How to Let Go of Your Shame, Solved

Chances are, there’s something in your life you feel deeply ashamed about—something you’ve never told anyone, something you can’t even admit to yourself. In this episode, we go deep into the emotion we all experience but almost no one wants to talk about: shame. Where it comes from, why it’s so powerful, how it screws up our lives—and more importantly, how to deal with it. We cover the biology of shame, the psychology, the evolutionary roots, and how modern life (especially the internet) completely messes with our shame systems. We talk about healthy vs. toxic shame, how it shows up in addiction, relationships, perfectionism, and self-sabotage, and why most of us either try to hide from it or end up being controlled by it. You’ll also hear from members of my team about how shame shaped their lives in surprising ways. As always, this episode is brutally honest, deeply researched, and sprinkled with a few bad jokes. But more than anything, I hope it gives you the awareness—and the tools—to start facing whatever it is you’ve been avoiding. Because you can’t outrun your shame. But you can learn to live with it. Get your free PDF guide: ⁠⁠https://solvedpodcast.com/shame CHAPTERS Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction 00:04:35 Shame's Hidden Architecture 00:14:38 Key Definitions 00:18:32 Distinguishing Shame from Guilt 00:20:49 State Shame vs. Trait Shame 00:21:47 Shame vs. Embarrassment and Humiliation 00:24:03 Shame, Trauma, and their Interrelationship 00:25:14 The Neurobiology of Shame 00:29:56 The Shame Spiral 00:36:04 The Learning Paradox of Shame 00:44:12 The Shame Compass 00:47:33 Personal Experiences with Shame 00:49:21 Workaholism as a Coping Mechanism 00:59:13 The Allure of Shamelessness 01:01:15 Individual, Familial, & Cultural Sources of Shame 01:11:05 Geographical Impact on Shame 01:13:08 Cultural Values and Shame 01:14:35 How the Greater Culture Shapes Shame 01:26:12 Digital Technology & Shame 2.0 01:28:02 The Digital Divide 01:31:05 The Relationship Between Technology and Anxiety 01:33:55 Protection Strategies 01:39:21 Developmental Stages of Shame 01:40:19 Understanding the Origin of Shame 01:42:57 The Role of Parenting in Shame Development 01:56:49 How Therapy Transformed Our Understanding of Shame 02:01:06 Carl Rogers and the Safety Revolution 02:07:31 Albert Ellis and the Cognitive Revolution 02:11:58 The Influence of Albert Ellis and Carl Rogers 02:13:31 The Emergence of Reparenting and Inner Child Work 02:17:18 The Rise of Internal Family System 02:27:59 Tools to Address Your Shame 02:40:19 Stoic Principles for Perspective 02:47:05 Perspective Shifting Techniques 02:58:26 Tuning Your Shame System 03:10:39 Recognizing Unsustainable Shame Patterns 03:16:28 Kristen Neff's Self-Compassion Framework 03:25:33 Understanding Shame as Obsession and Resentment 03:29:53 Overcoming Shame and Personal Growth 03:31:39 Takeaways from the Discussion on Shame 03:40:40 Conclusion ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://go.markmanson.net/cdi1xzha ⇨ Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your patterns, challenges your blind spots, and helps you take action. Get started at https://go.markmanson.net/217i5ys5 FOLLOW MARK Mark's IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/markmanson⁠ Solved IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/solvedpodcast/⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://x.com/markmanson⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmanson/⁠ YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@IAmMarkManson

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mark Manson?

  Chances are, if you're listening to this or watching this, there's an area of your life that you feel so terrible about that you just try to pretend that it's not there. That you hide it from others, that you just, you avoid it at all costs. And that avoidance and that hiding leads to more problems in your life. It causes you to isolate yourself. It causes you to withdraw yourself. It causes you to numb and distract yourself. It probably causes problems in your relationships. Yet, you're probably not addressing it. Shame is, it is the, in many ways, the ultimate topic that we all need to address. But by definition, it is the last topic we ever want to address.

• 0:42Mark Manson?

  And so this episode is going to probably have a weird tension throughout for most people. I actually imagine that we will lose some people in this episode just for the simple reason that it will become too uncomfortable and they don't want to ask these questions of themselves as we go through all the topics. But fundamentally, as we will see alleviating shame, or healing shame, or coming to terms with your shame, whatever language you want to use around shame, it is one of the most important and core aspects of developing yourself or improving yourself. A lot of what people go to therapy for is to heal or overcome their shame. A lot of what people go to seminars and meditation retreats

• 1:27Mark Manson?

  and self-help conferences is to help heal and alleviate their shame. The reason people go to AA meetings, that they go to check themselves in the mental hospitals, a lot of it is around alleviating their shame. And so this is, it is such a fundamental aspect of our relationship with ourselves, our relationship with the world, our relationship with our loved ones. And it is the topic that we hate touching more than any other. So, all irony aside, we are about to spend the next four to five hours touching this topic, touching it in the most shameful of ways.

• 2:06Mark Manson?

  Or the most shameless of ways, perhaps. So with that, welcome back to the Solve Podcast, everybody. I am number one New York Times bestselling author, Mark Manson, and this is my intrepid producer, associate, former academic Drew Burney. And in this episode, we are going deep on shame. Now, for anybody who's new here, the whole point of the Solve Podcast is to give you a podcast episode that is so well researched, so deep, so thorough, that you will never have to listen to another podcast episode about this topic ever again, ever, your entire life. Don't be ashamed of that. There's gonna be a lot of bad shame jokes throughout this episode. I can already tell.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  And air them already.

• 2:52Mark Manson?

  Now, to set the agenda or the roadmap a little bit for the listener, this is a long podcast. It is very thorough. You don't have to listen to it all in one shot. You can break it up over multiple sessions. But just to orient you on like, how we're gonna go about this, generally speaking, the first half of the episode, Drew and I get into the theory and understanding the concept as deeply as possible. We look at everything from a scientific lens, a cultural lens, a historical lens, and a philosophical lens, as well as a psychological lens. And then the back half of the episode is where all of the actionable advices, the practical takeaways, the things that you could do today, or this week, or this month, to help solve this problem in your life. So prepare yourself accordingly.

• 3:34Mark Manson?

  And because it is such a large podcast with so much information, we provide free PDF guides to go along with the episode. So if you want to download the free PDF guide, it's over 100 pages. It has all of our citations and notes. It has all of the research, all of the theories, all of the book recommendations. You can go to solvedpodcast.com/shame, and you can download it for free. And finally, if you are a fan of the show, or you get a lot out of this episode, please, please, please subscribe or follow us on the platform that you're listening to us on, and leave a review if you can. Podcasting is very weird, and that there is not really a way to get a show out into the world, or promote it, without doing a bunch of bullshit social media stuff that we don't really like doing.

• 4:19Mark Manson?

  So if you love the show, and you wish more people were exposed to it, the best thing you can do to help us is to subscribe and leave that review.

• 4:34Mark Manson?

  Alright, so to begin, I want to go back. I want to go all the way back. I want us to imagine that we are in a prehistoric tribe. This is like 30,000 years ago, 50,000 years ago. Now, what is life like? Well, we probably live in a small band of anywhere from a couple dozen to 100 people. It's probably really just half a dozen extended families that roam the savanna together, eating a bunch of grub and worms and trying not to die of dysentery. Life expectancy was extremely short. You know, Thomas Hobbes had this great famous quote from Leviathan where he said that

• 5:16Mark Manson?

  "the pre-civilization man, his life was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." And for a couple centuries, there was a lot of debate around that, but we know for a fact now that, yeah, being a caveman fucking sucks. It was not a good time. Your life expectancy was about 30 years. Most of your waking hours were spent sourcing food, and if anything went wrong that day, you didn't eat. You spent roughly as much time sick as you did healthy. Disease was rampant. There were tapeworms, lice, parasites, diarrhea, constant food poisoning, malaria, gum disease. It was a tough time. People were not frolicking through the savanna. Let's just put it that way.

• 6:00Mark Manson?

  And then on top of all of that, violence was rife, not only within the tribe, but between tribes. There was a lot of territorialism and raiding and pillaging of neighboring tribes. In the prehistoric age, it is estimated that anywhere from 10% to 20% of the population died from murder.

• 6:23Mark Manson?

  So, being a caveman sucked. We've established that. I think it's important to really spend a moment thinking about this because it's important to understand how high the stakes were. Let's say you and I go out on a hunt together and you are screwing around and not paying attention and you step on a branch and the wild game like hears us and runs away. Like, that's our food for the next week. You just like completely screwed the entire tribe for the next week, right? There should be repercussions for that. It would make sense that we evolved consequences for certain behaviors or infractions or the violation of expectations between human beings.

• 7:05Mark Manson?

  Lying or stealing could really result in somebody's death. You know, today we see it, you know, you go to a drugstore and you see somebody shoplifting and it's just like, it's annoying, it's disrespectful, like maybe you like make an angry comment or whatever, but like, nobody's dying. In the caveman days, if you stole food from somebody else, like, somebody could die. Like, they could starve to death from the fact that they don't have that food anymore. Starting drama with people, disobedience to your elders or to superiors, like, all of these things could result in people's deaths. So like, the point here is that the stakes were extremely high and living up to social norms and expectations, it was a life or death matter.

• 7:50Mark Manson?

  And back then, you didn't have an option. Like, today, in this day and age, you know, it's like, it's very cool and fashionable to sit back and be like, "Yeah, man, society's not gonna define who I am. I'm my own man. I'm gonna, I'm gonna turn my hat backwards and put my watch on my right hand, 'cause I'm my own man." There was none of that. Like, if you, back in the prehistoric days, if you didn't have the tribe, you died. You'd be eaten by a predator, you'd be killed by somebody else, you would starve to death, you'd freeze to death, you would die of a disease alone. It was you had no choice. You had to live up to the social expectations of the tribe.

• 8:32Mark Manson?

  And not living up to those expectations meant you died. It was that simple. And so we have 80 to 90% of our biological lineage is built off of this software. Of like, if you don't live up to social norms, you're dead. And so it makes sense that we would evolve a mechanism in our brains to be highly sensitive to the possibility that we are violating social norms and social expectations. To be incredibly anxious around the idea that other people might not like us. That, that we would obsess over our reputation or how other people see us. Because again, for 90% of human history, if you had a bad reputation, that could get you killed.

• 9:17Mark Manson?

  So it is, it is fundamentally a survival mechanism. So as a result, we all, we kind of have this internal radar inside our heads that's going on at all times. And this radar is always paying attention to how the things that we say or do might affect the people around us and what they might think of us. And this radar is exhausting. I'm sure most people listening to this are, have, are very human and that they can share in that experience. And that it is fucking exhausting constantly worrying what other people are thinking about you. But it is completely natural and human and very fundamental to our, to our evolutionary survival. And part of this radar is that when we detect that there might be something

• 10:01Mark Manson?

  that might turn the people around us against us, we shut the fuck up. We don't, we close our mouths, we don't say a thing, we sit quietly. Just don't rock the boat. That's kind of like the default reaction to this radar when it detects something. And on top of that, not only do we shut the fuck up and not rock the boat, but we also have this tendency to internalize that this impulse or this thought or this behavior. Says that there is something wrong about us. It's not a purely transactional calculation of like, oh, if I say this thing, then you know, John and Mary might not like me, so I'm not going to say that.

• 10:43Mark Manson?

  It's like, wow, the fact that I want to say this thing that is going to make John and Mary hate me, like, I must be a bad person for wanting to say it. And that feeling that I must be a bad person for wanting to say these things, or I must be a bad person for wanting to violate these norms, that is shame. That is essentially what shame is. And all of this is important because it's important to understand the context of how important shame is for our survival as a species. Like, this is the message that doesn't get communicated in this industry or this space. You know, it's shame is universally like, oh, you should feel good about yourself

• 11:24Mark Manson?

  and you shouldn't keep yourself down and you should be open and share everything all the time. And it's like, yeah, in our modern world, for people who are suffering a lot, who have been through a lot, like, that's a good message. In the broader context of human history, it's not only a shame inevitable, but it's like, it evolved for a very important purpose.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. Shame, it doesn't, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense in the modern world, but when you understand it from this evolutionary perspective, then it does. And I think that's the, like, just a grounding self-awareness around shame is kind of like step one in addressing it.

• 11:55Mark Manson?

  What we're going to see is that this is, this evolutionary story of shame is going to come back over and over and over again. So like, when we come back to talking about therapy, it's going to be really apparent. When we talk about culture, it's going to be really apparent. When we talk about family, it's going to be really apparent. When we talk about technology and social media and cancel culture, it's like, all of this stuff is going to be extremely relevant and it's going to inform everything that comes after this in this episode. So, and also, to your point, it's just... Knowing how fundamental and universal it is, it is somewhat healing in and of itself, I think. You know, learning all this stuff, it's just good to know that you're not weird.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  Right, yeah. It's a feature, it's not a bug. There's nothing wrong with you.

• 12:40Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  It's part of your DNA, deep, deep.

• 12:43Mark Manson?

  Deep in the DNA, yes, absolutely. The fundamental paradox of shame is that the more you try to hide it, the more power it ends up having over you. And so what you see with shame is people will become ashamed of an impulse or a desire that they have that doesn't conform to the group or the society around them. That will cause them to isolate, it will cause them to try to hide themselves, to become dishonest or to portray themselves differently than they actually are. This is the key to understand, is that this generates a series of downward spirals, right? So the more you isolate yourself, the more unworthy you feel of the affection and validation of others,

• 13:23Mark Manson?

  the more shame you experience, the more you isolate yourself, the more unworthy of validation and affection you feel of others, and so on and so forth. Similarly, there's another downward spiral with compulsions and addictions. You know, the more shame you feel, the more you will try to numb yourself or distract yourself from that feeling of shame, so the more you will indulge in sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and which will then cause you to feel only more ashamed of yourself because you'll wreck your life even more, and then that causes you to want to numb yourself more, and then it just goes on and on and so forth. And then finally, there's a self-sabotage aspect of this that starts to emerge or show up for a lot of people,

• 14:04Mark Manson?

  and that when they've felt shame to such an extent for such a long period of time, they really internalize a belief of like, "I don't deserve good things." And so when a good thing does show up, they will find a reason to fuck it up. I imagine everybody listening to this has either, if you haven't done this yourself, you've seen it in a friend or a family member, and it's like one of the most heartbreaking things to see, is to see somebody literally just look a good thing in the face and fuck it up. But it comes up with people who experience a lot of shame consistently, and it's a very difficult thing to break them out of.

• 14:42Mark Manson?

  You know, before we get deeper into how shame affects our lives, I think it's probably useful to really go through a series of definitions and try to understand on a detailed level what shame is, how it's experienced, and how it's different than a lot of similar experiences or emotions, things like guilt or humiliation, or what's the difference between like, say, healthy shame and a harmful version of shame?

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Right. So you're right, shame, it's not just a feeling, it's kind of like this, it's a system, a kind of a behavior, both an emotional and a behavioral system that's really deeply hardwired into us, right? Like you've already mentioned, not all shame is bad, okay? There is healthy shame, and what does that healthy shame look like? Well, a healthy shame is, it's kind of like your moral compass. Let's go back to like our values episode that we did, you know, you have your values and the ones that you define. Shame helps you stick to those values. When you get off course, when you, it helps you course correct onto those values. If you've done something that's against your values in a healthy shame system, you'll have this kind of like internal voice saying, hey, you need to pay attention here because you're veering off track, right?

• 15:54Speaker 01

  That's a healthy form of shame. When it gets toxic, though, that becomes when it goes from, you know, I did something bad to I am a bad person.

• 16:02Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  Toxic shame is when you start internalizing that and it becomes part of your identity. You're, like you said with that spiral, you know, oh, I'm a bad person. And so if I identify as a bad person, then I don't deserve good things. And so when they do come along, I'm just gonna ignore them and I'm gonna keep doing all these other bad things. And I'm just, I'm not worthy of anything.

• 16:19Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  That's the type of toxic shame we want to avoid. And hopefully throughout this episode, we're gonna like find ways to get away from that type of shame, because that is typically when people think of shame, they think of the toxic version, they don't think of the healthy version.

• 16:32Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  So those are kind of like the two big categories where you have the healthy versus toxic shame, okay?

• 16:37Mark Manson?

  Right. Okay. So to bring this home with like an example, like let's say my value is helping other people. I believe very deeply in it, right? And then somebody in my life needs help and I ignore them. Or I just, I'm like distracted, I don't care, I'm being selfish in that moment. And then I feel awful the next day and I'm like, wow, I'm such a piece of shit. I really should have helped out this person in my life. That feeling then inspires me to say, reach out to them and apologize or make amends or maybe, you know, make up for it in some way. So like, I think that, that sounds like that's an example of healthy shame.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  It's a healthier version.

• 17:15Mark Manson?

  It's like, it's a corrective measure against like, when, when we don't live up to our own expectations or the things that we care about. Similarly, it's like, I would say like, if, I don't know, like, let's say I, I got drunk one night, I went on a bender and I like wrecked my wife's car. I would feel an intense amount of shame the next day, even though that's not necessarily like me failing to live up to my value. It's like I broke her trust and I've harmed that relationship. And so it's, there's a corrective feeling of shame of like, oh my God, I really can't do this again.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:51Mark Manson?

  So where that turns toxic, I guess, is when you internalize the message of, of like, this is just who I am. I never help people. I'm selfish. I can't control myself.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:01Mark Manson?

  And you start believing those things, which then makes them more likely to come true. Is that, would you say that's accurate?

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. And not only that, it, it doesn't motivate corrective behavior. When it gets to that point too. You're just, you just stop, you withdraw. You're not, you're not attempting to live out your values. You're not attempting to correct any, any sort of injustice that you might've caused or anything like that. That's where the toxic shame gets, gets toxic really, is that it doesn't motivate kind of that pro-social behavior to, to correct whatever, whatever wrong you did.

• 18:33Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 18:34Mark Manson?

  So what's the difference then between like shame and guilt?

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:37Mark Manson?

  Right? Cause I, I associate guilt with the healthier version, I guess.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. So you need to learn the difference between guilt and shame, or you're just going to end up drowning in both. That, that is a big part of actually the research. I spoke with June Tangney, who's one of the world's leading experts on shame and the social emotions. And she, she walked me through too, what the big difference is. Basically what it comes down to though, is that guilt says, I did something wrong. Shame says, I am

• 19:06Mark Manson?

  Something wrong.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  Something wrong.

• 19:07Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  Guilt is, I did something bad. Shame is, I am bad.

• 19:11Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  Now, she still believed that there is some, like, there is some utility to shame, but she was more of a fan of like, guilt is actually, even though it feels bad, is usually a healthier response.

• 19:22Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  And it's usually around your actions. It's not about identity at all. Okay? And a lot of times we use them interchangeably. And actually, I think, especially like in, in Western societies, we use, we talk about guilt more when we actually might be feeling shame, just because guilt is a little bit more.

• 19:37Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  You know, oh, I feel guilty about that. Now let me do something about it, which is a healthy response typically. Whereas shame is, yeah, like, I'm a bad person for this.

• 19:46Mark Manson?

  Even within the self-definition, like, there have probably been a handful, not many, but there have been a handful of moments in my life where I've had that realization of like, I am this type of person and I don't like it.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:58Mark Manson?

  And, and that has actually, that realization has motivated me to change.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:03Mark Manson?

  Very deeply. And so like, that feels like a healthy version of shame.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:07Mark Manson?

  Of, of like, a very like, get your shit together mark.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Right. What kind of person do you want to be?

• 20:11Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  And, and then, and then if you follow up with that and you start living in alignment with those values, then yeah, that probably is a, a healthy form of shame. June Tany, she brought up an example like this in her own life too, and, and I've had these as well. Those seem to be kind of few and far between, though, you know, so if you're, if you have chronic shame, it's usually not around that. It's usually around every little thing that you screw up and it's like, oh, I'm a terrible person. I'm a horrible person.

• 20:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  I screwed this up. I screwed that up. When it's usually like pretty benign stuff and nobody else really notices. You know, so that's, that's where the toxicity can come in, is when it starts to become, like I said, more part of your identity.

• 20:47Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  And that's what we, we aim to avoid, for sure.

• 20:51Mark Manson?

  We are definitely, we're getting like very nitpicky here, but like, I do think it's interesting because like, when I do think of the healthy shame. Yeah, there's some sort of like repeated action over a long period of time, followed by this revelation of like, I am this type of person. I didn't think I, I don't want to be this type of person, or I didn't think I was this type of person, but I am this type, type of person, and I feel really bad for being this type of person. How do I change this?

• 21:15Speaker 01

  Right. I think maybe what you're getting at a little bit here too is, there's state shame and there's trait shame.

• 21:21Mark Manson?

  Hmm, okay, yeah.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  I would argue that state shame, which I'll define here in a second, is healthier than trait shame. Okay, what do I mean by this? So, state shame is just that you have this feeling, like you said, oh, I'm this kind of person and I don't like this.

• 21:34Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  But it's, and you set out to fix it. It's temporary. You think it's temporary, you, you, you imagine that it's temporary and that you can fix it.

• 21:41Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  Trait shame, over time though, builds up into, I am a bad person, there's nothing I can do about it. Shame needs to be also distinguished between things like humiliation and embarrassment. Um, you know, embarrassment especially to, usually it's awkward, it's an awkward feeling, but it's also kind of funny, and you can talk to people about it. Like, like I remember, like when I was in high school, I think I was at a basketball game, I went to the bathroom and I came back out, walked across the-

• 22:07Mark Manson?

  The court?

• 22:08Speaker 01

  No, not across the court, no, no, no. I walked, walked down this, like the sideline there, you know, back to my seat in front of the whole audience or whatever. I had a piece of toilet paper stuck to my shoe the whole time, like, and I go and sat down. Well, I can tell you that and we can laugh about it, right? Like, that was embarrassing, like, you know, and like, all my friends made fun of me and I was embarrassed, and, you know, I'm sure I was blushing and everything when that happened. But we can talk about that and find some shared humanity. It wasn't my fault, obviously, just a piece of paper, toilet paper was on the floor.

• 22:34Mark Manson?

  So embarrassment probably happens with things that are like low stakes.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  Low stakes, not within your control, doesn't really have a whole lot to say about your character, right? Whereas if I, you know, tried to, like, play off the fact that I cheated on my girlfriend in college, you know, you're not going to sit here and laugh about that with me probably, if you have a healthy shame system anyway.

• 22:53Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  You're like, ah, okay, not cool dude, you might be forgiving of it or whatever, but it's not like you can-

• 22:57Mark Manson?

  It's not something you laugh about.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Right, right. So that's kind of a one of the key differences. Or one of the key ways to think about shame versus embarrassment.

• 23:04Mark Manson?

  Okay, okay, that makes sense.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. Then you have humiliation though, too. And that is generally coming from like an external source.

• 23:11Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Someone's trying to humiliate you or people around you are trying to humiliate you and and have you suffer the consequences of that. There's not so much of that internal feeling of of the shame that you have of of worthlessness or of of unworthiness of some kind.

• 23:27Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  So, you know, someone tries to, whatever they're trying to do, just humiliate you, make fun of you, you know, like you probably had these.

• 23:34Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  As a kid, you know, people would try to make fun of you for something and humiliate you in front of other people.

• 23:39Mark Manson?

  I do think you you could see humiliation as, whether conscious or not, it's an attempt of somebody else to inflict shame upon you.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  Right, and devalue you.

• 23:48Mark Manson?

  Yes, it is. It is an attack on your status and your integrity as a person. And and the goal is to, maybe not directly to make you feel shame about yourself, but to make you feel worse about yourself and then shame happens as a byproduct.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely.

• 24:04Mark Manson?

  I think another thing worth bringing up is that it's there's a distinction between shame and trauma. I think those two things, especially kind of in the therapy world or self-help space, like those two things get conflated quite a bit because they they tend to occur together. Like, I think an intense amount of shame can feel traumatic and also having a traumatic experience will often result in a great degree of shame. But they are not the same thing. Like, the the trauma is the events or the experience or the occurrence may have been in your control, may not have, but it is it is a harrowing, terrible event that that is extremely painful.

• 24:48Mark Manson?

  And then shame tends to be the byproduct of that. And and the shame is the result of all of the narratives that are emerged from the trauma. So I guess one way to think about it is that trauma almost always causes a great deal of shame, but shame does not always is not always a result of trauma.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:03Mark Manson?

  Shame is often a result of just a bunch of stuff.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Well, shame can be about anything. Anything. And we'll get into that. Yeah, yeah.

• 25:16Speaker 01

  Um, okay. So that could bring us to maybe some of the neurobiology of shame and seeing what's going on in your body as well. You want to get into that?

• 25:22Mark Manson?

  Yes, my body. Let's get into my body.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 25:25Mark Manson?

  I have no shame in my body.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Yes. Well, I don't know. You're not as shame prone as me, I guess. So maybe you haven't noticed this.

• 25:32Mark Manson?

  We're gonna talk, we will definitely talk about this, my shamelessness later.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  That's right. That's right. Um, but you know, most of us, we know that it's not shame isn't just like the psychic torture that goes on. It's actually kind of a whole body experience.

