2628: Overcoming Shame with Dr. Frank Spinelli

LifeBlood: We talked about overcoming shame, the distinction between guilt and shame, common sources of shame across demographics,the shame spiral and its link to addiction, the Four P's framework (Pause, Present, Ponder, Possibilities), the neuroscience of self-compassion, and the importance of community in overcoming shame, with Dr. Frank Spinelli, physician, health coach, and author. You can learn more about Frank at FrankSpinelli.com https://www.frankspinelli.com/, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/fspinellimd/, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063181962309, X https://x.com/spinellimd, and LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/frspinelli/. Get your copy of The Shame Compass here: https://amzn.to/3RNfAmK Want to say “Thanks!” You can buy us a cup of coffee. https://www.buymeacoffee.com/lifeblood George’s newest book is available! Get your copy of The Meaningful Few here: https://amzn.to/4qA26X9 Feeling busy but unfulfilled? The Meaningful Few helps you identify what truly matters, eliminate distractions, and live with intention and clarity. Learn more here: https://www.mymeaningfulfew.com/ Thanks, as always for listening! If you got some value and enjoyed the show, please leave us a review here: ​​https://ratethispodcast.com/lifebloodpodcast You can learn more about us at LifeBlood. Live http://lifeblood.live/, Twitter https://twitter.com/ourlifeblood, LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/lifebloodlive, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lifeblood.live/, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNQ9Gc4mMwCHZKUHjbt0-qA and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/lifebloodlive or you’d like to be a guest on the show, contact us at contact@LifeBlood. Live. Stay up to date by getting our monthly updates https://george-grombacher.aweb.page. Copyright LifeBlood 2026.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:45Speaker 01

  Dr. Frank Spinelli is a physician, a health coach, author, and passionate advocate whose groundbreaking work bridges healthcare storytelling and social justice. He is from New York. He brings both medical expertise and personal experience to writing, creating powerful narratives that educate, heal, and inspire. He's the author of four acclaimed books. His newest book is The Shame Compass: A Radical Framework for Trauma Healing and Self-Acceptance. Welcome to the show, Frank.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you for having me.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  Excited to have you on. Tell us a little bit about your personal life, some more about your work, and what motivated you to write the new book?

• 1:21Speaker 02

  Sure, I'd be happy to. So, like you've mentioned, I'm coming to you from New York. I am a New Yorker, born and bred. I was raised in a very small place called Staten Island, and you probably are familiar with it because we have two things that everybody knows about, which is the Staten Island Ferry, which has been in a lot of movies, and also, at one point, we had the largest sanitation dump in the world. We were very proud of that. And I grew up there with my Italian immigrant parents and a very Catholic upbringing. And, you know, like millions of people around the world, I had a traumatic childhood. I

• 2:02Speaker 02

  was molested by my scoutmaster from the ages of 11 to 13. And unfortunately, the way it got resolved when I told my parents was that they were shamed into keeping it quiet. And so that has some repercussions on me. Fortunately, I found an amazing art therapist. I worked with her for years, and she is really what got me through school, and I became a doctor, and I had finally achieved a degree of success. And it was on a book tour for my first book, where I caught up with some old friends from Boy Scouts, and I looked up my scoutmaster.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  And I found out that the year after he stepped down and disappeared, he adopted a boy, he wrote a book, and he was on the Today Show. He was even nominated for Father of the Year. And so I began to pursue him, and I found him. And he told me that since the 30 years that had lapsed, he had adopted 15 boys. And so, short story, I worked with the police. I wore a wiretap, if you can believe this boy from Staten Island did that. It's like an incredible story because I can't believe it's mine. And we brought him to justice.

