Untethering Shame

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 difference between normal human nervousness and anxiety that's disproportionate to the moment, and why one small comment can hit like a level ten when it "opens a door" to an old, unresolved story.

Chelsea introduces her "shame sandwich" (shame about having anxiety on top, the anxiety itself in the middle, and the core fear of being fundamentally broken on the bottom). Both women also get personal about parentification, emotional caretaking, money, and the deep discomfort of being cared for without having to earn it.

From a puppy-training binder to a loaf of bread that refused to rise, this conversation shows how conditional worth quietly shapes our relationships, and why saying the shame story out loud creates the space we need to finally question it.

MORE ABOUT CHELSEA

Chelsea Horton is a somatic coach, educator, and founder of Healing Embodied, where she trains wellness professionals and leaders to integrate somatics, creativity, and emotional healing into their work.

After experiencing shame and overwhelming anxiety that fueled self-doubt and overthinking, Chelsea discovered who she was beyond those patterns through her own embodied healing. Today, she helps others explore how embodiment can support their journey toward freedom from anxiety, fear, and shame.

CONNECT WITH CHELSEA

Website: https://www.healingembodied.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/healing.embodied

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@healing.embodied

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@healingembodied

FREE RESOURCE: 5 THINGS SHAME-RESILIENT PEOPLE DO EVERY DAY

Download the free handout and start making daily shifts to break the shame cycle that's keeping you stuck in a negative headspace.

https://adversityrising.com/handouts-all?category=Addressing+Shame

READY FOR MORE SUPPORT?

Book a free 25-minute discovery call to discuss program options and find the support that best fits your needs.

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STAY CONNECTED WITH UNTETHERING SHAME

Subscribe to the podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and leave a review to share your thoughts on this episode.

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2AouludJr7EweOkMIN9s42

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/untethering-shame/id1691795543

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdqCNF8lI6hq8U2GNQsAJkQ

Website: https://adversityrising.com

"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 an inside job.

In this episode I unpack how to reclaim your own happiness and let your kids off the hook:

• Why putting your happiness on your kids pushes them away

• How to build joy that is not dependent on your children

• How to give unconditional love, not love tied to performance

• How to find what makes you feel alive that is fully yours

When you stop making your kids responsible for your happiness, you free them, and you give yourself a fuller life too.

If this resonates and you want to go deeper, book a free discovery call and we will map out your next step.

Book a discovery call: https://calendly.com/adversityrising/discovery-call More: https://adversityrising.com

This is part of my series on messy parent-child relationships. Subscribe so the next one finds you.

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 her first episode, we explored the psychology of power exchange, the Gateway Theory of pain, and how a truly non-judgmental space can unlock healing that more traditional approaches sometimes can't reach.

This episode goes deeper into the shame that brings people to Mia's work.

Mia talks about people carrying profound shame around their bodies, desires, curiosities, and even their need for penance—the feeling that they have done something wrong and somehow need to pay for it.

For many people, especially those from religious or conservative backgrounds, certain parts of themselves were never safe to acknowledge. They learned to hide—not just from the world, but from themselves.

And hiding doesn't neutralize shame. It can feed it.

In this conversation, Mia and Kyira explore:

• How shame rooted in desire and identity shows up in relationships• The impact of religious and cultural shame• Why hiding parts of yourself can make shame grow• The everyday ways we secretly punish ourselves• The difference between healthy and harmful pain• Why Mia sees shame as a core belief rather than simply an emotion• What happens when we stop hiding the parts of ourselves we've been taught to be ashamed of

Whether you've lived with this kind of shame for years, you're a clinician trying to better understand how it operates in your clients, or you've ever felt like part of who you are isn't safe to show, this episode is for you.

MORE ABOUT MIA

Mistress Mia is a Transformative Life Coach, Certified Therapeutic BDSM Practitioner, and Sacred Kink & Intimacy Coach who helps people step into their power, release shame, and claim lives that feel bold, authentic, and deeply their own.

Through The ARC Protocol™, sessions, workshops, writings, and coaching, Mistress Mia offers a grounded yet daring path to confidence, courage, and self-acceptance.

