Shattering Shame – A Path to Real Masculinity with Kelly Flanagan

Shattering Shame – A Path to Real Masculinity with Kelly Flanagan

Kelly Flanagan:
Shame would be the belief that either you’re not good enough or you’re too much of something. Shame is the urge to hide something about who we are or what we’ve gone through. The societal programming suggests that men should only be involved in about half of the human experience. When that voice of shame shows up, my job is to to soften to it and to create a space for it. I used to think a man was someone who was afraid of nothing around them. Now Now I think a man is somebody who’s afraid of nothing within them.

Rob Dale:
Hi. Welcome to the Living Rich Leaf podcast. We’re so glad to have you here with us today. We’re so excited to have with us special guest, Kelly Flanagan, returning with us. Hey, Kelly. How are you doing?

Kelly Flanagan:
Great. It’s great to be back, guys.

Rob Dale:
We are going to be continuing our series on mindful masculinity and zeroing in on the topic of shame, which is one that I think for a lot of guys pretty difficult to have a conversation about.

Eric Deschamps:
A 100%. And and, Kelly, again, we had such a great conversation with you first time you’re on the show. Thank you so much for carving out the time to come back, and be on the show again. It’s always good when people come back means they enjoyed themselves the first time. Right? But you’ve been you’ve you’ve authored a number of great books, one being, a book that’s deeply influenced, both Rob and I and actually the entire Living Richly Nation because it’s the most referred book. We we tell everybody, if you wanna start this journey of owning your worthiness and overcoming shame, you gotta read this book. But you’ve written Lovable, you’ve written True Companions, The Unhiding of Elijah Campbell. You’re currently working on your latest book called Open Hearted, all of which explores some pretty deep shit, like, some pretty deep subjects and some pretty complicated, like, emotional landscapes that for a lot of people make them uncomfortable, but I think especially for men.

Eric Deschamps:
What drives your passion to do that?

Kelly Flanagan:
Well, it wasn’t always that way. I, I was a a clinical psychologist in training at Penn State in, like, maybe 2,000, 2,001. And, a local therapist sent out a notice to our entire, graduate class. Basically, hey, I wanna offer group therapy to all of you, you know, like, get into your stuff, figure it out now. I ignored that announcement like a plague.

Eric Deschamps:
And Like what could go wrong, right?

Kelly Flanagan:
Yeah. Right. Exactly. No. I’m okay. That’s why I’m gonna become a therapist. I’m helping everybody else out who’s not okay. Right? And, and so my supervisor, maybe like a month later, pushed back on me, and she said, you know, you really should get back to him and and get into that group.

Kelly Flanagan:
Mhmm. I put it off for a couple more days. I call him up. He says, you know, Kelly, great. I’m glad you wanna be in the group. The only problem is you’re the only one that’s called me back. Right. Right? So this is, like, the dirty little secret of the therapeutic community.

Kelly Flanagan:
We love helping other people with their stuff. Yeah. But we don’t tend to love looking at our own stuff. So, I persisted in that for another 7 or 8 years. And by the time we got to, like, 2,007, 2,008, I was clinically depressed. My I was burning out my marriage. I could see the ways that I was passing my own pain onto my children. I had 2 boys at that point by 2,009.

Kelly Flanagan:
And I knew I needed to do something different. And I made the shift, it was actually the New Year’s Eve going into 2,008. I said, I’m done reading books, I’m done trying to fix things, I’m going to start to practice all the things I’ve been reading about, mindfulness, meditation, contemplative prayer, I’m going to learn how to be with myself and go on the inner journey. And this is what you find out in that in that part of it is that the the real freedom comes from the inner work, not from anything you do to manage the outside. So that’s, I wanna go deeper and deeper into inner work and, and find greater and greater freedom in that.

Rob Dale:
We’re grateful that you have because the because the the stuff that has come out of that work for you in in the sharing. And I know that, in many of your books, there’s a lot of of your own your own story is woven into them. We’ve talked about Lovable, you know, how impactful that’s been for us. I remember, when on The Unhiding, came out, The Unhiding of Elijah Campbell. That was the one of the first books in a long time where as I got to the end of that book, I felt the tears flowing, and it really did strike me emotionally, feeling Elijah’s story, and the journey that he goes through. You you really have shown that. Shame is a big component of the is a theme in a lot of the story that you tell. Talk to us a little bit about the challenges of theme, the challenge, of shame, the challenges of of how that shows up, in particular, our topic today around mindful masculinity.

Rob Dale:
So with men, talk to us about shame and men.

Kelly Flanagan:
You know, I think shame shows up as, as a belief, and and and if you had to sort of distill it down, shame would be the belief that either you’re not good enough or you’re too much of something. And so the first time I encountered my shame was at a, a workshop where they they forced us to answer the question, I’m not blank enough. Right? I’m not blank enough. And and the answer that came to my mind was interesting. I’m not interesting enough.

Eric Deschamps:
So you

Kelly Flanagan:
can fill it, and I’m too, what? I’m too verbose. Yeah. All the things. And and so in belief form, I think that’s how how you can start to sort of hone in on it a little bit.

Eric Deschamps:
So that so that’s just a bit of a mind blown moment when you said that. Both of us, like, like, mic drop just because shame. I’ve often, heard it defined, defined it myself within my work, with leaders and helping them overcome it, as not believing that you’re not enough, that somehow you’re deficient, that you’re flawed, that you’re different from everybody else. But when you said that you’re too much of something, oh my god. Did that ever resonate? I’ve never heard it heard it put that way, and I could probably point to a bunch of areas in my life where I have felt like I’m too much of something, and that sometimes has led to lots of change.

Rob Dale:
I I I looked at you. I I know exactly what you’re thinking. Clearly, I didn’t Yeah. Because I was thinking about another a good friend of ours, psychologist, Matthew Rippeyoung, who, he he did an episode with us, and he made a statement in there if you recall where he said, I’m I’m too much but not enough.

