trigger people. If my wife says, David, you teased me the other day and it hurt my feelings. Sometimes I've done that a number of times. 

I'll make little jabby jokes. If I kind of go, oh, I'm really sorry, I shouldn't have done that. That won't have an impact on what happens next time. 

Shame will dominate. But if I say, huh, I wonder what I did. I gave my wife a little jab. There was something I wanted to say. 

Ooh, there was something that came up two days ago. I didn't say something about how come I didn't? How come I'm not more direct? What should I have done then? What will I do next time that comes up? So I'm more direct with her. Those are all questions that when shame is free from me, I can actually inquire and I can actually deepen my relationship. I can say that was a shitty way of telling you that I was a little bit upset about something that happened two days ago. Now that would be an unshaming. 

That would be a repairing, not just I'm sorry, a genuine repairing. What am I doing? How should I handle you? What happened for you? What was the difficulty that you suffered from? All those questions I wouldn't ask if I was filled with shame. 

A: Okay, so it seems to me that the unshaming process and maybe we can go into some of that. Now it sounds like it's a lot about some a sense of inquiry, but there may also be a somatic element here in terms of being in touch with and feeling the shame in one's body, which is a very intense and awful experience. I have to say from, you know, like if especially if you're not used to being in touch with the feeling of shame, right? But so would you say that it starts with getting in touch with your sense of self and feeling or would you say it starts with inquiry? 

D: Either way, it's so useful either way. It's so useful to have a body experience, a somatic experience because somatic experience, pure somatic experience, meaning the sensations of it, not my 

A: feeling of anger, but the story pressure just tighten it in my chest and it makes me want to dance and smash things. That would be more of a somatic description. That's going to be really useful because somatic experience is unshamed experience. 

It's pure experience. So let's say with the anger idea. If I say, Amy, I just, I'm just really angry inside of me. 

I have absorbed ideas from a culture. It's okay to be angry. It's not okay to be angry. I should suppress my anger and not express it too much. So around anger for many people, especially if you're from a marginalized group from women to people of color because I shouldn't be angry because people will then call me a B or a militant. So around the feeling of anger is shame saying that's not a good thing. 

Something's wrong with it. You should get rid of your anger. Go get help with your anger. Go to a healer so your anger goes away, David. 

All those ashamed ideas, it's covering over the anger and I'm not going to be able to deal with it. If I say inside of me, there's a tension. It happens in my hands. They want to clench like making this. I want to bang on my desk. Those kinds of things. That's pure experience. I don't have an opinion about my tightening. I have an opinion about the word anger. 

D: And that those opinions are often shame based with almost any emotion, even joy. I shouldn't be too happy because that would make somebody feel this way. So most people are living in a moderated emotional experience. You can't go too high. I can't be too happy. I can't be too proud. And you did the best thing in the world today. Whoa. You know, a good thing happened for me today. I can say that. What happened to that extra? Yeah, I'm so happy like a child today because something cool happened. It modulates. 

What modulates it? Shame. It's not so good. What's wrong with you? 

Are you being selfish or you being egoistical? So those ideas enter and then if it's a low mood, I'm just really just want to sink. I'm so upset about the world. I just want to collapse and give up. Yeah, don't do that. Keep yourself up a little bit. 

There's things to do. Don't let it take you down. So the ideas of don't let it take me down. Now censor the downward experience. 

One is the upward experience. I'd be too proud, happy, celebrating of myself. The other is I shouldn't be too down. The down part now is shame. 

That's not good. Whoa, I'm really depressed. I should go to therapy. I shouldn't feel what's it like to be down, the heaviness in my body. I want to lay down and close my eyes. I want to feel like I'm floating on a river. Those latter descriptions laying down heavy, floating on a river, a body or there's no shame, there's no ideas about those are just experience. So the beauty of the body is that we get pure experience unmitigated by our ideas that come from colonization, culture, sexism, etc. Does that make sense? 

A: Yes, absolutely. There is. And what I think I'm grasping here is that the judgment of how it should be versus how it is, the somatic experience is just what it is. It's these sensations and it's without the story and it's without the context sometimes, right? That we just have these sensations and these feelings in our body versus the cultural stuff and the lived, learned, experienced stuff that say that judge what's happening and say it shouldn't be this way. 

It should be some other way than how it is. Do you think that judgment and like our development as beings, right? Like from the time we're children and then we're growing up and then children at a certain point and different people say different things, like for some it could be as early as five or six. Sometimes after the potty training phase, we start to feel shame, right? And we might feel shame that's not even our shame. It's like we're feeling into the parental figures around us and their emotional states. If you had a parent that was very affected by shame, you would have come in contact with that. Your parent would have shamed you, right? 

Those kind of things start to happen. And so in some way, the judgment that we have in our mind are discerning, mind that is working its best to navigate the world has a relationship to shame. What would you say about that in terms of the development of judgment, development of shame in a person over time? 

D: It's a deep question you're asking and it's a great question. It's a deep question. If you say to me, David, those are the ugliest glasses. I don't know, that's not that's not the most hurtful thing, right? David, what you just said is so ridiculous. I don't even think I can allow this podcast to go further. I just want I'm going to write on Instagram what a terrible person you are. 

Okay, you have a real real criticism of me. That would I can feel that my body I'd be like, Oh, that would be painful, right? So that would be that would be somebody else might say, I wouldn't matter to me, I'm detached. 

I'm not that detached. It would be it would have an impact on me. I'd be a little frightened that you're going to hurt me, right? And tell people terrible things about me. And I would feel assaulted of a kind. 

Whoa, that's like a hit like a smack in the face. No shame yet. But I have my fear. Whoa, she's going to hurt me. I know exaggerating that my body like my hands curl up. I'm like, don't don't do that kind of feeling in me. And then there'd be like, ouch, Hey, me, that was pretty heavy. 

There's no shame yet. It was just pure experiences. Now, let's say I have in my brain, the idea that I shouldn't be affected by that. David, you're gonna be seven years old, you written four books, you shouldn't be an issue as a woman, you're a man, you have a lot of privilege. There's no reason for you to feel those kind of things. why are you so tender and vulnerable? Now what happens with that, my hurt and my fear? Now I have to make those go away. 

Those are something wrong with me. Now I go to a therapist and say, why am I so tender? Why do I get hurt? 

Why am I scared? As opposed to saying, Amy, that's painful. I leave the relationship with you. I say, what's wrong with me? 

