IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL HEAR ABOUT THINGS LIKE:
- Monica’s triumph over debilitating anxiety and depression, and her journey through the mental health system.
- The common, self-limiting beliefs that induce shame, and how shame is passed down through generations.
- The causes and devastating effects of toxic shame.
- How shame induces grief, and how that grief can be healed.
- The importance of Letting Go of the Past and the Healing Power of Forgiveness.
SOME QUESTIONS IRENE ASKS MONICA:
- What exactly is shame, and how is it a learned behavior?
- Although you were successful in many ways, why did you often feel like an imposter?
- What inspired you to pursue shame as your calling?
- What are effective healing strategies for conquering shame?
- Why is it important to heal shame?
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Don’t Let Shame Eat Away at Your Quality of Life
I had an enlightening interview with Monica Gullotta, who endured tremendously toxic, debilitating shame in her life and has become a counselor helping people overcome shame. She talks about how shame can be like an emotional cancer that is sabotaging your life, the causes of shame, and how shame can induce grief, and she talks about healing strategies for conquering shame. She’s got a wonderful book about why it is so important to heal or shame, and there is so much more to this wonderful interview. Don’t miss it. You are going to learn a lot, so come join us. Heartfelt many blessings.
I hope this finds each of you very well. I’m speaking to you from my studio in West Orange, New Jersey, and I could not be more delighted to have the pleasure of interviewing Monica Gullotta, who was a mental health educator, a mentor, a lecturer, and the author of three eye-opening books that address mental health. Monica’s latest book titled Conquering Shame: Surviving to Thriving is filled with insights into the damaging effects of shame, surviving shame, and healing from shame.
Monica has a master’s degree specializing in counseling. In 1999, she founded and facilitated the upstate group for panic, anxiety, and depression, and in 2008, she received the Volunteer of the Year Award presented by the Mental Health Association of Onondaga County, New York, for her innovative work that gives people suffering from panic, anxiety, and depression, the support and knowledge needed to help themselves.
In 2009, Monica founded the Ray of Hope Wellness Center, where she provides one-on-one mentoring to educate individuals contending with anxiety depression, and other mental health maladies. She developed the developmental and recovery stages of shame to help individuals understand how shame becomes solidified and provide a path for conquering it, and she has also created a number of educational workshops. Monica has appeared on radio and television, and she has lectured and spoken on a wide range of topics pertinent to mental health at numerous venues.
I’m looking forward to talking with Monica who lives in Baldwinsville New York about her journey with toxic shame, the causes and effects of shame, how shame induces grief, the importance of healing, shame, and so much more for what will surely be a very enlightening interview with a special woman who has many healing insights about shame to share with us. Monica, a heartfelt welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me on your show, and thank you so much for that extraordinary introduction. I am so happy to be here with you. It means the world to me and thank you.
Understanding the Core Concept of Shame
When I was preparing your interview, I had to be very honest with our readers, and they know I had a very painful childhood of my own, and I have dealt with a lot of shame on my own. I have been in therapy for it and all, but working on your interview was another healing moment for me because I got to be even more in touch with what had happened that I have been working on, and dropping the backpack of suffering all my life, but it was like, “She’s identifying this that I have done, I have dealt with, and all of that.” For our readers, I was abandoned by my family for 23 years, which is a tremendous cause of shame and I had a very dysfunctional childhood. Before we get into your story, can you educate us all, on what exactly is shame and how is it a learned behavior?
Shame is an emotion, and because it’s so insidious, it can be misconstrued for something else, but it is an emotion. It is not a mental illness. How shame takes shape and holds is through the environment. The environment that I was living in, unfortunately, was highly dysfunctional and toxic. I had two parents who were both, quite frankly, mentally ill, and they were ill-equipped to deal with their shame and their issues because they, in essence, were unhealed themselves.
Shame is a learned behavior. Share on X
What they did, in fact, was they couldn’t tolerate their shame. They in essence, projected it upon their children, and so in essence, that’s exactly what happened to me, and primarily with my mother, because of her lack of ego strength and her narcissism. She’s like, “I can’t deal with this, so let’s pawn it off on our children and pawn it off on Monica.” In essence, that’s how my shame began to cultivate itself.
