How Shame, Your Inner Narcissist, Messes With Your Mental Health

We challenge the belief that shame is useful and take aim at the “inner critic,” reframing it as an inner narcissist that feeds on your energy and keeps you small. We share a clear method to cut its supply, regulate your body, and return to authentic choice.

• redefining the inner critic as an inner narcissist
• family roles of scapegoat, golden child, and enabler
• how shame scales into workplaces and politics
• shame versus guilt and why the difference matters
• why “healthy shame” is a myth and a control tool
• the BREAK method to break the trance and disengage
• nervous system anchoring for real-time relief
• shifting from hustle and perfectionism to quiet confidence
• practical examples and outcomes after releasing shame
• resources to go deeper and start today

Grab Emma's free guide, five signs you need to break up with your inner narcissist: tinyurl.com/nottodaynarc. Follow Emma on Instagram and Facebook at trauma.matrix, and read her Substack at trauma-matrix.substack.com. 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Topic Setup
• 1:35 Defining The Inner Narcissist
• 3:20 Family Roles And Systemic Shame
• 6:30 Collective Scapegoating And Control
• 8:45 The Inner Critic As Narcissist
• 11:20 Shame Versus Guilt Clarified
• 15:00 Is Shame Ever Useful
• 18:10 Cultural Roots Of Shame
• 23:26 Parenting, Projection, And Control
• 26:06 Breaking Up With Shame: Core Premise
• 28:46 The BRIKE Method Overview
• 31:36 Refuse, Expose, Anchor, Kick
• 34:26 Addiction To Shame And Immunity
• 36:36 Decision And Practice Over Time
• 39:36 Why Shame Fails As A Moral Compass
• 42:36 Life After Shame: Confidence And Ease
• 46:56 Client Results And Real Confidence

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Alright, warrior. I would feel like the loudest boy in the world lives in your head. And sounds like the lion. Common form dealer and founder of the common. I didn't know that I need it. My laptop. And what to do the moment that a voice starts clocking? We do need to do the title thought as part of how malignant this boy can get. So take care of your nervous system and positive. If you're ready for two o'clock and a psychic gel break, you're in the right place. Oh, you're very welcome. It's nice to have you here. So today we were going to talk about the inner narcissist. And I have to tell you, that's something I have never heard of before. Is that something that everybody has?