• 25:45Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  It hurts physically, actually. It hurts because your brain treats it as an injury. A social injury is much, is treated much the same as a physical injury. So again, like your brain is in this black box. It doesn't know what's going on. Uh, it's only, it's taking in information from all around and it processes this pain in a similar way to physical pain.

• 26:04Mark Manson?

  I wonder if that maybe that explains the linkage between trauma and shame as well, right? Cause it's like, in the case of trauma, if you experience this physical injury, let's say, and you start experiencing it as a social injury.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah.

• 26:16Mark Manson?

  Why, why did I deserve this? Oh, what's so terrible? I must be a terrible person if they chose me to treat this way.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Right. Right. And so I won't get into the weeds too much of this, but we'll talk about a couple of the brain regions here that are involved with that. And, and part of that, that, that noticing the pain and kind of treating it as a form of physical pain in a way, that's down by your anterior cingulate cortex. Um, it's, it's like your brain can't quite tell the difference between social rejection and like a broken arm even in, in certain ways. I mean, you can, you could think about this too, when you have felt any sort of deep sense of shame, it hurts. It physically hurts. You get like a knot in your stomach, or at least I do. Um, there is kind of just this kind of ambient pain throughout your body that you feel even too. And that kind of starts in your anterior cingulate cortex, then moves your insula, what's called your insula.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  Um, this is kind of what, uh, this is the part of your brain that, uh, links the, like the rest of your body to sensations. So like the flushing in your face or, uh, the, the nausea you might even feel for like deep shame. That starts there. There's a cascade that follows from the insula that starts there. Uh, and then your default mode network takes over. And I think this is part of like the trauma response as well. So your default mode network, that's when, that's the part of your brain when you're thinking about yourself, when you're thinking about, uh, yourself in social situations as well, or maybe using somebody else's, uh, perspective to view yourself. This is where the rumination comes in too, around shame. And, and so you put kind of those three together and you get this shame

• 27:51Speaker 01

  response, um, that we feel. And it's really not about the fear either. It's not like a fear response. Your, your amygdala in this case, which is usually associated with a fear response or danger of some kind. It's really not as active as you would maybe predict it to be.

• 28:05Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  It's these parts of your brain that are more tuned to, uh, social interaction and social rejection. Okay. So it kind of bypasses that fear response to some degree at least. And it's really focused on the social consequences. And yet it's, it's also coupling those with, uh, the pain system that we feel that emotional pain and physical pain are tightly linked.

• 28:29Mark Manson?

  Which makes sense.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 28:30Mark Manson?

  Based on like the evolutionary stuff that we just talked about.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  So evolution, what oftentimes what evolution does is it takes an old system and it adapts it for a new purpose. And in this case, what, what appears to have happened was like that physical pain that, you know, it's signaling to you, your brain and your body that, hey, something's wrong, something, there's damage being done here. Uh, physical damage that needs to be addressed. Evolution seems to have co-opted that same system and applied it to social pain as well, social danger, social harm that could be done.

• 29:02Mark Manson?

  And this is so interesting because later, when we get into the, the therapy modalities that specifically address shame, what we're going to see is we're going to see both of those things pop up is that one is it's a social problem with the social solution that you, you can't really solve shame by yourself.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:19Mark Manson?

  You have to. Share it with others.

• 29:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:22Mark Manson?

  The second thing is that there is a deep part of the pain or dysfunction that is involved with shame. It's like your conceptual identity, the default mode network, or what a lot of people would call your ego. Right. It's like the way you think of yourself or who you are is being attacked and damaged and hurt the same way that your physical body would be hurt. And so your brain sees those two things as it's basically responding in the exact same way.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:47Mark Manson?

  And so a lot of the therapeutic modalities that we're going to get into are all about like repairing that conceptual self and like integrating it back into social norms in society.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. Yeah. If you've ever mentally spiraled after a mistake too, here's what's actually happening in your brain. So it's this shame spiral that happens and it goes from kind of like this silent alarm that starts to like a full body reaction in the matter of just a few seconds. But they've actually figured out what this is. So you start out with like within about a half a second, say a shameful event or something that would cause you shame occurs in your environment. And within a half a second, your brain, that anterior singular cortex is already online and it's fired up. Okay. And it's detected this social threat of some kind. That's within a half a second. You don't even know this at this point. That's sub perception.

• 30:36Mark Manson?

  You're not consciously aware.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  Not aware of this at all. Okay. It's subtle. It's fast. It's unconscious. Okay. Then within about two seconds from there to your like higher order cognitive functioning is already shutting down. And it's like, just focus on this thing and react in the damage control. That's where we're at at this point. Okay. Well, that's within two seconds. Your working memory, it's kind of gone at that point. Your, like I said, logical reasoning, emotional regulation, those are all starting to be shut down because it's like a five alarm fire that your, your brain's like, okay, there's social threat here.

• 31:09Mark Manson?

  You're, it's like you're describing being triggered.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Yes. A hundred percent. A hundred percent like that. Yeah. Within just a few seconds then after that too, there's body hijack. Like I've already talked about this body response that you get. You get the blushing, maybe the flushing of the face withdrawal. You sink back. You maybe want to hide even at that point. That's within just a few seconds. Your posture changes. I think anyway, this is really a signaling to everybody else that you're aware. I did something shameful. I'm aware of it. And it's kind of a signal to everybody else that you're aware of it. Within 10 seconds and then leading out to a few minutes, then you start to have this mental kind of meltdown that we all are familiar with, with the shame, right? You completely forget about all your past successes that would maybe mitigate some of this shame that you're feeling, right?

• 31:54Speaker 01

  You can't imagine that this is ever going to end, but you can't imagine a better future at this point. Your present shame is just eternal at this point. You're like, oh my God, I just want to be swallowed up in a hole and die. You know, that's where this, within a few seconds, you start feeling that. And this is kind of where that default mode network kicks into your inner criticism. The rumination will start within just a few seconds. And then within even, you know, 30 seconds to a few minutes, even a few hours is when you get those reactions to shame. So far, what we've talked about is kind of the more of the withdrawal that typically happens from shame and the avoidance. But there's other reactions too that they found, you know, lashing out. That can happen as a shame response as well.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  You externalize the shame, something outside of you is to blame, and so you lash out at it and you get aggressive with it. Okay, that's one. Going invisible, that's more what we talked about. You freeze, you withdraw, you hide, you don't look people in the eye. And then there's another one too, hiding the evidence or destroying the evidence too. Okay, that's another thing. It's more just like you lie about it, you try to cover it up, you pass it off, oh, it's not a big deal, but you still feel a lot of shame about it. So those are kind of like the three, three typical responses you get from a shame, a shameful event occurring. And that's within minutes through even a few hours. If, if it isn't resolved and isn't, you know, we talked about that state versus trait shame. If it isn't resolved and it, it starts to bleed more into that trait shame, you start

• 33:22Speaker 01

  to get lasting damage for this because your stress system has been activated, stress hormones are flooding your body and that starts to have actual physical consequences on your brain and body as well. At this point too, this is when your shame system starts to be more hypersensitized too. Because these, this cascade of chemicals going through your body is going to prime you for the next shameful event and it's going to be a lot easier to get you into that shameful state. Yeah. And You can vividly recall these moments, especially to later about that and relive the experience too, which is very common.

• 33:59Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I mean, this, again, this is where this starts to bleed over a little bit into the, the body keeps the score stuff, you know, where, you know, Vanderkool talks a lot about how trauma is not simply experienced in the mind, it's experienced through the whole nervous system and the body, and it creates a chain reaction within the nervous system that makes you more prone to being triggered in the future, which then make, just makes it more likely that you suffer even greater consequences and it just, you know, it turns into another shit spiral. It's interesting that like, you see a similar, a similar process take place around shame. You know, the more shame you harbor, the more sensitive you are going to be to being shamed further, the more acute and aware of the stress response, the more

• 34:41Mark Manson?

  you will pick up cues in your environment that make you feel bad, the more easily you'll be triggered in the future. And so it really, it's another one of these cases in psychology of just, bad things lead to bad things.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  Right, yeah, the vicious cycles that we see, yeah, for sure. There's even another level of that. So, okay, just when you think it couldn't get any worse.

• 35:00Mark Manson?

  But wait, there's more.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. Welcome to shame about shame.

• 35:04Mark Manson?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  Right?

• 35:06Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  And this, especially if you get into that kind of like trait shame and chronic shame, this happens a lot. You feel bad about your shame. You're like, why am I ashamed about this? Now you're, now you're ashamed about being ashamed. And they call that shame stacking, researchers do, yeah. And this is, when, when shame starts to feel endless and more of like a part of your identity, that's what happens. It's like this meta shame about, oh, I, I feel shame about this stupid thing I shouldn't feel shame about. Why am I such a worthless piece of shit? Right? Like, so it's, it is really just that vicious cycle that you're talking about too.

• 35:40Mark Manson?

  It would seem obvious to me that before you can actually do any of the work on the shame itself, you have to like, cut that cycle off at the bud, right? Like, you have to, you have to at least eliminate the meta shame before you can start dealing with the shame. You know, so it's, it's like, if you, if you're still feeling bad about the fact that you're feeling bad. You can't deal with the fact that you feel bad. Right, right.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  So yeah, so awareness really is that base layer of addressing the shame, for sure. You know, but there's also though, too, there's this other kind of interesting thing I found. It's they call it the learning paradox of shame. When a shameful event happens, it kind of locks in the details of what's going on. So you do get hyper focused on the social aspects of the shameful event. Who was there? What the looks they gave you, the feelings you had around the looks they gave you. All the social information contained within that event is like highlighted and blown up. It's like a flashbulb memory is like, you know, I can, I can think back of shameful things that happened to me when I was a kid. And it's like, yeah, I remember everybody was there, the faces and everything like that.

• 36:40Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  The crazy kind of thing, though, I talked about the stress response that happens to immediately after that. Once the, that shame hits and these stress hormones kind of take over, your ability to think clearly, to absorb new information, your brain just kind of can't do that.

• 36:58Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  It's kind of weird. So in a way, it's like it creates this flashbulb memory. And that kind of helps you down the line and say, okay, when another situation like this starts to happen, that flashbulb memory can come right on, or at least the feelings of it can come right online and prevent you from doing that again. But you don't really learn from the experience. You don't gain the wisdom from the experience around taking the time to address, okay, this is what happened. Walk through it. Why did it happen this way? Your brain kind of just shuts that down. And that seems weird, but from an evolutionary perspective, again, it kind of makes sense.

• 37:34Mark Manson?

  I would say you can't learn from the experience if you're trying to avoid it.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 37:38Mark Manson?

  Right?

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 37:39Mark Manson?

  A fundamental part of shame is that you just don't want to revisit this.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah. So the evolutionary adaptation to that, though, was in smaller groups. It was like, just get the hell out. Withdraw, get the hell out.

• 37:49Mark Manson?

  Just move on.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  Move on, get out of there. It prioritized withdrawal over rejection. It was kind of like this is, it's a, it's a safer bet if you just get the hell out and let's not worry about the interpretation of the wisdom or anything like that. Because if you hung around and you kept being annoying to people, you're just going to get ostracized further. Right? Now, in a modern context, that's not as adaptive. That's what ends up kind of keeping us stuck instead. Right? We avoid all that shame. We, we push it down. This is, this is what I do for the most part. If ever I feel shame about something, I find a way to avoid it.

• 38:20Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  And instead of addressing it. And, and the stakes are different now, as you've kind of mentioned.

• 38:25Mark Manson?

  Because again, in modern life, the downside of being ostracized socially is pretty minimal. Like, it's a nuisance. It sucks to lose friends, or it sucks to lose touch with people. But like, it's so easy in the modern day and age to just go somewhere else, or log on to a different website, or like, change your account name, or whatever. So like, the downsides are pretty minimized, whereas the upside of addressing whatever you feel shame about, like, the growth, the knowledge, the wisdom, the new information that comes from that, is extremely valuable, because we now live in a society that is moving and evolving so quickly, that like, you have to be able to grow and evolve just to keep up with it, that the incentives have changed.

• 39:07Mark Manson?

  So we now live in a world where you are actually incentivized to deal with this stuff and learn from it, whereas in the prehistoric days, there was not really any growth to be done. Right. You know, if you learn from your mistake, like, you're still gonna be hungry and being chased by a tiger the next day, so who cares? Right. Whereas being ostracized from the group is immediate death, so you might as well just shut the fuck up and pretend like nothing happened. And that was a priority. Just avoid that at all costs. Pretend like it never happened. Yes. Yeah.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  There are a couple, too. There's a few. Let's sprinkle in a few other strategies to do this, that neuroscience has kind of figured out.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  One is, we've talked about this already, mindfulness a little bit. Train your brain to act without judgment when the shame does pop up. That's really, really hard to do. Like we just said, your first reaction is to avoid it. But instead, maybe try to sit with it instead, and be like, okay, engage your brain and slow that spiral down. Okay, that's probably one of the first steps anyways, to just be like, okay, I'm in a shame spiral, and then recognizing it, right? Psychological distancing is probably the next step, and I don't mean avoiding it. I mean, stepping outside of yourself and trying to see yourself from the outside view. When actually, I mean, shame is kind of like, it's a way of viewing yourself from the outside. A lot of times, right, you're trying to view, you're just like, oh, all these people are...

• 40:22Mark Manson?

  Hate me, or are embarrassed by me.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  Want nothing to do with me, yes. But actually, we step outside of it, and we've talked about this before, too, kind of take it more self-compassionate, like... See the situation for what it is like this. Okay, you messed up. That's fine. But it's probably you're not gonna die, right? Like, the shame system is designed to help you survive and you're probably misusing it at this point.

• 40:48Mark Manson?

  It dramatizes things.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 40:50Mark Manson?

  Quite a bit.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  And

• 40:51Mark Manson?

  Yes. And kind of deludes you into thinking things are much larger or worse than they actually are. I think the huge thing with shame is that like, a lot of people don't even know they have it.

• 41:04Speaker 01

  Ah, yes.

• 41:05Mark Manson?

  Like, it's so pushed down inside of them and it's so repressed and they are so distracted from these feelings that like, they don't even know it's there. And so I would say, you know, a big piece of the mindfulness is just to like, gain an awareness of like, I feel weird around this person or around this situation and I never realized that before.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  Right. Go back to those three responses I had, right? Do you lash out? Do you get angry when? Or do you go invisible? Do you try to deflect or like, hide the evidence like I was talking about? Look for situations in your life where that happens and see if there's some shame underlying that. Because I think you're right, you don't even realize that that's shame. I think a lot of people who do have like anger issues, especially men, and we'll get to this later.

• 41:50Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  It's because of the unresolved shame and they're just lashing out because they feel uncomfortable.

• 41:55Mark Manson?

  Yeah. But what's interesting is that shame is one of these things that it's a little bit of a Goldilocks situation. Like, here's the thing about shame. If you have too little of it, you're probably a sociopath. But if you have too much of it, you're a depressed wreck. And so the proper amount of shame is actually not no shame, it's a healthy amount of shame. And I think this is something that gets lost in our industry all the time is that every self-help seminar and affirmation book and journal or whatever is like constantly telling you like, "Oh, you're beautiful and perfect as you are. Like, just release it and let it go and accept yourself." And I actually think that's a little bit dangerous because You probably should be ashamed of some things like, like if I made out with my best friend's

• 42:39Mark Manson?

  wife, like, I probably should be ashamed of that. Or if I, if I stole my brother's car, like, I should probably be ashamed of that. I don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of that touchy feely self-help stuff results in a kind of spiritual narcissism, because like, literally what they're training to do is become shameless individuals, and a shameless individual is essentially just a narcissist. So you don't want to be shameless, you want to have some moral standard that you hold yourself to. But you also don't want to be shameful, because when you're shameful, you hold yourself back, you think less of yourself, you imagine that you're not good enough to have all the nice things that you want to have in this life. And so I just, I think it's a, it's a tricky balance for people

• 43:24Mark Manson?

  to walk. They either, I think naturally, we tend to either want to just go all in on our shame and wallow in it, or we want to become shameless and just indulge every impulse and desire that we might have and not worry about the consequences.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  If you're shameless, you, you're wading into like psychopath territory, right? Like, you hear people say, "Have you no shame?"

• 43:46Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  When there's times where you should actually feel that shame. Again, it's not, the goal is not to get rid of the shame, it's to develop a more healthy relationship with your shame, and to apply it in situations where it needs to be applied, where it's directing you to your values.

• 43:59Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Where it's guiding you along the path that you want, want to be on. I, I think evolution has actually kind of tuned us to that, and in the modern environment, though, our shame triggers are going off all the time. So I think it's, it's a lot easier to be full of shame than it ever has been before. And then, yeah, the advice to just get rid of it all, that's no.

• 44:17Mark Manson?

  No way, no.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  That's not gonna work.

• 44:24Mark Manson?

  Well, I, I had, I had this mark to bring up later, but we might as well get into it now, which is Donald Nathanson's Shame Compass. So Donald Nathanson was a researcher who studied affect theory, which was big in the 80s and 90s. And in 1992, he wrote a book, which had a foundational model for understanding how people respond to shame, and he, basically- He put together a compass with four points and it's like kind of two dimensions. And you know, the first one is withdrawal, which we've talked about plenty already. It's just like get small, hide, don't talk about it, pretend like it's not there. Uh, the second one is, uh, attack self. So that is punish yourself, judge yourself, criticize yourself. I think there's, this is perfectionism is a result of this.

• 45:07Mark Manson?

  It's like people who feel like nothing they do is ever good enough. That, uh, nothing that they try is, is goes right. Um, that everything they do is they're gonna screw up in some way. Um, the next one is avoidance, which I don't like. To me, this is a misnomer. Avoidance to me feels very similar to withdrawal. Um, but when you dig into avoidance, that's where all the compulsivity is. It's, I think a more, a more accurate description would be distraction. Distraction, yeah. Or numbing. Um, so this is, you know, people who develop an alcohol problem or they start partying every night. Or, uh, they spend all their money, uh, shopping or gambling, uh, or people who become addicted to porn or, or, or sex or whatever it is. Uh, and then finally there's attack others. Yeah.

• 45:52Mark Manson?

  And that is lash out at the world, blame the world for your problems, blame a group of other people for your problems. And generally speaking, Nathanson found that like these four things, everybody kind of has their own style. So like the way the compass is laid out is that it's, there's two, there's an X axis and a Y axis. So, um, on the X axis, there's attack self and attack others. And then on the Y axis, there is the withdrawal and the avoidance. Withdrawal would just be like check out and like hide. Uh, avoidance would be probably more like numb and distract. And everybody kind of falls in a different place around this compass. Everybody kind of has a different composition of how they deal with their shame. Um, but it's, these are like generally the four ways that, that it gets expressed.

• 46:37Mark Manson?

  And, um, ultimately Nathanson argued that like shame is unavoidable. Like the goal isn't to get rid of the shame in your life. His point is you're gonna feel shame at some point. You're gonna have things in your life that like you feel really bad about. So how do you become aware of how you're managing them or approaching those things? And how do you implement better strategies and healthier strategies to make sure that you're not falling into these? So yeah, we have these four points on the compass and you know, each of us kind of slots in in different places. And also, we can move throughout our life. Like, you know, maybe when you're young, you're very withdrawn and angry at yourself, but then you grow up and you become very angry at others. And so it's like, these things move and shift.

• 47:20Mark Manson?

  And Nathanson's point all along was, was really like, you don't get rid of shame per se, but you can A, turn it from toxic to healthy, and then B, channel the healthy shame in like, a more constructive and sustainable way. But I'm actually curious. So which of those four points on the compass would you say you primarily inhabit?

• 47:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. I do more of the kind of internalizing blaming myself.

• 47:49Mark Manson?

  Yeah, you're a perfectionist. You're hard on yourself.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  And I think most people who are perfectionists are like that. I've used all four of those, definitely, through, throughout my life in different, I think in different settings, I use different ones sometimes. I've went away from the more externalizing and the distracting things, you know, not numbing and not lashing out. I've, I've went away from that as I've gotten older. I wanted to just see that that just damages both relationships and your own personal health. But yeah, I think the more, more internalizing and avoiding, those are definitely mine.

• 48:21Mark Manson?

  Yeah. I would say as an adult, my, my preferred method of coping with my shame has definitely been distraction and numbing. So like, drugs, alcohol, partying, sex, just all the things, all the fun, the stimulation. It was interesting when I was reading Nathanson's work, he actually, on the list of Uh, ways to avoid or distract your from your shame. He included intellectualizing.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  Okay, ask him, ask about that.

• 48:50Mark Manson?

  Which I was like guilty as charged.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:52Mark Manson?

  Uh, and humor, which also is, is like, makes sense. Once you hear it, you're like, you know, if you think about comedians, you know, um, or there's like a the sad clown effect, right? Where it's like often comedians are some of the saddest people.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:07Mark Manson?

  And the humor is, is really actually a coping mechanism to, uh, to help them just get through the day.

• 49:14Speaker 01

  A lot, a lot of comedians do like traumatic events in their lives or, or, you know, hard upbringings or whatever it is. And the way they've done that is to externalize through humor.

• 49:21Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 49:22Speaker 01

  Like to deal with that shame. Yeah. So, so, okay, uh, you said alcohol and drugs. Do you think you don't drink anymore?

• 49:28Mark Manson?

  Hmm.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  You don't do drugs anymore. What about like workaholism? Is that part of it too?

• 49:33Mark Manson?

  Because, because. Damn it, Drew.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  You, you gave up alcohol and then now you just work your ass off all the time. Not that you weren't working really hard before too, but yeah.

• 49:42Mark Manson?

  Totally. So, okay, guilty as charged. I, I, but I would say for me, I think the shift has been, I think this is probably a good example of like maybe unhealthy shame transmuting in the healthy shame. So I look at when I was younger and I was partying a lot and I was drunk all the time. I, I think a lot of that was motivated by like kind of an unhealthy compulsivity. One of the things that happened when I stopped drinking is that I became aware of how compulsive I am. Like, I think I was in denial of my compulsive nature for most of my life. And it was funny because it wasn't that it was hard for me to stop drinking. It was hard for me to not be addicted to other things. And, and I started to realize like, oh, I just, I, I'm very compulsive.

• 50:26Mark Manson?

  Like if when I, when I'm into something, I'm like all in. So part of, I guess, being sober means that like, I've had to come to terms with that and really understand that about myself and like be okay with that. I'm definitely a workaholic, but. I also think it's much better to be a workaholic than an alcoholic or a drug addict.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:48Mark Manson?

  You know, and, and at least now I'm aware of it and, and, and I have people around me who can like pull me back. You know, I say like, hey, you're going too hard or, or like check in with me and like make sure I'm like, okay, or whatever. So I, I would say I'm in a place where it's much healthier and I'm not ashamed about it. Like, I think if you would ask me 10 years ago, if I had an alcohol problem, I would probably, would have been very defensive and very offended. Whereas like now, if you like, when you call it like, you bring up workaholism, I'm like, yeah, dude, guilty as charged. And I'm okay with it, which like to me, that's, that's the sign that shame isn't there. Like, that's one of the things that Nathanson talks about as well is that,

• 51:28Mark Manson?

  part of the attack others is a very intense defensiveness around whatever the shameful behavior is or the shameful aspect is, as well as, as lashing out, you know, becoming offended and like seeing it as like a moral affront that like, oh my God, I can't believe you would even suggest such a thing that I, I have a problem, you know?

• 51:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. You don't seem to get very defensive about that kind of stuff anymore, as far as I know.

• 51:54Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I don't think I do.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's interesting. Like going from, like you said, is transmuting from a toxic form of shame to a healthier form of shame. Happens over time after you get more aware of it. I don't know. Like I've experienced something similar to that too, where, you know, I grew up in a very working class family and this, we'll talk about this a little bit later too, but you know, shame around money is a very common one.

• 52:15Mark Manson?

  That's a big one for a lot of people.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  A really big one, a really big one, especially like in a place like the United States where so much of your identity and self-worth is based on your net worth, right? Like, okay. Growing up though, I was very aware of it. Now, you know, we weren't the poorest people in town, but we weren't definitely not the richest, right? And I didn't even want to talk about it for the longest time, right? Like, I didn't even want people to know at all.

• 52:36Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  Like, so I just wouldn't talk about it. Yeah, and it wasn't really until I got to college that I started opening up about it a little bit more and being like, you know what, it just kind of is what it is and I can talk about it at least. Let's just see what happens.

• 52:49Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  You know, when it came up, I would bring it up and the thing was is people didn't really care. They were just like, oh, that's okay. Interesting, move on. And it wasn't that big of a deal. So it made me realize that, oh, okay, this is, doesn't have to be something that's so shameful and I can address it that way. Yeah.

• 53:05Mark Manson?

  And then how would you say you feel about it now?

• 53:07Speaker 01

  You know, I probably took it too far at one point, too. Like, like, it's kind of like a badge of honor, you know? And I started like, oh, like, this is, I'm very proud of this. And, oh, you didn't grow up poor, well, you suck then. You didn't, you know, that, started doing that. Now I feel like it's a lot healthier though, where it's like, this is something that happened. It was no one's fault.

• 53:24Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 53:24Speaker 01

  It, it, it just is what it is. Lots of people have dealt with it before. I'm not unique in my suffering, like we've talked about. And I feel like I just have a better relationship with that part of my life, anyway. Yeah.

• 53:36Mark Manson?