I had a similar story. It sounds to me like when I know that you talk about the causes of shame being poverty, mental illness, secrets, bullying, abuse, sexuality, religion, and abandonment, they all bring about shame. I’m wondering, Monica, is it true, that if they are mentally ill or whatever is going on, it’s very easy to blame the child for whatever their things are? Now all of a sudden you are carrying responsibility for things that are not, that did not even originate from you.
Not only that, because you have to think in terms of a child and their lack of maturity. What they don’t want to do is they don’t want to lose their parents. In essence, as a defense mechanism, they are going to take on that shame, because guess what? “I don’t want to lose mom and dad.” Shame is extremely insidious, how it takes shape, how it takes hold, how it can start cultivating, and usually all the family members involved in a dysfunctional family unit, are not even cognizant of the shame that themselves in essence what they are doing with their children unknowingly on an unconscious level.
The sad reality is many professionals are living with shame and are not even cognizant of it. Share on X
Developing a Sense of Being an Imposter
I identified it when I was reading your book and getting ready for the interview, I felt like this too. You say that inwardly you feel like an imposter when you are when you are a child who has had shame foisted upon them. Can you talk about that also?
I’m going about my life, like you said, I have a master’s degree. I’m doing interviews, I’m doing radio television, getting awards from my work, but so interestingly enough, whenever the shame would surface, it would be in that professional arena. I am facilitating my support groups, and I will never forget, that I was very versed and I could do these lesson plans. I knew them like the back of my hand. It was like, reciting whatever.
As I’m up there and I’m standing in front of the group, all of a sudden the self-deprecating thoughts are coming, ‘“You are a phony, you are an imposter. Who do you think you are? You don’t know what the hell you are talking about. Why don’t you sit down?” That is what imposter syndrome feels like, but then to add insult to injury, I’m experiencing what is referred to as cognitive dissonance. There’s this disconnect. I’m this professional, I’m doing all of these things, but I feel like I am this wretched, pathetic, phony who doesn’t know what she’s talking about, and that is what imposter syndrome feels like. It’s horrific.
The Journey of Overcoming Toxic Shame
It’s awful. Here you can have this successful event and still go back to your hotel room or whatever, and feel lousy about yourself because you can’t even give yourself credit for what you are doing. You are talking about, you are even a professional and you are making these presentations and getting these feelings. What was your journey in healing this toxic shame that was hidden within you for decades? What was that like because you had to first come to terms with your shame?
It started back in 2020 during the throes of COVID. I’m doing an interview and I used the wrong word, and at that moment, the shame beast that I was carrying around for decades and decades became triggered. At this point, I’m spiraling downward and I need help. I decide, “I’m going to get back into therapy and I’m going to start working with somebody.”
Lo and behold, during a session, we are talking, and Irene, I kid you not, I’m feeling so wretched and unworthy that I cannot even look at him in the face, and he says to me, “Excuse me, you have toxic shame and at that point, I was not even, I kid you not, I was not even aware of shame, what it was, and that I had it. Given the fact that it is, such an insidious emotion and it can hijack a human being in any waking moment, I decided to write a book about it, and again, I want to put a spotlight on shame here and now so your readers can understand how debilitating it is to navigate through those steps and to conquer it the way I have. That’s when, in essence, it reared its ugly head for me.
That’s how you decide to pursue shame as you are calling through healing it.
What happens is, as a result of the book, all of a sudden it starts catching on like wildfire. I started doing lectures and presentations and people are coming out of the woodwork, so this conversation of shame needs to be out there. It needs to be normalized, it needs to be discussed. The sad reality is like myself and how many other professionals are out there, or paraprofessionals, they are living with shame and they are not even cognizant of it, and it’s killing them like it was killing me.
I can identify with my personal story also and you went through the mental health system with your shame.
This is so interesting as I was working with a therapist for a number of years, she had no idea what was going on with me. It was funny because I could be in a session and I would be cowering and in a very shameful position, and she was not even cognizant of it. It wasn’t until 2020 when I was working with my therapist that it came out, it surfaced. Nobody had a clue. That’s how good I was. Perhaps it may be even unknowingly trying to hide it myself.
