The Emotion That Stopped Me Living | What’s Yours?
What has actually been stopping you asking for help? For me it was shame, and I had no idea until somebody put the word to it. The truth annoys you first, then frees you.
What has actually been stopping you asking for help? For me it was shame, and I had no idea until somebody put the word to it. The truth annoys you first, then frees you.
I never knew how to ask, or rather I knew how and could not stand doing it. Somebody said something that made me want to argue, so I sat with it instead. I read two of Brene Brown's books on shame. I did not know I was about to have the challenge of my life the moment I dived into that pool. Then I asked for help with the wheelchair, and so many of you gave.
One thing to try: Ask for one thing this week that you would normally go without.
In this episode
(0:05) A realisation that gave me more freedom than anything
(2:40) Never knowing how to ask for help, or hating it
(4:55) Agitated, thinking you are so wrong, then sitting with it
(7:39) Not knowing what the moment I dived in would cost
(9:31) The truth will annoy you first and then free you
(11:40) Two books on shame, and not seeing it in myself
(14:14) Asking for the wheelchair, and what happened next
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Thank you for listening.
Steven
The story behind this one
This is the episode where I worked it out, recorded within days of realising it. Everything I have said about shame since comes from this afternoon.
An ex asked if she could share an observation. She said she thought I was bitter about my accident.
That is not the right word and I do not recognise it. What I do recognise is what it did to me. It annoyed me enormously, and when something grinds you like that, somebody is onto something. They may be pointing at the wrong thing. They are pointing in the right direction.
So I sat with it. And what was underneath it was shame.
Here is why. I stood on that wall and I chose to dive in. I had done it many times, I did it the night before, there was nothing unusual about that night. But it was my choice, and I have no one to blame and nobody to send a bill to.
So every single time I need help, and I need help with about ninety per cent of my life, some part of me says I have no right to ask.
That is where my stubbornness came from. Not grit, not courage. Shame.
I have read two of Brene Brown's books on shame. I could see it in other people. I never once saw it in myself.
What it taught me
The truth will first annoy you, and then it will free you.
I asked Doshin about it and he moved it about six inches, which was all it needed. It is not the diving that people admire. It is what you did afterwards. What counts is the response.
I did not know I was walking into the fight of my life when I hit that water. I did not know anything except that the deep end was in front of me.
The way I picture it now is the planet nobody can see. No light comes off it, so it is invisible, and they know it is there because of the pull it puts on everything else. That is what shame had been doing to me for thirty years.
And here is what happened when I finally asked. I put up a page for a new wheelchair and people gave. Six and a half thousand pounds so far. When one couple put in a thousand in the first two days I genuinely wanted to give it back, because I did not think I could live with having it.
That was not guilt. I had misfiled it as guilt for decades.
Questions people ask
How do I find mine?
Ask somebody who knows you what they think is holding you back, and then shut up and listen. You will want to argue. The bit that makes you want to argue is the bit worth keeping.
Is shame the same as guilt?
No, and mine wore guilt as a disguise for years. Guilt is about something you did. Shame is about what you are, which is why it is so quiet and so heavy.
Why does naming it help?
Because you cannot work on what you cannot see. Nothing about my situation changed that afternoon. What changed is that the thing pulling on everything finally had a name and a shape.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
shame · vulnerability · healing · personal-story
Read the transcript
I want to share something with you that I come to the realization
the other day and it's feel like.
I feel like it's given me more freedom than anything that I've ever
realized.
It's made me feel more whole than I've ever realized.
And one of the things that I talk about becoming whole is including
feelings, including as much as you possibly can in your life.
It's not getting rid of the feelings you don't like and only
choosing the feelings that you do like.
I never realized I had this feeling.
I never realized I had this emotion.
I never realized how much this one particular emotion controls me
completely.
And it has done for nearly 30 years.
And for someone to point out this to me, although they didn't
point to it precisely, but what they pointed to enabled me to
find it myself and see it.
And I was in a conversation with an ex and they said, do you
mind if I say this to you?
An observation that I've noticed with you.
And they said to me, I think you're quite bitter about your accident.
And although I don't recognize the word bitter, I really don't.
It annoyed me.
I.
And when something annoys me, when something really grinds you,
when someone says something and you're bothered by it, they're
onto something.
And you may not like it, but they're onto something.
And I sat there and I thought about it and I let them talk and
I listened.
And before I tell you about this emotion that I've realized now
that quite possibly has controlled most of my life and held
me back from having any kind of freedom and it explains so much
in my life, so many of my decisions, so many of my fears, and
I had no idea it even existed over the past few weeks or.
One thing I've always found difficult in my life is to ask for
help.
I just did not know how to ask for help or I knew how to ask.
I didn't like doing it.
I wanted to be independent.
You know, I'm paralysed just below the neck.
My arms have limited movement and my hands are completely paralyzed.
I broke my neck when I was 18.
For the people that are not regular listeners to my podcast or
my YouTube videos, I dived into a swim pool and I was instantly
severely paralyzed.
I have 24 hour care.
I have all kinds of things having that I have to have done for
me.
I'd have my food cut up.
I have the gift that I can eat it myself.
Not I need someone to eat it for me, but.
But I can put it on a fork and put it in my mouth.
So that's quite a gift.
And I. I need to be showered, and I cannot have go toilet in private.
So everything, nearly 90% of my life, I have to ask someone for
help with.
And I don't like doing it.
I really don't like doing it.
And I feel guilty doing it a lot of the time.
I feel guilty at reaching out and asking.
And the guilt was quite easy to see.
You know, I kind of seen that for a long time.
But then my wheelchairs broke and I had to reach out with a GoFundMe
page.