Eric Deschamps:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Rob Dale:
Right? Remember that frame? And and that’s how he was feeling. He was showing up in his relationships. I’m too much but not enough.

Kelly Flanagan:
And I would just say that too much is just one of those sort of shadows that shame hides out in. It’s just a little more cleverly disguised form of it. Like, and I mean, if you wanna talk about a common one for guys, how about this one? I’m too sensitive. I’m too sensitive. I’m not tough enough. I’m not hard, you know, thick skinned enough. I’m not hard shelled enough. So, yeah, I think too much is one we wanna keep an eye out for as well.

Eric Deschamps:
Yeah. 100%.

Kelly Flanagan:
That belief can show up in various thought forms, but one of the things I will often say to folks is, if you in fact, I’ll have someone come up to me after any given talk and say, I just really don’t feel like I have any shame at all. And I’ll say, have you ever felt the urge to hide anything about yourself or your story? Well, yeah. That’s shame. Shame is the urge to hide something about who we are or what we’ve gone through, because we believe it’s broken and it’s deficient, And if people find out about it, we’ll be left alone and we won’t belong, essentially. So Right. So that there’s that belief form of it, shows up in various thought forms, but then in terms of inner urge, it shows up as that urge to hide.

Eric Deschamps:
Yeah. That’s so powerful. I mean, we’ve been talking a lot about this topic of mindful masculinity, and, one of the ways that we’ve approached it is when we define toxic masculinity, what does that look like? Well, of course, there’s the extreme versions of it. There’s misogyny. There’s aggression. There’s violence. There’s rage. All the things that we would typically throw into that category.

Eric Deschamps:
But then there’s the toxicity of not being able to express yourself, a feeling like you’ve gotta have it all together all the time, that you have to be that provider. We’ve talked about some of the archetypes so far that we’ve covered, are the the lone wolf, right, and how often the lone wolf becomes a lonely wolf. And we talked about, the stoic, and how, there’s great benefit to actually both those archetypes, but taken too far, then the stoic gets like it’s like he’s wearing an emotional straight jacket, doesn’t know how to express himself specifically. So with the programming, like, I mean, you’ve been doing this work a long time, and you’re a dude, so you’ve got, like, a whole lifetime of experience. How does the societal programming about how a man should show up contribute to those deep feelings of shame?

Kelly Flanagan:
You know, I think what you just sort of touched on is that the societal programming suggests that men should only be involved in about half of the human experience. That men, men should be tough, strong, resilient, and then any experience that is opposed to that, all the other half of the human experience, men should push away and resist. So feeling fragile, uncertain, tender, sensitive, insecure at times, that these are sort of experiences that don’t belong in the masculine experience. The problem is that you can’t push anything away, you can only push it down, right? And so when you start to push that down, it’s still in there, that part of the human experience, but now you’re invested in hiding the fact that it’s in there. And now you’re in, again, you’re in the shame cycle now, you’re starting to hide that, oh, by the way, I’m not 50% of a human, I’m a whole human, but I’m a man, so I’m not allowed to be a whole human. Yeah. So I think society does send that message, which is, you talk about the flip side of toxic masculinity is that, then a man goes around thinking all those things that are not good, those are a woman’s territory, right? And so now a woman is by definition something less than, something shameful, something fragile, something weak, something to be judged. And so a big part of the process is just embracing that both genders carry around the whole human experience, so we need to learn how to be open

Rob Dale:
to it. What we love about I love that. And I I the the notion of you’re right. The when we are only seeing that half part, of course, we’re we’re now reflecting that onto the other the other sex, and we’re seeing then it’s the opposite of that. What we’ve really tried to do through this series of, and, Roy, we’re calling it the mindful masculinity, is we’re inviting people into conversation. We had right out of the gate, we had people that were, very critical, had some very interesting comments, when we used the language of toxic mass masculinity where, again, there’s almost this pushback today from people saying enough of the woke culture or whatever. Right? And and they they would push back and and would, you know, made these statements.

Eric Deschamps:
Well, one of the one of the statements, Kelly, was that, a fellow posted on LinkedIn, when we shared out 1 the first episode where we talked about why we were so passionate about this subject. And he made the statement that vulnerability is for women, and you 2 are contributing to everything that makes men weak. Right? And and so It

Rob Dale:
fits right into the the the context of that.

Eric Deschamps:
Yeah. 100%.

Kelly Flanagan:
My post on Substack this week, was titled vulnerability isn’t a glitch. It’s a guide.

Rob Dale:
I saw that. Yeah.

Kelly Flanagan:
It’s part of the human condition. And when you feel vulnerability, it’s just you about what matters to you and it would hurt to not have it, right? So, when you feel vulnerable about a person, right, it’s telling you that you really love them because you’re wondering what’s gonna happen when they really see you. When you feel vulnerable about your life, it’s telling you you love your life because you’re afraid of anything that might change it or end it. So, vulnerability is just a it’s just a tool to understand what really matters to us.

Eric Deschamps:
Oh, I love that.

Rob Dale:
You use, in lovable, you really do frame the net the notion that, we have to start with the loving ourselves, accepting ourselves, the worthiness from within, the we call it now, we use the language of radical self acceptance. What are some of the ways that shame blocks people from the ability to do that?

Kelly Flanagan:
You know, I think I think the short way to say it is that that shame, is sort of intertwined with the sense that our worthiness is conditional upon our performance and what we do, and how we act. I mean, I, one of the stories that I now understand through the inner journey, and it’s just such a subtle story, but I offer it up as a way for folks to get connected with their own stories and the subtleties of how we learn that our worthiness is conditional on what we do. So I’m in kindergarten, and as the legend goes, I my first season of soccer, I stand in the middle of the field and I turn like I’m on a turntable. Right? I don’t even follow the roaming pack of kids and stay I just stand in the middle of kids and stay I just stand in the middle of the field and turn and watch. And this apparently was pretty humiliating to some, you know, some some family members of mine who were excellent athletes in their day and age. And, but then near the end of the season, I started to apparently, I’ve been, like, doing the geometry and going, well, if you run straight to that point, you’ll you’ll get there first. You know? Those that sort and I started to actually perform. And, at the end of the season, of his own, goodwill, my coach brought over a trophy for me and brought it to my house, had it made himself, it said most improved player.