Yeah. So the judgment itself doesn't cause the shame. But my system and how it deals with that, if I'm not allowed to be hurt inside, I'm a guy grow up, you're tough, don't be macho, whatever it is or don't show it. Or if I'm angry, give me a break, Amy, you know what? If let's say I had that count, that would be a reasonable, a natural counter reaction. Well, I don't think what you did was so good. That's human. If I'm not allowed to do that, I'm allowed to push back, have a boundary. 

That's not okay with me. Then all of these reactions I have to the judgment, the boundary, the fear, the hurt, all of those get stuffed. They get covered over in shame. So where do all those feelings go? They go into the shadow. 

They go into the body. They go out of my awareness. And now I no longer say to people, I had a really difficult conversation with Amy today. 

I go to people and say, gosh, I'm so screwed up today. Can you hear the difference? One is like, I actually spoke with Amy and Amy had a difficult time. The other is, what's wrong with David? He's got a psychological problems he should heal. 

A: Did you know that your muscles are holding onto thoughts, memories and feelings? If you have a tight neck or back, you're not just getting old. You're experiencing a buildup of tension from the life you've lived. Most people don't know this, but there is a part of your brain that can reverse and prevent chronic tension. When you relax your muscles, you not only move better and regulate your nervous system, but you also free yourself from the grip the past has over your body. So you can live with freedom, confidence and enjoy your life now. How does that sound? 

Join me, Amy Takaya and discover what my clients are raving about at youcanfreeyorsoma.com. Right, I think the term I'm familiar with is internalization, that we internalize, we make it about us. Taking it personally might also be another way of saying it, but what you're describing is a much more, like, goes into kind of the depth of what that can mean when it comes to shame. I had an experience that maybe will illustrate a little bit of kind of what you're talking about. I do somatic body work and I had a somatic body work session with my father and that's a whole thing. Receiving somatic body work from my father has been a whole process of, you know, really quite out there for me. It's been amazing, but, you know, I got in contact with, during that session, I got in contact with some shame, like I felt it arise in my body, that I was holding in my left hip where classically I've had a lot of injury, I've had a lot of pain. 

And I got really, like, just this sudden knowing of what it was about. And it was this shame that I had of wanting love and validation from others. At some point I had become aware that I wanted love and validation from other people and I had told myself that that was not something that I should need or want, that I should be bigger than that and stronger than that. And I shouldn't need love and validation from anybody else and I shamed myself for wanting that. And I, like, as I became aware of this, it was like very, like, I felt how true it was. I felt the truth of it, I felt the shame in my body and then I felt sadness over, like, having unconsciously done that to myself. It's like, here I am wanting love and validation and then shaming myself. 

And so I'm not gonna get it and I'm not gonna be able to receive it because I shouldn't need it, right? Like it was this compounded thing that was being held in my left hip that I didn't even know was there. I mean, I've been doing somatics and somatic body work. I've had hundreds of sessions and where there was still another layer of unconscious shame. And this was just last summer that this happened. But maybe does that kind of illustrate the way it can compound? 

D: It beautifully, beautifully said that there's a need for love, validation. There's a need, like, valid, I don't know, it's valid or not valid. It's a need. It's all in this, a need is a need. It's like not saying a bear is valid. 

It's like this, it's just an organic living experience in your body and in your psyche. I have a certain need and now something says that need is not okay. Something's wrong with you for having a need. 

You should be working on yourself and be self-sufficient or whatever that is. Then the need gets covered over in shame. It gets suppressed, put into the shadow. You're not allowed to be even aware of having that need. But it sneaks out anyway, right? 

Or you get hurt anyway when people don't do it. So things still lives. And then in the psyche, it's gonna live in various ways. 

It's gonna show up in my nighttime dreams. And as you said so beautifully, it will show up in the body. And for some people, many people, not only will it show up in what we call body feelings, emotional things, but in symptoms. Almost all physical symptoms have a shame-based aspect. I'm not saying shame causes all body symptoms. You can get a virus, you can get tumors, not because you're full of shame, but how you deal with those experiences can be ashamed. 

A: Absolutely, because when we're ill or when we're sick or when we have an injury, there are limitations that are taking over and we can have different feelings about what it's like to be limited. We can judge ourselves for not being able to get all the things done that we normally would get done. We have to slow down and pay attention to other things in our lives that are going on that might not have been in alignment with us for a while, but we were too busy to notice. But getting sick and slowing down creates all kinds of awareness of emotional experiences. 

And when we're having the injury, this is the thing I love exploring semantically, is like when you're having the car accident, for example, you're not an empty vessel of a human being, just like floating around and you have a car accident. You're having thoughts and feelings and sensations and we could talk about them in terms of like, neural pathways that are firing as you're in the car, thinking about your, I don't know, your job or your wife or whatever, right? And then the injury happens. 

And so those patterns of muscular contraction happen alongside whatever was going on with you that week or that day or that month, right? And get linked, get associated with that. So as you said, it's not causal, but it's alongside. 

It's right alongside and it gets merged. And that's how we can be like, oh, I'm holding my heads having pain since this car accident, but some of that pain, as you said, could be shame. Some of that pain can come from emotional experiences that were in your system at the time of that accident. 

D: Yes. And if we go into the body of a symptom, the somatic of a symptom, then the symptom will also have a kind of, call it a message or an intelligence in it. 

Meaning it'll have something to say. So part of the shaming of physical symptoms is that we don't, in addition to wanting to relieve ourselves, that's good. I just got an injection in my finger because I have some kind of swelliness in my joint. So I'm not against doing that, great. 

So I should do that if I want to or do something to take a supplements or eat different or whatever you're gonna do to take care of your body's wellness, which usually means feeling more fit, more energetic, less pains. And the body has intelligence in it. So the swelling in my hand will have something, intelligence in it, tumors will, viruses will, et cetera, that we don't look at. So we don't inquire as to what kind of intelligence lives in me. An example, let's say a person says they have a headache. And then if in shame's world, we just say, oh, do something to make the headache go away. 

That's fine. I mean, again, I'm not thinking don't take an aspirant, do what you want to take an Advil or whatever's right for you to do that or take a rest or don't eat so much ice cream or whatever the intelligence is. But then if we're always unshaming, unshaming means I think there's intelligence also in your body, then I would have to ask the person what kind of headache do you have? 

What do you mean? Well, is it a pounding headache? Is it a pressure headache? Is it like a sharp blade poking into one eye, like a migrainal headache? 

That makes sense. Is it like a pressure inside that wants to explode out? Or is it like a vice on top of you? Is it a heavy, warm kind of headache that pushes your head down? And as many other, as many descriptions are there as there are people, but those are the more common. 

