Welcome to Nobody Told Me. I'm Laura Owens. And I'm Jan Black. Have you ever felt shame? Our guest on this episode,

psychotherapist Joseph Bergo, says shame is a family of emotions ranging from mild embarrassment

to deep humiliation and most of us experience varying degrees of shame every day. So how do we

recognize shame, control it, and use it to our

advantage? Joseph is here to help us explore those questions. He's the author of a new book called

Shame, Free Yourself, Find Joy, and Build True Self-Esteem. Joseph, thank you so much for joining us.

Oh, it's a pleasure. Thanks for inviting me.

Why did you decide to write a book focusing on shame?

Well, it has become increasingly the focus of my practice over the last 10 years, and that is because it's increasingly become the focus of my own life, coming to terms with my own denial, I guess,

the denial of my shame that I had to come to terms with, you know, at the end of my marriage

and a big change in my life. And so I don't know, it just informs the work I do. It informs the way

I think about myself. I think shame is everything. How long did it take for you to come

to terms with what you were feeling at the end of your marriage? And how quickly were you able to

identify that those feelings were shame? Well, it took a long time. The whole thing was that my

marriage and the life I was leading, you know, successful,

two-income couple on the west side of L.A., you know, lawyer, psychoanalyst, we looked really good.

We had three kids. That was my defense. That whole life was my effort to make everything look

really good. And when it all fell apart, I kind of had to face what

was underneath it all. And it took me years to work through that, I would say. I mean, I'm better

off for it now, but it wasn't easy. And how did it all fall apart? That's a painful question to

answer, but I'll answer it. We were sort of staying together for the children at that point. We had drifted apart, but we were good as parents together. We loved our children and I fell in love with a man. And that really didn't work anymore. So we separated and that was incredibly difficult and painful and shaming for me. But, you know,

we managed to work it out and I was still there from my kids and we had them half time. So it worked

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