The Practice Gap
The Practice Gap
#30 How to overcome the fear of sharing your message with the world -A conversation with Inger Beate Botheim
Are you struggling to share your message with the world due to a fear that you can't quite define? Are you afraid of being judged by your peers or being called out for not having enough knowledge? Join me, Elisabeth, as we explore how to find out what might be stopping us, and how we can step beyond our fear. In the studio with me, I have Inger Beate Botheim, a coach who works with leadership development.
In this episode, Inger Beate Botheim will invite us to understand our fears of putting our message out to the world and the natural transition to understanding the difference between shame and guilt. Just the mentioning of these emotions might send shivers down your spine. We'll dig deep into the complexities of these emotions and how they can hinder our ability to connect with others. By naming and sharing our stories, we can find the courage to overcome feelings of unworthiness and empower ourselves and those around us.
In this episode, Inger Beate will offer strategies for how we can differentiate between feelings like shame and guilt, and why this is super helpful for you. Inger Beate is heavily inspired by the work of Brené Brown on how to foster connections through the strength found in vulnerability. Join us for a journey to emotional literacy and empowerment, where the sharing of our most inner fears becomes the bridge to communal resilience and growth.
I am honored that The Practice Gap is on the list of the Top 100 Chiropractic Podcasts on the web. Link is below.
https://blog.feedspot.com/chiropractic_podcasts/
Thank you for listening! If you like what you hear, please share it with someone that you think might find value in this episode. If you enjoy this podcast, please take a moment to rate us on Apple Podcasts or where you listen to us. Your feedback helps us improve and reach more listeners. Thank you!
Kind regards,
Elisabeth Aas-Jakobsen, DC, MSc
follow on instagram
or visit homepage
Hi and welcome to the Practice Gap, the podcast for closing the gap between the practice you have and the one that you want. I'm Elizabeth, a chiropractor, a business owner, coach and entrepreneur, on a mission to help you move from frustration and overwhelm to clarity, focus and joy in practice. Hi and welcome back to the studio inne vi at the Brutheim hello. The reason I have you back today is because, as practitioners probably very special for the health care profession, maybe not we are sometimes scared of getting our message out to the world with how we can help them in the fear of that somebody is going to cut our head off or say that we did something wrong or that we said something wrong, and it kind of holds us back.
Speaker 1:We have a message that we want to have out. However, we are scared, so that's the big picture. The reason why this theme came up was because yesterday we had this little discussion at the clinic about getting your message out, and one of my beautiful people that I work with she's super smart and she's very, very like she really wants to get her message out to the world. However, she is scared that somebody from her own profession will come and go get her. The question is how can I help her get over that? Could you give us three tips?
Speaker 2:Just a couple of minutes and we'll solve this case for everybody. Once and a pro. I can hear what you're saying is getting your message out I guess it's on social media or getting it out on the internet, and when I hear you speak I hear fear there, and you even name it right. She is afraid of somebody judging her.
Speaker 2:I think that's not very special for the healthcare industry no no no, I think that's part of the human experience, and what comes to my mind when you brought up this topic is Brene Brown's research around shame, and I lean heavily on her work as a client or as a coach with my clients, so that's what got me intrigued into this team that you brought up. So you want to dig right into the practical stuff.
Speaker 1:Yes, actually wait, wait, wait. Could you explain kind of what shame is?
Speaker 2:Let's start there. Definitions are good, because shame what Brene Brown says around shame is a shame is a social emotion that means it lives between us, lives between human beings. Even though you can experience it like when you're all alone and you experience it internally, it is something that happens when you are afraid of thinking about what other people think about you, if they judge you from your example.
Speaker 1:When you sit there and think about all the stupid things you said and the way you acted and yeah other people's experience and often you make that up.
