Welcome back to another episode of The Self-Confidence Project with Kimberly. Today, we explore the emotion of shame, uncovering how it may hurt your dating and relationship experiences. Discover how shame manifests in your behaviour, affecting eye contact, emotional expression, intimacy, and self-worth. Kimberly shares practical steps to overcome shame, including acknowledging its role, making better choices, and combating negative self-talk. Tune in to reclaim your self-worth and build healthier, more fulfilling relationships.
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With love, Kimberly
Here’s the transcript
Hey guys. Welcome back to another episode of the self-confidence project. I’m your host, Kimberly, and I’m excited to be bringing you guys another show this week. Um, today we’re going to be talking about. Shame. We’re going to be talking about the emotion of shame. And understanding why and how this particular emotion. That you might be familiar with and you might feel is actually. Holding you back more than you think in your dating and relationship experiences. So we’re going to talk about really know what shame is today.
And then I want to share with you very specific. Ways that shame can interfere in your dating life. So manifestations of shame and your behavior and things you might do or not do as a result of feeling this very strong emotion. So. This is a subject that probably a lot of us are going to be quite familiar with. And, uh, so it’s relevant and important that we dive into it today.
Now, before I do that, of course, just want [00:01:00] to say thank you very much for tuning into another episode of my podcast. I’m recording this for many years now. If you’re new to the show, welcome aboard. So while the wacky journey we’re on talking about all things, life dating and relationships. And, um, for those of you that have been listening to my show for, for some time now, thank you for your support and coming on back. I mean it from the bottom of my heart. Um, I just recently started recording me doing the podcast, which honestly guys, it’s, it’s funny, it’s a, it’s different to, um, Um, just kind of intimately talk to them, Mike, then intimately talk to them like, and to know that your facial expressions are going to be shown to the world as well.
But I know a lot of people like to consume content in different ways and YouTube is a great spot and this is a great way to. Um, for you guys to also get to know who I am a little bit, because in the podcast, I. I’m a very much my genuine self. And that’s important when you’re, you know, when you’re watching this type of content and you’re listening to people that consider themselves to [00:02:00] be influential. You know, or coaches. Um, you want to know that that person is actually like a true person that they’re genuine when they’re. Sharing advice and thoughts and perspectives with the worlds that they’re, they’re not doing that with a weird, hidden agenda. Um, so I just really appreciate you guys being here and, um, and, and listening to my perspective, which certainly is not the only perspective that you should be listening to if you’re coming here because you enjoy some dating and relationship advice.
That’s awesome. And I have some, I do believe that I have some really great content and really good perspectives to share with you all. Um, but I’m not the only person you should listen to on this subject because truthfully sometimes complex and challenging topics. Um, only really land and resonate with us when we’ve heard them. In different ways from different people.
And, um, but I am glad you’re here and I am glad that you’re tuning into today’s show. So, so let’s, uh, let’s dive in with how much further and do what the heck is. Shame. [00:03:00] What is this feeling of shame? A lot of people think of shame and embarrassment and guilt as the same kind of thing. But there is some distinction between them now, shame is that. Heavy. Sinking feeling that you get when you believe you’re. Falling short of. Your own expectations in life and you’re falling short. Of other people’s expectations of views.
We feel shameful when that happens and it’s more than just a feeling of. You know, feeling bad after you’ve made a mistake. That is more in alignment with the emotion of guilt. But rather shame is this deep sense of unworthiness that can really borough deeply into your thoughts. And you can feel shame. When you’re out. In the world, you can feel shame when you’re. In a group [00:04:00] of people that you love, but you can also feel a lot of shame when you’re alone with your own. Thoughts. And so if you’re familiar with feeling shameful at certain points in your life, or maybe as you’re listening to me, you’re like, I have a lot of that right now in my life.
Um, what I want to talk to you about is how that might negatively be impacting your dating life, your relationship experiences. And then I do, of course, towards the end of this show, just want to share, like, I typically try to do a couple of ways for you to think about this. Maybe some action steps that you can take to, um, Raise your own.
