Healing Complex Shame, Emotional Safety & Codependency: With Dr. Zoe Shaw

Interview with Dr. Zoe Shaw

[00:00:00] Welcome to Hard, beautiful journey where we embrace vulnerability as our superpower and let courage light our path. I’m Tiff Carson here to share heartfelt stories of healing, grief, and resilience. Each week I’ll talk with guests from experts to everyday heroes. About their journeys through adversity.

Together we’ll uncover the beauty that emerges from life’s challenges and how each experience can spark profound growth. Join us on this courageous journey of connection and transformation.

Let me ask you this. Have you ever found yourself over explaining, over apologizing, or saying yes just to keep the peace even when everything in your body screamed no. Today we’re going there with someone who has [00:01:00] helped thousands of women break free from those very patterns. Dr. Zoe Shaw is a psychotherapist, coach, speaker, and author of the upcoming book, Stronger in the Difficult Places, and her work centers around helping women heal from complex shame, build boundaries without guilt, and finally have a kind, honest relationship with the person in the mirror.

And here’s what I want us to reflect on as we dive in. Are you showing up in your relationships from a place of love or fear of losing connection? Let’s get curious together. Hello, Zoe. How are you? I’m doing so well. Thank you for having me on, Tiff I am really looking forward to this conversation because I have been that person.

I have been that over explainer [00:02:00] and just trying to keep the peace. And always say yes, and so I can’t wait to dive in and explore this a lot more with you. But before we dive into that, you have worn a lot of hats. You are a therapist. A coach now, a writer, a speaker, and a mom of five, which I don’t understand.

You don’t look like you’d be a mom of five kids. Oh my goodness, yes. But when all of that quiets down for you and it’s just you by yourself, what do you feel you’re truly here to do in this world? Oh, that’s such a great question. I am convinced that. Everything that I have studied, everything that I’ve experienced in my life has been to serve my purpose of helping other women [00:03:00] specifically, although I help men as well learn to overcome complex shame and codependency, it’s my life’s work.

I love working with women. I love working with couples and seeing the transformation and allowing people, not just allowing, but helping. People on the journey of really becoming more of themselves in public, if that makes sense. On the outside. Mm-hmm. We hide so much and, we hold so much because of shame and nothing excites me more than watching people be able to express who they are and their relationship.

Mm-hmm. So what made you realize that traditional therapy space wasn’t enough anymore? When did something inside of you just say, this work actually needs to go much deeper? Well, the reality is that in traditional therapy, I can work with one, maybe two people in one hour, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But when I started getting up on a [00:04:00] stage and I was able to speak to hundreds and people would come to me after, and the same amount of time, I can speak on stage for 45 minutes.

And I can reach more people. So it was really when I started speaking, which I actually started speaking on Facebook. I just started getting out there and talking, and then I got invited to speak on stages and began to do that. And I realized, oh, I can affect way more people and this in this way than I can one-to-one in a therapy room.

But the therapy has been amazing as well. I mean, I’ve been a therapist for 25 years. And so that work is really rewarding and I don’t ever wanna stop that. Mm-hmm. Because it’s a different kind of work and it’s really important. But I also love being able to help people on a grander scale. Mm-hmm. So let’s talk about that.

Mm-hmm. Because that’s one of my blocks is you, Uhhuh, you just [00:05:00] started. So I’ve done one keynote, two keynotes, sorry. And. I was terrified. Let’s be real, but I heard I did a good job and I wanna do like, I want to show my face on the screen and talk and, and I’ve always had this thing of doing tiff talks and something like makes me stop from pushing.

The button to like actually talk where people see my face. Was that a thing for you or is that something that you’ve heard from your clients where it’s like a, a block or you’re just frozen? Yeah. That thing’s called fear and I have experienced it personally to just a real, a really large extent.

The first time I got on stage. I was shaking, not just outside, but inside. Mm-hmm. I was [00:06:00] terrified and not just the first time. Maybe the first five or six times I got on stage before it really started, and maybe even more than that before it started to release a little bit. and now I get to have fun on stage, but the only reason why I get to have fun on stage was because I did it terrified for a long time.

