S3 E6 | How To Handle Shame (Pt 2) with Ellen Ronka, LCMHC

[Music] Hello everyone and welcome back to Mind Body Medicine for Chronic Pain. I am thrilled that you are here and that we are talking together again. This is part two, how to handle shame with Ellen Ronka. If you have not listened to part one that's last week's episode season three, episode five is last week, I would encourage you to start there. Do that one first. And today, you're here with season three, episode six, how to handle shame part two. Why do you repress anger? So common in the TMS world, repressed anger. Why would you repress anger? Why would you repress any feeling? Because you're ashamed of having your feelings and because you're ashamed of being you. Shame is underneath so much of this. Like when you dig to the bottom, you will find shame. Shame is so core to what is causing your chronic pain and your chronic symptoms. And the way Ellen teaches about shame is very helpful and it will deepen your healing. Okay, before we jump into the interview, just a quick rewind, rewind back to basics. Pain is a danger signal in the mind body system. Pain and symptoms, chronic symptoms are danger signals in the mind body system. And yes, pain, of course, you know this, anyone knows this. Pain sometimes means there is a structural problem with the body at the side of the pain. Sometimes pain means that. But here's what most people don't know, but you know because you listen to this podcast. Pain does not always mean that there's a structural problem with the body at the side of the pain. Expand the definition because pain does not always mean a structural problem with the body at the side of the pain. Oh, expand the mindset because expanding your mindset to include the other causes of pain will bring your brain in sync with reality of how the body really works. With chronic pain, there are three places we need to pay attention to as the primary sources of the danger signals that cause the pain and symptoms. One, sensations in the body being experienced as dangerous. Two, your emotions as they rise being experienced as dangerous. And three, being and truly inhabiting your true self being experienced as dangerous. One, two, and three. Four, the work of healing from chronic pain is the work of feeling safe again. That is the antidote to the danger signal, feeling safe. Therefore, what we work on is one, the psychological work of teaching your brain and your nervous system that physical sensations are safe to feel. Two, the emotional work of teaching your brain and your nervous system that feeling your emotions is safe. All of your emotions, even the really hard emotions. And three, patiently attuning to your true self. Teaching your brain and your nervous system that it is safe to be you. Now, Ellen's analysis of shame that we get into today will deepen your mind, body, work particularly the work of patiently attuning to your true self. But it also definitely helps with emotions as well. And the way she works really obviously hits on all three. Because anyone who's doing this work is doing some slight variation on the same basic theme. So everybody's doing the same basic, basic stuff. The way Ellen explains shame is very helpful. Shame, she says, is a feeling, not a thought. And the experience of shame feels like a thought or actually more so, it just feels like reality. Like it feels like something's just wrong with you. Like, I'm ugly. I'm not a success. I'm not motivated. I can't do anything right. I always fail. Those feel like, you know, just like facts, right? Like, like sometimes those things feel like facts. I know, I know you think these things because I've been a therapist for a long time. So I know how people think. And I also, you know, I know how I think. So yes, I have been stuck there in those shame, shame based thoughts. And I'm sure I'll be there again many times. Like life is fucking hard. And that is how it is. I will, I will see you back there someday. That's for sure. But it feels like these negative self judgments are just facts. Or at the very least that their thoughts. But these are not facts. This is shame. Shame is a feeling. These thoughts and beliefs arise from the feeling of shame. And we know how to feel feelings. We know how to deal with feelings. You don't need to believe the story behind the feeling. You can feel the feeling. Allow the feeling. No need to be afraid of the feeling. And then you feel it and move through it. And you're on the other side. This interview is great info about how to reframe shame as a feeling if you're not already thinking about it in that way, which most people are not. And how to move through shame. This is such good info. And it was my honor to have this conversation with Ellen Bronco. If you want to find Ellen, you can find her at chronictocured.com. That's the coaching program that she runs, which I am sure is awesome because Ellen is awesome. It's chronictocured.com. You can find that in the show notes below. If you want to find me, I am offering weekly individual therapy. I've got a couple