SPEAKER_01: 1:44

That's something that I coined myself. So I'm not surprised you haven't heard of it before. It's what's often referred to as the inner critic. And I realize that it ticks every single box off the narcissist, except in this case, the call is coming from inside the house. So inner narcissist is really, and I think we all have it, particularly in Western society, which is very narcissistic and very shame-driven. So I think all of us have it. It's the question to what degree we're aware of it, first of all, and to what degree we're aware that it affects us. And as you might know, narcissism itself is a behavior that's widely seen and regarded as being driven by shame. So people who are narcissistic, they're like, I don't know, Donald Trump or whatever, he's reactive to criticism because he has loads of repressed shame. Like a real confident person doesn't need all that validation from out the outside and doesn't go on the attack when somebody makes a criticism of them. That's actually a lack of confidence. That's actually a lack of that's shame. But it's shame that people are not in touch with, they repress it, they push it down, and it comes up in this narcissism. And what I realized is that this narcissism, we live in a very narcissistic world. We worship narcissists, all our leaders are narcissists, not just in the United States, across the board, all our governments are narcissistic. Just some of them are a little bit nicer, some of them are enabling, some of them are more malignant, some of them are more covert. And what I also realized is when I started to realize how dysfunctional and narcissistic my family is, because I realized that my mom ticks pretty much all the boxes of the covert narcissist. And I also realized that I fit to a T the exact description of a scapegoat, if you know about scapegoating. Yes. So this is something that you have in dysfunctional and narcissistic families, and about it's estimate, it's been estimated that in the United States, about 70 to 80 percent of families are dysfunctional, and that means narcissistic as well. And that would mean that you would have these kind of roles that are basically shame roles. So they have someone who's the scapegoat, and that's basically you're the landfill for all the unprocessed trauma and shame that the family haven't dealt with, it gets dumped on that person, and then you have the golden child. The golden child is the favorite one, the one who can do no wrong. It's also a shame-based role, but they don't get so much, they don't dump that dumped that shame as their identity. And then there are also a few other roles, like the one that I talk about is the enabler. This is often the other parent who watches the abuse, sees the abuse happening, and basically lets it happen. And what I realized when I started to realize this is what happened at my in my family, and I had been the scapegoat. I went from thinking that I was the problem and that it was just me who had the problem to really recognize that this is a systems thing. And also recognizing that it's not just in my family, it's in loads of people's families. And also it fractals out into our government environment where groups of people together, corporations, they have these any kind of organization where you have this hierarchy, you're going to have these dysfunctional systems for merging, the scapegoat, the enabler, and the autocrat, the one who rules the rules very often. You see it in corporations, you see it in communities, you see it in governments, you see it in intergovernment situations as well. And you can see it's clay, it happens in the collective as well. For example, women have been collectively scapegoated. So women were carrying that collective shame. Right now, in many countries, not just in the United States, the current scapegoat for all the repressed shame of many societies is the immigrants. So we're we as a country have all this shame that we haven't processed because shame is something that we can't process. So, what do we do? We find a group and we project all our shame on them in an attempt to get rid of it. So you can see this happening on the personal level, and you can see it happening on a much wider level. It's absolutely everywhere. It's and shame is the kind of coding system of the structure, if that makes sense. The way that these systems operate is through shame. This is how they get people to behave the way they want. Because if somebody is doing something that you don't like, you shame them, and very quickly, usually they stop doing what you don't like if they experience that shame. And what I've realized is the reason why that is, is because we have internalized this system within our own, within our own heads. It's what's called in psychology the inner critic, and we're taught that this thing is a wounded child and we need to send it love and that it's trying to protect us. What I realized from my own experience and from looking at how this thing works is that it actually ticks every single box of the narcissist outside. It's grandiose, it's shaming, it thinks it knows best, it's entitled. It ticks every single box in the DSM, but the call is coming from inside the house this time. And the funny thing is that we're taught to deal with this in a very different way than we are with narcissists out there in the world. So with narcissists out there in the world that we might encounter, we're told to don't engage with them, create the separation, go no contact, don't engage. But with this narcissist that we've internalized, this so-called inner critic, we're told that it's trying to protect you, that it's trying to keep you safe, that it cares for you. I say that's I call bullshit on that because it does not care about you. That that's the same as saying the narcissist person cares about you. No, they're getting narcissistic supply out of you, they're feeding off you. And they'll they'll kick you in the ball, smack you in the face, punch you, and then say they're doing it to protect you. They'll tell you, who are you to do that? You can't be a singer, you can't be a yoga teacher, you can't have that podcast. And then they'll say, I'm just trying to protect you. But the truth is, that's a lie. It's not trying to protect you, it's trying to keep you small and trying to protect itself. And this is a huge gaslight that we're taught to take this thing to therapy and send it love. And that's the wrong thing to do with this thing. We just need to cut it off, recognize that it's not, doesn't have our best interest at heart, and that it's just trying to kill us, basically. It's trying to keep us small and trying to keep us in a little box, and it's putting its comfort above ours. So it has no power. That's the reality. Like narcissists, they have no power of their own, they get all their power from other people. That's why it's called narcissistic supply. That's why they need other people to extract their energy from because they're kind of empty shells. And this so-called inner critic is exactly the same. It's a parasite, it's got no energy of its own, it gets all its energy from you. It extracts your energy by making you dance work, by making you perform, by making you argue and defend yourself from it. It's just taking your energy and getting stronger and stronger. And this thing can also get really pretty malignant. This is why people unalive themselves, because this voice can start saying there's no point in you being here. And what I've uncovered, because I've experienced that myself, I've had a very malignant voice in my ear on many occasions, like from a young age. And what I realized is that without this inner narcissist voice in your ear, I don't believe that people would actually go on to take that action at all. Because I believe that in order to experience that, you need to actually, no matter how bad things are on the outside, you need that voice in your ear saying, you might as well not be here in order for you to take that action. So this is really the key to reclaiming your freedom. We don't need to stop other people from shaming us. We've got to disconnect from this inner voice that's shaming us. And the more we exorcise ourselves of this demon, this parasite, this shell of a thing that's extracting our power, the more we become unshamable and we reclaim our shameless and start living our true authentic self. Because what I've realized is that shame is the opposite of authenticity. If you're carrying shame, you cannot be authentic. It's impossible. Shame inhibits authenticity. It stops you, it tells you you've got to hide, but you're not good enough. You gotta hide yourself, don't let them see you. So if you're carrying shame, you you can't be authentic. It's impossible. So the more we release this shame, the more authentic we can be, the more we can tap into who we really are and reclaim our power.