And same thing with my podcast. When I started on a podcast, I was so scared to do a solo episode because it was just me actually started on a radio show and so there wasn’t any editing. It was live and I always had guests and it was wonderful because the guest, I could kind of rely on them to have a conversation, but it was just me and the time was rolling and I had to talk until commercial.

Terrifying. And so I, you know, for the, that person listening out there, often we have this idea that we have to get over the fear before we can do the hard thing. We don’t, we just have to do the hard [00:07:00] thing and know that as we continue to do the hard, terrifying thing, the fear itself will dissipate, but it often doesn’t work the other way around.

And so all I can say to you is, Tiff, keep getting on stage. Keep getting on stage scared, keep doing it over and over, and you’ll find that you get more comfortable. That stage can even get to a place where it becomes like home, where you look forward to it, but it only happens with time. Okay. I am going to do that.

I’m going to do it. Good. I’m go people, I’m gonna do it. So if you start to see Tiff talk return, ’cause I did do it a couple years ago, a few episodes, but I, I wanna get back to it. I, I have a feeling like I’m supposed to be doing it, but I’m like terrified. So anyway, I’m gonna do it. So you talk a lot about the relationship that we have with ourselves.

Why is that the hardest one to heal and what gets in the [00:08:00] way of that? There’s a couple of things that get in the way. The first is that we have so many other things to do in our lives, and we’re trying to foster relationships, you know, work on career, build families, and often it’s very external focused, like I am trying to work on this relationship.

What we often don’t do is recognize that the only one, the only relationship that we will have for our entire life is the one with ourself. We will lose probably all of our relationships at some point in time, and that’s okay. They are worth having and they matter, and we are meant as humans to be in connection with other people.

But the other thing is, you know, and I say this in faith spaces and people get very upset when I say The relationship you have with yourself is the most important relationship. It serves all of your relationships because people will say, well, what about your relationship with God? I’m like, well, if you don’t have a good [00:09:00] relationship with yourself, the relationship you have with your Creator or God is also not going to be a good one. And so that’s why it matters. It matters that you get to know yourself intimately. It matters that you honor who you are, that you are able to speak and express who you are because it makes all of your relationships healthy, healthy. That’s why I’m gonna get on just a very short soap box here, because let’s do it.

If you don’t have a good relationship with yourself, you are not honoring God. Correct. ’cause that is what he wants most for you. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And you know, you know the verse that says, love others as yourself? People often miss that part. Mm-hmm. The assumption first is that you love yourself [00:10:00] and that often gets glazed over.

It’s like, oh, you’re just supposed to love your neighbor. You’re supposed to give and serve. Yes you are. But the assumption is that you already have a deep sense of love and care for your own self. It’s not that we need to throw that away. Mm-hmm. So I think that a lot of people don’t tend to recognize that and see that.

Mm-hmm. So you have a new book coming out. Mm-hmm. I know how exciting that is. Being a first time author myself, that feeling of. Oh my Lord. It’s done. It’s coming out into the world. Yours is called Stronger in the difficult Places, which is a very powerful phrase. Can you explain what complex shame is and how it shows up in everyday life?

Yeah. Stronger in the difficult Places is the title of my podcast. And I, I came up with that. You know, it’s interesting [00:11:00] because one of the things that made me think about that, that title was my accountant of all people, and he and I, sorry, I’m laughing. He’s my, I’m an accountant. Oh, are you? I didn’t know that.

Oh, those accountants. Oh, that’s awesome. Those accountants. Yeah. Yeah. But my accountant, who I love dearly, we’ve developed a really wonderful relationship over a couple of decades. And when we were meeting once, we were talking about just life and, and I asked him something about his family and he said, you know, uh, a cracked cup can still hold water and.

It was interesting how he said that because he was talking about his own life and for some reason that meant so much to me because we often think if we’re broken, if we’re cracked, if, you know things are difficult in our life that we no longer work. And it was really interesting that he just spoke and I mean, it seems so simple to say, but a cracked cup can still hold water.