  It's interesting, because it's like, this is something that comes up a lot. And, there's, there's like this weird kind of spectrum between like shameful and shameless. And I feel like sometimes to, maybe part of the process of healing the shame is to jump from one extreme to the other, you know? So it's like, you take the thing that you're so, like, so ashamed of, and you wish nobody would know about you. And so then you compensate by being like, you know what, I'm actually, I'm like, all in on this thing I'm ashamed of. Not only do you own it, but it's like something that you like shame other people for not having. But then ultimately, like, really, the healthy version of, of any of this is to just like land back at acceptance, really. And I think you see this a lot, like,

• 54:17Mark Manson?

  I mean, there's like, I know I've, I've like read studies where there's like a, like a shocking amount of, like, sex workers are like sexual abuse victims. And, you know, a lot of people who, you know, experience abuse when they're young, like, go into like, you know, the military or combat sports. Like, there's just kind of this, like, okay, well, if I can't hide it from the world, then I might as well just double down and make it my entire identity as another way of like, kind of protecting myself. So, yeah, it's, it is interesting how that happens.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  That's a form of externalization, yeah, to some extent.

• 54:53Mark Manson?

  For sure. I think it's a version of Nathanson's, like, attack others, right? It's like, you know, fuck you for telling me I should be ashamed of this. But it's funny, because it's, I don't know, like, there is, there's a little bit of an irony here in that, like, Generally speaking, the things that we're ashamed of are also the things that make us unique and and also like because they're the things that make us the most unique that they like define us in a lot of ways. So it's, you know, you know, I have this old theory of like the the worst thing about somebody is also the best thing about them. Like it's you get this flip side thing. Like I imagine that that you there's some of a

• 55:34Mark Manson?

  lot of the good things about you are a result of how you grew up and and having to go through that hardship and having to deal with like maybe some of the things that weren't fair about your upbringing or whatever. And like, I definitely feel that about some of the things I was ashamed of when I was young as well. So it's just funny. It's just like, it's like, kind of funny how that works. Actually, fun story. I've never told this publicly before, but so when I was hiring you, and this was ages ago, like over 10 years ago, I remember it was you and it was two other PhD candidates. And on paper, like all three of you were pretty much the same. You had like graduate degrees in psychology. You were studying neuroscience. I forget what the other two were studying, but like

• 56:16Mark Manson?

  you all like had similar credentials, similar applications, like similar backgrounds. And I was like, really having trouble differentiating between you three. And so when I did the final interview with you guys, I asked each of you, I said, you know, you're very similar to the other two candidates I'm talking to, like what makes you unique? What's different about you? And I talked to you last, so I talked to the other two first, and both of them really struggled with that, that question. Like, they really kind of stuttered and they're like, well, and all of you were academics. So it's like, all of you had just been in school your whole lives. Right. You know, so I remember one of them was like, well, I read this really cool book.

• 56:58Mark Manson?

  And I'm like, okay, so yeah, all right, that's not really, really working. And then I remember I got on the call with you and I asked you that question. And you immediately were just like, Mark, I grew up in a trailer park.

• 57:11Mark Manson?

  And I was like, done, you're hired, say no more, calls over. There's like, there's some weird thing where like, sometimes the thing you're ashamed of like, actually becomes your superpower.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 57:23Mark Manson?

  And, um, and that's just, it's a really interesting dichotomy, I think.

• 57:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and what it, what it showed me too was like, again, anything can be shameful. You know, anything can be, like we've already said, you can, you can shame yourself or whatever, but that, like, that doesn't, in, in the modern context, that doesn't matter. Like, that, that story of mine, that doesn't matter. It's not, it's not germane to my survival. I'm not gonna die because of it or anything like that. You know, our, our shame systems were tuned to survival and ostracism from the group and all of that. That doesn't matter now, but my shame system latches on to that.

• 57:56Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 57:57Speaker 01

  And so that's just another example of how it can keep you stuck if you don't address that, so yeah.

• 58:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:01Mark Manson?

  I just had a random thought, I was not planning to talk about this, but I feel like one indication of an area you might, you probably have shame, is anywhere you have a chip on your shoulder.

• 58:11Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:12Mark Manson?

  Like, anywhere you just kind of like...

• 58:13Speaker 01

  That's a good one, okay, yeah.

• 58:15Mark Manson?

  You feel like you have something to prove over and over again?

• 58:17Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, we were just talking, like, I, I did sports when I was growing up. I, I actually did sports, it was a small town, you know, stuff, so everybody kind of did sports. I was always the smallest guy, and I had a huge chip on my shoulder there. I, yeah, I was like, I'll show you. But really what it was, is I was ashamed of being so, like, small and, you know, so yeah.

• 58:32Mark Manson?

  That's funny.

• 58:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:34Mark Manson?

  No, see, I was, I was like, I was the geeky artsy kid who was like, pushed into lockers in school, so I don't consciously feel this, but I feel like it has to be true, that like, a certain amount of my career, a certain amount of like, the desire to have an audience and be known in the world and put my stuff out in the world, is still that, that high school kid, that dorky high school kid who's like, "I'm cool, guys, I swear I'm cool."

• 58:58Speaker 01

  Tell me I'm cool, yeah.

• 58:59Mark Manson?

  "Like me, please, like me." Yeah, we all have some, something like Some degree of that, for sure, for sure. I don't even remember who said it, but there's a great quote that says that everybody spends their entire lives trying to either prove or disprove who they were in high school. Yeah.

• 59:15Mark Manson?

  You've told me that before. It's so true. It's so good. What's interesting, though, is that I think we're very drawn to people who are shameless. Like, there's a certain Yeah. envy. There's a certain freedom that they experience and like, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade places because I do think shameless people are probably extremely vapid and feel very lost. But like, from the outside, there's something seductive about it. And I don't, I don't want to get too much into politics, but like, I think a lot of the allure of Trump is how shameless he is. And I think a lot of the people who support him or admire him, that's actually what they admire. You know, there's this, there was a famous article in the Atlantic, maybe 10 years ago, about Trump, and it was called Cruelty is the Point.

• 59:59Mark Manson?

  And you sometimes hear that repeated on the left when people are really upset with Trump's policies. You know, they'll repeat like, the cruelty is the point. I would actually amend that. I would say the shamelessness is the point. And I think what the left hates about Trump is that he does all these things with no shame. He doesn't really care about the consequences. He doesn't let other people's opinions, like, hold them back from what he wants. But I also think that's what the people who vote for him love about him, is that they feel like they've had all this like shame inflicted on them. Right. Forced upon them, yeah. Yeah, and they look at him and they, there's like a certain amount of like relief or liberation that comes from his shamelessness. Right.

• 1:00:39Mark Manson?

  All right, as we wrap up the theory section of this podcast, I want to remind listeners and viewers that there is a PDF guide to this show. We talk about a lot of stuff. There's a lot going on here. And so we have a free book that accompanies every episode. It's over 100 pages long. It has all of our references, citations. It summarizes every section of the show. You can get book recommendations there and it is absolutely free. So go to solve podcast.com/shame. And if you want to start implementing some of the stuff that we're going to talk about in this episode.

• 1:01:17Mark Manson?

  So we've talked about kind of the evolutionary history of shame, where it comes from, why we have it. We've talked about how it manifests in ourselves individually, how we experience it, how we feel it, and how we cope with it, I suppose. I think what's probably the best way to do this is that because shame is a social construction, and it is very socially based, I think the way to cover the interaction that we have with the world around our shame is to kind of take it in like a fractal format. I think it's probably useful to just like, let's start at the individual, let's break that down, and then we'll like slowly move out, talk about family, slowly move out, talk about community, and then finally talk about

• 1:02:01Mark Manson?

  just broader culture and society at large. Researchers have actually found that there's kind of consistent categories across cultures that people generally always feel shame around, or that it's like super common to feel shame around. So those categories are physical, mental health, appearance and body image, money and work, parenting and family, sex and sexuality, religion, trauma. And then the last one I just, I called standing out or being different. There's kind of a cluster of a few things that show up, but to me, it's just really like being individual, being like going against the grain. I think it's very, it's a natural human tendency to feel that like if you're very different than the people around you, that there must be something wrong with you. Right. You know, you've already talked about

• 1:02:45Mark Manson?

  how money was like definitely a source of shame previously in your life. I look at this list and like, A, I used to be fat, so like there's definitely some body image stuff in there for me. And I grew up in a very religious environment, and I was not, I thought it was all bullshit. So I struggled with that quite a bit for a number of years as well. It's just like feeling completely out of place. I'm wondering if any of the other things on this list like ring true for you.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, I definitely, I grew up in a religious area as well. I wasn't like, when I was younger, I was actually more in line with that. I kind of fell into line with the religion. So I, I felt more shame around like when I wasn't being pious or religious, you know, that was, that was a thing for me. But yeah, the standing out to where I came from, like a smaller area and there was a lot of pressure to conform to a very narrow image. I think that was a, that was a big one for a long time, too.

• 1:03:40Mark Manson?

  For me as well. One thing that's interesting is that like, that's not on here is emotions. So if we zoom out one level and talk about family, I definitely grew up in a family where like, negative emotions wasn't, they weren't really, I don't want to say tolerated, but like,

• 1:04:00Mark Manson?

  I don't know, the house I grew up in, it was like, you weren't supposed to get angry, you weren't supposed to get upset, everything, like, everything's okay all the time. And so it was, there was, I, I never felt free to express like a lot of negative emotions. Like, everybody in my family just kind of bottles things up and like, pretends everything's okay. And it really wasn't until I was an adult that I realized that like, anger in particular, like, I, I internalized that anger is not okay, that it's not okay to be angry and to get upset about stuff. And I would say that I probably didn't let myself get angry or like feel okay about getting angry until like, maybe 30?

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  Wow, okay.

• 1:04:44Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  It's, um, See, because a lot of times men, like anger is their default emotion too. So that's, that's interesting. I don't know. I feel like that was one of the only things I could express, I guess, growing up too, was, was getting angry.

• 1:04:56Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  One of the few emotions, especially negative emotions, that was okay to express. So, yeah, that's interesting.

• 1:05:02Mark Manson?

  I think I felt a lot of shame around that.

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:05Mark Manson?

  Like, it just wasn't, it wasn't acceptable. I think that's the word I'm looking at. It's not that it wasn't tolerated, it wasn't acceptable to be angry.

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  We did talk about that in the emotions episode, that there is a push to conform, there's a pressure to conform to your emotional, whatever the emotional kind of culture is around you. And it can be a shameful thing if you're not, like, you know, if you're in the United States and you're not happy all the time. Like, that can be a shameful thing.

• 1:05:26Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:05:27Mark Manson?

  For sure. And I think the interesting point about family, you know, family is kind of the closest linkage to you. It's where most of your emotional investment is, and especially as a child, it's, it's who you're surrounded by as a child as well. So, so generally speaking, like, If you have parents who harbor a lot of shame, then they will either intentionally or unintentionally inflict that on their children, right? So like, it took me a long time and a lot of therapy to realize that my parents also feel a lot of shame around being angry and upset. And so that's why they suppress it and like bury it and they never felt okay. And it's actually one of the reasons why their marriage fell apart is because they never felt at liberty

• 1:06:12Mark Manson?

  to actually get angry or upset with each other. So they just kept like burying things over and over and over again. And I think, you know, my brother and I got that from them or we learned that from them. But to do a more tangible example, you know, I had a, I dated a girl growing up who again grew up in a very religious area. So like her, her family was very, very Christian, very conservative. And her mom in particular had this like, I mean, it was like borderline like Amish attitude towards appearance. So basically this, this girlfriend of mine, like if she, if she left the house with her knees showing,

• 1:06:52Mark Manson?

  like her mom would basically tell her she was a whore and shame her deeply for dressing in such a way. And would tell her like really fucked up shit like, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna get raped and you're gonna deserve it because you went out dressed like that.

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  Dear God, yeah.

• 1:07:07Mark Manson?

  You know, and imagine being like a 15 year old girl and like, yeah, your mom's telling you this, right? So shocker, she had a lot of shame and issues around her dress, her appearance, what she like felt comfortable wearing, what she didn't feel comfortable wearing,

• 1:07:24Mark Manson?

  which is totally understandable. So it's like, we, you know, we talked earlier about how shame is, shame is not the pain itself. It's the narrative around the pain. Like you can inherit those narratives from your family while you're growing up. Like if your, if your dad has all sorts of weird shame issues around money or work or something,

• 1:07:47Mark Manson?

  chances are you're gonna inherit those narratives around money and work. You know, my, my story, my stepmother tells me is that, you know, her, her parents kind of had this psychotic relationship with work. They were just like, just. Very, very like uptight around work and money and everything. And so she grew up being told that taking a nap meant you were lazy and that you were never gonna make anything of yourself. And so like, she's fucking sixty-five and still won't take naps.

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  Can't take a nap, yeah.

• 1:08:16Mark Manson?

  You know, cuz it's like she grew up being told she was a lazy piece of shit if she took a nap. So it's, it is pretty wild like how this stuff gets handed down and sticks with us without us even realizing.

• 1:08:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I mean, like, family duty too. I think that that varies a lot by between families. Like, the expectation that you contribute to the family or help take care of the family or whatever it is. So like in my family, it's pretty weird, like independence was kind of a main kind of value that we had in my family, right? And so, you know, if you're leaning too much on the family, then it's like, ah, you're now a burden. Whereas in a lot of other cultures, it's kind of the opposite, where if you're not leaning on the family enough, what's wrong with you?

• 1:09:00Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  Right? That can be a shameful, a shameful act. And I'm kind of navigating that right now, you know, like my parents are getting older, they're having health problems, and they will not ask for help. You know what I mean? And like, I've been feeling some shame around it, like, oh, I haven't been helping as much. They don't ask for it, they act like they don't necessarily want it.

• 1:09:21Mark Manson?

  Well, the irony is that they probably feel ashamed of asking for it.

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  That's what I realized too. As recently I realized that is that they feel ashamed for having to ask their children for help.

• 1:09:30Mark Manson?

  Exactly.

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  And I feel ashamed for not helping them. So it's like, again, this goes back to, we need to talk about the shame. Because if we just would talk about it, we would all be like, oh, we're all on the same page here, it's okay.

• 1:09:40Mark Manson?

  I've seen that actually come up, you know, you and I are both at that age where our parents are getting old and, you know, most of my friends, their parents are getting old, and like, I'm seeing that come up a lot. I think a lot of elderly parents, like, they feel like if they have to ask their children for help, that they failed as a parent.

• 1:09:57Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:09:58Mark Manson?

  Like, they shouldn't burden you, because it was their job to set you up for as much success as possible, right? And it's, I mean, that's, it's a lovely thought, but like... At the end of the day, it's your family.

• 1:10:11Speaker 01

  I would say that's a pretty, that's a fairly western, American or at least western thought.

• 1:10:15Mark Manson?

  Very western.

• 1:10:16Speaker 01

  Right? Because like in East Asia, it's like, no, you're very much expected to take care of.

• 1:10:19Mark Manson?

  And Latin America as well.

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  Latin America is.

• 1:10:20Mark Manson?

  Latin America as well, you're like, you're supposed to go home and

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:10:23Mark Manson?

  take care of them.

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:10:24Mark Manson?

  as they get old.

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  So that's going, you know, that's again, the levels going out.

• 1:10:27Mark Manson?

  It's the levels going out.

• 1:10:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Affecting the family of you, affecting the individual.

• 1:10:30Mark Manson?

  Absolutely.

• 1:10:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:31Mark Manson?

  And what's interesting too is like, I, I think, you know, if you think about immigrants,

• 1:10:37Mark Manson?

  I think you could, you could really get a sense of these, kind of these concentric circles of like, let's say you immigrate with your family to another country, you could feel very loved and supported within your family. But then your family's values are completely contradictory to the, the, the country that you're now living in. And so your family feels ostracized and your family feels a little bit ashamed and, and, and like a bunch of oddballs. And, and so there's like, again, that dynamic can play out at that level as well. Zooming out a little bit more, I think you can talk about community. I do think you and I have both talked a little bit about the places we grew up and kind of the ethos and, and standards and morals.

• 1:11:19Mark Manson?

  Again, I, I had an interesting juxtaposition in that like, I grew up in a very, very conservative excerpt of a very progressive and liberal city. And so it, it was, I feel weird telling people I'm from Austin because it's just like my childhood. Like I know how people, what people associate with Austin.

• 1:11:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:40Mark Manson?

  You know, it's like, everybody associates Austin with like cool, hip tech.

• 1:11:42Speaker 01

  Keep Austin weird.

• 1:11:43Mark Manson?

  Yeah. It's like South by Southwest and all this stuff. And I'm like, yeah, but dude, like where I grew up, it was like fucking.

• 1:11:50Speaker 01

  It was more Texas than Austin.

• 1:11:51Mark Manson?

  Dude, it was a lot more Texas than Austin, for sure. And there's like, it feels like a little bit of a mismatch there.

• 1:11:59Mark Manson?

  But like, I think Austin itself like has a lot of pride in being the oddball of Texas. Right? You just said, right? That it's like the slogan of the city is keep Austin weird. And like, the reason that slogan emerged is because everybody else in Texas was like, man, Austin's full of a bunch of fucking weirdos. Don't go to Austin.

• 1:12:19Mark Manson?

  It's a bunch of hippies and libertines and godless folk down there. It's interesting that you can see this play out on that level as well. And we'll get into, again, we'll get into this a little bit later with the technology section. But I think there's an interesting interplay that happens around this, like, say, politically. Right? Like, there are certain parts of each country that feel like forgotten or left behind. And they get very bitter and resentful for it, or they feel ashamed for it, or whatever. I think we probably attach less identity to our community or like the specific town or region that we grew up than, say, our family or ourselves.

• 1:12:58Mark Manson?

  But again, I think there is something there and it is possible to feel some degree of shame for where you come from geographically. Right, yeah. And then finally, you have broader culture in society. And it's, you know, I don't want to hang on it too much, but it is incredibly important and impactful. Like, our culture is the water we swim in. In our values episode, we spent quite a bit of time talking about cultural values and the importance, how much they affect us. There is something about cultural values that I don't think you ever completely lose them. Like, even if you move to a bunch of places and even if you move to another country and even if you spend a bunch of time with a different group of people, like, just the,

• 1:13:41Mark Manson?

  like, the water you swam in when you grew up, like, it sticks with you to a certain extent, no matter where you go. Right. And it's interesting, too, because I think you could almost look at cultures like operating systems for groups of people. And I think, you know, each of those operating systems, they're very similar in a lot of ways, but they are like programmed or weighted in different ways. And so it's like, again, we talked about this in the values episode, but like, you know, it's like Japan versus the United States. Like, the Japanese, they care about the same things Americans do, but they just wait them and prioritize them in a different order. And because those prioritizations are different or show up in a different order,

• 1:14:25Mark Manson?

  that affects the behavior of the people and the emphasis or the priorities of the people there. And so the... The behavior will follow soon.

• 1:14:35Speaker 01

  Right, right. Yeah, and one of those big divides is like the individualist versus collectivist.

• 1:14:39Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  Culture. And so the sources of shame differ between those. So like in the more collectivist cultures like East Asia, you know, it's all about group harmony, respect for your family, honoring your family. And if you don't do that, you bring shame upon your society, your family, or your group.

• 1:14:56Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:56Speaker 01

  Whereas like in more individualist cultures, Western Europe, United States, North America, it's more about like, are you a personal failure is more of a source of shame. And the group harmony isn't so much emphasized.

• 1:15:09Mark Manson?

  Right. It's like if I do something shameful, it's my brother's not going to walk around feeling terrible about it, probably. Whereas like in, if we were Chinese or Japanese, maybe he would.

• 1:15:21Speaker 01

  Right, right. Like in the United States, you never hear like, you have brought shame upon your household, right? Like, that's not, that's not really something we think about. It's more like you failed in some way.

• 1:15:29Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  You failed to live up to your values, your goals, or whatever it was. And it's a personal failure, and it's personal shame. It's not so much shared with the group. So and, and your shame is yours to deal with, too. Don't put it on anybody else.

• 1:15:41Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:41Speaker 01

  Right? That's a big one, too.

• 1:15:43Mark Manson?

  That's true. Yeah. Because I guess in those collectivist cultures, you can rely on the people around you to kind of like shoulder some of that burden, some of that.

• 1:15:50Speaker 01

  It's a collective shame. It's a collective effort.

• 1:15:53Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:15:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. Whereas.

• 1:15:54Mark Manson?

  And so your parents can like dig you out of it, or your siblings can dig you out of it. Whereas in the US, you're shit out of luck.

• 1:16:00Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No system is right or wrong. And they just serve different functions. Right. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:16:07Mark Manson?

  Well, I'm curious, actually. So we're sitting here, we're like talking, we have this whole episode about shame and culture and life experience. And here we are, two boring white dudes from middle America, when we have like two amazing case studies in the room with us.

• 1:16:22Speaker 01

  Right. Sitting behind the cameras.

• 1:16:24Mark Manson?

  If they're willing to come on and talk for a minute. Massa, do you want to come on? Come here.

• 1:16:30Speaker 01

  Take my seat. Take my seat.

• 1:16:31Mark Manson?

  Get out of here, Drew.

• 1:16:32Speaker 01

  You're in the hot seat.

• 1:16:33Mark Manson?

  Don't be shy. Don't be shy.

• 1:16:36Speaker 02

  I'm so shy.

• 1:16:37Mark Manson?

  You're not shy at all. Don't even pretend. Didn't even have time to do her makeup.

• 1:16:44Speaker 02

  Didn't even clap.

• 1:16:46Mark Manson?

  Oh, you must be so ashamed right now.

• 1:16:47Speaker 02

  I'm so ashamed.

• 1:16:49Mark Manson?

  See, it's the appearance and yeah, the body image thing. No, I, I wanted to bring you on because you have an interesting life story. You're an immigrant, you're Persian, so you grew up in a different culture. I'm, I'm just curious, like, what, what sort of shame have you had to struggle with or deal with throughout your life? What have been some of the obstacles you faced?

• 1:17:09Speaker 02

  Well, I think one of the biggest ones growing up was being in ESL in like elementary school and middle school. And like, I remember I would be in class and the ESL teacher would come and like grab me and like three other students. And we'd have to go do ESL and like, I remember walking out of the class and just feeling so much shame that my English wasn't as good as the rest of the kids. Even though I didn't really have like an accent, but it still wasn't like on par with everyone else. So I felt a lot of shame around that. And then when it would come to, you know, parent teacher nights and my parents had to come and they didn't understand fully what the teacher was like explaining to them or they were talking back with broken English.

• 1:17:51Speaker 02

  I remember just being like, oh my God, like someone take me away. I can't deal with this. But you know, now I'm so proud of my Persian heritage and I'm so proud of my parents for like, you know, moving from Iran here and starting a new life. And they had to actually do this twice because we went back to Iran when I was nine and had to do this whole process again. So I had to go to ESL twice. I was like, not this again. When we came back in, um, from high school, I had to go back and I'm like, oh, here we are back in ESL. But you know, um, I got to learn about my culture when I went back, so it was all a great learning experience.

• 1:18:32Mark Manson?

  Did you ever, was there ever like friction between growing up here and your Iranian parents? And like what their expectations for you? Was there like shame that happened there?

• 1:18:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, lots. So, um, I remember I wasn't allowed to wear a bikini for the longest time because they were just so trained to like, we, I mean, my parents didn't even get to go to the beach growing up in Iran because of the revolution and everything that happened. So when they came here, they were trying to still enforce those kinds of. Um, perspectives raising me. So they wouldn't allow me to wear bikinis or like short skirts or anything like that. And like, that's all I wanted to do. I was the biggest girly girl. I just wanted to look cute. So I remember when, uh, in school, when they took us to the pool for like a field trip.

• 1:19:27Speaker 02

  I had to wear this like really ugly bathing suit and I remember I cut it and I made it into a bikini.

• 1:19:35Speaker 02

  So that, that I was like the rest of the kids and I had so much shame around like, you know, what my parents wanted me to wear or like. Um, they, they would just, you know, be very restrictive. Um, and I wasn't allowed to go to parties. So I would lie to them about doing graveyard shifts at McDonald's because that was my first job. And then I would go to the bus stop and like go to a party and then come back at three AM and tell them to come pick me up. So, yeah, um, there was a lot of shame around the rules and regulations that my parents would put on me, raising me. And, um, how I wasn't allowed to do the things that the rest of the, the North American kids were allowed to do.

• 1:20:17Mark Manson?

  Yeah. And when, when did the, the shame flip in the pride? Like when, when would you say that happened?

• 1:20:23Speaker 02

  I would say in university. Um, that's when I really realized how, you know, special my culture is and that my parents were just trying to do the best. That they could, raising me with like, you know, limited knowledge about, you know, what it's like to live in a free society. That you can, you know, do whatever. It's not dangerous to be wearing a bikini or it's not dangerous to, um. Go to a party with guys and girls, like as long as, you know, there's a chaperone or something.

• 1:20:57Speaker 02

  So, you know, they had to learn that and it was a lot easier for my sister. But as I got older, I just, I just understood where they were coming from.

• 1:21:05Mark Manson?

  Gotcha.

• 1:21:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:06Mark Manson?

  Cool. Thank you.