• 3:24Speaker 02

  And the point of all this is that I had been traumatized, like so many people. I was fortunate enough to get therapy. I had still achieved success, but what I didn't realize at the time was that what we call abuse, to me, was called my fault. And like many people who experience shame, you blame yourself. And even though I had gone through many decades later, I think we all experienced something universal, and that was in 2020, we experienced the pandemic and the lockdown and the isolation brought out a lot of those feelings of shame

• 4:05Speaker 02

  for me again. It didn't help that at the same time, I was involved in a class action lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America, and I had to fill out a very extensive questionnaire, which, to me, I felt caused my rock bottom moment. And I looked in the mirror one day, and I said, why is this happening? I had done so much work. I had become a success. Why is this happening to me again? And why am I feeling this intense shame? And I realized, just like a moment of clarity, what if I have been doing the wrong thing? What if I have been running away from shame instead of leaning into what it's trying to tell

• 4:46Speaker 02

  me, what it's trying to protect me from? And so that became the origin of the Shame Compass, developing a framework to say to other people who experience shame, and it's not necessarily if you've been abused, it could be any shame, and we could talk about that as well, because there are many forms of shame. But what can we do with this information? And how can we move with it instead of trying to run away from it? Use it as information instead of indictment?

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Wow. What a story, man.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  A lot for a Tuesday, but whatever day it is.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Whatever day it is. Holy cow. So, this person was brought to justice. Does that mean, I don't even know what that means. Hopefully burned at the stake, but probably not.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  Well, you want to know a spoiler alert? I mean, you could read it in my other book, Peashy, but he was imprisoned. And I never got the full story, but he died one year later. And if you know anything about child abusers, and certainly a police officer, I forgot to mention that, and somebody who goes to prison, I don't think is treated very kindly among the other inmates.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  He was a police officer also?

• 6:01Speaker 02

  He was a police, a highly decorated police officer, yeah.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  All right.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  Sorry, George.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Oh, no, no, no. I'm glad he's dead. There, there, there I said it. What we know and what we do are often two different things. Do you, I mean, did you intellectually understand that it wasn't your fault, but you just felt like, like, like, like it somehow was?

• 6:36Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I think at the time, because of the way it was poorly handled, I'm 13, my good Catholic Italian parents are told to be quiet, don't bring this on to your family. So what is that telegraph to me? We don't talk about this because in some way it is your fault. You've brought this on. And that's why I think I had such a struggle when I got later on, and especially in college, really struggling with my identity and who I was going to be or what I wanted to be. And I did find help. I was rescued by an art therapist. And yeah, became a physician and then learned through that process of

• 7:16Speaker 02

  when I discovered him, that this isn't my fault. And, you know, one of the clear differentiators that many people confuse is there is guilt, and then there's shame. So guilt is, I did something wrong. I feel bad. And maybe you can learn from it. Maybe you can apologize and learn from the experience. Shame is, I'm bad. It's identity. And it's that voice in our head that we listen to. And what I wanted to express in the book is, that voice does not belong to you. That voice was installed by somebody else who has their own deficiencies,

• 7:58Speaker 02

  and they put it in you, possibly when you were young and didn't know how to say, I don't want this in my head, or possibly as an adult from a bad divorce or a breakup or something where you're traumatized and you don't know how to acknowledge the fact that that voice is being installed in me when it really, when you don't have the words to say no. So what I was hoping to install in these frameworks is to say, when you hear that voice say, you're too much, you're not enough, you're broken. The important thing is to say, okay, that voice is not me. And number one, that's, those are thoughts. What

• 8:39Speaker 02

  are the facts? The facts are, I'm a good guy. I became a doctor. I help people. I'm not broken. I'm not too much. I'm just right. And it is reparenting ourselves that is really the work of trying to overcome the intense shame and not really succumb to it, but sort of understand that you can listen to it and you will live with this. And by the way, you know, more bad news, shame is not going to go away. It's an emotion. You can't get rid of it. You have to learn to work with it. So hopefully, when, just to answer your question in a more short way, yeah, I didn't think it was always my fault. And that took years

• 9:23Speaker 02

  of developing and therapies, then decades in therapy, trying to understand.

