8. Shame is Not an Effective Motivator for Behavior Change

Shaming yourself doesn't work to break toxic cycles. You can not shame your way into make better choices for your life.

How many times have you overate a food and then resorted to speaking meanly to yourself?

"I'm such an idiot."

"What's wrong with me?"

"I have no self control."

"I hate myself."

We all know the cliche saying "would you speak to your friend the way you speak to yourself?" And of course you wouldn't talk to your friend in these ways. And yet you continue to talk to your own self in this way.

Did you know that you shame yourself in these ways because your brain is actually wired to do so?

The limbic system is the part of the brain that associates emotions with memories. When your brain perceives your own behavior to be a threat to yourself, the limbic system gets activated and tries to make you feel a negative emotion to associate with the behavior in the pursuit of convincing you to never perform that behavior again.

But the thing is that it doesn't work. In fact, psychologists call the limbic system the "prison of the survival brain." When you are caught in a cycle, there are cultural, genetic, and environmental factors that put you in the trap of that cycle.

Shaming yourself doesn't actually do anything to get you out of that trap. Shame just berates you for being in a trap that you had no part in creating.

The cool thing about being a human though is that we have something called a prefrontal cortex and we can use this part of our brain to evolve in a different way. We can use our brain to stop shaming ourselves and to get curious about why we are caught in the trap to begin with.

Only then can we gain control and make the behavior changes that we are trying to make.

In this podcast episode, I dive much deeper in these little nooks and crannies of the human brain and I show you exactly how to break out of these toxic cycles so that you can make the behavior changes that you're looking for.

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