Episode 227: This week's guest on the podcast is Beverly Engel. We talk about childhood abuse and neglect and the negative impact that this can have, with shame being a huge part of this. Self-compassion can be the antidote to shame but for someone with a history of abuse, there can be many obstacles to self-compassion. We talk about these obstacles and the ways to get past them.
Beverly Engel is an internationally recognized psychotherapist and an acclaimed advocate for victims of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. She is the author of 26 self-help books, including three bestselling books on emotional abuse. Beverly is a licensed marriage and family therapist and has been practising psychotherapy for 40 years.
In addition to her professional work, Beverly frequently lends her expertise to national television talk shows. She has appeared on Oprah, CNN, and Starting Over, and many other TV programs.
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Chris Sandel: Welcome to Episode 227 of Real Health Radio. You can find the show notes and the links talked about as part of this episode at seven. So, the word all spelled out seven-health.com/227.
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Real Health Radio. I’m your host, Chris Sandel. I’m a nutritionist that specializes in recovery from disordered eating and eating disorders and really just helping anyone who has a messy relationship with food and body and exercise. And today on the show, it is an interview and my guest is Beverly Engel. Beverly is an internationally recognized psychotherapist and an acclaimed advocate for victims of sexual, physical and emotional abuse. She’s the author of 26 self-help books, including three bestselling books on emotional abuse. And Beverly is a licensed marriage and family therapist and has been practicing psychotherapy for 40 years. And in addition to her professional work, Beverly frequently lends her expertise to national television talk shows. So, she’s appeared on Oprah and CNN and Starting Over and many other TV programs. So, I became aware of Beverly last year.
If you are a regular listener to the show and heard my end of year roundup of my favorite books and documentaries, Beverly was on that list for her book, It Wasn’t My Fault. And I actually give a proper intro and talk about when I’m gonna cover when I chatted with Beverly, which you’ll hear in a moment. So, I won’t repeat myself here. But before I do start the conversation, I wanna offer a trigger warning.
This episode is all about childhood abuse in all of its forms. We talk about the effects that it can have and how this can make the practice of self-compassion so difficult. But this is definitely a heavy episode where we do cover topics of childhood sexual abuse, childhood neglect, physical and verbal abuse. So, if you are someone who has a history of this, it’s likely that this could be triggering.
And ultimately, I believe it can be a really helpful episode because we cover using compassion and self-compassion as a healing modality and what this looks like. But I would be remiss if I didn’t offer this warning before we started. So, with that out of the way, let’s get on with the show. Here is my conversation with Beverly Engel.
Hey, Beverly, welcome to the Real Heart Radio. Thanks for chatting me today.
Beverly Engel: You’re welcome I’m looking forward to it.
Chris Sandel: So, just as a little bit of an introduction as to how I came across you and we come to be doing this conversation today, it was, I think last year, I had a client who had suffered sexual abuse when she was a child and went to a therapist to start to deal with that. And one of the books that was recommended as part of that was a book that you had written called, It Wasn’t My Fault. And the client recommended it to me and said, hey, I really think you should check this out. And I really, really enjoyed the book.
And I’ve been a really big fan of compassion and then how important compassion and self-compassion is and really like Krista Neff and Tara Brock and Paul Gilbert and a lot of people within the compassion space and the self-compassion space. And what I’d found with so many of my clients who’ve suffered childhood abuse or trauma is it felt a lot of this material just wasn’t speaking to them or there was this bridge that just wasn’t there so they could make it to that information. So, it felt, okay, this is okay for regular folks, but my experience is different and I just can’t do self-compassion.
And so, what I found with your book was it was really nice in that it was able to then bridge that gap. So, talking about self-compassion, talking about compassion, but also talking about how there can be then so many obstacles for someone who has a history of trauma and starting to talk about that. And I also know you have a new book out which focuses more specifically on escaping emotional abuse, which I was sent an advanced copy of and I also think is great.
Today’s discussion, I think we’ll be just using these two books as our focus and having a conversation about it. And from a practical perspective, because that was the other thing that I really liked with the books is there is so much practical information in there. There’re so many different exercises. So, trying to make this as useful for listeners as possible. And then also just finding out a bit about you and your story and your background and how this has informed the work that you do. So that’s my thought for today. How does that sound?
Beverly Engel: Sounds really good.
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Chris Sandel: So, as a starting place, do you wanna give the listeners a bit of background on yourself? So, who you are, what you do, what training you’ve done?
Beverly Engel: Yes, I was emotionally, physically and sexually abused as a child. And I had lots and lots of trouble growing up because of it and took a real deep interest in psychology because as most therapists will tell you, their original reason for becoming a psychotherapist was to heal themselves. I equally had a need to help other people, but my primary motivation at first was to really understand myself. I had therapy for the first time when I was a senior in high school. So that’s how I got started.
After I became a psychotherapist, my very first book was on sexual abuse. Well, let me back up. I had a practice in psychotherapy and I was starting to see more and more people who were sexually abused. And I found that in the first sessions, I was repeating the same information, educational information. So, I thought I’d write a pamphlet for my clients and leave it in the waiting room or hand it to them. And my pamphlet just kept getting bigger and bigger until it became a book. And that was my first book, which was called The Right to Innocence about how to heal from sexual abuse. So, I went from there and wrote, I’ve written 22 books at this point. I’m very prolific. And I love it. I love writing. It’s really a gift. I believe I was gifted with that talent to write especially nonfiction books. And what was the other part of your question?
Chris Sandel: I guess, it was who you are, what you do and the training that you’ve done.
Beverly Engel: Oh, training. Well, I have a master’s degree in psychology, clinical psychology, and I’m a licensed marriage family child counselor here in the US. And I don’t believe you have an equivalent there in the UK of a marriage family child counselor, but it’s a specialty to work within families and couples and to work on focusing on resolving issues with parents or resolving issues with adult children.
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Chris Sandel: And so, you mentioned about you having trauma and abuses as a child. So, what was, when you went for your first session of therapy with the therapist, I think you said in high school. So how was that experience?
Beverly Engel: Well, it was pretty terrible. It was, I mean, it was a man and he was nice enough. He didn’t give me any feedback. He just let me talk. And I only saw him for, I think it was two sessions. And then the third session, he told me that I didn’t need therapy anymore. He said that, you’re a very intelligent, articulate young woman. You know what happened to you, but it’s gonna be your choice now to decide how that’s gonna affect you. It doesn’t have to affect your life. You know about it, you’ve talked about it, and you don’t really need any more therapy. So, I couldn’t have been any more misunderstood.
The therapist obviously couldn’t see past my facade of being articulate and intelligent and couldn’t recognize somebody who was very defended, very emotionally defended at that point. And, we know that victims of abuse tend to fall into two categories. There are those who, fall apart and become suicidal or have tremendous anxiety and depression constantly and do poorly in school and do have, difficulties in relationships. And it’s, really obvious that they’ve been victimized. And then we have the person like me, who is articulate and defended and can tell you what happened to them with very little emotion connected to it. And that person is just as in need of therapy as the one who’s overtly falling apart. But this therapist didn’t understand that, obviously.
So, my first experience with therapy wasn’t really good at all. And I had a couple of other experiences with therapy after that that weren’t good either. So, it took me years to find a good therapist who was compassionate and very direct, but very compassionate. And she saw through my facade the very first time I saw her. I went in telling her what I wanted, what kind of a therapist I wanted, what I wanted to work on, had it all together. And she took a look at me and she said, boy, you really have a need to be in control, don’t you? And it just melted my defenses. It just melted my defenses completely. And I started crying because I felt for the first time, this person saw me. She really saw me. She saw the pain. She saw why I was defended. She saw past my ability to be articulate. And I ended up spending a couple of years with her just crying, basically, being on her couch and just crying.
And in those years, therapists could actually hold their clients and she would hold me and I would sob. And that would be primarily what we did for the first couple of years. So, compassion I recognized that how much I needed compassion. And that was my first introduction to ever having anybody have any compassion for me.
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Chris Sandel: Wow. And I also want to highlight something you said there in terms of, for so many clients, they have terrible experiences with therapists and that can happen on multiple occasions. And, as you said, it can take you a number of years to find the right person. And then you do find the right person that you just click with. And that’s when you start to make the real difference. And it sucks in a lot of ways, because I think people can get very disillusioned before they reach that point, or they have the experience of thinking, I am too far gone. I am broken. There is no chance of repair here. So, I’m always, when I’m working with people, if they’ve had those experiences of saying, well, look, that is definitely not the case. And we need to find someone that you do well with who does do the right form therapy that is going to be helpful for you. Because, unfortunately, it is a really irregular occurrence.