Kelly Flanagan:
And one of the very first memories of my life is standing there with my mom and dad and my coach looking at me and just sort of adoring me as it felt, right? And it’s a beautiful moment and I wouldn’t change it.

Rob Dale:
Right.

Kelly Flanagan:
But there’s a subtle message getting sent in that. When you just are you, just standing there, being there in the middle of the field, doing nothing

Rob Dale:
No trophy.

Kelly Flanagan:
We’re not real interested in you, we’re not real excited about you. But when you start to perform, when you start to do things, when you start to run, when you start to score, oh, man, you’ve got our attention. And this is a huge moment for a kid. As an adult, that doesn’t seem like a big deal, but you think about it. A kid is dependent upon the attention of their tribe for security and safety. Right? So this is an existential moment for a kid. He’s like, oh, when I run, everybody looks at me and I’m safe and I belong, and when I don’t, I don’t know where I’m gonna end up. Right? I don’t know if I’m safe.

Kelly Flanagan:
So this is I think this is one of the ways that we learn that our worthiness is gonna be contingent upon the things that we do. Yeah.

Eric Deschamps:
And and talk about family of origin where most of our most significant programming gets set. Right? Like, those are the most formative years for us forming beliefs about ourselves and how the world works. This is where our mental models, really emerge, and we probably some people will continue to live according to that program the rest of their life. We call it being asleep at the wheel of their own life, unconsciously living out of their subconscious program. Some of the research we’ve seen recently is, and I’ve been using this with my clients. We talk about how we think we’re so much more elevated than animals, who most animals do everything they do by instinct. Right, and we’re supposed to have this ability to reason and be so much, superior to that. And yet the research is showing we’re only choosing our actions and behaviors about 5% of the time.

Eric Deschamps:
Wow. We’re acting out a program, like, 95% of the time. In your experience, how does that fam like, the the the the family of origin. I mean, we could go I’d love to have a sidebar conversation with you about growing up with, parents who love me, but a dad that, was a workaholic and didn’t see much and wasn’t very present in my life, and a mom who was borderline narcissistic, if not right over the line, and not getting that nurturing and the shame journey that sent me on. But how impactful are those formative years from your perspective, and what does it take to start to unravel some of that mess?

Kelly Flanagan:
Well, to to your point, you know, what we’re discovering is that reason isn’t what distinguishes us from other mammals. It’s actually awareness that distinguishes us from other mammals. That that’s the uniquely human capacity. And, and so part of the healing from shame involves an expansion of our, a gradual expansion of our awareness, to incorporate parts of ourselves and our experience that we’ve sort of pushed out of awareness because they’re painful, because they hurt. And, so we we bring them into awareness. We learn how to be soft and tender towards those things because it’s the only way to keep it in awareness. If you judge it, you’ll push it right back out. And then we learn how to to love it enough to start to be vulnerable about it with people and share it with people.

Kelly Flanagan:
And as soon as we share it, I feel like then it’s integrated into our sense of self. It’s no longer in danger of being pushed out into our shadow, now our awareness and our sense of self has expanded. I mean, what I’d want to emphasize for anybody listening, because any parent listening right now is like, oh no. Like how am I shaming my kids? What am I, you know, and am I shaming my kids? The answer is yes, You’re definitely shaming your kids. I mean, my 20 year old is coming home today. Right? He is far more precocious than his old man. He’s already started counseling. And- Wow.

Kelly Flanagan:
And one of the things he’s starting to uncover is that if there was one thing that it was difficult for me to accept about him, it was his ADHD in all the ways that expressed itself. I’m a highly high executive functioning, organized, you know, and that, he carries that around with him now, the disapproval of the ways that he forgets things, you know, the ways that things aren’t organized. And, and he walks around with some sense of I’m not good enough. My mind isn’t good enough in that way. And in a large part, I mean, his teachers helped with that too. I think he had a 180 office referrals in his high school career, but, but he, his old man helped with it too. And and so, part of part of, the way that we can can sort of serve our kids and and become a safe family of origin is to not have shame about the ways we’ve shamed our kids. Ironically, if we have shame about it, we’re gonna have to push away their story and their truth.

Kelly Flanagan:
Right? But when he comes home today and he’s like, I’ve become aware of some more things, It’s my job to be unashamed enough of my, the things I wish I could change to to be an open and receiving space for for him. And, and so as parents, that’s what we can do is we can deal with our shame so that we can receive our kids when they’re starting to wrestle with theirs.

Rob Dale:
The the healing that comes from to your point as the parent, and and I I think of, I I 31 26, and then her girls were there. And, on the a couple of nights before the wedding, we’re all kinda just hanging out and enjoying some cigars with my with my daughters, which is a a pastime that I get to do once or twice a year and and really a favorite time. But I was able to and it it just it lended to the moment where I had this very vulnerable moment of recognizing that when they were younger, when they were 6, 7, 10, I was so busy and focused on, at that time, in the church world as a minister, that I had no time for them, that God came first. Right, the church came second, and then, you know, the family somewhere fit into whatever spare time I had, and I wasn’t fully present for them. And I I remember having a saying to them how I carry shame and guilt and all of that for how I was then. And I made the statement to them, I can’t go back and change the past. All I can ask for is for your forgiveness for how I showed up and a commitment to how I will show up moving forward. And it was it really is, it’s it’s fresh, so it’s still very defining for me, but an incredibly defining moment for me and for them.

