I'm back with the wonderful Susan McCulley. And today we have a tender topic.When discussing shame it feels so essential to hold ourselves gently.We touch on areas that may feel challenging. We explore aspects of our own responses to shame, and the associated emotions that connect with it. We traverse the landscape of shame to see how we can hold ourselves with ever-deeper compassion.There are many angles to a conversation about shame. Our attention today is focussed on how we can normalise the feelings we associate with a sense of shame and how we can differentiate her from her sisters - sadness, embarrassment, guilt, anger, despair, neglect, disappointment... This feels like an important subject because the more we can identify what we're feeling, the less we are identified by those feelings.Toward the end of the conversation we landed on an idea that affected us both deeply. And brought tears to my eyes. Ultimately the message is one of whole acceptance of who we are.Henny xPLEASE NOTE... At the beginning of our conversation, Susan leads us through an exercise to grounds us all as we embark on this conversation. The very initial part (feeling into your feet) can be done when in car, but please note the rest of the exercise involves your hands too - so won’t be possible when driving! Some of the things we discuss include…How our ancient animal brain responds to experiences and creates shame because of our deep fear of being shunnedThe Gottman Institute have created an emotion wheel (see the link below) that helps us understand the subtlety and breadth of what we feelShame arises when we know we’re not being TRUE to ourselves We can carry shame with us throughout our lives - and can inherit it from others, from our conditioning or from societal moresShame is a primal emotion and we ALL have it.Shame hates to be talked about so secrecy is its language - the more we deny or refuse to talk about shame, the more we have.Shame is ‘I am bad (and I can’t change that)’ - guilt is ‘I did something bad (and I have a choice to change it)’There is a depth and breadth to our emotional landscape - developing our language of emotion helps us differentiate what we’re feeling and that in turn helps us see that the feeling of Shame per se could be built on something else… sadness, embarrassment, guilt…Everything we feel is offering up something to usCONTACT SUSANwww.susanmcculley.comThe Age of Becoming REFERENCESBrene Brown - Shame podcast The Gottman Institute - feelings wheel Dr. Robert PlutchikTara BrachGRATITUDEThank you as always to Angus at changomusic.com for his music and production.CONNECTThe Regroup Hour on Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/groups/theregrouphourJoin the mailing list & receive the mini-course '3 little acts of self-compassion', completely free https://hennyflynn.ck.page/6e83d0227eExplore Henny's coaching, books, retreats, courses & events https://www.hennyflynn.co.uk/