390 - Ellen Ronka is back to talk Shame, Anti People Pleasing and Obsessive Thinking

Welcome back to the Mind and Fitness Podcast. It is Halloween Day Friday October 31st. I'm gonna try and record this opening as fast as possible because My neighbors are having evidently the most landscaping ever done in the history of landscaping done today I've been trying to record this open for a few hours now and it just keeps getting louder. So let's get to it Welcome back and with that with all the I'm not sure if you can hear my dogs my dogs are going insane too So Ellen Ronka was on the podcast several weeks ago. She came back. We wanted to deep dive into answering a few questions and A lot of this had to do with the shame overwhelm cycle sort of continuing on that But overall just diving quite a bit deeper into what we had talked about before so responding to indecisiveness Again, the shame overwhelm cycle. There's just a lot of really really good stuff It was great having her around you can find her by the way at chronictacure.com And I'm gonna link that in the show notes So listen to Ellen Ronka and I part two welcome back to the Mind and Fitness Podcast I am your host Eddie Linnonstein. I've had a lot of repeat guests over the years I've got another repeat one today Ellen Ronka is back. Can you hear me? I can I was I don't know what I told you that I that I was listening to our last episode while I was running this morning and I Listen to all my podcasts on 1.5x because a lot of the ones that I listened to are very long like we did 52 minutes last time I'm talking like hour and a half two hours and most of the ones that I listened to are like About professional wrestling which is a little geeky whatever But I got to be able to get through them pretty quick like you know I've got 10 that I listened to a week and I walk the dogs every day and it's only 35 minutes. I'm trying to You know, I'm trying to get through those and I kept saying I was saying Ellen Ronka in the beginning and for some reason my brain kept going to Alman Roka every time I would say it was what I kept I don't know if you've ever heard that before ever even had that thought but Too funny. I've not had that thought but it's gonna be hard to get out of my brain Well, and actually the first the person that I had on my podcast a few months ago Skylar who introduced me to I didn't I had never heard your name before and she raved about you and the first time she said the name. I was like Did she just say Alman Roka? No, that's what she said so You know the funny thing is is that when I when I'm trying to get people to know how to spell my name I'll say that like you know like Tonka trucks and then they like you know or Willy Wonka and a truck You know because I really I'm a big dark chocolate fan But you know I don't really want to be associated with either of those me But you know Alman Roka isn't gonna get us to spell it without any better. So do our I guess I haven't looked in a toy section Are Tonka trucks still around oh? I would have assumed but maybe not I mean all the let me tell you a lot of the cool stuff is not around anymore So it's don't get your hopes up. Okay Okay Moments after we recorded the last podcast. I sent you an email And I said hey Something that I want to learn more about that we really just grazed and I want to get your take on and have that kind of be the jumpoff point for us Was around people being okay with not being liked essentially the opposite of a people pleaser and I want to I want to dive more into that so Start us out All right, would you want to tell me what hangs you up on it? I think it was just interesting because I haven't heard I think that's sort of a necessary skill And part of me would just be led to believe that That's just something that comes with Experience like life experience like the longer that you're alive assuming but you like you know kids If you're a teenager you want to fit in right so like you kind of want to be liked but as time goes on as you become an adult You would think that and I know this isn't the case which I can see the expression on your face This is not the case you would think that the case would be that people grow out of that and There would become a time where they're sort of like I don't really care what other people think or I don't really care if I'm pleasing people But I know that that probably is not the case for a lot of people It might well be if you're an intentionally growing person, but not everyone is yeah And also I think not everyone gets the same quality of help or you know finds the right resources to help them grow out of things like that But let's frame this up because I want to make sure people our listeners understand the context because we're like We just came back into this deep dive and I want people to understand that we were talking about this in the context of I think I said something pretty bold which is I still stand by it that in order to heal from mind-body symptoms Which is to say chronic symptoms right symptoms that don't have a structural cause disease infection Something like that a tumor in your body Which a lot of people even with neuroplastic neural circuit problems mind-body symptoms 10 not it's still 10 to think there's a structural problem in the body But I think it's going on for months if not years most certainly it is mind-body or it not most certainly almost certainly And so it's worth understanding what's driving that right because you can