“Understanding Shame + Getting Your Life Back” from Kimberly Snyder
“Understanding Shame + Getting Your Life Back”
Source: Feel Good Podcast (Listen: 35 min)
Contributor: Selena Garcia
“Guilt is related to the actual behavior, but shame means that we think we are bad, we are evil, we are un-loveable.” – Kimberly Snyder
We all stumble; we all mess up. How do we learn from our mistakes, from our behaviors, and let go? How do we offer forgiveness to ourselves, and move through our shame?
Kimberly Snyder answers questions from her community around shame. She’s a holistic wellness coach and meditation teacher who has worked with "dozens of the entertainment industries' top celebrities to help them feel their best, including Drew Barrymore, Kerry Washington, Reese Witherspoon and Channing Tatum, among many others."
While Kimberly's community is primarily female-based and she refers to them as "beauties," the questions, tips, and tools are not gender-focused. They will apply to everyone. Also, regardless of the question, Kimberly's insight in response to each question is much broader. Listen to the full talk.
Questions:
Q1: “I sometimes feel undeserving and isolated from the rest of the world because of an affair that I had a couple of years ago. I’m not sure how to get my life back and feel trusted.”
Q2: “Is there a way to prevent shame, to avoid feelings of despair? In my case it’s how I look, and I’m not happy with what I see in the mirror.”
Q3: “How can I move through shame, instead of trying to numb it? I feel like it’s taking over every part of my body.”
Q4: “Can you share what the difference is between shame and guilt and how to move past these feelings?”
“The funny thing about the past and all the things that we’ve done, it only exists as memories. It’s not here anymore. We continue to beat ourselves up, and we continue to think that we are bad by things that we’ve done that aren’t actually in existence anymore.” – Kimberly Snyder
(4:33) “The funny thing about the past and all the things that we’ve done, it only exists as memories. It’s not here anymore. And so we continue to beat ourselves up, and we continue to think that we are bad by things that we’ve done that aren’t actually in existence anymore.”
(4:54) “The other thing is to really separate the behavior from you. Was it the best behavior? No. But, it’s behavior. The core of you is, and will always be, light. No matter what you do in this lifetime, the core of you is good. The core of you is part of the Devine, part of God. Whatever word you want to use. Nothing can take that away.”
(7:28) “We’re human. We stumble. We do things to each other. And if we hold resentment for anytime anybody has ever slighted us, can you imagine how heavy that burden would be? We forgive others… so we need to give that to ourselves.”
(20:11) “Numbness. We feel so paralyzed that we don’t want to feel so we can just close something off. The problem with closing something off that we don’t want to face is that it stays in our life. It persists. You know the saying ‘what we resist, persists.’ So when we do something.. if there’s a behavior in something that we’ve done, and we feel bad, we start to feel guilt; we want to process that. Because otherwise, it starts to turn into shame which is what we attach to ourselves. Guilt is related to the actual behavior, but shame means that we think we are bad, we are evil, we are un-loveable. We want to really feel the guilt. Feel the feelings that come up. Whatever’s happened or whatever it is, we want to feel it.”
LISTEN TO THE FULL PODCAST (35 min)
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