The Hidden Battle of Shame: How to Overcome & Heal | with Jerry Henderson

Michael: There's a secret battle that I think is happening in the hearts of a lot of people, a battle because of their childhood, a battle because of maybe things they've done, a battle because of the way that they see themselves in the world. And I think a lot of the crux of that battle revolves around the idea and concepts of shame.

Today I'm very excited to talk with Jerry Henderson, an expert, dare I say a master, of walking this journey and facing this battle, both for himself and to guide others. Jerry, why should anyone listen to today's episode?

Jerry: Well, we're talking about a key thing, as you said earlier, that affects so many people, and it's something that is often silent in people's lives.

They don't understand that there's this narrative, the narrative of shame, that I'm fundamentally flawed, I'm broken, that I'm a unique problem, and I can't figure out how to fix myself. And they're carrying that and it's driving all of these things in their life. Workaholism, addictions, broken relationships, toxic relationships.

And so today it is a key topic to help bring awareness so that people can understand that maybe some of the things they're dealing with are rooted in shame. And then two, how they can start getting free from this. And so it's a massive topic that affects multi millions of people and for many of us. We don't even know that we're dealing with it because we've become Identified with the shame we think we are the shame and so we don't know that there's something that's operating in us, and this episode will help shine light on that. Well, thanks for listening guys.

Michael: We'll see you later. I mean like dude, it's one of those things where it's like man run, you know I feel this response come up in me where it's like Holy shit, like why do we have to deal with this? Right. I know for me, I've talked about it a lot. It's actually a topic of a subject matter topic that's been coming up all around me recently.

In my coaching groups and my one on one sessions, in my leadership sessions and my businesses, like we're seeing it where I think people are just yearning for freedom to be themselves, but man, it's such a journey. Right. It's such a journey. There's so much reconciliation that has to take place.

There's so much healing that has to take place. There's so much truth that has to take place. Let's get into your story, Jerry, ‘cause I think it's gonna be very, very beneficial to people ‘cause I don't want them to be like, yeah, Jerry's the shame guy, but he's never dealt with it. Right. Which I think is like this weird thing that's starting to happen a lot. And I'm like, let's put our money where our mouth. So Jerry I'd love because I know a little bit more about you, tell us about the story. Tell us the journey that's kind of led you to this moment.

Jerry: Yeah. Well, thank you for that, Michael. And let me just say, thank you for allowing me to be here and such an important topic and I'm so grateful for the work that you do, the influence that you have.

And so it's a great joy to be partnering with you in this conversation. So my story in shame started very early. I grew up in childhood trauma, physical, mental, sexual, emotional, all of it, right? And by the time I was five, my parents were feeding me alcohol as a reward for chores. By the time I was nine family members were introducing me to other things like smoking weed, getting me high, and then it just became a cycle for me.

And by the time I was 14, I was in rehab grew up in U.S. poverty on the welfare system. And all of those experiences, what that did was it fragmented or broke my relationship with myself. You know, we talk about how trauma is not what happens so much to you, but what happens in you. And one of the things that happens is it can separate us from ourselves.

And when that happens, we can feel that sense that we're broken. And thus, I love the name of your podcast, Think Unbroken because the reality is we're not broken. But what's happened is there's been a separation from our authentic self. And so that shame starts to get, you know, embedded in us and we carry it.

And what often happens is people are putting their shame on us, right? We weren't born with shame, but people transfer their sense of shame to us. And so that was my story. alcoholic father, abusive home, just a wreck, a mess. So I carried a narrative for 40 plus years that I was uniquely broken. There was something wrong with me.

Always felt like the dumbest guy in the room, and I started trying to achieve my way out of that story. And so seeking degrees, trying to be successful, trying to build a house. over this sense of shame, that if I could bury it underneath all of that, then it would go away. And I could prove to myself and to others that I wasn't that.

Challenge is, that never goes away, and it's not supposed to go away, because it's inviting us into healing. It's inviting us into a journey back to our authentic self. And so that unhealed shame, I didn't know that's what it was. I just knew I didn't feel like I was walking on this planet in a way that felt good.

So that once again, as I said, started me on an achievement cycle that didn't do it. So then I took up drinking, became an alcoholic, and then all of that imploded over an 18 month period where I wound up going through a second divorce because that shame kept me hiding myself. I didn't know how to make authentic connections.

And then from there that addiction took hold of my life, I found myself in rehab, and then on my last day of rehab was where my eyes really got opened. All the work that was done over those 30 days helped open my eyes to the fact that I'd been carrying shame, and that I could heal it, I could deal with it, and I could return to the parts of myself that I was rejecting, and learn how to love and accept myself.

So, very familiar with this thing, man, it drove my life. imploded my life and I started to heal that space and now I'm helping other people in that space as well.

Michael: Powerful man, you know what comes to mind for me is one just feeling a total relation to that journey. My parents being drug addicts and alcoholics most of my family being alcohol actually just wrote a post the other day because I do you drink?

And if not, why? I'd love to see your thoughts. And then subsequently, I wrote the reason I quit drinking. I never felt like an alcoholic, Jerry. I've said many, many times over the years, but the thing that it was, I started looking around me. Mother's an alcoholic, stepfather's an alcoholic, grandmother's an alcoholic, uncle's an alcoholic, my siblings, many of them have been through recovery in that journey.

And even though I've been able to go, alright, I don't need to drink for this period of time or that period of time, and it was never the thing that got me. There were isms that I certainly had a connection to that were my addiction. Alcohol was never one of them, but I started to look at the future, and I started to think to myself, maybe not today, but if you don't step away from this, that will create a pathway to the potentiality and I find that the shame that people feel, especially around alcohol and the impact that it plays, which often is tied back into their childhood because they witnessed their parents is one of the strongest senses of shame that we carry because it's such a cultural norm that people around you are just drinking or alcoholics or party people.