And each of those has a different energetic experience that's important for that person. The sharp pain means that the person has a sharpness also in them, but the head is expressing. I have a sharp jabby pain in the side of my head. 

That's my headache. And that person will show me with their body and with their hand a sharp thing. And then if we worked on that, being sharper, being more cutting, making a boundary, saying, no, wait a second, this is okay. This is not okay. So they could use the sharpness. Or the pounding energy often has this pounding kind of thing. Wait a second, Amy, I have something to say. I want to do something. 

So the pounding energy will live in there. And that's true with all symptoms, not just with some, all symptoms when investigated for their somatic intelligence, I'm calling that, meaning something that would emerge as a message when it's unshamed, meaning I'm not looking at it just as something that's wrong with me. Right, or something different. As a college and messenger, I'm gonna learn something. My body's saying, I know something about life that you may not know. Let me offer that to you. 

A: I love this. I love this. This is so aligned with, you know, with the somatic work that I do. And, you know, what I want to ask here too is the way that, you know, suppression, right? 

The suppression that we, because you spoke to it earlier. So the way that children are larger than life often, especially if they're healthy and unabused, you know, like kids are, kids have those big emotions. They're really excited about going to the fair, you know, like whatever it is. And they're also really devastated when it's time to turn the TV off, right? 

And we kind of teach them over time to, you know, be less big about it, to not be, you know, and modulate that. Now, you know, what kind of, what kind of languaging or kind of behaviors do you think that parents do that unconsciously they end up shaming their children and having their children start to suppress their natural energies? Like what are the things that we're doing that we're not aware that we're doing? 

D: The main learning that I've gotten from children and parents, if a parent has first a natural reaction to the child, bringing that natural reaction is modulated. If it's too much for a two year old, they're all those kinds, is the most important. For instance, if a child, a parent said to me, my child is so loud, I just tell them, it's not okay to be so loud. So listen to that, miss, not okay to be so loud. And then I say, does the loudness bother you? Well, yes, it hurts my ears. Why not say, ouch, you're hurting my ears. I don't want you to be around me because my ears are hurting. 

And there's difference between that and it's not okay to be loud. Is I have an intimate relationship with you. Amy, you're hurting my ears. If you continue doing that, I'm gonna want you to go to your room. I'm gonna wanna walk away from you. 

Not because I'm trying to hurt you or punish you, because my body says, I don't wanna be so close to you screaming. That builds a relationship. And that relationship is not a shamed one doing that. It's a sacred one. It's a good bond. And the child will start trusting the parents natural reactions and the parent will start judging it. 

And it has power to it. If I bypass my reactions and make it into a, this is what's good and this is what's bad, for shame will enter and the relationship will become more distant. I'm no longer relating to you, realizing I'm hurting somebody and then saying, I don't care. Then you're going, why do? Now we have a conflict. 

So it's gonna be better. It doesn't mean a parent can have a rule. You try to cross that street, I'm gonna stop you. Period. 

I'm gonna do that. So, but again, I'm being very, I'm not saying it's bad to cross streets. I'm saying, I'm gonna stop you. And we can talk about the why, but the whole you shouldn't do this. This is what's bad and this is good. 

It's very confusing. The problem is that a lot of parents don't have models of authentic empowerment. If I don't feel power, I have to have a rule. If I don't feel like Amy, do that. That's not, I'm really, I'm upset. Now, how much of that upset as I bring out depends on the child, right? If you're three and you're vulnerable, I'm gonna do that much more gently than with a 15 year old, I understand. But if I don't have a model like that, and the only models I have for power are more like violence, I'm gonna threaten you, I'm gonna punish you, I'm gonna hit you, then that parent grows up, but how do I idea? What do I do? 

How do I, I don't know how to be a person in interaction with another person as a genuine relationship creating experience. So, huge. I mean, we work with a parent. This is, so taught me so much, who was, the child was like three, two, three years old. And when the parent was looking away, the child knocked a cup of hot tea, I'm hearing what the beverage was, and they put a burn on their face. 

And the child is older, but the parent can still see the scarring on the face. So, and she was saying, you know, she feels very ashamed about this. Somebody would say, that's good. But I say, let's, what happens now when you're in the shame experience? 

What happens when you see your child? Oh my gosh, I just feel bad. I think, what did I do? 

What did I do? Now think about that. This child comes to that parent, and the parent responds with, I'm a bad person. Every time. That's not a great relationship to have. Feeling some remorse, I'm really sorry. Oh my gosh, how do I make this up to you? 

But if every time you come near me, you meet a person who feels terrible about themselves in response to you. This is not a good relationship. It's not even about the child anymore. It's about me, and inner critic that's telling me I'm a terrible parent. So in a way, even though that parent is heartful and cares about their child, the child is becoming invisible. 

Goes back to our early conversation. You're no longer visible to me. It's all, the only thing that's visible to me is a person telling me how bad a parent I am. There's no me, there's no you anymore. Shame has dominated the situation. I can't even see you. 

So that's really bad for the relationship. Now, what can you do? Unshame says, what's the experience? Take a look at your child's face. Oh, I feel bad. Take a look at your child's face. What do you see? I see something bad I did. 

No, no, no, you already know that. See their face. Go ahead, look. Oh yeah, I see some scarring. 

What does the scarring look like? Learn about it. Take a look at it. Let's forget about whether you've apologized. You're a good parent. You're not somebody who cares. 

You didn't burn them intentionally. Wow, it's amazing. Do you see anything beautiful? Do you see warrior marks? Do you see scarring of who this person is gonna be? Do you see an early story that lives in them that's gonna become part of how they show themselves in the world because it's on their face? You have to learn to see this person independent of what shame is telling you about so I can actually witness a person. 

And then you're gonna have an honest relationship. Wow, I said, look at it. Put your finger on the scar. Well, is it bumpy? Get to know this experience. Then you can make intimacy out of it. But if you're filled with this more than a little bit, a little bit of time, I'm sorry, I feel bad. But if that persists, which it did for years, this is an awful relationship. 

A: Right, well, as again, as we said earlier, it's self-centered and we don't even realize that we're being self-centered when we're in that. We don't realize that we're not seeing the person that we're only seeing this version of ourselves that we are condemning in that moment. And that disconnects us. We're disconnected from ourselves. We're disconnected from the other person. I think that a lot of what's kind of coming up, and I'm glad we talked about the parent-child relationship, but other layers of it that come in that I'm sure a lot of people listening may have encountered is shame around sexuality, shame around the way your body looks or shape of it and all of that. 