SPEAKER_00: 11:03

This is fascinating. And I'm trying to wrap my head around it because you're right. I've been taught the exact opposite that it's yourself trying to protect you from the outside world and keep you yes in status quo, but to do that for safety measures. But what you're saying makes a lot of sense. So if that's the case, how do you get rid of that? What is the hope for that?

SPEAKER_01: 11:31

Well, you have got to first of all recognize, and this is the thing, like we're taught by society that you need shame. We're taught that you need shame in order to be a good girl or a good boy. That's the thing. It's even linguistically enforced. If we look at our language for a second, um, you know, this word shameless. You have no shame, Amy. You know, you need shame in order to be a good girl. And this is the this is what we're taught from a very young age that shame is good for you, that you need to feel a certain amount of shame in order to know who you are and to know what's good. And we're conflating, and I really believe that when people do that, they conflate guilt with shame. And guilt and shame are very different things. Guilt is the recognition that I've done something wrong and feeling bad because of that, and shame is the feeling that I am bad, so it's really identity-driven. But the thing is, the evidence doesn't stack up with what we're being taught because when people experience shame, they're actually less inclined to change their behavior and modify their behavior, not more. In the moment, yes, it's very effective. If there's a child here and he's bother bothering me and wanting to shut up, I'll shame him. It'll work very quickly, 99 times out of 100. But in the long term, in the medium to long term, absolutely ineffective because what happens with shame is you contract in on yourself, you become defensive. It puts you into survival mode like no other emotion. And that's why I've identified that shame, it's not a normal emotion at all. Shame is more than just that belief that I'm bad. It's that those beliefs that I'm bad, there's something wrong with me, I'm defective, are actually downstream from what shame is, first of all, because shame is a toxic cocktail of a bunch of different things: self-loathing, fear of your power, disgust, anger towards the self. It's all of these things, like a toxic cocktail of emotions that are turned against the self, and these feelings like I am bad, I'm defective, there's something wrong with me. That stems from that. So we're taught that shame, we're taught that shame is good for you, that we need a bit of shame, but this doesn't make any sense. It's an attack on our own identity, it's an attack on who we are. How can this be good for us? The only thing that shame is good for is the people that want to keep us under control and keep us small. That's it. Shame is not like any other emotion. If we look at anger, if we look at fear, if we look like anger, those two, for example. So anger, somebody's crossed my boundary. I have to say no. Anger is positive then in that case. Same with fear. I get really afraid. There's a car coming, I need to run off the road because fear is positive there. But shame, it has no positive function. The only function of shame is to manipulate or to be manipulated, to keep you small, to keep you in your little box, to stay in your spot and don't move and don't try to be anything else. That's all that shame is good for. Shame is good for the people who are trying people on the top who are trying to keep everyone else down. And shame is very effective at that. But it's not beneficial for, like I said, changing behavior, remedying behavior, all of these things. Shame actually shuts down empathy, you know, and this thing, this why we're kind of gaslit by this belief that you even Brene Brown, who talks a lot about shame, says that if you don't experience shame, that would mean you're a psychopath. And I just really disagree with that perspective. This just shows how normalized shame has become in our society. And people like John Bradchow, who wrote a book about shame as well the years ago, talks about toxic shame, but he also talks about healthy shame. And this is where I diverged from their perspective because from my from what I can see, shame is always bad. It has no positive function except to control, to manipulate, to keep people small, to keep people in their little box, and to not try to be to keep people inauthentic, to keep people under someone else's thumb. That's all shame is good for. So this idea when people talk about healthy shame, I feel like these people are talking from inside the shame cage where shame is normalized and where they've accepted that shame is just what it is to be human. I totally contest that. Shame really was invented by hierarchical societies as a mean mechanism of control. And particularly the individualized form of shame that we see in the Western world, this idea that I'm a sinner and that I have to forgive. This is a very European idea that was really disseminated and brought up to all the world, loads of parts, a lot of parts in the world through the Catholic Church, through Christianity. And if you just think about that idea that of original sin, I'm a sinner and I have to forgive, that's a double bind that you can never get out of. And that's like serious, you are just a sinner. There's nothing you can do. Now, before Christianity came, for example, in Ireland and other places, other hierarchical societies, tribal societies, you you had shame as well. And you see that in Japan and China, but it's a collectivist shame. I call it collectivist shame as opposed to the individualist shame that we see in the West. The collectivist shame is more like the honor shame. So you do something, you bring dishonor on the family, you're shamed for that. But that is that's kind of a little bit different. It's maybe tight slightly less corrosive, although it is very damaging and it does lead to people analyzing themselves and suicides as well, because shame is always it always does that. But it's still by an action something that you've done. So there is in theory the possibility of going back. It's not who you are as a person that's sinful, it's something that you've done that's shameful, and you can potentially go back and make things right. But with this idea of original sin, no such redemption is possible because you're just a sinner, you're just ashamed of a of the because you're human. So that I feel is even more corrosive and damaging than the kind of Asian idea of shame or the collectivist idea of shame that we see out there.

