When the fear is too locked into the nervous system for heart-opening alone to shift it, the remedy is exposure—being seen in small ways, repeatedly. Joe points to the connection course, group therapy, and 12-step rooms: the more you speak the thing and get seen in it, the less you care what people think. He uses his own example—openly saying “my dad’s an alcoholic” with no shame, where in his twenties he’d have hidden it.
Sharing shame produces one of two liberating discoveries: either you find you’re not alone in it, or you find you invented it alone in your own head. Both are exits.
“One of the best ways to to just address the shame is to share it with people and notice, oh, they’re not ashamed. They don’t think there’s something broken with me.”
The hidden bonus is that this cures loneliness, because the people scared of being seen are usually lonely. Joe’s daughter, lonely in college, was asked where she wasn’t being herself or saying the hard thing; days later she’d had three hard conversations and felt transformed.
“It’s amazing how quickly loneliness can be cured if you actually show up in a way that you’re proud of saying the things that are important to you.”
Related Concepts
- Connection with others dissolves shame
- Loneliness is shame plus anxiety about interaction
- The fear of being seen is the belief that you’re inherently broken
- Shame about anxiety creates more anxiety
- Opening your heart to someone dissolves your concern with their judgment
- Don’t should yourself into being seen