322. Summer Shame: Why Sunshine Doesn’t Always Equal Happiness

Hey, I'm Amanda Hess.

I'm a certified life coach.

But what you need to know is I'm a sensitive woman just like you, and I'm going to help you understand yourself better so that you can approach your life differently and feel really good about it.

Let's go.

Hey, my friends, have you ever noticed that in the summertime, it's supposed to be this magical experience, but then when you're in the middle of living in it, there's something far less magical happening?

I have found through coaching many women through the years that summertime brings a lot of shame.

And I thought today we could just talk about summertime shame because it's a specific kind of shame.

There are many different areas where summer brings in shame and how the shame drives behavior.

That.

That creates a summer that we don't like.

And that is something we just really want to look at and something that we want to address.

Because there's not a single person that I've ever worked with that has said to me, you know, Amanda, what I'd really like to do is have a really shitty summer.

Nobody has said that to me in all the years that I've coached people.

So if we want to have a great summer, right?

So I'm recording this.

I'm in Canada.

I'm recording this on July 22nd.

We're right in the middle of summer.

And if you want to have a great summer, summer, you want to understand what is getting in the way of that.

All the things that are creating any kind of problems when it comes to that.

So when we start really looking at, say, shame, right?

We start understanding how that is, how that is showing up for us.

We can start looking at what are the things that create the shame in the summer.

And I think it's a really great place to start.

In fact, I was coaching a client today, and I was saying to her, you know, she had listened to my previous episode, and if you.

If you haven't listened to this episode, you should go listen to it, because it's gonna help you.

But she had said, you know, maybe we could have a coaching call talking about shame.

Cause it's something that comes up for me, and of course, could talk about shame all day long.

I think it's such an important topic.

But what we really started to discover in our conversation is a way of coaching yourself that you might not have thought about before.

So what I offered her was you could every day ask yourself on a scale from 1 to 10, 1 being low.

I don't feel it at all 10 being high.

I feel it all the time.

What's my shame level at today, right now, at the beginning?

This might be a difficult question to answer for her.

We've been working together for a few years, so she, she's very, very well versed in understanding how to ask herself this question.

The reason why it's valuable is because shame is something that hides.

Shame is something that likes to hide and grow in the dark.

And so we really want to start pulling it out into the light and creating curiosity.

The thing is, we experience a lot of shame in today's culture.

In today's world, we are inundated with externalized and internalized shame.

We are taught that it is useful to feel shame.

And I'd even like to extrapolate it because a lot of people say you should move shame to guilt.

And I actually don't think guilt is any more useful of an emotion.

Shame and guilt in the summertime are a problem not because they show up and because we feel them, but because of what we do when it shows up and what we do when we feel it.

When you look at the different categories of where we feel this in the summertime, we can start with your body.

It's, it's just an easy place to start.

And for women in particular, it's one that carries a lot of shame.

Why?

Well, the way that we look, we have been socialized to believe is a problem.

We are not skinny enough, tall enough, small enough, toned enough, tanned enough, unlined enough.

Our butts aren't big enough, our legs aren't small enough, our boobs aren't big enough.

Our waists aren't small enough, our arms aren't skinny enough.

We have been taught that the way that we look, the way that we should look is very different than the way that we do look.

And we also now have just a plethora of images that are sent our way through social media, through the Internet, through advertising, all over the place that shows the perfect person.

It's worth noting that the perfect person has changed over the years.

There's a lot more intervention to look perfect.

And I even noticed, I watched a post the other day, a reel, and they were talking about how they missed people's non veneer smiles of the 90s.

And if you go back and look at movies and actors, you will start to see that there were a lot of people with natural teeth that were in the public eye, that were performing in movies, that were singers, that were celebrities.

And now if you look at those same singers, celebrities, those People in the public eye, the vast majority of them have veneers or implants.

They have really done things to their smile.