Beverly Engel: Yes, unfortunately, you’re right. And how did you, you said you had this facade of being put together and articulate. So how did you then come to be in therapy? Was it you taking yourself there? Was it someone else requesting that you go there? Well, in high school, I went to a party and I got really drunk. And I had broken up with a boyfriend and was distraught about it. And in my drunken state, I went in the kitchen and grabbed a knife and started running down the street with it
So that was called a suicide attempt. Now, I don’t honestly know if it was a suicide attempt. I think it was, I was being dramatic. I was distraught, but I don’t think, I had never seriously thought of killing myself. So, I don’t honestly know what that was, except it was a call for help for sure. And I told my YWCA director about that, and then she referred me to therapy. Okay. Do you have siblings? No. No. Okay. So only child. And so, do you wanna give a little bit more detail of your childhood or anything that comes to mind there that you think is relevant for listeners? No, I know you touched on it briefly, and I’m not asking you to go into huge amounts of detail that could be triggering, but whatever you wanna share from your childhood that you think is relevant.
Well, I was a very precocious child, and my mother seemed to like that about me, and she encouraged it. But my mother was basically emotionally absent, and she was physically absent because she had to work for a living. She was a single mother, but she was also emotionally absent. And that set the stage for the sexual abuse, which happened several times.
And when I finally told her about the sexual abuse, she didn’t believe me. She, as I wrote in, It Wasn’t Your Fault. She had an idea about me in her head of who I was that precluded her from actually ever seeing me. She thought I was a liar. She, I think all children lied, but to my mother, because I lied, I was this terrible person. And I could never please her. She was very disgruntled with me, and she wasn’t really compassionate or available to me at all.
So, by the time I told her about the sexual abuse and she didn’t believe me, that was the last straw for me. I was full of shame from the sexual abuse, but I was also full of shame from the way she had raised me. She was constantly critical. She didn’t seem to understand children at all in terms of the fact that children can lie. I was a constant disappointment to her, and she made that known. So, I was full of shame, both from the way she treated me and the sexual abuse. I’m one type of victim who, when they’re so shamed, they can’t take shame anymore.
I had a client who held his index finger under his nose and said, I am full up with shame, I can’t take anymore. And so, I can’t take any criticism. I can’t take any suggestions even. I can’t take any negative feedback. I have to defend myself. And I do that by making you wrong before you have a chance to criticize me. I do it by always acting I know what’s going on. I know what’s happening. I’m always right. I can never accept the other person’s opinion. And I do that to protect myself from shame. And that’s what I did. I just got very defended, especially with my mother. And I just shut her out. I just shut her out and went on and lived my life. I had been pretty much living my life anyway. She didn’t really watch me or know where I was. So, I was very, on the one hand, it’s called independence.
On another hand, I was at risk constantly of either getting into trouble or being abused or something bad happening to me. So, I became defended at a very early age. And that was my way of coping.
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Chris Sandel: I think the independence piece, I was recently listening to a podcast where it was interviewing Flea, who is the basis for Red Hot Chili Peppers. And he was talking about, pretty much having absentee parents for his whole upbringing and talking about it in a very nostalgic way and that a lot of that stuff is lost and LA isn’t like the LA he remembers from his childhood. But it was, it was interesting listening to it in the sense of I think you are looking at this in a way that is happier than it really was. And I think we can choose to use the word independence when often the appropriate word is neglect.
Beverly Engel: Yes, absolutely. When I hear people talk with, speak with nostalgia about the good old days in the 50s where you didn’t have to worry about your child, your child could roam the neighborhood freely. You didn’t have to lock your doors. You know how wonderful all that was. Well, that’s the time I was growing up, but somebody should have been watching me. And I wasn’t safe out there roaming the neighborhood. So, you didn’t have to, in the 50s, you didn’t have to be at home all the time. You could roam around and be free, but you could get into all kinds of trouble that way.
Chris Sandel: And I think then there is a happy medium between the complete helicopter parenting and kids never being let out of sight and never being able to make a decision and all of that. But, the solution to that isn’t, let’s teleport back to the 1950s.
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Chris Sandel: And you said in terms of, okay, you with your mother, you shut her out. What about in terms of friends? And this can be friends when you’re in school or friends when you’re in college. How did you have friends? Would they have known or suspected anything in terms of your background with the abuse?
Beverly Engel: Well, I went to school a ragamuffin. I don’t know if you have that term in the UK.
Chris Sandel: I know what it means.
Beverly Engel: My mother didn’t get up in the morning to get me ready for school. As early as four years old, I was getting myself up. So, my hair wasn’t combed and I didn’t have very nice clothes because we were very poor and I didn’t know how to dress. So, most kids and teachers just left me alone because I lived in a fairly affluent area, adjacent to an affluent area. And I was just an outcast. I did have several throughout my school, several really, really close friends, really wonderful friends. And they were friends who were also either being abused or neglected. It just was common place that that’s who I hung out with. But I did have the wonderful experience of having really super close friends growing up.
Then, by the time I got to high school, I was able to put myself together. Although I tried, at one, there was a girl at high school who was a bossy, controlling little girl. And she said to me, “if you’re gonna cut your bangs, be sure you go completely across, your bangs look stupid”. So, I was getting myself together, but not quite. I’m still standing out. But by the time I got to like a junior in high school, I really blossomed. And I became the president of the Medical Careers Club and the president of my YWCA club. I had this natural tendency to be a leader. And I became charismatic. And my natural personality was coming out.
And so that was really good because then I became super popular among a certain group of people, not the elites, but a certain group of people really liked me and I had a good sense of humor. So those were good days. Those last couple of years of high school were really good days for me.
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Chris Sandel: And does that tendency you talked about there of getting involved and being the head of this thing and that thing, does that, I don’t know, have a darker side where it then morphed into overwork or perfectionism or workaholism?
Beverly Engel: A little bit, not too much perfectionism, but again, it was a good way to hide. I could hide my pain. I could hide my vulnerability by being the leader. And it’s really started my career as being the expert, which is what many abusers take on, right? They’re the expert, they’re the teacher, they’re the always right, people are looking up to them. And so, and this is a foreshadowing of the fact that I became somewhat abusive myself emotionally in my adult relationships with men. But it was just a way to hide. It was a way to look good and be liked and be popular without really having to show what I was really feeling.
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Chris Sandel: And, then when you started training as a therapist, what was, did you know then what your area of specialty was gonna be and what you wanted to be working on with clients then, or just evolved with time?
Beverly Engel: No, I focused mostly on sex, sexual therapy at first, sex therapy and not, I knew I had been sexually abused and I knew that my clients who were needing sex therapy probably had been abused, but at that time, nobody was making the connection. I was working for a couple who were known as the Masters and Johnsons of the West Coast. And I was training with them and I was seeing clients and there was never, it was never talked about, sexual abuse was never talked about. But I knew there was a connection. And I knew that what I knew my interest in sex therapy was because of both the fact that I’d been sexually abused and that I had sexual issues myself. So it was, I focused on sex therapy in the beginning. And then because I had so many clients coming in who were emotionally abused, then I also focused on that.
Chris Sandel: And with the sexual abuse, I mean, it feels there’s a lot more of that that’s going on than we’re talking about now, but it definitely doesn’t feel as taboo as it once did. It definitely feels there is a lot more focus on it. And considering you’ve worked in the field, when did it feel like there was that shift?
Beverly Engel: Well, this was in the early 80s. And all of a sudden clients started coming in who were sexually abused and telling about their experience. And I don’t know, I don’t think anybody’s ever figured out why that happened, but it happened all of a sudden that clients were coming in and talking about the fact that they had been sexually abused. And it was, we all started talking about it. It became pretty famous you know to talk; the whole issue of sexual abuse and people were coming out and people were being arrested. And it was just a phenomena of the culture.
Chris Sandel: I’m trying to place when all this came out around the Catholic church and wondering if that was part of it.
Beverly Engel: That was later, the Catholic church was later. This could even be the late 70s. And I don’t know if anybody’s ever figured out why it happened, but all of sudden victims of sexual abuse were going to therapy in droves.