recover from those things and what I was saying is you can't recover My opinion unless you get comfortable with disappointing people or having other people's disapproved of you and that was the context right Because I'm really really the context we were talking about is shame the emotion of shame very often people here They don't recognize shame because it comes in the form of thoughts about ourselves right I suck, you know people are judging me I failed. I'm inadequate. I'm on where the I don't deserve XYZ and Very often it doesn't even really exactly show up in those words until they try to express how they feel to someone else They just know they feel gross. Yeah, and they're going to get out of that feeling so So your question is about it's true. I think For people who are consistently growing people. Yes, though although they get the more likely they will have to gotten to this point of being able to tolerate other people other people's disapproval but My experiences You get that skill by working on it and I've known a lot of people If they get the right health they can grow up a lot sooner. It's not necessarily an age thing So I'm all about being very intentional about that because I think that feeling of shame or fear of other people's judgment or disapproval is what drives all-mind-body symptoms. That's my hypothesis or my thesis Like what are what are some things that people can do to get out of that? I mean other than seek help right so like one One continuous feedback that I get from people that listen to this podcast and when I have therapists on is I think that And this is a whole deeper discussion about The cost of really everything for people but a lot of people that will email me or message me will say that Ultimately getting help is very cost prohibitive and so it becomes challenging and almost self-defeating for a lot of people because like You know there's resources I can get I can get free information on the TMS wiki. I can journal for free I can do all this but I'm not making any progress So that's some that's some feedback a lot of time so like being able to work on a skill like that What sort of things can people do? I'm sure it's like it's got other in the absence of working with a professional It's got to be a lot of little things that add up over time just repetition repetition repetition, right? Okay, thanks for framing up the context because Now I know better how to Speak to your audience So the first thing is you have to recognize that When you're feeling shame that you're you're feeling shame and because most people are Count by it because it comes in the form of thoughts like I suck. I'm not good enough that kind of thing Too fat don't make enough money like those kinds of icky is self-referencing That's the constant self-prouding over and over all that yes nicely put In the first thing I want those people to know and I put myself in that those people category because for years and years I struggled with this is that it's just an obsessive thought But it really comes from the emotion of shame so well let me back up Sometimes we end up like getting really immersed in the feeling of shame like you just oh man You said the wrong thing and you just feel disgusting about yourself That's kind of one version of shame, but then this like constant. What did you just call it that constant inner Poking, yeah, what I call the shame Gremlin just not constantly at you in the back your head Let's start with that one. It's it's an obsessive thought and you don't have to think it like thoughts really are behaviors and you don't have to engage them and most times people engage them by trying to argue with them or believing them One way or another and if you can get a little bit of distance and which is hard because shame is the most compelling emotion in my opinion that And again, I'm calling it an emotion, but it shows up for most people as thoughts. Yeah If you recognize the thoughts and And usually not thinking something never works for people they actually have to do something different and so there's something different is Send yourself love and buys a lot love, I mean empathy because I think empathy is the purest form of love. Like you really see yourself and your struggle and your suffering. And it sort of dodges the whole issue of "Am I good enough?" And it just says, "I see your struggle." Yeah. So, the most basic thing, and this is honestly how I arrived at how to heal from chronic shame is honestly, yes, I learned from Bridey Brown how to understand shame. But then, it was when I understood pain and processing therapy and how you train your brain out of any kind of sensation, I do exactly the same with shame. So, in other words, with chronic, any kind of chronic sensation, let's call it back pain just for ease, okay? Or, I don't know, foot pain. What do you think is your most common listeners issue? Knee pain, foot pain because you get a lot of runners or. Yeah. That's super. Let's say shoulder. Maybe shoulder. Let's say shoulder. So, if we, you know, and I don't want to assume too much on the other hand, it's a short podcast. So, let's just assume we know this is a mind-body symptom. It's not neuroplastic. Right. Sorry, it is neuroplastic. Once we know that we absolutely have to arrive at that in order to train out of the sensation. You know, as long as we're thinking it's a structural problem, there's a problem in my shoulder, I gotta go get an MRI and then I gotta get surgery, I gotta get an injection