slots still open. So if you are interested, by all means, I would love to work with you. If you want a therapist, I'd be happy to be that person for you in your life. You can find me at Sean Hershey.com or my body medicine for chronic pain.com. They both take you to the same place. And if you're enjoying the podcast, by all means, please rate the podcast and review the podcast. There hasn't been a new written review for a while. I would love to see some new ones. If the podcast means something to you, that would be a great way to say thank you to me. Is to rate and review the podcast. You do that in the app where you listen to it. So if it's like Apple podcasts, rate and review there, Spotify. You can't review it with a written review on Spotify, but you can rate it on Spotify. And whatever app you can rate or review. Okay, without further ado, let's talk to Ellen. So my soapbox here about shame is that I think there's so much talk about anger and fear in the mind body community about those generating symptoms. But in my opinion, shame undergirds, even those most of the time. This is the conversation we had at the AT&S conference. So let's have it again. I'm totally here for this analysis. Go on. Thank you. This is like Jan talking about this. So good. Well, I'm a willing audience and we have a whole podcast audience who's also there here and they're willing to. So the reason why anger is so problematic usually is because we repress it. But why do we repress anything? Because we have shame about it. Yes. Right. And we should probably before we go too far into this conversation, I'm sure you know, but just for any listener who doesn't. The word shame, I think a lot of people confuse and mix up with guilt all the time. Even at the AT&S, I would hear people mix those two words and it drives me a little baddy because guilt is really about doing something wrong against. And by the way, it is subjective. It's subject to your moral and ethical code. But it's about doing something against those whereas shame is really haven't done anything wrong, but you feel gross by yourself as one way to put it. Not good enough inadequate, unworthy, undeserving. Those are all like words people use when they're talking about shame because almost no one unless you're my client. Her name is shame very directly. It's because we're ashamed of it. Of course. Well, isn't that fascinating? Thank you. You're so insightful, Sean. You're exactly right. I think part of why it's not on a radar because there's shame about shame. I mean, you know, Brunei Brown and her Ted Talk and you know, shout out to her because I at least my original ideas about shame came from her. So I can't take any credit for that. But in terms of how to train out of it, that's actually a combination of knowing what how Brunei defines shame and then using this mind body model, particularly PRT, to inform how to train out of it. So stay tuned because I'm going to tell you how to train out of shame. But anyway, yeah, definitely don't change that dial. Go on. So she defines shame as an intensely painful. She says feeling or experience of feeling flawed. And unwilling, unworthy of love, connection, and belonging, which is a mouthful and you really have to tease it out to get it. But honestly, her shorthand definition, I think, is a little more potent and powerful. She boils all that down to fear of disconnection, which gives me goose pimples even still because here's the thing. In the mind-body world, and this is back to why I think shame really drives mind-body symptoms. We talk about fear all the time. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the most common fear most people in the, let's say, the Western world where you are mostly safe, I understand that there are marginalized groups that are not, they don't have the privilege of being able to say that. They don't feel safe. Skin-colored sexual orientation, gender, all the things. So I don't want to skip over that. But in general, we're not living in a world in a war zone, right? We're physically safe, so whatever fear we feel is generally an emotional fear. An emotional fear almost always shows up as fear of disconnection, fear of other people's judgment, fear of people's disapproval, someone's going to be mad at me. That really, I think, is shame. We just don't follow that, right? And so here's the thing. Mind-body symptoms are created by repressed emotions. Well, we repress them because we're ashamed of them. Like if someone knew that I felt this way, they wouldn't like me, they judge me, they think I'm a terrible person, right? AKA code for shame, okay? Yes, yes. Shame itself is noxious, so it feels terrible, right? And we know when we're trying to heal from chronic health issues, the goal is to feel good, practice feeling good, right? So shame is counter to that, right? Shame on, we're using the British brown talks about this. It kicks you into fight flight or freeze, or fun. It does arouse our sympathetic system. So stress physiology kicks in just from that one emotion, right? Because it's that noxious. And