• 1:21:07Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:21:11Mark Manson?

  Jess!

• 1:21:12Speaker 03

  Oh boy.

• 1:21:13Mark Manson?

  Get over here Jess.

• 1:21:15Speaker 03

  Mark, this is weird.

• 1:21:16Mark Manson?

  It's not weird Jess.

• 1:21:18Speaker 03

  I'm so comfortable being behind the camera. That's why this is weird.

• 1:21:24Mark Manson?

  Jess Choi, our intrepid director of photography, always behind the camera, now in front of the camera.

• 1:21:30Speaker 03

  Wow, I must have done something good in my past life.

• 1:21:33Mark Manson?

  No, you're a wonderful person to talk to for this episode because you have a very interesting history.

• 1:21:41Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:21:43Speaker 03

  Shane and I are very familiar with each other.

• 1:21:45Mark Manson?

  Why is that?

• 1:21:46Speaker 03

  Well, I was born in the United States, but I was born to South Korean immigrant parents. And so, I think just growing up, like, it was tough because I had a lot of these expectations placed on me, you know, growing up in a Korean household and, for example, like, being obedient was so important. So anytime like I spoke out, I felt shame and my parents would say like, "No, you can't do that. You have to just say "neh," which in Korean means like, "yes." So, no matter what you thought, even if you like disagreed with what an elder was saying, just say "neh," "neh" over and over. And so I felt a lot of shame about like speaking out. But then I would go to school and I would want to like speak my mind and like speak up

• 1:22:29Speaker 03

  and then there would be this weird like contradictory feeling inside of me. So, that was hard growing up. And then to add another layer to that, my dad is a Christian minister, so there was a lot of shame with that because he put a lot of pressure on me to, you know, live up to these Christian values and standards and always be an example to all the other kids in the church. And I always felt like I wasn't good enough, like I could never be holy enough or, you know, pious enough. And so, there was a lot of shame with that. And then I think it had this like really weird pendulum effect on me where I wanted to like rebel and like do the opposite of things and then I felt shame with that. So, yeah, it's Shane and I are very familiar with each other.

• 1:23:15Speaker 03

  Unnecessarily.

• 1:23:18Mark Manson?

  She's like, I'm suddenly sweating.

• 1:23:19Speaker 03

  I'm with the same people.

• 1:23:20Mark Manson?

  I'm suddenly sweating, very intensely.

• 1:23:23Speaker 03

  I don't know how you do this, Mark.

• 1:23:25Mark Manson?

  Are you comfortable talking about your sexuality?

• 1:23:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, I can talk about that. So, I identify as a gay woman. That has been quite a journey because, on one hand, I feel very fortunate because I grew up in the United States, which, you know, in the US, for the most part, at least the areas that I grew up in, like, were very, like, you know, people didn't care if you were gay or not. However, like, growing up in a Korean household, like, sexual orientation or, like, sexuality is not something that was talked about. And so, this is something recent that has happened. So, like, my parents and I are not on speaking terms. And so, and it's because I chose to marry a woman. And I came to this point in my life where I had to decide between, like,

• 1:24:10Speaker 03

  do I want to live my authentic life and choose my own happiness? Or do I want to dance around and be someone that I'm not for the rest of my life just to make my parents happy? And, you know, just my extended family happy, to live up to the image that they have of me. And that was really, really hard.

• 1:24:31Speaker 03

  I cried a lot. And I don't typically cry, like, I think my wife is the only one who has seen me cry.

• 1:24:36Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:37Speaker 03

  I can't let Mark see me cry.

• 1:24:41Speaker 03

  So, that's been my recent journey. And I feel a little, like, some shame around that because, obviously, like, I grew up being told from my parents, hey, like, family is everything. You know, you have to obey your parents. You have to make your parents proud. It's like, others don't matter in the world. Family is everything. And I basically did the opposite. And that's been really hard.

• 1:25:05Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:25:06Mark Manson?

  It takes an incredible amount of courage to do that as well.

• 1:25:10Speaker 03

  It doesn't feel like... It does, and that's why it's so polarizing, the feeling. Like, I'm proud of myself, but I also feel so, so much guilt around what I have done.

• 1:25:20Mark Manson?

  Right, and I think that's natural. It's, um, we haven't gotten yet to kind of the process of working through shame, but it's, you know, Drew mentioned early in the episode that shame has this weird thing of kind of warping your perception of yourself and, and, and like not allowing you to see the full context of what's going on. And so it, it creates this weird kind of funhouse mirror effect where it's like internally, everything looks like dark and terrible and wrong, but externally, people are like, wow, that must have been really hard, like, good for her, you know? And it's kind of sick and fucked up how like that plays out in all of our heads. But it's, it is, it's part of it. But thank you for coming on and sharing. I appreciate it.

• 1:26:04Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:26:06Mark Manson?

  Jess Troy, everybody!

• 1:26:09Speaker 03

  That was hard.

• 1:26:14Mark Manson?

  All right, welcome back, Drew. Before we move on to the actionable advice, I do think there is one quick topic that we can't really do an episode on shame without touching or covering to a certain extent, and that is how technology has fucked everything up. Yeah, yeah. So like, if we return to this idea that shame is a moral mechanism that evolved within a tribal society to keep people in line and obedient and working together. If we, if we accept this idea that of Durkheim's, he called it the collective conscience of the moral standards and norms that are enforced on everybody, well, what happens when technology

• 1:26:57Mark Manson?

  basically turns the entire planet into your tribe? It basically scales shame to infinity and beyond.

• 1:27:06Mark Manson?

  Now here's the thing, everybody kind of understands this implicitly, but yet we don't change our behaviors or actions around it. Social media is not real life. It's basically a shame machine that is on 24/7. And part of this is because when we are online, when we are scrolling through our Instagram or TikTok or whatever, our brain doesn't understand that these are strangers. Our brain doesn't understand that these people have no relation to us, that their lives have no implication on ours, that the things that they say or do will affect us in no way, shape or form. When we see a human face talking to us, like it is our primal wiring just understands that this person is part of our collective or our group. So those moral mechanisms inside our brain,

• 1:27:50Mark Manson?

  that radar that is constantly trying to detect social infractions and that causes us to feel ashamed about ourselves, it is on overdrive all the time, every day, 24/7. Now, what makes us even worse is that the things that live online are permanent. So there's all these statistics about how young people, they're going out less, they're drinking less, they're dating less, they are doing drugs less, they're partying less. I think a huge part of that is there's just this intense risk aversion that happens in the real world. When you understand that even the slightest mistake might be filmed and recorded on a phone and it might live online forever.

• 1:28:33Mark Manson?

  And this is not a made up exaggerated thing. There is this concept of cancel culture that has taken over over the last 10 years. And it's a very real thing. A couple of examples here. There's a story of in 2010, a college student at Rutgers named Tyler Clemente. His roommate decided that it would be funny to secretly film him with a webcam while, without him knowing. And so his roommate would leave the room. He'd leave the webcam on and then he'd go down the hall to his friends' rooms or whatever. And then they would sit and watch what Tyler would do when he thought nobody was looking. Well, it turned out one day Tyler brought in a boy and started hooking up with him on camera.

• 1:29:17Mark Manson?

  And he was in the closet at the time. Nobody knew he was gay. And so suddenly this is being broadcast to the entire school. It's being put online. It starts getting shared by everybody. The next day Tyler jumped off the George Washington Bridge and killed himself. There's another story. Uh, there was a woman who was bird watching in Central Park. Um, and a man came over and started harassing her and her dog, uh, and threatening her and threatening to, uh, hit her dog. And so she pulled out her phone and started calling the police. And then he pulled out his phone and started recording her. Well, it turned out that the same day that this happened,

• 1:29:57Mark Manson?

  George Floyd was murdered and everything was going crazy on social media about George Floyd and violence against African Americans. And it turned out that the man recording the video was African American, filming a white woman calling the police on him for threatening her dog. And sure enough, she went viral. She, she became the Central Park Karen was, was what she, she became labeled. And it went to such an extent, she lost her job. Uh, she lost her friends. She lost her apartment. Um, she had to move to Canada because she was getting, she got doxxed. Um, she had people showing up at, at her place.

• 1:30:37Mark Manson?

  She got death threats. Uh, she had to like delete all of her accounts online. She had to move to another fucking country. So like, this shit is, it's shame on steroids. Any potential infraction, social infraction, any violation of the group norm or the social norm, uh, that triggers that, that shame response in us, it can happen at any time. It can happen anywhere and it can scale across thousands or millions of people. And so I think this is an interesting angle to understand. I guess kind of the relationship between technology and anxiety that we've been seeing over the, the last 10 or 20 years. Uh, I think it's an angle that, you know, you and I have covered this topic.

• 1:31:22Mark Manson?

  To death and back, but it was interesting prepping for this episode because I think this is an angle that I never thought of it in these terms, right? You know, it's like we have this biological machinery to like be sensitive to what our peers and our tribe thinks about us. And so if you technologically scale that tribe to the entire planet, then it makes sense that you are just going to live your entire life absolutely paranoid of anything and everything you do. I think when you live in an environment like this, that with stakes that high, I think there are two things, there are two kind of logical reactions to that. Reaction number one is if you can't beat them, join them, which that is basically become

• 1:32:06Mark Manson?

  part of the shaming mob, right? Become one of the enforcers online, like join in with the outing of people and, you know, take part with glee, the harassing of the people that you think are morally corrupt or ruining society or whatever. And then option number two is to just stop giving a fuck, is to essentially become shameless. And we kind of, this returns us to that point that we talked about earlier, how being full of shame is not healthy, but being completely shameless is also not healthy. When you're full of shame, your life is just this miserable, constantly judgmental morass

• 1:32:50Mark Manson?

  of like anger, violation, threat, paranoia. And then when you're shameless, you're basically just, you're like a selfish nihilist. And I kind of see these two poles have, like, they define internet culture. You know, one pole is the cancel culture pole, and then the other pole is the, I would call the troll pole. The troll pole. The troll pole. Like, I think, a lot of different angles, we could talk about this, but the left in many countries has kind of adopted the sanctimony position of like, join the mob, join the self-righteous mob. Right, pile on. Pile on, yeah.

• 1:33:31Mark Manson?

  And then the right in many countries has taken up the troll side, which is like, you know what? The point is to kind of just be an ass.

• 1:33:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:33:41Mark Manson?

  Is to kind of like stick your finger up, middle finger up in the left's face. And this isn't really a functional way to like run a culture or society.

• 1:33:51Speaker 01

  Run a society, yeah, yeah. Or interact with any other human being, really.

• 1:33:55Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yes. So what can we do about this? Basically, I think the most important thing is to understand that when you go online and when you choose what content to engage with and who to follow and who to subscribe to and who to listen to, you have to understand that you're not, this is not simply entertainment. You are choosing your new tribe. The information and the personalities that you choose to let into your life, you are essentially constructing your own tribe from the people in the world. And when you construct that tribe, you have to understand that you are going to start adapting and living by the values and norms of those people that you follow.

• 1:34:39Mark Manson?

  It's just, it's just human nature. And so be very, very careful and conscious of the people that you choose to follow, the people you choose to subscribe to, the content you choose to engage with, because each, each time you do that, you are voting not only for the information that's going to live in your brain, but you're also voting for the morals and values that you're going to slowly adopt over time. And if you follow shitty people with bad, bad values, then you will slowly morph yourself into a person with bad values.

• 1:35:18Speaker 01

  Right. What about the, okay, so I've taken kind of the extreme position on this and just kind of, I don't really do social media anymore because what I found was it's actually very hard to kind of curate and choose your tribe online because the algorithms and the billions of dollars and the super smart people that are behind them figure out ways to put that shit in front of you still. You know what I mean?

• 1:35:40Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:40Speaker 01

  So what do you say, like, most people aren't going to be like me and kind of just be a, you know, a lot out here and get off social media.

• 1:35:47Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I mean. Yes, get offline as much as possible because when you get offline, you revert back to the social mechanisms in your brain that your brain was actually evolved and built for, right?

• 1:35:59Speaker 01

  That's what I found, yeah.

• 1:36:00Mark Manson?

  Yeah, so it's like, yeah, when you're in person with a group of people, you have a healthy shame radar, you have a healthy sense of like norm violation and understanding the consequences in a reasonable way. When you're online, all those things get distorted and messed up. So the more time you can spend offline, the better. At the same time, I understand that, you know, it's not reasonable to ask everybody to get offline all the time. And you're right about the social media companies, like it's the for you algorithms are designed to, are optimized to play to many of your worst instincts. So you have to be very assertive and conscious with the way that you use the technology.

• 1:36:41Mark Manson?

  You have to kind of enforce, you have to have an understanding of what, who you are and what you care about and the people you care about and then actively enforce that onto the apps and algorithms that you use.

• 1:36:53Speaker 01

  Right, yeah. One thing about the digital stuff, the online stuff, I think, you know, you mentioned the permanence piece where, you know, something you do online, it can come back to haunt you, you know, years later, decades later, even at this point. That, I think, you know, when we, when social media first kind of came on scene for us anyway, like the mid 2000s to late 2000s, Facebook was kind of the only game in town, right? And you remember this, it was all a bunch of college kids. And it was just, it was like, this is where you learned where the parties were. You put pictures of you partying with people and like, it was fun because it was all just a bunch of college kids at the time. When it started to change, it was when you started to hear, oh, employers are now looking at Facebook, right? This is what they call audience collapse, right?

• 1:37:38Speaker 01

  And so... That's one thing that our shame systems are actually tuned to different audiences.

• 1:37:45Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:45Speaker 01

  And they can only really handle one audience at a time. But when you're online and especially like a platform like Facebook where there's people from all ages and other platforms do, I don't want to sound like too much of an old person just talking about Facebook.

• 1:37:57Mark Manson?

  Such a boomer.

• 1:37:58Speaker 01

  He's such a boomer, I know. But you're now, you now have an audience that's composed of like, yeah, you have your friends, but then you have coworkers and even bosses, maybe your grandma or you know, your parents are on there, whatever it is. And those audiences get collapsed into one and your shame system is not attuned to that. Your shame system is very attuned to different audiences. You know, we talked about the different concentric circles that go from individual to family to community, society, right? Your shame system is tuned to that. Online, all of that has collapsed down into just one audience.

• 1:38:30Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:30Speaker 01

  And so there again, that's just like a, you're staring back at, it's something that your brain, paleolithic brain is not set up.

• 1:38:38Mark Manson?

  Doesn't know what to do with it. And I would add on top of that, right? Like we talked about how again, the concentric circles, we kind of ended on society and culture, you know, it's American culture, or if you're from China, Chinese culture, or German, if you're, German culture, if you're German. When you're online, you're being exposed to every culture everywhere. And so there's just contradictory norms all over the place. And that's, so you start seeing this weird bleeding over of different norms into different, into different areas that like, don't make sense. And you have to be very, you have to be careful about that. Like it just adds another layer of confusion to everything.

• 1:39:24Mark Manson?

  All right. So that wraps up kind of the theoretical portion of the episode. Now we're going to dive into application, takeaways, advice, exercises that the listeners can do. But before we move on, I just want to remind everybody that we have that free PDF guide. If you really want to follow along and do a lot of these exercises as we talk about them, PDF guide is indispensable. You can go to solve podcast.com/shame. All right. So I think as we get into the application portion of this, I think probably the best place to start is to help people get an understanding of where their shame comes from. And one of the biggest determinants of where our shame comes from is what age

• 1:40:09Mark Manson?

  we were when certain things happened to us. So I think just to set the stage for everything else that we're going to go through over the next hour or two, it's probably worthwhile to kind of talk through the developmental stages of a young human being and like where they're susceptible, what sort of problems emerge at different ages. And then from there, we can start moving into therapeutic modalities and things that people can actually do.

• 1:40:34Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. Yeah. So understanding how shame develops from an early age is going to help you pinpoint some of those sources, like you said, right? So it's important to go through this. So it might seem a little theoretical, but there's actually a very practical implication to this. So as I'm going through this and kind of describing these different stages, just think about, think back to maybe you can pinpoint some of these things or how you were raised and how that influences what kind of shame you feel now. Okay. So to start it off, so this, a lot of this comes from a book by Michael Lewis, not the guy who wrote The Big Short, right? Different Michael Lewis. He's a pediatric psychologist, psychiatrist, actually. It's called Shame, the Exposed Self. And then June Tangney also has a book called Shame and Guilt. And a lot of this comes from that. So if

• 1:41:17Speaker 01

  you're nerdy enough to want to go look up those, you can. But shame, shame really, it starts early, obviously, but even before we have words for it. So about a year and a half to two years, this is when an infant or a toddler will develop kind of like a self-recognition. So they can look into a mirror and they know that, oh, that's me. Okay. So they have this self-concept already. And that's kind of a precursor, a prerequisite to shame, right? You have to be self-aware and know that you're a person in the world, right? Before you can develop shame. But even at that stage, even though they're not probably, as far as we can tell, not feeling

• 1:41:57Speaker 01

  shame, they're still treating emotional disconnect from the people around them, their caregivers, their parents, they're still treating that disconnect as a threat. So any sort of like neglect or anything that happens at that stage is still, like, it's salient to an 18-month to a 24-month-old toddler, right? So that's the baseline, that's where it can kind of all start even too. Now, by the ages of about two to three, between two and three, you start to see shame behavior. So you see a toddler that does something wrong, right? They'll immediately shrink, they'll shit, they'll throw their head down, they'll pout a little bit maybe, they'll try to hide, they cover their eyes. This is where all the shame behaviors

• 1:42:38Speaker 01

  start to come out. And this is also where they think that parenting really plays a big role in shame at this point, okay? So if at this stage, between two and three, you're getting these negative evaluations on yourself, like, "Oh no, you're bad, don't do that, you are bad," right? That's that toxic shame we've talked about before. This can start to take root there, okay? As opposed to if you have parents who are a little bit more, like, "You did a bad thing, hey, don't do that, that's a bad thing to do, just let's not do that," okay? That's where the internalizing starts to happen. An infant, even as, or

• 1:43:20Speaker 01

  a toddler from two to three, can start to internalize at that point. This is also usually when toilet training starts, it's usually around this time. And depending on how kind of well that goes and how good of a teacher that the toddler has, that teaches them how to feel about their mistakes, right? If they have an accident on the floor, in their pants or whatever, and do they get scolded for it? It's funny, because I remember being in Psych 101 in school and like...

• 1:43:48Mark Manson?

  Of learning about Freud.

• 1:43:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:50Mark Manson?

  And of course Freud talked about the anal fixation.

• 1:43:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:43:52Mark Manson?

  And like obsession with poop and everything. And I remember just thinking like, that's so weird. Like, who would have, who would come up with that?

• 1:43:59Speaker 01

  I know, right?

• 1:44:00Mark Manson?

  But you're actually connecting the dots.

• 1:44:03Speaker 01

  Right, yeah, I know.

• 1:44:04Mark Manson?

  Which is like.

• 1:44:04Speaker 01

  Out of context, that is weird.

• 1:44:06Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it is super weird. But it does, it does actually like, especially from a developmental point of view, and especially once you understand things like attachment theory, like that age, that, that age of like two to three years old is like such a, such a critical period in the child's life of like their self-understanding and, and feeling worthy and, and feeling secure. And then it's like, yeah, one of the biggest challenges that they face during that time is managing their own poop, so.

• 1:44:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:31Mark Manson?

  Go on.

• 1:44:32Speaker 01

  As, as some, I have a lot of friends who have either just went through that two to three year period or are going through it right now. And you watch this and these kids, they are, they're growing so fast, they're learning so fast, so you can really see, and, and the toilet training is like a big part of their life, they'll talk about it with you, they'll tell you, hey, I pooped, it was awesome, you want to come see it? Like, come look at it. Yeah, so they don't have shame around that.

• 1:44:55Mark Manson?

  I still do that.

• 1:44:56Speaker 01

  Right, yeah, I know, yeah, yeah. He makes me, he makes me look at it. This is such a critical period, if you've ever spent any time around some, like a kid who's this age, you know how critical of a period this is. They, their personality is starting to come, really come through at this point.

• 1:45:12Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:45:12Speaker 01

  There, you can tell just like how upset they get when they do mess up. And the way that their parents and people around them respond to those mistakes makes a huge, huge impression at this stage. Okay? The, the shame, it can be hardwired in at this point though, too, to like, to a point that where it's like being imperfect is unacceptable. Like that, that can even register for a two to three year old at this point. So you can see that like this stuff, like, yes, there are these critical periods, there, there's some good news at the end of this too, it's not all, you know, there, there's some ways you can mitigate this as well, but. It is a very critical period for shame. And by the time you get to like three to five years old, this is when you start to

• 1:45:53Mark Manson?

  Internalize the shame.

• 1:45:55Speaker 01

  So it's not just coming from the outside at this point. You you hear the voices of your caregivers or your parents in your head, right? Even when they're not around.

• 1:46:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:03Speaker 01

  And this is where you're starting to kind of self police with shame.

• 1:46:08Mark Manson?

  Right. And I think just to kind of contextualize this for listeners, you know, they they have a sense of self, but they don't have a sense of like, of people or experiences persisting while they're not there.

• 1:46:20Speaker 01

  Right. Right. So they think they can cover their eyes.

• 1:46:22Mark Manson?

  Yeah, they think they can cover their eyes and you can't see them, right? So they don't understand that you have different perceptions than they do. And and interestingly, as a result, like any trauma or neglect that happens around this this stage, it's very, it's very like corporeal, like it's very like people, people who's children who suffer a lot at this age, they they tend to be the ones who grew up with like issues around disassociation.

• 1:46:49Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 1:46:49Mark Manson?

  You know, numbness, loss of of of sense of different parts of their bodies, like just a fundamental inability to connect to their own emotions, recognize their own emotions, or recognize emotions in others. So it's like a very, it it, I guess, one principle to keep in mind through this whole section is just that like, the earlier you go, the more fundamental the damages and and and like, everything else gets kind of built on top of it. And so at this stage, it is, it is like, it's almost, it's not even unconscious, it's like pre-conscious, it's just like, it's just like a basic ability to like, recognize your own sensations and feelings in your body and understand and even know that you're feeling bad, much less like, understand why.

• 1:47:32Speaker 01

  Right, right. Yeah. And then by the time of three to five, you start to internalize a lot of that, like I was saying.

• 1:47:38Mark Manson?

  Yes, you you get you get some of that narrative of like, oh, I feel bad, I must be a bad person.

• 1:47:42Speaker 01

  Right, right. That's kind of where the seeds of the narrative start, at least anyway. And interestingly, too, at this point, too, children can start to distinguish between shame and guilt. Like, they they can, I mean, it's they don't have a concept of it necessarily, but they they've found that there's actually like the feeling is is different for them at that point. So I, a lot of people, a lot of psychologists will say it's probably healthier at this point to push them towards a more healthy guilt than it is to shame at this point.

• 1:48:09Mark Manson?

  Right. And that that's where the You did a bad thing, not you are a bad boy, or you are a bad girl comes in.

• 1:48:15Speaker 01

  Exactly. There's also around this time, you know, children are really testing out their boundaries for independence at this point, too. And so that, again, that's kind of a foundational layer that gets built upon as well. If you can build like kind of a healthy sense of independence and trust, like you show that you trust the kid to manage their own self in whatever capacity that they can at that point, that starts to build a little bit of self-confidence in them at that point, and they can kind of build on top of that. But if they're too controlling and criticized too much, then that can internal, again, that internal shame really does get identified with the self at that point. That's where that really starts at that point.

• 1:48:58Speaker 01

  And children at that point, too, will look to other people to take the lead because they're so ashamed of of their own thought processes, their own decisions that they make. Okay? So that was three to five. By about five to seven, this is when the narratives really start to take hold. So they took seeds back in like three to five years old, the seeds start saying, okay, I'm a bad person. Is that right? By five to seven, they've got a full story about who they are. And if it's a shameful experience, or if they've experienced a lot of shame up to that point, then they have this like self-identified shame that they have. Okay?

• 1:49:32Speaker 01

  So again, the whole I made a mistake, even when mistakes happen, come to I am a bad person. So that's when they start to internalize shame if they've had a lot of those types of experiences. This is also when children get to be more curious about bodies, right? You know, these like five to seven year olds, sometimes, especially around, you know, four to five, they might still be kind of interested in, or they're okay with being naked, right? Like you go to somebody's house and they're like four or five year olds like running around naked. By the time they get to five, six, seven, they start to kind of like, oh, I'm naked. And they're a little bit more self-conscious about it.

• 1:50:03Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:50:04Speaker 01

  Or they start to explore, they'll ask you kind of embarrassing questions, you know, be at a grocery store and you hear some kid, you know, talk to their mom like, mom, like, why is my butt hurt? You know, or whatever it is, like, or what, you know, what's, why are your boobs so big right now? Or, you know, whatever it is, they'll say weird things like that. And

• 1:50:23Speaker 01

  How caregivers react to that can really set up whether or not you are shameful of your body, or someone else's body, your bodies in general, or touch, or you know, physical intimacy, that can really start at this stage, too.

• 1:50:38Mark Manson?

  Interesting.

• 1:50:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, and like harsh reactions to that will, will be, it makes it more likely that somebody's more ashamed of their own body, or you know, sexuality, whatever it is. And that really starts in about the five to seven year old range.