You got exposed to it super young. I remember I took my first sip of beer at eight years old my grandmother was like, hey go to the kitchen and get me a pabst blue ribbon, right? And of course, because I'm eight, I don't know better. I try it. I was like, well, that's disgusting but it was fed to you, it was given to you. Did you find the real I'm asking this as a very pointed question because I think that a lot of people who feel shame, don't recognize that it actually started with something that wasn't even their fault to begin with.

Jerry: Yeah.

Michael: Does that feel true for you?

Jerry: Absolutely. And that's the crazy thing about shame. You know, when we're in our young formative years, right, and we experience ACEs or adverse childhood experiences, it causes us to make decisions to try to make sense of things.

And so if we have these traumatic experiences, or what some people might not even consider traumatic, but we're getting involved in things or things are happening to us that we don't feel good about, and we feel like we need to hide that, our brain starts to make decisions about, well, What's wrong with me that this is happening to me?

And here's the reality, right? I mean, I'm not consciously thinking as a five-year-old, an eight-year-old to go like, okay, I have to make a conscious decision here, you know, really define what's happening. No, I'm in survival. And part of what happens in that space is I have to make three decisions, right? I have to make decisions about other people.

I have to make decisions about life. I have to make decisions about myself. And those are some of the options. And then the brain just starts to fire. And the truth is, it's a lot safer to make the decision that there's something wrong with me, which is what shame is, right? That sense that there's something wrong with me.

Not that I did something wrong, but there's something wrong with me. It's a safer decision for me to think there's something wrong with me. Instead of thinking there's something wrong with my caregiver. Because if I think there's something wrong with my caregiver at that age, that's super unsafe. This person who's supposed to take care of me doesn't have it in them to do it.

I'm super vulnerable. But if I can think there's something wrong with me, that gives me a sense of empowerment. Once again, subconscious level here, that I can start scanning my own life, my own behaviors, and start to think, like, what do I need to change so that I don't get hurt, and so that, you know, something bad doesn't happen to me, so I don't upset dad when he's drinking, or whatever the narrative is, I start to scan me, but then I get into a pattern of always feeling like there's something wrong with me, always something that I have to fix about myself, so, absolutely, it gets birthed out of things that are not our fault, didn't choose it, got handed to us, and then we start to live a life that reinforces that sense of shame. We want to prove to ourselves subconsciously that we are what we believe about ourselves.

Michael: Yeah, and I just wrote a note here as we were going, because I just connected a dot that actually probably makes more sense to me about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs than maybe anything ever. I'm going to explore this with you just briefly in real time.

I wrote, not feeling safe directly interrupts our ability to live within Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and feel connected. And so this idea that we would choose feeling safe by not interrupting what we know, Might be something bad ie I see mom dad drinking. It's not supposed to be for me I don't want to rock the boat because then I’m not safe means that you actually never even get to the space in which you can go up to the next level in the hierarchy of needs that to me, feels like a truism in consideration that so much of what we're doing as children is trying to protect ourself. Because if you look at it, right at the foundational baseline of it, you got your psychological needs, but then you have your safety needs. But then on top of that, you have love and belonging, and it's like, you're not going to interrupt love and belonging and all the things along the bottom rungs of that tier, because it's too dangerous to your psyche. What I think is really interesting, without doing so you don't ever get to the esteem level, and you definitely never get to the self-actualization level.

Jerry: Yeah.

Michael: Just because I'm exploring this in real time, what you said just like triggered a thought in me. What do you think about that?

Jerry: Oh, I love that, right? Because part of what has to happen and for that, in order for that hierarchy to happen is safety along the way, right? Physical safety, you know, then we have our needs met, then we can move up. But if we'd never feel safe, and that's one of the things that trauma and these experiences and shame will do to us is keep us in a state of not feeling safe.

And then we can't advance beyond some of those stages, right? And some of the research shows that as we experience those early, uh, traumatic experiences and the shame that develops, we kind of get stuck and trapped in some of that. Age, you know, we identify with that. And as men, sometimes we walk around feeling like, well, I feel like a seven-year-old still.

And, you know, you struggle with trying to move into that self-right? Because you're still trapped down here in survival, safety, and everything can still evolve. Yeah. externally seem to be okay, but if things internally aren't okay, nervous system doesn't get the message, right? And so I can't move up because nervous system is keeping me at a state. I haven't reconciled that part within me to be able to move forward. Yeah, so I think it totally applies.

Michael: Yeah, I feel like that, I'm just making a note to self to like, dig deeper into this concept, because I think it could be very helpful for people. mentioned about nervous system. Let's talk about this for a minute, because I think that this is one of the areas in which, when you recognize what actually happens within you. Your physical embodiment in regard to having these traumatic experiences that are toppled and topped with shame. I should say it really can wreak havoc. So to create clarity here, how does shame impact our nervous system and our decision making?  

Jerry: Yeah, so if we think about shame, once again, not that I did something wrong, but that I am something wrong, and what gets birthed out of that the inner critic, the constantly beating ourselves up, the sense that we need to hide ourselves so we can't, like, make connection emotionally in the way that we want to or that we need to, because research is clear, one of the biggest things that can help us heal is connection with other people. You know, that Harvard study that's been going on for so long about if you had to choose one thing to help your overall wellbeing, it's relationships. Well, if I'm living in shame and I'm afraid that people are going to see me the way that I feel about myself, I'm always going to stay trapped behind a wall.

And so my nervous system doesn't see relationships as safe. My nervous system doesn't see my relationship with myself as safe. Because if you think about it, I'm in there 24/7 talking to myself in a way that I'd never talked to anybody else. Fearing my own consequences, that if I ever mess up, that I'm going to beat the hell out of myself over it.