Speaker 2:But that's a story you're telling yourself, right? You make up what other people might think about you and that's a negative self-talk. So it's something that lives between people, because human beings are social beings. We are born to have connection and love and belong with our tribe. She also says that shame is actually the fear of losing this love, connection and belonging with other people and, like for your example, it might be other practitioners or the ones who would listen to her social media, whatever that is. So it's a fear underneath there. And that's human experience in being afraid of not belonging in the tribe, because it's safer when you're a part of a group, you're part of a tribe, you're safe. So it's the fear of not being in that safe space.
Speaker 2:And another thing, if I can add to the definition, is that it's very useful to distinguish between the definition of shame and the definition of guilt. And in brown words again, shame is that I am bad, that I am not worthy of this love connection and the longing. So I'm stupid, I'm not up for it, I should never have been here. And then guilt is I did something bad. That's more about the behavior.
Speaker 1:Okay. So it's like I'm really good, I'm a good person underneath, but I did something really stupid yeah yeah, right, yeah.
Speaker 2:So that's a useful distinction because, even though none of those feelings is a very good place to be, the shame experience that's more an internal self-talk that I'm not worthy of being here that really, really holds us back from doing a lot of the stuff that we long to do, like we also talked about in the last episode. So the shame feeling, it's a deeper, harder, tougher feeling to experience that.
Speaker 1:The guilt Okay, so I'm a clinic leader and I have two people working in my clinic and one I can see it's the shame that's talking One. It's the guilt because she knew she didn't do what. She knows she can do it. She hasn't done anything, she didn't meet the deadlines, but she has no fear of getting it out. She just she feels guilty that she hasn't done it and she feels guilty about she's not going to do it for the next six months because she doesn't have tiring priorities. So that's one thing, but the guilt feeling is like I know I want to, I've tried, I tried, but it's my negative self-talk holding back. So that's two.
Speaker 2:that's actually makes super sense now that you distinguish it, how can?
Speaker 1:I I mean one thing to deal with a guilt person. I can do that, but how do I help this person to change her negative self-talk?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's beautiful, that you would be interested in that, because I think just recognizing it, because sin's shame is a social emotion and it thrives and it grows when it's in the dark, when you don't talk about it. If I don't share my shame or my shame feeling and situations, it will grow. It grows and it loves being in the dark with the silence and my old self-judgment and all the talk that I do.
Speaker 1:So just by you seeing it will help, Okay so just me seeing that she has this guilt feeling or negative self-talk will make it a little bit better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because sin is the social emotion what Brine Brown means.
Speaker 1:Social emotion is kind of bigger than just you, your emotion personally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because social emotion it arises between people. It might be unconscious but, like with your example, it's due to the fear of other people judging us. So if I don't judge you for this, it will finish.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and what Brine Brown says, that it grows when it's silence, when you keep it secret and when you judge yourself or other people judging you also out loud empathy that's like the opposite of shame. Empathy is somebody seeing that this is hard, being interested in understanding why this is hard. That's the first step and that's super important also when you're a coach.
Speaker 1:Okay, so concrete. Then One shows some empathy to the person who has the negative self-talk.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think you said that the guilt person I can easily deal with because we have a sense that that's a more practical thing. You know and you can help or have discussions around what you could be able to do or how it's time management.
Speaker 1:It's like you have all these concrete what to do things.
Speaker 2:It's behavior, right, it could be, and often, just to make it a more blurry picture, it could be that I think it's guilt prone, right, that's around the behavior. It might be that the real cause so I can't move ahead and do something you really want to do might be shame. So what we do when we work with clients around shame is like Brené Brown again says you need to understand shame, to move through it. Right, so to just understand this distinction between shame and guilt and then to understand how shame lives in you.
Speaker 1:So how does shame live in me?
Speaker 2:or you.
Speaker 1:How does shame live?
Speaker 2:So shame is. What we do is very useful when you start working with shame is to try to let go of the head and the intellectual part for a bit, because often our head gets in our way when we try to understand everything, we're going to try to understand shame through the body. So then I would ask you, when you this familiar feeling of shame and I know you have you feel shame just like the rest of us. Yes where in your body can you feel shame?