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• 10:21Speaker 02

  Why this happened, and I think people get stuck in that loop, like, why me? Why me? Instead of just saying, hey, this happened. You did nothing wrong. And in fact, I dedicated the book to my 11-year-old self. I said that you did nothing wrong. It's just unfortunate that bad things happen to good people.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  So much there that's so important, breaking free of that why me loop. I'm sure that I've, I'm sure that I've felt that way and I don't know that I've ever been trapped in it, but I certainly see how it would be easy, especially when you have, you experienced such a horrible, traumatic experience as you did, and then had your family react the way that they did. Have, have, have they apologized to you?

• 11:12Speaker 02

  Sure. Yeah, I mean, it was heartbreaking. My father passed away years ago and one of the things my mother talks about often is that, you know, she always felt like he didn't do enough to protect me. And my mother and I have a lovely relationship. She's read my books and she understands that this wasn't her fault. One of the things that we forget is that when somebody infiltrates our home, like a sexual predator, he doesn't just groom the child, they groom the family. So everybody is beguiled. Why wouldn't my father, a hardworking Italian guy, trust a cop?

• 11:55Speaker 02

  Why wouldn't he? Of course he would. Of course he would. And so he saw Bill as an extension of himself. He was helping me become a leader. So, uh, you know, to be duped by somebody, it's, it's, it's unconscionable. And the other part of it is, you know, for us, the Boy Scouts was part of our church. So it was all wrapped up in the community. So it's very hard for people to disentangle that. Um, and yeah, while later on, we did come to understand that nobody is really to blame. Nobody was pointing fingers. I did for many years blame my family, you know? It was just the way it was for me to process it. And finally I did, thankfully.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  And it was just Bill. That's the person that should have received all the blame.

• 12:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  And shame then led to more shame. Your parents felt, your mom felt.

• 12:56Speaker 02

  Which, and it's a spiral.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  You know, it's a shame spiral. So, you know, when I talk to, uh, clients that I work with at, at Reframe, where I'm helping people navigate their addiction, one of the things we talk about is, you know, you, like I said, you don't have to be, you don't have to have a childhood trauma. Many, the top reason women experience shame is body image. They feel a tremendous amount of shame with the way they look, whether they're, they think they're too large or too thin or too old, or they're, they're trying to understand the changes in their body and they have a tremendous amount of shame with that. The second thing women also, uh,

• 13:38Speaker 02

  feel a tremendous shame over is motherhood, being a single mother, being a working mother, being a stay-at-home mother, and then conversely, being unable to become a mother, infertility shame. And then when you look at men, men feel intense shame about not being able to provide for their family. Let's say, being the man of the house or the breadwinner, feeling shame that their spouse has to work to help support them. And then secondly, they're feeling sexually inadequate or over their own bodies and over their performance. So these are things that are very everyday causes of shame. And I think people

• 14:19Speaker 02

  tend succumb to them and what we call a shame spiral. So the voice tells you, you're terrible in bed. You're, you don't have enough equipment. You're not satisfying anybody. And what do you do? You rely on something, certain times it's either drugs, maybe alcohol, food, more sex, and you develop this spiral because you can't get out of it. So one gets the other. I'm drinking because I feel shameful. Then I feel shameful because I drank. So then I drink some more to forget that. And the only way to step out of it is to really acknowledge that you're in a shame spiral and that what is the source of this? What, map it back to the source and try to understand.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  Some people do this with therapy and some people do it with just even going to groups and meetings and being around other people with similar, uh, histories as a way of understanding and being in community. One important thing for everyone to know is that shame loves isolation. Shame breeds in it. That's why the pandemic brought out all the shame. That's why the pandemic brought out all this alcohol use disorder. People were drinking, millions of people were drinking, over drinking. And so when you're in community, and that's why, for example, your show is helping people