SPEAKER_00: 18:05

Yeah, I would have to agree with you because I'm thinking as you're talking about this, that a small child has no shame in the beginning until it's taught to them. So you don't come into the world that way.

SPEAKER_01: 18:18

I agree with you, but a lot of researchers they point to children who are like hiding and stuff like that and say that's shame. I really feel that's a projection. Babies, like you say, that are born, they experience they're completely shameless. They and when I say shameless, I mean it in the positive sense of the world. They have no shame. They have no shame, they're completely authentic. If they're hungry, they cry. If they need something, they cry. They don't repress their needs. And that's what shame teaches us to do. It teaches you to repress your needs, that you're not good enough that your needs aren't as important as someone else's. And when children hide, they're, I don't think it's all necessarily shame. I think that's a projection from us as a society because we are so shame-infused that we project it everywhere. And children, obviously, they are taught shame. They're taught shame. I mean, they're told you have no shame. They're shamed all the time as a way to get them to behave the way they want. So we're taught this is the way we're we make people do what we want. This is how we're told what to do through shaming. So, of course, they learn shame, but I don't believe that it's that it's inherent to what it is to be human. I believe this is an idea that comes through hierarchical societies and that even in the collectivist form, again, it's always about control and it's always the people on the top that they get to control. It's not really caring for the person that's shamed, it's about the person doing the shaming. Like I said, if I'm shaming a child here, um, I might tell myself, oh, I'm doing it for his own good. I want to keep him safe, but no, I'm doing it for my own comfort. And when I I'm that might be a lie that I tell myself that I'm doing it for his own good, but really my comfort is the priority. And that's always the case with shame. The shamer is the person who takes priority. So it's an egotistical, it's always a manipulation when you shame someone.

SPEAKER_00: 21:33

Yeah, I'm sitting here thinking about my own parenting that I've done with my children, and I have definitely used shame thinking that I was doing the right thing, but looking back on it, you're right, it was for my comfort. So I can see that. Tell me a little bit about once we recognize that in ourselves, how do we eliminate it?

