Untethering Shame

Is it defiance, or is it fear?

I sit down with Dr. Bethany Bilodeau (Dr. B), an expert in human behavior, to talk about why school refusal, meltdowns, and "non-compliance" are almost always a nervous system that does not feel safe, not a bad kid.

Your child plants their feet at the front door. They will not get on the bus. They melt down over a spelling mistake, throw the game board, refuse to walk into a classroom. Everyone around you has a label for it: oppositional, disobedient, manipulative. And underneath it sits the question you are afraid to say out loud. Is this my fault?

Dr. B told me: "I very rarely meet a child that I truly think is non-compliant. Very, very rarely."

The harder we push, the more the child digs in, because pushing reads as a trap. We get into boundaries that create safety instead of control, why compliance was never the goal, and why failing with a safety net is the best kind of failing.

I also had to admit the part I rarely say out loud: sometimes my kid is fine with failing, and I am not.

This conversation is for you if:

• Your child fights you every morning about school
• You have been told your kid is lazy, defiant, or non-compliant
• You are carrying the weight of a system that grades you on how obedient your child is
• You quietly wonder if their struggle is your fault

You are not failing. Something else is going on, and it can be worked with.

More about Dr. Bethany Bilodeau

Dr. B is an expert in human behavior. Her career began as a teacher in Guam and personally with her own family's challenges. She designs programs that help people achieve emotionally, socially, and academically, and holds numerous certifications in behavioral therapies. She was awarded 2024 Business of the Year in Education and the Business Excellence for Social Equity Award.

Connect with Bethany:

• Website
• Instagram
• YouTube
• 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 that break the shame cycle keeping you stuck.

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

Stay connected:

• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts
• YouTube
• adversityrising.com

Be sure to leave a review to let us know your thoughts on this episode.

You are not behind. That feeling has a source, and it is older than you are.

Being single is not just a relationship status. For a lot of people, it carries a verdict built out of family questions, cultural timelines, and a lifetime of quiet messages about what it means to still be on your own.

In this second conversation with clinical psychologist Dr. Amanda Lynne Quinby, Kyira goes after where that verdict comes from—and what believing it actually costs.

Amanda names the mechanism most people never see. When you walk into dating carrying "something must be wrong with me," that story picks who you tolerate. It tells you what you deserve. It talks you into staying. And then it points at the result and says, see, I told you.

The shame does more damage than the dating ever did.

They get into the sentence that starts earlier than anyone realizes: when you get married, and what it implies about you when it does not happen on schedule. The comparison that sharpens every year as the people around you pair off. The reason self-blame is so tempting: if it is your fault, you can fix it, and that feels so much better than sitting with what you cannot control.

And the part almost nobody says out loud: other people's opinions about your relationship status are information about them, not about you.

Amanda also says the thing a therapist is not supposed to say. When a client insists it must be me, she sometimes agrees.

It might be you.

Just not in the way you think.

Not that you are unlovable. Not that you are unworthy. Not that you are broken.

It is the narrative, and the narrative is workable.

There is no five-step reframe here and no promise that someone is coming. What there is instead is honest company in a hard conversation, language for things that usually go unnamed, and one real question:

Is the story you have been living inside about what your relationship status says about you a story you chose, or one you inherited?

If you have ever felt like you were running out of time, wondered what being single this long says about you, or caught yourself quietly assuming something must be wrong with someone else because of theirs, this one is for you.

Dr. Amanda Lynne Quinby is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Bloomington, Indiana. She works with adults in their 30s and 40s who are navigating life transitions such as career changes, divorce, or relocation, and specializes in helping analytical, driven professionals move through the places where they feel most stuck.

Her approach is collaborative and grounded, drawing on cognitive-behavioral therapy, mindfulness, self-compassion, and authenticity. She is passionate about helping people treat their feelings as data, create new narratives around their struggles, and build lives that are aligned with their values.

Website:https://www.amandalynnephd.com

Psychology Today:https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/amanda-lynne-quinby-bloomington-in/254020

Email:[email protected]

Free consultation:https://www.amandalynnephd.com/contact

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.

http://www.adversityrising.com/become-shame-resilient

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

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

Website:https://www.adversityrising.com

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

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

Knowing is not the same as changing. And the personal growth industry has blurred that line for a long time.