• 15:43Speaker 02

  because we're sharing stories and you're listening and I'm listening to you in that community is what makes it bearable. And people then feel, I'm not so shameful because there are other people like me.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  Thank you. Trying to suss out with shame, it is, I, I had a bad experience. Either something happened to me, something that I did, and not that I feel bad about the behavior that I engaged in, it's that I feel bad about myself and I am a bad person because of this thing. And I ruminate on it for years and then it just imprints deeper and deeper onto me.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  Is there a, is there a healthy version of that? Is it, is it feeling guilty that I did something bad? I, I, I was in a car accident. It was my fault. I feel guilty about that. Doesn't mean that I'm a bad person, but that's something that I did.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  Right. And it is nuanced. So there's guilt and shame. Guilt is more behavioral. I did something bad. Therefore I could learn from it. I could apologize, for example. Or I was in a car accident. I feel bad. Uh, but we're going to get my insurance to take care of it and everybody, nobody got hurt. So we can move forward. Again, the shame component is I'm bad. Now, where it gets a little interesting is that there is a form of healthy shame where you understand that sometimes your behavior and your identity are attached to your core values. So one of the things I do when I work with new clients is I say, give me three things you hold dear.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  I'll give you mine, just as an example, and you don't overthink it. I like kindness. I like compassion and, um, loyalty. Those are three things. When I'm in a, in a situation where I realize that I'm feeling shame or guilt, one of the most important things for anyone to do is ask, how does this ladder up to my core values? Well, you know what, Frank? You're not showing very much compassion. And you know what? I don't think you were, you could have been kinder to that person. So the healthy part of that, when you tease it out is, I could actually learn something because it's a misalignment with who I am as a core,

• 18:20Speaker 02

  what are my core values? Now, the toxic shame, which is the worst kind, which is really the predominant part of the book, is you're a bad person. These things always happen to you because you deserve them. That's where you need to work harder with the steps that I outline in the framework because that's not something that's easily remedied by saying, you know, I'm out of alignment. Maybe things are just going, I'm stressed out at work and I was snapping at people. So it's more important for you to realize where, what is the shame's root? Is it I'm bad? Or is it related to something, um, related to my core values?

• 19:01Speaker 01

  That makes sense. How does this, how does what I'm feeling ladder to my core values? And it's violating that I, I am a kind person and that the, what I engaged in was, I was really awful. I bullied this kid when I was a young person. And now I just, I think I've been carrying that with me and it's just been ingrained in me. And I catch myself being mean to people and that takes me right back.

• 19:31Speaker 00

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• 20:01Speaker 04

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• 20:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it could happen in the work environment all the time. You're at work, quotas aren't being met, your boss is putting extra pressure on everybody, and you at a meeting lash out. So, a perfect example of this was, early on, a few years ago, after the pandemic, when we were all working via Teams and Zoom, my then-manager, who was a great guy, but let's face it, he was a physician, went to Ivy League, and he could be a little bit of a narcissist. And one day, he just said something really snarky to me, on a team call, and I felt humiliated. And I realized, I stopped.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  So, it's fight, fight, or freeze, and I froze. And after doing the work, I realized, I said to myself, wait a minute, that voice is triggering something in me. It's triggering the 11-year-old boy from Staten Island. Well, guess what? You're not 11 years old, he's not Bill Fox, this is work, and you need to understand that. So, one of the things I talk about in the book, which I live by this, are the four Ps. First is pause. The power of the pause is like, it's like your superpower. And the way you practice this, because you cannot practice this when you're being activated,

• 22:04Speaker 02

  is when someone is talking to you, and your friend, when they stop talking, don't answer. Give yourself three seconds. It shows them you're listening, and it tells your brain that Frank's gonna answer, not shame. So, when I was with my boss again, and he said something snarky, I didn't answer right away. I didn't get activated, I didn't knee-jerk. And what I did was, secondly, I stayed present in the moment. Okay, I'm on a phone call here. And then you ponder, the third P, what's happening here? Okay, you're being activated, we know this is 11-year-old stuff, you know, that's the way Bill Fox used to talk to you, but you're not there.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Okay, and then, only then, can the fourth P emerge, which is the possibilities. And the possibility in that situation is, you know what, doctor? You made a good point, but I'm gonna need a little time to answer, because I want to make sure I answer it correctly. And what you've done is, you've commandeered a situation where, maybe previously, you would have been like, why are you yelling at me on a team call? And totally losing your cool, and allowing someone to cause you to lose your cool. So, I think one of the things that I say to a lot of clients is, anchor yourself in those four Ps. And it takes practice, all of this takes practice.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  But in the end, it's really about showing up for yourself and what serves you, not having other people impose that upon you.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  Well, I appreciate that. It's so valuable and important to have that framework, because we've all found ourselves in that situation where, freeze, you want to punch him in the face, or run away, or whatever.