then lastly, it drives all of the personality traits we talk about that feed and generate the symptoms themselves, like people pleasing, you know, being hyper conscientious, you know. Let me just put it into say my TMS therapist who I saw last year who was so great Liz Wallenstein was her name. She was very into it. And I just, I did a podcast on this recently. She, not just taking the TMS personality traits all at face value, like digging underneath that to question, like, why? Why am I a people pleaser? Why do I, you know, it's right in my mind. And I would probably be like, because I think I haven't yet really read the book, you run into anyone doing those personality traits, perfectionism, another example where you can't draw a line straight back to shame. Yeah. If there are people pleasing, you know, finding is a lot of what people call it now, whatever. If you're doing what the other person wants you to do and you don't want to do, I guarantee you it's because you're afraid of what they're going to think of you. Definitely. What other reason would you have, right? I mean, yeah. Correct. If you're doing, if you're in this co-dependent relationship where you're, you know, subjugating all your needs to the other person, that's, you know, it's interesting. That's Rosenberg. I've not followed his work deeply, but his whole thing, he's, I think he, his whole thing is around co-dependence. And here's how he defines co-dependence. Self-love deficit disorder. There we go. There it is. It's the same. In other words, co-dependence is a disorder of shame. He's just not calling it shame, right? And if he did, probably no one would listen. Sure. It's like every day, every day is set at the beginning of your 10 talk. Like if we, we've renamed this shame, that one's gonna listen, you know? So anyway, I think that a big back to what went wrong in my healing process besides the fact that I simply didn't find this model soon enough is I didn't see how shame was operating. I didn't see it. And that's, if you've had big tea traumas that were really shame-inducing, I think people generally can see their shame a little better at that kind of shame. But in my case, like I was pretty high functioning in terms of, you know, I went to grad school and I had a career and, you know, I was, you know, athletic and did well, etc. So like, it didn't make sense to me that there were times I didn't feel good about me. It didn't, because it didn't match sort of like my conscious awareness of who I am. And now I realize, and this is the key, is that I think what really changed for me is when Brunei defined it as fear of disconnection, she defined shame as fundamentally an emotion, not a belief. But most of our culture, when they feel shame, they talk about it in terms of thoughts. Feel like he's judging me. Yeah. I didn't get enough done today and I feel crappy about that. No, we don't want to say, I didn't do, you know, we talk about it in terms of like sort of a measurement or like a thought, not the actual emotion of shame. And the reason why that matters, see her first definition is a feeling or experience, a feeling flawed and therefore unworthy of love, connection, belonging, shouldn't say that. But it's like sort of this emotion that kicks off a thought. Yeah, right. And I think that really matters. I know I'm like in the weeds here, but I think it matters because most of the time when people have an experience of shame, they believe the thought. Yeah. Because the emotion of shame is so compelling, it comes with it, it comes with thoughts that are anti-U kinds of thoughts. Like you're such a fuck, you know, like you're such a jerk, you really fuck that up, you know. Failure, you're ugly, you're actually husband or wife or whatever, like all that. And so it's a story, right, as opposed to, oh, this is just an emotion of shame. And the reason why this is good news everybody is because emotion is, it's just like anything else you can do PRT on. You can smack track on it. It's just an emotion and you can feel it and it can keep moving. A belief is pretty like, that's tricky. And the, here's the piece about where I think the science really matters is that we know with neuroplasticity that anything we do often, we get better at. But when people say I have a low self esteem or I feel worthless, like kind of on a regular basis, right? What they really mean is they've been practicing the emotion of shame. That's such a great reframe. I love that if you have low self confidence or you, right, what that really is is like you're very practiced in the emotion of shame. And if you think about it that way, if you think of it as a neural network, I'm telling you, you're home free because we know how to train out of sensations and I know how to train out of emotions, like a really compelling emotion. So shame is even a little bit adaptive if it, if you actually are kind of like, oh, I really lost it on my partner last night and it wasn't kind, you know, guilt is appropriate. I don't know if you ever need to go to shame, but at least that shame makes some