In this AMA episode, I answer an anonymous listener who has understood exactly what they need for years and still cannot act on it. We get into what is actually happening neurologically, where shame makes the gap wider, and what it genuinely takes to move from understanding your patterns to living differently.

This one is for everyone who has done the work and is still waiting for it to show up in their behavior.

What we cover:

• Why insight produces a neurological reward that mimics progress without being progress
• The difference between the thinking brain and the nervous system, and why behavior lives in the second one
• How the shame of knowing better becomes its own obstacle to change
• Why understanding and doing are entirely different processes, not points on one continuum
• What identity change actually requires: accumulated evidence, not more information
• How to shrink the gap instead of trying to leap it
• The core belief underneath most gaps that makes new behavior feel unsafe or undeserved

This week: Pick one thing from your "I know I need to do this" list. Write down the fear. Not the hoped-for outcome, but the actual worst-case story your nervous system is running about what would happen if you did it consistently. That story is the gap. And you cannot close what you have not fully seen.

Three lines worth keeping:

• Insight updates the map. But your feet are still walking the old roads.
• The gap between knowing and doing is not a discipline problem. It is a depth problem.
• You don't need more knowing. You need someone to help you close the gap.

Resources and links:

• Take the Burnout Quiz
• Liberated Living Program
• Free Guide: Five Things Shame Resilient People Do Every Day (and Three Things They Don't)
• Submit a question for a future AMA episode (anonymous)

Connect with me:

• Website: adversityrising.com
• Instagram: @adversityrising
• TikTok: @adversityrising

If someone in your life keeps saying "I know, I know" about rest, about boundaries, about speaking up, and nothing is changing, send them this episode. Sometimes the most helpful thing is someone finally naming why it is hard.

What does it really cost us to play it safe? And what do we do with the weight of regret when we realize, too late, how much of our life we spent protecting ourselves instead of living it?

In this episode, Kyira sits down with Telana Simpson, Courage Coach, facilitator, and podcast host based in Johannesburg, South Africa. With two decades of coaching experience and a background in psychology, Telana works at the intersection of self-worth, communication, and courage.

Together they break down the difference between guilt, shame, and regret, and what happens when failure stops feeling like an event and starts feeling like evidence of who you are. Telana draws a line most of us never learned: confidence is about your doing, esteem is about your being.

She also shares a personal story about her brother's grief and the regret that surfaced with it: how much time had gone to productivity at the expense of connection. From there the conversation moves into the cultural and intergenerational side of shame around failure, and takes apart the advice we repeat without questioning: live with no regrets. Regret, in her framing, is not a verdict. It is a signal pointing at something you value.

If you have ever stayed silent when you wanted to speak, held back when you wanted to reach, or found yourself still carrying the weight of a choice that did not go the way you hoped, this episode was made for you.

Connect with Telana:

• Website
• Instagram
• Facebook
• TikTok
• LinkedIn
• YouTube

Ready to take the next step?

Download the free handout, "5 Things Shame Resilient People Do Every Day": adversityrising.com/become-shame-resilient

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

Stay Connected:

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• YouTube
• adversityrising.com

#UntetheringShame #ShameResilience #Regret #CourageCoaching #SelfWorth #ImposterSyndrome #KyiraWackett #TelanaSimpson

Perfectionism Is Not About Being Perfect

Perfectionism is not about being perfect. It's about avoiding the feeling of not being enough.

In this episode of Untethering Shame, I answer an anonymous listener who wonders why they procrastinate, abandon projects, and only show up when success feels certain.

Therapist to therapist: your therapist is right. This is perfectionism, just not the version most people recognize. It operates through strategic not starting and not finishing. Perfectionism's primary goal was never excellence. Its primary goal is protection.

Why Not Finishing Feels Safer

A finished thing can be judged. An unfinished thing can't be fully evaluated. An abandoned project is disappointing, but it isn't evidence of your inadequacy. Not finishing is the most elegant escape hatch there is.