We have a mask. I can remember someone saying to me once, “You could be very aloof.” I’m not like that at all anymore, but that was the way I protected myself, and that was how I kept the mask in place. You’ve got a great shame rock story that I love because I like it when I tell people to drop their backpacks to heal and drop their backpacks. Your shame rock story is very similar to that. Could you share that with everyone?
This is so hilarious and this is so true. I was at the point in my life where the shame and the magnitude of the shame that I was living was so debilitating that I wanted to feel it. I wanted to feel it physically, and I wanted to experience it metaphorically. One day I have this a-ha moment, I kid you not. I go to my garden, I start digging. I’m not kidding. I get my shovel and I’m digging and I’m digging, and I’m looking for the biggest rock that I could find, and lo and behold, I found that rock. I bring it inside my house, I wash it, I shine it, I paint it, and on the top of that rock, I paint shame. Now it gets even better. I decided for the next two weeks, I am going to take that shame rock with me everywhere I go.
Did you slip it in your purse?
I take it to the grocery store, bank, library, and post office. I take it to the post office, but here’s the thing, because the shame rock is so big, it’s not fitting in every purse that I’m using each day because I’m switching my purses off. One day I go to the grocery store and my shame rock will not fit in my purse. I kid you not. I said, “Screw it. I’m going to put it in my grocery cart.” I’m putting all of my groceries in, and then it gets time to go to the register, and I put all my items on the counter. What should I do? I put my shame rock on the counter and it goes to the cashier. At which point, this is so hilarious, she looks at the shame rock, and she’s like, “What is this?”
At that,t she’s thinking, “We have got a live one on aisle three.” To make a long story short, that was the most profound, helpful exercise for me because it allowed me to understand how heavy the shame was that I was carrying, but here’s the better part. After that, I started giving my shame rock to other clients so they could use it and do the same exercise, and it helped them not only mitigate the effects of shame but to understand it and work through it and process it. That’s my shame rock.
I want to ask you about the seven stages of shame and you’ve also got these four core elements of shame. I want to make a comment to everyone reading. Let’s see if Monica agrees with me. I would say one of the hardest parts about healing your shame is to accept that your parents had so much pain and your parents weren’t perfect and that they had their history, and now when you are trying to heal it, you are consciously separating from their story, which is a big part of it. Would you agree?
This is so profound. After I finished writing my book, I realized that the shame that was projected upon me was never mine, and in a sense, it was their unhealed shame from generation to generation. Shame is a generational thing. If it’s never resolved, it continues to be cultivated and metastasized. Monica and I believe it was this ongoing issue of cancer within the family, generationally speaking. I wanted to put an end to it, and so here I am.
The Seven Stages of Shame
People heal, which is what we are talking about. Let’s say someone goes to you to heal, they are identifying that they have inherited the shame. A lot of times someone has to change the legacy of the family. When you heal, you get to change that, and now you are not passing that on to yours. Monica, educate us, please. What are the seven stages of shame that you have developed?
If I can share this story with you very quickly, how the seven stages came up. One morning I was working out on my StairMaster level sixteen, and I believe the endorphins were kicking, and lo and behold, the stages came, and I had to get off my StairMaster and I had to write them down. There wasn’t the meat that went with them, the exact stages. Stage one is victimization. At this particular stage, the child or the individual is completely oblivious to the fact that they are being victimized. It comes in the way of male treatment. It would include, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, spiritual abuse, and sexual abuse, and again, the child or the individual is completely unaware. They are unconscious.
When it happened to me, my mother would say things to me like, “You don’t know how to dance or you are going to end up in a mental institution like your father.” It is a very insidious thing, and again, as a child, you are oblivious to what’s taking place. That is stage number one. Stage number two is saturation at this particular stage, with the ongoing shape-based victimization, it now becomes chronic. There’s a chronicity to it, and so what happens at this stage is that the child or individual starts to believe these falsehoods about themselves.
For instance, I am unworthy, I am defective, I am unlovable. It is at this particular stage where the shame identity starts to become more solidified and it infiltrates the individual’s mind. Stage three is indoctrination after ongoing shame-based victimization and shamed base saturation, the individual is now indoctrinating. Guess what? They believe it. “Yes, I’m defective. I am unworthy. I’m unlovable.”
