today we want to dive in a little bit deeper into a part of shame that i think is really going to help you have more self-awareness it’s helped me tremendously and that’s this idea of shame scripts these scripts that we repeat to ourselves or maybe we don’t even realize we’re repeating it to ourselves maybe like jim you’ve said it’s like a ticker tape that runs on the bottom of the tv it’s just running pretty rampant in your subconscious but it’s changing the way you perceive things what you believe about yourself others and god

and it is affecting you probably more than you know so what is a shame script so i’ll start are you going to be vulnerable here i’m going to be vulnerable good i know and then i’m going to turn to you and and do some forced vulnerability forced vulnerability okay but before i get with to my shame script i want to tell you how jim helped me even become aware of this because of course if it’s just running in the back of your mind affecting your perceptions and your beliefs maybe you have no clue what it is now some people will say oh yeah i know what

mine is but i didn’t and so jim did this wonderful technique that helped me realize what was happening so i took a piece of poster board and i wrote i drew out a stick figure scene like little scenes um anytime i’d felt traumatized abused emotionally physically sexually something impactful rejection you know when i felt rejected or abandoned something that felt significant in my life from my earliest childhood memory to the present so i drew all these little stick figure scenes and had little boxes around them so they were

different scenes and i had quite a few of them so then you told me to take my poster and in one of our sessions you said now just tell me tell me about what happened in each one of these stick figure scenes and it’s not about the drawing it wasn’t judging my artistic abilities but um it was just a safe place for me to say okay this happened i’ll tell you about it and then this happened i’ll tell you about it and then when i was eight and then when i was 20 and then when i was 30 and then you know i’m old so i kept going

and um what you were listening for is what jim the impact because we love to say well you know my story and that’s it that’s the fact and you’ve written about this now yourself is the impact i think well this happened to her then i pondered with curiosity i wonder what that did to her the same sun outside today that hardens clay softens butter so i can’t think what happened to your sister what happened to joel or me how did it impact you i’m always listening and pondering impact and what became evident is some shame