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Coffee With Hilary and Les from State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Centre
Errors, Mistakes, Guilt, and Shame: The Paralyzing Habit of Judgment
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This podcast episode dives into the feelings of shame and self-judgment that hold many back from making desired changes. The hosts explore how to transform mistakes into lessons, emphasizing the importance of trust, self-compassion, and the cyclical nature of these emotional experiences.
• Resistance to change rooted in past shame
• Importance of trust in relationship with self
• Habitual judgment's impact on personal growth
• Shifting perspective from mistakes to lessons
• Guilt does not motivate; embracing self-compassion matters
• Creating room for mistakes fosters resilience and growth
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As hypnotists, we look into the past. We start to notice patterns from childhood, we start to notice what they went through. They start to notice what they went through and I think it's compounded right. You weren't born feeling shame.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Coffee with Hilary and Les. We are a couple of hypnotists who have created a podcast about freeing our minds from old ideas, old thoughts and old habits, those old things that interfere with our ability to make fresh new choices. It's time for us all to create the life of our dreams. We're here been a while hot minute.
Speaker 1:That's what it's been. A hot minute I don't even know where that comes from I've just heard it before what is a? Hot minute.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's been a while since we did this. We've been thinking about what we want to do to make these podcasts better, how much we want to get feedback from those of you who listen and find out what's helpful and maybe what's not helpful, and it's caused us to be a little bit resistant, I think, in terms of doing them, which means we've been gone for a month.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's mostly about you know. I think I'll speak for me. My resistance to doing them has been really about am I doing them right? Am I doing the right thing? Am I approaching them the right way? And then that led us to a discussion this morning about you know, what are the things that cause us to resist doing what we want to do, what we know we want to do?
Speaker 1:Yeah, for me the resistance was well, always a little bit of resistance, only because I it's just not on my mind as much as I would like it to be sometimes, you know thinking about topics and whatnot. But I was a little hesitant because I know we had spoken in early December about just making some changes and sort of refreshing the podcast a little bit. And then it's sort of like in my mind, for some reason, if the changes weren't implemented now I didn't feel compelled to making a podcast. Um, so we're. So we're still working on the changes and looking to, yeah, put a refreshing face on the podcast.
Speaker 2:And that's what really brings us to now, to the topic of now. I mean, I think about this stuff and so often I feel like our podcasts are just us letting you know what kind of stuff we're dealing with within ourselves.
Speaker 1:Yeah right.
Speaker 2:And it's the new year, it's the beginning of beginnings. People want to begin and do things differently and they experience resistance, and then I think there's a lot. There's a lot of resistance from the I don't know how, but I think that the reason I don't know how, as a self-statement becomes so paralyzing is because of the shame we feel of what we perceive to be our failures of the past, and I think that the resistance comes from an emotion of shame that stops us from trying new things now, from going after new things now. It's that time of year, people are doing it, we're doing it with the podcast, we're doing it with our work, and all I could think about was like, why aren't we just diving into this? Why haven't we just made a bunch of podcasts? We had such a rhythm going on there for a while and we were just loving it, and you know, we're not reaching the level of success I suppose in terms of listeners and feedback was. A big part of our desire was engagement with listeners, having them reach out to us and help us give them what they need.
Speaker 2:But I guess yeah and I'm trying not to we just pause to turn on the microphone, because I really want to build my energy up into something positive because as I think about this, I think about that vibration of shame, I think about that idea of shame. We talked about it a bit the other night, watching some goofy YouTube videos, and it seems to be the appropriate topic. I know that you want to be light-hearted and motivational at the beginning of the year, but I, but I think our role is not to, you know, pat you on the back and say way to go. Our role is to help you understand what's going on inside you. That's really normal because everybody's going through it. That's getting in the way of you having doing and being who and what you want to be and want to have and want to do right. And I think that there's this huge complex that I'm learning inside myself of this thing that I'll call shame.