• 1:50:51Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:51Speaker 01

  And then we get to adolescence.

• 1:50:53Mark Manson?

  Oh, it's the best.

• 1:50:54Speaker 01

  The best, right? You remember this?

• 1:50:56Mark Manson?

  So much fun.

• 1:50:57Speaker 01

  So much fun.

• 1:50:58Mark Manson?

  Oh, my God, if only I could be 13 again.

• 1:50:59Speaker 01

  Oh, God, can you imagine? Oh, I imagine you feel the same way. That was just such an intense period of your life, right? It's so intense.

• 1:51:09Mark Manson?

  Yeah, very emotional.

• 1:51:10Speaker 01

  Super emotional, lots of ups and downs.

• 1:51:12Mark Manson?

  Very insecure.

• 1:51:13Speaker 01

  Your brain is reorganizing itself during adolescence, and a big part of that reorganization causes you to obsess over the judgments and perceptions of other people at this point. That's why you're, that's why teens are so self-conscious and so hyper-aware of any sort of social rejection, or social faux pas they might make, whatever it is. This is the stage where, like, your brain is, like, it's quickly, quickly rewiring, and it's trying to figure out where they stand in the social hierarchy, their social value. Again, shame is attuned to social devaluations, and so the shame system during this period is hyper, hyper-online at this point.

• 1:51:55Speaker 01

  It even gets to the point, too, the shame system is so sensitive at this point, that teenagers, you know, adolescents and teenagers will start to detect threats that aren't even there. So every little look, every little word, every little, you know, somebody didn't like something on their social media, whatever it is, they perceive that as a social threat at this point. So everything is just, it's turned up to 11 at this point. Any of those embarrassing moments, I know some of the most like shameful and embarrassing things I can think of happen during this time, and it's just because your, your brain is wired to remember those and not repeat those mistakes at this point. That's kind of the, the trajectory through childhood anyway, and adolescence.

• 1:52:33Mark Manson?

  Yeah, and I, I think a really important thing for, for people to understand with these different stages is that, we talked earlier about how, when you feel deeply ashamed of something, or you have like a very shameful or traumatic experience. Your brain kind of gets stuck in that moment.

• 1:52:51Speaker 01

  They get that flashbulb memory of it.

• 1:52:53Mark Manson?

  Yeah, and you don't really evolve or grow out of it. And so that applies to all of these as well. So if you, if you have a very intensely shameful moment, say, when you're between five and seven, you'll kind of like, from an emotional maturity point of view, you will kind of get lodged in that five to seven range. Until you go back and fix whatever that is that, that really fucked you up back there. Same thing at, you know, three to four years old, same thing at adolescence. And so, you know, I think we all know certain adults who will act like children when they're, they're, they get emotionally triggered. And this was really why, it's because when you trigger somebody, you are basically kind of throwing their brain back to that moment

• 1:53:37Mark Manson?

  where they were traumatized or violated or ashamed in some intense way. And they are like replaying or reacting that moment in time at that same level of cognitive development, that same level of self-understanding. And so, you know, just think of that in terms of like whatever you're struggling with. The, the deeper it is, the further back it goes. If it is on like a fundamental visceral level, like that probably goes back very early in childhood. If it's just kind of this like deep sense of, of failure and inadequacy that like,

• 1:54:16Mark Manson?

  you don't really have any sort of logical or rational explanation around, you know, that probably goes back to that, that toddler era. And then if you have like very specific insecurities around specific experiences or groups of people or whatever, you know, social anxiety, codependence, avoidance issues, like that probably goes back to like bad adolescent experiences.

• 1:54:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:37Mark Manson?

  Because that's, that's much more, it's much, much more about your social identity than like your relationship with yourself.

• 1:54:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, and this all, I mean, it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, right? Like, it seems kind of cruel, right? Like, it's like, oh, my God, I'm stuck in when I was five years old and this thing happened and I can't get out of it. Like, why would, why would our brains be, be designed that way, right? But what it is, is, you know, your brain is trying to figure out what kind of environment it's in and what it has to prepare for, right? And, and so it uses those early experiences as a template. Now, that makes a lot of sense in like, especially in like, a small tribal society that was our evolutionary kind of past, that's where we evolved these things. But in a more modern society, it's what the good news is, is that you don't have to stay stuck back there, right?

• 1:55:27Speaker 01

  You can, like, your environment can change and you have a lot of control over that. And so I just want to emphasize that it's not, like, you're not doomed based on this stuff, okay? And not only that, like, if you're a parent and you're listening to this too, and you're like, oh, my God, I've screwed my kid up so much. Well, yeah, you probably have, like, let's just, let's just be honest.

• 1:55:44Mark Manson?

  Newsflash, every parent screws up their kid in some shape or form, yeah.

• 1:55:47Speaker 01

  The good news, though, is that repair goes a long ways. So even if you have, like, kind of, you know, probably shamed your kid at some point, going back to them at some point and either, you know, you apologize for that, or you just change how you treat them in these situations and you push them more to, hey, that's a bad thing, don't do that, rather than you're a bad kid. That goes a long ways for kids, too. Kids are very resilient and still very flexible. So these things don't just, you're not set, set in stone if they do happen this way. It could take some work to get out of it, too.

• 1:56:16Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:21Mark Manson?

  All right, so there, there's a kind of a history or lineage of therapeutic modalities that address shame directly. And I think it's worthwhile to kind of go through them, understand what the originators were, were thinking at the time, like, what, what led to their decisions, what those practices are, and where they help and where they come up short. And so, of course, every episode, what is a solved episode without a section on Freud? I believe we're now like, five for five or six for six or something with him. Like, I think he is the one person who has showed up in every single solved episode. But you can't really have a psychology podcast without talking about Freud. So it's, it's very hard to, to avoid him.

• 1:57:05Mark Manson?

  So Freud, of course, was the originator of talk therapy and... His school thought was called psychoanalysis and his whole thing was about digging into people's unconscious thoughts and fears and emotions and motivations and then just bringing them conscious. He noticed that there was a healing effect when people became more aware of all of the impulses and emotions that were going on inside of themselves. Once they were aware of them and they were able to put language around them, it seemed to liberate them in a lot of different ways. And at the time Freud was working in 19th century Europe, the cultural norms at the time were extremely rigid. That you were really not supposed to show emotion.

• 1:57:49Mark Manson?

  Sexuality was extremely taboo. Everybody was very buttoned up, very conformist. There was a lot of judgment and shame everywhere. And so most of Freud's early patients, you would classify as highly shamed adult women. As a result, I think, you know, a lot of his discoveries or a lot of his ideas, I think were very much biased, based on that self-selection bias of just like, most of the people coming to him were like wealthy or middle-class women, who were very repressed. And so he, like many scientists do, erroneously extrapolated from this small segment of the population that he was working with

• 1:58:30Mark Manson?

  and then made all these kind of grand proclamations about human nature and whatnot. But one of the things that he noticed is that most of these patients that came in were like they had deeply repressed emotions, deeply repressed. Many of them were very sexual. Many of them were anger, sadness, guilt, and things that they had not talked about ever with anybody, things that they had buried for decades. And what he noticed is that when you Got these people to open up and finally start talking, talking about it. There was kind of this, this sense or feeling of liberation that happened.

• 1:59:09Mark Manson?

  Now, what's interesting about psychoanalysis is that it, he never really came up with any game plan of like, how to deal with these emotions. And sure enough, by like the 1910s, even Freud himself started to notice this as a problem. He even wrote, uh, he, he wrote in one of his books at the time, that he noticed that, that a lot of his patients who experienced the, uh, the release of repressed emotions, it actually caused them to leave psychoanalysis because the emotion that came up was just so uncomfortable and so messy and ugly and, and like, that they didn't know what to do with it. And they were just like, you know what? I think I'm gonna be fine. I don't need, I don't need to do all this stuff.

• 1:59:52Mark Manson?

  Uh, and so Freud kind of lamented the fact that like, most people wouldn't actually stick with it long enough to like sort through all of the, the baggage that they had been carrying around. And he never really got around to like game planning, like what to do with that baggage. So one of the acolytes of Freud, a psychoanalyst in the 1920s and 30s was a man named Carl Rogers. And Carl saw this as like the central problem of psychoanalysis. He's like, it's great that you can dig up all these buried emotions and all these repressed feelings, uh, and all this shame, guilt that you've been carrying around your entire life. But what are you gonna do with it? You have to find some, like, there has to be some sort of like solution waiting for you when all of that junk comes up.

• 2:00:37Mark Manson?

  So Rogers created what, what is known as person-centered therapy, although today some people just call it Rogarian therapy. Uh, and it's built on this radical idea that, that people are, are naturally driven towards growth and healing. Uh, but they just need to be provided the right context and emotional environment. And so Rogers' goal was actually not to solve, dig into everybody's psyches and like excavate all these unconscious feelings or emotions. His goal, the goal of person-centered therapy was simply to create the emotional environment that was full of enough trust and safety that people would start kind of unloading their stuff on their own naturally.

• 2:01:19Mark Manson?

  And so he actually took kind of a radical approach to therapy, which is that the therapist is actually not supposed to ask questions. The therapist is, it's actually patient-directed. So the therapist is simply there to support, to make observations, to maybe make suggestions of like, well, have you considered this? Or what do you think about that? And then let the patient really direct the narrative and direct where everything goes. And for Rogers, by far the most important thing above all else was that there was radical, unconditional acceptance. Everything is fair game. Every horrible thought, feeling, ugly experience, trauma, neglect, everything is okay.

• 2:02:02Mark Manson?

  There is no such thing as a bad thought or feeling. Just get it out and let's work with it. Let's talk about it. Rogers actually found a lot of good success with this. He's got a fantastic quote that I believe we've mentioned on the show before. He said, "The curious paradox is that when I accept myself as I am, it's only then can I change." And Rogers, from all of his work with his clients and patients, he developed this concept called incongruence. And because what he noticed is that generally speaking, a person's level of suffering is proportional to the mismatch between their self-concept and how others see them.

• 2:02:43Mark Manson?

  And so if somebody comes in and they see themselves as like, "I'm a loser, I suck at everything, nobody's gonna like me," but they're actually like a very successful, well-liked, popular person. He argued that it's the incongruence between the two that is the problem. And it's not, you know... Specifically how the person sees or feels about themselves. Because and I like this because it also addresses the fact that sometimes people who harbor a lot of shame, they compensate by overestimating themselves, right? You get kind of like the narcissistic defense mechanism or response to feeling a lot of internal shame. So he also noticed that people would come in and say, oh, I'm, I'm the best. Everybody wants to be like me. Everybody's jealous of me.

• 2:03:27Mark Manson?

  And meanwhile, it's like, you know, it's, it's this loser who like, you know, has nothing going on in his life, has no friends, whatever. So for Rogers, it was really just trying to get people's self-concept back to, to reality, to match that reality. And, and, and he really believed that that ultimately just came, came down to people having the time and space to work through all these questions and problems themselves. Now, the problem with that is that you need patients who are willing to put in the work. Yeah. And the fact of the matter is, is that the majority of people either are not willing to put in the work, or even if they're willing, they don't know the right questions to ask.

• 2:04:12Mark Manson?

  They haven't thought about these topics deeply for long periods of time. So they don't, they don't notice the, the paradoxes and, you know, the contradictions and, and like the, the faulty assumptions that they're, they're walking around with.

• 2:04:27Speaker 01

  You, it reminded me, when you were talking about the self-led or the, the patient-led part, it reminds me of Good Will Hunting.

• 2:04:33Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:34Speaker 01

  You know, when he goes into the first session and Robin Williams just sits there.

• 2:04:37Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 2:04:38Speaker 01

  And he just sits there and they don't do anything.

• 2:04:40Mark Manson?

  It's very Rogerian.

• 2:04:41Speaker 01

  They do a whole hour of just sitting there staring at each other and then they leave.

• 2:04:45Mark Manson?

  That's actually a great example. That, that's very Rogerian. Like hid that whole, I forget the, the name of the therapist in that, in Good Will Hunting, but Robin Williams' whole character is like very Rogerian. And what's interesting is that, you know, kind of coming back to the, the different stages of development, right? Like each of these therapies kind of properly addresses one stage and. misses the mark on the others. Oh, yeah. Psychoanalysis and like a Freudian approach is probably very good for people who are just like completely unaware of why they feel bad. Right? It's like you just get them on the couch talking and like eventually stuff's gonna start to come up. You're 90% of the way there. And, and, and we can like, we can start digging it out, you know? And, and I think for people who maybe experienced a lot of shame at a very young age, you know,

• 2:05:30Mark Manson?

  before they have an ego identity, before they have any sense of like social standing, before they've spun up any narratives about themselves, uh, you know, a Freudian approach can probably be very useful because it's like, it's really designed to deal with a lot of that messy unconscious kind of irrational aspect of ourselves. Rogerian therapy, I think, is, is probably more appropriate for, uh, you know, people in those, like the toddler phase or like the young childhood phase where they, they have a sense of self, but it's like, they don't have a clear understanding of the world or their relationship with the world. And so anything, any, any sort of trauma or pain that happens in that stage of their life, they just, they internalize it. They're just like, I'm worthless, I'm shit, nobody loves me, I'm gonna be alone forever.

• 2:06:15Mark Manson?

  And it's, and so interestingly, I think Matt Damon's character is very much that. Like he has this, this deep wound inside of him from being an orphan, uh, that nobody, nobody's ever really addressed and everybody's tried to approach him intellectually and he's just too smart. He can deflect them. But it's like when Robin Williams' character shows up and he just, he has the Rogerian approach of just like, you know what? I'm just gonna sit here until you start talking. Uh, that's the thing that eventually breaks through to him. Yeah. But unfortunately, most of us are not whale hunting, so, uh, we're not math prodigies. And, and most people like they, they don't have the time, patience or energy to sit and

• 2:06:58Mark Manson?

  do that, that level of work for that, that period of time. Uh, and so this started to frustrate a number of people and along came Albert Ellis. And he came around in the 50s and 60s. I think he was aware of the Rogerian approach, but he actually decided to take the completely opposite tack, which is he, he decided, let's intentionally get patients to experience their shame and their insecurities. Because then, once they experience it, they're gonna realize that it's not nearly as bad as they thought it was gonna be. And so he, it's here with Ellis that you start to, uh, Get some of the, the, the early progressive desensitization that later on ended up in CBT.

• 2:07:41Mark Manson?

  You know, so he, he would do things, he would, he would take patients who say had like intense social anxiety and he would make them go out in public and embarrass themselves. And, and then they would embarrass themselves and he'd be like, see, nothing happened. You're fine. Your, your face is like lighting up. You love this. I love this shit. I fucking love this shit. I mean, I even made YouTube videos doing this with people. So like, it's like so liberating when it works because it's, it's, you know, as we've talked about, like shame has this funhouse mirror effect of like amplifying or exaggerating the negatives in our perception and, and like downplaying the positives in our perception. So Ellis was just like, you know what, man? You gotta feel some pain.

• 2:08:26Mark Manson?

  We gotta, we gotta make you suffer a little bit. Ultimately Ellis believed that, uh, you know, most shame is, is just, it's really rooted in unrealistic or, or contradictory expectations of the world. So if you take somebody who like believes that they are always supposed to do the right thing, no matter what, they're supposed to like get a hundred on every test and succeed in everything they try. His, his approach was a much more intellectual approach of like, well, let's, let's, let's find the, the contradiction in that, you know, like what, like what makes you successful at something? Oh, well, you learn, you learn from mistakes. Well, what, how do you make mistakes? Well, you fail at something. Okay. Well, interesting. So it sounds like you can't actually be successful at something until you fail at it.

• 2:09:07Mark Manson?

  So it, it sounds like this idea that you should do everything correctly all the time is just faulty. Like it's built off of faulty assumptions. So he would approach everything from a very intellectual angle. And I'm going to throw out a, a shout out of very obscure book that I read. Maybe 10 or 15 years ago, I read it in my twenties and I loved it. It's by a clinical therapist named Peter Spinagatti, or I believe that's correct, Spinagatti. It's called Explaining Unhappiness. And it was such an interesting book because the author was very much like Albert Ellis type person. And he, he believed that all unhappiness was rooted in an unresolved contradiction.

• 2:09:48Mark Manson?

  And so, and the whole book is just examples from his sessions with his patients of like them coming in with like very kind of complicated, what seems like complicated, messy life situations. And then him simply like digging and digging and digging and then finding a contradiction and being like, oh, well, that doesn't make sense. And then the patient realizes it doesn't make sense and it like completely changes the perception of everything that came before it. What's like an example of that, that, can you take one? Take somebody who like thinks that they should be making, making their partner happy all the time, right? And it's like, and they feel like they're overextended and they're doing so much and they're unappreciated and all this stuff.

• 2:10:28Mark Manson?

  And it's an Ellis approach, a Lesian approach, an Albert Ellis approach to it would be like, to sit there and be like, well, what are the things that make your partner happy? And you know, maybe the person lists them off and it's like, okay, what about those things makes, makes them happy? Okay. What are the things that make your partner unhappy? Okay. Well, how much control do you have of those things that make them unhappy? Okay, let's imagine a perfect world where you're able to make them happy at all times. Like what are, what are the preconditions to that world? Like, oh, oh, you have literally no life of your own and you are unhappy all the time. So, okay, there seems to be a contradiction going on here, right? So it's like, it's just kind of like working with, it's a very intellectual approach to issues.

• 2:11:13Mark Manson?

  In many ways, it was kind of a precursor to CBT. You know, CBT was like very much a therapy that, you know.

• 2:11:21Mark Manson?

  Saw challenging people's thoughts as like the easiest entry point into breaking their their spiral of behaviors. What's interesting with both Carl Rogers and Albert Ellis, like I think there's a lot of profound truth in both of them. And they're both incredibly influential on future modalities. What's interesting is that they're not scalable or repeatable. Right? So it's like, in both cases, you're you're essentially completely reliant on an exceptionally talented therapist to make it work. Right? So it's like, in Rogerian therapy, you need a Robin Williams from Good Will Hunting to like really move the needle for people. Like, you need an exceptionally emotionally attuned and nonjudgmental and thoughtful

• 2:12:05Mark Manson?

  therapist to like make that space and like keep you keep nudging you forward. And similarly with with Albert Ellis's method of of therapy, you need an incredibly intellectually sharp therapist who's like excellent at catching paradoxes and contradictions and like challenging assumptions and noticing blind spots. Kind of a brilliant person sitting across from you, challenging everything you say, you're it's gonna be hard to get mileage. And I think really the reason that CBT took off the way it did is that the brilliance of Aaron Beck is that he saw that you need something, you need a framework that's easily repeatable, that you can hand off to any therapist and they can apply it just as well as the person who invented it.

• 2:12:48Mark Manson?

  That you're not relying on the skill or talent of the therapist, that you're simply you're relying on the framework. And I think because of that, that's why it's become so popular and so prevalent. And also, it's it's allowed people to iterate on the framework and make it better over time. So when we get to the 1980s, you know, Freud Freud made a little bit of a comeback in the 70s and 80s. Sometimes it's called neo-Freudianism. You know, there was a hot moment for maybe about 10 years where where therapists like really got back in the psychoanalysis and they they got really into like repressed memory and like helping people like discover things they forgot as children because of their trauma and all this stuff. They dragged the couches back into their offices. Exactly. It's like, get back on the couch, motherfucker. And and around the same time, too. This concept of reparenting emerged.

• 2:13:33Mark Manson?

  So, and again, this is kind of a response to the original Freud's original problem of like, okay, what now? Like, we dug up all the shame. We dug up all the ugly mess and the emotions. Like, what do we do with it? And this concept of reparenting is, it kind of comes back to this realization that like, let's say you get, somebody comes in, they're harboring a bunch of shame and self-loathing. It originates from, I don't know, say when they're five, their dad walked out on them or something. Like we talked about earlier, it's like when that shame gets triggered, they kind of revert somewhat to that five-year-old emotionally.

• 2:14:14Mark Manson?

  And they, maybe they have outbursts, maybe they are like super insecure. Maybe they need tons of reassurance and validation from the people around them, much like a five-year-old would. So the neo-Freudians looked at this and they said, well, when that patient is in that moment, when they are kind of inhabiting the five-year-old, that's when you go in and you like reparent them. That's when you like, as an adult, you can help them, you can bring a family member in or maybe like somebody trusted in and you can like actually start treating them in a way that they needed to be treated in that moment. Or maybe even train the patient themselves to parent themselves in that moment.

• 2:14:56Mark Manson?

  So around the same time in the 1980s, there was a really popular self-help book called Heal the Shame That Bind You. It was written by a man by the name of John Bradshaw. And Bradshaw really pushed this idea of like healing your inner child. It's like going in, tapping into that ashamed, traumatized five-year-old. See the world the way they see it. Feel the world the way they feel it. Go back to that moment right before the last time you saw your father. Think about how you're feeling in that moment. Now imagine like what you wish, how you wish your mother reacted? What you wish your father said to you before he left? Like replay all those things in your head and like really get people back to that moment so that they can then use their present-day adult knowledge and self-acceptance

• 2:15:41Mark Manson?

  to kind of reconfigure the experience in their head. Like really rewrite that story in a lot of ways. And this sort of practice is still extremely prevalent in the personal development space today. I mean, there's like Literally thousands of life coaches that like still do stuff like this and I still run into people all the time who are like, oh, I did like inner child work at a retreat last year and it was life changing and blah, blah, blah. Bradshaw also had this cool framework, which I don't know where he got it. You know, he wasn't a therapist or a psychologist, but he had this like really cool framework around like family systems and how, you know, when you live in a dysfunctional

• 2:16:26Mark Manson?

  family, like people take on different roles and there's kind of a balance that has to happen. And this is where the the classic concept of like the golden child comes comes out or like the rebellious child shows up and and you he was like very clever at spotting like different patterns and dynamics that often emerge in people's like really fucked up childhoods and family life. And eventually this all kind of got rolled into a I guess a more codified framework by a man named Richard Swartz. He created a modality called Internal Family Systems and and it is blowing up right now. It's relatively new. It's like, you know, I'd say it's really only been around for a couple decades.

• 2:17:09Mark Manson?

  Well, he started in the 80s, but he was laughed off stage until the like late 2000s. Yeah, but yeah, yeah. Yeah, so. It's come into vogue in the last 15 years. Yeah. So, yeah, it's it's he it sounds like he started around the same time with the neo freudians. But yeah, it's like, nobody took it seriously until until recently. But it's it's really becoming a thing and IFS is super interesting because it it's similar to the reparenting thing. It like it asks you to role play as different aspects of yourself. Different parts, right? Yeah. So it's like, let me speak to a shame Drew, right? Or let me speak to let me speak to alcoholic Mark. Right. That'd be a great podcast, by the way.

• 2:17:49Mark Manson?

  Uh, you know, and then it's like have different, the therapist will have different conversations with the different aspects of the patient. And it's really fascinating. Human brain is just so fucking fascinating. It's really fascinating that like by role playing, you, you actually kind of do trick your brain and your unconscious into like resolving a lot of emotional baggage. Uh, and you can achieve a lot of that self acceptance and a lot of the, uh, you know, resolving different paradoxes and stuff that Albert Ellis and Carl Rogers were trying to do.

• 2:18:20Speaker 01

  So yeah, with IFS, yeah, I'm a big fan of this, you know this, um, I'm a big fan of this. I've never actually done it with a therapist, but just using it kind of, I've read the books, you know, and used it in my own life, kind of. And I think that this is really useful. Like you said, it's, you can, you can have a conversation with different parts of yourself. And for me, anyway, especially if you're really like, I'm a shame prone person.

• 2:18:38Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:38Speaker 01

  And if you do identify with your shame, I think something like IFS where you're talking, this parts work, where you're talking to different parts of yourself and figuring out how the different parts of yourself fit together and work together with you or against you, however it is. If you find that shameful part of you, for me, anyway, it really helps me, uh, kind of like look at it from an outsider's perspective and not identify with it so much so you can deal with it. And then you can start asking it questions. This sounds crazy if you've never done this. Okay. I, I understand how crazy this sounds, but like you said, the human brain is just fascinating and you can do this. You can have a conversation with that part of you being what, what are you trying to protect here? Why are you, what are you so afraid of that you're using shame to keep me from, keep me stuck?

• 2:19:21Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 2:19:21Speaker 01

  You, you can have that and it really detaches you from the shame long enough so you can address it. So that's, that's been my experience with it.

• 2:19:28Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it's, it is super fascinating and it, and it's like, there are just recently, the last few years, there's some like, like clinical studies are coming out about it. You know, like we're finally getting some like efficacy scores on it and it's actually great.

• 2:19:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19:43Mark Manson?

  Like it's, it turns out it's really good, especially for people who suffer from like PTSD, uh, and, and shame. Like it is super effective. So it's, um, Yeah, it's kind of the exciting, cutting-edge of all this stuff. All right, last one I want to talk about. It would be impossible to do this episode if we didn't talk about Brene Brown. I wish we had had a chance to talk to her. She does not talk to anybody anymore, so. She doesn't have to. She doesn't have to. When you've sold as many books as she has, you don't have to talk to fucking anybody. So, good for her. But, it was actually really interesting, because I've read all of her books. And obviously, I've read about her research in her books. But it was interesting prepping for this episode, because it was the first time I actually went and looked at her papers. And I never actually looked at her research. And it was like, it was actually super fascinating.