And that's a very devastating experience. And I feel like it's rampant because we get conditioned from such an early age to say, like, this is what a beautiful body or a beautiful person looks like. These people who are beautiful are deserving of love and attention, and people who are not beautiful are not deserving of that love and attention, even if it's not a conscious thing that's being thrown in our faces every time we look at a magazine. 

And I feel like the narrative is starting to shift a little bit around that in the last 10, 15 years or so. But at the same time, it's been such a deeply driven, I guess, plot line for so many people that overcoming that, I know for myself, it was very hard for me to receive love, like physical affection and love, because I was inverted. I was inverted into myself in that shameful self-centeredness where I couldn't even receive anything. 

And there are moments, because I feel like, and you can speak to this too, like as we're healing, we're healing in spirals. We're looping back around to the same experience, multiple times, kind of the things we didn't pick up on the first time around, we have another go at it. We go, oh, okay, there's some of this that's still here, kind of like the shame that was in my pelvis, right? But what would you say to people who are struggling with sexual shame or shame over their bodies? And what would you say that could provide some hope that that's not just how it is forever? 

D: By 10 years old, 80% of girls are managing their body weight, not because they're overweight and have high body fat, but BMI indexes, some percentage of those, but 80% are managing themselves out of self-hatred, not out of self-hatred and how to self-hatred and shame go together. 

They're not the same. Self-hatred is, I can't stand my belly. I hate the flab, that's hatred. But if there's no shame, just hatred, there's a voice in my head saying, David, your belly is so ugly, it's disgusting, you should lose weight. If there's no shame, I'd be like, ow, damn, and I come through and say, Amy, I'm getting beaten up so today, I'm getting near the scale and I just think I'm terrible. Listen to that description. 

Now I'm gonna give you a shame description. What's going on with me? I don't know how to manage my body. 

I just wanna stay away from people. How come I'm such a loser? Why, you know, I'm so unlovable. 

I really am ugly. That's, I'm no longer describing an inner hatred. Somebody's, I'm getting a shit beat out of me today. I'm looking at my body and there's like voices in my head that are like, you're this, you're that, you're unlovable, you're ugly, disgusting, don't wear those clothes. Now I'm a person telling you about my inner experience in a pure form, it's a painful inexperience. There's no shame, just the hatred that I've internalized. 

But if shame is there, gosh, I just feel like a loser today. Why am I so unlovable? Gosh, I just see ugliness. I don't even know I'm being assaulted. So the problem with those 80% of those girls, they don't know, most of them don't know they're being assaulted. That's somebody saying you're not beautiful. To tell anything, anything, a tree, an animal, a person that they're not beautiful is an assault. Every time, not some of the time, because some people, no, every single time it's an assault. 

And if you don't notice it's an assault, then you internalize it, you call that, you say internalize, you invert, then shame enters. I just feel down today. Well, you're beating yourself up all day, wouldn't be shocking. You don't need therapy for your depression. You need somebody to talk to you about internalized oppression and the voices in your head. Depression, pathologization in that example. Not all, something's wrong with me, I need to get depressed. 

Unshaming, I just come to you and say, do you have this experience? Oh yeah, let's get together with a bunch of other women. Let's get 10 year old girls together. And somebody scream out terrible things about their bodies and have them all protect themselves. 

Then we would be unshaming around that. Huge, we don't notice those assaults that are coming in so quickly and so young and so thoroughly. This is an incredible study, which I'm always shy to tell because it's so painful, but it bears telling in this situation, I can't remember the researchers, but they've studied African American girls. I wanna say they were like five years old, my voice is getting low because it's so painful. I don't wanna say it, but it's instructive. 

So care for your bodies and feelings, people who listen. So they take these five year old black girls and they show them dolls. One's a white looking doll and one's a black looking doll. 

Different features, colors, hair textures and things like that. And then they say, it makes me weep. They say, which is the pretty one? And they all point to the white doll. Which is the good one? 

A good person, I'm just a good person. Yeah, painful. By five years old, they all have internalized the belief system. Now the problem, so that's self-hatred. The shame problem is they don't know they're being attacked. They don't know somebody put that idea into their head and that's disgusting. They just believe it. Does that make sense? 

They just it just it just gets sucked in. By the way, they had to stop that study because they were traumatizing those girls. Right. 

Yes. You see, speak about the body when the girl they have videos of this when they ask the girls which is the good one and the pretty one. They the girls have the point they put their finger out and the finger shaking because the finger doesn't the finger thinks I'm supposed to point to the white doll. That's what my head says but the body is like that's not okay for me to do this. Does that make sense? So there's like a yes and no in the body and so at least it is shaking then they interpret the shaking as stress. 

It's not only stress. It's a yes and a no. It's like yes but something is really wrong with me having to say this. So the body knows that information. Right. 

A: I would think on some level, you know, those questions are a bit intense, you know, and and you know, one might say almost leading because it's a binary. You have to pick one or the other and that's not really how human beings are but five-year-olds don't know that, you know, so it's also demonstrating just the nature of a child to have that while I have to pick one or the other. 

D: I don't tell me something and then I right. Yeah. 

A: Yeah. No, that's really intense. I mean, I grew up and just I'm a quarter Japanese. I, you know, don't look as when I was a little kid, I looked more Asian than I do now. I grew up in a very white area where there really weren't other kids that looked like me. I, you know, and so I understand like growing up my mother's blue-eyed blonde hair. 

I always wanted to look like her, you know, and when I would have friends over, I would be frustrated because when we would go to the park or something, people would think my blonde haired blue-eyed friend was my mother's daughter and they would think I was the friend but you know, that conditioning, I know, how can I point to where it came up that I just got this idea that like, oh, you know, was it my own, that fact that my mother was blonde, you know, redhead with blue eyes or was it, you know, the little mermaid or any number of like cartoons and things that I saw where there was never anybody who looked like me, you know.

And I see that there's more and more, you know, like the last 10 or 15 years, more representation in films of people of color, you know, and and allowing them to take the lead roles and I'm personally happy about that because when I was growing up in, you know, 1993 or whatever, like, we didn't see that. That was, you know, it was like the token character, you know what I mean? Would have like a mini spotlight for a second, you know? 

D: Because there's so much assault happening in the culture, this is what a boy should be, they shouldn't cry and they shouldn't do this and this is what a girl should be like, she should be thin and pretty and whatever and all these different ideas that are around their assaults and they injure just like that. 

We were talking about the judgments, you say, David, you're a terrible person. It could, it may not injure me, but it could, depending on the spot you got, I could hurt. So, the injuries are happening and by those little black girls, this is what beautiful is, this is what goodness is, those messages are coming in or in injuring. 