Speaker 1:For now, yeah, yeah, and, as I was saying earlier, I feel like, um, I feel like trust is entangled with shame as well. Right, trusting yourself, um, not being shameful about yourself, to allow trust to flourish again. Think of, I guess the biggest thing that comes to mind is weight loss. People want to hit the gym January 1st, kind of thing, or start eating differently, and what I see with clients a lot, what I've experienced for myself, sometimes in different ways, is this well, I've tried, I've started and stopped this so many times in my life. Now, how can I trust that I'm going to continue or this is going to be the time that it works out? And that breakdown of trust can lead to shame, can lead to those feelings of shaming oneself because you're not trustworthy or something in your own.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's people out there trying to have a dry January and they got to January 3rd and said I need a beer. And I have every bit of sympathy for that, because we really make decisions in the moment, we make choices in the moment and those choices are often driven by habit in the moment, and those choices are often driven by habit. In fact, so little of our life is really deliberate. Most of it is really quite habitual. And then we drop back into habit. We make a deliberate decision this is going to be dry January, or this is going to be no sugar January, or this is going to be quit smoking January, or this is going to be, you know, quit whatever, quit biting my nails January. We make these decisions and then habitual things sort of overtake us and we find ourselves, you know, picking up that beautiful chocolate cookie and putting it in our mouth because we're not being deliberate, we're really quite. We're being quite subconscious, unconscious in so many ways.
Speaker 2:So for me it's like well, where does that come from? What is that about? And why does a simple thing like eating a chocolate cookie suddenly become a matter of shame, to the point where we would give up on what we deep inside want to accomplish right, and so that's the process I really I've spent a lot of time thinking about for a couple of weeks and I thought a lot about over the last few days, and even for a couple hours this morning, just trying to put the pieces together what's going on in our minds that gets us to the point of shame. And I guess my answer and I think that you know our point, our reframe, our first reframe for today, is we need to make room for mistakes, we need to allow ourselves to learn by experience, and learning by experience absolutely requires mistakes. So then to me, the question becomes why does a simple mistake, a simple error, become an insurmountable wall of self-judgment and shame? And that, to me, is the mental process I'd like us to break down a little bit.
Speaker 1:Well, I think it starts with why does one person go through that and another person doesn't, right? So what, uh, if we start to break that down as we start to notice what they went through, they start to notice what they went through and I think it's compounded. You weren't born feeling shame that we know of. You weren't born feeling that.
Speaker 2:Hillary and Les offer both in-person and online hypnosis services for clients all around the world. If that interests you, please visit our website wwwsomhypnosiscom and sign up for a free consultation, or send us an email at info at psalmhypnosiscom.
Speaker 2:It comes, you know it starts with little events that compound on one another and start to create this shame cycle, and so that when you're an adult, it's like even just one little thing feels like you're being brought back to that shame cycle yeah, and that's that's our work as hypnotists, as we find those patterns in the mind that are based in emotions, that cause us to react unconsciously, subconsciously, that cause us to behave and choose and to speak and to respond without thought and find ourselves saying why did I do that, why did I say that, why is it going that way? And these are just. I think the first thing to understand is that these are well-honed patterns. When you do something that later you say I wish I hadn't done that, or I wish I hadn't said that it happened because it was totally subconscious, you are in such an an extreme program, a habit of responding that way, that you couldn't stop it yeah, because it needed to happen quickly and that's what happens to all of us.
Speaker 2:That's like so normal. It's wonderfully normal when it results in something good, right, when we, when we quickly go to habit. You know, let's use an example of I don't know something simple like playing sport. You're playing a sport you're doing, you've got one of your hobbies going on and you're so good at your hobby, whatever it is, that you can do things without really even thinking about them, right, yeah, and that allows you to become really good at things. That's where your talents start to become really, really ingrained is that these responses become completely subconscious, below, below your awareness. They happen automatically. So subconscious behaviors are really the way we thrive in the world. They're the way we get good at stuff, the way we find ourselves confident in ourself, that we can handle situations, that we can deal with certain things. So turning things from conscious, deliberate action to subconscious action is a really valuable thing.
Speaker 2:Unfortunately, it's also just a tool that we use for everything just a tool that we use for everything, and so habits can interfere with our deliberate living, our intentional living.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like I'm really good at putting back a bag of chips right, that has become unconscious, subconscious.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you don't even you think about it for a moment and then somehow you're sitting on the couch with the baggage in your hands.
Speaker 2:That subconscious behavior, that habitual behavior, it's not always helpful, that habitual behavior, it's not always helpful, and I think that one of the things that becomes really habitual is judgment, yeah.