At this point, what they do is disown the authentic self, and this is where the imposter or the false self comes into emergence.
The false self wears many different masks, and that would include overachiever, fixer, and codependent, again, they are completely oblivious of this, but they are doing it in essence as a mechanism to receive love, to be loved, and to be validated. Stage four is immobilization. At this particular stage, the authentic self is completely immobilized, repressed, and blocked, and the individual is now operating out of maladaptive coping mechanisms. That would be your addiction, that would be your anxiety, that would be your depression.
At this particular stage, the shame identity is completely solidified. It is internalized, it is habituated. It becomes an inherent part of the individual’s identity. It is also at this stage that the individual will experience burnout, breakdowns, and suicidal ideation. This particular stage is very debilitating and very devastating. AStagefive is restoration. At this particular stage, the individual is returning to the authentic self. The individual becomes more cognizant.
Is that upon healing?
Yes. The individual at this stage is becoming more cognizant of the presence of shame. They are going to start talking about it, maybe about their issues in AA or with a therapist. This stage is very important because they can have a positive result or a negative result. If they don’t come to terms with their shame and become aware of it, they can be caught up in a chronic shame, a negative shame feedback loop where they never get out of it. They keep spinning their wheels round and round.
If people do not come to terms with their shame and become aware of it, they can get caught up in a chronic shame feedback loop where they never get out of. Share on X
They are probably passing that on.
For individuals who might die, sadly, of alcoholism or suicide, what might be driving a lot of those behaviors, unbeknownst to them is a shame. This is a perfect example of them getting caught up in that restoration stage. Stage six is transformation. At this particular stage, a metamorph or a dramatic change is taking place, and what happens in the stage is the individual is not only cognizant of the presence of shame, but they are able to utilize tools and techniques to mitigate the shame, to neutralize it and to keep it at bay.
They are also able not to get caught up in that shame vortex from the past. They are also able to become that wonderful healing, that parent that wonderful parent drawing from the four healing components. They are also able to become their therapist in essence. Stage six is more about healing and coming to terms with and taking charge of it.
Stage seven is my favorite stage of all, and that’s liberation at this particular stage, the individual is no longer encumbered by a push-pull mentality, shame, or the shame circuit. They are able to fully embrace their authentic self once again. They are able to become the best version of themselves. They are able to reconstruct that dysfunctional narrative from the past. They are able to become all that they are meant to be, and they are liberated and they no longer feel bogged down or anchored by that horrific presence of shame, and that is where I am at. I am there finally.
Navigating Challenges of Healing Within Family Dynamics
Now that you’ve done so much healing and now that you’ve transformed, how does that change your relationship with your family of origin who are not changing? I’m going to say one thing about me. When my mother reconnected with me after 23 years of not speaking to me, and I went through therapy I realized she was a battered woman and all that jazz.
As I had so much therapy, I said to her, “I have a sliver of a window open for you, but our relationship has to change. I have been in therapy. I have done this.” My mother, who my father had his first stroke and my father was losing his power over her, was able to say to me, what do I have to do? I got my mother into therapy and all kinds of healing took place, but how do you handle it when your parents say, “I don’t care about that. I’m not changing. I’m not doing any of this.” How does a person you are changing, so now a different person is coming back into the family system? Do you help people to navigate that or do they detach? How does that work?
That’s where one of the four core healing components comes into play, and that’s acceptance. I have to realize that unfortunately, there are many of my family members who have chosen to stay in a place of resistance denial, and shame, and I have to accept that. I also have to accept the fact perhaps that they don’t have that ego strength to work through it.
It’s about accepting the fact that they want to go through this. They want to live in this constant place of resistance and denial, and that’s their prerogative and that’s their light, but despite it, I can still love them. I can love them from a distance. However, with individuals within the family dynamic that are so unhealed, unhealthy, and well, I have to create boundaries in essence to protect me. The toxic shame or the shame that they have not dealt with process resolve. I can’t allow them to keep projecting it upon me.