sense. Shame about your skin color, your orientation or gender or like, you know, anything, any of that. That's, you have no control over that. That's, it's such a shame, right? To have shame. Right, right. Right. And so I think that we can train out of where, especially like choosing myself to prioritize what my need is over this other person, we shouldn't have shame about that either, right? But what we're really saying is I'm afraid of disconnection with this person because I need connection. I want, it matters to me, right? And I'm worried about how they're going to perceive me if I disappoint them or whatever. But when you recognize that's an emotion and I don't actually have to listen to it or believe it, you can over and over again as often as you recognize that pattern, train out of it. That's just an important, you kind of shrug at it. It's like you do with your sensations with PRT and you get kind of like, just like with PRT, you're like, yeah, that doesn't mean anything. It's not a structural problem in my body. I totally get that there's pain happening in my knee right now and it's irrelevant because it's an old signal, right? You can do that about shame too. And like, yeah, okay. Okay. So you're saying like treating the feeling like you help your clients treat the feeling of shame similar to the feeling of like back pain. This is exactly it. Like that feeling, like people are going to judge you, you have to listen to it. Okay. And you don't have to believe the similar. It's like, you don't have to believe the story of like, oh, my slip disc, this is not going to get fixed. I won't get out of pain until I get surgery. That story you can put aside is the same as like, I'm feeling the shame because I failed because is that what you mean? All of that exactly. Like just because I blew it yesterday, I failed whatever. I didn't get my promotion, whatever. I don't actually have to believe that I'm, there's anything wrong with me, right? I don't have to believe that. It's just the thought that sometimes people who are really fucked up get a lot of promotions that's for sure that anyway go on or a lot of votes in like elections that too, but go on. External validation does not mean everything folks, but go on. Exactly. Well, this is exactly, well, now you just brought up something that is sort of a corollary of my solution to shame, which is that for the longest time, when I, at least when I figured out, okay, I have some. real inner harshness here. And even if I hadn't named it shame yet, like it was so compelling for me. But my intensity was really problematic because you know your therapist, OCD. Obsessive thoughts lead to compulsion. Sometimes a compulsion is just another thought to fix the obsession. But with OCD, the more attention you give to the obsession, the more you try to fix it or solve for it, you just increase it. So in my case, honestly, I was fanning my shame into flame because I was trying to solve for it. I am good enough. I, you know, partly by doing more, getting more accomplished, try to whatever, right? But also like, by arguing with shame, that is not the solution. It's sort of like, most of the time it doesn't work to tell your knee pain, stop! I know you're not structural, stop! Right? That's a bad idea. That's engaging in it with like, you know, Howard Schubiner's 5Fs or whatever, you know, fix it, focus on it, all that stuff. So I know I'm like talking so fast, I'm trying to jam. No, no, no, no, this is good, this is good. And for people who aren't familiar, I don't know the all 5Fs, but you know, you can look it up, fix it, focus. Fixing focus. Fixing focus. Being frustrated. Frustration, right. Anyway, yeah, it's all good. I never remember all 5 either. Go on. It won't point out, I was like, is it up to 7 now? (laughing) Maybe it's over, who knows? Um, so this was, I think the coup that finally did it for me that helped me train out of shame, which is that for the longest time I did affirmations, I did mantras, I did like, I really am good enough, I don't know that. And quite simply, people don't waste their time, 'cause talking yourself out of shame, talking yourself out of any emotion doesn't work. You have to just feel it. So to heal from shame, I think we have to believe it or not, learn to tolerate it, but also not listen to the message of it. Just like to heal from pain, watch, watch. To heal from pain, we have to learn how to tolerate it first and not believe the message of it. - Yeah, that is so clear. I love the way you just like pulled that together, that is so clear. And I hope people, if you're listening to this, that's the note that you underline, right? Like that's it right there. - I love it. And so, when you have a shame based thought, they were just constant for me. It was just like, I would talk with the shamebremel and just constantly whispering in my ear. That stuff, you just ignore, ignore, ignore. Oh, that's more shame, oh, that's more shame. Ignore, right? Just like if your back pain is at a three or four, or whatever, you just ignore, ignore, ignore. You don't want to attend to it. Unless you're doing somatic tracking when you're adding safety messages, right? So the equivalent of the safety messages for shame, I think is empathy. Because empathy in essence is speaking to emotional safety. See, when you're in shame, right? Oh, right, you got it, right? 