Or that I have to have perfectionism, and that perfectionism keeps me wired. And so people start to really, you know, develop high levels of anxiety. underlying buzz, the pit and the gut. And you carry that, that then can lead into panic attacks, depression, and other things. And so the brain, the fight and fight system inside of us, you know, the amygdala, the limbic system, uh, designed to keep us safe and an actual acute threat gets locked in chronic stress. The sense that there's always a threat. The shoe's going to drop at any time because there's something wrong with me. Bad things happen to me. I'm on guard against myself. I'm on guard against life. I'm on guard against other people. So I'm kind of trapped in that space and I can't relax. And once again, I'm on fight or flight, even against myself.

And so we stay in that state, feeling hidden, feeling like there's something wrong with us, feeling like we're a constant tension war and all of that's working inside of us, working against us, causing us to self-sabotage, et cetera. Does that make sense?

Michael: Yes. Are there commonalities that you see about the shame that people carry? Whether that be the way they look, or their sexuality, or their money, or any common day occurrence, or do you find it's typically more associated in childhood? things that happen. Alcoholic parents, neglect, molestation. Like, do you find that it tends to lean in either, or is it both, or is it some of each?

Jerry: Yeah, I think it's some of each, and I think everybody's unique story, right? Because definitely a lot of those early childhood experiences. That then birthed the shame, that then birthed us trying to figure out how to overcome the way that we feel about ourselves. But somebody can have a very early, a very healthy early childhood, but then get locked into a toxic relationship.

And that person begins to verbally, mentally, physically abuse. And so once again, the person might develop a sense of shame. Because they need to figure out what's wrong with me so that I can stay safe in this relationship. And it can develop in so many different ways if we have a failure, right? Somebody who's trying to build a business crumbles, it all falls apart, that what would be considered for them a traumatic experience of loss, loss of self-worth, loss of self-confidence can then start an underlying narrative in their mind that there's something wrong with them, that they couldn't achieve that.

And that's where it starts to kind of unfold. Right? And the story that we develop. Shame is a story that gets, you know, birthed inside of us through various events that then we lock into. We keep repeating the story. And I like to think about it this way. We have an experience. From that experience, we make meaning from the experience.

Our brains are meaning makers. From that meaning, we start to then develop core beliefs, right? That means that I am a failure at this. So then I developed a core belief that I'm a failure. I'm always going to be a failure. And then I get scared to try, or I start to self-sabotage, which then leads into more actions, which gives me a new experience, which reinforces that belief.

So it stays in a loop and that can happen, you know, at various times in life, but a lot of it does happen in childhood experiences, but it can happen later in life has been my experience.

Michael: Okay, so here's the thought that I have about you specifically. How in the hell do you build so much success in your life while simultaneously destroying it?

Jerry: yeah, good question. That's part of the key, right? Because You will be driven by a narrative that you're trying to overcome. And it's interesting when you work with people who are these really high achievers, who maybe have a trauma story or a shame story that you're trying to overcome, and you start asking the question that you just asked, how is it?

that you're building this, but yet underneath you have this constant sense of feeling like an imposter. People are going to find out that you're a fraud, that you're going to, you know, lose everything, and you're waiting for the shoe to drop. It's that story that propels the achievement, that keeps you stacking the wins, because you're hoping that the wins will give you the evidence to show the world, everybody else, that you're not the loser that you're not the broken person, but what you're actually after.

And I think this is what keeps it going, right? Because no matter how many attaboys you get or attagirls, it doesn't work, right? Here's the crazy stuff about you're out there stacking achievements, trying to get success, hoping that other people will see it. And then they will accept you, but you get that acceptance from them, right?

But it's not enough. Why? Because what you're ultimately after. Is that hopefully all that acceptance you get from other people will give you the permission to accept yourself and that lack of self-acceptance that driver is so powerful. You're trying to heal yourself through the achievements, through the success, and so you just keep pushing until guess what happens?

Your body, your brain, your nervous system says, we can't do it anymore and you implode and that's life's invitation for you to begin to heal or hopefully you recognize it before the implosion happens and you say, I want to avoid that. I want to get healthy. And so it's the story that drives it. And once you heal the story, you can then begin to heal. Make success and achievements in a way that feels so much more life giving and sustainable,

Michael: Man. It's so spot, you know, at 25 years old, I had made a million dollars, worked a fortune 10 company, no high school diploma. I was doing things in my life that no one could believe that I was capable of doing, but I did.

And yet I was 350 pounds. Smoking two packs a day, partying all the time, getting high from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed, cheating on my girlfriend, 50, 000 in debt, and my car got repoed. Right? And so, I, one of the things I'm always teaching my clients is like, you have to actually prepare yourself mentally, emotionally, physically.

Physically and spiritually and somatically for success that thing that you said, we're trying to heal ourself through accomplishment Holy shit. Did that just like ring a bell for me because I was like I will show you I will have the best car the best condo the hottest girlfriend the most money and yet 26 years old I’m sitting in the bathroom with a gun in my mouth

Michael: It's like that thing that we're seeking externally, it doesn't fill that cup and it's like, we hear it, but I don't until you live it. It doesn't make sense. Right? How do you sit in that moment of recognition? Right? But let's say somebody is listening right now. And the thing that they would identify with the most is like, yes, they can say, yeah, I have shame. Maybe they feel shame about who they are as a person sexually, or they feel shame about that they've made too much money, or they feel shame because of things that happened to them in childhood. And yet they're seeking this thing to make it all go away. What would you tell them?

Jerry: Yeah, I would tell them that it's okay that they're seeking all those things to make it go away It's all we know right because often what's happened is something externally brought shame into our life some type of event and it's normal that the brain would then say Well, something externally is going to fix me.

And yet we have to realize that actually what happened was something internally happened inside of us and that we don't want to outrun ourselves anymore. And that the sense of trying to bury who we are authentically is an absolute natural response to it. You see, we can develop shame and having shame and we think, well, I have shame, so there must be something wrong.