• 2:20:28Mark Manson?

  The first thing I didn't know is that she got her PhD in social work. She's not a psychologist. I always thought it was weird when she talked about her research, she talked about interviewing people. And I was like, what psychologist still interviews people?

• 2:20:42Mark Manson?

  Like, social workers do. Yeah, I'm like, oh, yeah, social work. So, Brene Brown was a PhD in social work, and she was doing a bunch of work down in Texas. And she just made a really simple observation in the early 2000s, which is one of those things that it's so obvious in hindsight, that you kind of just slap your forehead, and you're like, well, no duh, like, what the hell? Is that she realized that through her research and her work, doing social work, she was meeting and speaking to literally hundreds and hundreds of very troubled people. And not troubled people as therapy patients. Troubled people as in, like, I just got out of jail. Or, I just tried to kill myself. Or, like, you know, my wife just died.

• 2:21:26Mark Manson?

  You know, it's like really rough situations. And she couldn't help but notice that these... There was just so much shame in these people. Like, every single person she talked to was just rife with shame. Like, had deep, deep pain and trauma in their background that they were very, very, very ashamed of talking about. And she looked around, she looked at a lot of the psychological literature and she's like, "Wow, there's like no good research on this. Like, nobody's actually studied this in depth." And so she decided to be the one to study it. And it makes sense that somebody who comes from a social work background is the one who kind of stumbled into all the stuff that she stumbled into,

• 2:22:08Mark Manson?

  because shame is a social problem. It's a problem of social acceptance, of familial acceptance, and therefore it requires social solutions. You can't just sit by yourself and resolve your shame. Like, you have to go live it. You have to surround yourself by people who accept you for who you are, or accept the new version of you. You can't just like intellectualize your way out of shame. And so I think her understanding of how this actually gets resolved and improved is really key, and it makes sense that psychologists would miss it. So, the key tenets of Brene Brown's work, and by the way, if you haven't read her books, go read all of them. They're excellent, they're fantastic.

• 2:22:51Mark Manson?

  She talks about the importance of vulnerability and just sharing everything openly. It's like, it really is, it's cliche, but sunlight is the best disinfectant. And when it comes to shame, it is like, the best thing you can do for whatever you feel ashamed of is to talk about it with somebody. Because it just, it relieves the burden.

• 2:23:10Speaker 01

  Even though that's the opposite of what you want to do.

• 2:23:11Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 2:23:12Speaker 01

  It's what you need to do, yeah.

• 2:23:13Mark Manson?

  Exactly. The other thing she found is owning and taking responsibility for it. You know, most people's tendency with the thing that they're ashamed of is to blame somebody else. It's like, "It's not my fault. It's like, I was a victim. This horrible thing happened to me. Like, these people are awful." And that all might be true, by the way. Like, this is, I talk about this in my book, there's a default responsibility fallacy. Like, all of those things can be true. You could totally be a victim, you could be surrounded by horrible, horrible people, but you still have to own your experience. You still have to say, "This is who I am, and this is what I've lived through, and I'm gonna take responsibility for it and move forward." And then, of course, her... The other tenant is just ask for support. Find support.

• 2:23:58Mark Manson?

  Find other people who have suffered in the same way that you've suffered, who are ashamed of the same thing that you're ashamed of, who understand what you're going through, and find people who can sympathize with you. You want to hear something really funny? So I was returning to Brene's work. I read all of her stuff, you know, back in the early 2010s when it came out, and was a big fan of it. And, but returning to her work and kind of going through her tenets and like revisiting a lot of her advice, I realized that there is actually a framework that encapsulates everything that she recommends, and it's been around for over 100 years. Do you want to guess what that is? I'm blanking. Alcoholics Anonymous.

• 2:24:42Mark Manson?

  Oh, oh, sure. Which? Oh, shit, yeah. When you think about it, you're like, Oh, yeah. That totally makes sense. Yeah. That totally makes sense. Especially when you come back to the fact that like, addiction and compulsivity is like very much rooted in shame. Very shame-based, yes. So when you look at the 12 steps, what's step number one? It's to share it. Have a problem. Share it and own it. Yeah. Right? It's like, own the fucking problem. My name's Mark, I'm an alcoholic, right? Step number two is like, be vulnerable. Share your experience. Talk about your story. Talk about all the fucked up stuff you did. As you go through the steps, it's like you basically see Brene Brown's recommendations like repeated over and over and over again.

• 2:25:25Mark Manson?

  And in fact, the entire framework around AAs is basically just, it is one giant shame alleviation machine. It is like, let's get all of the people who are ashamed, who have the same problem and have similar shame in the same room. Let's create an environment, Carl Rogers, right? Let's create an environment of radical acceptance. Uh, let's get everybody to be vulnerable and share their stories. Let's get people to make amends with the people that they've wronged and take responsibility for the actions that they've done. And then let's, let's keep each other accountable. Let's, let's challenge each other's bullshit and faulty assumptions, rationalizations for their bad behavior, which is the Albert Ellis method, right? And, and by the way, you're here for life.

• 2:26:10Mark Manson?

  Like you, it's, there's no exit, there's no off-ramp. There's like, you're in it till the end together. And, um, Yeah, I like that epiphany hit me when I was revisiting her stuff the other night and I was just like, oh my God.

• 2:26:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, because what is addiction if it's not like trying to escape who you are, right? Which is like completely shame based. You're so ashamed and you hate yourself so much that you're just trying to escape that through addiction, through using. So, yeah.

• 2:26:38Mark Manson?

  And AA is really, yeah, it's just, it's a, it's a giant shame alleviation framework, essentially.

• 2:26:45Speaker 01

  Wow. I didn't think of that. That's a good one. Yeah.

• 2:26:48Mark Manson?

  All right. So those are kind of the four or five modalities that I wanted to touch on. You know, as we get into, we're gonna, we're gonna talk about different tools and exercises people can use to, to work on their own shame and then, and then we'll wrap up with kind of like a, a framework or a process of shame alleviation, kind of like the steps or the stages that, that people go through and then we'll contextualize all of this stuff in those steps and phases. But I, I, I think all, all of these modalities are useful in their, in their own context and I think they're useful for different aspects of the problem. And yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll keep revisiting them as we move forward.

• 2:27:35Mark Manson?

  All right, Mr. Bernie, what can we do? Give us some actual like tips and exercises, takeaways that we can do. What are the questions we should be asking ourselves?

• 2:27:46Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah. So as we've covered so far, we do often just avoid shame at all costs, right? Like we just find ways to not feel it, to distract ourselves, to numb ourselves, whatever it is. But the first step in addressing shame is being aware of it and, and gaining a better awareness around your shame triggers, your sources of shame and how you react to shame and all of that. Okay. So I'm going to go through a couple of ways. It's going to bring up some awareness and then we'll go through a few ways that you can deal with your shame. So we just talked about the therapeutic modalities and that's if you need that, obviously get to that stage too. These are some things you can do just now in your own life and on your own. So while I'm going through these, you know, write them down, just listen, whatever it is.

• 2:28:28Mark Manson?

  Or download the PDF guide at solve podcast.com/shame.

• 2:28:32Speaker 01

  You beat me to it. Solve podcast.com/shame. You can figure this out too. Okay. So the first kind of step here in understanding the programming, your shame programming, right? What are your shame triggers? So the first question there is like, what consistently triggers your shame now? Is it, is it failure? Now, that's a big one for me.

• 2:28:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:53Speaker 01

  Conflict? There's a lot of people who, like, when they get into conflict, they feel shame around the conflict because they think they've done something wrong, when it's just a miscommunication, maybe? Maybe at work, you weren't chosen to be on this team, or whatever it is, because now you think you're a horrible person and you're not good at your job, all of that. Not being perfect, that's another one, too. Big one for me, it's perfectionism, right? Go through, what is it that consistently triggers your shame response? Again, if you're not really aware of your shame, though, if you, if you avoid it a lot, this might be a, a kind of a tough step, but really pay attention.

• 2:29:26Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I, I would say the things to look out for, if you're, you're unsure where, where your shame is, I would look at, uh, where do you have a chip on your shoulder? Like, where, where do you, what, what triggers your anger? What makes you feel like you need to prove something to people? Uh, what makes you feel sad irrationally? Um, what makes you mopey and maybe a little bit depressed?

• 2:29:47Speaker 01

  Withdrawal, yeah.

• 2:29:49Mark Manson?

  Where do you find yourself constantly needing validation from others? What are you constantly looking for approval for? And then finally, look at, what are the things that really, really make you want to check out and numb or distract yourself? Like, so what are the moments, like, that make you wanna go drink, or go play video games, or scroll and doom scroll on your phone for three hours? Like, what are the triggers for that as well? So it is just looking at where those behaviors will crop up consistently. Like, that will probably be like an arrow pointing towards something you're shameful about.

• 2:30:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then, uh, once you do kind of identify those triggers, like, to, to start addressing them, are they signaling, like, real harm? Or is it just like a cultural expectation, or an expectation put on you by someone else that's not really serving you? Because I think, again, there's so, like, our shame systems are, are highly tuned to social rejection within small groups, because that meant death at one point. Today, our shame systems seem to be, like, again, they can be

• 2:30:51Mark Manson?

  Haywire.

• 2:30:52Speaker 01

  Anything.

• 2:30:53Mark Manson?

  Haywire, yeah.

• 2:30:53Speaker 01

  Okay, so just, like, does it make sense? And, you know, you're probably not gonna resolve it right there, but at least you're kind of planting the seed to say, okay, maybe this isn't serving me so well, right? Like, who taught you that, that, that mistakes in that area? Mean that you are less than, right? Like, usually you can come up with a, an explanation for, okay, this isn't really serving me here. Even though this is triggering my shame a lot, okay? So that's the first step is the, is noticing your shame triggers, okay? The next is like the shame intensity. This is like the volume knob. How, how intensely do you feel shame? Again, if you try to avoid it a lot, you probably don't feel it a lot. But if you sit with it for a second, it probably like, it'll ramp up really quick. So like, you know, how loud is that shame?

• 2:31:36Speaker 01

  Or, the other thing too is like, do little things like, you know, missing a deadline? Or saying something kind of stupid in a social situation? Do those cause like a huge amount of shame or a huge shame response to you?

• 2:31:48Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:48Speaker 01

  Is it disproportionate to like, what's actually like the actual threat that's being levied upon you?

• 2:31:54Mark Manson?

  So just a quick, small thing on that.

• 2:31:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:31:58Mark Manson?

  The funny thing is, is that a person who has a lot of shame around something, they would argue with you. They're like, but it's not a small thing. It is.

• 2:32:05Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:32:06Mark Manson?

  If you miss a deadline, that's, that's huge. That's your reputation. That's, that's people depending on you, you know? So it's, it's, you have to, and I, I think we're going to talk about this in a minute. But it's like this ability to kind of zoom out and like, see proportionality of like, okay, yes, missing a deadline, it's a bad thing, but like, how bad is it? Like on a scale, like is anybody dying? Is any, is like, is the world ending? Or, or is it just like, oh yeah, that's really annoying? Or you, you let somebody down, you know?

• 2:32:34Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, and we will, we will, we will talk about how you kind of zoom out and we can address that a little bit more. The other thing on the intensity side is like, how long does it last? So now you're getting an idea of your shame response, right? Does it, does it stay around just for a few minutes? Hours, days, weeks, years, you know? I go back sometimes, like I said, there's things I'm ashamed of that happened when I was in fifth grade or whatever it was. That's part of my shame response and that's something I have to be aware of. And do you confuse shame with guilt a lot too? So we've talked a lot about the difference between shame and guilt. And part of that is it comes into the intensity part. Because, you know, one of those, again, guilt is I did something wrong. Shame is I am a bad person. Which one do you kind of go towards?

• 2:33:17Speaker 01

  Because if you go more towards the shame, I am a bad person. It's usually a lot more intense than that guilt feeling that you feel like you can actually address. Knowing your shame patterns too. This really helps if you if you notice the physical sensations that you get around shame. So drop into your body. What is your shame response like? What is your shame pattern like? I know for me, like I get the I get the blushing. I get like if I'm shameful, I get like red face. I remember when I was in, I think it was like sixth or seventh grade. I was in a home ec class. They just painted the the desks. They were like these desks. Two people had sat at these tables, basically is what they were. They just painted them this nice new paint and I carved my name into it, you know, like a real dumbass.

• 2:33:54Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:54Speaker 01

  Like who else would it be? It's the guy who wrote his name there. And I got like called out right in the middle of class, Mrs. Dietz. And she was so pissed off. And I remember I got really ashamed of it. My my friend turned to me and goes, you are beet red right now.

• 2:34:08Mark Manson?

  Really?

• 2:34:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So like noticing those kinds of things, a tightness in your chest or numbness. I know I get like tingly.

• 2:34:15Mark Manson?

  I get I get very, my stomach, just I feel like.

• 2:34:17Speaker 01

  Stomach issues are a common ones too.

• 2:34:18Mark Manson?

  I feel like nauseous, like when I, yeah.

• 2:34:21Speaker 01

  And then from that, like what what thoughts follow that too, though, right? So this is part of your shame pattern as well. Like, oh, God, I'm such an idiot. I'm worthless. I'm a piece of shit. These people are gonna leave. These people are gonna hate me. I'm never gonna, I'm gonna die alone. All of those things that follow from that. And then what is your behavioral response to that too? Right? Do you, like we've talked about, do you do you hide? Do you over apologize or over explain things? Do you lash out in anger? Like, so understanding that what your shame pattern is can help you at any of those points too, to kind of either stop it or step back and examine it, which will, again, we'll get to there in a second. Okay?

• 2:34:59Mark Manson?

  I make jokes.

• 2:35:00Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, deflection, that's another one too. Yeah, yeah. You try you try to minimize the shame by by making jokes about it and making light of it, saying it doesn't matter, dismissing it.

• 2:35:10Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a big one too.

• 2:35:12Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 2:35:13Speaker 01

  And then the last part of this awareness kind of menu we're going through here is the sources of your shame. Try to identify. So we went through, you know, the development of shame. Maybe it was something early in your life where you got stuck in that. Who can still trigger your shame now too? And can you tie that back to an earlier stage in life? Like your parents, maybe like just a look?

• 2:35:33Mark Manson?

  Yeah, maybe.

• 2:35:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe something like that. A comment that a spouse, your spouse makes, maybe. Silence, like people just like they're silent in a situation and that makes you like, well, what's going on? Is I a bad person because they're not responding? Your parents, your bosses, your partners. Some version of yourself from the past even too, that might be kind of attacking you. Where, where, where's your shame? Where's the big sources of shame in your life? Identify those. So again, this is the first step in addressing those as well.

• 2:36:04Mark Manson?

  It's, I want to add to that, that like, again, your unconscious mind does not differentiate rationally between individuals. So like,

• 2:36:13Speaker 01

  Or time.

• 2:36:14Mark Manson?

  Or time, right? So it's like, let's say, let's say you have a, you had like a horrible experience with a boss when you were young and like extremely like just toxic workplace or something. You will probably have triggers around your shame with every boss that you have after that. And you will make assumptions and associations with every boss. You could have the nicest boss in the world, but because of that piece of shit that you had when you were 15 or 18 or whatever, you will still make assumptions and associations. This also plays into effect in, in marriages. Let's say one person in a marriage has like a deep trauma or a lot of shame like around their father. Well, to their unconscious mind, a father is a father. It doesn't, it's not just their dad.

• 2:36:57Mark Manson?

  It's like everybody's dad is just as awful and just as much of a piece of shit. And so they will get triggered around their father-in-law. They'll get triggered around, you know, their, their brother's father-in-law. They'll get triggered around their best friend's father. You know, it's like, it's just this like class or category that lives in your unconscious mind that, that can like, you know, set the tripwire at any moment.

• 2:37:20Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. And kind of along with that, so these, these sources and these people that might trigger some of your shame in your life. Start to plant the seed here. Like, do these people actually, do they live by the values you want to be, you want to live by that you respect, that you want to reflect it back in your life? Like, do they, do they want your, are they interested in your growth? Are they invested in your growth? Or they just want obedience from you too, right? And so that starts to kind of plant the seed that we'll see later to about kind of tuning your own shame system to your own values. Okay? And that, that starts with the sources of shame. Like, have they actually earned the right to have that much emotional control over you? Start to ask those questions at this stage.

• 2:38:01Mark Manson?

  Like, why are you trying to prove something to them?

• 2:38:04Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:38:04Mark Manson?

  If you don't even respect their perspective?

• 2:38:06Speaker 01

  Exactly. And you'll find that a lot of times it's either people you don't know very well, so why bother? Or they're people you don't really like too, so why bother at the same time? Just kind of planting the seed there. Okay?

• 2:38:18Mark Manson?

  I mean, sorry to-

• 2:38:20Speaker 01

  No good.

• 2:38:22Mark Manson?

  Again, that shows up with family stuff.

• 2:38:23Speaker 01

  Yes. Family stuff is huge around this one.

• 2:38:26Mark Manson?

  You, you see, I see, and I did this for years too. Like, I see so many people spend so much energy and effort, like, trying to prove something to one of their parents, or a sibling, or whatever. And it's like, they've done it for so many years, and it's so automatic to them. And if you actually sit down and talk to them, it's like, they don't respect that, that family member's perspective at all. You know, like, they don't identify with their values, yet they're still trying to prove that they're right, all these years later.

• 2:38:53Speaker 01

  I guess it was kind of a source of shame for me for a little while, but I'm a 40-year-old, single guy, no kids, you know, never been married, all of that. And I, there, I actually haven't had a whole lot of, like, pressure from my family. Not my parents. My parents are like, you know, you do your, that's fine. We, either way, we accept that. But there's, like, people in my extended family who I know, like, I've heard comments, either behind my back or to my face, and for a while, it kind of got at me. And then I realized, I was like, oh, God, you're in a horrible marriage yourself. Why would I care what you think about me? You know, that's, so that was a small source of shame that I had for a little while. I'm completely over that now. I don't care who thinks of what about that about me.

• 2:39:30Mark Manson?

  I think women get that really hard.

• 2:39:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's probably way more difficult for women. Yeah.

• 2:39:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah, both the marriage and the kid thing. It's like, there's just so much pressure and shame that's, like, pushed on them around that.

• 2:39:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, they've given up on me. So, yeah.

• 2:39:45Mark Manson?

  Yep, I get it. You're, you're just the eternal Uncle Drew.

• 2:39:48Speaker 01

  That's right. I'm okay with that.

• 2:39:51Speaker 01

  Okay, so those four areas, that's your shame programming, right? The triggers that you have, the intensity that you feel the shame, the patterns that you go through, and then the sources, those sources that you can identify. Okay, so again, we're usually so often just trying to avoid shame that just this level of awareness, like getting a grasp on this, that's going to take you a long, long way in addressing your shame. And just being able to kind of like step outside of it and look at it a little bit detached, which is kind of what I want to talk about next, okay? There's this kind of old stoic practice, and they call it the view from above, right? So if you would imagine yourself kind of leaving your body, we're going to get a little out there.

• 2:40:34Mark Manson?

  Are we getting woo woo, Drew?

• 2:40:35Speaker 01

  Well, no, it's stoicism.

• 2:40:37Mark Manson?

  Okay, yeah, it's not woo woo.

• 2:40:38Speaker 01

  This isn't woo woo if it's stoicism, right? But they had this practice of like, imagine you're leaving your body. You're viewing your body from above. You go through the ceiling.

• 2:40:49Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 2:40:50Speaker 01

  Go out into the sky.

• 2:40:51Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 2:40:52Speaker 01

  Out into outer space. This is the woo woo part, okay? But then you-

• 2:40:56Mark Manson?

  Become one with the cosmos.

• 2:40:57Speaker 01

  Become one with the cosmos. But then turn around and look back. Look back at the planet.

• 2:41:02Mark Manson?

  But before you become one with the universe, just look back at your physical body.

• 2:41:06Speaker 01

  Give one last look back to that little blue dot you see. And imagine yourself, you're sitting back on Earth with your shame, on this tiny little speck in the infinite universe, right? This is what the Stoics called this, this view from above, okay? Marcus Aurelius, the famous Roman emperor, he used this technique. He journaled about it in Meditations, his book, especially when shame hit. Now, he was at the time, one of the most powerful men in the world. And he still felt shame around things. Now, the things he felt shame around were like, what emperors felt shame about, right? But he would remind himself of this. He would do this, and he would zoom way out and just imagine that he was this tiny speck of dust, right? And he realized that empires rise and empires fall.

• 2:41:50Speaker 01

  What seems to be a catastrophe in his life today would just turn into a footnote at best tomorrow, most of the time. When you zoom out far enough, the lesson was, all of these things that we tend to just obsess over just kind of disappear. And I know, again, this sounds a little like woo woo, whatever. But really, when you do zoom out and if you can detach yourself from these like deep feelings of shame, you start to realize just how trivial most of it is. Most of us are not ashamed because we've murdered someone or, you know, caused really irreparable harm. It's usually over stupid, I said something stupid.

• 2:42:26Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:27Speaker 01

  Or I wore something weird.

• 2:42:29Mark Manson?

  Or nobody, nobody picked me for kickball when I was eight.

• 2:42:32Speaker 01

  Right. Zoom out a little bit.

• 2:42:34Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:34Speaker 01

  It's, it's okay.

• 2:42:35Mark Manson?

  Well, you know what's cool? There, there, this is not woo woo at all. There's a, there's a thing with astronauts called the overview effect, which is that they find astronauts report that when they first get out into space and they see Earth from space, they have this feeling. They have this feeling of like, oh my God, like none of that shit.

• 2:42:54Speaker 01

  None of this stupid stuff.

• 2:42:55Mark Manson?

  None of this stuff matters. Oh my God.

• 2:42:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:42:58Mark Manson?

  And it was actually really interesting on, on our old podcast. I, I had a chance to interview Katie Coleman and I asked her, I was like, is the overview effect a real thing? And she was like, absolutely.

• 2:43:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You don't see, you don't see all the shameful thing. You just see, oh my God, we're just this tiny little speck.

• 2:43:13Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:13Speaker 01

  Just floating. And the universe really doesn't care if you, you had this like terrible presentation at work. It doesn't care if you said that stupid thing in fifth grade that I obsess over still, right? It doesn't care if somebody didn't like your social media post or they posted some nasty comment on it. The universe might care though, about whether you did the right thing, whether you lied or whether you were honest, whether you were cruel to someone or whether you were kind to them. If you betrayed the principles that you live by, that actually matters.

• 2:43:46Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 2:43:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:43:48Speaker 01

  Not that all that other little stuff. So the zoom out kind of helps you with that.

• 2:43:51Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:53Speaker 01

  This is, this is what the Stoics, they called it the gift of perspective.

• 2:43:56Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:57Speaker 01

  Right. It doesn't mean your shame is meaningless. It doesn't mean it doesn't carry any weight. It doesn't mean it's not important. It doesn't mean you shouldn't pay attention to it. It just means that you need to have a stronger noise to signal ratio or signal to noise ratio.

• 2:44:10Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 2:44:11Speaker 01

  Is what it is. Feel shame when it's, when you are deviating from your principles, from your values, from who you want to be. Yes, sure. Forget the rest. And that's really the biggest, uh, the biggest takeaway from that, that view from above. This takes some practice. If you do it repeatedly, you start to see it more and more in the little thing, especially in the little things that, that cause you shame. You know, like I talk about when growing up poor and that was shameful like that, it just doesn't matter now and it, and it shouldn't. And I don't know, I've gained a lot of perspective from that anyway.

• 2:44:44Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's interesting. I think you can do this both from like, kind of a physical zoom out. And I think there's like a temporal zoom out as well. This reminds me of a story that, uh, uh, like Will Smith told me once. He was talking about his divorce with his first wife and he was like devastated by it. She, she filed for divorce from him and he was just absolutely devastated. Like he, his world was collapsing and, um, he became like really, really depressed and, and, and like bummed out about it and like didn't know what to do. And he started like hire all these lawyers and she was hiring all these lawyers and like, and they had a son and he was like, well, I'm going to fight her for, for, for my son.

• 2:45:27Mark Manson?

  And like, I'm not giving her custody and she's not getting all my money and like all this stuff. And it was, it was about to get like really contentious. And I remember he told me, he was still doing Fresh Prince of Bel Air at the time and Quincy Jones, who's the executive producer. And Quincy Jones was divorced like five times and, uh, he was like having a really like, you know, panic attacks and all this stuff. And so he was like having a really bad night one night and he like called up Quincy Jones and he was like, man, Quincy, I'm getting divorced. Like, I don't know what to do. I'm like, I'm a total wreck. And he's like, what did, what did you do, Q? Like, tell me what you did. And Quincy's like, oh, man, give her half your shit and just move down the street. Like, he's like, you're going to be best friends in five years.

• 2:46:09Speaker 01

  And he is now, right?

• 2:46:10Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah. Oh, they're really good friends now. And yeah, it's like Quincy was like, he was like, "Yeah, man, like, half my ex-wives live on my street. Like, I see them all the time." What was like, "Oh, oh, okay."

• 2:46:22Speaker 01

  That's a lesson in perspective, right? You can, you can make it horrible if you want to.