'Cause when you're in shame, you're fearing disconnection. And Brene Brown says, the antidote to shame is empathy. Just like the antidote to a danger signal as you're actually safe, the antidote of fear of disconnection is actually empathy. It's not, oh, they're not gonna reject you. Oh, you really are good enough. It doesn't work 'cause it sounds like you're lying to yourself. - Yeah, right. - What works is, oh, damn, it's so hard to be an imperfect human. Oh, man, it's so disappointing and feels so icky to be passed up for that promotion. When other people are getting promoted to all kinds of positions that they don't deserve. (laughing) - Bring it back, right? - And yes, yes. And 'cause what I gather from you saying, that just like the way that lands in my body, is like that you get it. You know, it's like the opposite of the fear of disconnection. It's like me too, same. I'm with you. - Exactly, and that's what you're so brilliant at, Sean. I'm sure you're such a fabulous therapist because like early on when I was talking about my family of work and you were like, same, right? The thing about empathy, you know, I'm always teaching couples how to do empathy and it's awkward at first and people kind of try to paraphrase and all that and how I'm always like, it doesn't have to be that many words. Just same, I get you. I've been there, holy shit, it hurts. Like that kind of stuff, that's empathy 'cause the energy of it is, I totally get that you get the energy of it, right? And if we can do that to ourselves, so this is the thing, shame is anti-me energy. - Yes. - Right? And people with chronic pain have a lot of that. - Well, back to my point, why I think, we ought to be talking far more about shame than even anger or fear. And unless again, shame is a very special brand of fear, 'cause it's fear of disconnection. But this is why, you know, it's important, I'm gonna write a book about it, but like why I think the name is totally central. And if you can, because I think at so much of, and then, you know, we talk about the cases that if it complex cases, it's another passionate, you know, topic for me because I'm after those, right? Like there are some pretty low hanging fruit cases where someone's had pain for six months and they'd land in PRT and they heal up pretty quickly. But I'm talking about like the people of complex developmental trauma through their whole childhood, right, and then they have layers and layers of symptoms. There is a lot of self-loathing in there. So it's not a momentary blip of emotion of shame. And it's not even necessarily like this kind of niggling shame, gremlin-y kind of, like what you didn't do that as well as you could. You could have gotten more done today if you really worked hard, you know, that's how my shame gremlin showed up. But for a lot of people with complex developmental trauma, it's like, I suck. I'm disgusting, right? Yeah. But what I want those people to know is that just like, again, because we're talking to listeners who know something of this model, like when you know the pain science and you know you have to reinterpret the sensation as it's not a problem in your body, right? You cannot get anywhere in mind body healing until you know that key piece of brain science. The bones, like you're saying before, like go to the bones, watch everything else rest, yeah. Go ahead. So the equivalent to that, that like this is, we gotta get out of the structural mindset about the sensation, right? The equivalent to that with shame is, I am going to make a decision right here right now if I haven't already. I am worthy. I am fully deserving just as anyone else. And it's gonna feel completely like not at all true and like you're lying to yourself, but you just like that knee pain, back pain, head pain, whatever it is, feels so compellingly true and real that there's something terribly wrong with my head knee back, right? We, that's how compelling shame feels. I am disgusting and it really is true. And everyone else thinks I'm disgusting too. No, we don't actually. Right, that's such a good point, right? And people listening know that feeling, right? Like everybody listening goes that feeling of like believing your shame story is true. People know that. That's my point. But if you can, and I think this is why, I say like I learned about shame from Brittany Brown and then I saw it like, oh, I get it. How my family aborted and kind of set me up work 'cause they were kind of judgmental. And you know, there's always a right way to do things. And there's so much emphasis on productivity and all that stuff. But so, Brittany, thank you, Brittany, helped me see how that played out in my life. But then to really learn how, like awareness of it is a different thing than being able to fix it. And I did affirmations out the wazoo. (laughing) And they don't work. Affirmations don't work. Here's what works is literal brain training. Brain training. Now, I will say, if you've just had a blast for three hours dancing hard to some really fun music, you're less likely to be in shame than it. You know, like, right? Like, it's hard to feel shame while you're in pleasure. Yeah. So that makes sense. One reason why it's actually hard to have good sex when you're totally ashamed of your body or something about something. Right. So the flip, the opposite goes to two. But my point is, sometimes part of solving this shame problem is just get into good feeling states. Yeah. 