blah, blah, blah. We're cooked. We're not gonna heal from that mind-body symptom, okay? But once we recognize, okay, it's really mind-body. It's driven by something, driven by my brain, a neural circuit in my brain. Then you can disregard the sensation and keep moving. And what I'm saying is the parallel here is with shame, what happens is people get caught up in the message of it, which is like suck in some version, you know, which is the equivalent of like, oh, there's a problem with my shoulder. Yeah. And instead of doing that, you say, I don't have to listen to this message. It's an old, it's an old neural circuit. I learned that from my childhood or I learned that from my, you know, first, my ex or whatever. I don't have to listen to the message of that. It's irrelevant. And then, just like in pain-reprocessing therapy, one of the big, you know, tools is safety messaging. I'm actually, because if pain is a danger signal, the way you respond to the danger signal to turn it down is to say, hey, I'm actually safe. Brain, limbic brain, I don't really need you firing up, giving me some kind of alarm. I don't need that. Thank you very much. You know, you can go and if you want, that's that outcome independence thing. So with shame, with a consistent shame-based message, the equivalent of that safety message is actually empathy, because empathy is the antidote to shame. Are there close cousins of shame? Like, you talk of the kind of the story that you've been talking about is the constant prodding the Gremlin, right? Over and over and over. Like, that's, as people are listening to this, they're probably remembering or identifying ways that they do that to themselves or that they kind of hear that voice over and over. What is maybe a close equivalent? That might be a tough question, a close equivalent to that. It's not the Gremlin, but it's something not a physical pain, but it's something similar that, okay, the shame goes, like we call it the, in the TMS Dr. Sarno world, we refer to this as the, what is symptom imperative? Meaning your knee pain goes away, but you now get ankle pain, or you now get elbow pain, or something like that. What is something that is close in nature to the shame piece? That somebody, they might be successful in getting the Gremlin to shut up, but then they get something else. Well, it's interesting because any kind of obsessive thinking, so like, it's really common for people in their plastic symptoms, symptom imperative. They resolve the sensation of the pain maybe, or the GI issue, and then they end up with OCD. You know, they get really obsessive about germs or something else, or in my case, obsessive decision-making style, like I got to get that decision right. How does this stuff relate? This just popped my mind. How does this stuff relate to, I think that one of the overall themes a lot and a lot of like, I don't know if I'd call them TMSC people, but people in general TMSC. That's, I know that John, I know that you're worked in origin, because of John Sarno, but hey, that seems like the fits. We can coin that, yeah, I'm good with that. I gotta apply the trademark before I put this podcast. Right, honestly. But a necessity for control. I always got to control something. So there's like, I've had people, I've had experts that have talked about eating disorders on this podcast before. We talk about the necessity for control. It sounds like some of the stuff that you're talking, like I got to get this deadline, right, they can control those things. And then OCD sounds similar where if I can always control my handwashing or my, or me being vigilant over germs, or I could think about like, dieting in a lot of ways is very, and I've had people that are experts on that that have come on and they've talked about that. And I think all these things are equivalencies. So do you mind talking about the necessity for control a little bit? Sure work. I mean, so much of this is about not being able to tolerate uncertainty, right? And I'll like, I'm not certain this person still likes me if I say no to them. I'm not certain if I'm going to get sick because I just touched that door knob. I'm not certain if what was an example you just gave me, there's, you know, if my shoulder, if my shoulder really hurt, did I just work at a little too hard yesterday? Did, is it really torn? Oh, it might be torn. I may need surgery. Really bottom line is so much of what you're exactly right. The undergirding pattern is the brain gets on the glitch, you know, it's sort of like the record that keeps skipping with the scratch in it. And it just keeps replaying the same worry. It's fear-based, right? So whether it's about whether someone likes me enough, whether I ate too many calories today, did I exercise enough today, it really doesn't matter. And this is why sort of psychologically speaking on the one hand, it's fascinating to do a deep dive in helping people heal from chronic physical symptoms. The truth is you're exactly right. All of these things are mechanisms by which the unconscious distracts us from the real issue. And the real issue is something's not okay. Like a really based level. And very often there's some emotional something that's driving it. So on the one hand, sometimes this, you know, prodding of that shame-based thinking is just, it's a learned neural circuit. You just got it from childhood because that's what was role model for you. Or maybe you had someone constantly giving you negative feedback so