If no one witnesses the injury, that hurts, that's awful. I want to protect you from that. You matter, I want to hold you, I want to tell you how beautifully you are. If no one responds as if the assault is happening, then the person assumes something's wrong with me, shame enters. So, we need witnesses, that means somebody who gets it. If you're a little girl who's got different colored hair, somebody needs to be aware if they can. 

I'm not trying to say parents are good or bad, somebody needs to be aware and say, you're about to enter, I'm going to exaggerate the words, maybe I wouldn't say this at three, we have to say it in a different way. You're about to enter a world that people say, this blonde and blue eyes is really pretty. Let me tell you that about that. Ouch, that hurts. Look at this child, look at this, look at you. 

Somebody has to do that so that your system knows, oh, that hurts when people talk to me that way, but I don't internalize it as something wrong with me. I just want to live in a picture that can be hurtful and assaultive. If you know it's assaulting, you'll get hurt. If you don't know what's assaultive, you'll think something's wrong with you. Wrong with you, or you don't matter, is annihilating. People kill themselves, it's not small. People take their lives because of those kinds of things. 

I don't matter. I just think something's wrong with me all the time because no one has observed violence. The violence could be obvious. I grew up with a father who used fists and belts to express his rage and had a mother who said, it's not happening, right in front of her. She would say, I don't see what you're talking about. 

I'm like, he's sitting right there with his belt. What are you talking about? But never mind the next day. So then I have the assault. That's not shaming. That's just, that's abuse. That's violence. Somebody should have stopped him from doing that. No good. But if I could, if I walk away from the scene saying, my father is a mean person, he hurts people, he's a bad man. 

I don't like him. That's not shame. It's hurt. It's hurt. It's fear. 

But no shame. But if someone says, what are you talking about? Why are you so dramatic? 

How come you're angry? Your father doesn't do that. I think you're making things up. I'm not sure that's what he really meant. If that's what surrounds that violence inside of me. So it's not the assault that comes shame. 

It's that belief system. So now I walk around kind of going, why am I feeling bad? What's going on? How come somebody said something to me today and I'm so sensitive? I have a whole analysis of what's wrong with me analysis. And that analysis, I love the way you said, inverts me. I'm no longer related to the world, to my children, to the world, to you, to the politics of the moment. 

What's going on in Palestine? I'm not one related to those things. I'm inverted. And then therefore I wake up, I look at the loser, I think I'm depressed. 

I don't think, well, of course I'm feeling pain about that. I don't only have that beautiful relationship which makes me more activist about what's going on in the world. I have this inverted thing. I want you to go to therapy and fix myself. Therapy's good. I'm into it obviously because I've been a therapist 35 years. But people often come with a viewpoint about themselves as if something's wrong with them as opposed to learning something deeper and unshaming of who they are. Yeah. 

A: Yeah. I mean, it's all very fascinating because I think that I was very suppressed for a lot of my childhood and when I'm observing like my son, I have a six-year-old son, he says stuff that I don't even think I was capable of saying out loud until I was like a teenager. And sometimes it's disturbing because he will say things like I'm a bad person and I don't like myself. 

I hate myself. And it's like, it's sort of all started when we moved across the country and he had to leave a lot of his friends. And so I was, I've been very aware and doing a lot of like care for him in this big transition. And with that big transition came some of this like negative self-talk and being really down on himself. 

People don't like me. And when I really witness it, it's like, I had those same thoughts and feelings when I was his age, but I didn't say them out loud to anybody. They were internalized. 

D: No one knows that you're getting hurt inside. Right. 

A: And I didn't say anything about them till I was like a teenager or like older, you know what I mean? Like admit to the world that I was feeling this way. And so it blows my mind. I'm kind of impressed with him at the same time. It like breaks my heart to hear, you know, my beautiful little six-year-old boy say something like people don't like me, you know? 

D: But it's like. I'm sorry, I'm just cutting off. Go ahead. 

A: Go ahead. But I think he's saying it out loud. He's at least like not letting it just like fester in him. So I don't know what do you think about like someone saying things out loud? I mean, you were doing a bit of that. That's what made me think of it versus just holding it in. 

D: Like what's the what's the benefit? Better than they say it out loud and then they need because it's a form of violence, something inside is saying, I don't like you. Right? He has that. You're a bad. I don't like you. You're no good. 

Whatever those things are. That so that's good that it's out. Now it can be witnessed and you can kind of go ouch. Oh, I don't want anybody talking to you. I'm making up now. I don't want anybody talking to you like that. 

Who's saying those things about you? I would say those kinds of things out loud. So there's a reaction. 

I wouldn't say so many people would want to say that's not true. You're beautiful. That's helpful but not as helpful as witnessing the violence like again, if my father beat me and you said, David, you're a great kid. That's not going to help enough. You need to say you're being beaten. Can you follow the difference? 

So one would be nice. You lift me back up but you're not doing anything about the violence. So if I were with that kid and the kid were free to interact with me and all those kinds of things, then I would say there's somebody over there. I'd put maybe put a representation or a doll or make believe chair and somebody is saying you're bad. You're dumb. You're no good. 

We don't like you. I wouldn't have the kid be over there and I'd say, what are we going to do about that? What are we going to do about that scene of holding up two things? Somebody is criticizing saying I don't like somebody and that the child didn't know and I'd say, well, I want to stop that person from saying those things. I want to get in between the two of you and block. 

Don't you talk to them like that. The child needs to see a response to the violent part. This is a big thing with bullying in children. They need to see they need to work on the violent scene. They don't have to do that therapeutically but somebody needs to dramatize those scenes and then you can say, you talk to my son like that. 

A: Who's saying they're they're bad? Well, it's inside of me. Yeah, but somebody told you that I'm going to punch their noses in. 

D: I don't know what I'm going to do, right? But some kind of reaction to the fact that somebody is being injured, assaulted, there's a voice that got inside. It came from somewhere. They didn't make that up. People mean that those exact words but there was an energy that matched those words that came in. Right. 

A: And so, you know, the response that you're describing almost sounds like creating like a no or a boundary that like this assault, whether it's a, you know, internal thought or someone actually saying something to me, like the response that you want the kids to witness is the no and the pushback and the saying that's not okay to do that and you can't continue to do that because that perhaps helps reprogram the way that they're experiencing their internal, you know.

When they when they're having these internal thoughts instead of just buying in, they have that internal thought and then then they become aware that they can push back and they can go, actually, I don't need to think about that right now. That's not, you know, totally different response. 

