Moving Beyond Shame

All right, and welcome back. On this episode, I want to talk about the importance of having somewhere to come back to.

What do I mean by that? Well, anytime we're out there in the world trying to do something, whether it's in relationship work, whatever that might be, and it doesn't go our way, it's important to. To have a space in relationships we can come back to. And this idea is really tied in a lot to the idea of shame, something I've spoken about on this show before. Right.

And shame really has to do with what are the conditions make connection allowable and permissible. Right. So in cultures and societies and groups, we shame each other if there's some kind of action or behavior that is deemed not appropriate for that group. And the cost of that shame is often being ejected from that group, from becoming disconnected. Right. You're no longer able to be in relationship.

And there's some very healthy aspects of shame. Not all shame is bad. But what I'm talking about today is when we internalize our shame to a toxic level, right? When we stop distinguishing between bad decisions and choices we've made and our worthiness as a human being. And this really is so key, right?

Shame and guilt are another way to think about this, where guilt has to do with, I did something wrong, and I don't feel right about that. But that's very different from, wow, I did something wrong, and that's because I am bad. There is something wrong with me inherently that cannot be fixed. And when we start to internalize shame, we collapse everything into that there's something wrong with me, and I'm not worthy of.

Of relationship, worthy of connection. And so that's when we tend to isolate in shame, right? We pull back into ourselves. We literally look down. Eye contact and shame don't really go particularly well together because connection is the antidote to shame. And what I'm talking about here, when I say it's so important to have somewhere to come back to after we have experiences of guilt or shame.

It's one of the defining powers of a men's group. It's the willingness to come back to ourselves and relationship, even through imperfection, that's so important and so healing here. Perfectionism, which a lot of men I Work with and certainly myself, carry within us. It's often tied to shame, right? If I don't do this right or good enough, I'm not worthy of love and connection.

And so we can isolate and try to perfect whatever it is we're creating or ourselves, because we feel like if it's not perfect, we're not going to be worthy of connection. But you can feel the rub there. If we're isolating, we're already disconnecting. So perfectionism itself is a means to the exact ends. We fear so much. Having somewhere to come back to where we can be embraced, welcomed back into the community, into relationship, like in a men's group, is so healing.

It is the corrective medicine. It is the antidote to shame. This didn't go how I wanted to, or I messed this up. And yet here I am, right here I am coming back to connection. That is what's so powerful and so healing, and that is what builds the deepest resilience we can have as men. And frankly, as human beings. In community and in connection, we're more resilient.

We're able to handle more of the stresses of life. We're able to move through discomfort, move through making mistakes. We're able to learn, right? We're able to come back to ourselves and that willingness on our part and in whatever group we're part of to welcome us back, that is the healing move that is so important. So a lot of work I do with guys, even in men's groups, right?

It's about setting accountabilities and goals. I don't want to look at porn anymore, or I want to go to the gym so many days. And the challenge with those kinds of goals and accountabilities, which we all need, it's good to grow, to stretch, to lean into our edge, is if we fail them, they often feed on our inner critic. They feed the sense of shame we have inside ourselves, of, oh, man, I didn't do that. So now I don't want to show up in the group because I will have to feel shame, and they're probably not going to welcome me, right?

This is the kind of internal crap that goes through so many of our heads as men. Whereas the beauty about being in a group where you have somewhere to come home to is around goals and accountabilities and stretches. There's no way to fail. And what I mean by that is, if you do it, you won great, you succeeded, you moved towards the thing you wanted. And if you didn't do it, you have the opportunity to come back to connection and relationship.

And that is deeply healing and powerful because what it does is it teaches us I don't always have to have it perfect, I don't always have to do it right. There's always a way to come back to relationship, to come back into connection. And that in itself allows us to go out and take more risks, right? When we feel the safety of that, we can be more bold in our lives. We can try more things, we can ship work that's not perfect, dig into relationships that we don't quite know where they're going to go, we can experience more.

And if it doesn't work out, or we fuck it up, or we get hurt or rejected in the process, we have relationships to come back to which will soothe our souls, which are the way that love comes in and lets us know, you're okay, you deserve it. No matter what, you deserve love, you deserve connection, you deserve relationship. But we can't do that if we don't have somewhere to go back to. And so this shame and the spirals of it that we can fall into as men, they're so poisonous because then we'll self isolate, right?

Like I've talked to before, when we're hurting and when we're in pain as men, what we often want to do is withdraw. And then we collapse very easily into our own shame. And the willingness to step forward and be like, here I am, I'm feeling shame. I feel like I'm not enough. I feel like I messed this up. I feel so bad, so guilty. I hate myself right now. The cure to that is, is to come back to relationship.

It's not going to fix everything, it's not going to mend every relationship. But it's the way you move past the shame. You tell yourself, I'm still worthy of connection, I'm still worthy of relationship. There's something for me to learn here. Maybe what I did wasn't great and it's okay to feel a little bit of guilt around that and to commit to making changes around that and, and getting support and bringing in structures in your life to do that. But that's so different than allowing that to kind of coalesce into an inner shame.

We always carry forward. So one of the reasons I'm so passionate about guys getting into groups is you gotta have somewhere to come back to, right? So you can take some risks in your life and not be afraid to fail, not be afraid to be uncomfortable, not be afraid to feel shame. Because when we have the relationships when we have people that will welcome us back and accept us, even if we've made mistakes, some of which we think are totally unforgivable, that is the path forward for healing.

That is the answer. And so many guys we have nowhere to come back to, right? We are taught very early that our love, our ability to get it, it's conditional, right? It necessitates us showing up or being or behaving or creating or making a certain amount of money or whatever that might be in the world. And that creates a lot of pressure for us. Something like a men's group in the unique texture of masculine love is, I'm here with you.

No matter what you're experiencing, I'm with you, right? And that's the power we can give each other. In a men's group. Many times I've had to step into a group feeling tremendous shame. And many times it's been the men in my life who have pointed to the way out for me to, wow, man, I see what you're saying there and you're giving yourself no space. And something that's been shocking to me in my work over the last years is how embedded and connected to my shame I've been to the point that I will actually defend it against others, defend it against men in my life who are saying, I think you've been a little too hard on yourself here.

And I'll go into, no, here's all the reasons you're wrong and my shame is right. The love of those men in those relationships, that has been what's allowed me to open beyond my shame, to say, oh, I don't have to be perfect. Here are men that are receiving me despite what I've done, despite what I've felt, I've had somewhere to come back to. And we all need that.

And the more we have that, we're actually wired for this. As humans, we are relational beings. We have entire systems in our body dedicated to connection and what that does for our nervous system, our self regulation and our health. We cannot survive a lot alone, despite the bullshit we're fed, particularly as men. Shame will kill us.

It can. Shame spirals will take people into addiction, depression, suicide, you name it, I've been there and I've witnessed it. And so the call here, as is so often the case, is to find people around you. Find a men's group, find a that you can join so you have somewhere to come back to when life hits you or you don't hit the mark and shame comes up. You gotta have a group, you gotta have a place that you can come back to.

And if you do, that's the healing move, the willingness to come back to relationship even when things haven't gone the way we wanted them to. That is one of the most powerful ways to grow and heal ourselves. So if you don't have a group, it's time to find one. Until next time. If you're interested in working with me around dating relationships or your masculine presence in the world, just go to evolutionary men Apply.