• 23:52Speaker 02

  Maybe all of the above.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it probably makes more sense.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  Fortunately, we're on Zoom calls, so we don't have to really be violent with each other. But yeah, it's very easy for anybody, and it's all situational. It could be you're having a bad day, it could be, it could have nothing to do with you. One of the other things you have to remember is that, you don't know what's going on in that other person's life, they might have just gotten a really tense phone call from their mother, or their wife, or whomever, and they're bringing that to the meeting, and this has really nothing to do with you. So, another thing is, always, always assume best intention, and give people some grace, give them one, a pass. Somebody gets snarky, just say, all right, I'm gonna let that roll off my shoulders, and see if it happens again. And if it does, then you address it.

• 24:40Speaker 02

  But for the most part, you have to only be responsible for yourself, and how you show up for yourself.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Isn't that the truth?

• 24:51Speaker 01

  And affording others grace, what an incredibly important and difficult thing that is, Frank.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  Oh, God, it's the work of Job. I mean, you know, to give somebody some grace, when all we want to do is rip their head off. But you see, this is the beauty of it. You can want to rip somebody's head off, that's okay. And the other flip side of that, giving somebody grace, guess what? Give yourself some grace. And I talk about this a lot, the neuroscience shows, grace and kindness, or self-compassion, these are not nice to have, they're actually neurologically sound, they help your brain. So, if you're having a hard day, or somebody's gotten the best of you, say, listen, you're doing a good job.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  You know, I know it seems really tough right now, but this is hard stuff, and I'm really proud of you. And practicing that, especially in the mirror every morning when you wake up, this is gonna be a great day, you got this, isn't just, you know, lip service, there's real concrete evidence that people do actually move forward in their day with a more positive outlook. And so, yes, we want to give people grace, but certainly, give yourself some grace.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  That's so true. I mean, we're living in this increasingly more tense and cold, rough world, and giving another human being grace and kindness goes so far, and certainly, we have to be able to extend that to ourselves. So, I appreciate that, Frank.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it's one of those things you need to do more of.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, no doubt.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  Well, Frank, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with you? Where can they get their copy of The Shame Compass?

• 26:43Speaker 02

  Well, you can get The Shame Compass anywhere you buy books, certainly, Amazon, Barnes and Noble. If you want to learn more about me, you can go to my website at frankspinelli.com, and look for me on social media. I've been doing this whole thing with 60 Seconds of Shame on Instagram, you can follow my Summer of Shame, and get some helpful tips, hopefully.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  I've heard about different forms of summer, you know, like, whatever.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  There's no shame in my game, I'm trying to turn it around for everybody.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  Being empowered by it.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  No shame in my game. Dr. Frank Spinelli, thank you so much for coming on. If you enjoyed this as much as I did, show Frank your appreciation, share today's show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas. Pick up your copy of The Shame Compass, where you buy your books, I will link all those in the notes of the show. Learn more about Frank at frankspinelli.com, I'll put that in the notes of the show as well, and then find him on Instagram, and check out the Summer of Shame.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Thanks again, Frank.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  All right, thank you very much.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  Until next time, do your part by doing your best.

• 27:57Speaker 04

  Cool fall nights always make me want to entertain more. A few friends around the table, maybe a fire outside when the sun goes down. Before everyone comes over, I stop at Total Wine & More. Right now, there's a cranberry-flavored wine, a crisp apple wine, even a pumpkin spice cream that's perfect in coffee after dinner. And with the lowest prices, I can bring home a few different fall flavors for everyone to try. Find your favorite fall flavors at the lowest prices at Total Wine & More. Spirits are not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly. Must be 21.

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