Chris Sandel: Wow, it sounds Malcolm Gladwell will write a book on or a short story on explaining why this happened. And so, let’s talk a bit about the compassion piece and self-compassion piece, because I think that’s just so big as part of your writing. So, you obviously talked about the therapist and spending many years crying and actually having that be so helpful and someone finally giving you the compassion that you needed. So how did that then evolve for you in your life in terms of compassion and self-compassion?
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Beverly Engel: Well, I can’t say that the fact that she was being compassionate, having it dawn on me that I needed to be self-compassionate, I didn’t make that connection. But what I do know from working with clients is that if somebody receives compassion, it’s far easier for them to have compassion for others. It’s just a natural evolution. It takes work to learn self-compassion, don’t get me wrong. And you mentioned obstacles before, and there are many obstacles to having self-compassion. But if I had never received that compassion from her, I wouldn’t have been able to evolve into being self-compassionate. Took me many years to evolve to being self-compassionate.
I was full of shame, as I mentioned, and I was very critical of myself, but the shame was just so heavy on me. I had an experience growing up when I was around 10, it was a few years after the sexual abuse, where I had an impulse to be sexually abusive and I didn’t act on that impulse, but I carried the horrible shame of just the fact that I had that first that I had that thought and carried that for years.
In fact, honestly, it’s only been fairly recently that I really got it that, I had that impulse, but I didn’t act on it, and that I should be proud of myself for not acting on it. I didn’t feel any pride about not acting on it. I was just more focused on how horrible, what a horrible monster I was, that I even had the impulse. And I didn’t even think of it as an impulse. I thought of it that I had become like my abusers, that I was a monster. I didn’t, I mean, I knew that kids, at this point, I knew that kids who were sexually abused will repeat the pattern. They’ll go off with their friends and ask their friends to take their clothes off, or they’ll show their genitals to their friends, or they’ll introduce sex to their friends. And they’re repeating what happened to them. It’s a way of healing. In therapy, with children who were molested, the therapist would, at least in the past, used to use these cloth dolls that were genitalia were correct. How do I say that?
Chris Sandel: Anatomically, correct?
Beverly Engel: Anatomically correct, but they actually had genitals. And they would ask the client, the kid, were you touched and where were you touched? And kids will do that themselves naturally. They’ll get a doll and play around with the genital area or whatever. So, I knew that that was a way that children cope with trauma is to repeat it. But I didn’t recognize that it was an impulse that came from inside of me, but it wasn’t because I was, I had become an abuser. I wasn’t wanting to abuse my power. I wasn’t wanting to have power over anyone. I just had the impulse to do to somebody else what had been done to me. It was rather innocent, in fact. And that it was a great thing that I had the control to stop myself from that impulse.
Honestly, in the last few years really got that. I got the importance of that. And I had been carrying that horrible cloak of shame all my life because of that and because of other things. And so, when I started working with shame, I started doing research myself on shame, again, for the reason that I wanted to heal myself of my shame. And that’s when I came across self-compassion, which is really the antidote to shame. And I learned, when I learned that, it was a light bulb went off, oh my gosh, I’ve got to do that. I’ve got to learn self-compassion so I can heal my shame.
00:29:41
Chris Sandel: I mean, you said a lot there. One of the things I want to touch on was just, with your book, It Wasn’t Your Fault. So, there is quite a section or bits that are dedicated to people who have been abused, who then become abusers and dealing with the shame of being that abuser and continuing on the pain that was done to you and how important it is to then be able to reach those people. Because I think so often it’s more about dealing with the quote unquote victim or survivor or whatever is the preference term that someone wants to use, and then ostracizing the person who is then the one who is then doing that abuse. But it’s for the people who are typically doing that abuse, that they were also the one who were abused.
Beverly Engel: I never excuse abuse? And it’s important for an abusive person to acknowledge what they’ve done. But I don’t want to shame them further. That’s not going to help them. What’s going to help them is for them to make the connection between their own abuse and their abusive behavior, and to find ways to heal their shame, because I can almost guarantee you that every abuser is just full of shame.
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Chris Sandel: You said you did a lot of research around shame, and I can definitely tell that from reading your books. And so maybe we start with at the beginning in terms of what is shame? Can you define shame, or how would you describe it if you were wanting to explain it to someone who doesn’t know what that means?
Beverly Engel: Well, shame is equivalent to feeling exposed. You feel like somebody has exposed your weaknesses or your imperfection, and you feel exposed in the eyes of other people, and you just feel like hiding. And if you think about the posture of a person who’s shamed is that their shoulders are rolled forward. It’s almost they’re protecting their middle, maybe their heads down. They don’t look you in the eyes. So, the whole posture of shame is, I want to hide. I want to hide my imperfections. I want to hide my mistakes. I don’t want you to see me. So that’s the feeling sense of shame.
A person who feels shame feels unworthy. They can even get to the place where they feel unlovable. So, it’s actually more a state of mind than just an emotion. Yes, there is the emotion of shame, which I just described, which is to feel exposed and to feel unworthy. But people who were abused carry around a whole, I call it a cloak of shame, where they’re just covered with shame. And it’s a state of mind. It affects everything they do. It goes way beyond their self-esteem. It’s their self-concept. It’s everything about them is affected by how much shame they feel.
Chris Sandel: And that was definitely one of the things that I took from the book. And for me personally, I’m very fortunate and I haven’t had any trauma or any major trauma or any abuse or anything along those lines, but I definitely have had moments of feeling shame. But there’s a difference between that being more a situational thing that feels transitory and that then has an end point and then I get over it versus where, okay, the default feeling that I’m just carrying around all the time is shame.
Beverly Engel: Absolutely. And a lot of abuse victims carry around that default feeling of just being inadequate, being less than.
Chris Sandel: I know, Tommy, you talk in the book about the different types of shame. So, there’s immediate shame, there’s then the shame of not standing up for yourself, then there’s the calmative shame, the fact that you have tolerated certain treatment or unacceptable behavior. There’s just so many different angles in which shame can then be part of the story for someone who has suffered abuse.
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Chris Sandel: And so, one of the things I would also wanna talk about is just shame connected to parenting and connected to children. So, one of the things, I talked about, actually before we hit a record with this, is that for your new book, which is called Escaping Emotional Abuse, a lot of the focus is on emotional abusive relationships that A, someone is still in and B, are with a partner. And for the majority of the time where I’m seeing this play out for my clients, it’s much more about with their parents and that they had emotionally abusive parents while they were growing up. And for a lot of them, they are now very distant from their parents and they’re estranged and may not see them at all, or they are seeing them fairly infrequently and they could recognize how hurtful and judgmental and cruel they are. But in a lot of cases, they still are that way to themselves. I think it would be useful to just talk about it from a parent to child perspective, because I think that can be quite helpful for the listeners.
Beverly Engel: Unfortunately, shaming a child is pretty acceptable. It’s the idea is that that’s good discipline, is to shame a child. If you can shame a child into behaving, that’s a real positive. But shaming a child is just horrific. It’s one of the worst things you can do to a child aside from abusing them. And some people say that shaming a child is abusive. But a shame, a parent who uses shame as discipline will have unreasonable expectations of their child, like my mother. My mother expected me to act like an adult, and a lot of parents do. They expect their kids to think and behave like little adults, and they just can’t. As we’ve discovered in the last 10 years or so, child’s brain isn’t even fully developed until they’re in their 20s. So, they can’t be held accountable for making making mistakes that children make.
So having unreasonable expectations, belittling a child is a horrible way to discipline a child. What’s wrong with you? I’m so tired of you. I’m so tired of you always doing this, comparing a child to somebody else. I wish you were more like Tommy. Tommy, look at Tommy. Tommy acts really nice when we go out, and you’re always causing a fuss. Just constant criticism. The silent treatment.
My mother used to give me the silent treatment. She would sometimes not talk to me for weeks. So, I would do something, I’d make some mistake, spill some milk, come home late from school, worry her in some way, shame her in some way. And so, she would give me the silent treatment as a way to punish me. And it felt horrible. And then I would have to start a campaign to get her to like me again. I’d apologize, and then I’d clean the house, and I’d apologize again, to try to get her to finally talk to me. And it was very humiliating. So, there’s lots of different forms of shaming that are very common with parents.