Now this is coming from someone who I actually have always had great teeth, but I judge my teeth because they don't look like big pearly white veneers.

Right.

And this isn't meant to judge you if you do have veneers.

What it is meant to show, though, is that the beauty standard has changed and it's no longer acceptable to have a lined face.

It's no longer acceptable to have small lips.

It's no accept.

No longer acceptable to have facial, you know, texture, to have small eyebrows.

We just, we have changed the beauty standard.

Yes.

And what happens is we experience a lot of shame.

I noticed this when I worked as a stylist, right.

When I was helping women with their fashion and their clothing and their closets, that we have become very good at identifying what's wrong with us now.

Why?

That's just the way our brains work.

We've established that it's looking for problems, but that's not the only reason why.

We're also being told that we should look deep differently than how we look.

That the natural female body, whatever yours is, and there's many different versions of it, is not acceptable.

That it's not okay to look the way that you look because it's not perfectly proportioned.

You don't have a tiny little waist, you don't have a big butt, you don't have big boobs.

Right.

You aren't muscular or you're too muscular or you're too fat or you're too skinny.

There's cellulite.

There isn't cellulite.

There's so many discrepancies of what is real and, and what we're shown as to be what we should be attaining.

And then so many people now are getting so much work done and really altering their appearance.

And then we're comparing ourselves to people that don't even look like that.

Right.

Really worthwhile noting now, bringing in AI and it's, it's actually going to increase that pursuit of the perfect body that isn't a real body and that the image of perfection is not necessarily what we want.

Right.

So we have just so much shame in the summertime, looking at our appearance, looking at our bodies, looking at how we look in a bathing suit, looking how we look in a picture.

You know, I think about when we were kids in the summertime and you know, for all of us it changed at a certain point and it's different for everyone.

But there was a point in time for all of us where going to the beach was more about having fun and less about how I look in a swimsuit.

Yes.

And the shame of that is that in this place where we are now, we don't get that same opportunity because of all of the shame we feel about how we look.

So when I'm looking at summertime shame, it is a different kind of shame.

You know, in the wintertime, I live in Canada, we wear a lot more clothes in the summertime.

Your arms are out, your legs are out.

You might be in a bathing suit.

You might be doing an activity that might put your body in an awkward position.

You might be at a barbecue or a family gathering where people are taking your picture.

And it could be an unflattering angle.

In fact, I was just away this weekend and saw all versions of that.

And what I will tell you is that, first of all, we have to be able to identify where we're feeling shame.

And we need to understand that it's happening.

Right?

Oh, I feel shame.

I think it would really surprise you to notice how many times in a day you feel shame.

It is for myself, an inordinate amount of times.

Right.

The difference potentially between you and me is that for me, shame is something that I notice, but I don't lean into.

So I don't ignore it either.

I don't pretend it's not there and I don't try to positive talk myself out of it because it won't work.

Instead, what I do is I notice, oh, that's interesting that I feel shame about this.

I feel shame about how my.

My hips look in a bathing suit.

And I can decide what I'm going to do about that.

Am I going to believe that the beauty standard that's set is the one that I want to use?

And for me, the answer is no.

And I've done a lot of work on that.

Right.

Because even prior to life coaching, I worked with so many people on their bodies that I saw every single person in the universe has a problem with something about their body.

It doesn't matter who you are.

So to believe that I could change my body and then I would be happy is a thought error.

It's not the truth.

And, you know, even for myself, I've had the experience of seeing how my body has changed.

I've been the size I am now, which is the biggest I've been.

And then I think I.

The lowest I was in adulthood was probably an 8.

That was really, really skinny for me, right?

And what I will say is that at that size, I still had wide hips.

I remember once somebody saying to me, I.

A group of adults that were sitting.

I was riding.

I was working at a riding stable, trading a horse, and all these adults were standing around.

I was about 16, and men and women.

And they said to me, you know, Amanda, you were just, like, noticing how you've got such childbearing hips, which is wild behavior, right?