And [00:12:00] I want people to understand that, not just because of the work that I do with other people, but the work that I’ve done on myself, I’ve seen that those things that we are often the most shameful of those things that were the hardest in our life are often the places where we can become the strongest are often the things that create the most resilience and strength in us, and ways that we can help other people.

And so instead of just thinking about, oh, you know, I wanna heal my difficult places, or I wanna heal my trauma, or, or something like that. I want people to think, huh, I can become stronger in those really difficult places in my life. Um, and so that’s the title. That’s why the title, the subtitle is, heal Your Relationship with Yourself by Overcoming Complex Shame or Untangling Complex Shame.

And a lot of people don’t think about the fact that they need to heal their relationship with theirselves. Complex Shame is a term that I’ve [00:13:00] come to describe a type of shame that does not easily get, alleviated by vulnerability and external compassion. So lots of people know about Brene Brown and all the work that she did in shame and a phenomenal work, but what I found is that there’s a different type of shame that does not work in the way that Brene Brown talks about, such that we can become vulnerable and if we experience external compassion, we don’t believe it because our shame has become so complex that our internal response is, oh, but you don’t really know and understand. If you knew, then you wouldn’t be giving me this compassion.

Right. Another way that complex shame exists as well is that we become vulnerable and then we are gaslighted about our shame. This happens a lot in marginalized people such that someone will tell you that your experience wasn’t real or [00:14:00] that it, you know, didn’t exist, or that you’re exaggerating or whatever.

And so then instead of our shame dissipating, our shame just dives deeper. And so you know, part of my life’s mission is to help people understand complex shame as opposed to simple shame and understand how that might be their experience. Because if you’re being vulnerable, you’re experiencing external compassion and your shame doesn’t go away, then you think there must be something just devastatingly wrong with me.

Why does this not work? Right? Mm. And the answer is, well, because your shame is complex. It’s a little more complicated, a little deeper. And it happens for a number of reasons. Part of it is that, you know, we might have a shaming experience, something happens, and all the things we do to run from our shame often are sabotaging to ourselves.

And so it gets very complicated and we’re not able to simply just separate it. And so I talk about a process, that someone who has complex shame can work on to untangle it from their [00:15:00] identity and experience that relief. You wanna talk about that process? Yeah. You know, it’s, it’s in my book and it’s not a simple process, but it starts with being able to identify our initial shaming messages, so we all can’t get through a couple decades in life without having experienced toxic shaming messages. Right? And often what happens is we think that when we leave a situation or people that might have created some shame that we’ve left that behind. But what we often do is we just pack up all of those messages and we take them on what I call co-sign.

We co-sign with the messages, we co-sign with people who also have those messages and we just repeat them back to ourselves and that creates shame as well. And so part of what we have to do is begin to understand what was the initial shaming experience, what are the messages that I heard? And then we need to do something that I call separating or untangling the blame, because what we have to recognize is how have we harmed ourself as a result of our shame? So whenever [00:16:00] we feel shame, shame makes us hide. Shame is a thing that we do in society and we think that it stops behavior. Guilt might stop behavior. Shame does not, because shame is something we attach to our identity.

Guilt says I’ve done something wrong. And so when we feel guilt, if we feel like we’ve broken our moral code, there’s something to do about it. We can change our behavior. We can go back and repair. There’s an action. But shame says I am wrong. And so if you co-sign with that you believe that you are wrong, then the only option you have is to hide that part of you or to hide those things so that other people don’t see.

And so in the hiding, we often sabotage and self harm. And so you wanna also begin to understand how have I hurt myself as a result of feeling this shame? And that’s part of the self-awareness, right? Becoming aware about where your shame is, where it lies, where the triggers are, and how you’ve hurt yourself.

And then one of the [00:17:00] key steps when it comes to complex shame is separating the blame. So, often therapists, especially when someone has had a lot of shaming experiences, their first step, their first reaction is to say, oh, but it’s not your fault, right? We want to help someone just take the shame away. But for someone who has complex shame, their response is, oh, you don’t understand.

You don’t know what I did. And so what we have to do is actually do the hard thing of acknowledging all the little and big things that you feel. You could have done differently. You maybe are to blame for even, and sometimes people may feel like that’s victim blaming, but we have to work with the way our brain works.