'Cause if you can, like, get super, if you know, I don't know, making jewelry or some kind of crafty thing, whatever, that makes your system settle down, you will be less inclined to shame. That's part of training out of shame. So back to, like, I think, stress physiology if your limbic system has come, you will have less shame-based thinking. And that's a really powerful realization, just like pain. Remember, you know, you probably heard it, Alan Gordon's story about when he was at some big baseball, basketball game. Was it a lake or something? Right. And he realized after a couple hours, like, oh my gosh, I wasn't aware of my pain. Right. I'm in like, whatever, like forever. Right. But I think the same is about shame, the same is true about shame. Which goes to prove your point that shame functions similarly to pain. You know, and can be treated the same way. 100%. And I'll prove it to you another way. So, you know, so much of my career as a psychotherapist, I was doing trauma work all the day, all the time. And I started as doing EMDR, but eventually, landed on. energy psychology. So things like tapping, but there's a whole body of other energy psychology techniques that are also powerful that I would mix in and then havening and brainspotting and that kind of stuff. And when we would work on a trauma memory, like of some kind of abuse, right? Every time when people talked about the memory, so that we could like basically open up a neuroplastic window is how it works. With memory, reconsolidation, you'd sort of go into the memory just enough to stimulate all the feelings, sensations, story, like, cognitions that go with it, right? And then you bounce the nervous system in reference to that memory and that's how you reconsolidate the memory. But every time when you bring up a traumatic memory, there's always body sensations. Always. Right. Right. And there's always some kind of shame because shame is trauma is trauma because of the meaning we make of it and almost always. I mean, if you're in a natural disaster, it's traumatic because I don't feel safe. Okay, fair. That's not shame-based. But most of the trauma we therapist are processing with people, it's relational trauma. I feel gross about me because of what was done to me. Absolutely. Right. And there's always body sensations that go with that, which says to me that basically limbic activation always goes with shame and body sensations. So if you can solve for one or the other, this is back to like this whole, you know, the mistake I made of doing like these energy work on, you know, going like fix me, you know, if I'd gone and said, you know what? You know, it was just my father was critical. Can we work on that target and how I felt when he was critical or when I didn't feel seen by my parents or something like that? Can we target that exactly? Right? Then that's really productive energy work. But not because I'm like, fix me. That's because like I know I need to crack this not about shame, right? And this belief system I have that's promoting all these these shame-based behaviors. Right. Right. Right. In order to give myself self love. Correct. And this is why I am a firm believer in this stuff, even though I know a lot of people think it's woo-woo. I see it all the time like I could process one memory that's really only a representation of a whole lot of memories. And just doing that one memory can shift someone's posture towards the whole experience of how they were treated by, you know, that particular person or it can really like I always like to say it is like it. It at a certain point in therapy, the insight only gets you so far. Oh, my father was critical, right? At a certain point, you need to learn how to like sort of grow out of the aftermath of your father being critical, right? But for a lot of people, they just can't do that. And that's where doing these things like MDR or tapping or some some version of kind of body oriented therapy. If you loosen that up, then they're able to walk in the, oh yeah, I am okay. I am worthy. Right. I do deserve love and belonging. And I don't have to worry about this person judging me just because I say no when they ask me to do something, you know. Oh, my I'm like, I'm sure we could talk about this forever way over time. And I'm like, I'm like, I feel like we're in such a fun like mad scientist space around shame. You've got to write a book, Ellen, because