CONNECT WITH MIA

Website: https://thenestontario.comTikTok: @mistressmiapayneInstagram: @callmemistressmiaTelegram: @mistressmiapayneEmail: [email protected]

RESOURCES

Free handout: "5 Things Shame Resilient People Do Every Day"https://adversityrising.com/handouts-all?category=Addressing+Shame

Book a free 25-minute discovery call:https://calendly.com/adversityrising/discovery-call

Episode 1 with Mistress Mia:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaPZmQcEiyk

STAY CONNECTED

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2AouludJr7EweOkMIN9s42Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/untethering-shame/id1691795543YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdqCNF8lI6hq8U2GNQsAJkQWebsite: https://adversityrising.comInstagram: @adversityrising

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. They are not your children's burden to carry. Your kids are not the cure for your loneliness.

In this episode I walk through how to carry those fears yourself and still stay close to your kids:

• Why your aging fears land on your kids as guilt and pressure

• How to name what you are really afraid of

• How to build support and meaning outside of your children

• How to share vulnerability without guilt

Naming the fear is the first step to taking it back and freeing your kids from a burden they were never meant to carry.

If this resonates and you want deeper support, book a free discovery call and we will map out your next step.

Book a discovery call: https://calendly.com/adversityrising/discovery-call More: https://adversityrising.com

This is part of my series on messy parent-child relationships. Subscribe so the next one finds you.

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 radical idea: your worth is a birthright. It is foundational, not earned, and it has to be honored even when the families, communities, and systems around us fail to affirm it.

After more than a decade of research, she reached a striking conclusion. Sometimes depression and anxiety do not come from a chemical imbalance or a hard season, they come from denied self-worth, a pattern that had gone unnamed in clinical practice for far too long.

We get into the distinction almost everyone misses, the real difference between self-worth and self-esteem, and what gets lost when we treat them as the same thing.

We talk about what low self-worth actually looks like day to day, in your relationships, in the stories you tell about what you deserve, and in the quiet weight you carry when the messages you grew up with did not match who you really are.

At the center of it all is what Dawna calls the lost-worth story, the narrative you hold onto that keeps you denying your own worth, often handed down through generations.

She walks through how shame works inside that story, both as something you feel and as a social force, and what it takes to start pulling shame apart from your identity.

We close not with a tidy five-step plan, but with a real invitation: get curious about the story you have been telling about your own worth, and where it came from.

Dawna and her co-author Chris Brown wrote Understanding Self-Worth: A Guide to Worth-Conscious Theory and Psychotherapeutic Practice, already being called required reading for counseling students and one of the most inspiring clinical books in years.

Whether you are a clinician, someone in your own healing, or simply curious about why so many of us struggle to feel like we are enough, this one is for you.

Understanding self-worth is Dawna's passion project. For more than a decade she has studied what it means to claim self-worth as a birthright.

Just before 2023 she and a co-author published the first academic article on the topic, and that work grew into the book released last year.

Dawna has also spent over twenty years as a private practice therapist and is certified in trauma-informed care.

Website:
https://understandingself-worth.com

Buy her book:
https://understandingself-worth.com/book

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1665455067401496

Read her article:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09593543221135559

Download the free handout, "5 Things Shame Resilient People Do Every Day," and start making the daily shifts that break the shame cycle keeping you stuck:

https://adversityrising.com

Book a free discovery call to talk through program options and find the support that fits you:

https://calendly.com/adversityrising/discovery-call

Subscribe on Spotify:
Spotify

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts:
Apple Podcasts

YouTube:
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Website:
adversityrising.com

Subscribe and leave a review to let me know what this episode stirred up for you.

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 to the reality of aging. But here is the truth: those fears are yours to wrestle with. They are not your children's burden to carry.

In this episode, I unpack why your kids going quiet is almost never about not caring, how waiting and guilt can quietly create distance instead of connection, and three concrete ways to rebuild the relationship without pressure.