Speaker 1:My feeling of shame would sit in both in the heart, but also maybe a little bit in the gut. It makes me a little nauseous.
Speaker 2:I can't breathe, yeah, so it also affects your breathing. Yeah, does it have a temperature?
Speaker 1:No, it has a texture Stone.
Speaker 2:Stone Color Gray.
Speaker 1:And a little black and a little white dots.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you are closing your eyes and squinching your face when you talk about shame. Yeah, what's with?
Speaker 1:the face. Yeah, yeah, you don't want to go there. No, it's kind of uncomfortable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. How do you feel that uncomfortable in your body?
Speaker 1:It's your musket right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I mean to have a stone in your body. It's not a nice feeling.
Speaker 2:No, no, what is the feeling? It's heavy, right, yeah, yeah, we could of course go on and coaching you for another hour but. I think what you did now is such a great example of how our body knows right. So that's what we mean with starting with the body to get familiar with when it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Where? How does it live in my body? Where does it sit?
Speaker 1:Okay, so if I'm To be practical, yeah, If I'm in a situation. I get this stone feeling, I feel it, it's heavy. It's like oh man, my body reacts before my head. Where? What can I do with it? How can I get? Rid of that stone, yeah, throw it out, throw it out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, get rid of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so for the ones who listened to the last episode when we talked together, there's something about creating a space between the stimulus and the response.
Speaker 2:Right, and that's what we talked about last time to get personal, to get interested in there, and just what you said now, just to be able to, in a given situation or in a dialogue with another human being, just to recognize that, ah, that's the feeling I'm experiencing shame Just that will give you some time to reflect and know that, ah, this is something in me, even what we do when we feel ashamed, you don't want to go there and it goes really fast and you will take it out on somebody else or or hold yourself back for doing something or saying something that you really want to get out there.
Speaker 2:So, when we work because this is, of course, this is a work that's super important to do I think everybody needs to work for their shame, but it's not like done in a second. So when we work with clients, after getting familiar with the body it's start we will also go to get familiar with what kind of situation or persons or things are triggering those shame responses in your body. Right, because, like Brené-Brenn Sout, to understand is to understand the body's reaction and what kind of situations and persons triggers this shame response. And can you, when I'm talking now, can you picture some? Or do you know what your triggers are for the stone feeling in your body?
Speaker 1:Because that's when you talk. Now I really wonder how? How can we feel the difference between shame and guilt?
Speaker 2:When you feel guilty. How do you feel that guilty in your body?
Speaker 1:A good question. I feel, oh yeah, when you ask me that, that's, then you're okay, I'm starting to feel it already. So the shame is the deep breathing heart thing. The guilt is like ooh shoot, I should not have done that. That was really stupid. So then this I can. Then just it's a stupidity that doesn't really affect how I feel. It's like it affects me kind of more intellectually or like, oh, maybe I should do something different. But it's not the. The shame is a lot deeper. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it makes totally sense and I think you would describe it beautifully. And it's also very interesting to observe you, because when I gave you the answer, your face was more relaxed than when I asked you about shame, and you were just looking up, so like trying to find your answer in your head somewhere. Yeah, okay, that's the shame, shame, that's the guilt and that's the shame, and you could distinguish that in your body. That would be a part of the exploration, like to understand. Am I more prone to guilt or shame?
Speaker 2:We both have both feel. We all have both feelings where anybody doesn't live, because being aware and being conscious about what's happening in situation when we experience this, that's the first key. And it might be like super fast, like you did now Was like super fast. You can experience it. Other people need more digging because it could be hiding. But if you've been hiding for years, it could take a while to even go there. And for me, I thought that I don't have any shame, I have a lot of guilt. But then, of course, brinea Brown she says that if you can't experience shame, you haven't dug deep enough right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, because it's much easier with guilt than shame.