00:37:33
Chris Sandel: I think as you talk about in the book, is that it can be so corrosive because it can feel subtle, or it can feel in a way that that’s just the way that they talk to you. Typically, when there’s physical abuse, it’s much more overt, and it’s much more obvious to you. I clearly remember being hit. But when you’re having someone belittling you and making comments, it can feel very different. And it can feel maybe that’s just the way that my mom is, and maybe actually she is correct. And it can very easily be internalized in that way. And I think often the problem is, from a parent’s perspective with this, is you’re looking at the immediate effect of, okay, I said this thing to them, and then they stopped misbehaving. So, it’s obviously a helpful thing to say, because I got them to change their behavior in the instant, but without realizing just the monumental damage that that is gonna have down the road.
Beverly Engel: There’s research that around emotional abuse in adult relationships, and I’m positive that it must apply to childhood relationships, that they have actually found that emotional abuse is far more damaging psychologically than physical abuse. So, you just said, if your partner physically abuses you or a parent physically abuses you, there’s bruises, there’s broken arms, there’s redness or signs of abuse. With emotional abuse, there usually aren’t signs. So not only does the victim not know they’re being emotionally abused, but other people don’t know. And with physical abuse, we’ve all learned that there’s the cycle of abuse where somebody is abusive, and then there’s a period of time where they’re nice.
In couples, they call that the honeymoon period, where the abuser is being really nice and sweet and trying to regain the trust of the victim. So, there’s abuse, and then there’s a break in the abuse usually. With emotional abuse, almost always, there’s no break. It’s just constant. And as we know with people who develop personality disorders, those people who were abused and then they got to go off to see their grandmother, or they were abused for a while, and then they had their summers at camp or summers with their uncle or whatever, if somebody’s had a break with the abuse and then they come back home and they’re abused again, that break is very reparative. It helps the person heal from the previous abuse.
If there’s no break in the abuse, it affects the personality in really horrible ways. And personality disorders can be created from that because the person is constantly being abused and doesn’t have any downtime, doesn’t have any time to come back into themselves and reconnect with themselves or have some reparative experiences. So, with children, it’s the same thing. If they don’t have a break, if they’re just constantly being with one parent or two parents and they don’t have a break, a nice uncle or something to go to, it really creates the personality in a certain way.
Chris Sandel: Well, I think that the break by going and seeing the uncle or whoever it is, and it could be some teacher or mentor at school, is you then start to see that there is another way. You start to glimpse that actually someone does treat me nicely or with respect or whatever. And so there can at least be some level of thoughts that can start to enter in of, okay, maybe this isn’t about me or isn’t just because of me.
And so, I think it can start to have that bit of an impact. I mean, even with your story, when you talked about the fact that you had good friends, I think that as well can be helpful because I would imagine that if there was then no one that you were getting to have a joyful experience with or be able to relax or laugh or whatever, that’s a very different story.
Beverly Engel: Yes, that’s a very good way of putting it, to have another perspective that there is another way and to be treated differently by somebody, yes.
Chris Sandel: You touched on it there in a sense of when that doesn’t happen, it’s horrible. And that’s where you can then end up with more of thecomplex trauma or PTSD type stuff.
00:42:28
Chris Sandel: And so, let’s go through some of the obstacles then to self-compassion for someone who has abuse or trauma as part of their story. And I also do wanna make sure that we’re gonna end this podcast as well on a more positive note and start to talk about how people can get over all of these things. I know it could, at this point of the conversation, it could feel a little bit bleak, but there is gonna be positive stuff as part of this as well. So, with self-compassion for someone who has that as a background, what are some of the obstacles?
Beverly Engel: Well, the main obstacle is that if a person has never received compassion themselves, they don’t know how to give it to other people. People who’ve never received compassion or empathy don’t know how to put themselves in the place of another person. They don’t know how to open their heart to another person’s suffering. They might not even want to think about another person’s suffering.
And so, then they can’t turn it around and give themselves some compassion for their own suffering. So that’s the main obstacle is if you just haven’t ever received it. Another is that you may decide that self-compassion is really more like self-pity. And many people are raised with the idea that don’t have a pity party, just move on, just put your head down and keep moving. Don’t be a victim.
Our culture is just horrible in terms of victim blaming. People are really careful to not present themselves as a victim. I’ve talked about in the first book, It Wasn’t Your Fault, how we tend to, we don’t want people to talk about being a victim. If there’s a horrible hurricane or a tornado or something, you’ll have a news person go out and put a microphone in somebody’s face and say, well, “how does it feel to have your house destroyed?”
And what we wanna have that person say is, “Well, it’s terrible, but I’m grateful that I’m still alive and I’ll move on, I’ll be okay.” That’s what we want to hear. We don’t wanna hear somebody break down and cry and say, oh, it’s horrible, I’m devastated, I lost everything, I don’t know what I’m gonna do. We don’t want that in our culture, okay? And so, we turn it around and we blame victims for their own crises, we blame victims for their own abuse and we don’t wanna hear from victims. We don’t wanna hear how bad they feel. And so, you talked with somebody about giving themselves self-compassion and they think you’re talking about either being a victim or acting, having a pity party and having self-pity. And it’s not the same. First of all, there’s nothing wrong with self-pity, but self-compassion is not about self-pity.
Self-compassion is about acknowledging your suffering. It’s just that simple. It’s acknowledging your suffering. And so many abuse survivors and victims don’t know how to do that. They don’t even know how to acknowledge their more painful emotions.
You mentioned PTSD. Well, we know that when somebody is being abused, especially sexual abuse, but not just sexual abuse, any form of abuse will cause a person to leave their body, to dissociate. That’s a really important survival technique. It’s impossible for a child to take in the atrocities that are sometimes done to them. They wouldn’t remain sane if they could feel all that’s happening to them. And so, they literally leave their body. And some people, as you’ve heard often, will talk about looking down at their body while they’re being abused from above, looking down as if that was a stranger. And that’s a very important coping mechanism. But some victims tend to take on the habit of constantly being dissociated. It almost becomes a habit.
Whenever they’re stressed out, they dissociate. And so, they’re not present. They’re not present in their body. So, they literally cannot connect with their pain, and they cannot connect with their suffering.
So, one of the first steps is to help victims to embody themselves, to become aware of their body, to be in the present, to feel what’s going on with them, to even know how to feel and to look, what emotions to look for. And then they can give themselves self-compassion. Then they can acknowledge their suffering.
Chris Sandel: Which from working with clients and from reading your book as well, which I imagine is terrifying as well, because there’s a reason that they dissociate for so long. And so, it feels scary to think about, well, I’ve got to now come back into my body. I’ve now got to feel the feelings that I’ve been trying to numb from for so long. So, for someone who hasn’t dealt with this abuse, self-compassion feels like this really lovely idea and concept, and I’m so glad that I’ve come across this. This is gonna be so helpful. But for someone who has that as their history, self-compassion can feel like the thing that they’re actually running from.
It’s interesting. I use Paul Gilbert’s, I think it’s from the Compassionate Mind website, but he’s like fears of compassion score or scale. And it’s for people who don’t know it, there are three sets of questions and you have to give them a rating based on one of the sets of questions is looking at compassion for other people and you giving compassion to other people.
One set of questions is you receiving compassion from other people. And then the third set is about self-compassion. And what I find so interesting with the work that I do, if I know nothing about someone’s trauma or abuse history, just get them to do that scale on compassion, it’s typically a pretty good indication of what is going on and what has gone on. And the people who have the most difficult time with compassion across the board are people who’ve had histories of abuse. And that scale typically shows it up pretty quickly.
And so, you’ve talked about some of the obstacles for self-compassion. I mean, I’ll add a couple of extra ones in which are from your book, but also stuff that I’ve noticed in terms of the reasons when we then do start to chat about it, why someone doesn’t want to go down that road or why there’s fears around going down that road. There’s the idea that self-compassion is indulgent and that it’s weak or lazy or selfish. And I think that’s definitely a big one that weakness in all forms because of their history is seen as such a bad thing. And when you then think of self-compassion as being weakness, I am not going anywhere near this.
00:50:06
Chris Sandel: People believing that they are to blame or that they, even if they don’t take 100% blame for it, they feel that they were a part of the problem. And so, I think that can be an issue as well. And then, just a difficulty in taking in good experiences and joy. And I know Brene Brown talks about joy being the most difficult emotion. And I think that that is true for so many of the people that I see who have this as a history.