Only in the 90s.

Only in the 90s.

But that happened, and it stuck with me.

Think about it.

I'm 50.

How long has that stuck with me?

I have childbearing hips, AKA my hands.

Hips are wide.

That's a bad thing.

And therefore, there's something wrong with me.

Now, this shame, like, gets extrapolated because then I have additional shame when I think, oh, I have these wide hips.

But I couldn't push out a baby because I had to have C sections with both my kids.

Fascinating.

So I have shame about having wide hips.

I have shame about having wide hips and having had a C section.

Right.

It's really interesting.

It's everywhere.

I was speaking to a client of mine about how, you know, she's having some issues with what's going on with her breasts, and she's reflected back to me, well, isn't it just so annoying that something that is, like, so small is creating a problem and noticing the shame around that?

We have been taught to feel shame about our bodies.

So what I do and what I teach when it comes to that type of shame is, first of all, identifying it.

Second of all, allowing the feeling, right?

The feeling in my body, the.

The rejection that I feel inside of myself.

But rather than being judgmental or mad at myself about it, it's about bringing in kindness.

It's about bringing in compassion.

It's about tapping into, what am I going to believe about this?

That supports me for one of my clients this week, we talked about softening, right?

Being able to soften internally, soften my thinking, softening, soften my emotionality.

Not lean into the shame, but also not reject it completely.

More so, okay, it's here.

It makes sense that it's here.

I feel that it's here.

And I'm gonna honor that and take care of myself through that.

However, I'm also gonna remind myself that this shame was not mine.

I did not give it to myself.

This was something that was programmed into me.

And so I am going to really work hard on reprogramming what I think about this.

And it is really, really important that we do this in specificity.

It's a very human thing to do, to want to summarize, to want to lump everything back together.

I'm always like this.

I'm never like that.

That's where black and white thinking is born.

We're not always one way and never another.

There are times that I think I look great, and there's times that I think I look awful.

What changes?

Well, it depends how regulated I am.

It depends how much sleep I've had, if I've eaten well, if I've moved my body.

That makes a difference.

It depends whether or not past trauma has triggered me.

It depend if somebody has made a comment about what I've been eating, what I've been drinking, or how I've been looking.

All of these things can impact how I see myself and what level of shame I'm going to experience.

But once I see it, once I understand it, then I can start to poke holes in it.

And so when it comes to your body, it's really looking at what do I want to decide is beautiful?

How do I want to see beauty?

Do I only want to see beauty a certain way?

Can I see beauty in things that other people find not beautiful?

One thing I offered to another client this week is you could potentially decide the cellulite is beautiful.

Why couldn't you?

Who's to say it isn't?

There was a time when having a big butt was not a good thing.

Now it's something that people get implants.

There's entire exercise programs devoted to building up your glutes.

But there was a time when that was unattractive.

And it's just worthwhile understanding that the beauty standard we have.

Why wouldn't you make the beauty standard how you look?

Why wouldn't you?

How can you say there's no value, that all the value is in that?

And you might say to me, well, Amanda, but what about what other people think?

But it's really never been about what other people think.

It's about what you think.

It's what you think about you.

It's how you decide you're going to see something.

You know, when you.

When you look at art, it's like the value of art is the beauty is.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

You get to decide what meaning you're going to attribute to what you have going on.

But you get to decide whatever thing is terrible about you is actually beautiful.

And it very much is changing the way that you think.

Now, this isn't Running over the shame.

You've got to understand the shame is there.

This is about processing the shame, moving through the shame, allowing the shame to be there, and then moving forward with action.

Wear the bathing suit, wear the shorts, let the photo be taken, and coach yourself through this process.

Now, summer shame isn't just about your appearance.

Summer shame brings a whole other level of shame.

Right?

We are traveling, we are spending more time with people, we are in the daylight hours for longer.

We don't get as much alone time.