Rob Dale:
It was very powerfully received by by everyone, just this notion of just to use to your point of just stepping forward with that and recognizing and bringing that healing.

Kelly Flanagan:
So many parents are concerned with doing all of the right things as they’re raising their kids, so their kids will still want to be in a relationship when they grow older. But my message to parents is you can get it all wrong as long as when they tell you that you’re willing to receive it. Yeah. And then you have deepening, relationship with your adult children. And, so just just do the inner work to get ready to be told you messed up some things.

Eric Deschamps:
Yeah. And

Kelly Flanagan:
then you’ll be okay with your kids. Right?

Eric Deschamps:
Let’s talk about the inner work.

Rob Dale:
You used

Eric Deschamps:
you used, 2 words earlier that I know that for some of our listeners, you said we have to get soft and tender about it. And, again, men are not allowed to be soft and tender in in our culture. One of the other archetypes we have yet to explore is the live action hero. Right? Man, you’re not supposed to let them see a sweat. If you get hurt, just rub some dirt on it. You don’t look at explosions. Right? In the movies, they always walk away from them and don’t even flinch when the explosion’s happening behind them. Right? You That’s

Rob Dale:
how I am whenever I have an explosion. Right?

Eric Deschamps:
You you you always get the girl. Things always work out for you. You’re almost bulletproof. Right? Like, this is one of the, the the alpha male, like, you have to look and sound and be a certain way. And let’s face it. That’s a it’s an unrealistic, view of of of life in general, but it’s been so celebrated in Hollywood and in popular culture that I know that any you know, a lot of the men that I talk to, one of the tools we love to use is the feeling wheel to help men start to articulate what they’re feeling be beyond good or bad. Let’s let’s get a little more specific, guys. Right? And their usual response to when I first pull it out is they kinda look at me sideways, like, what the fuck is this? Like, pardon the French, but they’re like, what is what are you about to pull on me, Deshaun? And and yet, as soon as you start exploring it with them, all of a sudden, it’s like they need permission.

Eric Deschamps:
But how do you and your work over the years and in your ongoing work now, how do you help men break through that barrier, that it’s not that it actually takes tremendous strength and courage to be soft and tender?

Kelly Flanagan:
I have a few thoughts. Go ahead. The first one is I wanna, I wanna clarify that it’s not just men sending men the message of toxic masculinity that implicitly gets communicated between the sexes as well. Here’s an example. My Goodreads reviews of the unhiding of Elijah Campbell. Now, of course, I as an author, I would never look at my own Goodreads reviews. So these are just these are just stories people have told me.

Rob Dale:
Others others have told you what they said.

Kelly Flanagan:
Yes. Yeah. These these sort of helpful others Right. You know, telling me every time a new review shows up. But but if you look at them, what you see is that, so Elijah is, not a a traditionally male protagonist. He is vulnerable, he does have weakness, he is wrestling with his pain. And, when you look at it by gender, the the reviews from women are we just don’t really like this protagonist. He’s weak.

Kelly Flanagan:
We don’t. He’s he’s just not something we wanna get on board with. And when you look at the the most positive reviews, it’s from men going, finally, a protagonist I can resonate with.

Rob Dale:
Right?

Kelly Flanagan:
And so I think we get a lot of pressure from women too. I mean, Brene Brown tells the great story about the guy who walks up to her at her book signing table and says, I noticed you never talk about men’s shame. And she’s like, well, you know, and and he says, you know why? I think I know why. See those 2 women over there, my my wife and daughter buying your book? They’d rather me die on my white horse than fall off of it. Right? And so and so Brene Brown started to talk about the ways that women source their strength from their men’s invulnerability, and that a woman’s job is to learn how to source her sense of strength from herself so she can allow her man to be vulnerable. Right? Wow. Wow. Wow.

Kelly Flanagan:
Wow. Yeah. So there’s there’s some there’s some stuff in that.

Rob Dale:
Oh, there’s a little bit of stuff in that. Yeah. There’s 6 episodes in that.

Eric Deschamps:
Yeah. You’re gonna need to cut you’re gonna have to become a regular guest now just so we can unpack just that part of it.

Kelly Flanagan:
Yeah. We can have another episode about that. But your question is about softness and tenderness and and the role of that in, in dealing with our shame as men and as women. And I think one of the ways that, so even when I wrote Lovable, I talked about the voice of shame within us and the voice of grace. And the message of Lovable was to let the voice of shame quiet down, and to listen for the voice of grace. Right? And in the 7 years since I published Lovable, I would say what shifted the most for me is I would say don’t even just let the voice of shame quiet down. Soften to the voice of shame. Learn how to embrace the voice of shame.

Kelly Flanagan:
Because guess what the voice of shame is? That’s your inner child too. Most of us develop that voice of shame between the ages of about 4 to 8. This is sort of what we see generally. That’s when that inner critic starts to kick in. So if we’re 47 now like I am and my inner critic shows up like it did this week, as it sometimes does, if If my response is I have to is the traditionally masculine response of I’ve got to fix that, I’ve got to get rid of that, I’ve got to overcome that, I’ve got to shift my mindset, all these sort of things that we do as men, we’re literally re rejecting our inner child. We’re saying, hey, the shameful part of my younger experience, that’s inconvenient to me right now. I should be over it. But the wound of shame in the first place was one of rejection.

Kelly Flanagan:
So now we are traumatizing that younger part of us. So now for me, when that voice of shame shows up, my job is to to soften to it and to create a space for it. You know, this week, it was, oh, the fountains need to be cleaned. Oh, you know, the thing you sent to your agent wasn’t perfect enough. Oh, you should have gone this direction with client. You know, they’re gonna fire you. It was like, instead of being like, why am I regressing into a inner critic mindset, it was like, oh, there’s, like, my 6 year old self again holding the trophy, going, you gotta be just right for everybody to be happy with you. You know? And it’s like, no, dude.