you learned it. But very often, it's there taking up RAM so you don't actually have to look at the thing underneath. And so this mind-body work, again, you're exactly right whether you're trying to solve for an eating disorder or a shoulder chronic shoulder pain or OCD of any variety or any other symptom like IBS or whatever. You know, the Wissarno talked about it is like they're your unconscious thinks it's basically has assesses, has assess the situation as it's safer to feel these physical symptoms than to actually face the emotion. Personally, and I know it's like, you know, risky to be challenging what Sarno said, but I have much preferred to think of it as their messages as opposed to my unconscious is trying to fool me. I prefer to think of it as like an organic dream. When I say organic, I mean a dream in your mind, right? You wake up and you're thinking like, I wonder if that's like my unconscious trying to get through to me. I think our body symptoms are like that all the time. I understand that very often, they do serve that way because we can get in a flurry about them and we want them gone. And so they do actually have that distracting quality about them. And there are some people that I think, wow, they're unconscious really. Like it's so obvious that it's resistance. But in so many people's cases, like as I was listening to you talking about your foot pain and your your F-off episode, you don't want this thing you're trying to get to the bottom of it. You're doing your best. I don't really think you're unconscious is trying to fool you. I think your unconscious only has certain ways to communicate. And your body is the primary one. Your body is in the way I think of it as your, it's your your unconscious manifest. Yeah. So in other words, I, if you have anything that's taking up God's space and it could by the way be a behavior, you know, scrolling too much, gaining too much to the point where you're not, you know, doing your life responsibilities. It could be really any addictive behavior. All of those just point back to what are you avoiding? So yes, I think they're, they're, they're parallels everywhere. And so I was, you know, when you and I got into this shame piece, some of it is Learn, Neural Network. A lot of people walk around saying, I have low self-esteem and I don't know what to do about that. Well, I, you know, the way you train out of shame is the way you train out of pain. And if you know that because of listening to your, your podcast, then cool. You know how to trade out of shame. But, but really the bigger issue is, And I think this is why people without professional health sometimes don't get anywhere is because those unconscious factors, they're unconscious. You're blind to them. Other people may not be if they listen too long enough, but you are because they're your unconscious factors. So that's really the trick is, and I think that's why journaling in this field is so big because if you can really journal, let yourself go and really just blot out. You're more likely to be able to get to the unconscious factors as you go, because if you're really just flat out honest with yourself and you're willing to look at what you're seeing. So if you ask me, what's the best way, you know, without spending any money, and most people don't like it, they don't want a journal, but I think that's one of the least things. I always call journaling like the cheapest, most powerful health care intervention you can do. What's your, because like, I sort of talked about this the last time, but like Nicole Sacks is kind of the, you know, she's sort of the mother Teresa on journaling, at least in this world. And so that's her thing, like that's what she talks about. It doesn't sound like specifically, well, maybe this, maybe that's your thing, maybe you prescribe that to people to do. I don't know, but I tend to, my mom, for instance, has talked to me about journaling in the past. This is like way pre-Sarna. This is just, you know, me as a teenager, maybe at 20s or whatever. Her talking about how she kept a journal for decades, right? But in hearing some of the entries of that, it sounds like it's largely a storytelling device, like a vessel to tell, here's what went on in my day, here's why I ran into that kind of thing. When people hear journaling, I think that's what they think about. Similar to like a teenager's diary, right? You're telling a story of what happened. And people can't see you shaking your head now. But I know, but I think I know what you mean. What would be a, here's how you journal. And I know that's probably to in depth for a short form. No, no, actually, I can do that just as pretty quickly. Okay. First thing is, you don't get to judge yourself. Plan is simple. No holds barred. You gotta say exactly what you're feeling in the moment. And you don't literally get to judge yourself. It's against the rules. Now, you are going to, but as soon as you catch yourself doing it, and doing this kind of journaling with the intent not to judge yourself, will gradually help you see how often you judge yourself. But the first thing is, is you gotta write everything, how you really feel about things. Forget what happened. We don't have to lay out the story. It's only for you. And at that, a lot of people destroy it. So there's no point in writing what happened. So this is no holds barred. Say whatever you want about someone, a situation, a person, a someone close to you, someone you let like it doesn't