Self-worth reduce that amount of shame that you feel because my goal and my mission with, with everything I do in, in this business and in my life too, is really to help people feel better about themselves. Because look, I mean, honestly this journey started for me because I wanted to feel better about myself.
And so I embarked on a lot of learning and a really big [00:05:00] transformative journey. And it’s my pleasure to be able to share parts of that with you guys. Um, and hope that this content supports you guys and makes you feel better when you listen to this, it makes you feel less alone. And gives you tips and tricks and secrets and hacks.
So just like. Having success in dating and with relationships now. How has shame impacting your dating life? Right. If you’re feeling shame. Well people that experience a lot of shame, struggle making eye contact because. Well, if we really don’t believe deep down that we’re.
Worthy. It’s really hard to make. Eye contact with somebody because that is literally the window into your soul. So if someone is looking in your eye, it’s like, they’re going to know that you’re feeling shame. So you better not let them see into your truth. And so we avoid this eye contact when we feel shameful. [00:06:00] And.
Inadvertently what this does on your dates in particular with women is it can come across as disinterest. It can come across as lack of confidence, which is actually a pretty accurate representation of what’s going on there. But unfortunately, if you’re unable to hold eye contact or make appropriate eye contact, then a woman who’s on a date with, you might think. He really doesn’t find me that interesting, or he’s really not engaged on this date, or he seems to be somewhere else in his mind. And fast forward to any intimate relationships you might have with women.
If you’re having tough conversations and you can’t make eye contact. Um, you’re gonna really lack that attunement and connection. That’s really important for you guys to feel safe, to resolve issues. So shame will interfere in your dates in the way of avoiding eye contact, which is really important to, to make genuine.
I [00:07:00] contacted develop, um, Those genuine connections now. Shame will kind of creep into our relationships. And dating experiences where by you start to over analyze. Everything. You start to overanalyze those perceived rejections. You start to dwell on all of your past rejections with women or your perceived rejections with women. And all that does to you in your own mind as it reinforces that you’re not good enough reinforces that. You know, this feeling of shame is accurate for me. And what that’s going to do is when we rehash all those negative experiences further by exacerbating the shame that we’re already feeling, um, that impacts the.
The actions you take next.
So if you’re feeling really shameful, you’re probably not going to ask that girl out on a date, take her out. Um, you’re going to walk to go grab a coffee down the [00:08:00] road, and you’re certainly not going to feel like approaching that woman on the street. So shame will cause you to overanalyze. And reinforce your own shame and therefore it will stop you from taking particular actions that a person who isn’t weighted down by shame would do. Of course, this also manifests in a difficulty to express your emotion.
So if you’re really fearing judgment because of memory or going back to shame, is that really heavy feeling when you feel like you’re falling short of your own expectations? Or the expectations of others. So if you’re on a date and you think shit, I’m not living up to this woman’s expectation. Then you’re not going to open up.
So you’re going to struggle to actually express your emotions. And what’s going to happen here is when you can’t connect emotionally or on a deeper level. It leads to sh those shallow type of relationships that aren’t what you’re seeking, or it leads to having very distant relationships. So if you’re like, [00:09:00] oh, I love long distance relationships, or it’s great.
If a woman is a couple hours away in another town, Uh, ask yourself why that is. Is that like a protection mechanism from the fact that you don’t feel like you can really exist in a relationship with more closeness? Now Shane is going to impact you. It’s going to sneak into that life of yours, where you believe that you’re not worth a greater or healthier partner.
So you settle for less. And it can shame will so deeply convinced you. Right that you do not deserve a healthy, loving relationship. It’s going to really reinforce the belief that you need to settle for someone. Um, Less than what you hope for subpar. Right, or it will encourage you to kind of accept poor behavior because you just don’t think you’re worth more. So you settle for less.
So shame is like, oh, I wasn’t going [00:10:00] through this. I just feel this heaviness, you know, for people that, that really are experiencing heavy levels of shame in their life, because it. Really really negatively impacts. Your self worth and how you show up in this world, the emotions we feel about ourselves, honestly, like. Or the starting point for most everything we do in our lives and the emotions we feel are very directly related to the thoughts that we are having.