Beverly Engel: Yes, absolutely. There’s a really direct correlation between shame and difficulty feeling joy. It happens very often in adult relationships where somebody finally feels seen, they feel loved, maybe even for the first time in their life, they’re in a really super good relationship and it should be the best time in their life. And yet they will tend to sabotage that relationship. They’ll start becoming critical of their partner. They’ll start cheating on their partner. They’ll do all kinds of things to sabotage that relationship because it feels so uncomfortable. It feels so difficult to let that joy in if you’re full of shame.
Chris Sandel: I mean, I often talk a lot about polyvagal theory with clients and yet being in safe and social mode for a lot of people is really tough. And that feels incredibly scary to be in that place versus it feels safer to be in fight and flight or even shut down because that is just what someone has habituated to and what just feels so normal and it feels alien to be in a place that’s not that. And so, that can be why it’s so hard to let the joy in.
Beverly Engel: Yes, there’s an exercise I recommend to clients about shame. There’s been a lot of research about shame and posture, what I said in the beginning. To notice your posture, notice how you hold your body, how you hold your head, and then consciously decide to lift your head, bring your shoulders back, which opens up the chest, head forward, eyes open and clear and taking deep breaths and notice how that feels. Notice how that feels different. It may be really super uncomfortable, but just notice how it opens the chest and makes you sit up straighter. Start practicing that. Start practicing lifting your head, straightening your shoulders, feet on the ground. And it’s a beginning to healing the shame. There’s many, many ways to heal the shame, but that’s one way to get it in your body, to take the shame away from your body and open yourself up to the world.
Chris Sandel: And I think part of what you described there, so much of shame and so many emotions really do live in the body. And it’s in a sense, it’s in the nervous system. And so, by making changes to our physicality or can actually start to then change how you feel. It’s not always about writing exercises or it’s not always about the talking aspect. It can be about, changing how the body is being held.
00:53:53
Chris Sandel: And so, what about other suggestions, ideas in this realm of obstacles to self-compassion? Are there, exercises, and these could be writing exercises, it could be visualization exercises, whatever you think is helpful that just deal with some of these obstacles. So, whether it’s about being indulgent or about shame, self-compassion, being weakness, is there any that you’d wanna mention?
Beverly Engel: Can’t think of anything offhand. There’s a lot of education going on here. Just learning that the difference between self-pity and self-compassion, learning about that it’s not, you’re not being lazy or weak if you connect with yourself. There’s an exercise that Kristen Neff, who was the first person that we know of who did extensive research on shame, and self, not shame, sorry, on self-compassion. She suggests that you think of the most, the kindest, most compassionate person that you’ve experienced in your life. And very often there might’ve just been one. There might’ve just been a teacher or a Y director or someone who saw that you were troubled and was kind to you or a kind aunt or a kind grandmother.
Think about that person and think about how they treated you, how they looked at you and how they spoke to you and how their voice sounded. And then mimic that. Start talking to yourself, looking at yourself in a similar way. And that can be a really moving exercise to remember that compassionate, kind person and mimic that person. Start treating yourself in the same way that that person treated you.
Chris Sandel: Nice, I think that is very helpful. I mean, one of the things I will often do with clients just to make them become aware of how often they’re being very critical and having these thoughts is say for a day, can you write down every one of your critical thoughts and criticisms that come up and clients are then coming back with these long lists, but it’s less about the list and more about just the realization of just how much this is going on. And even when people say, oh, I are able to recognize that they have a not very nice inner critic and that they are critical, they realize just the tsunami of how much that stuff is coming out on a daily basis. And then starting to, as you talked about there, how can you be talking to yourself in a different way and using someone from your life as a guide as part of that?
Beverly Engel: Yes, and maybe connecting, where did I hear those self-critical messages? Where did I hear those words? And maybe connecting that with some previous abuse.
00:56:57
Chris Sandel: And so as part of both of the books, you then have ways at the end for how to deal with these and there’s overlap with them and there’s different things that I wanna touch on. So as part of it, you talk about self-understanding, you talk about anger expression and releasing anger, self-forgiveness, self-acceptance, self-kindness and self-encouragement. So, I wanna go through now just each of those. So, let’s talk about the self-understanding piece. So, what is included as part of this? Why do you think that this is so important?
Beverly Engel: The words, it’s understandable are really, really powerful because often we really don’t make a connection between our behavior and previous abuse or previous neglect. And this is not the same as making excuses for your behavior. It’s merely understanding your behavior. It’s a huge part of self-compassion.
If I have an eating disorder, alcohol problem, become abusive, verbally abusive or emotionally abusive toward my children and I look at the roots of those behaviors and find that I have an eating disorder because I was severely neglected because I didn’t get enough food growing up and I always come from a place of deprivation. I have an alcohol problem because it helps me block out that self-critical voice. It helps me block out the shame temporarily. I became abusive toward others because I was repeating the pattern of abuse. And so, it’s understandable that I did those things. Again, that’s not an excuse, but it helps me to understand myself so that I won’t be so self-critical. To know there’s a real good reason why I act this way can be extremely healing.
Chris Sandel: And I think in one of the books, I think it was in, It Wasn’t Your Fault, you talk about working with a client and then him seeing someone who was then his age when the abuse happened and that then being a real understanding point for it because in his mind, he had lots of stories around, well, I should have known better, I should have been able to defend myself or there are all these stories that he had, but then when he saw in real life what it’s like to actually be a six-year-old, he realized how much that was off target.
Beverly Engel: I’m so glad you brought that up. It’s such an important piece of this is that abused and neglected children almost always think of themselves as almost little pseudo adults because they have been left to raise themselves. And so, they feel older than they actually were.
So, a real good exercise is when you’re out, look for kids who were around the age that you were when you were abused and notice their behavior. Notice how really super young they are, how immature they are. And remember that that’s who you were. When you did these things that you feel so much shame about, you were only six years old. You weren’t 20 years old maybe you felt. You didn’t notice when your little brother ran off and he ended up getting really hurt and you’ve been carrying that shame and guilt all your life that your brother got hurt, but you were only six. He was two and why were you left watching him? Why were you left being the primary caretaker in the first place? So, I’m so glad you brought that up. That’s a big piece of self-understanding.
Chris Sandel: And I think as well, and this is what I’ve noticed with clients as well, and you talk about in the book, is when you externalize it, it can make it easier. Because it’s one thing when you can be super critical of yourself, but when you externalize it and you imagine a friend or you imagine someone else, then sometimes it’s easier to be compassionate or you just see things through a different lens because you’re not so enmeshed with your own story or your own emotions.
Beverly Engel: I always ask somebody, if a client is just super critical and cannot at all feel self-forgiving about their behavior and is just absolutely adamant about, I was responsible for this, I was a bad person, I do exactly what you were just saying. I say, okay, what if your daughter came home from school and told you the story of what happened to her at school? How would you feel? Or what if your son was bullied at school? Or what if your son did so-and-so? Then the story’s almost always different.
They say, well, I would have understood that he was bullied at school and that’s why he’s bullying his brother at home. I would have understood that she was too young to know what the teacher was trying to do to her. She was too young to be able to say no to him. She was warning his affection and he was her beloved teacher and so no wonder she behaved the way she did. They’ll almost always have so much more compassion for somebody else, especially if I put it in the context of what if this was your son or your daughter?
Chris Sandel: And I do, I think that self-understanding piece and starting there is so important. As you say, getting someone to realize there is a cause-and-effect relationship here. And yes, as you say, it’s not to then excuse behavior, but it’s always, given that this is what happened to you, it’s then also no surprise that you find yourself where you are. It’s a much higher likelihood that you will end up where you are because of that. And there is a connection between those two things. It’s not that you are just this bad person.
01:03:22
Chris Sandel: And then you talk about anger expression or releasing anger. So, let’s spend a little moment here in terms of benefits. What are the benefits from your perspective of getting angry?
Beverly Engel: Well, it’s not so much a matter of getting angry, but allowing the anger to come out. They already are angry. Almost every victim of every abuse feels horrendous shame, okay? But they also feel horrendous anger. They’re not able to express that anger, almost never able to express it because there’s a power differential. They’re afraid of their abuser.
Whether the abuser actually overtly threatens them or not, the abuser is bigger and stronger and has more power. And so, they can’t allow their anger to come out in the moment, even though they might feel angry. And so, they hold this anger in and almost always turn the anger against themselves. And then takes in that develops into depression or self-hatred. So, it’s a matter of connecting with the anger, really finding out how do you feel about what happened to you? And yes, you feel shame and yes, you feel fear, but you probably also feel anger. But it was never safe, almost never safe for a victim to feel anger in the moment. And they usually don’t feel it’s safe to feel anger even afterward because they feel like the abuser could come after them or that they’re gonna get into trouble.