Kelly Flanagan:
You can you can put the trophy down and just be yourself, and that’s gonna be enough. I I promise. And that’s the softening to the shame I’m talking about.

Eric Deschamps:
Right.

Rob Dale:
What would you say to the to the to the guy who hears you say that and says here you know, here’s what you need to do, and they and and the response is how? Like, what what what’s the starting point to begin to unhide?

Kelly Flanagan:
Yeah. Well, thank you for the opportunity to talk about my book Openhearted. So I I feel that question for years, honestly, and I didn’t quite know how to to answer it. But open hearted is my answer to that question, which is, that there is a moment that repeats itself over and over again in our lives most commonly in our relationships, and it’s the moment that our heart closes. It’s the moment that something is said or something is done or whatever, and we can just feel that tightening somewhere between our, you know, our waist and our our temples, and we can feel our heart close to and start to resist that moment. That’s a moment where usually separation, disconnection, and conflict starts. And we can actually mine that moment for a deeper understanding of our history, our wounds, our pain, and how we can reconnect with important parts of ourselves because it’s all right there in that moment. Right.

Kelly Flanagan:
And when you talk to couples, this is what they say is like, you know, we only have basically one fight, but we have it over and over again.

Eric Deschamps:
And it’s

Kelly Flanagan:
like, okay, so you have a wounded inner child who’s showing up in this moment, and you have a wounded inner child who’s showing up in this moment, and they’re both calling for protection in that moment, so you close your hearts to each other. What would it look like to open your hearts to each other and to yourselves and start to get more reacquainted with that part of you? So, that’s the and the very first, if in terms of the how, the mechanics of that is we have 5 senses, right? What are they hearing, taste, touch, smell, all those things. If you only use your 5 senses, you will be in a closed heart and in disconnection and conflict before you know it, because you’re relying upon things breaking bad out here in order to recognize that you’re about to close. If you can draw upon your 6th sense, which we call interoception, which is the capacity to tune into your body, you’re going to get significantly more warning that your heart’s about to close and you’re going to have more capacity to choose and to work with that moment. And so you start to tune in. So like when I say, how bad do you got to go to the bathroom? Right? And you’re like, oh man, I guess in the next 20 minutes, that’s interoception. You’re actually going in, tuning into your body, coming back out and reporting. You can do the same thing to notice your heart closing.

Kelly Flanagan:
And there’s data, which this isn’t probably the interview for that, but there’s data that suggests you’ll get 80% more warning that your heart’s about to close and that you can actually start to work with that moment, to soften to what is needing protection in you and to open your heart to the person in front of Wow.

Eric Deschamps:
Wow. That’s powerful. Again, paying attention to what’s going on underneath the hood. Right? Like, what’s happening in my heart? What’s happening in my body? And looking for those signs. I mean, a place where shame I mean, the relationship with self is one of the most important relationships because it sets the tone for every other relationship in your life. But shame, it it it it’s insidious not only in one’s own life, but it really, becomes a resistor, in our relationships, whether it be with spouses, children, friends. What’s been your experience there? And and, again, how does one begin to shift shift that?

Kelly Flanagan:
Here. I’m looking up. He just made me think of something. Yeah. Here it is. So, I we had friends over last Saturday, and we had just we just closed on a little bit of property near our house that sort of allows us to to to sort of have be surrounded on all sides by by forest rather than homes. And, he we’re walking down the king of the neighborhood. And a lot of uncomfortable things happened inside of me when he said that.

Kelly Flanagan:
And I had to go to in order to manage everything that was uncomfortable, I I had to go inward. And and I texted him the next day, and I said, I said, yesterday when we were in the street looking at the property across the street, he said I’m becoming the king of the neighborhood. The inner chatter that went along with that was very uncomfortable. I am the king of the neighborhood. I love being the king of the neighborhood. It feels good to be recognized as the king of the neighborhood. My god. How insecure am I that I need to be the king of the neighborhood? How arrogant how arrogant I am to enjoy being called that.

Kelly Flanagan:
I hope he didn’t see how much I enjoyed that. He’ll think I’m arrogant, and then he won’t like me anymore. I better be humble right now. Oh, but I bet he can see through my humility he isn’t gonna like me anymore. Like, I all that was happening in the in the moment. And, and then I said, before the work I’ve done, that would have ruined my evening. I’d have gotten all caught up in the chatter and consumed with leaving a better impression. For a while, I thought the work would would result in all that going away.

Kelly Flanagan:
Now I’m starting to realize that it will never go away, and that wishing it would go away isn’t freedom because you’re caught in a battle with it. Freedom is being aware of it without being in it. Locating my sense of self in the part of me that can watch it and laugh at it and move on with the evening. In part, because in my humanity, it’s all true. A part of me does want to be king, and a part of me is terrified people will know that. Now I’ve said it on a podcast spirit. However, in my awareness or soulfulness or whatever you want to call it, I can embrace that very normal human part of me is a part of me, but not the definer of me. And what I would love is for my awareness to come all the way forward, and my self acceptance to come all the way forward so I could be standing there in the street with him and be like, oh, hey dude, guess what just happened in my head.

Kelly Flanagan:
Right. Yeah. Right. Right there in the spot. It took me probably 15 to 30 minutes to sort of get back to that place of being able to soften to it and laugh at it rather than trying to get rid of it. And, Yeah. I’d love to get those 30 minutes back. And Right.

Kelly Flanagan:
But but vulnerability for me was just reaching out to him the next day and and and being able to share that with him and have us have a great conversation.

Eric Deschamps:
No. That’s so powerful. One of the areas that shame really shows up for me still where where the voice of shame, I hear it regularly. And I’m I’m making progress, but sometimes it feels, like, really slow, is with my kids. Right? Again, I could relate to what you said earlier, Rob. Again, we both come from that pastoral background where, like, living the sacrificial life, you know, crucifying the self, death to self, all that language meant that any acknowledgment of self was almost, well, is it it was like the ultimate sin almost. Right? And it it led to some really unhealthy thinking and beliefs, which led to in many ways, I love my kids. I showed up for them, but not the way I would have liked to.