So the quality of your thoughts and how you analyze and perceive the world around you and perceive yourself. Um, some of that is going to have been taught to you by your childhood. So if you come from a really unfortunate, broken home where your worth was not reinforced by the people around you, then you you’ve had a. Uh, years of learning, how to think. Critically and negatively about yourself, but the good news here is that because it’s a learned skill, you can unlearn it and you can learn to have more positive thoughts.
We’ll talk about that very briefly at the end here. So. How [00:11:00] else does shame sneak into negatively impact your dating experience as well? You’ll struggle with intimacy, because if you feel ashamed about your face, ashamed about your body, ashamed about your job, a shame that you deal with mental health issues, ashamed that you. Don’t have as many friends as you wish that you had, or you feel ashamed that you’re not making the kind of money you want to make, or very commonly guys, you feel ashamed that you’re divorced. You feel ashamed that your relationship didn’t work out?
That for some reason, All the fault lies on your shoulders as to why you weren’t able to maintain a loving relationship with somebody and that shame. Follows you like a ball and chain into your dating profile, into your dating experiences. So you end up struggling with intimacy. Don now, mom. Struggling with animacy because. You’re feeling shamed about who you are.
And of course, shame manifests into shame about our body, what [00:12:00] we look like, so that it’s going to sneak right into the bedroom and impact your sexual performance because you know, you’re, you’re not feeling good in your own skin and you’re in your body suit, right? So it’s going to strain your relationships because you’re going to struggle and avoid intimacy and like. And like avoiding eye contact.
If you struggle with intimacy, you will struggle to create the deep connections that you know, healthy partners are really looking for. So women might think, wow, he’s avoiding intimacy with me and he’s not looking at me. He, he doesn’t like who I am. He doesn’t feel connected to me. I’m getting all this.
Disinterests when really at the end of the day, you’re loving her and craving that you just. Can’t demonstrate it. You can’t show it. Now shame’s going to. Rock up your life to, in your inability set boundaries. So if you don’t feel worthy, then it’s really hard to assert yourself. It’s really hard to say, no, I don’t want to be treated that way or excuse me, I’d like to more consistent [00:13:00] communication or can you pick up the clothes that you dropped on the floor or, you know what, it’d be really nice. Nice.
If you would come to dates on, on time, they said I planned for you, right? You’re going to find it really hard to assert yourself.
So you’ll end up feeling more used and more under appreciated, which is why. Shame is a really powerfully toxic. Negatively impacting emotion. So, this is why it’s so important to talk about the city, because man, in this five years of working with men, I see a lot of men walking around with a lot of guilt and shame on their shoulders.
I mean, don’t quote me on this, but I arguably would say that men walk around with more shame than women do. Maybe that’s because I have more exposure to working with men. I don’t know. That’s just, that’s just what I, I feel. And what I’ve witnessed. So. When you feel this deep sense of [00:14:00] shame. Um, You know, you have this fear of being judged all the time.
It leads to trying to do other things to compensate for that. So you can get into a lot of people, pleasing behavior. Um, maybe you. Lavish her with gifts because you think that that’s going to make her love you, or you cancel things that are important to you to spend time with her, or you. Totally dismiss and invalidate your own feelings because you just don’t want to frustrate your partner or like even cause a conflict.
So. You suppress your own needs, wants wishes and desires to please someone else which ends up leading you into a cycle of resentment and burnout. And you just think, how come I can’t manage healthy relationships? Or why am I always being taken advantage of, um, because there’s so much fear of judgment.
There there’s so much people pleasing there. Um, which is really bad strategy. Right. So.
Point here is that shame [00:15:00] really seeps into almost every single corner of your dating experiences. And there’s more things that I can go through here. Um, but what I do want to share with you and leave you with. Is how do you start to overcome shame?
Because it’s not, uh, it’s not a magic wand solution.