And even if we have been a victim of something heinous, there are mo micro moments in those experiences where we made choices. Right? Mm-hmm. And sometimes we blame ourselves for the choices we made in those micro moments. And so until we’re able to open those up and acknowledge the blame [00:18:00] and acknowledge the thing that we feel we could have done differently, then we have to work on forgiveness.

Being able to say, I forgive myself for that thing. Until we’re able to do that, shame is not going to go away no matter how much external compassion we have. Now, when we talk about forgiveness, a lot of people. It’s a hard one. Forgiveness is hard when you have something really difficult that’s happened.

And my favorite quote about forgiveness, not my quote, Linsky said this is forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past. And I love that statement because now we’re not attaching it to anyone. Mm-hmm. We are just giving up the hope that our past, whether it was five minutes ago or whether it was 20, 30, 40 years ago, could have been any different.

And when we are able to do that, give up all hope of a better past. Now we’re able to separate that shame. Now we’re able to begin to talk about it [00:19:00] with vulnerability, and when we experience external compassion, we can feel it and we can begin to relieve ourselves from it. Now, also, we need to work on a maintenance program because shame is inherent in our society.

It is part of the way that our culture works and some cultures even more so. And so we have to recognize that shame is gonna show up. It shows up all the time, almost daily for me. But what I love to do is see it and like, oh, that’s shame. I see that I’m gonna let it kind of float by on a river, because I’m not gonna hold onto it.

I’m going to identify it. I know that it makes my body feel a certain way. I’m going to make sure that I’m regularly purging shame out of my body in both physical, and a mental and spiritual way. And that’s part, those are part of the processes that I talk about in my book about overcoming shame. I love doing this podcast for this reason.

Hmm. Because every single time I learn something and can [00:20:00] appreciate those things even more, because one of the things that I’ve talked about a few times on my podcast and and in my book is that I held a lot of shame around not being able to have kids naturally. Yes. All three of our kids are through IVF and mm-hmm.

The, the moment of actually expressing that I, that’s how this podcast came to be, was talking about that journey and it released, like I literally could feel the weight of shame coming off of my body because I was vulnerable. And then I got the compassion from my listeners and from my friends and family, and that was there.

So I understand that deeply. What I haven’t understood until now is the complex shame [00:21:00] and that not everybody can do that, what I did and still experience the same weightlifting right away. Yes. Yes. So thank you for that clarity and that, insight now that I’ll take into future conversations with people.

It is so, so profound. So thank you. So nice. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your story. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So another one of your Instagram posts. I loved it. It says, emotional safety isn’t optional. It’s foundational. And that one really hit me hard. What does an emotional safety actually look like and feel like in a relationship?

That’s such a good question. Emotional safety in a relationship. And the reason why I say it’s not optional is because, and I’m gonna tie it back to shame. [00:22:00] When we experience shame, like I said, we hide, right? Mm-hmm. And when we hide in our relationships, when we hide parts of ourselves in our relationships, we’re not showing up as our full, authentic self when our partner loves us, we actually don’t feel loved. And sometimes this is not even a conscious thing because there’s a part of us that knows, but they don’t really know these parts of me and so they can’t love me, and so we don’t feel fully loved even when someone is fully loving us and then we respond to them as if we are not loved.

And so it creates this dynamic in relationships when that’s just, it’s, it’s unhealthy. And then we can’t experience true emotional intimacy when we have emotional safety, which we have to co-create because if I, in that example I just gave you, that’s not the other partner doing anything [00:23:00] to not create emotional safety.

But when we are able to have that emotional safety, what that means is that we have space, and this isn’t in all of our relationships, but especially in our most intimate relationships, we have space to be all of who we are. We don’t have to censor ourselves. We can express ourselves in an open way and know that our partner doesn’t have to agree with us, but that our partner will accept all of who we are.

That is exactly what I mean, and in our most, in our closest relationships, it’s not optional for health. It’s necessary. Mm. So you also wrote something that made me scroll on the Insta. Mm-hmm. And you said that sometimes overgiving is really a form of control. Yes. [00:24:00] Uh, can we break that one down please?