Speaker 2:So how do we go? And this is sort of the path that I put out here in front of me, because I see it as the path that we all take. Where do we go from an error oh I got that wrong, oh, I made a mistake. How do we go from error to mistake? And how do we take mistake and somehow turn that into failure? And how do we take failure and somehow turn that onto ourselves, often with the help of others, our very, our true value, at least as it relates to these things we're trying to do, we're trying not to do mm-hmm like. It brings me back, first of all, to the, to the big reframe. I think it's one of the most powerful reframes we've we've ever tripped on and shared, and it is huge for every client I work with when we go over this one, it really rocks them. I am not what I do, I am the doer. I am not what I do, I am the one doing it, and I've never learned anything by doing something right. In fact, doing it right is proof that I already learned it, which now takes us from this process of learning, which is making errors, making mistakes and learning from them.
Speaker 2:We got this fork in the road where we could take our error and take a beautiful little left turn back into trying again, knowing that eventually we can learn, knowing that we're we learn stuff all the time, we're so good at learning. We could take that lovely left turn and then just try again. And you know, a great example of that is watching a little kid with a video game. You know, they die. We've been playing video games just to have, and I don't know how many times we died and splatted on the floor. But the amazing thing was is that we just went back and tried again. And we just went back and tried again. And we just went back and tried again. And there was never that pause to say, oh, I can't do this, I'm never going to learn how to do this. I'm not good enough. I'm lousy at these games. I'm just someone who doesn't fit into the world. I should just run and hide from video games. I should just take this video game machine and throw it away because I'm awful at it.
Speaker 2:We could take that right turn, that right turn that says I made a mistake and there's something wrong with me and maybe I hurt somebody and maybe I should feel guilty about that. Maybe I'm guilty of doing something wrong, mistakes suddenly doing something wrong, mistakes suddenly become something wrong, and when we turn them into something wrong we naturally go to guilt. And when there's guilt and we allow it to come into ourselves as somehow an interpretation of who we are, when guilt starts to become who we are, we embrace it as shame and our view of ourselves who we are, what we are, what we're capable of changes dramatically. So we could take that childish turn to the left that says let's just try again. But we get the habit of turning right, internalizing a simple mistake into a confirmation of a judgment that we've made about ourselves. That results in us going deeply into this, this feeling of shame, which is truly the lowest vibrational emotion you could engage yeah, I, I, I think that this, these things stem from um.
Speaker 1:I mean, they can, they can stress, stem from so many different places, but the thing that, the example, that I guess, I'll bring up because I feel like I connect with it a little bit, is you know, as a child being told at some level that you know, why do you keep doing that? You can't do things right? Why do you keep messing that up? Or why can't you get this, why can't you understand this? You didn't do that right.
Speaker 1:Those words really start to sink in and then you grow up and this, you know, happened to me growing up it happened to me in across my lifetime is that you want to, you start, you start, you start people-pleasing, you start trying to get ahead of what they're thinking. But the biggest thing and I know a lot of people can probably resonate with this is that when you do something right or you're judging it as right, it's not noticed, and when you do something wrong or judged as wrong, it's like you're back at square one. It's like you haven't made any change in your life and you're made to feel this shame or you start to put guilt and shame on yourself. Why can't I do this right? Why can't I do this right and um, so you might feel like you're ahead in life. You've, you've made strides to do things right.
Speaker 1:Again, judgment, your own judgment of what's right and wrong, um, but the people in your life don't see that change, or they're they're not even looking for the change or the change. You know, as we know, in hypnosis, when we change, it can feel very normal and they're very natural. It's a natural state to be in. You only notice when there's huge contrast. Um, so what? Yeah, what not to um, you know, beat a dead horse here or anything but like just the, the idea that you keep sort of slipping back to square one and then beating yourself up for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, to see that in yourself. I think a huge idea to embrace is that thoughts are habits and the reason that we go back to that habit of self-criticism and self-judgment is that it's a habit, and it's a habit that we've learned, we've come, it's come to us honestly. Um, let's step back and look at the idea that others who were teaching us, others who were wanting the best for us, have somehow in their minds seen criticism and correction as necessary or even unfortunately helpful necessary or even unfortunately helpful. But certainly the real problem is that a lot of what we received as criticism as children was a parent who wanted the best for you and somehow thought that criticizing you and telling you what you did wrong was going to help you and make you better and make your life better, and it's what they received. And so they just are reliving, like you say, that bad recipe, that bad script that was handed to them, reliving, like you say, that bad recipe, that bad script that was handed to them. We can look at how this has become a habit in ourselves, in part because we were encouraged to be critical, to be self-critical and to be, unfortunately, self-judgmental, and that's the habit.