SPEAKER_01: 21:55

Yes. Well, the first thing is to really recognize that shame is not positive, that it never has a positive function. That's really important. Because if you don't recognize that, you're not going to be able to draw the line in the sound. But I do have a system that I teach people to really start breaking up with shame because shame is a collective trance that we're all under. And like I said, I believe that shame is the number one reason why we can't be authentic, why we can't succeed in the world and scarcity and things like that. These are like the foot soldiers of shame. Shame says you're not good enough, and scarcity enforces our scarcity enforces that idea. You don't have enough, you can't have that, you've too little. It keeps you small, basically. So that's the only thing shame is good for. So you've really got to recognize that shame has no positive function, that it doesn't make you a better person. That's really important. That's the foundation piece to really start letting go of shame. Because while you're still holding on to that illusion, you're gonna still think that when you're shaming yourself or when someone that it's can be beneficial for making you a better person. And this is the thing that I have such a problem with that we're collectively taught culturally, like even if you look at the hustle culture, shame affects women immensely because you know, all the things like self-sabotage, procrastination, people pleasing, imposter syndrome, these are all shame at the root. Shame is the root cause, and these are symptoms of shame. Men don't experience imposter syndrome so much, but if you look at the whole kind of hustle culture, you've got to fight, you gotta do it, you gotta show them. This is again very shaming. And the reason why they do it is because it looks good in the moment. And some therapists use shame, some coaches use shame because it looks, it's fast, it's effective, it looks very impressive in the moment, but it has little to no medium to long term efficacy. It's it's short term and it's always toxic, it always leaves that toxic imprint because you're attacking the person rather than attacking the action that they took. So it's very different from guilt. Guilt is that belief that I've done something bad, and shame is that I am bad. So when we feel I am bad, it's like, how do you even start to change your behavior? It, like I said, it impedes that behavior change because it makes you feel it puts you in survival mode, basically, obviously, because your identity is being attacked, and you're probably that voice in your head is shaming you, and it's like, oh, you're not good enough, you've got to hide, you've got to get this is why people in cults get defensive, because again, cults are narcissistic systems, so they have that exact same format and utilize shame. This is why people in cults, when you critique anything about it, they feel personally attacked and may even punch you in the face because they experience that criticism as an attack on themselves. So this is what shame does. And shame, like if we look at what's happening right now in the world, when people have been scapegoated, for example, they have all this shame that they can't digest. And there are two things that you can do with it. You can internalize the shame and put it against yourself and become an alcoholic or an addict or kill yourself, or you can find someone, another target, find another scapegoat. This is why people who've been abused or sexually abused, they often go on to be abusers of themselves because they're carrying all this shame. And the way to get it to give yourself some relief is to find someone else to be the victim to that, find another scapegoat, basically. And you can see that happening in the collective right now. Israel, former scapegoat, former golden child, autocrat now in their own right, and now they found their own scapegoat in the Palestinians and are basically reenacting history now and projecting all their shame on them and trying to kill their shame by committing genocide. So this is shame is a very serious thing. It's not a it's not a joke, it's never beneficial, and yet we're taught in society that it's good for you. So you've got to recognize that it's never ever good for you, and that it's actually it's poison. It's poison, toxic, always, even a little bit, always toxic. So that's important. I can't stress that enough, but I know I've stressed it a lot. But then getting on to the acronym that I have is BRIKE, B-R-E-A-K. So when shame strikes, it hijacks your body. It's like I don't know if you've had a shame attack, but make can make you go feel really hot. It can make you contract in your body. You want to disappear, all that self-loathing. So the first thing you want to do is be break the trance, recognize that this isn't your voice, it's a spell, it's a pattern, it's a trance state. So you've got to catch it, interrupt it, and name it. Recognize that, name it. This is a trance. You don't argue with the trance, you just name it, and that automatically starts to disrupt the loop. So then you go on to R, which is important. This is refuse to engage because when shame comes along, we want to fight with it, we want to tell it's wrong. We want to so Dr. Ramani, who's the expert in narcissists out there in the world, she talks about deep. Don't defend, don't engage, don't explain, and don't personalize. And we've got to do exactly that with this voice in our head. So don't try to defend yourself if it says you've got a big nose or you're too fat or you're looking ugly today, or whatever the BS or you've got cellulite, whatever the BS it's spouting, don't try to defend yourself, don't engage or explain or make just say not today. You've got to just cut it off because it's a shell, it's got no power without you. Then the third one is E expose the lie. This means call out the shame-based programming. So if it's telling you that you've got too many wrinkles or you've got a fat ass or whatever it is, that's not that's not true. That's compared to what, you know, this is always about control. This is not truth, this is not your story, and really speaking that truth again disarms its power. So that's E. Then you go on to A. Like I said, shame takes you out of your body, it hijacks you and puts you into survival mode. So you need to anchor in truth. That means come back to your body, feel your breath, plant your feet, say your name and the year, and really remind your nervous system. You can even touch yourself, you know, I'm soothe yourself like this. I'm safe, I'm sovereign, I'm here. And then finally, Kay, kick it out. You can physically stomp it out, shake it out, say it aloud. This is not mine. And you do not have to take the shame. Shame is a choice, it's an unconscious choice. We need to have this inner narcissist in our ear agreeing with it in order to experience shame. I was talking to someone in a podcast a few weeks ago. They were talking about their aunt when she was a child, she was eating ice cream, but she was a little bit of a plump plump child, and she was with her friend, and some adult went up to her and said, You shouldn't be eating that ice cream, you'll get fat. And these girls they could have experienced so much shame, dropped their ice cream and left. They laughed in his face, they laughed in his face and continued eating the ice cream. So, this is the thing: you do not have to engage with shame when someone tries to shame you, or when the voice in your head or that shame entity tries to shame you, you do not have to take it. You dis that is not you, and that's important, that's why I call it the inner narcissist. We're taught that this thing is a wounded child, that it's you. I'm telling myself that I'm stupid. No, it's not you, it's your narcissist, it's this parasite that you've been carrying around, and that really helps you take back your power from it. But you never have to let yourself be shamed. What I'm saying is that shame is a habit, it's an addiction that we as a society have. It's an addiction, we're addicted to shame. And we need to unaddict ourselves collectively, but we can start individually, and that's a very that's a power move because, like I said, the more we exercise this shame demon, the more we immunize ourselves from shame. We become more and more shameless, we become unshamable, and that means we become more authentic, we become more true to us ourselves, we stand in our truth, nobody can push us around and manipulate us anymore. We become that light for other people, and there are very few people out there in the world who are living without shame in the true meaning of the word.