Eric Deschamps:
And even in adult conversations now, my eldest daughter got married last October. My second daughter gets married in August in the south of France. My son just started university. Right. So they’re all grown up now. And yet sometimes when I’m around them, I struggle to be in the moment because I will perceive something, hear something that triggers that old script of you fucked up, you made mistakes. Right? They’re just tolerating you right now because you’re their dad. And more recently, being able to, in the moment, push through that and, like, get present to push through it and then just, yep, that’s behind me now.

Eric Deschamps:
I’m showing up differently and being able to enjoy the moment. But there’s still some of those moments where that I’m still, like, trapped in. It seems like thinking from decades ago, that still shows up so strong and so prevalent. I feel like a little kid at the table.

Rob Dale:
And and part of the for me, part of the like, that was the power of that conversation I had, last week, the Sunday night, conversation I had with my my girls was because I basically everything that you just said, I said out loud to them, and it wasn’t a surprise. Now I knew they had we this wasn’t the first and only conversation we had around it. But in a sense, I was now, that vulnerability that you talk about, Kelly, with your friend, that was the vulnerability. I was putting it out there literally 2 days before this big day of saying, I’ve I screwed up. And sometimes I sit and I’m looking at you 2, and I fearful that you’re just looking at what I’m doing in my life now thinking, yeah, but where were you then? And to have to be that vulnerable with your own kids, to say here’s what goes through my mind in these moments, and then to have them to receive that the way they did because I had no idea how they were gonna receive that. You had no idea how your friend would receive that vulnerability. Right? That’s the that’s the freedom that comes out of it.

Kelly Flanagan:
Yes. Yeah. And I think like the, you know, you said you feel like a little kid at the table, Right? I think whenever we get that feeling of feeling like a little kid at the table or I’m not acting my age or, you know, whatever, it’s an opportunity just to stop and and say, yeah, the past is pushing its way into the present, in form in the form of a younger part of me that’s sort of frozen in time. And one of the most helpful things to me has been to remember that our inner child doesn’t ever grow up. Like, it is frozen in time. It is always going to be experiencing the same thoughts and feelings. The job is not to get that our inner child to to, sort of have a different set of thoughts, it’s to be able to hold space for them when they show up and and to be tender to them when they show up. And so more and more to me, it doesn’t feel like, self acceptance is the end, is the getting rid of self rejection.

Kelly Flanagan:
It’s the self acceptance is is, self sort of self acceptance and self rejection coming together in the the very same moment, where it’s like, oh, there’s all my self rejection. Oh, I love that part of me that doesn’t believe in himself. Like, he needs that love more than anybody. Like, okay. Here we are.

Eric Deschamps:
Yeah. So I mean, again, the the the way you frame that, like, earlier, it was, you know, it’s, you’re showing up as too much. Right? Not enough or too much. And now saying it’s not about because I I’ve talked about my inner critic. I grew up with a very severe inner critic, and only recently have I come to recognize, through the ongoing work, that when I refer to myself, internally by my last name so when I when I day shaw myself my last name is day shaw. So when I when I go day shaw, nothing good follows. Right? Like, when I when I but when I when I’m being kind to myself, I will use my first name, Eric. Right? And and, but the idea that it’s not about trying to eradicate that, because I think that’s been my goal.

Eric Deschamps:
It’s been, like, fire your inner critic. Well, I I talk about firing my inner critic. Right? Like, and I say and yet a son of a bitch keeps trying to show up for work every day.

Kelly Flanagan:
I’ve and that’s a like, I’ve never met any and I mean, you talk to any they’ve never been able to actually get rid of their inner critic. Right. We we we certainly can make progress in terms of how it shows up and how how we handle it. But, like, I remember listening to Krista Tippett interviewing the Dalai Lama, and she was like, oh, she you know, he’d said a few things. And he’s like, oh, I just wish I could follow you around for a day and soak up your peace. And he just started laughing. He said, well, if you followed me around for a whole day, you’d also have to soak up my anger. You know, like, he was like, you’re never gonna get rid of it.

Kelly Flanagan:
You have to you have just simply have to tenderize to it. You have to accept it. You have to even learn. I mean, I think the most enlightened people I know, they they’re able to laugh with it. They’re able to to sort of get a kick out of it. Like, that’s it’s like, yeah, my inner critic’s always gonna be there, and eventually I’ll be able to get get a kick out of it. Like, wouldn’t that be amazing? I I’m not there yet, but

Rob Dale:
Yeah. I’d love to get there. I can almost envision the inner critics getting pissed off because you’re because you’re loving on the inner critic. Stop loving

Kelly Flanagan:
on me.

Rob Dale:
Stop loving on me. Stop laughing at me.

Kelly Flanagan:
You have just hit on it. You just hit on it. When you are trying to totally eliminate the inner critic, you’re eliminating it with the inner critic and therefore you’re strengthening it, which is why you can’t ever get rid of it.

Eric Deschamps:
Well, you know, the old saying, the old adage, right, what you resist persists.

Kelly Flanagan:
That’s it.

Eric Deschamps:
And we talk about acceptance. I mean, I’m having some can we but, like, golly mama. Like, can we just, I remember holding myself to some pretty high I still you know, this is something I’m still working on, but holding myself to some pretty unrealistic expectations. And my coach Sherry, she’s from the south, so she has a bit of an accent.

Kelly Flanagan:
Right. She’ll do that.