• 2:46:27Mark Manson?

  If you want to, yeah. You, you can take the smallest thing and make it as big as you want. But you can also take a big thing and make it as small as you want.

• 2:46:33Speaker 01

  Right, right. Yeah. So that is, again, the gift of perspective. Now, there is, there are some other tools, too, I want to go over. I have like three or four of them here. We can go through that also. Really, there are perspective shifting as well. So one of them is like the timeline technique, and we've already kind of touched on this. But, you know, when you are experiencing a shameful event, ask your, just stop and ask yourself, "Okay, is this going to matter in 10 minutes? 10 days? 10 years?"

• 2:47:06Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:47:06Speaker 01

  Almost always, at least two, if not all three of those answers are going to be no to that. And so like, it's, it's not that your shame, again, it's not your shame isn't real in that moment. It's just that it's probably not worth your whole nervous system being dedicated to it and for an extended period of time, right?

• 2:47:23Mark Manson?

  This is actually, this is similar to another Stoic practice, which is negative visualization.

• 2:47:27Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah.

• 2:47:27Mark Manson?

  Which is like, really sit and imagine the worst-case scenario and then ask yourself, "How bad is the worst case?"

• 2:47:33Speaker 01

  This one's been huge for me. Yeah, I've been using this over the last couple of years more and more. Like, I heard about it a long time ago, but when I started using it, I'm like, "Oh, that's not so bad." I just imagine the worst, absolute worst-case scenario, and almost always it's like, "Oh, it's not so bad. I can deal with that."

• 2:47:45Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:47:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:47:46Mark Manson?

  I, I think about this when I do public speaking. I've had like one nightmare of public speaking gig.

• 2:47:52Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:47:52Mark Manson?

  In my career.

• 2:47:53Speaker 01

  Go on.

• 2:47:53Mark Manson?

  What was this? So like, early when my first book took off, you know, all these like speaking gigs started coming in. And like, At the time, like you don't, you don't know anything, right? So you, I just started saying yes to everything. I was like, oh, wow. Okay, cool. Yeah, I'll take, I'll take some money. Give a talk for all this money? I'll talk for 30 minutes and take some money. And so I just started saying yes to everything. I didn't think about it. I didn't think about where it was, who, who the audience was, like what, who it was to. And so I, I came up with like this, like really kind of quirky, clever, funny talk based on my book, uh, that dropped F bombs everywhere and was making like all these silly jokes and all, you know, all this stuff. It was basically, it was a talk made for my audience. Yeah. Not understanding that most of the people who are going to be hiring me to come speak

• 2:48:38Mark Manson?

  were going to be like corporations. Right, yeah. Uh, you know, like, uh, industry groups, conferences, you know, all sorts of different, different people that like I had no awareness of. So anyway, it was like, there was kind of this learning period early on where I had done, understand of like, oh, okay, when like, uh, you know, some industry conference brings you in, like, you should probably add, like, figure out who they are and then like, adjust your speech or your talk based on who they are. I, I hadn't figured that out yet. And so I remember I got invited to, uh, uh, like, it was like the insurance broker convince, like the Tennessee Insurance Broker Convention or something like that.

• 2:49:20Mark Manson?

  Like, it was just like the most, most mundane corporate bullshit. Well, let's bring the guy with the fuck book into this. Exactly. They're asking for it at that point. Seriously. Well, and this is the funny thing, like, another thing I didn't understand at the time is that people who book speakers, uh, often have nothing to do with the event. So like, a lot of times what the event will do is that they will just go hire an agency and they will say, go get us five speakers. And the agency won't know shit about the organization either. So the, the agency is like, well, I love that Mark Manson guy. He's really funny. Like, let's go get him. Some guy had read your book and he liked it. Exactly. It's exactly what happened. So, uh, so the, the, you know, the insurance broker, the Insurance Broker Association of Tennessee, like, also didn't know.

• 2:50:05Mark Manson?

  What I that I was coming or what I was about. So anyway, as you can imagine, I get I get there. It's it's in like Knoxville, Tennessee or something. And as you can imagine, insurance brokers in Tennessee do not have the same perspective on life that I do. And they do not speak the same way that I do, and they do not find the same things funny that I do. And so I proceeded to go up there and give this talk, just like laden with F bombs, disappointment panda. Like I was I was like ripping on Trump, like I was doing all this stuff and just like the room is dead silent. The entire time. It's like wall to wall dudes in business suits.

• 2:50:47Mark Manson?

  Like twiddling their thumbs, looking at me like, how long, how much longer do I have to sit through this before this guy gets off the stage? It was awful. You could hear a pin drop.

• 2:50:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:50:56Mark Manson?

  And and I survived. It was fine.

• 2:50:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. Now you know what like comedians who bomb feel like.

• 2:51:02Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:51:02Speaker 01

  And they they carry on. They're like, this isn't gonna matter in 10 days. And honestly, my next one.

• 2:51:07Mark Manson?

  As mortifying as it went, like I could not wait to get out of that building. Like as soon as I came off stage, like.

• 2:51:12Speaker 01

  Be lighted up.

• 2:51:12Mark Manson?

  I was like, I'm getting I'm going straight to the airport, right? You know, and I don't ever want to see these people again. But it's funny because it's like ever since then, anytime I have to like get up on stage or give a big talk or like go to a big event or something. I just remind myself of the insurance brokers in Tennessee.

• 2:51:29Speaker 01

  Can't be that bad.

• 2:51:30Mark Manson?

  I was like, it's impossible to be worse than that.

• 2:51:34Speaker 01

  Okay, okay. Well, okay, so so somewhat related to this one then too, is actually what they call the deathbed test.

• 2:51:42Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 2:51:42Speaker 01

  So.

• 2:51:43Mark Manson?

  Oh, I like this.

• 2:51:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:51:44Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:51:44Speaker 01

  Imagine yourself at 90, looking back, what do you wish you had done more of? Like, um, most people this age aren't going to say like, oh, I'm I'm so glad I never looked awkward. You know, like you can't imagine that. When I I talked to June Tangney, she's done some work with the elderly too. And she's like, I went into nursing homes with a bunch of 90 year olds, you know, to 100 year olds. And I asked them about shame and guilt and stuff like that. I was like, you know, what do you, what do you still feel shame about or whatever? And she's like, the vast, vast majority of them will say shame. I don't have time for that.

• 2:52:14Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:14Speaker 01

  Who gives a shit? Like, I don't care that, you know, that stupid thing I did, whatever. Like, I care that I had a good family life or that I tried this thing or that thing, or whatever it was. They don't regret. You know, they don't regret loving somebody deeply and and being hurt by it. They don't regret that. They don't feel ashamed by that at all. They don't feel shame about speaking up when they should have. They don't feel shame about taking big risks. You know, or making a mess of something and then having it turn out okay. Like, they don't feel shame about the things that you think they would. It just doesn't happen. So if you can kind of imagine that, and I've done this before too, you imagine, okay, I'm old, I'm on my deathbed. Shame is not going through my head at all. It's just not.

• 2:52:56Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:57Speaker 01

  And and and hopefully you you can get to the point where you're not, you feel that same too.

• 2:53:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:53:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:53:02Mark Manson?

  I'm reminded of another story.

• 2:53:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:53:03Mark Manson?

  Just the elderly thing, because I I do think this come kind of comes back to like the emporal zooming out, right? It's like, I think, I think in a lot of ways what wisdom is, is just like being around long enough to know what actually matters and what doesn't.

• 2:53:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:53:15Mark Manson?

  And it reminds me of like, I remember in college, so I wrote about in subtle art, how like my my college, my first girlfriend like left me. And cheated on me and then left me and it was, you know, my my 20 year old heart was absolutely devastated. It was funny. I remember I went and visited my grandmother.

• 2:53:34Mark Manson?

  It was either at Thanksgiving or Christmas, that next Thanksgiving or Christmas. And my my grandmother like lived a pretty wild life, like she was a she was a wild woman. And and I remember I hadn't seen her in a while. And so she was like asking me, she was like, how's college? And, you know, do you have a girlfriend or whatever? And I like, I was like, oh, I had a girlfriend, but it ended horribly. And she was like, oh, no, honey, like, tell me about it. And I like told her the whole story, like this whole heart wrenching, like, oh, I thought we were going to be together forever. And I we were long distance and I was driving hours to go see her and all this stuff. And then it's like, and then she was cheating on me and then she left me and I'm now devastated and I'm never gonna love anybody again. And I remember I was like, at the time, I was shocked because she was like, she just looked at me and she smiled.

• 2:54:18Mark Manson?

  And she was like, that's wonderful. And like, she really meant it, like she actually meant it, like she was like, she's like, I know you're hurt, but like, it's wonderful you're going through this, like, that was kind of her attitude towards it. And now that I'm older, like, I get it. It's it's like, yeah, you're living, like you're you're getting to.

• 2:54:40Mark Manson?

  Both the joy of your first love and the incredible disappointment of losing it like that is.

• 2:54:46Speaker 01

  May you be so lucky.

• 2:54:47Mark Manson?

  Exactly, exactly, exactly. So we're gonna wrap up with kind of like what the process of alleviating shame looks like and I do think that is kind of the end point is almost this like gratitude for living through it. We talked earlier a little bit about pride. I think it's kind of adjacent to that, but it's kind of like a, it's like you said, you know, or June Tangi said with the elderly people, it's like, it's just this like satisfaction of like, yeah, I got to live through that. Like that's, that's part of who I am.

• 2:55:17Speaker 01

  That was part of it.

• 2:55:18Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:55:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, for sure. Related that then too is this next one, the, what I'm gonna call the universal human test.

• 2:55:26Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 2:55:27Speaker 01

  We've, we've already mentioned this to some extent. Shame is not a signal that you're broken, that you're, there's something wrong with you. It's a signal that you're a human.

• 2:55:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:55:36Speaker 01

  It's a very ingrained part of our nature. It shows you care. And I know it's like, oh, caring about what other people think, but you should care about what some people think at least. And the point is to fine tune that system, but the whole point is, is that this is part of being human. It's that you make mistakes, that, you know, maybe you do, I don't know, fall apart in public and cry, or, or you, whatever, you forget somebody's name at a party, you say something stupid, you wear something stupid, you have, you have this ugly body that, you know, farts and poops and pukes and breaks out and all of that.

• 2:56:12Mark Manson?

  I definitely do.

• 2:56:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:56:14Mark Manson?

  I definitely do. Let me tell you about it.

• 2:56:16Speaker 01

  Best part of being human though, that just, that makes you human. It doesn't make you broken, it doesn't make you some alien species.

• 2:56:23Mark Manson?

  I mean, I would go further. Having a dysfunctional family is.

• 2:56:26Speaker 01

  Oh, there you go.

• 2:56:27Mark Manson?

  Being human.

• 2:56:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:56:29Mark Manson?

  Having health problems is human.

• 2:56:31Mark Manson?

  Having your heart broken is human. You know, suffering trauma is human. Like, nobody gets through life without suffering trauma at some point. You know, so it's, it is, yeah, the, the, the common humanity piece is, is extremely important.

• 2:56:44Speaker 01

  Right, yeah. The last one, and maybe, maybe the most important though, too, is the growth question. Okay. Is the shame that you're experiencing, is it helping you grow? Or is it keeping you stuck? So we've talked about the difference between that healthy shame and the toxic shame. Right? Healthy shame is, um, you know, I did something that doesn't reflect who I am. Now, how can I do better in the future? That's a healthy form of shame.

• 2:57:08Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:10Speaker 01

  Toxic shame just says, I'm a piece of shit and I'm not even gonna try. So one leads to like repair. The other one leads to paralysis. So being able to kind of nudge yourself one way or the other. Try not to get stuck in that. We just talked about the developmental stages you might get stuck in. Be aware of that. Know the difference there between the healthy shame and the, and the toxic shame. And try to, if you can, just start nudging yourself more and more towards that healthy shame. Is it helping you or not? Because if it's not helping you, then this is something you need to address.

• 2:57:40Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:40Speaker 01

  Right?

• 2:57:41Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:41Speaker 01

  So those are kind of the, the four other techniques, techniques on top of the view from above that we talked about that can really help you start to address your shame in, in lots of different contexts, too, and lots of different situations that you might be finding yourself in. Yeah.

• 2:57:56Mark Manson?

  Cool.

• 2:57:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:58:01Mark Manson?

  So the way I'd like to wrap this up is, you know, usually we do like an 80/20 at the end of episodes where we talk about the, the 20% of the advice or, or content that will get you 80% of the, the result. That doesn't feel completely appropriate for this one, just because, probably because it's not talked about a whole lot. It's not like procrastination where there's like literally a million pieces of advice to sift through. Shame is pretty much like, there's kind of just one track you're on.

• 2:58:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:58:27Mark Manson?

  And it points in one direction and everybody kind of goes through it. And so I, I would like to wrap up with just kind of walking through what the process of alleviating shame looks like. What the experience is like at each stage? And kind of relate it back to a lot of the different things that we've talked about throughout the episode. And I also want to, I guess, just preface this by saying that like this process, this is like, this is not something you solve in a month or a year. This is a multi-year process. I think if you talk to anybody about like a significant shame in their life that they've overcome or worked through, it is something that has taken them many, many, many years, if not a decade or more. Definitely, yeah.

• 2:59:11Mark Manson?

  When I was looking at like, okay, what is a kind of coherent framework? We've talked about all these different modalities. We've got all these different exercises and toolkits, different kind of stoic practices. We've got the developmental angle. We have, you know, all the evolutionary understanding. Like, what is a framework that can house everything in kind of a coherent way that people can kind of move through? So just like full disclosure, this is a framework I made up myself. But I think it's pretty cool. So there's this framework of of skill acquisition, which is like whenever you're trying to pick up a new skill or learn something, you start at unconscious incompetence. So basically you suck at it and you don't realize how much you suck.

• 2:59:55Mark Manson?

  And from there, the first step is to move into conscious incompetence, which is basically you understand how bad you are at it and what you need to do to get better. And then from there, you move to conscious competence, which is like, you understand how to do it well, but you still have to think about it and focus on it. And then from there, you move into unconscious competence, which is that you're good at it and you don't have to think about it. It's automatic. You've built all the right habits and and skills. So I'd like to apply that to shame, which is that it kind of this four-step process of unconscious shame, to conscious shame, to conscious acceptance, to unconscious acceptance. Like, that's the path that we want to get through. So the first stage would be unconscious shame.

• 3:00:38Mark Manson?

  And this is what we've talked about quite a bit, where it's like you have these, these wounds, these traumas, this pain.

• 3:00:47Mark Manson?

  The shame that you're harboring and carrying around with you and you're not even aware of it. Basically, this is kind of your default state of feeling ashamed of yourself and your triggers are automatic. Your identity is completely tied to it. You don't see any of the contradictions or faulty assumptions that you're operating off of. It's like, this is just the water you're swimming in. Life sucks in this certain way and that's the way it's gonna be. And the goal with the first stage is to simply get you to be aware. And I think a lot of the tools that you just talked through are a useful way to do that. Asking yourself questions about where do you, what situations do you find yourself lashing out in? Where do you feel like you have a chip on your shoulder?

• 3:01:31Mark Manson?

  Who are you constantly seeking validation from? Who do you feel insecure around? What situations or contexts trigger a lot of negative self-talk? When are you like very hard on yourself or judging of yourself? And just like make note of those things. I think there are different methods to do this. I think journaling can be a really useful method to try to find these things. Obviously, therapy is very good for this. If you're like really a blank slate and just have no idea, you just feel bad all the time. You have no idea why, you know, it's you. Probably something more like a Freudian or Rogerian therapy is gonna be useful. If you have a little bit of an idea of where your shame is or where your wounds are,

• 3:02:13Mark Manson?

  then probably something more modern like an IFS or a CBT might be a little bit more helpful. But basically, it's, it's the goal in stage one is to just get the conversation started with yourself. Where are my weak points? Where are my triggers? What sets me off? Where do I feel inadequate all the time? What situations make me bad? What people make me feel bad? And, and just start asking, you know, trying to look at why. Also, look at compulsive behaviors. If you're drinking a lot, if you're partying a lot, if you're doing drugs a lot, like. What are you avoiding? What are you avoiding? Like, what, what contexts are you, like, inspire you to feel that way?

• 3:02:54Mark Manson?

  There are an infinite number of ways to avoid yourself in your life. And there are, in this day and age, it's, it's easier than ever to indulge in compulsive behaviors. So, one of the most useful things you can actually do is like, if you feel like you might be doing something compulsively, just remove it from your life for a few weeks and see what happens. A, see if you can, first of all. Yeah, that's a hard thing. If you can't, like, that's a fucking problem. And then B, see what emotions come up, right? Like, you know, put the PlayStation away for a month and see what happens when you like, sit by yourself and try to read a book, or give up alcohol for 30 days and see if you can actually do it.

• 3:03:34Mark Manson?

  A, it might be harder than you think, and then, and then B, it's, it's, stuff will probably come up. This is something that I noticed without expecting it when I was trying to lose weight. I had a real hard on, we did a full episode on the old podcast on my weight loss journey. I hit a point in that journey where there were like certain foods that are like, I just really had a hard time not compulsively eating, or like, I would kind of get these like frantic triggers of like, no, no, no, I have to have, I have to have this, or like, I have to have, I can't go to bed hungry, or I have to have a snack. I have to have this much protein or whatever. And I would get like, actually like, very anxious and worked up about it. And, um, and I remember talking to my coach at the time, and he was just, he just started asking me, he's like,

• 3:04:17Mark Manson?

  what, like, what are the emotions behind that? And, uh, and I was like, honestly, it's like panic. He was like, that's really interesting, actually, like, where do you think that comes from? And then he and I, like, he's not a therapist or anything, but like, he and I, we had a good 20, 30 minute conversation where we realized that like, when I was a kid and my home life was falling apart, my parents stopped cooking. And there were like, there were like literally days where like, it'd be 7:30 and there's no food anywhere. And I'm like, you know, I'm like 11 years old and I'm hungry and I have no idea like I, I don't know how to feed myself. Right. I would like start digging through the fridge and like start looking for things to eat. And, and so like, I, I think I developed like a pretty fucked up relationship with food.

• 3:05:03Mark Manson?

  Just because of like the unpredictability it ended up having in my childhood. And, um, and of course, food is another way to numb and distract yourself and, um, and, and dull pain and everything. And I, I think there was a lot of that involved in it as well. But it like, that's, that's just an example of just from like the last few years of my life of realizing like, wow, yeah, I do actually, I'm, I am A, I'm like very compulsive around certain foods and then B, like there's emotion tied up in that, like there's like baggage there. Yeah, yeah. So, once you start figuring these sorts of things out, this will lead you into stage two, which is the conscious shame. So it's basically, it's like you have the shame. You know, there's something fucked up going on. You still haven't really done anything. Right. You don't know what to do with it.

• 3:05:48Mark Manson?

  You don't know what to do with it. You, you feel it. You know it's there. It's holding you back, messing up your life, but like, oh my God, what do I do? This is where I think, uh, Brene Brown's framework really like shines. So she has this like four-part process that she recommends that people go through. The first one is name it. Uh, we did a whole episode on emotions a few months ago and we, we had a whole section about like the power of naming emotions and how it like lessens their power over you and it helps you like manage, manage them and deal with them. And this like crazy intersection that happens between like linguistic understanding and emotional experience. Naming your emotions is just across the board, one of the most useful things you can do, you know, whether

• 3:06:30Mark Manson?

  that's through journaling or therapy or talking to a friend or whatever. It's just like knowing how to describe what you're feeling is just one of the most helpful things for any problem. So step one in her framework is name it. Second one is claim it, which is this is the ownership, right? This is the, let's say, I feel awful around my dad. I feel like he makes me miserable. Um, we have a horrible relationship, whatever. Uh, just owning that, like it, there's such a, especially when you're ashamed, there's like, there's just this tendency to want to be like, it's his fault. It's his fault. He, he sucked as a father. Uh, I deserve better, blah, blah, blah.

• 3:07:09Mark Manson?

  You know, turn that around and say, well, this is the, this is the father I have. So like, what am I going to do with it? Like this is, I need to own this because part of this relationship is mine. And I can't just sit around forever hoping and waiting for him to change. Right? So claim it, decide that it's yours, decide that you're responsible for it, that you, you are empowered to do something about it. And then the next step in her framework is reframe it. So this is anything from the classic, like, you know, saying, oh, I, I, I'm an anxious mess. Say, no, I'm a person who has a lot of anxiety. You know, not labeling your identity with things, not

• 3:07:49Speaker 01

  Fusing your identity with it, yeah.

• 3:07:51Mark Manson?

  Yeah, like really drawing that separation between what you experience and who you are. You're not a failure. You are just somebody who failed at a thing. You're not unlovable. You're just somebody who is not in a relationship right now. And, and like find the healthier versions of stating the same thing. I think this is really where the Albert Ellis stuff kind of shines. Really examining some of your assumptions or, or questioning some of the, the beliefs that you're carrying around, some of the stories that you're carrying around. CBT also has a list of cognitive distortions that tend to show up around people who are struggling with anxiety or depression.

• 3:08:34Mark Manson?

  I would say that those cognitive distortions probably show up a lot with, with people with shame as well. One of them is catastrophization. One of them's black and white thinking. You know, these are things that people tend to buy into without realizing it, without questioning. Whereas if you zoom out and start asking yourself, well, wait a second, is this really, is bombing this talk really is bad? Like, is this really going to fuck up my career? No, it's not. Is breaking up with my partner like really going to ruin my love life for the rest of my life? No, it's not.

• 3:09:07Speaker 01

  I'm not always going to feel this way, like, yeah.

• 3:09:10Mark Manson?

  Exactly. Exactly. And then finally, the, the last step in her framework is reach out. Reach out to people in, in your support network, reach out to people who understand. Understand what you're going through, who can empathize or sympathize, who care, who are willing to listen. Basically, get that emotional and social support. You know, in our emotion episode, we talked about how important relationships are for emotional regulation. I think with shame, it's doubly so because not only is shame like experienced emotionally as something that's like very unpleasant and difficult to deal with, but shame originates in social experience. So having that social support is like a double whammy of benefit. Like, not only are you getting emotionally supported in the moment, but you're also getting validated by somebody that like, hey, you're not fucked up.

• 3:09:56Mark Manson?

  You're not a bad person. You still do, you deserve love and affection. So yeah, definitely like reach out, look for people who will be supportive.

• 3:10:04Speaker 01

  Shame is a social problem, so it needs a social solution to it, too. Like, just like an emotional problem needs an emotional solution, not an intellectual one.

• 3:10:10Mark Manson?

  Correct.

• 3:10:11Speaker 01

  You have to have that social side to it at the end of the day. Yeah.

• 3:10:14Mark Manson?

  The goal with this stage is really just, you know, now that you're aware of the irrationality and the compulsivity in your life, is recognizing how unsustainable it is. That like, you can't continue this way. It's ultimately just going to be self-destructive. And there are all sorts of different ways that this can show up for people, right? Like, you know, so, I mean, for somebody who's an addict, obviously, like, addiction is unsustainable. But for somebody who is codependent and trying to people-please everybody, make everybody happy all the time, that's unsustainable. You can't maintain that for the rest of your life. Somebody who's a perfectionist, wants to do everything right and correct and never fail at anything, that's unsustainable. So like, however the shame is showing up for you,

• 3:10:57Mark Manson?

  like, I think the big understanding and realization of stage two is like, is really getting that like, this cannot continue. I have to act differently. I have to do something different in my life, and I have to find different people. And then that leads us into stage three, which is the conscious acceptance. I think conscious acceptance is probably like the hardest stage of this whole process.

• 3:11:21Speaker 01

  This is the work. Yeah.

• 3:11:22Mark Manson?

  Yeah, this is the work. This is like, this is like the thankless clocking the hours in the coal mine.

• 3:11:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:11:30Mark Manson?

  To like, dig yourself out of a bunch of shit.

• 3:11:32Speaker 01

  It's kind of easy to get stuck in stage two, actually, I think. Yeah, you're right. Because stage three is so hard. It is the work. Yeah.

• 3:11:38Mark Manson?

  It is the work. I also think, I mean, and this isn't just with shame. I think this is just personal growth in general, like. There's a sense of accomplishment that comes with awareness. And a lot of people get satisfied with that.

• 3:11:50Speaker 01

  It's a false sense of accomplishment.

• 3:11:51Mark Manson?

  Right, right. It's, it's, you know, it's, it's like the person who goes to a five day seminar and like learns all these things about themselves. And then goes home and does the exact same shit they did before they left. It's a, awareness isn't really worth anything until it like changes behavior.

• 3:12:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:12:07Mark Manson?

  And stage three is where the behavioral change comes in. I think this is the hardest stage for two reasons. One is, A, it takes courage. The nature of shame is that it causes you to think that something is wrong when it's not. And so to act despite that requires a lot of, a lot of courage. It requires like a certain amount of faith that like, this is gonna make things better. It doesn't feel like it. It doesn't feel like anything's gonna get better. It feels like things are gonna get worse, but like, I have to do this.

• 3:12:41Mark Manson?