Ask yourself: Is the obstacle that you don't know how to do it? Or are you not certain you can do it well enough? One is a skills gap. The other is a shame gap. No productivity system in the world closes a shame gap.

Perfectionism & Imposter Syndrome

These two are intertwined. Perfectionism is the armor. Imposter syndrome is the wound it's protecting. Not finishing is the strategy that keeps both intact.

The Cost of Not Finishing

Every abandoned project leaves a deposit against your self-trust: "I don't follow through." "I'm all ideas and no execution." Those stories become identity and build new ceilings. Not because you can't, but because you no longer believe you could. Those are not the same thing.

What Actually Helps

What helps isn't trying harder. It's changing the story about imperfect work. If imperfect output currently means evidence of inadequacy, practice seeing it as evidence of courage. Build that belief through small acts of completion. Teach your nervous system that done is survivable and being seen unfinished is survivable too.

The things you're most certain you'll do well are things you've already done. They sit inside your existing range of tolerance, so they are not growth.

Perfectionism keeps you safe, competent, unjudged, and not learning. The version of yourself you most want to become is living at the edge.

This Conversation Is for You If...

• You start things and abandon them before anyone sees.
• You've been "almost ready" for months.
• You avoid anything you're not sure you'll be great at.
• You've been called a perfectionist, but nothing gets finished.

Resources & Links

Liberated Living: Learn more
Burnout Quiz: Find your honest starting point

Submit a Question

Want to submit a question for a future episode? Submit anonymously or with your name.

👉 Submit Here

Take the Next Step

• ★ FREE Guide: Five Things Shame Resilient People Do Every Day and Three Things They Don't
• ★ Free Discovery Call: Book a call
• ★ Liberated Living: Practice Radical Acceptance, Radical Responsibility, and Radical Authorship

If I understand my triggers, if I've done the work, why does it still feel so hard?

In this episode of Untethering Shame, I sit down with Elizabeth Kipp, Stress Management and Historical Trauma Specialist, Certified Addiction Recovery Coach, Ancestral Clearing Practitioner, and international best-selling author of The Way Through Chronic Pain, for our fourth and final conversation in this series. This one got personal fast. We are not talking about the nervous system in theory anymore. We are talking about what it looks like to live inside it, in real time, with the people who activate us most.

Elizabeth gave me a line I wrote down in all caps three separate times: we cannot defend and connect at the same time. The nervous system does not do both, the same way we cannot digest and run at the same time. Which means the moment the other person is in defense, you are never going to feel seen. Not because you failed at asking. Because their system is not available for it.

She also named the thing underneath all of it: safety is the directive of the organism. So instead of trying to make a relationship safe, which you cannot control, you help your own nervous system understand it is safe as a separate whole thing, independent of how that conversation goes. Breath first. Then acknowledge what they said before you say your piece.

The part I had to sit with is my own. I have started to notice my relationship with shame looks a lot like an addiction. Elizabeth walks us through the four words that pull you back into your heart before any of it starts: patience, kindness, gentle, self-compassion.

This conversation is for you if:

• You have done the work and still get activated by family
• You keep leaving conversations feeling unseen, no matter how carefully you phrase it
• You calm yourself down, then get worked up all over again lying in bed that night
• You are an adult child trying to have a real conversation with a parent who goes straight to defense
• You catch yourself upset at people for not meeting expectations you never said out loud

Connect with Elizabeth:

• Website
• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn

Ready to take the next step?

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

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

Stay Connected:

• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts
• YouTube
• Website

In this episode of Untethering Shame, I answer an anonymous listener who asks:

"I have a list of conversations I've been avoiding. With my partner, with a friend, with my boss, some for months, some for years. I know exactly what needs to be said. I can rehearse the whole thing in my head at 2 a.m. and I still can't make myself have them. Why do I keep avoiding conversations that could actually change things for the better? And how do I stop getting in my own way?"

Here's what I want you to hear first: avoidance is not cowardice, and it isn't procrastination. It's a nervous system response. Your body made a calculation faster than conscious thought that the risk of this conversation outweighs the cost of not having it. That calculation might be wrong, but it isn't weak.

Instead of asking "why am I so bad at this?" ask: "what threat is my nervous system convinced this conversation contains?"