There's nothing wrong with having shame. It's a natural part of experiences that you've had. And the first place to start is to recognize that you have it, to allow yourself to meet that part with compassion, and then to realize that the path is not sustainable. Shame fueled achievements; accomplishments are trying to drown the shame.

I tell people I used to drink in order to tolerate my own presence, right? And drowning all of that. Yeah, it ain't gonna do it. It's okay where you're at. You don't have to stay there. It's okay that you're right there. Don't judge yourself for it. And then begin to see that you are your own healer. You have the ability because it was an internal decision that was made. You can then make an internal decision to change that story.

Michael: Yeah. Yes. And now I want to explore something that I think stands parallel with what you just said, because I agree with you entirely, like you have the ability to change this and flip this script and go and live this amazing life. And in my first book, when I wrote Think Unbroken six years ago, there's a, uh, I believe that we all have the ability intrinsically to go and do this work, face our inner demons, uncover and unlock all of our potential, and come out the other side as this unbroken person.

Like, I believe that to be true. Not only because I've done it, but because thousands of people have walked the path with me have done it, all the people who've walked with you have done it. Like, this is a possibility. But, one of the things that I've been thinking about, especially recently, One, the internet, the state of social media, society as a whole is like absolutely fucking insane.

It's almost unpalatable at this point. It's so disgusting. And I'm just curious, like when we think about this idea about shame, what role does society and culture play in the reinforcement of shame?

Jerry: Sure.

Michael: And is it something we need to be aware of?

Jerry: I think it plays a huge role, right? As we look on Instagram, Facebook, or wherever we're at, right? TikTok, etc. And we see, you know, what we're supposed to be like, right? We get into the should story. And, you know, you think about the language of shame, it's I should be like this, right? Shouldn't be like that, or you know, all of those narratives. And when we're looking and we're constantly fed with things that we're comparing ourselves towards or to, it's going to continue to reinforce shame.

It's going to continue to feel like, well, there's something wrong with me. Why don't I have this? Why don't I have that? So it's an inundation of, we get inundated with it. And we do have to realize that there are some protective things and protective factors that we install in our lives to protect us from shame and to heal from shame.

You know, it's interesting. Some of the research on, you know, childhood trauma is that it can diminish a person's ability to have resilience, not survival resilience. We're great at survival resilience, right? We get through it. We got through it, but thriving resilience. Many trauma survivors or people who deal with shame really struggle with and in order to build that resilience there's just key things that we have to do and one of them is protecting ourselves from those stories that we get sucked into is we can get addicted to comparing ourself to the world because what is it doing?

You know, we're looking at everybody else. It's just reinforcing the message that we have about ourselves and so culture society and especially if you live in a high shame culture definitely The major contributor to a sense of shame. And we have to build protections in our life from that.

Michael: What do those protections look like? If somebody's listening and maybe they're vibing with this and they're like, yeah, definitely. Every time I get on social media, I feel less than every time I'm driving up and I see the guy in the escalade and I'm in the Ford Pinto interview to make those anymore. But you get my point, right? It's like, how do you navigate that? Like what protective mechanisms. What tools can people be bringing into play in their day-to-day life?

Jerry: Yeah. And this is going to sound like old hat, but there is really not much you can do with some of this stuff, then limit your exposure to it.

And so if you're in a space of using social media all of the time, then after you get done with it, you feel like trash about yourself. Afterwards, you're going to have to find times to, to limit your interaction with it. or to change your relationship with it. You know, I was working with a client not too long ago and they said anytime they got stressed, pulled out the phone, two hours later, you know, they're there.

And then they feel terrible about themselves afterward, all this stuff that they get exposed to. And so they had to find something that replaced that immediate reaction to go to that source of self-soothing, right? Because a lot of times we're self-soothing, but then we get sucked into the comparison trap.

So limiting the time, I think, can be really important. Two, once again, might sound like an old have for people, but very effective, is the practice of gratitude. Our brains look for what we tell that is, it's important to us. And so if I'm constantly looking at other people and what I don't have, then my brain keeps looking for that.

We train our brains, and one of the ways that we train it is every time I look at that, I start to compare myself, then I feel terrible about myself. Well, guess what? All those emotions, those chemicals, all the reaction that's happening is helping wire that pattern and that habit into your life. The practice of gratitude, as simple as it might sound, is allowing yourself to start looking for things in your life that you feel good about.

What is something that's good about you? You might think, I can't find a darn thing about me. That's any good work in that space of practicing gratitude for yourself, gratitude for what you have, and it can help diminish some of that sense of constantly comparing ourselves, looking for what we don't have versus looking for what we do have.

And there's other strategies, of course, the relationships we have, what kind of people are we with, are we with people that are always, you know, comparing or, you know, reinforcing the chatter that we tell ourselves. And so those are just a couple of the examples. People can start super practical. I always tell people, you know, I never say that change is easy.

But at the same time, there's a lot of simplicity in it. The simple things that we know we should, perhaps should, know that we could do, that brain change we often avoid, and we make them super complicated. Change is simple in some ways, but it doesn't mean that it's easy.

Michael: I was sitting with my therapist once upon a time, and we were having this really interesting question, because I was, or conversation, because I was mentioning to him, I was like, Why is it that I can seem to be able to do these things and other people can't and he said to me It's not that other people can't he says Change only happens when you make change happen.

Yeah, and some people aren't ready and I was like, oh, yeah That makes sense to me and my thought process went to why the fuck wouldn't you be ready? Right. But it is, you know, it's, it's a process and it's, it's a thing that it unveils itself as you go and I wish there was a way to create a linear timeline on the healing journey to be like, here's when you can expect for things to be different, but it really is the baby step.