matter, right? I don't rip also the whole of whatever language you want to use. If you're mad, you're mad. If you think the whole world is ending and you're always going to feel this way, right? That, you know, like you gotta get in your, it's the thing that really hangs people up with journaling as one. Either they start writing like that and they're like, I don't know how to get out. I'm like, I'm in a morass of yuck and I don't know how to bring myself out. Or are they terrified of what they're going to write about? Because if they start talking about their childhood, oh my gosh, that's terrifying. I don't want to feel all that, again, no, thank you very much. Or other people just go completely blank. They, you know, dissociate or they just really don't know how to feel their feels. So on the one hand, yes, if you can get into your feels and if you can have this role for yourself to not judge yourself, it'll be productive. But so, this is why the professional help often is needed because as kids, and this I really want to make this point clear, really clear that although it's true that having really complex developmental trauma growing up, you know, verbal abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, watching mom and dad fight that kind of stuff, not having mom and dad, poverty, you name it, those kinds of things, that definitely sets you up for mind body symptoms. The ACEs is what you're talking about. Adverse childhood experiences. Yes, thank you, exactly. But if you don't have any of those, there's a very good chance still, if you have chronic symptoms, you almost certainly didn't have one really key important ingredient, which is why I'm so big on talking about shame. That key ingredient being empathy or being attuned to by your parents, like someone's really noticing your emotions, someone sees you, who you are, not for what you do. Oh, you want some dishes? Good job, Johnny. No. You really notice who Johnny is, and you love him unconditionally. And you notice when Johnny's down, when Johnny's excited, and you can reflect that, and you mirror that. That is what we call attunement, and that is essential for not just emotional health, but physical health, believe it or not. That's what the ACEs studies shows, right? And the more ACEs, you have the more inclined to have those same problems too, but very often what people miss is that if, hey, I didn't have any of those, I don't have that many ACEs. Why do I feel terrible in my body all the time? It's probably because you missed this one key ingredient that's more important than anything else in that attunement. And this is why I'm so passionate about, see, if you don't have attunement, you're going to be prone to shame. Plain and simple, I haven't, we can just draw a line between the two, because shame is about not being able to see yourself and feel okay with you. And if you didn't get that role modeled for you, and if you didn't get someone reflecting that you're a very special, unique, beautiful human, you're not going to be able to do that for yourself unless you do a whole lot of healing work. So that's, and when you can't do it for yourself, what you end up with is all this niggling shame based thinking. And right now you're probably thinking, but just about everybody I know has that. And I'm like, yeah, because it takes very special parents to give that quality of attunement that people really need. And so without that attunement, this continuous cycle of shame, essentially the anticoot is, or what you're saying, the anecdote is the empathy for self. Yes, which connects you to yourself, which keeps you attuned to yourself. Now, for people first learning that, it's going to feel obnoxious because my experience is people are like, "Fash dammit, I didn't get it when I was supposed to. Now I got to do it for myself." And my kids, like that really pisses them off totally. I get at 100%. Empathy over them. Yeah. You know, when I landed on this, I just resisted it. And here's the other thing, when you're really in a vat of shame, when you're just feeling totally disgusting about yourself, it really helps to have someone outside yourself to come along and say, "You know what? I still think you're awesome. I love you. And I'm right here with you. And you may feel disgusting about you, but I don't feel that way with you and be with you, right?" But when you're bar, it's awesome if you have that person, or just even one. But if you're borrowing it from another person all the time, just based on my clinical experience and my personal experience inside my own head and heart, it's not the same when you're relying on other people. You're really very dependent on that other person that you learn the skills. So I'm all about teaching that skill. And honestly, I might even go so far. I don't know. And well, I might say that if you learn how to do self-emphathy. So back to what's the cheapest path to healing if you don't have professional help, all day long empathy, every which way from Sunday. But it's got to be high quality empathy, not what I call cheerleading, not trying to tuck yourself out of the icky feelings and none of that, none of this reassurance stuff that is good, but it's not empathy. And if you can do empathy, that consistently, the only other thing I think you really, because then that means you're going to be able to process your feelings, you're going to be able to see yourself, not judge yourself, all those other things fall into place. The only other