  Otherwise, nothing is gonna change or get better. And then the problem is, is that even once you've done it, it still doesn't really feel better. Like, like, I think a lot of people, and I think this is wishful thinking, but I think a lot of people, like, there's this desire for this, like, kind of joyous epiphany of like, "Oh my God, I struggled for years with drugs and alcohol, and then one day I decided I need to be different, and I've been happy ever since." And it's like, no, it doesn't work that way.

• 3:13:07Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 3:13:07Mark Manson?

  Like, it's still, in fact, in many cases, because you're removing yourself from an environment or certain behaviors, like, it gets even harder. Because it's, it's, now you're in new territory. Now you're like dealing with feelings and thoughts that you've never dealt with before. Maybe you've removed yourself from people that you're used to being around, and so you don't know how to cope without having them there. And so you kind of end up with this like intellectual, emotional schism. And, you know, we talked to Jess earlier in the episode, and she described this really well of like, intellectually, she knows she's doing the right thing, but it's like emotionally, it's still hard.

• 3:13:49Mark Manson?

  And it's still, like, there's this lag time that persists for, for years. Before it's like your new sense of self kind of catches up with the choices that you've made.

• 3:14:01Speaker 01

  Right, the progress doesn't feel like progress at this point.

• 3:14:03Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 3:14:04Speaker 01

  Because again, like you said, it's, these are things you've never felt before, so you don't, it doesn't feel like progress.

• 3:14:08Mark Manson?

  Right, and it's, and it's like, You know, ultimately, shame is, it's tied to the self-concept. And self-concept doesn't change quickly or easily. Like, it's, there's a, there's an inertia to it, right? So it's like, if you've, if you've seen yourself as a worthless piece of shit for, for 25 years, that's not gonna change in a week, or, or even a year, right? Like, you, you, there's gonna be a residue of that for many years, and it's gonna be like a very slow, gradual process to come out of it. Uh, I think the, the other reason this, this part is so hard is that it forces very difficult trade-offs in your life. Um, you're often forced to give up friendships, relationships,

• 3:14:52Mark Manson?

  uh, careers, hobbies, interests. It can suck. It's like, there's a lot of collateral damage that can often happen. I know, like, when I quit drinking, the hardest thing for me, it wasn't actually giving up drinking. It was being bored. Like, feeling like I had nothing to do. Like, I, I hadn't realized or appreciated the, the extent that, like, my entire social life revolved around drinking. Like, pretty much everything I did for fun, I drank while I did it. And then when I stopped drinking, like, 80% of that shit stopped being fun. Right. So I'm like, oh, what do I do now? So I was just bored, I was like intensely bored for like 12 or 18 months. And it was, it was like very difficult to deal with.

• 3:15:36Mark Manson?

  And it was, and again, to the self-concept piece, like, it was very disorienting in trying to understand who I was without alcohol. Like, wow, like, a lot of the things I enjoyed doing, I don't enjoy doing anymore. A lot of the people I enjoyed hanging out with, I don't enjoy hanging out with anymore. So like, who the fuck am I? Like, you, you need that time to like rediscover who the new version of yourself is. And that's very hard. There is a framework that we haven't totally, we haven't talked about yet. It's almost like the, the modern version of Carl Rogers' person-centered therapy. And that's Kristin Neff's self-compassion framework, which I know you're a huge fan of.

• 3:16:17Mark Manson?

  So basically, you know, like the super quick version of this is that for decades, psychologists have talked about self-esteem, which is basically, you know, having high self-regard, believing good things about yourself. And I think psychologists, you know, they saw that, they looked at people who suffered a lot, were very depressed, high anxiety, and they saw that they had very low self-regard. I think in many ways, shame is very similar to low self-esteem. Like there, they, there's like a pretty big overlap there. The problem is, is that there are plenty of people with high self-regard who are miserable pieces of shit. So it's self-esteem, like the, the outcomes of high self-esteem are like not what they were thought to be. Right. Initially.

• 3:17:02Mark Manson?

  And so in the late 2000s, Kristin Neff came out with her work around self-compassion, which she proposes like probably a better measure of like how somebody really feels about themselves, which is essentially, it's not looking at how, how good you feel about yourself. It's, it's like, how compassionate are you with yourself, especially when things are not going well? Right. Because what you find is that a lot of people with high self-esteem, when things don't go well, they get very upset and they, they like blame themselves, blame others, like lash out at people. Whereas like somebody high in self-compassion, they'll be like relatively steady and stable during hard times. And so there are three parts of self-compassion. First one is mindfulness, which is just the self-awareness piece.

• 3:17:47Mark Manson?

  Second one is kind self-talk. She talks a lot about how like, talk to yourself the way you talk to your best friend. Like, most people talk to themselves horribly. They're like insanely critical and judgmental. But if you think about like, imagine your best friend was going through the same problem. Like, what would you say to them to encourage them and support them? Okay, now say that to yourself. And then the third one is, we talked about the common humanity piece. It's just like understanding that like, there is no such thing as a personal problem. Like every single problem that exists is being experienced by.

• 3:18:20Mark Manson?

  Thousands, if not millions of people on the planet. And like, there's nothing special or unique about what you're going through. And that's a good thing because it means that there's nothing uniquely wrong with you or or broken with you or whatever. So, yeah, the conscious acceptance piece is really, it's about stepping into that new life, finding the social support, people who will validate that new life. And then really just letting time take its course and like practicing that self-acceptance, the self, the self-compassion, you know, not falling back into the compulsive behaviors and the avoidance behaviors and the, you know, the lashing out. And really, really trying to stay on the straight and narrow over the long haul.

• 3:19:02Mark Manson?

  And that eventually ideally gets you to stage four, which is just the unconscious acceptance. And I think really, you know, when Massa was on here, we talked a little bit about the pride of like, you know, the thing that she was ashamed of early in her life. Now she's very proud of. And I think, you know, when I, when I look at some of the things that I was ashamed of in my life, I don't know if pride, like some of them, there is some pride, but I'll give you an example of something I don't, I'm not proud of, but I'm still like, I'm happy I went through. Yeah, you've accepted it. Yeah. So I had a lot of shame around sex and women when I was young, a lot.

• 3:19:44Mark Manson?

  And a lot of that has to do, I mean, probably dysfunctional family life. You know, I spent my whole adolescence with a single mom. And then first love cheated on me, left me. So it was just like a series of like very kind of unhealthy dynamics in my early life, particularly around women. And it's, you know, I came out of that breakup extremely hurt, lots of shame, lots of feelings of inadequacy, failure, lots of anger, lots of lashing out, like lots of like, women are the problem. Right. You know, all women are like, oh, they're so, they're so selfish, they're such bitches, all this stuff.

• 3:20:27Mark Manson?

  And I went through like a very ugly period of.

• 3:20:32Mark Manson?

  I guess like it's interesting like it was both womanizing but also like intense resentment and avoidance like it was a very weird thing and I think shame causes this dichotomy in a lot of people right where it's like you're kind of obsessed about something and and your whole life revolves around it but you're also like resentful of that obsession and and like kinda hate the fact that you love this thing so much and I definitely felt that way around like women and sex and dating like I just I I had an unhealthy relationship with romantic relationships like I

• 3:21:14Mark Manson?

  was obsessed with them I was constantly dating tons of women I was cheating on most of them

• 3:21:23Mark Manson?

  anytime any of them wanted to get close to me I like just bailed I was very selfish I was not compassionate I was I was a awful boyfriend and and at the time I kinda didn't care it was just like it's like this hole and it was like trying to put water in a bucket with a hole in the bottom like it just I had I just had to keep pouring you know I couldn't stop to like look at what was going on because I had to go find more water to pour in my bucket eventually like that obviously like I just kinda like left this warpath of failed and and dissatisfied relationships behind me and after enough years passed you know you basically when it comes to relationships

• 3:22:07Mark Manson?

  especially romantic relationships like there's this there's this realization that I think hits most dysfunctional people at some point where it's like you it's you reach a point where it's impossible to deny that like you're the problem you know like at a certain point it's like all of your fucked up exes they only have one thing in common and that's you And wow, like, how, what are the chances that every single person that you happen to like, get with is like fucked up in the exact same way?

• 3:22:37Speaker 01

  Every woman on the planet.

• 3:22:38Mark Manson?

  Yeah, like, it's like, you know, coming back to challenging, you know, Albert Ellis challenging faulty assumptions, pointing out contradictions, like, pointing out where like beliefs are not realistic.

• 3:22:51Mark Manson?

  You know, I definitely had some like hard and sobering moments around that. And I also just realized like how unsatisfying it was. Like, I think I eventually, you know, through quite a bit of therapy and working on myself. And I mean, it was to the point where like my career, I became a dating coach because I was so obsessed with this. And, uh, and through my work as a dating coach and like reading and studying everything around relationships and understanding it and like going to therapy and then also like just the track, like the horrible track record of failed commitments. I finally kind of came into stage three of realizing like, uh, I can't keep doing this, like I have to do something differently.

• 3:23:32Mark Manson?

  And, um, I had like very intense attachment issues, lots of avoidance. And, uh, I remember, you know, I was 27, 28 and I, I realized I'm like, okay, I think I need a relationship and whoever it is, like, I'm gonna do it right this time. Like, I'm not gonna, not gonna be a selfish piece of shit, not gonna cheat. I'm not gonna like just bail whenever I feel like it. I'm gonna stick around and it's gonna suck, but like, I'm gonna stick with it as long as like I, I like her and, you know, there's not a problem. I'm not gonna create one. That was the agreement I made with myself is like, if there's not a problem, don't create one. If there's a problem, okay, cool.

• 3:24:15Mark Manson?

  You can bail, you can do, you know, you can break up, you can do whatever you, you need to do, but if there's not a problem, don't, don't make one. And it was funny because the next couple of women I dated, like, it was really, really hard, like it was very unsatisfying. Like, it was like fighting those urges and proclivity, like it would just, it's like, uh, this sucks. This is, this is boring. I kind of want to go. But I wouldn't let myself and then, uh, you know, and then finally I, you know, shortly after that I met my wife and, and, you know, through the early period of our dating, like I worked through a lot of that stuff. But eventually, you know, you, you come out the other side and as you talked about early in the episode,

• 3:24:58Mark Manson?

  like I think the healthy place that you land is like you don't, you don't feel a need to avoid it, but you also don't need to indulge it. You know, if like peak shame is both obsession mixed with resentment, like peak health is just like acknowledging without needing to, to indulge and, um, you know, I look at that period of my life. I, I think I do have a healthy amount of shame around a lot of my behavior when I was young.

• 3:25:26Mark Manson?

  There's definitely some regrets in there, but I also like, I don't know, I don't revel in it. I don't obsess over it. It doesn't eat me up.

• 3:25:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. It's not, it's not, uh, it's not avoiding it. It's not indulging it. It's accepting it at a certain degree. And that's kind of the goal, the, the self compassion, right? The goal of self compassion is self acceptance around these things. And that's, yeah, that's where you land, I think.

• 3:25:49Mark Manson?

  That's where you want to end up. And it's interesting too, cause it's like when I was kind of working through stage three, there was a period, I, I actually remember it distinctly. So when my wife and I got engaged, I went through, there was like a year or two, I felt like deep regret around a lot of my behavior when I was younger.

• 3:26:06Speaker 01

  Previously, yeah.

• 3:26:06Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Like deep regret to like the point where I'm like a lot of shame, a lot of like, I can't believe I was that person. Like what was, what was I thinking?

• 3:26:16Mark Manson?

  So yeah. If you're listening and you dated me in my twenties, I'm sorry.

• 3:26:22Mark Manson?

  Listen, I'm just gonna put that out there. You know who you are.

• 3:26:26Speaker 01

  Do you ever, okay. Do you ever have these like really weird, I guess you would call them anti fantasies where all your exes show up in one room?

• 3:26:32Mark Manson?

  No.

• 3:26:33Speaker 01

  And they're like, they're like, let's do, let's do this. Cause I have those and I have shame around that too. So anyway, we won't, we don't need to get into that. But yeah.

• 3:26:42Mark Manson?

  Do you want to share your forced stage process? Do you have anything that you're willing to?

• 3:26:45Speaker 01

  I could. Yeah. Yeah. This has happened. So I already brought this up and one of the big sources of shame in my life was that growing up without much money, growing up a working class, kind of poor family. For the longest time, like I said, I just avoided it. And that was like, like that stage one where it just wasn't even really. If I was aware of it, I would tamp it down as soon as I could. It was just like, we're just not gonna think about, I'm gonna act like it doesn't exist.

• 3:27:05Mark Manson?

  So when you say avoid, like, you mean like, not just emotionally, but like, would you have friends over? Would you like?

• 3:27:12Speaker 01

  Oh, no, I wouldn't want my friends to come over. No, I always wanna go to their house.

• 3:27:16Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:27:16Speaker 01

  That's what I always wanted to do. So I would do that kind of stuff. But that would bubble up, you know, because then you'd say, oh, my God, they got like four bags of chips and we don't even have any chips at home and like that kind of stuff would pop up. So when it would bubble up to the surface, I would just, you know, deflect or act like it wasn't an actual issue or act like there wasn't a problem at all. That was for a very, very long time. That's kind of how I addressed it. There just wasn't a, there wasn't awareness around my shame about it. I didn't know I was ashamed of it. I just, I just blocked it out. That's what I did for the longest time.

• 3:27:52Speaker 01

  When I kind of woke up to it, though, I would say late teens, early college, early university, I kind of woke up to, okay, I have a lot of issues around this. This is causing me a lot of shame for one. I'm shameful around it and it's causing me to, it's hurting my relationships at a certain point too, because I would just wouldn't. I wouldn't engage with people if I was like, oh, they won't understand this. So I'm just not even gonna.

• 3:28:20Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:28:20Speaker 01

  I didn't know what to do with it. I was aware of it, like at stage two, I was aware of it. I didn't know what to do with it for the longest time. I started opening up about it a little bit later. I think part of that was is that I kind of ran around with a crew who grew up fairly similar to me, pretty working class in college. And we started kind of talking about it. We started talking about the weird shit you do when you grew up like that. And it became a little bit more like, oh, okay, this is, there's a common humanity here that I can find with other people. It's still, it just sucked though still too. Like it's that stage three where it's just like, God, like I'll talk about it, but this is, I don't know what to do with it. I'm, I'm not, I'm still not comfortable with it.

• 3:29:04Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:29:04Speaker 01

  I still get very ashamed about it. I didn't know, I especially didn't know, and this still comes up too. I don't know how to act around people with money sometimes. Like I just like, I get very hyper aware, like, oh, I didn't grow up like these people.

• 3:29:16Mark Manson?

  Yeah. I was gonna say, like, have you noticed any change, like as you've become successful throughout your, your life and your career, like in, has? Has that changed your relationship with it at all? Like?

• 3:29:29Speaker 01

  Um, yes. Yeah, it has. Because I think at one point anyway, I did go, it went from, it went from a source of shame to being that badge of honor. And that was, I would, I would say that I was indulging it at that point. Like, I kind of went a little too far with it. And I was like, well, screw all of you because, you know, you had a leg up above me. And look where I got. So screw you. I'm haha, look at me. Right? Not that I'm like filthy rich by any means or anything like that, but like now that I'm comfortable, there, there is a new relationship around it where it's like, yeah, that was a part of my life that I got over. That's, and that's great. Now sometimes I experience shame around like, well, I was one of the lucky ones that got out of that.

• 3:30:07Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 3:30:08Speaker 01

  Like, so there's a new source of shame around that where it's like, because there were, there's a number of things that have happened in my life that were just fortunate. I can look back and like, that was just a lucky break that I got. And somebody else who was in a very similar position that I had, didn't get that. So now I have some guilt and shame around that too. That's kind of weird layer to it, you know? But I think eventually, you know, it just, instead of indulging it and going into that whole, you know, I take this like, kind of, I don't know, unwarranted pride around it sometimes. Now it's just like, that was just, that was a part of my life that was nobody's fault. There was nothing that, um, nothing that I necessarily did to deserve it. But at the same time too, it's just like, it is what it is. Some people, that's just the luck of the draw, right?

• 3:30:53Speaker 01

  And it could have been a lot worse. I feel that too. Like it, I, you know, it wasn't that I, it, we weren't like necessarily going hungry. There was definitely times where we thought, well, this might not work out so well, but you know, at the end of the day, it was okay. So now it's just like, yeah, that's just something I went through. That's, that's what it was. It was just, I got to that acceptance part of it.

• 3:31:13Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 3:31:13Speaker 01

  I think, yeah.

• 3:31:14Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:31:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:31:15Mark Manson?

  Takeaways?

• 3:31:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:31:16Mark Manson?

  What are your biggest takeaways from, from doing this episode?

• 3:31:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I was, I was thinking about this, um, making this podcast, not just this episode, but this, this podcast in general, doing the podcast, doing the old podcast we did too, during the subtle art podcast, doing this podcast, has kind of been a one big exercise in shame for me. Right? So, so much of my shame was wrapped up in like perfectionism. You know, we've talked about that. And we've talked, you and I have talked about this a little bit before where, you know, you've been practicing this for 15 years. And then I kind of just, I was in the background and I understood these things from an intellectual standpoint.

• 3:31:51Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it's probably worth it to point out to the audience that like, you and I never planned for you to do this.

• 3:31:57Speaker 01

  No, no, we were gonna do a podcast and we were, yeah.

• 3:32:00Mark Manson?

  Yeah, like, the whole reason Mark and Drew even happened is when we were like, preparing pilot episodes of the Subtle Art Podcast, you know, because we were thinking, maybe I'll do some solo episodes. And I was like, well, why don't you ask me questions? And then like, you and I just had this chemistry and it went really well. And we were like, well, maybe we should just do that. So, yeah. So like, for just to set

• 3:32:20Speaker 01

  That's the setup, yeah.

• 3:32:21Mark Manson?

  Set, set context for the audience, like Drew had no aspirations to like, be on camera.

• 3:32:26Speaker 01

  I'm a behind the scenes guy.

• 3:32:27Mark Manson?

  We never had the conversation around it. It kind of accidentally happened. Like, of all the pilot episodes we did, the one you and I did was like, by far the best. And then the team was just like, well, shit, Drew should be your co-host. And we were like, okay.

• 3:32:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I was like, okay, if you want me to do it, I'll do it. And, and what I didn't realize just though was, yeah, I have that, that shame around perfectionism and being perfect and all of that. And then to see yourself screw up, not only that, but like, early on too, I don't know, anybody out there who's ever tried to be like, on camera?

• 3:32:58Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:32:58Speaker 01

  Or listen to that, even just a microphone?

• 3:33:00Mark Manson?

  It's awful.

• 3:33:01Speaker 01

  At first, it is jarring. It's so bad. I'm, I'm pretty used to it now. And I'm just, I'm more forgiving of myself now. But God, at first, I was just like, you look at yourself and you're like, that's how I behave? That's how I look? That's how I sound?

• 3:33:14Mark Manson?

  People see this every day.

• 3:33:15Speaker 01

  People see this. Or like, when I, you know, I, I'm not the best public speaker. And when that comes about, like, I make mistakes when I talk and I feel, oh my God, I'm stupid. It's not perfect. And there's a lot of shame around that, you know? I was sitting there last night doing some last minute prep for this and I kind of caught myself in one of those moments where I was like, I love my job right now. Like I was just like, I love my job. I'm doing something awesome. I'm doing something I really, I was coming up with like cool stuff and creative ways to think about things, talk about things. And I was like, I really love this about my job. And I realized at that moment, I was like, I had to sit with all of that shame. I had to go through that. You had to dig through all of that shit to get to

• 3:33:55Speaker 01

  those nuggets. It's almost, almost anything worth doing in life, it's on the other side of all that shame that you've put up in front of you. And you, there's, there's just no other way around that. There's just, you have to sit with it. You have to work through it. There's no way around it. You're gonna sit here and think about, okay, how can I maybe do an end around here and, and bypass the sitting with the shame and going, going through those, and going through these four steps that we've talked about, right? This four phase process. There's no way around it.

• 3:34:24Mark Manson?

  Yeah, you can't. There's no shortcut.

• 3:34:26Speaker 01

  You have to sit with this shit and you have to deal with that shame. You have to put up with all the stupid comments of people who have never filmed themselves and never tried to do anything and realize that that, oh, those aren't the people I care about. Going back to your shame radar, those aren't the people that I care about. And you, but it sucks going through that. It's very, very hard. And so this whole podcast for me has been one big lesson in shame, where in order to get to those little nuggets, like I said, those little nuggets of, oh, I'm doing something that I really enjoy. That's all on the other side of the shitty shame that you have to sit with. So that's been my biggest takeaway, anyway.

• 3:35:02Mark Manson?

  Very cool.

• 3:35:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:35:04Mark Manson?

  How the fuck am I gonna follow that up?

• 3:35:08Mark Manson?

  That was so much better than what I was gonna say.

• 3:35:10Speaker 01

  Okay, well, what do you got?

• 3:35:14Speaker 01

  Take us home on a strong note, Ermark.

• 3:35:16Mark Manson?

  One thing I've noticed the last few years, so you know this, but I'm gonna describe it for the audience, which is that, you know, 2015 to probably 2022 was the book phase and it was pretty much all my focus was on my books and tours and a movie and doing the stuff with Will and I wasn't really paying attention to the internet stuff. And then in 2022, I kind of came back to the internet business and I looked around and I realized like, wow, things have changed and grown a lot.

• 3:35:48Mark Manson?

  And I like, this seems really cool. I'd love to to kind of update my internet business and launch a podcast and do a YouTube channel and get on social media and like really like do it, do it the right way, like, you know, start marketing myself well and, uh, you know, build audience on different platforms and like ultimately that that it's basically what I did in the blog phase, just scaled out across a bunch of different platforms and like, I love that. I love this. I love doing, I actually like doing this much more than I do writing books. Um, a side effect of that that I didn't realize is that I, to do that, I started spending

• 3:36:28Mark Manson?

  a lot more time on YouTube, listening to podcasts and on social media than I ever was before. I was never a big social media user, uh, personally, but the last two or three years I've been using, I've been on it all the time. And I have noticed it affecting my brain. It's initially I noticed it and mostly like attention span stuff. Um, it was harder to get through books or stick with books than it used to be. Um, felt a little bit more ADD than, you know, I mean, I have ADD, but it was definitely like, it was kind of agitating my ADD in a little bit, uh, in a few different ways. And when we were, so when we were prepping for this episode, you know, we had

• 3:37:12Mark Manson?

  this, this section marked for technology and, um, and you and I, we've done a million podcasts and segments on social media and mental health and technology and interviewed Jonathan Haidt. And so I wasn't expecting a whole lot. I was like, oh, cool. It's the technology, social media thing. But coming at it from the shame angle and like really understanding it from that like shame is like a tribal mechanism to, uh, create order and stability within the group and then seeing how social media and technology like scrambles that. And then like also just from my own experience, the past two or three years where like, I've noticed my brain and attitudes

• 3:37:52Mark Manson?

  changing around certain things, um, and mindsets changing around certain things. Uh, and, and the, the thing that I said in here of like, when you're getting on social media platforms, you're choosing your own tribe without realizing it, you're, you're essentially choosing what, what you define as shameful. And shameless without noticing it. That's really stuck with me like as we've prepped with the episode. It's like made me think because it's like I've been giving the advice forever of like curate your feeds, be conscious of who you follow, like, don't, you know, like do more stuff in real, but like to your point, so much of your social media experience is outside

• 3:38:32Mark Manson?

  of your control and so much of what gets syndicated is also outside of your control. And so you're really like only following and seeing the content that's presented to you, you're not seeing the minds and people that are not presented to you, you're not seeing the ideas that are not presented to you. And so, you know, it might not be enough that advice. Like, I think maybe a little bit more real lifetime is in order.

• 3:39:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Like, use your shame system as it was intended, you know, bring it, bring it down to earth and in real life and then it functions in a much more healthy way.

• 3:39:10Mark Manson?

  Associated with that, right? Like, it's because I've been spending, because my focus on the business has been so much on this side of the business, I've noticed too that like my standards and norms are getting like skewed and fucked up, right? It's like, I'll like, I'll see somebody with like, you know, 3 million followers post something similar to like something I posted and I'm like, well, why does he have so many followers? Like, all those stupid fucking narratives start showing up. It's like, well, why does he have all those followers and I don't? And I'm like, dude, what game, like, are you a child? Like, how old are you? Like, how, how long are you gonna keep doing this?

• 3:39:51Speaker 01

  It never ends.

• 3:39:52Mark Manson?

  It never ends. I think actually doing this episode, if there's any takeaway for me personally at the moment, I think I might, I might get a little bit more conscious with like tighten the information diet up, as it were. And And yeah, really like focus on real life tribe over digital tribe. For sure. All right. Well, that's it for this episode. Thank you all for coming on the shame train with us. PDF guide, go to solve podcast.com/shame. You can get everything there, everything that Drew and I talked about today. All the takeaways, the research and summaries of each of the sections.

• 3:40:33Mark Manson?

  And then finally, if you love the show, if you've enjoyed this episode, please follow the show on whatever platform you're listening on. And leave us a review. It is hard to get a podcast out there, especially a podcast, a five hour podcast about shame. It's not the sort of thing that just gets goes viral randomly. So the best thing you can do to support us, simply follow the show on your favorite platform and leave a review for us. I am Mark Manson. This is Drew Burney. We will be back next month.