SPEAKER_00: 31:00

Yeah, I gotta tell you, I love this because it gives more hope, if you ask me, that you could get rid of that because it's not part of you, it's yeah, its own being. So, yeah, that's me. Do you know? Notice that when people try to go through this, does it fight back harder to stay alive? You know, that inner narcissist when you first start trying to get rid of it? Well, it's a practice, I'll be honest.

SPEAKER_01: 31:29

It's a simple process. But if you've been practicing shame and feeding it, feeding this beast or whatever you want to call it, this parasite for 30, 40, 50 years, it's got a bit of momentum, right? So you've got to really make a decision. That's really what it is. You've got to make a decision. It's not good for me. I'm not doing this anymore. That's important. But without that decision, nothing is going to work. So you've got to make that decision for yourself and decide that you want to live without shame. And that's it's kind of radical because we're, like I said, we're taught everywhere that shame is good for you, that it keeps you being a good person. And what I'm saying is the exact opposite, it's 180 degrees from that. I'm saying shame is the root of all our I can't say all our problems, because someone is going to say, what about this? But so many of the problems, mental health issues, issues in the world, we can trace them back to shame. Shame as the originator, our major driver of this dysfunction. So we need to cut this off. This is no good for us, and this is bad for us as human beings and a society. Living from shame, it's only good for the people who want to keep us down and the people at the top. When because when we're living out of shame, we feel small, we feel powerless, we feel like we can't, we feel helpless, we feel hopeless, and we don't do anything to change our situation. That's what that's what shame does. It puts you into freeze mode. How is that help you change your behavior? It makes no sense. But like I said, it's because shame has been so normalized as a as a as particularly in Western culture, that it's been normalized, and the people just see it as something that of what part of what it is to be human. And I've realized that no, no, shame has no positive function. You don't need it, not ever, not even a little bit, not even children, never. You don't need shame to be a good person. Shame makes you worse person every single time.

SPEAKER_00: 33:35

So I'm wondering, you've got this process you call it break, right? Yeah, what happens to someone when they're going through this? Have you actually done this with yourself and done this with others?

SPEAKER_01: 33:49

Yes, yeah, I have done it with myself and done it with others. And yeah, it's really empowering because in the moment when shame might come and tempt you, but in the moment you say, No, not today, bitch. Not today. And you when you really recognize that this is not your protector, that it's not coming to help you, that it has zero benefit whatsoever. And this is the key, because we've been all brainwashed to think that shame will make you better, or if you beat yourself up enough and whip yourself on the back, this is the kind of Christian penance thing. We've all been taught that if we beat ourselves up enough, that we'll become better. And it's the actually the opposite is true. If you're training dogs, it does work. If you're training animals, it does work to use torture, but much better to use. I mean, it's much better to use the carrot and not the stick. But we've been taught this way. And we need to, we're under this trance that this is the only way. And if we do something bad, I was talking to someone the other day, and he was taught this is he was told by his therapist that it's good that you feel shame because you've done so many bad things. So this is the conventional wisdom out there that you need shame if you've done bad things in your life. Shame is seen as a moral compass. And I completely contest that. I think it's absolutely a flawed premise. That's what it is. So it's a flawed premise, it's coming from a completely flawed premise, and it's counterproductive in helping people to transform, to recognize that they've made mistakes, as we all have, and we've all done bad things to other people, we've all hurt other people, but we don't need shame to remedy those mistakes. And this is the kind of this is what's being pointed to by people who defend shame. They're saying that you need shame in order to recognize that you've done something bad. You don't. You need more empathy. That they say that you need shame to know that you're not God. You don't. That's humility. Shame doesn't do that. Shame just makes you shrink up into little ball and die. We don't need shame for never. It's never beneficial, but it's just been so normalized that even therapists and counselors and coaches talk about it as if it's some kind of moral compass when that is a complete fabrication of our society, always designed to manipulate people and keep people small.

