Dialogues on Shame, Beauty, and Acceptance

Transcript of a Sage Hill Live Fully Podcast conversation with Dr. Chip Dodd. Lightly edited for readability; speaker labels omitted.

You're listening to the Sage Hill podcast with Dr. Chip Dodd. Sage Hill is a social impact organization that helps people see who they are made to be so they can do what they're made to do. By the way, have you noticed how much and and and and a lot of people won't see this. But do you remember when when I I came to you with The Voice of the Heart idea and you were working with the publisher? 1998. Yep. And, Stephen, we it was a foreign language. If if if it weren't a foreign language, you would have already been up on it because you were like mister up on everything. Right? I thought I was. But you were. I mean, you had your your pulse on the marketplace. Right? I mean, your your finger on the pulse. I thought I did. Well, you kinda did, Steve. Yeah. I mean, you kinda did. And and even when you you miss it, you're pretty sure you did it. But

Confidence. But we were speaking a foreign language that is not foreign anymore. Right. I've noticed more and more and more readings, writings, this and that. It's prevalent. It it it literally I will see things and hear things, and my I'll turn as if to I recognize that. And it's some great person, writer, teacher talking about the things we were talking about in, you know, '98 Yeah. That that I was doing in Dallas in the, you know, the late late eighties. So it's a good thing. Right? It's a good time to be in recovery. Yeah. You know? Yeah. There's a lot of of things out there, a lot of lot of people who are speaking into this space, who creating influence in this space. Well, see, that's what people use words like space and presence now and Oh, yeah. Right. That's yeah. And and heart is is common. Feelings, shame. The word shame is the word shame, but with the what's a Brene Brown. Brene Brown. Yeah. With that with that John Bradshaw, I mean, she brought John Bradshaw back to life from the late eighties in terms of the toxic shame. And so it's good. My my concern is that in the process that instead of we we will we will and I watched it happen too in the nineties too, but we'll reduce our toxic shame, which is great, and become shameless instead of reducing our toxic shame and returning to neediness and dependency and healthy shame. Mhmm. I know that there's not a lot of talk about healthy shame. There's a there's a very beautiful inborn healthy shame that that's what we're toxically ashamed of. I mean, contempt for ourselves, we're contemptuous towards ourselves for needing, which is healthy shame. We hate ourselves for depending upon God and others to have fulfillment in our lives.

So my toxic shame would tell me that we shouldn't even do this podcast to talk about all the things we're up to. Yes. Or Who do we think we are? Absolutely. Or do it in such an advertising format that we it's like, you need to hear what we have to say and and you buy it. And if you buy it and you're not satisfied, if you haven't lost eight inches off your neck by Oh, wow. You have no neck. Yeah. You have no but if you haven't done then you we'll give you your money back or something just insane. We're not selling. Yeah. We're not selling. We're offering something that matters to us. Right? Also sharing what we're excited about. Right? And I think that, you know, my own story tells me don't get excited about things like that. What you're excited about, don't get excited about. And if you're celebrating

or sharing, hey. Look at this painting I've I've painted. Look at it. Here, I want you to have it. Something you're bragging, such celebration is considered wrong Yep. Or celebration turns into shameless self in grandiosity. I remember when I was a kid sitting in class and drawing pictures. I would draw pictures of, like, little army men. Mhmm. They'd have these tunnels that went under things. And Mhmm. It'd be so intricate. And I used to get so into it. And I remember one day drawing it and looking over at this other kid drawing, and his drawing was better. And I remember going, like, I don't wanna draw anymore. Like, just the sense of comparison and shame. And I had to be around, like, nine or ten or 11, somewhere in that late elementary school age. But there was a time where I wasn't embarrassed about anything I drew. Right? It was just like passion. Yeah. And and then there was this time where I started looking at my offering and comparing it to the guy next to name was Russell. I could picture him earlier.