Let’s break it down, because I talk about this a lot when it comes to codependency. A lot of times people think when they tend to be codependent, when they tend to be the givers and the pleasers, their thought about themselves is, I’m just nice. I’m just nice and I just wanna do wonderful things for people.

And you know, I’m always about peeling back the layers because let’s peel back the layers. When someone is overgiving, it’s usually not just, um, almost a hundred percent, not just from a place of, I just want to be nice and that’s not a bad thing. We just have to be aware of it. What it means often is I am trying to create an environment for you, I am trying to control your emotions such that you will give me what I need. And it could be, and, and when we look at, there’s different ways kind of, you know. To be codependent. It could be that I [00:25:00] know if I create this emotional experience for you or this emotional space for you, then you’ll respond to me and give me what I need.

It could mean also, I don’t feel that I’m valuable, just me how I am, and so I feel like in order to control your behavior towards me, I have to give you extra, because just who I am is not good enough. Either way, we are attempting to control the other person so that we get what we need. And if you’re able to recognize that, then you can start to pay attention to why you’re giving.

Because what often happens is that you over give, you don’t get what you want back from the other person. It creates resentment and then you become passive aggressive and you know, we know that’s not a recipe for health. Like the mind blown that. Yeah, yeah. No, I, I can see that, um, in a few areas of [00:26:00] my life and things that I have done.

And it is, it is a thing. And do you then suggest going into, before you be nice, before you do the thing…really sitting with the intention of that thing. Yes, absolutely. So ask yourself, why am I doing this? What do I want from the other person? And sometimes it’s actually okay to ask your partner or ask your friend or ask someone for what you need.

And you can still give them what you want to give them, but if there’s something you need, we cannot expect people to be mind readers. And so if you openly ask for something, now the fear is that I might be rejected. Right? And so you’re gonna have to sit with that fear. And then the other thing too, is sometimes if you really wanna give, and you also know that part of your intention for giving is because you need to get something [00:27:00] back from someone, and you need to ask yourself, can I give this without expectation? Hmm. And if you really can’t give it without expectation, then you need to not do it because all you’re doing is creating that cycle that I just spoke about, but being intentional, it’s kind of like that, that idea of, you know, you really , um.

Lend money to people. If you wanna give them money, give them money, but don’t lend them money because you’re really creating issues. It comes, it’s the same when it comes to people pleasing. It’s okay to do things for people. Just make sure you know why you’re doing it and make sure the intention is not to get something back from them.

Mm-hmm. That, because also you need to recognize that you who you are is good enough. And if someone doesn’t wanna be in relationship with you because you’re not overgiving, then they’re not valuing the relationship at all, and you need to open up space for people who can value you just as you are. So you, again, your Instagram account is [00:28:00] just full.

Mm-hmm. So people go check out her Instagram account. There was another post where you said, if someone else needs to be okay for you to be okay, you’re in a dangerous place. Yeah. What is going on there and what does that truly mean? So when it comes to codependency, what we have to understand is there’s a difference between independence, which is not really how we were created to be.

And then there’s codependence, which is also not how we were created to be, but there’s something healthy called interdependence. And this interdependence is really the healthy way to be in relationship and in the interdependence, I can have a feeling, I can have an emotion, and I, you don’t have to have it.

Or you can have an emotion and I don’t have to have it. When we’re codependent, it’s like it’s our emotion. If you’re sad, I’m sad. If I’m sad, you’re sad. And if I want, you know, if you’re sad, then I have [00:29:00] to pull you out of it to make myself feel better. And that, that is, that’s simply, it’s not healthy. And it goes back to that controlling.

And so if you are in relationship and you can’t allow your partner to have their experience, their feelings, their thoughts separate from yours, then you are in a codependent relationship. And it also just creates anxiety, and it creates pressure, and it also goes back to that whole, hiding and in authenticity, in, in authenticity, in relationships.

And so if you have to be in a, in relationship with somebody, if the only way you can be in relationship is if they’re okay, then you’re okay, then you’re codependent. And it’s hard for someone who, tends to be experiencing codependency to sit with someone else not being okay. Their desire is to control that and to fix it.