And I think a lot of it. It's in the discomfort of self, right? You, you mentioned about having gratitude for yourself. It's funny. That's actually come up a lot in one of my groups recently, because I've been challenging this group of guys. We have this Men's Monday program. I've been challenging these guys when you're doing gratitude journal, make one of them about you. And all of them are like, dude, that's the hardest thing I do. Right? And one guy particularly comes to mind, obviously we won't talk about him here, but, you know, I think about this a lot because that was the same for me. It was like, you can have gratitude for the silliest, most mundane things that, like, realistically, probably don't matter that much.

It's like, you're grateful because the bag of tea was good today? I'm like, okay, cool, I get that, like, great, let's have, but it's like, where's the gratitude for you? I see this self-fulfilling prophecy happen for people when it comes to shame, especially with this idea of like, how do we move from compassion through guilt to this place of acceptance, right? And I noticed sometimes there's a wall that shows up right at the door of compassion. It's like, imagine, imagine you're outside of a building.

Michael: It's a big marquee and the marquee says compassion and they're like all these like cartoon arrows pointing to the door And there's a handle and you walk up to the door you turn the handle and you open it up and just like an old Cartoon, there's a giant brick wall.

And that's what I think happens when people are like, hey I hear you talking about compassion, but then it's guilt and shame kind of double layer my ability to walk into the theater of compassion to actually touch that for myself because I feel guilt or shame about the fact that I even have to be compassionate for myself to begin with.

Jerry: Yeah, how the hell do you navigate that one? That's a tough one. It sure is, right? Because you're asking somebody to give themselves permission to do something that's going to heal that part, right? That they're resisting, that they feel so much identity around. And so moving towards compassion can feel very scary, right?

If we start to ask the question, how is shame and guilt serving me? Let's get really curious, right? Because shifting to curiosity is one of the most freeing energies that we can have. Because if we stay stuck in a, something wrong with me, I shouldn't be doing this, what's wrong, all of that sucks us back into negativity.

But if I step back, I observe, I go, wow, why does self-compassion or being compassionate towards myself feel scary? Why can't I go through that wall? What does self-compassion mean to me? Does it mean that if I'm not hard on myself that I'll screw up again? If I'm compassionate towards myself, I let myself off the hook and I don't trust myself.

I know because I feel all this shame about what a horrible person I am. If I start to give myself compassion, am I going to like lose it? What's going to happen if I let myself off the hook? So we've got to get into some of those subconscious stories that are cycling that makes self-compassion feel like a wall.

Because we're afraid of what's on the other side of that wall, right? What's, do I have to let go of something that has served me for so long? Shame has served me. Guilt has served me. Maybe it's kept me in line. Maybe it's protected me from getting into intimate relationships and being my authentic self.

So it's really been doing something great for me. It's trying to serve me. The consequences suck, but its intention is good. So, I have to go and say, let me be patient with myself in this compassion journey. What am I afraid of around it? How does shame keep showing up and why is it showing up? And then when we get to that place, we can make a decision that's more informed.

It isn't sat in the judgment of, well, I feel judgment that I even have to try to figure out how to have compassion towards myself. It allows us to face what's on the other side of that, which is. self-acceptance, self-love. Those are super scary for people who deal with shame. That's scary because shame has been an identity piece and something that's kept him safe.

Michael: And as we look at the idea, and again, we're not necessarily saying like Maslow's hierarchy of needs is the end all and be all of this conversation, but when you, when you look at the top of that scale, self-actualization is the goal, right? I try to sit in this notion about know thyself. Do you can get to the place?

And people ask me all the time like because obviously I'm a podcast guest and I think about this and whether I'm working with clients or on stage or whatever and people say well what does healing mean and I always think to myself, it's very simply this doing what you want to do because you want to do it and not doing what you don't want to do because you don't want to do it.

And that's about agency and sovereignty and self-actualization, especially, and this is such a powerful topic, that's why I love that we're going so deep today. when shame becomes associated with the identity of sin, self and the ego. We as human beings know one thing to be true two things to be true one for whatever reason We love to fucking suffer.

I don't know why I wish we could figure out that's part of it and the other part of it is we hate change And so the idea that I would walk and let down that wall and step into the room and see what compassion looks like means I have to let go of my current identity, which is a person of shame, right? Because now we've associated this concept of I am bad. I am not worthy. I am not loved. And so how do you, this all to me feels like a giant mind game. Right? All you're doing is playing this game with yourself to break down the wall and then rebuild the pieces into the construct of who it is that you choose to be.

What's difficult about that is you've never been you before so you don't know what to do in the mind the brain's Natural response to the unknown is to revert back to what is known because that's where safety exists So how so how in the world do you what I'm trying to pare down here Jerry is okay here We have this idea I want to shift my identity.

I want to let go of shame. I want to leverage curiosity. I want to become the fullest version of me I want to know who I am at my root, but I’m terrified not because of what's inside the room but because I’ve never actually been me before and I don't know what to do.

Michael: How do I become me and change my identity?

Jerry: Good question, right? And there lies the work, and that is the part of saying, one, we've got to just move towards it, right? When I was in rehab on my last day, where they did a little ceremony, they took a stone and they passed it around the room, and everybody there was supposed to take the stone and say something positive about me into the stone, and then the stone came to me and I was supposed to say something positive about myself into that stone, and I was going to take that stone with me, right, as a reminder that, Other people saw something good about myself, but I then needed to see something good about myself.

And it was in that moment, I looked at the stone, I'm like, I don't know what the hell to say. I don't say good things about myself. That's not my identity. But the word slipped out of my mouth kind of, you know, spontaneously. I said, I am worthy of my own love. And it was a moment where I gave myself permission, right?

I crossed the threshold in some way and gave myself permission to start exploring what loving myself would look like after 46 years of hating myself. And that little crack, it's all we need is a crack to start shifting the identity. And one of the things I work on with my clients, we start with, let's talk about your relationship with yourself.

