Make Your Damn Bed

Practice, patience, and persistence is required to reinforce the neural pathways you'd rather reinforce. Some distress is unavoidable, and you are fully capable of dealing with distress. Balance improving + acceptance. When you feel yourself self soothing with something negative, redirect. Practice creating space between your immediate reaction and your actual response. Show your brain it's safe t...

Coping with stress? No thanks. Avoiding stress? Yes please. I tend to use a combination platter of situational avoidance, numbing, reassurance seeking, over-planning, constant checking, and more! That said, it only creates more of a mess for me down the road. Something that has helped me sit with myself more honestly is to recognize that emotions and uncomfortable feelings come in waves. I can lea...

The more we fear, struggle with, and try to avoid any form of distress, generally the worse that distress gets.  Distress intolerance remains due to certain beliefs they have developed about experiencing negative emotions. These beliefs tend to centre on the notion that negative emotion is bad in some way, unbearable, unacceptable, or will lead to disastrous consequences. These beliefs tend t...

Today's resource is accessible here . A negative emotion in itself is not necessarily distressing, we only begin to feel distressed when we evaluate our emotional experience as a bad thing. Read Julie's Medium Blog . Support JULIE (and the show!) Support + get some bonus stuff over on PATREON . Get an occasional personal email from me: www.makeyourdamnbedpodcast.com Tune in on INSTAGRAM AND YOUTUB...

Seeing traumatic symptoms as an interrupted natural response and as unreleased energy in the body rather than a disease can lift a burden for traumatized people. -  Daniela Ramirez-Duran Noticing Physical Comfort  – Feeling physical support and experiencing your physical boundaries in a safe space can bring feelings of comfort. Self-Soothing Touch  – Boundaries are usually broken wi...

Somatic Experiencing is a therapy that focuses on the mind-body connection to help alleviate trauma-related tension stored in the body. https://positivepsychology.com/somatic-experiencing/ https://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/-/media/CCI/Consumer-Modules/Facing-Your-Feelings/Facing-Your-Feelings---01---Understanding-Distress-Intolerance.pdf Read Julie's Medium Blog . Support JULIE (and the show!) Supp...

You can't outrun 'em, but you can revise your interpretation and your response, and that’s not for nothin’. Access today's episode on Julie's Medium Blog . Shame spirals, or negative feedback loops are chain reactions starting with:  The Trigger: something spurs a sense of emotionally activation or vulnerability; perhaps through a rejection, a crossed boundary, or a mistake. The Story: i...

It’s not about eliminating all sources of shame, but aligning with the confidence that you’re able to handle it effectively.  In the book, Healing the Shame that Binds You by John Bradshaw, he compares shame to a “demonic” presence that takes over our whole being. I think this is a valuable analogy, because the presence leaves very little room for our conscious response, if we don’t recognize...

you're not "finding" an authentic self, but rather, practicing ease and comfort when you feel it. "as soon as she touches the water, she is immediately transformed into the most graceful creature." find the water of your own belonging. John Bradshaw's website . Buy the book, Healing the Shame that Binds You Read the TOXIC SHAME article from Very Well Mind . Read Julie's Medium Blog . Support JULIE...

dealing with rejection can feel impossible for people with internalized, toxic shame. there are rarely absolutes. life exists mostly in the gray area. not all good and not all bad. people will go to extremes to avoid toxic shame, so they will force themselves to make it "either/or" when it may be healthier to think that things are "both/and" it comes back to giving your "true self" unconditional l...

When you make a mistake and feel vulnerable, the best response is to acknowledge and repair. Don't harbor more shame. The mistakes are inevitable. You highlighting them makes the mistake seem like something worth worshipping, not something to learn from. John Bradshaw's website . Buy the book, Healing the Shame that Binds You Read the TOXIC SHAME article from Very Well Mind . Read Julie's Medium B...

stop being so hard on yourself!! YOU ARE NOT YOUR MISTAKES. Mistakes are simply feedback. Listen, take responsibility when needed, and adapt!!!! It's all part of the process. John Bradshaw's website . Buy the book, Healing the Shame that Binds You Read the TOXIC SHAME article from Very Well Mind . Read Julie's Medium Blog . Support JULIE (and the show!) Support + get some bonus stuff over on PATRE...