Going back to the other core healing component. I don’t know who said it, I think she was a Holocaust survivor. Corrie Ten Boom. She said, “To forgive is to set the prisoner free, and to know that prisoner, in essence, is you.” I have to forgive them for not wanting to look at what they don’t want to resolve and accept the fact that they want to live with toxic shame or toxic dysfunction. That’s their prerogative.
There are four core elements. One is acceptance and one is forgiveness, and what are the other two?
Compassion and self-love, and are paramount, and let me explain why. When I’m working with clients, I remind them that although shame can happen in the, then in there, it can be reactivated in the here and the now. What an individual doesn’t want to do when their shame has become triggered or reactivated, is you don’t want to move into those self-deprecating behaviors.
What it does in essence is it cultivates more shame and it reinforces those pathways in the brain, and that’s exactly what you don’t want to do. You always want to draw from acceptance, compassion, forgiveness, and self-love, because in doing so, you are not only healing the shame, but you are unlearning the shame, and you are not reinforcing those pathways within the brain.
In my mind, you are becoming conscious. When you had the shame, you were unconscious. Unconscious. You had all this perpetrated on you. You didn’t know what you were doing. Now you are healing and you are becoming aware, and now you are consciously employing ways to offset what happened. Have I got that right?
Yes.
How Shame Is Reconciled by Doing Grief Work
Tell me this because we talk about grief on this show. How can shame induce grief and how is that reconciled by doing grief work?
First and foremost, shame acts as a barrier and prevents healthy grieving from taking place. In essence, the individual doesn’t feel as though they have the right to even grieve. Let me explain. Let’s say an individual or a family member died from an atypical situation, may it be a suicide or an overdose. Let’s say they start going to support groups for grief. What happens is, “It’s their time to speak.” All of a sudden because they feel so ashamed or embarrassed, they don’t want to talk.
What happens is they are like, “I’m not going to go back to that group. I’m not going to speak anymore.” What’s happening is they are home and it’s what it’s cultivating, it’s causing more isolation. In essence, they are not grieving. You can see that shame is so insidious. It prevents you from being able to process that grief that so desperately needs to be processed. It impedes and it thwarts the whole grieving process altogether.
Shame is insidious. It prevents you from being able to process grief that so desperately needs to be processed. Share on X
If a person is grieving it’s a maladaptive coping mechanism.
It is.
If they are grieving a lot of people go for grief counseling or guidance. I would imagine shame comes up as a part of that sometimes.
Let me say this to you right here and now. How many people who read your show have so much shame that they never come on your show.?Quite frankly, I don’t even know if I would be here myself if I didn’t guess what process and work through my grief. You look at shame and grief, they can feed off one another, but it’s so important to understand the magnitude of shame and how it can impede the whole grieving process, which is tragic.
Do you help people who are grieving? Do you, in your therapy practice, get people who are grieving and identify that there’s an element there that maybe they are experiencing their grief instead of on a scale of 1 to 10, they got their grief going to a twenty? Maybe there’s something else fueling it to get people like that.
Yes. Many times, especially when you are working with LGBTQ clients or individuals who had a family member that has had a death, and they are experiencing that grief again, they don’t even understand it. They don’t even understand at times what the grief is that they are feeling. A lot of them experience what’s referred to as disenfranchised grief. It’s atypical from, “My grandpa passed away,” or, “No. My family member, my loved one committed suicide.” In that disenfranchised grief, there is a horrific shame.
Addressing Shame as Cornerstone of Personal Healing
In a way, if they address that, they are dropping that rock. They are grieving. They have had a loss. They don’t even realize there’s that extra rock that they are carrying with it. Your therapist inspires you to write your book Conquering Shame: Surviving to Thriving, which is wonderful. Can you tell us about how you were inspired by that? You speak also to the concept of becoming your therapist while you are dealing with shame. Talk to us about your book and about those concepts.
I’m working with my therapist and I’m a writer. I love to write. One day I was so enthusiastic and I said, “I have got some great news to share with you. I’m writing a book on trauma.” His face drops, and he is like, “No. You want to write on shame.” “Shame?” I said, “I know nothing about shame. I can’t write this book on shame.”