Speaker 2:Now it becomes the go-to response I made a mistake. I'm a stupid goof, right. I made a mistake. What an idiot I am. You know my favorite from. For years and years and years I'd say this to myself, and now I don't. Very often, I don't you know, I would say less, you dickhead, right? That would be the way I talk to myself, silently inside my head. I expect more from me, I don't expect me to make that kind of mistake. And there you are, making that kind of mistake, and it became habitual. Those words came out over and over so often, so completely immediately after every mistake, that I started to recognize in myself this growing paralysis of not wanting to do anything, not wanting to try anything, because I had no room for mistakes, for mistakes, mistakes immediately moved to judgment, and then I took that on as part of who?
Speaker 1:I was.
Speaker 2:And that became a habitual thought pattern and I really think that that's really normal. I really think that most of us can relate to that process of becoming self-critical, self-judgmental, and see how that evolves into almost a constant downward pressure of shame.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it becomes this cycle. Pressure of shame yeah, it becomes this cycle. And when we were watching YouTube the other night about shame and I won't mention, I don't even know the channel actually to even mention it if I wanted to, but I noticed this clip on YouTube of somebody saying that guilt is needed to make a new choice, and I almost died. I was like I couldn't believe that they said it and apparently it was a psychiatrist or something, and that's something that in hypnosis um, at least I can speak for myself, I, I, I work with directly right away. Um, if someone is in a guilt cycle, shame cycle, and we'll get into how they differ, but that can be. That is meant to be broken, right? You do not need guilt or shame to have you make a new choice, a better choice, a better choice, in fact, guilt.
Speaker 1:Let's imagine somebody who has an addiction to something and they go into the night, whether it's food, alcohol, smoking, whatever, they go into the night and they, they binge, and then they feel this little inkling of guilt afterwards and that guilt you wake up with the next day and it sits with you, sits with you all day, and as we, I don't, I'm not sure where you got it from. But we like to say guilt demands punishment. And so what do you do the next night? You end up punishing yourself for doing what you did the night before, and it just becomes this cycle. I've seen time and time again when we break that cycle, it gives you the breathing room to make a new choice and to not feel bad about it. You might have a binge night, but you're not beating yourself up for it.
Speaker 2:And that, to me, is I agree with you completely. We are led to believe that somehow guilt has value and it doesn't. The value is in recognizing the error and I like that word the best. Really, I don't even like the word mistake anymore. And if we can go even better and not use the word error or mistake and use the word lesson, right, if we can keep it to that learning purpose, like a little kid does who keeps dying in that video game but keeps popping back to life and trying again because they're gonna figure it out, I'm gonna figure this out. If we can just turn the things we do that don't work out the lessons, the errors, the mistakes, and Not take that step into guilt.
Speaker 2:Yeah, guilt is that first step that says this thing that I did is who I am, this thing that I did makes me bad, this thing that I did that didn't work out, that I made a mistake, that I made an error, that somehow it didn't happen the way I wanted to. Instead of taking the time that left turn that says I'm going to learn the lesson here, I'm going to get better at this, the time that left turn that says I'm going to learn the lesson here, I'm going to get better at this, we take that right turn to there's something wrong with me.
Speaker 2:I'm bad and we think that by telling ourselves that it's going to motivate us to make change. But it doesn't. It's so important to understand that criticism never motivates. Criticism doesn't motivate. I learned this years ago. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever. I've ever learned when it comes to interacting with others on a teaching level. A good teacher does not criticize. A good teacher does not point out the mistake. A good teacher just suggests suggests what to do instead. The perfect words out of the greatest teacher are try this. It's that simple. I don't need to tell you what you did wrong. I don't need to tell you how you keep making the same mistake. I don't need to tell you that your technique is bad. What I need to tell you is try this. This is the thing that might help. That's a great teacher, that's a great parent.
Speaker 2:Right, allowing making room for mistakes, and that might be our next beautiful reframe. Right is I make room for mistakes. I make room for the lesson. When I make a mistake, I make room for mistakes. I make room for the lesson. When I make a mistake, I make room for the lesson. And to allow yourself to make room for the lesson so that you make that left turn into trying again instead of the right turn into self-judgment. We've got to make room to allow for mistakes, because that's the only way we grow. It's the only way we develop.