this is this is cool. Like this is really cool stuff. As we're winding down, um, any final thoughts you have. Oh, that's such a juicy question. And I'm like, um, I've already gone over time because I've like a fire hydrant in you. Is that a verb? I just turned it into one. It's it's it's been good. It's this is good information. But okay, okay. Let me just briefly say what I'm thinking is that like a big part of what I talk about on this podcast is like that there are three parts of healing, you know, feeling safe in your body, feeling safe with your emotions, and feeling safe with yourself. And what you're talking about is like really speaking to everything, but feeling safe with yourself, like seeing that as like what I'm talking about there is shame. And so the language we're speaking, I'm just like, yeah, I'm really vibing with. We just have people. Yeah, sorry. Go ahead. Just like people, people who are listening, if you're used to hearing me talk about this stuff, this it's the same thing. It is slightly different words for the same thing. 100%. I was going to say exactly the same. Yeah, we just have different ways of talking about it. And and honestly, I think Dan Ratner, the way he talks about power, it's so interesting, because he talks about power the way I'll say the flip side of shame, or I'll say like there's a continuum of shame, you know, and on one side is your full on in your worthiness all the time, none of us is. And then down at the other end is this like you're in a vat of shame all the time soaking in it, right? And that that's this continuum. But he talks about operating out of your power. And I think that that's to me, that's equivalent of operating out of your worthiness. And and when you're out of power, I that's how I think about shame. So we just we've got three beautiful ways of talking about the same thing. And the good news about that is it'll resonate with some, you know, each each of our ways will resonate with different people. Totally. Yes, to that. And it's additive, you know, like me hearing about your analysis on shame, I'm like, this deepens my analysis. You know what I mean? Like it, it's good to have a lot of different perspectives. You know, thank you for that. And here's another thing that I really love about what you just said, because I when I think about sort of big picture back to the bones, I think in terms of needing to downregulate your nervous system. And we do that lots of different ways with lifestyle changes, with setting boundaries, with somatics exercises, that kind of thing, right? Meditation yoga, that kind of thing. So downregulate, express the emotions is a second. And these aren't in order of priority, by the way. And then the third is the brain training. You'd like to have to actually train out of certain things. Now, not everyone actually ends up having to do that. In my experience, complex cases, you got to all three. But I think what you just said, feeling safe in your body, feeling safe with your emotions and feeling safe with, did you say like with you? With you. Yes. Though what's so cool about that is like my whole thing with shame is it is all about connecting you to you. Because once you can do empathy for yourself all day long, whether it's about your pain or GI issues or any sort of other things, chemical stuff. Deziness, exactly right. When you can do empathy for that stuff and the moments when you don't feel good about yourself, you're home free. You're like your rec star. You can accomplish all manner of things like look at you, like your therapist and you do a podcast. I'm so impressed. What a great note to end. That was so impressed with me. I really resonate with what you just said there. Let's end on that. What was that? If you can do empathy for yourself all day, that's the goal. Yes. But I really want to be clear. Empathy is not to be confused with cheerleading. It's not to be confused with reassurance. It's not to be confused with arguing with yourself. Speaking of doing the right things the wrong way, those are all doing the right things the wrong way. Right? Because it is a choice to try to be kinder to myself. But there's a very big difference between saying, "Oh, it's so hard to run on time and I know you really struggle with this." Here you are again running late. Yeah, it's hard and you're working hard to overcome this, but it's hard. That's empathy. You're fine. They probably won't mind if you're late. That's reassurance. Cheerleading. You'll figure it out sometime. That's cheerleading. You're not actually late. The parade doesn't start just yet. You see what I mean? It's got to be my qualifications got to be high quality empathy. But I honestly, if shame, I guess you asked for the final thought, if shame is what undergirds and Ellen's economy of mind body symptoms, if it's what undergirds all the symptoms, empathy all day long every time. Every time. Beautiful. Beautiful. If you can probably heal. They're beautiful. Surely there are people listening to this who are like, "I relate to this conversation, people relating