thing I'd say you really need is the pain science, so that you understand that just because there's pain in your body doesn't mean there's actually a problem in the tissues of your body. You have to have that information, you have to understand what that means, you know, how to reinterpret those signals. But in my opinion, those two things, yeah. Give me two examples here. We're both going to play the role of, did you, did you see that? I, both my hands are, I'm not touching anything. I know you went up with your finger like this. Oh, we just got balloons go across. Yeah, bunch of balloons just came across the screen. The hell's behind me. I don't know, that was funny. I kind of happened a few times in a therapy session until I learned how to turn that, that setting off. Okay. I don't know what caused it. Wasn't my fingers? It wasn't my fingers. I don't know. Okay. Give me two, so I'm going to give you two examples. We're both going to play the part of, I'm going to be shameful Eddie. You're going to be empathetic Eddie to shameful Eddie because that's, I want, I want people to kind of understand what this may look like for them. And what we're saying is I'm how you should be responding to yourself or how you, how you could, I don't know, I don't like the word should. So, I love that. Okay. Good. Yeah. Nicole Sacks actually says, shooting all over yourself is what? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a Nicole is, it's, it's earlier than that in the therapy world, but I don't remember who actually said it, but he used to say, you know, stop shooting on yourself. Yeah. So, in front of me, so I've got three monitors in front of me. You're on one. The right side is my job. The left side is soccer coaching, kids, which we talked a little bit about. So, I'm going to use the two from the, from the above. So, this is a disclaimer. I've actually had a very good sales year this year, but the sales person is always a great critic of themself. You know, because there is a quota, there's either you did it or you didn't do it. So say I'm sitting here, I'm wallowing, I've had an awful month or quarter of a year, whatever. And I suck at sales, I can't do this. Nobody buys for me, I'm terrible at this. What would empathetic, like how can I come to the rescue of my, not even the rescue myself, but how can I help counter some of that continuous the Gremlin over and over? Yeah, yep. You catch yourself in it, you see, oh, these are shame-based thoughts. Oh, not just shame-based thoughts, but I'm in shame, right? So that's first step, second step, empathy. So, oh man, it is so hard to do a job where I'm constantly being measured and worried about measuring up. It's hard, and it's hard to balance a lot of stuff in life. And I can see you're really struggling with the results. You got this year, quarter day. I see you, it's hard. Contrast that with, and you sort of alluded to this earlier, if instead of doing that, I said to myself, you went to president's club seven times, you've done this, you know what you're trying to do, almost out logic that, that shame feeling, how, why is that detrimental? That's such a great question, I'm so glad you asked. Because basically you're trying to argue down the shame, and with any obsession, which I believe these shame-based thinking is, you're increasing it by doing that. Because really, what you're doing is you're just measuring yourself still. You're still reinforcing the idea that I'm only good enough if I met a certain quota or criteria. So, and this is why I think so many people who are a quote-unquote successful in the world struggle with shame, because they don't see that. They're flip sides of the same coin. Whether you're succeeding or failing, you're still measuring yourself. And so, I rather have you say to emphasize your values, or like, are you saying, you're what, you had those shame-based thoughts, and then you tried to talk yourself out of them by saying, well, you did president's club, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or are you saying, this day, I'm like, I did this, I did that, I did that, which are you saying? Probably more the former. So, I wouldn't really argue it down, because I don't think it's going to work, because here's why. Arguing with emotions doesn't work. If you're kid at this point, and it's raining on their birthday, honey, we'll still have a good time inside the house. It's not going to cut it. Still sucks. Don't do that. Yes, please, people, don't argue with your kids' emotions. Don't do it. That is the lack of a tune in exactly that I'm talking about. And I know, I know, I know that you really mean well. But here's what it should sound like. Oh, honey, I totally get it. It sucks when it rains on your birthday, and you had a, you know, jumpy house planned and all the things, right? Yeah. It's not so disappointed with you, too. You name the emotion for them. I know it's disappointing. I know. I know. You'll be with them. See, what happens is when you counter the emotion, what they ended up feeling is invalidation. It's wrong for me to be disappointed. Oh, come on. We'll still have a good time. We'll make balloons inside the house. You just, not just invalidated your kid. You did not attune to your kid. And I know, at parents now, we're listening, and they're probably scared that, you know, their kid will end up in this big morass of disappointment. They'll never be able to get out. It's exactly the opposite. It's totally counterintuitive. I