And so, like I said, they turn that anger in on themselves. So, it’s externalizing that anger, finding a safe, healthy way to externalize that anger. That’s important. A lot of victims are afraid of anger in any form, and they certainly are afraid of their own anger. If you grew up in a household where your father was beating your mother constantly, if you start to get angry, you’re gonna be afraid that you’re gonna turn into him.
And so, a lot of victims have these ideas that I better not ever act out my anger because I’m gonna become a monster like my abuser. So, it’s giving permission to externalize the anger, find a safe way to do it so that you can get that anger out of your body, out of your system. It’s very empowering to be able to express your anger. It helps motivate you often to get out of an abusive situation. It helps with your self-esteem to be able to stand up to your abuser. And I don’t mean literally, I mean visualizing. So, finding healthy, constructive ways of releasing your anger is very, very important. I always start by just asking my clients to say the word no.
A lot of victims are just unable to say that word. They just always go along with whatever going on. So, I ask them to imagine a scenario in which they would like to say no, maybe a current scenario where they would like to say no to their partner or no to a situation and have them start saying no out loud. And just walking around the house, just saying no. And say it with different inflections, with different volume, just no, no, no. Just saying it in different ways to get comfortable saying it. And hopefully as they’re saying no, they’re gonna start connecting to their body. When they say no, they’re gonna start feeling something in their body. It might be fear, but very often it feels empowerment. It feels strength. The more they say no, it’s, no, no. And then asking them to increase the volume, no. And until they’re finally yelling no, okay? That’s a really good starting point and it can be very, very powerful.
Chris Sandel: Nice, I actually had a client do that for a couple of weeks where she was constantly saying yes to things that she didn’t really wanna be doing. She was constantly feeling that she was, and not just feeling she was, she was just exhausted and was not prioritizing her own downtime, her own repair time, her own physical, emotional, mental needs.
And so, I said, let’s have two weeks where you just say no to everything. And if there’s things on the books that you actually now don’t wanna do because it’s not in your health’s interest to do so, contact the person and say, I can’t, I’m really sorry if things have changed, I now can’t do this. And at the end of the two weeks, it was amazing. I mean, she just noticed such a difference in how she felt and it’s then something that she’s then been able to continue to keep up and it’s been one of the things we’re working on in terms of having good, healthy boundaries and being able to say that actually, that’s just not gonna work for me right now.
Beverly Engel: Right, so some healthy, constructive ways of releasing anger, in addition to just practicing no, would be put your head in a pillow and scream, take a shower and scream, go for a long drive to an isolated place, roll up the windows and scream your head off. It’s really okay to scream and it’s really healing to scream.
Especially if you’re visualizing maybe having been raped or having been abused and screaming at that abuser. You have to do that when you’re ready, you have to be careful about that. But just screaming can be an incredible release.
01:09:13
Chris Sandel: I mean, one of the other ones that you mentioned in the book that I’ve used a lot with clients is writing a letter. And this can be writing a letter to their eating disorder or it could be writing a letter to their parents. And I’m always explicit, this is a letter you are not gonna send.
You definitely do not. I mean, if at the end of it, you genuinely wanna send this letter, then by all means, but the goal of it is not to be writing a letter that you’re gonna send to someone, it’s to write a letter to get out all the things that you wanna be able to say that you haven’t been able to say. And that process, I mean, it depends on the individual how it feels, but often it can be very cathartic just to be able to write all of those things out and to be able to get it out because they just have not been able to do that for years and decades.
Beverly Engel: Absolutely.
01:10:11
Chris Sandel: And so, then the next part of this is self-forgiveness. So, talk about, and maybe we’ve touched on this a little bit already, but some of the obstacles to self-forgiveness and then how someone can get to that place.
Beverly Engel: Well, again, people think of self-forgiveness as just taking themselves off the hook, I’m not being responsible for your behavior. And that’s not what we’re talking about. In fact, it’s very important to take responsibility for your behavior. But to have that self-understanding we talked about in terms of why they did what they did, if they neglected their own children, if they abused their own children, if they abused their own body, to be able to look at it from the perspective of, I understand why I did it. And now that I understand why I did it, I can have compassion for myself. I can have compassion for my suffering. And I can make that important connection between my past and my present behavior. And I’m going to forgive myself for those things. That might be including apology, in 12-step programs, making amends.
Apology and making amends can be extremely important, but they’re not necessary for you to forgive yourself. But if you feel you owe someone an apology and that, that apology is going to help you and help the other person, you got to be careful about making sure that you think it’s going to help the other person. Let me give you an example. I’ve had clients who sexually abused their sibling and when the sibling was very, very young, and they’ve wondered whether they could go to the sibling and apologize to the sibling for what they did. Well, they have to consider whether, number one, does that, do you think that your sibling actually remembers what happened to you, what happened to them? Have you seen any signs that that abuse affected their life? And do you really think that apologizing for it is going to help that person to heal? And, there’s no black and white answer here.
I’ve had clients, again, remembering that they are so full of shame and so full of self-blame that their perceptions are often distorted. Now, if I’m talking about, sexually abusing a sibling for years, you being a male who was 12 and he was six and you sexually abused him for years and you can see he’s got serious problems, then yes, an apology would probably be in order. It would probably help that sibling. But if we’re talking about an incident when you were five and your sibling was three or four and you didn’t do anything overtly, you had him take his clothes off and you, you touched him a little bit or he touched you a little bit and it was a one-time thing and you have a real strong feeling that he doesn’t remember it at all, I mean, what would be the benefit in apologizing to him? Okay? So, you’ve got to be careful with that. But if you’re talking about maybe, you becoming physically or emotionally abusive to your own children, it’s very important to apologize to children.
Don’t assume that children won’t understand an apology. They actually get very healed when an adult apologizes to them. It’s very powerful. Number one, you’re acting as a powerful role model to be able to admit when you’ve made a mistake and apologize for it. That’s teaching your child to do the same thing.
And we all, we talk about validation. We all need validation that what we experienced was important, what we feel is important, that our perception is important. And so, if by apologizing to a child for being abusive, you’re validating that child’s experience. You’re saying, I know I was wrong, I know I’ve been abusive toward you. And yes, you’re asking for them to forgive you, but you’re acknowledging their experience, which can be extremely healing. So, apology is a big part of self-forgiveness. It’s not necessary, but it’s usually a big part of it.
Chris Sandel: What you said there about the apology with for being an abusive parent. I mean, as we talked about before, if you are then the child of that parent, you internalize so much of this and start to blame yourself and think that you are at fault. And so, yes, I would imagine then receiving an apology can then start to help that individual start to learn to be more self-compassionate and see that actually they weren’t at fault and that this is something that was done to them that shouldn’t have been done to them. And, it can be incredibly healing because of that.
01:15:26
Chris Sandel: Any other writing suggestions or any other exercises that you would suggest on the forgiveness, self-forgiveness piece?
Beverly Engel: There are lots of writing exercises about it. It could be as simple as just writing out, I forgive you for, I forgive you for. There’re some more elaborate ones. There’s a beautiful exercise of putting your hand on your heart and saying, I forgive you. And you can be explicit. You can say, I forgive you for becoming an alcoholic. I forgive you for so-and-so. And there’s some beautiful self-forgiveness of mantras that you can use. But it can be just as simple as putting your hand over your heart and saying, I forgive you.
Chris Sandel: Nice. And so, then the next one is self-acceptance. So, speak a little about this.
Beverly Engel: That’s to counter, mostly it’s to counter the critical inner voice. It’s what you were saying, to start noticing the critical inner voice, maybe keeping track of it. And then Kristin Neff talks about installing a nurturing inner voice to replace that critical voice. And that installing that nurturing inner voice is pretty complex, but it could be that you start with that idea of remembering a compassionate person, remembering somebody who spoke to you in a compassionate way. And beginning to talk to yourself in the same way. So, you hear the critical voice, and instead of listening to the critical voice, you can even say, shut up, or no, I don’t believe you. Or you can just go into countering it with a nurturing message. So, you’re so stupid, you did so well with your eating this last week, and now you just ruined the whole thing with one meal.
