Untethering Shame

Your kids do not call. They do not visit. They do not show up the way you hoped they would. So you wait. You hope. And sometimes, without meaning to, you guilt. Here is the truth. Healthy relationships do not grow from waiting or blaming. They grow when both people take ownership of how they show up. Your kids are grown, but your part in this relationship did not end. It shifted, and it is still y...

Why do so many people feel trapped in cycles of overthinking, people-pleasing, reassurance-seeking, and fear of abandonment, even when they logically know better? In this episode, Kyira sits down with trauma-informed somatic relationship coach Valerie Rubin to unpack the deep connection between shame and anxious attachment. Together, they explore how anxious attachment develops, why it impacts so...

Is wanting control actually a problem, or is it the rigidity around it? In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, licensed clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha "Sami" Turetsky joins Kyira to explore overcontrol and Radically Open Dialectical Behavior Therapy (RO DBT), a treatment designed for people who hold their emotions in too tightly rather than letting them spill out. Kyira steps into...

Should parents be best friends with their kids? Can my kid be my best friend? My answer is no, and here is why. Being close to your kids is beautiful. But when you try to be their best friend, especially once they are adults, the lines get blurry. Instead of staying the parent, you become a peer. And what feels like closeness to you can actually feel like pressure or a burden to them. Here is the...

What if your anxiety isn't the real problem? In this episode, somatic coach and Healing Embodied founder Chelsea Horton joins Kyira to unpack anxiety as a secondary emotion: the thing we feel when we're afraid of feeling something deeper, like rejection, loss, embarrassment, or shame. Together, they explore why anxiety can feel safer than the feelings underneath it, how to tell the differe...

"I would be so happy if you called more." "You are the only thing that makes my life worth it." These comments sound loving, but underneath they send a message: my happiness depends on you. And that is a burden no child, whether they are 5 or 55, should ever have to carry. Here is the truth. Your kids can add joy to your life, but they cannot be the source of it. Happiness is a...

Mistress Mia is back, and this conversation goes somewhere the first one didn't. Mia is a Transformative Life Coach, Certified Therapeutic BDSM Practitioner, and Sacred Kink & Intimacy Coach. She is also a founding member of the Kink Professional Standards Alliance and the creator of The ARC Protocol™, a self-development program built around embodiment, resilience, and intentional BDSM. In...

Many of us hate to admit it, but aging brings real fears. The worry that you are becoming irrelevant, that your kids do not need you anymore, that you are slowly being left behind. And when we do not face those fears ourselves, they quietly get pushed onto our kids through guilt trips, expectations, and even anger. But here is the truth. Those fears are painful, and they are yours to wrestle with....

What if the heaviness you carry, the quiet sense that you are somehow not enough, was never about a flaw in you at all? In this episode I sit down with Dawna Daigneault , a licensed therapist, trauma-informed care specialist, and the creator of Worth-Conscious Theory , for a conversation that goes far deeper than the usual self-help talk about confidence and self-esteem. Dawna's work is built on a...

Why Don't My Kids Call Me? If you have ever sat by the phone waiting for it to ring, or felt that sting when you realize it has been weeks since you heard from your child, you are not alone. When you ask, "Why don't my kids call me?" what you might really be asking is: Am I being forgotten? Am I becoming irrelevant? Am I losing my place in their life? Those are real human fears, and they are tied...

We all have two versions of ourselves now. The one who sends the perfect, AI polished email, and the one who stumbles through the meeting five minutes later. In this episode I sit down again with communication coach Salvatore Manzi to talk about what that gap is really costing us, and why AI didn't create our shame around communication, it just turned up the volume on it. We get into why a "neutra...

Once you have kids of your own, a hard expectation can show up: that your parents are automatically owed unlimited access to your children, and that everything painful between you and them should be forgotten now that there are grandkids in the picture. If you have ever heard "you're keeping them from me" or "after everything I did for you," and felt the guilt flood in, this one is for you. I want...

