1726 || grief work || healing the shame that binds you

0:00Welcome to the Make Your Damn Bed Podcast. A daily motivation podcast designed to help you get out of bed every morning with a little company from me, Julie America. If you struggle with consistency, let's build a little momentum together, whether you make your bed or not. Good morning sunshine, welcome to another day of the Make Your Damn Bed Podcast. Lately, I've been reading from John Bradshaw's book Healing the Shame That Binds You. So far, we've talked about the foundational experiences and childhood that could create these shame-based responses and force us to create false selves as a way to cope with this toxic shame. And we dug into how the way to deal with it is to address it, to be able to face it directly and really understand where that shame stems from. And this often comes from healing and her child work. But today, I want to talk about the integration of your disowned parts, which can only be done once they're identified.

1:04As Halstone and Cedra Winkleman put it, the course of our life is determined by an array of selves that live within each of us. These selves call out to us constantly, in our dreams and fantasies, in our moods and maladies, and in a multitude of unpredictable and inexplicable reactions to the world around us. As Bradshaw puts it, a big part of the work of self-acceptance involves the integration of our shame-bound feelings, needs, and wants. Most shame-based people feel ashamed when they need something, especially if they need things like help. Whenever they feel angry or sad or fearful or joyous, or whenever they're sexual or assertive, these essential parts of us have been split off. And we try to act like we're not needy. We pretend we don't feel anything or we don't feel what we feel. And many of us, either numb out our sexuality completely and act very puritanical or we use sexuality to avoid all other feelings and needs.

2:07In all cases, though, we're cut off from the vital parts of ourselves. These disowned parts appear most commonly in our dreams and in our projections. This is especially true of our sexuality and our natural instincts. In their book Embracing Ourselves, Halston and Cedra Winkleman have developed a powerful approach for overcoming the self alienation that results from toxic shame. Their work is based on the premise that our personalities are constituted by an array of selves that live within each of us. These selves are the result of the self-splitting that happens naturally in the process of growing up. Because, of course, our caregivers are going to be imperfect. None of them could have accepted us with the perfect unconditional love. Everyone in their own way puts conditions of worth on us and measure us according to their map of the world. So in doing this, they naturally reject the parts that don't measure up to their way of viewing things.

3:07These parts become split-off and over-along childhood become somewhat autonomous. Each split-off part becomes a little self. These little selves call out to us constantly. We experience this as our inner voice. The more we become conscious of these inner voices, the greater our range of freedom is. While everyone has these voices, shame-based people have them in spades. So they have a greater need than others to integrate all of their many selves. As forms of energy, these disowned parts of us exert considerable influence. Meaning it's exhausting to hold space for all of these different parts. Shame-based people tend to be exhausted a lot of the time. They spend so much energy holding onto these masks and hiding their disowned parts. That Bradshaw compares it to holding a beach ball underwater. Virginia Satire compares it to keeping guard over hungry dogs locked in a basement.

4:07Either way, it becomes a lot of work. These repressed parts exert a lot of pressure by forcing us to keep their opposites going all the time. While we tend to be repelled by our own disowned selves, they hold a certain fascination for us. And so the underlying premise of Stone and Winkleman's work is that all of our parts are actually okay. In fact, every aspect of every person is crucial for their wholeness and their completeness. There's no law that says one part is better than another. And our consciousness, with its many selves, needs to operate on principles of social equality and democracy. Basically, there's three levels of consciousness. Our awareness, the experience of our subpersonalities or inner voices, and our ego. In this context, awareness is just witnessing. It doesn't judge. It is simply the experience where the subpersonality is the experience of whatever we've manifested as an energy pattern response.

5:11Whether it's physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual, you are experiencing shame-bound anger that you've repressed for years. And now you've identified with your anger to the point that you're not even aware of your own anger. And so you can't experience that rage until you address it. Then you can use your ego to become more aware of your experience. The ego is the executive of the psyche. This is what makes choices. The ego receives information from the awareness level and the experience of your different energy patterns that you have in your history. And fortunately, as we move forward in the consciousness process, the ego becomes a more self-aware ego. And as a more aware ego, it's in a position to make real and more considered choices. This is the needed direction for healing the shame that binds us. As we developed our false, perfectionistic, controlling, people-pleasing parts of ourselves, our ego lost its authentic executive power and became identified with the controller or the protector.