The Fears Beneath It

Avoidance is often fear of rejection, rupture, causing pain, or making an ending feel real.

What Is Silence Costing You?

Silence can create distance, resentment, and self-betrayal. Every time you stay silent, you teach yourself that what you need isn't worth the risk of saying it.

Preparation vs. Rumination

Preparation and rumination are not the same thing. Preparation clarifies what you need to communicate and why. Rumination replays the conversation on a loop and introduces a new variable every time, keeping the conversation permanently unready.

It's anxiety wearing the costume of productivity.

How to Have the Conversation

• Lead with intention instead of a script.
• Go in regulated instead of calm—because those are different things.
• Name the vulnerability at the start so the other person hears care instead of attack.

This Is for You If...

• You have a mental list of conversations you keep postponing.
• You rehearse at 2 a.m. and still can't start the real thing.
• You've been telling yourself "it's not the right time" for months.
• You want the words, but what you actually need is the capacity to say them.

Your Homework

Pick one conversation from your list. Not the hardest one. Write down: 1) the single most important thing you need this person to understand, and 2) what you're most afraid will happen if you say it.

You don't have to have the conversation this week. You just have to get honest on paper about what's keeping you from it.

Comment POD and I'll send it your way.

Resources & Links

Liberated Living: Learn more
Burnout Quiz: Find your honest starting point

Submit a Question

Submit a question for a future episode anonymously or with your name, whatever feels safest.

👉 Submit Here

Take the Next Step

• ★ FREE Guide: Five Things Shame Resilient People Do Every Day and Three Things They Don't
• ★ Free Discovery Call: Book a call
• ★ Liberated Living: Practice Radical Acceptance, Responsibility & Authorship

Stay Connected

• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts
• YouTube
• Website

Why He Says This Is A Waste Of Time

"It's not a character flaw, it's a chemical state."

In this episode of Untethering Shame, I sit down with Alexander Pujol, a former physician assistant turned performance coach and founder of Quantum Human Performance, to talk about what is actually happening inside a man when he goes cold, shuts down, or tells you the conversation you are trying to have is a waste of his time.

Alex has spent eight years working with Division I athletes, ballerinas, golfers, and business owners, and he kept finding the same pattern underneath the performance. The people who managed pressure best did it by staying cold through challenge, and that coldness followed them home. What looks like dismissal in a relationship is often residue from a skill that was rewarded everywhere else.

We get into why a conversation without a clear goal can register in the nervous system as a threat, and what happens next when adrenaline and cortisol narrow focus and amplify that threat into anger. Alex is direct about the fact that most men cannot name shame when they are in it. They only find it by working backwards from why they are so angry.

He also gets honest about his own life. The burnout four years ago that made him stop. The divorce, and reading a book afterward that finally gave him the word for what he had been doing for years without knowing it. Losing his father and immediately starting a 2,000 square foot build out because grief was easier to replace than feel. And the one question he started asking his partner that changed how he shows up in every relationship since.

If there is one idea I want you to carry out of this conversation, it is this: the skill was never installed. Nobody taught these men how to sit with an emotion, so there is nothing to fix, only something to practice. As Alex puts it, what we practice grows.

This conversation is for you if...

• Someone you love goes silent or cold the moment things get hard, and you have started taking it personally
• You are the one who shuts down, and you have never had language for why
• You keep hearing "I don't want to talk about it" and you do not know what to do with that
• You were raised to fix, perform, and protect, and you are realizing that none of that taught you how to feel
• You are parenting a boy and you want to interrupt the pattern before it sets

Connect with Alex

Alexander Pujol is a former physician assistant turned performance coach and founder of Quantum Human Performance, where he helps athletes and high performers optimize their mind, body, and emotional resilience. Drawing from neuroscience, breathwork, and his own journey through burnout and recovery, he teaches a holistic approach to self-belief, flow, and sustainable performance. Alex is also the author of Spectrum: A Galvanizing Journey, where he shares the principles behind transforming adversity into growth and purpose.

• Website: oneqhp.com
• Instagram: @q.h.p._wellness
• Facebook: alex.pujol.777
• LinkedIn: Alexander Pujol

Ready to take the next step?