And so we can find ourselves in this scenario where it's summertime and we feel shame about how much we're doing, or we have shame for how little we're doing.

And sometimes that can be happening all at the same time.

We are very externally focused a lot of the time and shame allows us to do that because as we talked about before, shame likes to hide, shame likes to grow in the dark.

So it would rather that you be externally focused, looking at what other people are doing, looking at how other people are managing things, looking at how other people want to see us.

But where we're going to experience success in processing and moving through and having less shame in the summer is first of all, identifying when and where it shows up.

When do you feel it?

Is it when you're with your in laws?

Is it when you are at a big family gathering?

Is it when you're home alone and you know that you could be out enjoying the sunshine?

When do you feel it and when you feel it, where does it come from?

What are the thoughts that are creating that feeling of shame?

We start here so that we start to understand what am I thinking?

What am I thinking that is creating this emotion?

Emotions don't come from nowhere.

Summertime shame isn't just some random thing that lands upon you like a bird, right?

Summertime shame is something that is created by the thoughts that we're having about what we're experiencing.

And shame almost always is coming from a place of I should be experiencing it differently, I should be performing differently, I should be having a different experience.

So we want to really understand what do I think should be happening here and what is actually happening here so that we have an understanding of what's what, what the gap is.

And then once we know what the gap is, we can start closing the gap.

We can start understanding, oh, I believe that there's a right and a wrong way to do summer.

There isn't.

There's just a way to do summer.

I believe that summer should always feel happy.

You're still gonna have 50% positive and 50% negative emotion.

Really important to know I shouldn't feel always happy in the summertime.

So that's not real.

That's not real.

So we can start poking holes in that while just getting curious.

What do I think should be happening?

And what if that isn't true?

And what if there's another way to think about this that could be supportive, that could be compassionate, that could give me what I need?

This is the experience that we wanna be moving through in the summer.

We wanna pull ourselves out of our brain and plant ourselves into our body and start understanding what is going on inside my body.

What is this?

What are these thoughts creating?

And how is that informing the real that I'm experiencing right now?

And then we can really start looking at how do I move through the shame, through not around, not pushing it away, not hiding from it, but through it.

One reframe that I think could really help you is if you think about the phoenix, right?

So the phoenix is a bird.

It's a mythical bird that lights on fire and then is reborn.

And if you've ever watched Harry Potter, that is what Dumbledore's double doorst bird is, is a, is a phoenix.

And that bird lights itself on fire perpetually and regenerates.

We also can do this.

So no matter what's happened, no matter whatever thoughts or beliefs you have, no matter what somebody has said to you, raised you to believe any version of that, no matter what, we can light it on fire and start over.

We can decide to burn that shit down and begin again.

And when you're dealing with shame, that's what you really want to do.

See it, notice it, understand it, burn it down and decide what you're going to think instead.

My body is beautiful.

My face is beautiful.

I love how I look.

I love how I show up in the world.

I love the version of me that shows up to parties.

I love the version of me that shows up at home.

I trust myself.

I believe in myself.

I like myself.

I have my own back.

That is the version we built.

So my friends, summertime shame, it's specific.

It's different.

It's in the events we go to.

It's in the way our body looks.

It's the way that our lifestyle changes.

But if we can start having some understanding of what's really happening here.

Start to understand that moving through shame instead of around it is the way that we are going to get where we want to go faster, that we want to burn it all down and build it all back up again as many times as needed.

That's how we start having a really kick ass summer because we start believing what we want to believe, thinking what we want to think, creating what we want to create.

This is what I've got for you today.

If you would like help with this.

As always, you can book a Discovery Call, you can go to amandahest ca bookacall.

We can get onto Discovery Call and we can look at what's happening for you.

And if it feels like coaching would be the right fit, we will talk about it.

All right my friends, I hope you have an incredible day and I will talk to you all next time.

Bye for now.

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Until then, take care friend.