D: Ow, that hurts. I don't like it. That's painful. Oh, mommy, they pizza and they really hurts. They hurt my feelings. No shame to hurt. But mommy, why am I so bad? How come? 

Why am I such a stupid person? That's a whole different experience. Then people hurt me. 

The second one, I've internalized something as fine to disconnect myself from myself. And now I'm going to lose touch with things. I'm going to lose touch with my essence. I could start to get more depressed because I'm out of touch with my own vitality. 

The shame stops, suppresses all those proper reactions, proper meaning the natural reactions to people talking about you in an nasty way. Maya Angelou, some of you people know her. She's died a few minutes, three, four years ago. I don't remember. So she was a anyway, it's a longer story. 

Should I tell a longer story? I don't do it. I'm curious. Okay, okay. 

I just wanted to I was just noticing it doesn't take that long. Anyway, so Maya Angelou, black girl, I think she was like five or six. This is a violin story. 

So again, people triggering their feelings should be cared about. She was raped as a child. I think she was like five or six. 

I always get the ages wrong, but someone's around there. And then inside of her, she was like, what should I do? Should I tell people? Should I say, say, tell the story? Should I tell? 

I think it was an uncle or something like that. And she thinks, that would be really scary. They might do something really bad. But so she but she does tell. And a few days later, there's a knock on the door and the man who raped her was they found kicked to death. She concludes in her child's mind, I should have never said anything. 

I caused this person to die. Not saying that's legit, but just let the child's mind those listening, the child's mind is what it says. And right, I get that child's mind has that understanding and they don't know what to do with her because she decides she shouldn't speak. She didn't speak for five and a half years. 

She was that that potent and experienced. Anyway, they didn't know what to do with her. They sent her to her grandma's house because grandma was a special woman and my I call grandma mama. So Maya would go to school and she would write notes. She wouldn't speak to him and speak in school. She wouldn't speak at home. She wrote things that wrote things down one day. The school year is starting and the teacher new teacher says everybody introduced themselves and Maya writes something down and the teacher says, you have to speak in my class and ridicules her in front of everybody. 

Right? A public humiliation doesn't understand. Maya doesn't think it's legitimate. Maya goes from crying, right? To mama, grandma. And grandma says, get ready. We're going to go back to school. Grandma goes to the school in front of the classroom. Smacks the teacher in the face in front of everybody. 

The assault happens in public. Mama addresses it in public. Then mama says, I'm sorry. I should never have hit you like that. That's not okay. But she already did. So there's two messages. It's not okay for me to do this. 

That's true. And the and part of me wanted to smack you in the face in public both. See how beautiful like the both are and then she says to you have grandchildren ma'am. 

Like maybe you would understand what happens and then so Maya watches that. This is my worth. This is what this means. Then mama takes Maya home and spends hours making her favorite red velvet cake and gives her the cake. This is what she says. What I did today going to school and making you this cake will never make up for how you were treated. Now listen to what she's going to internalize. That will never make up because you were mistreated. 

You were disrespected. Right? Then touching that the power now that's an that's an unshaming act. 

Right? I witnessed it. I know what happened. 

I know this was terrible. Somebody should have defended you. Someone should respond like that's a big deal. 

Someone should care about you and someone should tell you how big that experience was and that should never happen to you. So now you don't walk around thinking what's wrong with me? I don't matter. You think I am a special person like everybody should feel I should be treated well. 

No one should talk to me like this. So that's a protective lovingness. Right? A boundary or something. Bound that child. You can see why in part why she's then free to when she does speak to be so incredible. Yeah. 

A: That is an amazing story and I think you know the red velvet cake and like that act I can almost imagine it kind of like reverberating back down the timeline to like the you know the reason she stopped speaking you know like we sometimes when you know we've had- I mean I've had experience where we feel shame and then every other moment that we've ever felt shame and humiliated and embarrassed we get like triggered down the line and it's like oh.

And now I'm thinking about this thing that happened in third grade right but it can work the other way too with the unshaming or with the blessings when we have this moment where where something that rectifies it when there's a healing that occurs that healing can also travel down the chain of events right. That's kind of the image I got with like the red velvet cake and that act of like you know standing up for her in her silence you know kind of shaking things up all the way back down to the shame she probably felt when she stopped speaking the whole reason that she wasn't speaking in class. 

D: I'm loving the way you're thinking and the way you're framing things and seeing I like that the reverberation and inversion and appreciating I'm appreciating you and admiring you and seeing your intelligence and your experience and your wisdom and how you're and how you frame things really I'm glad you're in the world doing your your work the way you are and with your gifts and with your story and intelligence. 

A: Oh thank you yeah I mean and you probably maybe this is a good time to touch on it like you know there have been moments when I have been processing an experience that was unprocessed in me and I'm like why did I have to go through this like why did I have to have this terrible thing happen like what's wrong with me and then it becomes what's wrong with God why would why would life do this to me you know and I had a really powerful moment a few years ago with a fellow you know therapist healer.

And she just held my hand and she said so that you would know what it was like to go through that so that you would understand like truly understand this particular flavor of like human pain you know and so in your story and you know you've shared a little bit on it today like to become a person who is carrying this message of unshaming in the world like a lot of times it comes from right like the wounds that we had to endure early on in life in my and my suppression that I went through of not being able to even say the things that I was experiencing internally to anyone until I was you know in my teens and twenties right? 

D: The wounded healer archetype that means some of us take the wounds that we have and incubate them alchemize them we hold them and cook them and alchemy was a cooking we cook them to find some of our own gifts it doesn't mean that anybody should be hurt and that's not the point that's miss that's a misuse but does my the medicine that David has does it go to the place where my wounds are? 

That's why you can find it there just like if you cut your hand right then your healing stuff your immune system your white blood cells go to that spot right the white blood it didn't it didn't create white blood cells but your white blood cells kind of go we better go to that hand infections possible and when people have psychological wounds the gifts in the medicine that people carry goes to that spot.

So then if you inquire about the violence I experienced as a child you'll also be able to find some of the gifts I call the medicine I naturally have because that's what I did you take your medicine the gifts you have the intelligence that can make a better world it will go to that spot so some people say it causes that it's not caused it doesn't cause the gifts but the gifts are magnetically drawn to the difficulties so if we explore the difficulties we can find the medicine in there that's true for a culture.

