You Can Unshame Yourself with David Bedrick

The Anxious Achiever

Morra Aarons-Mele

Business, Careers, Management, Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.7 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 4 December 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The shame you feel at work isn’t a personal flaw, but a kind of violence acting on your story, your body, and your worth. In this episode, I sit down with psychologist David Bedrick, whose pioneering work on unshaming helps us understand how shame interprets the world for us and how you can reclaim your own internal witness. We talk about why shame is not just a feeling but a lens, how childhood interpretations stick with us for decades, and why so many of us carry invisible pain through our careers, relationships, and leadership roles. David shares how the body speaks when our lives become too heavy to carry, and how that “symptom” is often a messenger of our deeper story, not a problem to be erased. Tune in to start unshaming yourself from the inside out. Check out our sponsors: Northwest Registered Agent - Protect your privacy, build your brand, and get your complete business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes! Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/achieverfree In this Episode, You Will Learn 00:00 What is shame and why is it not a feeling? 04:15 How childhood witnessing becomes your lifelong lens. 08:00 The link between chronic illness, over-responsibility, and hidden shame. 14:00 How a simple temper tantrum can reveal a protest your body is begging you to hear. 19:30 Why pain and exhaustion are often your body’s way of saying “this is too much.” 21:30 How layoffs, business failure, and money anxiety get wrapped in shame at work. 26:00 The one question that begins unshaming others and yourself. 29:00 How to ask about someone’s experience without piling on more shame. 37:00 Why we never tell anyone about our chronic pain. 41:30 How to start walking the “unshaming way” in your own life, relationships, and work. Resources + Links Learn more about David Bedrick HERE Get a copy of my book - The Anxious Achiever Watch the podcast on YouTube Find more resources on our website morraam.com Follow Follow me: on LinkedIn @morraaronsmele + Instagram @morraam Follow David: @david.bedrick

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today, unshaming with the psychologist David Bedrick.
0:09.0	If you've ever had a boss who use shame as a management tool, and many of us had,
0:16.0	you understand the particular kind of violence that shame can inflict.
0:23.0	David Bedrick, who's my guest today, is a psychologist who studies shame and teaches
0:28.5	unshaming.
0:31.0	Shame is a very specific and special kind of violence, he says.
0:35.1	Shame is interpreting the world for you until you learn to start unshaming.
0:42.1	And what's really cool about this is this is an active process that you can undertake.
0:48.4	I'm Maura Aaron's Mealy, and this is the anxious achiever, the show that looks at the intersection of mental health and leadership and work and asks,
0:57.6	how can we do it all better? Today, I dive in to shame and work and how we ourselves can be the agents of unshaming with David Bedrick.
1:12.3	Enjoy.
1:16.3	First, I would love you to define shame.
1:20.3	What is it?
1:21.4	Shame is an internalized witness of our experience.
1:32.7	When we have an experience of feelings or relational dynamics,
1:41.1	we look at it through a lens. And this particular lens has two conclusions. What's wrong with you?
1:46.1	That's how I'm looking at your feelings and your experience or you don't matter. So is the lens of shame saying, I don't matter and there's a lot of things wrong with me?
1:51.8	Is it telling me that? Is it interpreting the world for me? Yes, it's interpreting the world for you.
1:57.4	Some people think that shame is a feeling and that shame produces feelings, but many people
2:05.4	have lots of shame and no obvious feelings at all. For example, you could have enormous amount of body
2:13.0	shame and then do a lot of things to make your body different and think, I just feel good,
2:19.0	even though there is a lens looking at you saying,
	...

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