How's that going, right? We have measures and markers for so many things in our life, but we don't really measure our relationship with ourselves. How are you talking to yourself? What do you say about yourself? How do you see yourself in the mirror? How do you act towards yourself? How do you let other people act towards you?

Those are all indicators of your self-relationship. So as we think about shifting identity. And moving away from, I am the shame, and allowing myself to start opening to the fact, to the possibility, that once again, are these little steps that we take, and we say things to ourselves internally, we start to make a decision, I'm going to move from the land of shame, which is my home, and I'm just going to take a step, going to explore the possibility of what would it look like to accept myself? You know, in change theory, everybody stacks like, okay, I'm going to make my new year's resolution. I'm going to do 20 things. All change theory says that's not going to work for you. And what the brain wants is it wants small, consistent. actions that build. And so the best thing that we can do and start reshaping our identity is to take that brave step and just sit and wonder, just start the process.

So if you're listening to this right now and you have no way of understanding how you can make that new identity shift. One, it doesn't have to happen overnight. Two, it happens with a small choice of the will that says, I want to create a crack and opening with inside of myself to imagine the fact that I could step away from this and into something that's more beautiful and see how that feels in the system.

Michael: I don't know. What do you think about that, you know, it's funny. A couple weeks ago, I released an episode, just a solo show that I did on the backside of a course that I had taught my group and it's called Giant goals and baby steps because I think people are so tied into the concept and the idea of like I have to hit the home run and they attach their identity to the idea that if they hit the home run, they'll be worthy And I’m like, well, why don't we try getting on base a couple of times first?

Let's make some contact, let's build worthiness in the day to day and as you were talking I actually wrote this because you said I am worthy of my life And I wrote this note that said somewhere in here is reconciliation.

Jerry: Yeah.

Michael: But I think what people get trapped in and shame at the deepest sense of it Is they feel irredeemable?

They feel like because of and look context here. I'll speak for myself. You're welcome obviously has the guest to speak for yourself. I have done really fucking bad things in my life Yeah, like when I was young dude, I did I did things there's stuff like literally I will not talk about publicly because I don't know whether or not that it would get me in like actual legal trouble, but I’ve stolen cars.

I've broken into houses. I've robbed people. I've put guns in people's faces I've cheated on people I’ve stolen money of like all those things when I’m 13 to 20 something, right? Trying to figure out the world, trying to make it work. And that's a real conversation about nature, nurture. Look at the environment I came from. Look at the things I experienced. And today I go, yep, that was a part of it. I carry no guilt for it. I carry I owe no recompense It is what it is and I’ve given myself the permission of freedom from my own like it's like the beatings will continue until morale improves and so talk to me about not only your journey of reconciliation, but how do you find yourself or even give yourself to be redeemable? Because I feel like so many people right now, dude, they're beating themselves up about that shit that was 30 years ago, 20 years ago, 8 years ago, 6 months ago, and it's like, when are we going to let go here?

Jerry: I mean, it's a fantastic question, right? Because we get trapped in a sense of never being able to forgive ourselves. And once again, we get into the space of curiosity. How is holding on to that serving you? How is not forgiving yourself? Serving you because you're, we don't do anything unless we get some payoff and that payoff to tell me holding on to the sense that I'm irredeemable, that I can't forgive myself, that I need to stay stuck in the rumination of replaying and then the pit in the gut and the shame that comes up with all of that and I can't Give myself permission to forgive myself.

I struggled with that, just like you, Michael. I mean, I had those things, right? when I talk to people about forgiving themselves, it's always like, like, no, I can't. Comes down to, like, these three or four things. But then it usually comes down to, like, one or two. Right. The big ones. Like, no, because of that, I can't forgive myself.

And when you start to understand that we're, you know, displaying behaviors Even in those terrible choices that we've made, they were reinforcers, right? They were things that we either got caught up in, or they were reinforcers about the way that we felt about ourselves. And learning to say to ourselves that we are worthy of being able to forgive ourselves, but we have to get to that point of going, it’s doing something for me.

It's keeping me stuck. It's keeping me in my safe zone, right? And part of what I had to do was tell myself, That I'm just going to treat myself like I got a dog's brain. I know it sounds strange, but for me to rewire myself, I had to like strip it all down and go, why am I holding on to unforgiveness? Why am I holding on to shame?

Well, I got trained that way. And there's a part of my brain that's just like a dog's brain, you know, it's that little primal piece that develops habits and beliefs and keeps me in behaviors. And you train it by, you know, reward systems and repetitiveness. And I go, holy crap. I've been talking to myself this way for.

You know, 40 years, of course, my brain's trained to feel that way. Of course, I can't forgive myself because if I forgive myself, once again, that means I have to let go of the story that I'm irredeemable. I have to let go of the story that I'm a piece of shit or whatever it is. And that doesn't feel safe.

And so retraining the brain, I disassociated, I disidentified from shame as me. And I put it in the habit category, the training category. And yes, did I have evidence that said I should feel that way? Yeah, we all do. But the reality is Things can happen to people. One could have that same experience and can move away from shame and can give themselves compassion and grace and another will move towards a deeper sense of shame and unforgiveness.

And it is training and it is habitual patterns. And when I stripped it down to that and said, I'm going to train myself to forgive myself. I'm going to train myself to not feel shame. I'm going to train myself to love myself. That brought freedom for me for some reason. And then I went on a path of doing that and letting it go. And it's been a beautiful journey.

Michael: Yeah, I asked myself this question. What would a person who gave a fuck about themselves do, and that became my anchor, you know, if you ever seen the movie inception They have these like tokens that bring them back to reality And that question was my token for a long time because I was so mean to myself, dude you know and you get this because you just spoke to it and You know, I always try to have a little bit of candor in this But I tell clients all the time, like the way you're talking to yourself, if you talk to me like that, I'd beat the shit out of you.