If we go to the to a culture let's say racism in the United States is a is one of the essential wounds of the culture then we can go to that issue and we can learn something about the kind of medicine that the culture needs in various different forms in the musical form around race all of almost all American I think all American authentic music from American not from Europe etc it comes from the black traditions from gospel to blues to rhythm and blues to hip hop and jazz all these things happen so these are medicines that that come into the culture you need these other kind of medicines doesn't mean these things are over but um anyway I'm just thinking about the cultural level of that it's real 

A: yeah that's fascinating I haven't thought about it on that cultural level yeah I haven't thought about that before so I love that is is this you know do you investigate these things in your book the unshaming way or is it more practical like do you talk about it from a more cultural anthropological standpoint or is it a little bit of both and then the more practical like how to kind of thing 

D: I'm always weaving things into the social issues like if we look at a woman's body it's just going to be her but in but the sexist culture that's the reason why 80% of 10 year old girls it's not because everyone has a bad parent it's because they're living it so I'm always making that that weaving connection so that people don't think oh that's only me and my parents it is but those parents channel the culture that they've that they've learned in the traumas that they've learned but I don't remember if I've talked about the medicine inside of the cultural wounds. 

I did in an earlier book which is on more on activism itself but it's really important so that when we look at something like racism we're wanting to be anti-racist I want to be I want to stop those kind of things and with bear witness bearing witness to the assault is really important but then bearing witness then to racism means we should also be seeing jazz and rhythm and blues right we should be seeing what's erupted out of that particular tradition so that we don't make it you know we should see Maya Angelou's poetry and how amazing a voice is not only a wounded black girl but the wounded black girl who then became who wrote six volumes of an autobiography including I know when it came to her.

So we want to see the beauty and intelligence that comes out of these things this is a really important part of unshaming and working with people because people lose touch when they focus on their this ease I'm traumatized I'm depressed I'm anxious and although I'm procrastinating I'm gonna have an add addictions have codependent patterns all these things that we analyze about ourselves if we see them absent of the wholeness of the person which includes the kind of beauty and gifts that that person carries then we are only looking at what I call a pathology you're an ill person we're trying to heal you're not a person who's going to be doing somatic work and doing podcasts who's going to have a voice in the world I want to make sure that when I'm healing you if I'm charged with being your healer. 

I'm not really healing you anyway but if I'm being charged with being the healer I want to make sure I'm seeing Amy and the woman she is and the gifts that she is otherwise I'm just turning you into only an illness that's not sufficient I want to help you be this particular person with her voice and her intelligence the kind of person she wants to be the teacher that she is I want to be mindful that otherwise the person gets reduced to only a woundedness or a sickness or a disease that's painful that's shaming 

A: and a lot of times people are coming in with that they're coming in with that narrowness view of themselves right and part of what I feel like you're speaking to and then this is a big part of like work that I have with specific clients is like allowing them to be their full their full spectrum of their themselves again right and and that kind of sticking up for you know because I'm and I'm gonna kind of backtrack and just go over some of the main points now.

It's like when you know when something occurs when there's some kind of as you put it assault that there's a response to that that there's a response that draws a boundary that says no we don't you know we don't continue on with that kind of assault and and recognizing that perhaps it came from an outside source it came from a particular experience or from our culture or from you know some kind of source that didn't originate in us.

It's not an us problem necessarily right and so those kind of creating those boundaries and then the other things that you said about like communicating in the moment if you can if you're capable of that practicing communicating when something hurts in an authentic way that just says hey you know the moment ago what you said it affected me and I'm still affected by it right now it hurt my feelings right versus letting it become a pathology with something that's wrong with me why am I so sensitive oh this this happens all the time that I get hurt by things people say and everybody else is laughing so it must be me it must be my fault right.

And all that and when the person comes in it's like to be able to be allowed to be bigger not bigger but like to fill up more space with their experience to experience and express what they feel and where their boundaries are and what they want or what they don't want and what feels good and what doesn't feel good to them you know and and allow them to be in that fullness of their somatic experience again rather than reduce to as you said pathologies and what's wrong and I'm a problem they're problems that need to get fixed right 

D: yeah beautifully said I love that I love your distinction you are making it's not just being bigger it's the fullness I love that you bring that in yeah that's a vision of healing as I think healing comes from the root word which means wholeness it means I'm more of me all of me if possible whatever all looks like but it's more of me is here yeah 

A: not less of James says let's cut this out cut this out cut this out cut this 

D: out one of my teachers Robert Bly used to say that gets thrown into the shadow bag I love that I take my sensitivity throw that in the shadow take my hot blooded throw that in the shadow bag take my intelligence I shouldn't have too smart throw that in the shadow bag right take my emotional freedom take throw that in the shadow bag take my playfulness throw that you're pretty soon here like a you're carrying a very heavy bag he said 

A: around yeah it weighs us down and it creates our posture our posture gets formed sometimes like so let's go there for a moment as it was as we're coming kind of around to towards the end of our 

A: interview the somatic experience of shame right like what I was kind of taught in my trainer what I've connected to is that it's a contraction of like the front of our body it's like a it's like a making ourselves smaller right but what I personally experienced was that we we don't want to look weak I didn't want to look weak I didn't want to look insecure and so there's another pattern that gets put on top of it which we call in my practice like a green light or a landau reflex where your lower back engages and your body's like kind of arched and lifted up right but underneath that layer of contraction there's a there's a stomach contraction pulling you down and slumping you right?

And so what I discovered through releasing my muscle patterns was that I looked like you know in my 20s I looked like this perfect yoga teacher with great posture and people like oh are you a dancer you know but underneath of that was the shame that I was holding the fear that I was holding and it was it was actually in releasing the mask right that I walked around with like I'm okay I'm good I've got it figured out and you release that mask and then you come in contact with the little child inside of you that's kind of curled up in a ball right and would you say that a lot of people like experience like when they can get to because it can take some time sometimes for people to actually get in touch with the sensations of shame right do you think that that they have a specific physical patterning that you have witnessed or seen is it is it that contraction of the front of their body 

D: it is kind of a contraction but the way I think think of it is shame exists in connection with some aspect of the person the need for validation I shouldn't either so then the shame and the need for validation or I'm angry or I want or I'm hurt I'm not allowed to be hurt I should be a strong guy so then being hurt and shame went together or I look in the mirror and I think that's ugly and nobody defends me so now my body and shame go together so shame is always attaching to something and so then the processing of shame almost always I'm going to say one one way it does this not true almost always has to connect with that thing that's being shamed the shame around my Jewish nose then I have to deal with.

Then I have to look at my nose and see it not as a bigger as the nose it as the nose I have so the different there'll be different body postures and energies that will go with that if it's pride then pride will come out if it's tenderness then tenderness will come out and the only time that that's not true where shame is attached to something is when you're looking at the etiology of shame where does it begin in the psyche and it begins around early wounds that are not witnessed those early could be past generations big wounds that we talked about before big assaults, traumatizing assaults, abusive assaults, abuse and trauma those old word all these words need to be defined clearly and aren't.