to the shame stuff. Where can people find you and what are you offering?" Yeah. Oh, good question. Thank you. So, chronictucured.com. That's two as in T.O. not the number two. That'd be cute if it was the number two, but maybe. I abbreviated it. It's always C2C with the two. But anyway, so I run this program. I design this whole program with so much. I would have just described because I'm all about understanding the bones first. And then it's really, it's designed to be comprehensive again, especially for complex cases where you had kind of a crap start to life and you need to. That said, in my case, no one would have said I had a crap start to life, but this is the program I needed. I don't think you'd be there. You didn't have a crap start. Well, the thing is I did, but I would never have known that. And that's something I just want to go back to that. Again, there's so much to say we could talk about forever. But I have many, many clients who are in a similar place where when I first meet them, I try to help them see, you know, like, wow, like I don't think anyone really attuned to you as a child. They're like, this was really difficult for you as a child. And they're like, no, not you at all, not you at all. And I've been there, I've totally been there. And so I do want to say to people listening to the podcast since I'm not your therapist directly right now, I can just sort of advise you. Question that question that. - I love it. That's so wise and wonderful, Sean, 'cause totally true. And again, I think this is also why it took me so long to heal because you and I both, and I think this is true for a lot of high-performing people or people who are kind of, quote unquote, successful, you know, is that we can't validate for ourselves the ways that in the mode back to empathy, oh gosh, I gotta bring it back to empathy. - Yeah. - You can get the stable life. I had a desk in my own bedroom. I had support to play my sports and to get my homework done on time and all that stuff. I had all those, the things that keep you physically safe as a kid, but if you're not attuned to. - Yes, yes. - That's the, if empathy is a central to your whole sense of self, if you don't get empathy, you're not as rich as you thought in terms of privilege and a set up, you know. - Absolutely, absolutely. - And I spoke to folks who grew up in poverty and or have trauma, but they had one person in their life who really saw them and really did empathy. Sometimes I think those people might be better off. I don't, you know, it's not an ID comparison, but. - But I know what you mean, it's so important. I mean, it's so important. And I'm also thinking of speaking of doing the right thing the wrong way. In my life, I had a, as a child, I had a lot of attention paid to me, which is very different than empathy. - Or in men, exactly. They weren't attuned exactly, exactly, 200%. Look at me, we just keep sliding back into the, because anyway, you can find me at Ellen Ronca, sorry, chronicturture.com. I was about to give you my therapy website. And that's really where all my energy is, is running this, it's a very small group, very high support. And it's designed really to help people kind of, you know, I think we can read books and listen to the podcast, but it's hard to find the unconscious blocks, right? Because we're only in our own brains. And we need someone to kind of speak in, just like you're talking about. So my program is designed really to give you lots of access to me so that we can like, sort of, you know, be as efficient as possible. But also to give you the all the bones, 'cause I didn't have the bones, and it drives me nuts that I didn't have the bones. - Yeah, get the bones, get a lot of support, and get the bones. And this is just the final thing that I was thinking this as you were talking, this dawned on me. When you said, people with chronic pain, you've found basically always that there's some developmental, like a relational trauma in the, there's some attachment trauma. - Attachment trauma. - I think that's true. I think that is true. And the reason that I want to land on that as we're closing is that I'm sure there are people listening to this podcast who have chronic pain and chronic symptoms and do not have insight into the fact that there probably was some attachment trauma. Think about it. Just wanna throw that out there. - Yeah, and particularly, you're not likely to notice if you had the parents who were doing like all the right, quote unquote, right external things, right? Giving out your exactly 100%. And so if your pain is persisting and you can't figure out why, what Sean just said, yes, with lots of exclamation points. (laughing) - And then empathy to self all day, every day, from here on out. - Ellen, it's been so awesome. I'm like, we will have to talk again. Obviously I'll see you in Dallas and thank you so, so, so, so much for being on the podcast. And for everybody listening, this has been Mind Body Medicine for chronic pain and I will talk to you next week. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)