Jerry: Yeah.

Michael: Like, there's no question about it. And like, I've been to like 200 fights, like that's not hyperbole, dude. Like that's like real talk. And it like triggers something in people to go, Oh my God, you're right. You're right. Look at the way I'm talking to myself. The inner dialogue is the foundation for everything.

And what's so crazy is what's modeled to you then mimic and then you master. And so you become a master of self-abuse from a verbal perspective, from a mental perspective, from an emotional perspective. and you wonder why you can't touch success. It's like you haven't allowed it. You haven't opened the door to be able to walk down that pathway and you have to look at this like if your best friend Was having that conversation with themselves, you would be like do you do anything in your power to make sure they don't ever talk to?

Yourself like that and yet you forget to get gas in the car and you go home and you're ready to jump off the roof because you're such a fucking bad person but I think there's I think there's a lot of misnomers In what we do here, Jerry, and I think a lot of those are positioned around these ideas around the inner narrative, and I think that a lot of it sits in these spaces in which people will use a lot of language that then is not backed up because as humans, we need proof, right?

Because proof is ultimately the thing that we galvanize against, right? And so you'll see that affirmations actually are not that successful. Because people are not backing it up by taking action, right? And so I'm wondering, do affirmations work to help shift mindset? Is it about the action that shifts mindset?

Is it more of the practice? Is it more of the affirmation? Is it just the way we're talking to ourselves? Is it all the above? Like, when we start walking this path of really looking at healing and transformation and these steps that we're taking, what is the process actually look like if you start to break it down into the nuance?

Jerry: Yeah, I think it's so spot on, right, that we need proof and what we're, we need evidence. What we do is we create a bunch of evidence. It just keeps us proof, keeps us in our loop, keeps us in our pattern, right? Our brain is just going to keep doing what we want to, that will reinforce the way that we, our core beliefs, right?

Because our core beliefs are important to us. They drive everything in our life. And so when we're carrying those core beliefs and we start to see something that is opposed to that core belief, we feel very uncomfortable with it. You might feel very uncomfortable with telling yourself that you love and accept yourself.

Why? It violates your core belief. You might feel very uncomfortable getting that promotion or that praise or whatever it is. Why? Because it violates your core belief. Or being in a healthy relationship violates your core belief. So when we get into that, you start to think, well, how do core beliefs start to get developed?

We talked about earlier experiences that we didn't make meaning of that. We then go on a pattern in a cycle. And so I think what you're saying is really key. And I think it's a holistic approach because if you think about what you said earlier, if somebody talked to you like that, you'd beat the hell out of them.

Right. And so when we start to understand, I'm in a relationship with myself. Now, if I'm in a relationship with somebody and I'm thinking trash about them all the time, it ain't going to be long until I'm out of that relationship. I'm talking myself out of that relationship by the way that I'm sitting around view and thinking of that person.

Now, if I'm in the living room and I'm talking trash to him, like you said earlier, then it's not gonna be long until that relationship is either done or extremely unhealthy. If I'm acting in ways towards them that are not honoring, once again, it's going to screw up the entire relationship. And then if I see, you know, myself as a broken person in that relationship, unworthy of love, and I'm rejecting that love and I can't have intimacy.

So you get the point. And so affirmations are interesting, right? Because there is some research that says that if affirmations are connected with emotion and that they're also connected with. Action that they can start to become very effective because I agree with you on one sense where somebody's just sitting around saying, yeah, I'm worthy of good things.

And they say it with that energy and they're just trying to use that alone. It doesn't have sticking power. Why? Because our system's rejecting. It's like, I don't believe this is BS, right? But if we can start to combine our thoughts, our words, visualization exercises, our actions, and then boundary setting, and this is one thing that people often don't get into.

If I don't set my boundaries and I let people keep violating me, then once again I'm sending the message to myself that that's what I'm worthy of, and I keep reinforcing the shame. So, what fires together, wires together. What we do in repetitive action, calling on multiple parts of our nervous system, thoughts, words, hearing it, saying it, feeling it, and then acting on it.

It starts to send a signal to our brain, oh we do believe this stuff, we're not just talking about it, we're not just thinking it. We're combining it all together, and it actually will start to move towards rewiring a core belief in our system that feels more normal to us. So, yeah.

Michael: Yeah, imagine for a moment of the core belief shifts to I am worthy, right? An experience you had an experience I had and at first it does feel like a fallacy. You're sitting in it and you're like, oh, come on, what is, you know, and then your brain, I'll speak for myself, my brain goes, Oh, you're just gonna fuck it up again. And there's something that. I have learned to do, which is I just acknowledge that I, that, uh, to be honest, Jerry, I don't think it for me because of my background, having an ACE score of 10 coming from the craziest environment you could ever imagine.

I don't know that voice goes away. Like I really, truly don't, but I'm always just like, shut up, bitch. I got shit to do. Right. Because that, that, that part of me, that part of me is a part that wants to take. That part of me is a part that wants to destroy, that part of me is a part that wants to have the I told you so moments, and so when I'm sitting in the discomfort of the creation, right, and I mean that in a literal sense, like the discomfort of like, you know, Writing the blog post, recording the podcast, going to the gym, eating the chicken and rice instead of the cheeseburger, spending quality time with the people I love instead of God knows what else I could be doing. Like that part, that little voice shows up sometimes.

Jerry: Yeah.

Michael: Right. And I just go, Nope, not today.I think that that internal dialogue, because you said it, like you're in a relationship with yourself, like that internal dialogue, even about the negative parts of who I am, has been really powerful for me, because I have just acknowledged the truth of the reality that it's there. Do you have that experience too? I mean, obviously you and I have been down a very similar path. And so I'm just curious. Yeah, 100 percent have that experience.