But my book they are yes if I get hurt and no one witnesses it it the the wound freezes or if it gets witnessed as a denial or gaslighting then the wound freezes that's what we call trauma and when that wound freezes and can't do what a wound does curl up as you're saying scream out run away and hide smash things whatever the whatever the energy that would be lived inside me if you if I was free in that moment those energies get held inside and not witnessed all of that begins with this idea of what's wrong with me and then that and that ends up going all over the place so in that place there is there's like a contraction of all those reactions that live in the trauma spots or processing trauma is more processing trauma is almost all about shame people you don't have to think of it that way but what we're doing is unshame we're allowing the experiences to happen and be seen that's what an unshaming is right? 

So I'm not walking around thinking what's wrong with me I'm thinking I can let me tell you about my Jewish story right there's no shame in that it's just a story and it's painful and difficult and it makes you angry and it makes you tender and it makes you whatever all those kinds of things but those reactions need to be had so back to your question if we're either looking at shame as attached to a quality in that case the quality is going to have a lot to do the quality itself will have a lot to do with with the body ends up doing or we're going to go into it more the beginnings of shame which has to do with a trauma early in the life or in a past generation that hasn't been processed and then there is a contraction around all the reactions that aren't allowed to person wasn't allowed to have 

A: they're not allowed to have and they're not allowed to physically express I think you described in you know your description just a few moments ago like movements physical moving slamming of our fists down like you know like a kid would have a tantrum or something to move that energy and express it we get taught to suppress that and to not express that and to hold ourselves stiffly and orderly to you know fit in with the culture fit in with the world and to not stand out too much to have someone go oh what's wrong with you so we do that we preemptively do the what's wrong with you to hold ourselves from back from expressing what's going on 

D: yeah that's how retreated retreated what's wrong when I was a kid one of the only ways that I could influence my family system was to have stomach aches and my stomach aches were so bad people had to pay attention because now if I said I don't like what's going on it makes a really lot of violence in my home no one would have responded to me they would have said uh you're acting so they this would be gas lighting and dismissive so that had no impact for me to say which I did a lot to talk about what's happening no impact but if I had a stomach ache which I would really get my body said that stomach aches when I got a stomach ache people would kind of take me away from say come and get me from school or a couple times I'd be taken to the hospital the doctors. 

I was in so much physical pain in my stomach they didn't find any physical problem with my stomach but the power of my stomach ache was really big the whole family had to stop watching tv had to stop being violent everyone had to go to the doctor that's a pretty potent I'm not saying it's the way to do it that's a potent event the problem is people are thinking what's wrong with David he's got a stomach ache they're not thinking what the hell is going on in this house that he's whirling over in pain all the time that would that would have been more less shaming right then and be like making intelligence out of it but that's one way the body and its symptomology that's not so uncommon as people think the body and its symptomality has a lot of expression in it it's a powerful expression I mean powerful meaning it changes everything 

A: right it physiologically affects us immediately I mean you describe that earlier with the headaches and like things that a headache could mean things that a stomach ache could mean and you know physical pain in our bodies is showing up as a messenger right and trying to get our attention about something so this is very exciting this is very groundbreaking 

D: conversation so I'm I don't know I was gonna say proud of you but that maybe I don't need to be condescending my 60 year old nine year old male person has those words so but I'm witnessing your intelligence and your your passion and your experience 

A: Thank you well thankfully I have a I have a very healed relationship or very you know healing relationship with my dad and so I can receive your your praise and your proudness with like no hesitation so thank you.

D: I'm cheering you like a ghost sister when spreading your message and doing your work and building your library of understanding in your mind and body it's a really good thing 

A: thank you thank you for saying yes this conversation has been impactful I'm so excited to read your book so tell us a 

D: my book came out it's my fourth book it came out in end of November okay I got a wonderful review by Gabbermate who was which was people said would not be very difficult to get my publisher said he's probably not gonna say yes not because he's not interested in your book just because he's not just because he's not gonna say yes to looking at people's books but uh he was really moved by that work so I was I was really happy about that.

So people can find my book anywhere you know Amazon and books other bonds and whatever books are sold you they'll either have a copy working or can get a copy it's called the unshaming way yeah my book before that was called you can't judge a body by its cover which is all about body shame and gender between women's stories that I tell and what it looks like to not think what should you do about your body being heavier but what are the stories and messages that lived in the in the eating patterns and bodies 

A: wow fantastic well I so appreciate this conversation again and you know for those those people who are on social media can where can they find you I mean I know that I found you on Facebook and I read a lot of your posts on Facebook are you also active anywhere else that people can find you 

D: Instagram is probably the main social venue for me so if people look up David and my last name is bedrick bed R I C K like bedrock bedrick people will find me on Instagram there's lots of reels and posts and and from there you can find lots of things I have about 90 articles on uh in psychology today those are accessible without cost the people just want to read different ideas there have youtube videos hour long trainings you can find there without cost and then there are things have shorter classes that are low prices and longer trainings that some people study how to do the unshaming work and learn to be facilitated those are longer training so there's a whole range of of accesses depending on your interest in your financial resources 

A: fantastic yes so the last one thing I'll offer here is like to kind of close our conversation what would you say to someone who has been afraid to go there with their shame who is hesitant because oh it's going to be really difficult what would you say to someone who's in that space 

D: I would say slow down and feel what it's like to be afraid, feel the fear in your body, where is it in your stomach, and your jaw, in your hand,s and your solar plexus feel your fear just the way it is make some sounds that go with the fear 

A: Uh no 

D: Do that out loud and enjoy it like a child would like a child and then the fear will do what it's supposed to do, and the next thing will happen 

A: I love that thank you thank you so much for this conversation and for those of you listening today feel free to leave a message on the post right if you saw this on a post leave a message there feel free to message me and tell me what you thought of this conversation I'm always so happy to hear from our listeners about what was impactful for them and this was a very impactful conversation. Thank you again, David. 

D: Thank you, Aimee.

A: Hey there friend I hope you enjoyed today's episode I would love to hear your thoughts follow me on instagram @AimeeTakaya and send me a dm about this episode I'd like to thank you for being part of this somatic revolution and if you'd like to support the podcast and help more people learn about somatics consider leaving a review or a rating and finally if you'd like to have the experience of relief in your tight hips or back and learn to understand what your body is really saying to you visit youcanfreeyoursoma.com I can't wait to share with you what is truly possible bye for now