But when you’re able to do that, then you are giving [00:30:00] space in your relationship for your partner to feel differently. You are giving space for you to be yourself, and then you’re actually moving towards emotional intimacy. You can support and be empathic without having to feel the same thing. Oh, I love that.

I love that. So let’s talk about boundaries. Mm-hmm. Why do so many women feel guilty about setting them and how do we start building them and doing that without guilt? Yeah, because boundaries feel mean. It feels like I am, I am closing people off from parts of me or parts of the relationship. And for women especially, we’re nurturers, we, our estrogen derives us to care for and hold space and all of those things.

And so when we go against that grain, it feels like we’re being mean. It also creates a fear [00:31:00] of rejection for us. So especially people who, so that’s like. General health, the idea is that boundaries are mean when we go to codependency, boundaries could mean rejection, and rejection is so scary for someone who tends to have codependency.

And so they would rather have zero boundaries and feel like someone loves them and accepts them and wants them than to have boundaries and someone reject them for, for the boundaries. The problem is, it goes back to, to the whole people pleasing thing. When you have no boundaries, you allow people to run all over you.

You don’t get to experience separation in relationships and what’s healthy, what isn’t. Who actually wants to be with me for who I am versus for what I can give. And when you overgive, you’re going to burnout and you’re going to develop resentment and passive aggressiveness and all of those things.

And so, [00:32:00] boundaries actually give us freedom. But you have to walk through that fear of rejection in order to get to the freedom. When we tell someone, no, that’s not how I’m going to show up in this relationship, and then the person responds in such a way that honors that. We’ll have to go back again ’cause I have to talk about what a boundary actually is.

Mm-hmm. Um, then we begin to experience freedom, right? Mm-hmm. I want people to be careful though, because what often my clients will tell me is, oh, I tried boundaries and it didn’t work. They didn’t listen. Like they, they people don’t, don’t hold my boundaries. And my answer to you is, your boundaries are yours.

They’re not anybody else’s. They are your rules that you have for yourself. And when you’re spewing out boundaries to everybody else and saying, oh, you’re, you’re pushing my boundaries, you’re breaking now, your [00:33:00] boundary is an internal rule that you have for yourself that says, I will not tolerate, or I will do this, or I won’t do this.

And what that means is that when someone breaks your boundary, you change your behavior. And because of that, you don’t have to blast your boundaries out to everyone. It’s just the way you move in the world. Mm-hmm. If someone doesn’t align with that, then you change your behavior. You remove yourself or you say, oh no, thank you I’m not interested, or I’m not going to do that, or I don’t work that way. That’s you holding your boundary. The world is not responsible for holding your boundary.

So one of the pillars of my podcast is Find Your Tribe, and you have said that healing doesn’t happen in isolation. So what does sisterhood or community mean to you in your own healing [00:34:00] journey and others that you have witnessed? Yeah. Um, you know, in my book, it’s funny, I talked about how my best friend was better than a therapist, although I also have a therapist.

But, we, we just, humans. Which is the scary part of artificial intelligence. It’s a whole nother topic. Um, but humans were made to be in connection with each other. We were made to support each other. We were made to be in, like you said, tribe, right? Mm-hmm. And what I know is that we do not heal so well in isolation for a number of reasons. Number one, because we often need to feel and hear our words bounced off of someone else in order to sometimes even understand and see what we’re doing. We do not have the best lens of our own self. It’s part of why I encourage people to seek to get to know yourself. And we do that, yes, in [00:35:00] isolation. We also do that in community. We pay attention to how our words affect other people.

We can talk to people and have them pour into us. And my best friend is always telling me things that she sees about myself that I don’t see about myself. That’s also why therapy works so well, and so what I know from my life experience and therapeutic experience is that we need to seek out other people.

Number one, who, understand our life experience, who love us, care for us, who we can connect with and we can share in a honest way with, and often we have to be a little bit careful, especially when it comes to trauma, when it comes to similar experiences that we may have had. We’ve gotta make sure that the people we are connecting with are not just people that we’re connecting with to kind of trauma dump.