get it. But actually, what happens is when you pull your kid into you and you say, oh, it's so disappointing when it rains on your birthday, isn't it? When your kid can really feel that the emotion drains out of them. And then after you let them cry, you don't go on, cry, it's disappointing. Of course it is. Of course it is. Yeah. What do you want to do with that disappointment? You got any ideas? Let them come up with it. I don't know. Maybe we can splash in mud puddles. I don't know. Do you know what I mean? If you come against the emotion, you are in effect, even though you're trying to be there for your kid, you're not attuned. And when we do that to ourselves as an adult, we're perpetuating the same thing. And we will not get out of shame, just because I tried it for years. Whereas when you say it's really hard to have a goal and not meet it and also be struggling because you're trying to balance so many things. You're a parent, you're a coach, blah, blah. See, that's empathy. I get why you're disappointed. You really wanted to meet the goal. You wanted that bonus. I totally get it. When you can do that for yourself, then yeah, you can be like, you know what? I'm really proud of myself, though, because I really-- I lived my values this quarter. And so OK, I didn't make them. That's not empathy, but it is seeing yourself. You know what? The reason why I got these results is because I didn't work 80 hours a week. I wanted to be a present parent. And that's-- do you see how that's seeing yourself? Yeah. So at the end of the party, you say to your kid, I know what rain, but how'd you do? And your kid's like, well, you had fun playing the blah, blah, blah inside the house. And you're like, you know what? Look at you. You did a really-- you made the best of blah, blah, blah. You're emphasizing values. You know? I think that's really powerful. I love that you were able to laugh with your friends, even though it rained outside. You know? That-- What? OK, the other example. I feel like it's going to be similar. But God, you are terrible at coaching. You lose every game. You suck. You suck. What would-- what's the-- you know, what's the empathetic to that? You know, can I turn this on you and do what I do with my clients as a team to improve? I don't-- hey, open book. By the way, this is not rhetoric that I say to myself. This is-- I believe that there are probably lots of-- in fact, I converse quite often with a guy who coaches Boyzucker that listens to this show. So I coach Girls, E-Coaches, Boyz. It's, you know, what it is, whatever. But yes, go for it. But Millie-- I mean, you're not just-- it's thousands, millions, millions. Like, this is how most people-- it's the lowest common denominator way to think. It takes effort to not do this. So most people do. And you can hear it in how they talk about themselves, people who over-apologize, for example, you know? So you tell me, if you catch yourself thinking those thoughts, how would you turn it around? Well, I say unfortunately, because we just talked about not trying to counter it. But I literally, what I would say to myself is I would say, did all the kids from last year return? The answer is yes. And that would be the case closed. See, and if that works for you, cool. But I'm just saying that for people with an obsessive style or sort of very persistent shame-based thinking, that's only going to encourage it. Well, and again, like, this is not something that I-- if I have said it to myself, it's been years, because I actually don't think that that's true. We do lose a lot. But I don't think there's anything wrong with-- I think we can always improve as coaches, as people, whatever. I do continue in education and all that. But I don't know if it were my kid and I were watching from afar, I would think I don't know if we could do any better. It sounds really arrogant, but I think that that is the case. So I don't have this kind of dialogue to myself, or I haven't in a long, long, long time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in other words, this is-- I mean, I remember in our first episode, you gave this example of feeling a little bit squeamish-- I didn't use that word, but driving away when you had to jet out of your-- Because I was going to the little scheme. I think it was after that weekend, yeah. Then there's-- it's in the little cracks and corners of this, what do people think about the fact that I jet it and jet it out? So it's not as compelling for you, because it sounds like you've probably done a lot of work on it. But it's sort of like-- so again, this is a continuum. There are people who sort of soak in that vat of shame all day long. And then the other end of the spectrum is people who live in what I call the apperate and their worthiness most of the time. And every once in a while, I have a blip of shame. And that's where we want to be. But in the way to get there is one to recognize that obsessive thinking and just not indulge it. But when there's a really-- like what you're describing is a big ugly moment where I'm like, oh, I suck as a coach. We lost again. I must really suck at this, that kind of thing. Again, those are the thoughts that go with shame. It's hard-- look at you. You're trying really hard, and it's hard to keep. Not winning. It feels like the measurement of who you are, and that stinks. Like, it feels really gross to have winning and losing as the measurement of your worth. Do you see how that steps out of am I really