Speaker 2:Super easy and that you can talk about it and you can laugh about it and everything right About all the things you've done. But it's so much harder to talk about what you really are ashamed of. And Brinea Brown she's written a beautiful book that I really recommend for everybody. That's called the Atlas of the Heart.
Speaker 2:And she describes all these emotions and it's to get emotional literate, to have the words. It's important, not because they're semantics, because just what you experienced when you told and showed how the shame lives in your body, it's a deeper, harder. The stone, gray stone feeling, it's heavy breathing. That's something different than guilt. So it's super important to know which feeling you experience.
Speaker 1:So, going back to the example from the beginning, if I wanna help either a colleague or maybe just a friend, when I start seeing the shame Because that's the person that we will all see shame after this podcast when do I start to help this person?
Speaker 2:I think we brought up empathy to listen, to understand and to share our humanities, because what we often do when the negative self-talk, we also the shame has us believe that you are the only one experiencing this Because everybody else there's a great on podcast and they are, like you said, on social media.
Speaker 2:They are up to date on every theory and research and everything that's happening. We experience, or we think that we are the only one experiencing this. So the first helping part, as a colleague, I would say, is to get curious and ask and listen.
Speaker 1:And serve you some good questions yeah.
Speaker 2:I think a good place to start with questions is to have them talk, Because that's the opposite of hiding is to help people put words to their shame.
Speaker 1:Okay. So in this example, when you then hear the self-talk and all the fears, just listen to them. Yeah, listen to them, and yeah, yeah or stop them.
Speaker 2:No, no. And people are so different because, like probably in your example, you heard her self-talk. She was very vocal about herself, which was really super interesting, yeah, and then it's easier to like latch onto that because then you can listen, you can ask more, and I think avoiding trying to fix them and giving them good advice is to just listen and share. And often what we do when we are doing the empathy thing is that we're also trying to find examples for ourselves.
Speaker 1:Ah, yeah, I understand right, and maybe to have this sharing of so if she shares some of her thoughts about this, then it's a good idea that I can also share some of them.
Speaker 2:How I feel. Yeah, and I think that because to make people understand that they're not alone, right, and I think you said that this she was very vocal, and then it's often easier to know how to get the conversation going Other people. You can just have a sense that they are hiding and they are not speaking.
Speaker 1:So how do we get them?
Speaker 2:to speak. Yeah, and that's why you go to a trained coach.
Speaker 1:Because we are trained in getting people to speak.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because that's the hard thing. If you're never spoken about your fear of losing connection and belonging and being stupid and judging everything, it's not to be expected that just somebody you work with ask you. Ask you, no, no no, so it could be a hard place to start.
Speaker 1:So in this example, because she is, I know she's highly coachable and she's done some deep work. Maybe that's why she could so easily talk about these feelings, because she had done some work on herself. So if she would be one of the persons who said like I don't know, I don't know, I just don't feel like doing it, I don't know, could that be a person to start with the coaching now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course I think everybody benefits from going through a coaching process but, like Bernadier Brown also do, when she has to big talks and TEDx or whatever venue she's at, she also shares her own examples of being vulnerable, of feeling ashamed. So I think that's also when you're thinking about conversations between colleagues or friends, so the vocals they will tell something and you can latch on to that and have a conversation With other people who are not used to talk about it. You could start with sharing examples for yourself and to show that I'm afraid of putting my voice out there because I'm so afraid of being in church. Anybody else feel the same. So it's like having common ground and I think that's the beauty of human connections. When you get the conversations on the human level, you know that we are here to experience love and belonging and connections with other people and I think that really helps to naming our own shame.
Speaker 1:When you experience others' peoples of shame, start by sharing some of your own stories. Yeah, I think that could be a good To show empathy and listen. Yeah, anything else I can do.
Speaker 2:No, I think the most important work here is to try to get curious on your own shame, Because often what we do is Because I could notice when I asked you you were super familiar with this even though you might have not said those words out loud before you knew.