"I thought I knew what grief felt like." A year and a half ago, Julie Lucas' husband Tommie left for a work trip and never came home. What she found on the other side of that loss was not the grief she expected — it was the shame of grieving wrong, the guilt of feeling okay, and the strange loneliness of being surrounded by people who love you and don't quite know how to reach yo...

When your parent goes silent... — if a parent has ever shut you out, given you the cold shoulder, or gone quiet to punish you, this episode is for you. We break down why the silent treatment is so powerful, why their silence is not your fault and not your job to fix , and three real scripts you can use to respond without falling into shame. In this episode In this episode of our series on messy pa...

Is it defiance, or is it fear? I sit down with Dr. Bethany Bilodeau (Dr. B) , an expert in human behavior, to talk about why school refusal, meltdowns, and "non-compliance" are almost always a nervous system that does not feel safe, not a bad kid. Your child plants their feet at the front door. They will not get on the bus. They melt down over a spelling mistake, throw the game board, refuse to wa...

You are not behind. That feeling has a source, and it is older than you are. Being single is not just a relationship status. For a lot of people, it carries a verdict built out of family questions, cultural timelines, and a lifetime of quiet messages about what it means to still be on your own. In this second conversation with clinical psychologist Dr. Amanda Lynne Quinby, Kyira goes after where t...

Knowing is not the same as changing. And the personal growth industry has blurred that line for a long time. In this AMA episode, I answer an anonymous listener who has understood exactly what they need for years and still cannot act on it. We get into what is actually happening neurologically, where shame makes the gap wider, and what it genuinely takes to move from understanding your patterns to...

What does it really cost us to play it safe? And what do we do with the weight of regret when we realize, too late, how much of our life we spent protecting ourselves instead of living it? In this episode, Kyira sits down with Telana Simpson , Courage Coach, facilitator, and podcast host based in Johannesburg, South Africa. With two decades of coaching experience and a background in psychology, Te...

Perfectionism Is Not About Being Perfect Perfectionism is not about being perfect. It's about avoiding the feeling of not being enough. In this episode of Untethering Shame , I answer an anonymous listener who wonders why they procrastinate, abandon projects, and only show up when success feels certain. Therapist to therapist: your therapist is right. This is perfectionism, just not the versio...

If I understand my triggers, if I've done the work, why does it still feel so hard? In this episode of Untethering Shame , I sit down with Elizabeth Kipp , Stress Management and Historical Trauma Specialist, Certified Addiction Recovery Coach, Ancestral Clearing Practitioner, and international best-selling author of The Way Through Chronic Pain , for our fourth and final conversation in this serie...

In this episode of Untethering Shame , I answer an anonymous listener who asks: "I have a list of conversations I've been avoiding. With my partner, with a friend, with my boss, some for months, some for years. I know exactly what needs to be said. I can rehearse the whole thing in my head at 2 a.m. and I still can't make myself have them. Why do I keep avoiding conversations that cou...

Why He Says This Is A Waste Of Time "It's not a character flaw, it's a chemical state." In this episode of Untethering Shame, I sit down with Alexander Pujol, a former physician assistant turned performance coach and founder of Quantum Human Performance, to talk about what is actually happening inside a man when he goes cold, shuts down, or tells you the conversation you are trying to have is a wa...

Having a need is not the same as being needy. Those two got conflated so early that for a lot of us they feel identical. They're not. This week's anonymous question: "Every time I try to ask for what I need I either over-explain and justify for twenty minutes, or I say nothing and then explode two weeks later. I was told so many times as a kid that I was too needy that I don't know how to have a n...

"The shame is it usually means curing yourself of yourself." In this episode of Untethering Shame, I sit down with David Bedrick, psychotherapist, teacher, and author with more than 35 years of experience working with trauma, shame, addiction, body image, and chronic symptoms. David created The Unshaming Way, an approach that treats painful experiences as meaningful signals rather than problems to...

Do you carry a quiet, persistent feeling that you are somehow too much for some people and not enough for others, no matter how much work you've done? You are not alone. In this episode, we go beneath the strategies and the affirmations to the place where that feeling actually lives. We tackle a question from an anonymous listener: "I've been in therapy. I've read the books. I've done the work, an...