SPEAKER_00: 36:15

Wow, I gotta tell you, like I said, I'd never heard of this before, but I'm getting my head wrapped around it, and I totally agree with what you're saying. I wonder, people that go through this, can you tell me about the kind of life they have once they have battled this shame and this inner narcissist, and they've come to a place where they're not fighting with it anymore? How is life different?

SPEAKER_01: 36:44

Well, you become empowered, so you go from like totally disempowered by being controlled by this voice, by feeling like, oh my god, I can't pick up the phone, I can't do this thing, by feeling helpless within your own life to feeling empowered. And when you address the shame, then there can be like other things like scarcity. It's like the enforcer of shame. So that can also be a piece that's left after you address these main shame pieces. But yeah, the more you eliminate shame, the more you can manifest the life that you want. Because shame is basically an anchor that keeps you, it's very low vibration, it keeps you stuck. This is why people, when they're trying to visualize and do affirmations, a lot of times they don't get the results they want. Oftentimes because they're carrying so much shame that says you don't deserve it or you can't have it, or you know, that that cocktail of stuff that I talked about, even if they're not consciously aware of it. And lots of us are carrying shame and we're not consciously tuned into it, but it's there in your energy and it's affecting you, even if if you don't know it's there. One example of a lady that I've worked with, she's a personal trainer, and she was really struggling to get people into her program and to say yes to her, and they were arguing with her on the price constantly. After I worked with her on these issues, she said she found it so easy to get people in. She was really struggling, and she went from a place where people were trying to negotiate with her on price, where not one person were just saying yes without trying to negotiate with her. And she was using the exact same script. I didn't change her script one bit. She was using the same script, but the difference was she was showing up as a different person, she was showing up more confident in herself because true confidence, again, it's the opposite of shame. You can't experience shame and experience true confidence. You can experience false pride, which is what narcissists experience. That's why they get triggered and then they get angry and defensive when someone triggers shame because they're it's all built on um, it's all built on sand, the image that they've created, or the self-image they've created, the pride, the false pride. But real confidence isn't like that. Real confidence is quiet. Real confidence, I don't need to prove anything to you. No, I I know I'm great. I don't need to tell you or talk to you about how great you feel that you you it's in my energy. You don't, I don't need to go and brag about it. That's a sign of a lack of confidence. So you go from that to from trying really hard from struggling to surrendering to really starting to trust yourself and to let go of and to start just floating and being receiving things in life rather than feeling like you have to struggle and fight for things. So there's a lot more ease, there's a lot more flow, there's a lot more trust in yourself and in other people, and just generally feeling lighter, not even no matter what's going on, and life isn't perfect, life has ups and downs, no matter if you have shame for a heavy dose of shame or not, but you deal with it in a different way, you deal with it in a confident manner. So instead of beating yourself up, oh, why woe is me? Why is this happening to me? And staying in that hole for days, weeks, months, years going into depression. I've been depressed, I know about this from personal experience. Shame is a massive driver again of depression. I don't think I certainly couldn't have been depressed without the shame that was driving it. So yeah, when you're free of shame, you just don't care what anyone else thinks. You're just living for yourself, you're free. It's really the only the only way that you can be free when you're free of shame. You don't care what other people think of you. And again, it's a process, it's you're leaning into this every day. So you're releasing layers of shame, and maybe something will happen, and you might you feel but you'll recognize the shame and you'll be able to release it. Shame will never have the same hold on you that it used to have, you know, back in the day where shame basically ruled your life. So it's about this is about taking back your power wholly and completely from shame, because we're all being manipulated by shame. We think we're free, but we're operating out of trauma responses. We think we're making choices, but if we if you're operating out from shame or from trauma, and again, shame is one of the main things that keeps trauma going down through generations, are why animals experience trauma, but they're not still thinking about it and wondering about it 20 years later. Human beings do, and the difference is shame is a huge driver of that. So without shame, we won't hold on to things so much, we won't take things personally. If people reject project shame on us, we'll be like, return to sender. I'm not taking that. You can take your gift back, and this is the real power move in all of this. It's quiet, but it is super powerful. It's the it's the ultimate power move, maybe not a flex because other people aren't necessarily seeing it, but people will notice it in your energy 100%. You will be a different person.