Mm-hmm. Right. We wanna connect with people who are [00:36:00] also healing as well, and working on that and being intentional. But when you do it, it helps you create health for yourself. Mm-hmm. So if there is someone out there that is listening right now that, mm-hmm is just realizing that they have been stuck and living in shame, yeah, in those patterns for years, what’s one small and loving thing that they can do for themselves today? Yeah. The first thing is, is to admit it to yourself. And the very easiest way to figure out where your shame is is wherever you hide, that’s where your shame is. So when you are in relationship, when you are at work, when you are, because there’s so many different types of shame wherever you are when you realize that you have that moment where you’re like, oh, I don’t want them to see that. Oh, I wanna make sure they don’t know. That’s where your shame is. So first, that’s how you find it. [00:37:00] And then the first thing that I’d like for you, the very first step I’d like for you to take is once you start to identify it, just use those words, oh, that’s shame.

Then you wanna ask yourself, where did that message come from that told me that I was unworthy or not good or not enough, and whatever the circumstance is, start, go back and figure out where those messages came from and start to pay attention to the things that you are telling yourself. Here’s the thing that I can guarantee you, and this is a beautiful thing about releasing shame, is that there is truly nothing new under the sun.

I have been a therapist for 25 years. I am not surprised by anything anyone tells me. And in the past, you know, 20 years of my therapy experience, I’ve heard nothing new. And so we think often that the thing for which we are, we experience so much shame is so huge. I carried my shame story for a couple of decades believing that if I shared it with the [00:38:00] world, the world would end, my world would end.

I’d experienced all this judgment, and the reality is, is that when I did, nothing happened. Nothing. Mm-hmm. And so, that’s the thing that I want you to hold onto is that whatever it is, I don’t care what the thing is that you’ve done or what was done to you, it’s not new. Other people have experienced it and it does not make you unworthy.

I know you might not be able to believe those words, but I’m just planting that little seed. Hmm. So if you want to learn more about this and connect with Zoe, here is all of her information. It is dr zoe shaw.com and on Instagram, Dr. Zoe Shaw and her book Stronger in Difficult Places, will be coming out soon.

When is it coming out? Well, it’s available right now for pre-order everywhere, so anywhere you can buy a book, you can get it, but it’s officially launching September [00:39:00] 30th and it will be in all the places that books are sold. All of those links will be in the show notes as well, so everybody can get ahold of you there.

I end every episode asking my guests what they are grateful for today, because there’s always something to be grateful for even in the hard. What are you grateful for today? Oh, yes. You know, I’m grateful that I have a platform to be able to help people. I just am, I’m, I’m so grateful that I have a voice and a platform and I’ve found that courage.

And I’m also grateful. I’m grateful for so many things. I’m grateful for health. I’m grateful for my son who came home from college, and this is last year before, uh, his senior year. So many things to be grateful for.

So Zoe reminded us that healing isn’t always about doing more. It’s about seeing clearly and seeing where shame is living in our relationships, seeing where we’re trying to control [00:40:00] when what we really crave, I think is peace. Seeing the ways that we abandon ourself to feel safe, and then choosing to return there. If this episode made something in you, sit up and listen, please don’t ignore that feeling. Take a moment today to ask yourself, am I living from love or am I living from fear? Am I setting boundaries to feel safe or abandoning myself to be liked?

What would it feel like to be emotionally safe with myself? Zoe. Seriously, thank you so much for being a powerful guide for us today. You’ve helped so many of us name that invisible thing and reclaim the parts of ourselves that we thought that we had to hide. You’re walking this journey with so much integrity and strength, and I’m so grateful that we got to share your [00:41:00] voice on this podcast today.

So thank you. Thank you so much for everything you are doing, Tiff, and thank you for having me today. Thank you. Thanks for being here for this episode of Hard, beautiful Journey. I hope today’s episode inspired you to embrace your own vulnerabilities and recognize the strength within you. Remember, every story of resilience adds to the beauty of our shared journey.

If you enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe, and leave a review your support. Helps me spread hope and healing to even more listeners. Until next time, keep shining your light and embracing the beauty in your journey. Bye-bye.