• What you are really asking when you wonder why your kids don't call
• Why blaming and guilting them can push them further away
• Why love is not measured by who calls more
• How to take ownership and reach out first, without guilt
• Why connection requires mutuality, not grief and pressure

Your kids are not ignoring you to cause pain. They are living their lives. And connection grows stronger when you show up with openness and ownership instead of guilt.

If this resonates and you want deeper support with these feelings and relationships, book a free discovery call and we will map out your next step.

Book a discovery call:
https://calendly.com/adversityrising/discovery-call

More resources:
https://adversityrising.com

This is part of my series on messy parent-child relationships. Subscribe so the next one finds you.

• When your kids don't call, it is almost never that they don't care.
• The fear underneath—being forgotten, irrelevant, or no longer needed—is yours to wrestle with, not your child's burden.
• Waiting by the phone and then blaming or guilting them creates distance, not connection.
• Love is not measured by who calls more. It is measured by whether the relationship feels mutual and respectful.
• Reconnect in three moves: take ownership and reach out first, be clear rather than guilt-driven, and respect their reality.
• Connection requires mutuality, not grief and pressure.

• 0:00 The question so many aging parents ask
• 0:30 What you are really asking underneath
• 1:00 Those fears are yours, not your child's burden
• 1:20 The guilt trap that creates distance
• 2:00 Love isn't measured by who calls more
• 2:13 Three ways to reconnect
• 3:00 They're not ignoring you, they're living their lives
• 3:56 Work with me

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 "neutral" message almost always gets read as negative, the unconscious bias that makes people see AI users as lazy or less competent, and the surprising truth that most leaders are already using these tools in secret. Salvatore also shares the reframe that changed how I think about all of it: AI is the wrapping paper, not the gift. You still have to do the work. You still have to make it yours.

If you have ever felt like a fraud for using a tool that actually helps you, this one is for you.

In this conversation:

• How AI is widening the gap between how we write and how we speak
• Why neutral reads as negative, and what to do about it
• The imposter syndrome loop that keeps us silent in real time
• Why "too polished" can cost you connection
• How to use AI without handing over your voice

About Salvatore Manzi
Salvatore Manzi is a leadership communications coach with over 20 years of experience helping executives, entrepreneurs, and leaders amplify their influence and impact. He has coached leaders presenting at the United Nations, guided investors in raising 100 million dollars over their goal, and helped biopharma scientists present their work globally. With an emphasis on frameworks, principles, and techniques, Salvatore empowers leaders to connect authentically and navigate high stakes conversations with confidence. He is passionate about fostering collaborative team environments through effective communication.

Connect with Salvatore
Website
Book: Clear and Compelling
LinkedIn

Ready to take the next step?
Download the FREE handout, "5 Things Shame Resilient People Do Every Day," and start making the daily shifts to break the shame cycle that keeps you stuck in that negative headspace: adversityrising.com
Book a free 25 minute discovery call to talk through program options and find the support that fits you best: schedule here

Stay connected
Subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and please leave a review to let us know what this episode brought up for you.
YouTube
Website

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 to be clear with you. Access to your kids is not automatic. It is a privilege, not an entitlement. Grandparenting is a role that gets earned through respect, consistency, and care, and the healthiest grandparent relationships are built when the relationship between you and your parent is healthy too.

In this episode I walk through:

• Why grandparent access is a privilege, not a right
• How to recenter your authority as the parent
• How to offer structure instead of saying yes to unplanned drop-ins
• How to name that connection with your kids flows through your relationship
• Why your boundaries are not keeping love away, they are protecting it

You are allowed to say no. You are allowed to set limits. You are allowed to protect your children's peace and your own.

If this resonates and you want deeper support with these family dynamics, your guilt, and the places where you people-please or go silent, book a free discovery call and we will map out your next step.

Book a discovery call: https://calendly.com/adversityrising/discovery-call

More resources: https://adversityrising.com

New here? This is part of my series on messy parent-child relationships. Subscribe so the next one finds you.

"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 you.

In this episode, Julie and Kyira talk about the fear that stops most of us from grieving at all: that if you let yourself feel it all the way down, you will not come back. Julie found the opposite.