Speaker 2:Judgment is that unnecessary next step? I can be aware of the mistake. I can be aware of the error. I can even get help on what I should do instead. I can practice doing something different. But if I'm busy thinking about the mistake and turning that into guilt, I've done something wrong and let that guilt be taken on personally, as I am. Bad becomes shame right. This is the magic of the moment. The magic of the moment lies in when I make the mistake. Do I learn the lesson, focus on the lesson, or do I let it mean something about me and that's the wrong turn, I guess and that's the wrong turn.
Speaker 1:I guess something came up because I, I, I, I resonate with it, and I don't know if I should be explaining things about myself on here, but I think it's important because I think that probably a lot of people can resonate with it as well is so as a child, I completely I don't know remember the exact events, but I know that something along these lines happened and I drug it into my, I dragged it into my future, and so I still feel like this sometimes is when I think I've done something bad, have to, um, I'm not allowed to feel happy, I have to punish myself, right? So, um, um, you know, from childhood, I I don't know exactly, I know I can feel it, I know probably if I did regression on it I'd find it, but I know the words, they're coming to me something along the lines of what do you think you're doing? You just did that bad thing, right? Maybe I started laughing again, or maybe I started playing, or you know, as a child, and so you know, go to your room and think about what you did and that allowed for this, beating myself up over and over and over again and making myself accountable for what I did, and now it's messy in my adult life because the smallest things can make me feel that way. Right, that I need to hold myself accountable, I need to beat myself up, I need to um, I can't be happy until the other person is happy again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that subconscious habit of the way we deal with things. The same way over and over, and then we have to find a way to break from them yeah them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's unfortunately, you know, really normal, right? There's nothing wrong with you, there's nothing wrong with me, there's nothing wrong with anybody listening. It's just that, unfortunately, thoughts become habits and they become habitual and our way of dealing with our mistakes, our lessons, becomes that unnecessary next step of judgment. You know to go from that and you use the words perfectly. You know I made a mistake and then I did something bad. We go from taking an error and labeling it, judging it right, judging it as bad, and when we, I think there's a lot of value in words and I think there's a lot of value in realizing that there are certain words that are judgment words and that if you're using them, it's because you've turned to a habit of judgment. And judgment just never leads to anything good. It only builds walls between people, it only builds walls around us when we impose it on ourselves.
Speaker 2:Self-judgment, right Judgment is an unnecessary next step. You know, shakespeare said nothing's ever good or bad, but thinking makes it so, and I think that's huge. Let that be another reframe for the day. Nothing's ever good or bad, but thinking makes it so, and I think that's huge. Let that be another reframe for the day. Nothing's ever good or bad, but thinking makes it so, and it's the way you think about things determines whether they're good or they're bad, whether you make the judgment or you take that wonderful left turn back into trying again, right. Okay, that one didn't work out, let's try something different this time, right?
Speaker 2:I think that as you approach your new year and your new self and your new goals and desires and the things you want to do differently than you've done in the past, differently than you've done in the past, you first have to be soft with yourself and say I've got a lot of habits, and habits aren't easy to just overcome. I've got to be very conscious and very deliberate. And I'm going to try to be more conscious and deliberate. And then say to yourself I'm not what I do. I'm the doer and I can try different things. I'm the doer and I can try different things. And then you can step back from that and you can say I'm not going to judge myself. This is a lesson, not a mistake. Embrace the lesson and then try again. Just try again and don't worry about it, like all you got is right now, that's, all that exists is right now. So right now I'm going to try again, just like the kid playing a game trying to figure it out.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's multi-layeredered that's for sure and very well ingrained, very habitual mm-hmm. We pass it along. So maybe, yeah, maybe, you can make a promise to yourself. I'm gonna make a promise to myself right now. I'm going to try to be more complimentary than critical.
Speaker 1:Me too. Yeah, all right, I've got to do my all right, all right, we will.
Speaker 2:Pick this up tomorrow.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, okay, have a good day. We hope you enjoyed today's podcast and that maybe it helped even a little. If you have any questions, we would love you to send them along in an email to info at psalmhypnosiscom. Thank you for being part of the State of Mind community. For more information about hypnosis and the various online or in-person services we provide, please visit our website, wwwsomhypnosiscom. The link will be in the notes below. While you are there, why don't you book a free one-hour journey, meeting with Hilary or Les, to learn more about what hypnosis is and how you might use it to make your life what you want it to be? Bye for now. Talk to you tomorrow.