Speaker 2:So I think to be To really remember what Menebran says that understanding is a key to getting through shame. And understanding how does your body react. So get curious about how your body reacts and responds, to get curious about how you experience shame and guilt, and then try to find some of your triggers. Because when you do this, that's back again to this space, right? Because if something happens and you notice something happening in your body, you get the space to reflect and choose to respond and that's very different from something happening a stone in my way and then you maybe attack somebody else or blame somebody else for doing something wrong or you know.
Speaker 1:So back to the example there for this wonderful person who wants to get her message out there and she now realizes it's all about shame, it's all about not being accepted by her colleagues, and she pauses. How should she change her mindset? How should she get over it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's a process right.
Speaker 1:That's the whole coaching process.
Speaker 2:That's the whole coaching process and I think in today's world we're all about the quick fixes, right. Give us some quick fixes, give us some quick fixes give us three to five steps, and I can do this very fast and then just get on with it.
Speaker 2:And I think then it's all about the behavior and that might work for a short time, but if it's shame, it's a bigger process, because it's all about how you feel inside, how you identify yourself. I need to be this person or that person. It's something that we have been doing for many, many years, like holding on to this persona. So that's a changed person. That's the whole coaching process and that's not the quick fix.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So just sum up a little bit Shame is really not a feeling I think we have been talking about as people. It's not a feeling you had a lot of problems about. I mean it's, when I think about shame I think a lot back in time from being a kid or being a young adult, but I can't really remember that anyone talked about what does shame feel like it was just it's a word. It's just a word, but it has we don't know where to put it.
Speaker 1:So to familiar with us and maybe go deep in itself to see what does shame mean for us and then to check out the feeling inside. Could that be a starting point?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think to get curious about. To get curious about shame and understanding it, not just intellectual, but also from your body, to understand how the shame lives in you and putting words on it. Like we said, that shame will grow when it's surrounded by silence and secrecy and your own self-judgment. It doesn't grow that well when it gets out in the open, and I think that's due to when I so the biggest killer of shame is talking about?
Speaker 2:Yes, it's naming it and normalizing it. Normalize that shame, feeling ashamed, is a part of the human experience and I think that's also what Brene Brown says right To be able to speak it and normalizing it and know what we're feeling. And I totally feel the same, like you said, that we have. I never talked about this in my family or in the school or education that I attended to, and I think that's because it's too painful often. Right, it's too painful to go there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's feeling guilty is better.
Speaker 2:It's a good feeling. So much fun, Okay. So if I'm.
Speaker 1:I started to sum up and I completely start to think.
Speaker 1:It brings out a lot of thinking here. Yeah, all right, that's good. So the take home message to the audience and correct me if I'm wrong what might be holding you back could be shame. So you have to kind of figure out if it's shame or guilt you're feeling when you're trying to get your message out and you don't get it.
Speaker 1:So if you want to pull something on social media or talk to someone, is it that you don't put off the? You have all the knowledge and you know you are right and you have no fear that anyone's going to judge you because you are not scared of a message? Or is it that you are scared that when your message get out there, somebody is going to cut your head off and tell you that you're a terrible person and you don't know your stuff and you're just not worthy of being the person you think you are? Yeah, so number one find out if it's guilt or shame. If it's shame, try to feel where it is in your body and start talking about it yes, because. And then find somebody to talk about who will give you a little empathy.
Speaker 1:That's very smart so if there's no one around you, or if you actually want to get rid of your shame and naming it, get a coaching hour. Yes, get a coaching hour. Does that sum it up?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's beautiful. To understand your shame, you have to notice it right in your body. You have to experience it, just like you did on this podcast. So naming it, noticing it and normalize it in conversations with people you trust, that would be a good way to start.
Speaker 1:Anything more.
Speaker 2:A lot more, yeah, a lot more, yeah. That's a really bad question.
Speaker 1:Well, I think we're going to end up with this note and I'm pretty sure Njibjelta will be invited to back on this podcast. Okay, thank you, njibjelta.
Speaker 2:Thank you Happy little bit.