This is an honest look at what grief actually asks of us, and what becomes possible when we stop trying to do it the right way.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Cold open
00:49 Intro
04:34 "I thought I knew what grief felt like"
05:08 The somatic side of grief nobody warns you about
09:11 Who Tommie was
12:16 The morning it happened
15:46 "You're going to love it here. I feel so free."
20:41 The fear: if I feel it fully, I won't come back
21:48 Asking her mother to hold her
24:52 Protecting everyone else from your grief
25:27 "I don't want my identity to become this"
30:41 Grief has no timeline
39:14 The acoustic guitar emoji
48:40 Grief is a solitary journey we can't do alone
51:45 There's no right or wrong way to do this
54:39 Why "let me know if you need anything" doesn't work

MORE ABOUT JULIE

As an introverted overthinker, Julie knows what it's like to feel anxious and stuck in her head. She spent much of her footwear design career in critique mode, comparing her work with others and chasing trends.

She became a master of focusing on the outside world and, in the process, lost track of her body and its wisdom. A yoga nidra class that brought her back home to herself propelled her on a journey to learn and share this profound practice of meditation and self-inquiry.

CONNECT WITH JULIE

Website: https://www.withinwonder.com/
Yoga Nidra: https://www.withinwonder.com/yoga-nidra
Work with Julie: https://www.withinwonder.com/individual
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wndr/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@within.wonder

RESOURCES MENTIONED

Tear Soup by Pat Schwiebert and Chuck DeKlyen — the book Julie's mother read aloud before they cried together.

Tear Soup on Amazon

READY TO TAKE THE NEXT STEP?

Download the FREE handout, "5 Things Shame Resilient People Do Every Day," and start making the daily shifts that break the shame cycle keeping you stuck in that negative headspace.

Download the Free Handout

Book a free 25-minute discovery call to talk through program options and find the support that best fits your needs.

Book a Free Discovery Call

RELATED EPISODES

One Pill Killed My Son. The Stigma Almost Buried Him Twice

The Grief Expert: Stop Trying To "Move On"

Shame & Complicated Grief: Moving With, Not On

Shame & Grief: A Match Made in Misery

Radical Acceptance: Grief is non-negotiable

AMA: Grieving Someone Who's Still Alive

STAY CONNECTED

Subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and leave a review to let us know your thoughts on this episode.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@adversityrising
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/untethering-shame/id1691795543
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2AouludJr7EweOkMIN9s42
Website: https://www.adversityrising.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adversityrising/
Email: [email protected]

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 of our series on messy parent–child relationships, we cover:

• Why the silent treatment works — and why it's really about them, not you
• The difference between keeping the peace and just avoiding the conflict
• Three response scripts for holding your ground when a parent withdraws
• How to protect your energy and stop chasing their approval

This one's for adult children navigating guilt, shame, and boundaries with a parent who goes quiet — especially if you've ever sat there wondering, "What did I do wrong?"

Want support working through this in your own life?
Book a free discovery call.

👉 Subscribe for more on parent–child relationships, family guilt, and boundaries.

Next episode: The grandparent angle — when a parent expects unlimited access to your kids.

#SilentTreatment #ToxicParents #FamilyBoundaries #AdultChildren #ColdShoulder #EmotionalWithdrawal #NotYourFault #HealthyBoundaries

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★ Download the FREE handout, "5 Things Shame Resilient People Do Every Day" and start making those daily shifts to break the shame cycle that's keeping you stuck in that negative headspace.

Download the FREE handout

★ Book a free 25-minute discovery call to discuss different program options and find the support that best fits your needs.

Book Your Free Discovery Call

★ Are you a people pleaser? Ruminator? Over-extender? Sign up for the next round of Liberated Living and implement the Radical 3 Practice:

• Radical Acceptance
• Radical Responsibility
• Radical Authorship

Learn More About Liberated Living

• 00:00 — Understanding the Issue
• 01:50 — How to Handle It
• 03:15 — The Takeaway