It’s not a click of the fingers. And all of a sudden your shame is gone. Shame is something that, you know,
Can take a long time to build up and ourselves because we’ve had. A bad childhood or we don’t have the tools and the skills to talk positively about ourselves, or we don’t know. You know how to combat the thoughts or the subconscious psyche that we have that kind of reinforces that, you know, I’m not, I’m not worth. Um, I’m not worth a healthy relationship right now.
The worst relationship experience I ever had. The worst decision I made in my own partner [00:16:00] selection. I was when I felt. Shame in my life. And this was when I had left my corporate career and I had worked. I can’t remember now I was like nine or 10 years in financial derivatives and there’s ego associated with a job like that.
And I was young and I was making a lot of money and I was living in cool places. And. I associated my identity with that so much. And when I, I made the decision to quit. Okay. Without something else lined up, I made the decision to leave that. Career. Because I knew I wanted to pursue coaching, but I hadn’t started yet. I had this in between period in my life where. I felt a lot of shame. And I remember actually thinking, okay, I’m going to move.
I was living in Singapore at the time I quit my job there. I decided to quit. And I was with a partner at the time we weren’t going to quit together and we’re going to go travel year when we did do that. And we realized we’re not compatible for each other. We both were [00:17:00] experiencing a lot of shame in our lives.
We were experiencing a lack of clarity of where we were headed. We couldn’t decide where in the world we wanted to live together. And so. We parted ways. This isn’t the story about my breakup, right? So when that happened, I was out of my career. I was now out of a relationship and I didn’t even know where I was going to establish roots or live.
So I came back home. I came to the only place where my family was, which is Vancouver, BC. And I said to myself that I’m, I’m going to be successful on, I am going to start a really impactful business. But it takes time to get there. And so I remember feeling really shameful because I said, I’m going to go become a server, a waitress or waiter whenever you want to call it at a restaurant while I, so I can work some hours at night and in the daytime, I’m going to focus on building my coaching practice.
And I remember taking that job. At a restaurant here. And I remember serving [00:18:00] people and feeling shame. I felt shame because I was perceiving, and this is not, this is not true about these jobs, but I was perceiving my self worth to have dropped like 15 nauseous. I was feeling shameful in. And where I was and in my position in life. And what did I do?
I made a really poor selection. For a partner for me, because I was focusing on the wrong values. Aye. I didn’t believe that I was worth something better than what I chose and this person, if they were here talking to me about that would probably say that they. Shouldn’t have picked me either that I wasn’t right for them.
And so when you’re at a point in your life where you’re experiencing a lot of shame, you make bad decisions because you don’t think you’re worth making better ones. So I know what that feels like. And. And, um, and I had to, I [00:19:00] had to face that shame and navigate through it and realize that. Every chapter of your life is not a chapter where you’re on top of the world. And so shame is the thing that can come and go.
But for some people it’s just this constant part of their lives. And that is like a part of their body part of who they are. So. How do you start to overcome this shame? Well, firstly, you need to acknowledge the role that shame is playing in your life. Like I was finally able to acknowledge that because I was feeling a lot of shame about my job.
And I was feeling shame about who I was choosing to spend my time within my life. I had to acknowledge that that is where I was at and that I’m responsible for the choices that I am making. And then this emotion was not helping me. So once. Once I recognize that I was able to start making better choices and it wasn’t a night and day thing.
It was, yes. Okay. I believe that I’m capable of doing this. So I signed up for a [00:20:00] certain course and then I, you know, went and networked at a different day and you know, those cumulation of better choices led to a better result in my life. And so if you want to begin to overcome shame or any particular emotion that is causing you distress in your life and is holding you back in some way, then you need to start by acknowledge. Acknowledging that it exists and that it is playing a unhealthy role in your life.
That acknowledgement is a massive, massive first step. Because when we are not consciously aware about something and how it’s impacting us, you can’t do anything about it because you’re not actively engaging in your life. So acknowledging that you might be experiencing this. And that it’s playing a role in your life is really important.
Little caffeine to keep going.
And then what you can do is you can begin the journey of.
Making better choices and combating those [00:21:00] negative beliefs. Now, how can you make a better choice if you’re mindful? This is what I I’m thinking you can do right now. It’s having this thought in the moment.