What would a more nurturing voice be? A more nurturing voice would be, I’m so sorry that you were so stressed this week that you went off your program. I’m assuming you; it must have been very painful to do that because I know how much you want to stay on your eating program. And you’ve been doing so well with it. So, I’m sure you must feel disappointed in yourself. But I just want you to know, I’m sorry that you were stressed and that that happened. And so, you can notice the difference, right? Between the two voices, the nurturing voice. It takes a lot of practice to break that habit of taking in, automatically taking in the critical messages. And then it takes a lot of practice and a lot of work to install that nurturing voice. But it can be done for sure.
Chris Sandel: And I would say with the example that you just gave there in terms of going off their eating program, that for the clients I’m working with, that’s typically not the language that I would use because I’m normally, the problem is that they are so restrictive. And the problem is that they’re so focused on eating in such a perfect way. And so, it would be more, getting them to be more compassionate about, okay, we need to, and I think this is something that you talked about in one of your books as well, is actually changing the expectations about what is, what should be happening. And the reality is that what they believe should be happening with their eating often isn’t what their body wants to have happen with their body. They’re not taking in enough food to support themselves. They’re not eating in a way that is supporting themselves. And so rather than continuing to try and follow upon a regimen that is not actually sustainable, it’s more for them to change their beliefs around that and start to be more accepting of that.
Beverly Engel: So, I don’t wanna put you on the spot, but what would that nurturing voice say if you’re gonna be working with your clients and what I was saying, suggesting doesn’t work because it’s about, it sounds too restrictive. What would the nurturing voice say to counter the critical voice in that case?
Chris Sandel: The nurturing voice could be saying something along the lines of, you need to be taking in this food. For so long, you haven’t taken in enough food or today we didn’t actually take in enough food to support ourselves. Your body knows what it is doing and you can trust the fact that you are getting feelings of hunger and it is trying to steer you in the right direction to give the body what it needs to be able to repair, to be able to regulate its emotions. And so, really coming at it from the angle of A, building body trust, but B, this is okay.
01:21:03
Chris Sandel: And I would also say just in more generally, I think the self-acceptance piece of this is probably one of the more difficult aspects for my clients, I would say. And I think a part of that is the shame of looking around, this is my life, this is how I live, this is the body I’m in, et cetera. And, why do I want to accept this? Acceptance feels giving up or acceptance feels weakness. And so, I think that can often be a really big hurdle. And I guess one of the ways that I try and deal with this with clients and talk about, we take care of the things that we love. And then if we can be loving to our body, we are gonna support it and take care of it in all of the different ways to the best of our ability.
You can’t hate yourself into a better place. And so, the self-acceptance piece doesn’t need to be about that this is where you’re going to stay forever and you’ve got to accept it. It’s more about I’m accepting where I am now for the benefit of, cause I want to take better care of myself and I want to be happier and I want to be healthier and I want to have a more enjoyable life. And so, I wanted to flag that up cause I think that the acceptance piece can be one of the more difficult aspects.
Beverly Engel: And would you work toward, I don’t want to counter your program, but I’m just curious, would you work toward having the person make the connection? Let’s say they, I don’t know in your program, if there’s food that they have chosen not to eat, say for example, let’s say candy, and they’ve made that choice. They don’t want to eat candy or they want to cut candy from their diet. And then they eat candy one week. Would the self-acceptance be to make a connection with, well, what was going on with me that I was craving the candy? What was the need?
Chris Sandel: It could be some of that, but I would also say with the clients that I’m working with, we’re trying to bring all foods back onto the menu. And so, it’s not that they get to a place where they’re able to live a life where they’re not eating candy, or at least they’re not, the goal isn’t that they’re doing that through fear of those foods. It’s that all foods become fair game, and that’s fine. And then let’s start to learn how to listen to our intuition about what to be eating. And that can be for many different factors, whether that’s, okay, how does something taste? How is it going to affect my energy? How is it going to leave me feeling from satiation? And so, I think for me, typically, if someone’s having trouble saying, I can’t not eat sugar, or I really have trouble having chocolate, it’s then how do we normalize that so that that food isn’t something that you’re preoccupied with? And typically, that’s going in the other direction of let’s have exposure therapy, let’s eat it multiple times.
So, it’s now just not a thing that bothers you. And with that, it could be, as you say, if they’re getting more of cravings at certain times, okay, let’s explore that. Why do you think that’s happening? What’s been going on with your sleep? How much you’ve, what were you, where are you in your cycle? There can be lots of different things to explore. But typically I’m not working with clients who work out how they can be abstaining from particular food. It’s going in the opposite direction.
Beverly Engel: Okay. Well, self-acceptance, it’s probably the hardest step for anybody because it’s hard to get to the idea that I’m actually going to become more of the person I want to be by accepting myself just the way I am today. That’s a very hard place to come to. [Laughing]
Chris Sandel: I do. And that’s the thing I knock up against the most with clients and why it can be so difficult. But yes, it is definitely something that can be overcome. And it is that paradox, hang on, if I accept myself as I am, typically that’s when you can start to make the most amount of changes. And when you are unable to accept yourself, that’s typically when you are most stuck.
01:25:55
Chris Sandel: And so, then there’s the self-kindness component. So, I know we’ve probably touched some of that already, but what would you add to that piece?
Beverly Engel: Well, again, it’s all part of the self-compassion point. Self-kindness is another thing that most victims don’t know how to do. They can be loving and kind to their children, to their partner, but they just don’t know how to be kind to themselves. They don’t even get the concept there. Partly, that exercise were bringing in that kind voice is a beginning, really looking at how they’re not so kind to their voice, how they are abusive to their body, for example, or abusive to themselves, and beginning to look at themselves from a more loving point of view. I sometimes start, if somebody’s got a lot of body issues, I will start by just having them do that exercise I’m sure you’re aware of afflict, getting up in the morning and appreciating every part of your body.
So, I appreciate my feet because my feet help me walk. I appreciate my legs because my legs help me stand up and move around in the world, and moving all the way up the body, and especially doing that when they find themselves being critical of a certain part of their body.
To remind themselves, yes, I feel critical of that part of my body, but that part of my body is really serving me. It’s really helping me. So how can I be kind to my body, you know? So, it could involve taking warm baths. It could involve giving yourself a body caress or going to get a massage if that’s something you’re comfortable with. But it could start with being kind to your body. It could be being kind to yourself in terms of what you mentioned, expectations. I’m not being myself if I’m have unreasonable expectations of what I can accomplish. If I’m pushing myself too hard to be perfect, then I’m not being kind to my body or kind to myself. So let me reset my expectations so that I’m softer and more gentle with my body. So, self-kindness is all-encompassing of with the idea that I wanna be soft, and generous, and loving toward myself.
Chris Sandel: I think this is another one where if you externalize it and say, okay, how would you treat a six-year-old child, or how would you treat your sister, that can sometimes be a way of starting to get a little bit of headway because yes, someone can be a lot kinder to someone else than they can be with themselves.
And I also, I really the idea, as you mentioned, of a massage, if someone’s okay with that, or really anything that is giving time or attention to their body or their self because it’s one thing that the massage is actually an enjoyable experience, but it’s also the added layer of I then took the time out, I then spent the money on giving this experience to myself. And I think that extra layer as well makes a real difference.
Beverly Engel: Learning that what you really crave, what you really love,for example, you might really love softness. You might love soft fabric or soft, the soft fur of your dog. And it may, if you pay attention, it may actually feel very nurturing to pet your dog or to touch a soft fabric. I bought some sheets that, these kinds of new sheets that’s supposed to absorb the heat more and stuff. And, they’re made from a different fabric than I’m used to, and they’re extremely soft. Like Satin, but it’s not, it’s not even softer than Satin. And when I first bought then put them on my bed, and I just was overwhelmed with how loved I felt. I just felt, my gosh, where have these sheets been? Because I just felt so nurtured and loved. And so, it just feels an act of kindness to myself when I wash my sheets or change my sheets and get that wonderful, loving, comforting feeling.
So being kind can be something like that. Just really paying attention to what feels really, really good to me. What makes me feel, loved or safe or comfortable? That can be a place to start too, with self-kindness.
Chris Sandel: I guess with those things in mind, this is where it can get into the trap of feeling, well, self-kindness or self-compassion is being indulgent. But I do, I think these, and they can be little things, they can be big things, they really do make a difference.