6:24And once you start to identify with being a perfectionist or being a people-pleaser or you identify with your inner critic, you lose your ability to have real choices. Instead, you identify as the false self and thus you release all control to that false self. You have to make choices through the perfectionist or through the people-pleaser or through the voice that constantly criticizes yourself. The goal is to get in touch with the energy and see it as one of many energy patterns that must be integrated in order to affect conscious choice, leading to integrated action. So this starts with exploring the subpersonalities or your energy systems that are there to protect you. Whether it's critical or embarrassed or repressive or controlling, only ones you've identified it can you clarify it. Quote, remember that control is one of the hiding places for shame-based people, though it will vary from one person to the next how it manifests.

7:31This is why it's so important not to identify with these masks or this false self. You are not controlling. You are not a perfectionist. There is simply one part of you that desires control and desires perfection, which is fair. But you can integrate the part of you that desires that without allowing that part of you to take over and make all the rules and make all the choices. So only after you've become aware of these subpersonalities and you've clarified them, can you start to enhance your awareness to simply witnessing and integrating. Quote, awareness is not about decisions or action. Nothing is to be changed. It's the point of which everything is noted and accepted. So that ideally you can start to make peace with all of your villagers. He shares an exercise about ranking people you dislike and writing down what you dislike about them.

8:34And for some reason, this exercise tends to bring up personality traits that represent the disowned parts of ourselves or the energy patterns that you don't want to integrate into your life under any circumstances. And you might find that this is a good way to externalize some of your own disowned personality traits, some of the parts you've repressed in yourself. And as Bradshaw reminds us, every disowned part of ourself has an opposite energy of which your protector or your controller can be identified. It takes a lot of energy to keep things disowned. This explains why we feel so intensely about our enemies. How stone compares this energy to a dam that has been built to stop the flow of this energy. Behind the dam there's an accumulation of dirty water and all kinds of debris and pressure. It's important to integrate this energy and use it more creatively. And he shares that one way to do this is to ask yourself some reflective questions about your enemies list.

9:39How can that person become your teacher? What can you learn by listening to that person? This person to whom you feel averse might be the key to helping you look at the parts of yourselves that you are overtly identified with not having. Bradshaw suggests asking the disowned part of yourself directly what it thinks. Ask the selfish, rude, antagonistic part of yourself, how it would change your life if you really owned it. Let it talk to you and listen to what it has to say. Allow it to bring you new perspectives and feel the energy it brings. Maybe it can offer new solutions to old problems. Because as Cedra Winkleman puts it, its views have never been available before. You may be surprised at the new energy you receive. Because hiding and secrecy takes energy, but bringing darkness to light does not. Now again, this doesn't mean you become this disowned part of yourself.

10:43You can't become the selfish and antagonistic asshole that you've been dreading. That would just do the same thing that you've been doing before, which is identifying with one part and excluding another. The exercise is simply to listen and integrate, to free up energy that has been bound in shame. And for me, that's a very valuable clarification. One, I needed to hear before I started welcoming the selfish or more problematic parts of myself. Integration does not mean allowing those to take over. It simply means to stop pretending like they don't exist. As always, you can access all of the resources and the show notes if you're interested. In the meantime, just know I love you so much. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. And I will talk to you tomorrow while you make your damn bet. Goodbye, cutie. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of the Make Your Damn Bad Podcast. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss tomorrow's episode.

11:44You can follow on Instagram and TikTok at mydbpodcast for occasional updates. And if you could rate and review this episode five stars wherever you're listening, it genuinely helps the podcast at its core. And if you have anyone in your life you think might be interested in hearing what I have had to say, it also makes a huge difference in the sustainability and my ability to make this something worth sharing. So if you have questions or want specific advice, you can email me at mydbpodcast.gmail.com. In the meantime, I've been your host, Julie America. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. And I'll talk to you tomorrow while you make your damn bet.