SPEAKER_00: 42:06

That sounds wonderful to have that new energy and that new confidence and all of that. And honestly, you explain this so well. Do you have a book or anything out there?

SPEAKER_01: 42:16

Yeah, the book is something that I do have a book in my head, but at the moment I have a Substack, so I've been writing a lot on Substack. So you can find me there, trauma matrix.substack.com. So that's where you can find my writings about shame. And yeah, really feel like this if people, if we as a society take this on board and step out of shame, this can be a massive game changer, not just for individuals like you and me, but for us as a collective.

SPEAKER_00: 42:47

Definitely. I can see it making a huge difference in how everything's run. So if someone wants to work with you, how can they find you other than Substack?

SPEAKER_01: 42:57

Yeah, you can reach out to me on my socials. I'm trauma.matrix on Instagram and everywhere on Facebook. Um I also have a free gift for you guys, so that's probably a great place to start. The free gift is five signs that it's time to break up with your inner narcissist. So this is for people who are listening and thinking, that's me. I have that going on. Maybe I need to do something about it. Maybe you're raising your hand. So this gives you five classic signs that this narcissist is really ruling your life and you're not free. And also gives you tools and strategies to start taking your taking back your power from it. But really, the first step is awareness. And if you've been woken up by this conversation today, I encourage you to do that because I mean it's all very well to listen to good conversations, but you've got to act on that if you really want, if you're really serious about changing your life. And this is a free step for you. It's a free gift, so definitely check that out. You can find it at tinyurl.com forward slash not today narc N-A-R-C. Not today narc.

SPEAKER_00: 44:06

And I will put that in the show notes too, so everybody can just find it easily. And I gotta tell you, I'm gonna be looking at it because this has totally woke me up, and I totally am sitting here thinking, oh my gosh, that's why I'm not getting ahead with the things I want to move ahead with, is that shame is holding me back. So yeah, I'll be getting it.

SPEAKER_01: 44:26

Shame is the root of perfectionism, procrastination, all that stuff. These are symptoms of shame. And like, why it why if you're just trying to address the symptoms, it's like you're just playing whack-a-mole with a bunch of symptoms. Shame is the root cause. So we've got to go to the we've got to go to the cause if we're serious about transforming these things.

SPEAKER_00: 44:45

I'm with you, and I totally appreciate you coming on today, Emma, and letting us all in on this because I think this needs to, I don't know if you need to do a TEDx talk or what you need to do, but everybody needs to hear this. So thank you.

SPEAKER_01: 44:59

Yeah, I think it's a it's an empowering message. It's not shaming, it's giving people back their power.

SPEAKER_00: 45:05

Yeah, definitely. I love that. All right, is there anything that you'd like to leave our audience with today, other than this wonderful gift? Any last words?

SPEAKER_01: 45:15

Well, I would say stop letting shame rule your life and take back your power. Yeah, you can do it, you deserve it. It's you weren't born for this. You weren't born to be a slave of shame. And it's nothing without you. The that that inner narcissist, it's got nothing. It's an empty, it's a parasite. It you don't stop coddling it, stop sending it love, stop taking it to therapy and take back your power. I love that.

SPEAKER_00: 45:44

All right, thank you, Emma. Thank you. If this conversation lits something up for you, here are your next brave steps. Grab Emma's free guide, five signs you need to break up with your inner gnar. The link in the show notes. Go print it, highlight it, talk back to that voice, and take your power back. Follow Emma on Instagram and Facebook at TomaMaker. And read her writing on Facebook, which I've linked in the notes. Share this episode with someone who's tired of the people. Put in the same company together. And if you want to get some help method, you can always find the football for the first method. Remember, the same boy is a fancy. It has no power without words. Name it, say nothing. Fill your feet, say your name, every year, and come back to you.