Eric Deschamps:
And she’ll she’ll tell me she’ll say, Eric, are your expectations in line with reality? And every time she does that, I just wanna tell her to go take a hike. You know? Okay. Right? But holding, myself to these just unreal and I remember I had read a book by the Dalai Lama on his level of compassion even for his persecutors. And and, of course, I turned, my older self would immediately turn an awareness of something I might want to lean into and become more of, but I would turn it into ammunition against myself that I’m less than, that I’m here’s another area that I’m failing in. She was one day said, okay. Can we talk about the Dalai Lama? She goes, so he’s not married. He doesn’t have kids. He lives on a mountaintop somewhere, and people do everything for him.

Kelly Flanagan:
That’s right. And by his own admission, he still gets annoyed and frustrated. He’s so upset. Like, what chance do any of us stand?

Eric Deschamps:
Right. Exactly. So this this whole notion again, I think the biggest takeaway for me so far in this conversation is that radical self acceptance means even accepting, the voice of shame, accepting the inner critic, making peace with him, and learning to coexist in a way that’s healthy as opposed to trying to eradicate it completely from my life. So that’s a that’s a game changer for me. I don’t I know. It’s gonna take me days to unpack that one.

Kelly Flanagan:
Well, and if it and if it helps, another way of thinking about shame we didn’t talk about is, you could think of shame as your inner child’s first attempt to take back some control. So what happened was that as a kid, we started to experience pain, usually the pain of some sort of separation, whether it was judgment or punishment or criticism or, you know, loneliness, abandonment, neglect, unseen, misunderstood, all the things. They’re either all some form of separation pain. And what we did as kids is we went, what’s the problem here? How can I fix this? Oh, if I’m the problem, maybe I can fix this. If if I’m the cause of separation because I’m bad or I’m not good enough, so we we sort of participate in formulating our shame beliefs as well as a way to sort of get get some control back. And, and so, like, to be able to sort of encounter that voice of shame and be like, like, hey, dude, that’s, like, I get it. I get why you decided that you were bad, and if you could fix you everything would be okay and you’d never be alone, but like, that wasn’t the real reason that you were feeling those things. You’re feeling those things because you’re human and everybody’s confused and thinking that we’re all separate and that that was just normal stuff and and sometimes abnormally painful stuff.

Kelly Flanagan:
And and so, hey, like, let’s just not get into that control game by trying to pretend it’s up to us to fix.

Eric Deschamps:
Wow. So you you’ve done a lot of this work. You’ve written a lot about this topic. I know that, both men and women listening to this episode can resonate with probably already, like, everything that’s been said because voice of shame doesn’t just show up for men. We’re just focused primarily. In your work with men specifically, when the voice of shame speaks to a man, what is it saying? What are its central themes?

Kelly Flanagan:
And, You are not okay the way you are. And so you need to do more to, to be okay and to be acceptable to people. I mean, the hard thing for a man is that we are taught that we should be okay being independent, okay not being without we shouldn’t have any needs, we we shouldn’t have any relational wants, we should just be okay and self sufficient. But men, again, are human beings who are wired for connection, who are wired for longing for belonging, right? And so we’re caught up in this thing where we’re told, no, you shouldn’t want to secure relationships with other people because you should be fine on your own, and yet everything in us is wired to be in relationships with other people. So in the background, we’re constantly going, how am I gonna secure my relationships? I gotta be okay, but I’m not okay, so I gotta do more to be okay. And and so the first thing we can do is sort to just to sort of accept that relationships matter to us. In fact, they’re probably the most important thing to us. And everything we do and everything we’ve been told about how relationships don’t or shouldn’t matter to us is a lot of baloney.

Kelly Flanagan:
Your human relationships matter.

Rob Dale:
We we we talk a lot, on the on the podcast and in the Living Rich Lee Nation, the importance of community, the importance of relationships that while you can do some of the work on your own, a lot of this work you need to surround yourself with people.

Kelly Flanagan:
We certainly were all big

Rob Dale:
proponents of a therapist having somebody who you can unpack some of this with. Yeah. But the power of community. What advice what would you say

Eric Deschamps:
to a guy

Rob Dale:
who says, what advice what would you say to a guy who says, I’m I’m ready to do this work. I’m starting to have these this this these conversations with myself, but how do I there’s no way in hell I’ll ever bring this subject up to my buddies. Right? Like, there’s no way, like, I would be the laughing stock, but what would you say to a guy who’s sitting there going, how do I embrace a community to to to live out this, to to begin to deal with some of these things when when they’re ready to do that? What would you say as advice to that?

Kelly Flanagan:
Well, I would say increasingly there are communities that exist to to support a man like that. I’d say go listen to the Living Richley podcast, start there. I’ll tell you I had an experience, I was after I published Lovable, I was asked to speak to, a group at a conference in the Florida Keys, it was October of 2018. It’s a group called Front Row Dads, and, tagline is, family men with businesses, not businessmen with families. They asked me to come speak about Lovable. I was attending the event for a day before I actually spoke. And 6 yeah. I mean, 6 hours into that first day, I’m like, here they all are.

Kelly Flanagan:
Here’s all the guys like me Yeah. Who have big hearts, have hearts for their families, who wanna take responsibility for their own inner work in order to show up better for their people, who are willing to I had a I once had a guy say to me after a talk I gave, I realized now that I used to think a man was someone who was afraid of nothing around them. Now I think a man is somebody who’s afraid of nothing within them. Right? And and and here’s here were these guys, like, they weren’t afraid of anything within them. They were gonna face anything they needed to to become better men, better husbands, better fathers. I thought, man, here’s my guys. So there’s a community like Front Row Dads out there that I now belong to, and and we’re not alone. Increasingly, there’s communities of men who wanna do the inner work to show up as more whole human beings.

Eric Deschamps:
Yeah. It it’s again, it it often just takes someone going first. I in our work, again, we work with, primarily in our coaching business, business leaders, business owners, very successful people, and it’s amazing, when you get them into a one to one conversation, how open they will become when they feel safe, and they feel like they won’t be judged. We heard a great story recently. I was invited to speak to for, on a for an online event, a new monthly. They were launching a new men’s group, in Owen Sound, which is in Northern Ontario in our province, and I was invited to speak, like, be the the presenter for that particular open inaugural event. It was only at the end of the show, of the webinar, that I found out that it was because they listened to the podcast. The 2 founders had listened to the podcast and or wanted to listen, said, you need to listen to this.