worthy? And it gets into kindness towards yourself about the fact that you're even measuring yourself with the ruler. Yeah. So I say, side step the ruler and be kind to yourself. And sometimes that's like-- Maybe like in your case telling yourself the truth that you know the kids all returned and the parents seem to like you okay, but I don't really think that repairs this tendency to go to shame. I'd be curious to know how I would feel if I decided at some point which is not out of the question to coach something where the kids are older or the environment is much more competitive. That's a good question. I'm sort of purposely, I'm in wreck. So it kind of isn't about, it's like are the kids exercising having a good time, are they coming back, are they enjoying themselves, are they, you know, like we never get blown out. So it's not like if there's this poor team, we close the season against this team and I, you know, we have the standings and so I can see how many goals did they score versus how many do they give up. Most teams are going to be like there's a super good team and there's a super bottom team. We're closing the season against the super bottom team where, you know, they've scored three and they've given up 60. You know what I mean? So it's not like that and I don't know how I would feel because winning and losing is not what it's all about. If I were getting drilled every single game, I think I would feel differently, but if I were in a more competitive environment, say these are late high school kids that are trying to get a scholarship or like something like that. Yeah, like travel where people pay a lot of money for their kids to be learning from you. Yeah, maybe the stakes might feel higher than and again, it may come at some point. It's nowhere even remotely on my radar of wanting to because I kind of do like that this isn't a year round thing and when we get to the end of 14 weeks, I can breathe a couple months, you know? Yeah, you know, I really appreciate your self-honesty with that because I do think, you know, most of us aren't shame based about everything. Like there are certain things we decide we don't care about, you know? And then there are certain things we really do care about and people get fixated on certain things, you know, how clean their houses or that their hair looks neat as a pin or whatever or how fit they are. You know, we pick our things and then the other things because you can't possibly work towards perfection on everything. So in your case, what you're saying is, yeah, but you know, if they were more eyes on me and there's higher stakes, maybe I would and I think that's probably true. So where does that leave us? Because I know you're like, I want to keep this short, but we're not short. I do want to just say that when it comes to this like obsessive thought process, we can do it with indecision, we can do it with any kind of anything that we get really hooked into and it just distracts us from what really matters. But two things that I think, two emotions that I think really hang people up because of shame, like because of not recognizing them, was I already mentioned disappointment. Like in the example of your kid getting, they're part of getting rained on. It's a great, a big part of my shame process, I think got set up because my parents did not know how to handle my disappointment. I never actually rained on a party, but it did, you know, a positive 78th. It's snowed. What's your birthday? February 7th. Oh, yeah, it's a terrible time. I'm sorry. Oh my gosh. Give no idea. Like I reschedule my birthday and the birthday resched. I'm post-pone birthday got snowed out too. It happens over here. So disappointment. But here's the thing. There's the disappointment and then there's if your parent doesn't attune to the disappointment, if they don't know how to tolerate the disappointment, you want to feeling shame too because they're trying to talk you out of it. And if you can't talk yourself out of the disappointment, you want to feel ashamed because I'm feeling it getting, getting in a good attitude. Yeah. You see that? And here's the other emotion that I think is closely tied to shame is disgust because I think built, you know, we all sort of walk around with this idea that we shouldn't judge people. But the emotion of disgust is really one of the primary emotions. We do have it. We're disgusted by certain people's behavior, especially, right? We tend to think of disgust as about like moldy, dirty things. But when it comes to relationships, we have disgust for people. But a lot of people won't let themselves feel disgust because they know inherently there's some judgment built into disgust, right? And then this is what they have to shame about it. And again, in order to heal from my body stuff, you got to express, be aware of your emotions, right? So if you're not aware of shame, right? And you're feeling the emotion of disgust, you might well repress it and then game over because I'm not going to find that disgust if I haven't unearthed my shame. Do you see what I mean? I do. Let's, well, again, we're way, we're way over. 50% over actually. I do have a question I want to ask you off air. So don't hang up when we call this. But hey, thank you for being here. In the show notes is where you can find Ellen. So please make sure you check that out. Check out her website. Check out her socials. Thank you for being here. Hey, you're welcome. Thanks. Eddie, it's really fun, I'm too sure.