His offering and and judging my offering against his Yeah. So the toxic shame was already offered. There. Because if if let's say, if it had been healthy shame because even as you were sharing that and and it's just and this is just a moment of healthy shame in my life. I because, you you know, I've I've got the toxic shame down as a form of expertise, but I'm a professional World renowned expert. World renowned expert in toxic shame. But, I remember John John John Florida. His penmanship I mean, he could draw he could write and draw. But I remember wanting to be able to do like him instead of saying, I don't I don't like mine. It's like, how do I do that? I remember that's healthy shame Mhmm. Me saying and and tempting to. That's beautiful. I wanna do that. I wanna do that. I wanna copy that. I wanna do like that. I wanna I want to be able to write like you with the way your letters And, you know, sometimes even when I'll print today, I'll print words and I I still remember how good he could do it. Wow. He must have been good. Yeah. He was really good As far as a fourth grader can see. But, but, you know, Steve, this this is something I'm this is something I don't know all the words for this yet. I don't I don't know even know if we need to do podcast on it until it's clear. But I really I really think I don't know if it's just age, but I really think we if we've gotta be careful not to lose a heart and the the the simple mission just because and I don't mean to avoid things that are hard, but to not, not let this whole thing get entangled in all the traps of of bureaucracy and, false complexities and being told this is the way it has to be done, so this is the way you've got to do it. And I know that, you know, we have to render unto Caesar. Sure. Appropriately. But to to create a new complex I don't know. There's something. Well, simplicity. Right? How do we keep things pure? Yeah. We I wanna help people remember. Go watch the fireflies. Go watch the the Robins are back. Go watch the Robins and remember the times when it wasn't so hard. And let yourself grieve and make it with, Philip Robinson in Murfreesboro this morning. New vision. Great guy. Great guy. Great guy. And we were out Philip, I wish Philip were listening. I hope he's listening. I don't know if he knows about it. I bet look. We've done a very poor job of letting people know. That's true. We have. So

but we were I'll call him and tell him. Tell him. Philip, listen to podcast. We were out behind the with with his counseling center, Integrity House, near Brownsburg, and there's a cedar stand back there. Probably it's probably 50 feet deep by maybe 200 feet Yeah. Long. And someone had built a fire pit back in there like a Yeah. Like, they could take people back there and do fire pit stuff. And he and I walked back in there looking at it, and the birds were singing. Yeah. Right? And I just stood there in the cedar stand. I said, listen to the birds. And then he said in this southern like, just a good solid man voice, he said, it's spring. It was like the we had this moment together of just noticing these birds flitting in the cedar stand and the wind blowing. And it was like, that made my whole day. Like, that moment made my whole day. And I don't wanna build anything, create anything, do anything, produce anything in in any way that takes me away from noticing that. You know? Noticing spring. And I think for me, sometimes I can get so busy in my own giftedness. Right? Yes. Not even in my shame, but in my own giftedness Yeah. That I'll not notice what's going on around me and the beauty of the simple things that's already there. If I don't do anything else in this life, it's already there. And you know what? If you and I stop

and say go to the Cedar Glades that you're describing Mhmm. If if we don't have a way of going below our stress and anxiety, it doesn't matter how many Cedar Glades we sit in, it won't see them. We won't feel them. And so I I swear on some level, the doorway into that recognition is is is neediness again. You know what I'm saying? It's that that my stress and my anxiety is about grief, life happening like I don't want it to, overdependence on on overdependence on myself as the answer. And if I don't get to x, y, and z fast enough, this a, b, c is gonna happen. And then it's all gonna collapse because I failed. I mean, it's just that that when I was this is a jump. But when I was in college, and I went to a professor and told him, strangely, that I was scared I wasn't gonna get my life done. I that that I somehow, I wasn't gonna be able to make it to life. And he turned me towards a John Keats poem. That was an English major in the college, which was a useless major. You were an English major too. Yeah. Yeah. So I thought it was a useless major and, but it isn't. No. But it was about John Keats worried about the same thing. John Keats is standing on the the they say he's worried about not getting to finish his work, not getting to finish his mission, not getting to, complete, what it is in his heart he wants to do. It's called high high pile books of something or another. And it says that when he gets like that, he goes out into the edge of the cliffs and looks out at the ocean until all those things do nothingness through sink. In other words, the all that stress and worry that we're we pile upon ourselves is all about forgetting our size that we're not big, but compared to the universe and the world. Yeah. But to God, we're big deals. So this neediness, this conflict in our neediness is big yeah. That reduction of stress and anxiety comes from neediness. The very thing it makes us run away from Because, you know? Yeah. And neediness brings us to grief because life is not like what we want it to be. It isn't.

And grief brings us to acceptance, which is the reduction of anxiety. Yes. And it makes us makes us look around and refer back to seeing God in the Robin. And I'm not talking about pantheism. I guess that's I'm talking about seeing the fingerprints of God's creation. It's okay. We come down to it's okay. It's okay that it's not okay. And it's not okay when it's okay, but it's okay. This is Stephen James, the executive director of Sage Hill Counseling. Thanks for listening to the Sage Hill podcast with Dr. Chip Dodd. Sometimes in life, we get stuck or blocked or reach an impasse. At times like these, an intensive short term therapy could help you overcome what's keeping you from the growth and changes you desire. At Sage Hill Counseling, we offer therapeutic incentives to help couples gain new momentum in their recovery process. If you wanna find out more, please visit sagehillcounseling.com.