Lo and behold, not only do I write this book on shame, but I also, develop the developmental and recovery stages of shame, and I can’t begin to tell you writing this book what it has done for me. How cathartic I am healed from my shame? Granted, it can come up here and there, but it’s because of this book. Not only that, this book is helping thousands and thousands of people. I had one review that said, “This book needs to be put at every rehabilitation center in America because it is so instrumental in recovery for helping individuals.”
I can relate to that, and make having that a part of your healing. It’s wonderful because you also talk about the cornerstones of recovery and there are so many insights in your book about shame. That’s great. Could you speak to this in your book, the importance of letting go of the past, and the healing power of forgiveness? A lot of times people think forgiveness is letting the person off the hook, but it’s not, and letting go of the past means you are also that it never happened and you are forgiving them. Can you explain those concepts to everyone who is part of releasing that rock?
I have what I refer to as Monica-isms. One of my favorite Monica-isms is, “Look not in the past or the past will never come back.” When I reflect on my life and everything that happened, I can recognize that there were very sick, dysfunctional parents who were ill-equipped to deal with life and their issues. Letting that go and being freed up of that. I’m not bogged down. I’m not anchored in all of that dysfunctional and all of that toxic shame, and it’s just like I said, it’s so liberating and I don’t want to be in that place anymore. Forgiveness is paramount and it’s key. I hope I answered your question.
I do. It’s like looking at the origins of your shame or other origins of what happened to you and saying, “Yes, that existed,” but by holding onto all of that, now that I’m healing, I am not letting myself be free. All of that is letting go of it and it doesn’t mean it didn’t exist, doesn’t mean you don’t protect yourself. It doesn’t live in you to trip you up all over the place in your life. Now that everyone knows how special this is and what you are doing to help people who have had these problems in their lives, there are so many of us. Tell us about your one-on-one mentoring sessions, your lectures, your workshops, and anything else you’d like to share with our audience.
I provide one-on-one mentoring sessions, and I draw from a psychoeducational paradigm to help enhance overall functionality and overall quality of life for clients. When I’m working with clients, I teach them about agency boundaries, codependency, dysregulation, and emotional regulation. I teach them about triggers, trauma responses, fear responses, stress responses, self-limiting beliefs, how to navigate through the developmental and recovery stages of shame, normalizing, anxiety and depression, and rethinking anxiety and depression. There are a plethora of things that I teach them. In addition to that, I also provide psychoeducational workshops focusing on topics pertinent to mental health, I have also taken my books, Rethinking Anxiety and Depression: Two Important Messengers and Conquering Shame: Surviving to Thriving, and I have turned those into workshops as well.
That’s so helpful for people. Do you have a special offer for our audience?
I am going to be offering 10% off of my newest book, Conquering Shame: Surviving to Thriving. Also if you go to my website, I’m presenting a lecture on shame and that’s free, and that’s very informative and it’s been very helpful for many viewers that have watched that particular video that I have made.
How Shame Becomes Emotional Cancer
Conquering Shame: Surviving to Thriving
I’m sure that people read what you said and it’s like, “Lights going off. That happened to me. That’s what that was all about.” Let’s talk about the importance of healing shame and how if unhealed, it metastasizes, you call it an emotional cancer that eats away at the person’s quality of life. Can you speak to that, Monica? Why should all these people reading come to face the fact that unfortunately, wounded people gave them wounding messages?
It’s so important to heal sham because if you give shame an inch, it’ll take a mile. What happens is it becomes implanted, it becomes internalized, it becomes an inherent part of the individual’s identity, and it literally can self-sabotage and destroy your entire life, and you are not even aware of it. That is exactly what happened to me. Hence it kept metastasizing.
I don’t know how many times I had opportunities and I sabotaged because it’s like, “Who’s going to want to listen to me?” I didn’t realize that shame and essence were always at the base of what I was doing and driving my behavior. This speaks to so many people who are grappling with addiction, or individuals that have some addiction or they have some problems that they can’t seem to conquer. They are not cognizant of it.
It is so important to understand how shame can take shape, how it can take hold, take charge of it, and control it. That is what my book offers. In my book, I provide a questionnaire. Another thing is most people think, “I have shame.” No. There are various levels of shame. There’s low, moderate, severe, and toxic, and I so happen to win the trifecta and come down with toxic shame.