Eric Deschamps:
And then they said, what do you think? And they started this group for men as a result. And, my heart just likes like, was just overwhelmed with, like, it takes the courage to go first. And when you do, you give other men permission to break free from the nonsense of you need to have it all together. Right?

Kelly Flanagan:
There is another entrepreneurial group that I spent some time serving, and I know one of its leaders got up here in the last couple years. He was given the keynote, and he got up, and it’s a room full of 250 Uber successful men. And he said, we must be the most traumatized room full of men in the world because you don’t get this successful unless you’re running away from something.

Eric Deschamps:
Wow. Woah.

Kelly Flanagan:
Right? And and so now you have a room full of 250 men who are like, I’m gonna have to figure out what I’m running away from in here. Now they’re now they’re launched on the inner journey. And so you’re right. Like, it’s leaders who embrace that if our community is gonna become as whole and as healthy as it as we want it to be, we’re gonna have to start to face some of the stuff we’re pushing away.

Eric Deschamps:
Right. Right. It’s it’s it’s elevating the conversation, beyond, what is it, business, blood sports? Boobs. Boobs and booze. Right? Like I

Kelly Flanagan:
have 4 b’s. Never heard of before. Right. I have

Eric Deschamps:
4 b’s. Like because I think that’s what most guys, like, they a lot of their relationships are really just around those four things. And listen, I I’m passionate about business. I I could talk business all day long, with other entrepreneurs, but I think there’s a lot of men that hide behind to your point when we feel shame and we’re not enough. We need to do more, and I think that contributes. I I I don’t know that a lot of men I know from my own journey, I can’t speak for all men, I know your journey you shared as well, that we felt like we were failing at home. Like, we felt like we’re not showing up really great. We’re not we’re we’re bad dads or bad husbands, but we feel like we’re failing there.

Eric Deschamps:
But when we put our hands, and apply ourselves at business, that seems to work. Right? And so we end up putting all of our eggs or most of our eggs in that basket only to realize that, we’ve been climbing the ladder that’s been leaning on the wrong wall the whole time.

Kelly Flanagan:
That’s right. Got it. Yeah. I think, the it’s so gratifying to take control and go out into the world and exert our wonderful capacity for control in in achieving success in business. And then you go home and and you try to exert the same level of control over the home and nobody wants it. And you’re like, well, that’s the problem. Everybody loves me out there when I need control and making everything happen and must be you guys because everyone else loves me. And it’s like, no.

Kelly Flanagan:
It’s just like in intimate relationships. Things have to be a little bit different than in business. Yeah.

Eric Deschamps:
Yeah. 100%. 100%. Kelly, this has been amazing. One last question before we wrap up for today, and thank you so much for being on the show again. But, for the men that are listening, the men and women that are listening to this episode, if you could take all the wisdom of all your books, right, and in a short, succinct word of encouragement, for them to take that next step and break free from the voice of shame, embracing it but breaking free from its insidious grip, what what would you say to them?

Kelly Flanagan:
I would say if you can’t welcome it, you can’t work with it. So if you’re in a, if you’re in a position of pushing anything away or rejecting it, it has you. I would say soften to everything that you see in you. There’s really no benefit of not softening to anything that you see in you. And that the way to freedom isn’t, you know, fixing anything, but just learning how to feel things and being open hearted to yourself and your people in your life. And, so head down that path, and I promise it’s it’s got a good really good destination at the end of it or along the way. I don’t know where the end is.

Eric Deschamps:
Yeah. Yeah.

Rob Dale:
That’s so good. Kelly, you, you are the king of podcast guests. Oh.

Kelly Flanagan:
That’s the kind of Yeah.

Rob Dale:
But wait. What’s the chatter? Let’s let’s plug a speaker to his brain. Let’s listen to that

Eric Deschamps:
chatter right now.

Kelly Flanagan:
Do you have a trophy for you right now?

Rob Dale:
There will be improved podcast guest. Dumb.

Kelly Flanagan:
That’s right. Yes.

Rob Dale:
That’s right. No. You rock it the first time. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. No. Over the top.

Kelly Flanagan:
Yep. No.

Rob Dale:
Thank you so much, for being a part of things. We’re gonna have, for our listeners, we’ll have links to all of, Kelly’s books, to his website so that you can find that. All of that will be found in the show notes, for the episode where he comes out. Thank you again. It’s we really will, reach out and want to have you back on. It’s just been such a pleasure. Both times having these conversations have been so tremendous, and and so thank you so much.

Kelly Flanagan:
Yeah. Thank you. You you both know as speakers that you can talk about one thing to one audience and then another and get totally different reactions. So Yeah. You’re only as good as your audience. You guys are amazing. And not that you’re an audience, but, I really am grateful for the space that you’ve created, and I’ll come back to it as many times as you’re told.

Rob Dale:
Amazing. And we’re grateful for all of you that have tuned in, continuing to listen each and every week to this podcast and for really showing the support. We wanna encourage you to to like, to leave your comments, your thoughts. What was one of those mind blowing moments for you, from today’s episode? And, certainly, if there’s someone that you feel would really benefit, from hearing this episode to share that out to them. Wanna encourage you to visit our website, living richly dot me. All kinds of resources that are found on the web site, including links to our community, our Living Richly Nation Facebook group, but also, most importantly, we’re so excited about the 15 day life giving life vision challenge, and, the the just the reviews and the response from that has been so tremendous. Absolutely free resource to help you figure out your life manifesto. Wanna encourage you to check that out.

Rob Dale:
You can find it at the website. Thanks again for being a part of, our episode today, and, just get out there and live your best life.

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