Jerry: And one of the things that's been really effective for me is the work of Internal Family Systems, or IFS, Dr. Richard Schwartz. And as you think about, I have multiple parts of me, man. I have a part that wants to beat the hell out of me. I have a part that wants to love me. And I've identified in my past so much with the part of me that was afraid and needed shame as a way to protect myself. And now I've moved towards, I've got a new identity. You know, the experiences that I had, it formed that. That's a part of my story and my journey and that dis identifying, right, to go, I'm recognizing that there's a voice in there, but it's one voice. It's not the only voice. It was the only voice. It's not anymore. There's me now, my authentic self, making a choice to recognize it and then to not shame myself for having it and go, of course it's there.

It's been around. It's been trying to serve me. I call those my echoes, right? It's like these echoes from that past space that wants to show up and go, you're not worthy of this. What are you talking about? Remember X, Y, and Z. And yeah, and then you sit with it. You understand that it's showing up to try to get a need met and you go, okay.

You're okay to be here. But guess what? I'm going to go and I'm going to continue to do the things that reinforce to me that I am worthy of love. I am worthy of the life that I'm trying to build. And the energy for me, man, has become so different because, you know, we often try to heal the voice of trauma with another voice of trauma.

We try to heal the voice of an inner critic with another voice of the inner critic. And so we beat the hell out of ourselves for having the echoes and we shame ourselves for it. Well, I'm, I'm still broken. I still have these. So if you start to accept that this stuff is totally normal, it should be a part of the journey and the story.

And it doesn't mean there's something wrong with you, that you have that. I always felt like I was the one person I'd hear other people's stories. And I'm like, yeah, they can do that, but I can't do that. And that story drove my life until I finally realized. Oh my God, it's a story and it's something that's trying to serve me.

And I separated, I created a gap between me and the voice and started to observe it and it disempowered it and a lot of curiosity to do exactly what you're saying. So yeah.

Michael: When I initially created Think Unbroken now almost a decade ago, the tagline around it and what I was trying to do at the time was we are the stories we tell ourselves.

Because I looked at that and I found that to be the most accurate truism of my life. The words that I would like extrude out of myself and put into the world would always somehow come back to me. Because I keep looking at the world and I'm like, this is a mirror. Like this, this is not this outside perspective.

Like what I see with my eyes is a mirror. It is not a window. And that felt so much true because when I started to understand the functions of the brain, for example, the. Reticular activating system this idea that we see what we seek, right? The bible you seek and you will find you're always you want to find a shitty relationship you're going to find a shitty relationship.

You want to find health you're going to find health and then I like kind of parlayed that with an unnecessarily probably deep dive into gestalt not only from my own experienced therapeutic Healing journey, but also just reading literally every piece of literature and watching everything I could ever find on Gestalt because I found that I was so dissociated.

I really needed to get into the present and the Gestalt really helps you sit in the here and now, comes around personal responsibility, brings an awareness, and it really helps you move away from this idea of intellectualizing and really brings you into the moment. And so like I was thinking to myself as I'm like trying to navigate this and then doing work with IFS and doing work in EMDR and CBT and NLP and ABC and every acronym you could ever imagine it always came down to the same thing no matter what I was in no matter what I was doing this idea about the self-narrative and the storytelling element always became the thing that I could leverage against to create change If you believe, was it Mark Twain, whether you think you can or you can't, you're right.

And it's like, that's the part about shame. If you find the belief system shift that you can let go of it and that you can be a fully formed, Authentic, unjudged, now, by the way, unjudged internally, cause trust me, society is judging the shit out of you. It doesn't matter, but if you can become that version of you, like that's where freedom lies the thing that came up for me, I just started asking myself all of these questions, all of these things, and I would just dive and dive and dive and dive and dive, and then I realized like, it always comes down to like one or two things, just like you had mentioned earlier, just always one or two things. I preface all that to ask this question. What is one thing that you wish that everyone understood about shame?

Jerry: That you're not the shame. Shame will trick you to think that you are the shame. It is not who you are. And that is one of the hardest things in healing from shame, is to put it outside of us.

And it is the most devious, tricky part about shame. Once again, guilt says, did something wrong. Shame says, I am something wrong. I would love for people to understand that care, that feeling that they carry, that you're uniquely broken. That there's something wrong with you is shame, and that shame is not you.

It is something you learned. It is a habit, and it is something you can unlearn.

Michael: Yeah. Powerful, man. This has been just an awesome conversation, dude. This feels like a master class and a half, and I would encourage anyone who's like, maybe a little confused, because we did walk that path a little bit today, to come back to grab a piece of Paper and a pen and come and study this like you were trying to learn it.

Before I ask you my last question, Jerry, I want to encourage people to come and find you, to work with you, especially to listen to the podcast you have. How can they do that?

Jerry: Yeah, just go to my website at jerryhenderson.org. Everything's on there. You'll find the podcast, my book, some free courses that you can access as well.

Michael: Yeah. And I will say this, I spent a long time researching you so we could prepare this conversation. Like II cosign this man all day long, obviously that's why he's on the show. Um, but the resources there are phenomenal. So guys go to thinkunbrokenpodcast.com look up Jerry's episode for this and more in the show notes.

Thank you. My last question for you, my friend. What does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Jerry: Means for me is that I could change the story about myself. That I am not a victim of the story that was handed to me, and that I've told myself for decades. I have the ability to change the story that I carry, that I repeat to myself, and I don't have to stay trapped in it. I can choose a new story.

Michael: This is about the truth, man. We all have the ability and the power to be the hero of our own story. Jerry, thank you so much for being here. Unbroken Nation, my friends, thank you for listening. If this brought you any value today, please leave us a review on Apple podcast or YouTube.

Share this with a friend. Someone in your life needs this desperately today. I'm telling you; you could help them create a massive transformation in their lives. Thank you for listening. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other.

And Until Next Time.

Be Unbroken.

I'll See Ya.