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.

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

Stay Connected

Subscribe to the podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and be sure to leave a review to let us know your thoughts on this episode.

• YouTube: @adversityrising
• Website: adversityrising.com

Having a need is not the same as being needy. Those two got conflated so early that for a lot of us they feel identical. They're not.

This week's anonymous question: "Every time I try to ask for what I need I either over-explain and justify for twenty minutes, or I say nothing and then explode two weeks later. I was told so many times as a kid that I was too needy that I don't know how to have a need anymore. How do I ask without it being a whole thing?"

I break down where the "I'm too much" story comes from, why over-explaining and exploding are the same protection wearing different clothes, and what a clean, direct ask actually sounds like.

This is for you if:

• You justify before you ask
• You go quiet and blow up later
• You were called dramatic or too much as a kid

Homework: pick one small need. Say it out loud. No preamble, no apology, no justification. Just "I need ____."

Your needs are not the problem. They never were.

Resources & Links

• Take the Burnout Quiz: https://adversityrising.com/quiz
• Liberated Living Program: https://adversityrising.com/liberated-living
• Free Guide, Five Things Shame Resilient People Do Every Day: https://adversityrising.com/become-shame-resilient
• Submit a question for a future AMA: https://adversityrising.com/shame-free-qa
• Book a Discovery Call: https://calendly.com/adversityrising/discovery-call

Connect with Kyira

Instagram & TikTok: @adversityrising

• Website: https://adversityrising.com
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2AouludJr7EweOkMIN9s42
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/untethering-shame/id1691795543

"The shame is it usually means curing yourself of yourself."

In this episode of Untethering Shame, I sit down with David Bedrick, psychotherapist, teacher, and author with more than 35 years of experience working with trauma, shame, addiction, body image, and chronic symptoms. David created The Unshaming Way, an approach that treats painful experiences as meaningful signals rather than problems to fix. This is his second time on the show, and we went somewhere I did not plan for.

We start with what it costs to belong. David calls it the assimilationist curse, the quiet agreement that says you can stay as long as you become smaller, quieter, less yourself. He points to James Baldwin on the price of the ticket, and then he makes it personal. He is 70. His body is inflamed. Instead of asking how to reduce the inflammation, he asks what he is inflamed about.

That question turns the whole conversation. If a symptom is a signal, then the thing you have been trying to eliminate might be the part of you still fighting for something. David tells the story of a client whose relationship with food had been treated as a disorder for decades, and what changed when someone finally asked what her refusal was protecting instead of how to make it stop. He calls it her power. He calls it every piece of medicine she needs in her life.

Then he turns it on me. What follows was not planned, and it is the part of this episode I keep coming back to. We do live work on my own anger, the part of me that wants to be seen, and David shows what unshaming actually looks like in real time. Not resolving the conflict. Living it.

This conversation is for you if:

• You have been working on yourself for years and still feel like the goal is to become someone else
• Your body is telling you something and every professional you have seen wants to quiet it
• You have been called too much, too intense, too angry, or too needy
• You are tired of being asked to find balance between parts of you that do not want to compromise
• You want to know what healing looks like when nothing is wrong with you

More about David:

David Bedrick is a psychotherapist, teacher, and author with 35+ years of experience working with trauma, shame, addiction, body image, and chronic symptoms. He created The Unshaming Way, which reframes painful experiences as meaningful signals, not problems to fix.

Rooted in process-oriented psychology and somatic work, his approach blends depth psychology and social justice, and explores how shame is shaped by the ways we are witnessed by people and culture.

He is the author of five books, including The Unshaming Way and The Unshaming Way Workbook, and writes for Psychology Today.

His work is also personal, shaped by childhood abuse and the denial surrounding it, which he identifies as central to how shame takes hold.

Connect with David:

• Website
• Instagram
• The Unshaming Way: A Compassionate Guide to Dismantling Shame
• The Unshaming Way Workbook, available now
• David's Psychology Today articles
• Episode 1: S2E41

Ready to take the next step?

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

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

Stay Connected:

Subscribe to the podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and be sure to leave a review to let us know your thoughts on this episode.

• YouTube
• Website