What If Change Didn't Have to Begin With Shame?
What if the parts of you that you’ve spent your life trying to fix, silence, discipline, or get rid of aren't actually the enemy?
I recently joined Emma on Healing Odyssey for a conversation about recovery, ADHD, shadow work, hypnosis, body wisdom, and what it means to change without making yourself wrong first.
And underneath all of those seemingly different topics was one thread:
What changes when we lead ourselves with love through transformation rather than leading ourselves with shame through transformation?
I know the latter approach intimately.
I grew up identifying with the good girl. The quiet one. The one who got straight A’s and tried to perform well and present an image of perfection.
But becoming that version of myself meant other parts had to go somewhere.
The loud one.
The rebellious one.
The argumentative one.
The one who said what she actually wanted.
The one I might have called “the brat.”
And here's what I've discovered through my own healing and the work I now do with others: those parts don't actually disappear when we reject them.
Sometimes incredibly important pieces of us get locked away with them.
My ability to speak up for my boundaries was tied up in what was called “the brat.”
When I could finally look at her differently, I didn't just see someone who needed to be controlled. I saw the part of me connected to my voice. My boundaries. My ability to say no. My willingness to take up space.
That is one of the ways I think about shadow work.
Not as digging around looking for more things that are wrong with us, but as bringing what has been operating outside our awareness back to the table.
Because shadow work is really about bringing back your power of choice.
That became important in my own recovery, too.
I talked with Emma about my journey of quitting alcohol and why my earlier attempts to quit didn't stick.
Eventually I had to become curious about the part of me that kept making a choice I consciously knew I wanted to stop making.
What was she seeking?
For me, a huge part of the answer was connection.
Belonging.
The ease of communicating with other people.
Feeling like I had a place inside a group.
That didn't mean I didn't also need practical changes. Recovery involved changing my environment, my routines, the places I went, the people I spent time with, and the associations I'd built around alcohol.
But there was something underneath the behavior, too.
And recognizing those deeper needs gave me the opportunity to begin meeting them differently.
That lesson has continued to follow me far beyond alcohol: instead of only asking, How do I make myself stop doing this?, I can become curious about who inside of me keeps reaching for it—and what she believes she's going to receive.
And then, years later, came another enormous reframe: understanding my neurodivergence.
We talked about what it's like to discover ADHD later in life and suddenly have language for things you've spent decades treating as personal shortcomings.
I need reminders.
I need lists in multiple places.
I need to structure my environment in ways that actually work with my brain.
Before, those things could become evidence in the case against myself.
Now I can say: This is an actual function of my brain. This is how my brain works, and there's nothing wrong with that.
An accommodation stops being something embarrassing that I secretly need and becomes something I can consciously choose.
And celebrate.
And that removes shame.
Maybe that's why recovery, neurodivergence, shadow work, hypnosis, parenting and body wisdom don't actually feel like separate subjects to me.
They're all invitations into a different relationship with ourselves.
One where change doesn't require rejection.
One where we can listen to the parts we once called bad, difficult, needy, bratty, broken, inconvenient, or too much—and become curious about what they're protecting and what gifts got buried alongside them.
One where saying what we actually want can become an act of connection instead of selfishness.
One where we don't have to become perfectly healed people who never struggle again.
As I said toward the end of our conversation:
“There's no end goal. The end goal is only to bring more and more love and openness and a big group hug for yourself.”
That's a healing odyssey I can get behind.
Listen to my full conversation with Emma on Healing Odyssey, where we explore recovery, ADHD, shadow work, hypnosis, self-trust, parenting, people-pleasing, and learning to work with the mind and body you actually have.
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