We make a lot of decisions really quickly and really automatically in our lives. And sometimes that works out for a lot of us that can be very impulsive, make quick decisions, and it can be really happy about the choice I made with that decision. But oftentimes like, Reflect back and go. What was I thinking when I made that choice?
And sometimes I wasn’t thinking I was just responding, reacting. We’re reacting, not responding. Right. What I want you guys to do is respond to. Your thoughts and your decisions. So. The context of dating.
If you acknowledge that shame is playing a role in your life. And you say, if shame you write down in your journal of shame is playing a role in my life. Then the shameful version of me is going to do X, Y, Z. Right. To acknowledge how this is impacting you. And then you can say the [00:22:00] not shameful version of me.
I eat the confident self-assured. Self-worth. Version of myself would make this decision and you start to.
Look at other perspectives on how you can make different choices in your life based on your emotions and the way you think about things. So you can ask yourself, well, what would the confident version of me do in this situation?
Right versus the shameful version of me. So that’s going to help you start to understand the different actions that you can take. And then there’s the journey of combating negative self-talk and critical. Thinking. And we can do that through something called thoughts, substitutions. So when you are having a conscious thought of, wow, I don’t like. Oh, this doesn’t feel good.
Or this girl doesn’t like me on the date of this. Woman’s not interested in me. [00:23:00] That’s that. Like negative self-talk that’s just rolling in your mind. If you are mindful in the moment where you say, okay, I recognize, and I’m having a negative thought cycle about myself. What would I like to say instead? Okay.
Cause you can’t. Stop yourself from having thoughts. Right, but you can choose how you want to respond to them. So you’re having a lot of negative thoughts in your mind about.
Yourself and how people are perceiving you and the experience you’re having on dates or dating apps or whatever. And you’re you notice this critical self-talk real is going then ask yourself, what would I like to say?
That’s different. That’s more positive, not toxically, positive, not going from, I don’t feel worthy of this relationship to I’m going to have the most magnificent relationship in the universe in all time. That’s probably not going to land for you, but saying something like I am worthy of healthy, loving relationships, and somebody will love me for who I am.
And despite dating, [00:24:00] being difficult at times, I know that I will pull through. And then I will find someone who deeply loves me for who I am, and I am capable of all of this. And when you start to talk to yourself this way, what you are doing is you’re feeding your subconscious positive beliefs because your deeper subconscious cannot tell the difference between a lie and a truth.
So everything that you tell yourself, your body, your soul, your subconscious accepts as fact. So if you’ve got this video playing in your mind, All the time about how you’re not worth it and that you’re not attractive. And that things don’t work out for you and dating apps are hard and dating in this city is too difficult and, and I’m too short and fat and old and bald.
And I feel shameful about who I am then. That’s what you believe that is the belief you continuously feed yourself. So instead. Feed yourself something positive. Feed your subconscious. A new truth. That you are capable, you are [00:25:00] going to be loved by more than one person and that it is entirely possible for you to have the best experiences in your life.
So, I talk about this a lot. In more depth. Across longer timeframes with my one-on-one clients that are dealing with emotions of shame or negativity, because this is really combating negative. Self-beliefs. So. This the way to start overcoming the shame is to acknowledge the role that it’s playing in your life to consciously ask yourself how you want to make decisions based on how you’re feeling step into the shoes of the confident version of yourself.
And when you notice those critical thoughts coming up into your mind, you stop them and you say, what would I like to think differently? And as wacky and as wild and as weird as some of these suggestions might sound, this is what actually works. If you take it seriously. So. So I hope that today’s podcast, uh, around shame it’s impacting your [00:26:00] relationships and what you can start to do to overcome.
This has been helpful. Please send this, uh, episode of someone who you know, is hurting or is struggling in this area of their lives or any area of their life that can be impacted by shame, which is all of them. And I hope that this has been insightful and helpful and is giving you some perspectives to take control of a part of your life that maybe you just have felt. You don’t have control over.
Um, so thank you for tuning in to, uh, to this week’s episode of the self-confidence project. And, uh, look forward to another episode next week, guys. Ciao.