You really are worth it. There has never been anyone like you. Nor will there ever be anyone like you again. You are unique, unrepeatable and of precious worth. - John Bradshaw John Bradshaw's website . Buy the book, Healing the Shame that Binds You Read the TOXIC SHAME article from Very Well Mind . Read Julie's Medium Blog . Support JULIE (and the show!) Support + get some bonus stuff over on PAT...

common cognitive distortions among shame-based people include: catastrophizing, mind-reading, all-or-nothing or either-or thinking, personalization, blaming, global blaming, filtering, cognitive bias affirmations, control thinking fallacies, "should" thinking, over generalizations, etc. to combat this we must: become active listeners, abandon comparison, abandon "shoulds" and absolutes. focus on c...

Grief work: identify, build awareness, re-route with corrective responses. John Bradshaw's website . Buy the book, Healing the Shame that Binds You Read the TOXIC SHAME article from Very Well Mind . Read Julie's Medium Blog . Support JULIE (and the show!) Support + get some bonus stuff over on PATREON . Get an occasional personal email from me: www.makeyourdamnbedpodcast.com Tune in on INSTAGRAM A...

Shame spirals tend to attach themselves to certain triggers or anchors we have created from our past experiences. If we are able to create safe, corrective anchors to attach to these triggers, we can avoid the spirals and instead, learn to ride the waves. John Bradshaw's website . Buy the book, Healing the Shame that Binds You Read the TOXIC SHAME article from Very Well Mind . Read Julie's Medium...

delayed grief is how we end up creating false selves. it's our job to grieve fully, so we can release the attachments to our denial. connectedness, validation, and support are the way through. John Bradshaw's website . Buy the book, Healing the Shame that Binds You Read the TOXIC SHAME article from Very Well Mind . Read Julie's Medium Blog . Support JULIE (and the show!) Support + get some bonus s...

in order to be healed, we must come out of isolation. identity formation is a social process, so unraveling toxic shame is also a social process. - John Bradshaw John Bradshaw's website . Buy the book, Healing the Shame that Binds You Read the TOXIC SHAME article from Very Well Mind . Read Julie's Medium Blog . Support JULIE (and the show!) Support + get some bonus stuff over on PATREON . Get an o...

As long as our shame is hidden, there is nothing we can do about it. “The only way out is through.” "Embracing our shame involves pain. Pain is what we try to avoid. In fact, most of our neurotic behavior is due to the avoidance of legitimate pain. We try to find an easier way. This is perfectly reasonable. In the case of shame, the more we avoid it, the worse it gets. We cannot change our “intern...

"Being nice is primarily a way of manipulating people and situations." - John Bradshaw "Perfectionism flows from the core of toxic shame. A perfectionist has no sense of healthy shame; he has no internal sense of limits. Perfectionists never know how much is good enough. Perfectionism is learned when one is valued only for doing... Condemning others as bad or sinful is a way to feel righteous. Suc...

Our culture does not handle emotions well. We like folks to be happy and fine. We learn rituals of acting happy and fine at an early age. I can remember many times telling people “I’m fine,” when I felt like the world was caving in on me.  Toxic shame is true agony. It is a pain felt from the inside, in the core of our being. It is excruciatingly painful. - John Bradshaw John Bradshaw's websi...

Sometimes, "“I feel shame” comes to mean “I am shameful, deficient in some vital way as a human being.” Shame is no longer one feeling among many, but comes to constitute the core of oneself. Internalized shame creates a frozen state of being. Shame is no longer an emotional signal that comes and goes. It is a deep, abiding, all-pervasive sense of being defective as a person. This core of defectiv...

We can't heal what we don't feel. Unfortunately, one of the greatest powers of toxic shame is that it creates automatic, unconscious defenses: like Idealization, repression, denial, dissociation. So most people don't heal this shame and end up passing it down to their children, through hierarchal power structures, coercion, and denial. Dysfunctional Family Rules : Chaos or Control, Perfectionism o...

The more one experiences shame, the more one is ashamed, and the beat goes on. It is this dead-end quality of shame that makes it so hopeless. But it's not hopeless, it just feels like it. “Without feeling, nothing matters, and with feeling, anything can matter.” - Silvan Tompkins When you internalize toxic levels of shame, you create a "false self" to cope. It takes lots of energy and hard work t...

“Without feeling, nothing matters, and with feeling, anything can matter.” - Silvan Tompkins When you internalize toxic levels of shame, you create a "false self" to cope. It takes lots of energy and hard work to live a false self. John Bradshaw's website . Buy the book, Healing the Shame that Binds You Read the TOXIC SHAME article from Very Well Mind . Read Julie's Medium Blog . Support JULIE (an...