We are looking at someone who has let go of all of that and look at how free you are now, and here you are.
Liberation is wonderful
Achieving Joy from Healing Yourself and Others
You are talking to someone, I am experiencing the same thing. We are sisters in that. Could you please explain to everyone how joy can come from healing yourself and healing others, which here we are?
Finding the things in life that bring you joy, and taking those things and incorporating them and making them into somewhat of a practice and teaching other people how to do that as well, like my clients and other people that I come into contact with. Shame comes from what we are doing here, healing, and normalizing our experiences but joy comes, ultimately from helping others, and that’s what I love to do.
You’ve taken your pain. You’ve dropped it, but now you are using it as a guidepost for others. That’s beautiful, liberating, and freeing. I’m doing the same thing through this show in a lot of ways. It’s a beautiful thing and we wish it for everyone reading who is struggling with your issues now that we are helping you to identify them.
I want to use the word rewarding. It’s rewarding to help people to see other people also get free from their shackles of what’s been pulling them down. I want to share this important quote because your book is so compelling. It’s a compelling quote from Conquering Shame: Surviving to Thriving,
and I want to share this with our audience because I’d love how Monica put this.
This is part of the hero’s journey to heal yourself and experience a peace you’ve never known to return home to your authentic self and to be set free. When I reflect on my journey, I realize I was never all of those diagnoses assigned to me, but rather a child who was highly abused and traumatized. All of the symptoms I brought forth in therapy were part of my collective pain, and I was merely looking for a name for it. At the core of all of my symptoms and problems was toxic shame. When you reflect on your journey, can you say the same?
Monica, I am personally so very happy for you, that you were able to heal from your traumatic debilitating shame. Thank you for your important work, educating and enlightening people about the importance of identifying toxic shame and healing from it. I thank you from my heart for this insightful, enlightening interview that is surely opening many eyes and will help people to heal.
Thank you so very much for having me on your show. I want to say this to you. You are an extraordinary human being. You are so honest and unpretentious. You are so easy to talk to, and talking about shame is a very difficult thing to do. You become a wonderful vessel in healing so many people’s lives and thank you. I want to let you know that this particular interview has been so redeeming to me because the last time I did an interview, you utilized the wrong word and it tripped me up. In essence, this wonderful interview has been so liberating for me, and it’s because of you and the work that you do, that you continue to heal so many millions of people out there. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for you being you, and for the extraordinary work that you do. Thank you so much.
Blessings. Thank you so much, Monica. As I like to say, to be continued and I want to thank you for my heart. Many blessings to everyone and we will say a do for now, there’ll be more to come. Thanks so much, Monica.
You’re welcome. Thank you.
Guest Links:
- Monica Gullotta
- Conquering Shame: Surviving to Thriving
- Rethinking Anxiety and Depression: Two Important Messengers
- Connect with Monica Gullota on Instagram
- Connect with Monica Gullota on Facebook
About Monica Gullotta
Monica Gullotta is a mental health educator, mentor, lecturer, and author. In 1999, she founded and facilitated the Upstate Group for Panic, Anxiety and Depression, where she provided educational group meetings for 16 consecutive years. In 2008, Monica received an award presented by the Mental Health Association of Onondaga County, and was honored for “innovative work, that gives people suffering from panic, anxiety and depression the support and knowledge needed to help themselves.” In 2009, she founded the Ray of Hope Wellness Center, where she provided one-on-one mentoring to educate individuals contending with anxiety and depression and other mental health maladies. She has written a number of educational workshops, has appeared on radio and television, and has lectured and spoken on a wide range of topics pertinent to mental health at numerous venues. Monica has authored three books, Therapy Land, Rethinking Anxiety and Depression: Two Important Messengers, and Conquering Shame: Surviving to Thriving. In addition, Monica has developed a number of techniques to help clients mitigate symptoms of anxiety, depression, shame, and trauma. Most recently, she developed the Developmental and Recovery Stages of Shame to help individuals understand how shame becomes solidified, and provide a path for conquering it. Monica has a master’s degree with a specialty in counseling and has been in private practice since 2009.