And I think we live in a culture where everyone has to be this big success story and you’ve got to just keep hustling and you just got to keep going and going. And there just isn’t a lot of talk about genuine self-care and self-nurturing and self-kindness. And that can then feel, well, if you’re doing those things, you’re obviously weak or you’re not driven enough or all of these different reasons for why you shouldn’t be doing it. But I do think that, self-kindness is one of the cornerstones to being happy and healthy in terms of physical health, mental health, emotional health, et cetera. I do think it is incredibly important.
01:32:04
Beverly Engel: I think with the pandemic, hopefully it will last. I think we have learned that if you’re stuck at home and you can’t do your regular social activities and maybe you can’t even be out there pushing so hard to be a success, I know so many people now are talking about appreciating the small things. Appreciating a back garden and doing a little gardening, nurturing yourself, putting your hands in soil, nurturing your love of nature, creativity, taking the time to create something. If that makes you feel joy, it makes you feel wonderful to create something, taking the time to create something.
So, I think the pandemic for some of us has forced us to appreciate the small things, appreciate the nap in the middle of the day or appreciate the warm bath or the hot cup of tea and take our time and take those things in because we’re hungry for things we’re not getting. We’re hungry for, social interaction and being busy and physically active and stuff. And if we can’t get it, then let’s give ourselves something else that we can give ourselves. Let’s be kind to ourself during this time.
Chris Sandel: If there’s one thing that the pandemic has taught me, it is loneliness and how bad loneliness is. And this is coming from someone who I’ve got a wife and a child, so I’m not completely isolated by any stretch, but just knowing how much I’ve then been cut off from seeing friends and family. And I’d always seen the statistics on how bad loneliness is, but it’s been this last year where I’ve got just the tiniest of taste of what that really, really means. And for someone who really is isolated, how just damaging and detrimental that can be.
01:34:07
Chris Sandel: And so, then the final piece is self-encouragement. And I know, again, we probably touched on some of this already, what would you say with this? And I think in, I can’t remember which of the books you talked about with this one, but the difference between self-criticism versus self-correction.
Beverly Engel: Yes, well, self-correction is noting if you’ve made a mistake and trying to think about a way to not continue the mistake, a way to correct the mistake. And self-criticism is more bent on shaming you and punishing yourself for the mistake. So, that’s a real important distinction. You can self-correct without shaming yourself. You can self-correct without punishing yourself or being critical. It’s just, oh, I noticed that I did so-and-so. Okay, how can I correct that? What can I do to change that? That’s a real different tone rather than what’s wrong with you? You made that mistake again. Why do you keep making that mistake? You’re stupid, going on and on. So that distinction is really important.
But self-encouragement is also an absolutely wonderful way of repairing shame, taking shame out of the situation. We don’t take time to notice our achievements or even small steps. It’s the idea that we, normally if we have a car, we get in our car every day and we turn the ignition on and the car starts. And we don’t pay attention to the fact that it starts every single time. But one time it doesn’t start, then we know we’re complaining, oh my God, I couldn’t start my car. I had to call the garage and we would lament on how terrible it was that we couldn’t get to work on time. And we don’t stop to think about all the mornings that the car started. And it’s the same thing with self-encouragement and self-acknowledgement.
Think about all the days that you get up on time and you get yourself ready and you get to work on time and you do your work. And, even if you’re exhausted and you come home and then you have a whole lot of things you have to do at home, but you do them. And versus the day that you wake up and you don’t wanna go to work and, maybe even take the day off and then you berate yourself all day because you’re so lazy, or you make a mistake at work and you berate yourself for the mistake you made. Instead of just acknowledging the mistake and reminding yourself of all the times you haven’t made a mistake. It’s like the car situation. Remind yourself of all the times and all the things that you’ve done well, versus focusing on the times when you’ve made a mistake. So that’s part of it.
But self-encouragement is actually being proud. Being proud of yourself is the opposite of being ashamed. So, if you maybe even wanna write a list of the things that you’re proud of. Being proud is another no-no in our culture. We’re not supposed to be proud that’s being conceded or something, or it’s false pride. But we’re talking about genuine pride, genuine acknowledgement about what you’ve done. I feel proud of myself because I wanted to quit smoking. It took me a while, but I quit smoking. I feel proud that I’m taking better care of my body. I feel proud that I’ve been taking steps to get better sleep. I feel proud that I was able to apologize to my partner for something. Just really noticing the things that you feel good about. That can be encouragement.
Chris Sandel: I think for the clients still work for people who have a history of abuse or trauma their default is not so self-encouragement its self-criticism to find the defaults it is that’s just exactly where clients I always one of the positive last two weeks what a been a ways it’s not a one of the challenge or whatever a warning of chat about that at least let’s start one of a good things ever, ever occurred and what sometimes notice is there’ll be “Oh one or two things as we go through the whole session is other things come up, another things is come up and so it’s not that they hasn’t being lost of the puzzles it’s often that’s not just where the focus goals.
And I also wanted to say, just in terms of the self-criticism versus self-correction piece, the reason I wanted to mention that is, I think that also can be another obstacle to self-compassion where there’s this misunderstanding where it just means that you then just have, I don’t know, there’s no ability to notice that you’ve made any mistakes, or there’s no ability to make any corrections or anything. Someone just becomes completely unselfaware and rudderless. That’s definitely not the case.
What you’re wanting as part of this is to be much more self-aware, but you’re doing it from a compassionate place and you’re doing it with reasonable expectations and you’re bringing all of these other factors in so that it actually does help you and helps you to become better or to understand the situation more as opposed to just making you feel shamed and belittled and worthless.
01:40:18
Beverly Engel: Right. We’re critical when we go to one extreme where we think we’re self-indulgent, but we’re sure not critical that much if we’re shaming ourselves and putting ourselves down. I loved talking about that working toward more self-awareness, just a neutral self-awareness where you’re not being self-indulgent and you’re not shaming yourself either way.
Chris Sandel: I mean, you talked earlier about the exercise of noticing, okay, what am I grateful for that my feet do or am I grateful for my legs do? And I think there’s something very positive to doing that and seeing the positives of it. But I’m also a lot of the time, let’s get some neutral language around all of these things. How can you describe all the parts of your body in a neutral way? Imagine you had someone who was blind next to you and you’re trying to describe your body. Can you work out a way that you’re able to do that in neutral tones? It doesn’t, I’m not asking for positives, I’m not asking for negatives, I’m talking about just neutral where you’re being able to be descriptive because I think that that’s an important skill to be able to have where there isn’t then some emotion that is layered on top of it. It’s just being able to be objective and say, this is what is.
Beverly Engel: Yes. That’s just not being judgmental in either way.
Chris Sandel: And just as a demonstration, because it shows how so much of life is neutral and it’s more the story and the spin that we put on top of it that then dictates whether we think something is good or not good. Just having that ability to be more objective, I think is a skill.
Well, look, Beverly, this has been a really wonderful conversation. I’m really glad that we’ve been able to do this. Is there anything else that we didn’t go through that you would have liked to cover or that you wanna cover?
Beverly Engel: No, I think we’ve covered just about everything I can think of. I made this one.
Chris Sandel: Okay, well, perfect. Where should people be going if they wanna find out more about you?
Beverly Engel: Well, I have two websites. One is beverlyengel.com, but I also have a website called Heal My Shame. And on that website, there’s lots of articles, research, blogs, lots and lots of information about shame. My other website is information about me in general and how to contact me.
Chris Sandel: Perfect. Well, I will put all of those things in the show notes. And as I said at the top, I really enjoyed both of your books and I’m really glad that my client had mentioned It Wasn’t Your Fault, because it was one of the favorite books I read last year and it’s been something I recommended a lot since coming across it.
Beverly Engel: Well, I appreciate that. Thank you.
Chris Sandel: So, that was my conversation with Beverly Engel. I have found her book, It Wasn’t Your Fault, to be incredibly helpful, both for my own understanding as a practitioner and as a human being, but I also have had many clients find it helpful and it’s one of the books I recommended the most of last year. So, if you have a history of childhood abuse, I would highly recommend checking it out.
As I mentioned at the top, I’m currently taking on new clients. If you want to help with an eating disorder or disordered eating, with chronic dieting, with body dissatisfaction and negative body image, overexercise and exercise compulsion or getting your period back, then I would love to help. You can go to seven-health.com/help for more information. That is, it. I will be back next week with another episode. Stay safe and I will catch you then.
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