And I was trying to.
Everything in my life I tried to give back.
If someone gives me something, I'm like, what can I do for you?
And I'm always trying to work out what I can give to people, how
I can help you and others before I ask for anything in return.
And that's always been my default thing.
I've always felt in debt with everything anybody's ever done for
me.
And people enjoy helping me.
People enjoy doing things for me.
So I found it really quite interesting when someone said to
me.
When an ex looked up and said to me, I think you're bitter.
I took a deep breath, and that really, like, it pissed me off.
I was agitated.
I was sitting there and I was like, you're so freaking wrong here.
But I thought about it and I listened, and I let it sit with me.
And I'm not bitter.
She was pointing in the right direction, but she was pointing to
the wrong thing.
It's shame.
It's shame.
Shame is an emotion I never thought I had, never thought it was
part of my life.
And I'll tell you why I know it's shame.
I dived into the swimming pool that night.
I made the choice on the wall to dive in.
Whether I was showing off, I didn't know I was going to end up
paralyzed.
But I dived in and I broke my neck.
I ended up paralyzed.
I created this life, this struggle.
And because of my foolish action at the age of 18, now I need
to ask people for help.
All my life, and I feel ashamed asking for help.
I feel ashamed because they didn't do it to me.
I've got no one to blame.
I've got no one to write.
Well, it's your fault.
You're the one that can pay.
You're the one that can pay for my new wheelchair and things
like that.
You're the one that needs to help me out because you did this
to me.
I don't have that luxury.
I don't have that I could blame people, but it would be unjust
and it would not be right.
So there it is.
For nearly 30 years.
I broke my neck in 1991.
For nearly 30 years.
Shame is the thing that, or certainly a large part of the shadow
I couldn't see this monster, this whatever you want to call it,
this.
There's something that was pulling on me, stopping me, pulling
me back, asking for help.
And people come to me and they say, well, you're courageous, you're
amazing, you do so well.
You're such an inspiration.
And in the back of my mind, although I'd never thought about
it in this way, in the back of my mind I thought, well, if I chose
that night to dive in, then perhaps you're right.
But I didn't know I was going to have the challenge of my life.
The moment I dived into that pool.
I didn't know I was going to paralyze myself.
I didn't know it was dangerous.
I did it many times.
I did it the night before.
It was the deep end.
There was nothing extraordinary that night that made
me think that I was going to change my life in a moment, forever.
That night I had the moment I hit the bottom of the pool.
I was in the biggest fight of my life.
And every single day that's affected me, I would never walk.
The interesting thing is.
Well, you may find it interesting, I don't know, but when
you damage your spinal cord, you either damage it completely or
incomplete.
And incomplete means some information may still get through.
I damaged my spinal cord.
Complete.
The bone went through the spinal cord, C5.
Now that's it.
My brain's never going to communicate my body again.
And because of that, I have to rely on people's help.
And I want to be independent.
I want to do everything myself.
And I'm stubborn.
I'm stubborn as hell.
And now I realize where that stubbornness come from.
It doesn't come from grit and persistence and some kind of heroic
courage.
It comes from a place of shame.
And shame because I was the one that broke my neck.
And I'm the one that has to rely on other people.
So other people have to help me in life.
But that's okay, because here's the thing.
They say the truth will first piss you off and then it'll free
you.
And since I found that out, I spoke to Doshin.
You know, a Roshi that has helped me in so many ways, also triggers
and pisses me off in so many ways.
But he Helped me see things in different ways.
And I spoke to him about this the other night, and he made me say,
well, it's not the courage of you diving in the pool.
It's what you've done with it that counts.
That's why people admire you.
That's why people admire.
It's your actions that you do with whatever happened to you.
It's the way you respond.
And isn't that life?
Life is about the way you respond, not what you actually do.
So I've allowed the action I did.
I allow that mistake of a teenager that could happen to any
teenagers, a mistake of one night.
I've allowed it to hold me back.
I come across other disabled people and I avoid them.
Not because I've clearly got a thing about disabled people, but
because I put myself here, they probably didn't.
And that shame that I created this in my life has had such a lasting
impact on me.
But realizing that it's just baby, so feel so much more freer
since then.
It's like, wow.
Wow.
That's what it is.
It's like having a pain in your side and suddenly finding out
what's causing it.
And now you can work on fixing it.
You know, I don't know if that's the best analogy, but in order
to work on anything, in order to grow anything up, in order to
bring something to a place where you could do something with
it, you have to bring it into awareness.
And I had no idea if anybody said to me, do you know what?
I reckon you suffer from shame.
I've read two books of Brenny Brown about shame.
She is the shame master, you know, she's the Zen shame master.
And when I read those books, I could see shame in other people,
but I'd never seen it myself.
Never thought so it's like.
And I love my life, don't get me wrong.
You know, I've just recorded a podcast of how much I love my life,
which I'm going to put this podcast out first, and there's a
reason for.
I'm going to do it that way around.
Yeah.
So much of my life is pulled down by this shame.
Shame is one of the lowest emotions, but it's one of the most
subtle, unseen, unfelt.
But it's one that affects so much of your life.
It's so subtle, or certainly was in my case.
It almost disguised itself as guilt.
I could see that, but I denied that, just brushed that aside because
it wasn't really that.
It's really raining outside.
I hope you can still Hear me.
Yeah, it's just, oh, I feel so free.
I feel free of just talking about it.
So thank you for listening to this podcast, you know, but look
at what's holding you back in life, you know, a shadow to me or
something in this way to me is like, at the moment they reckon There's
a 10th planet and it's huge, but no light shines from it, so they
cannot see it, but they know it's there because they can see the
pull on the other planets.
So they can see the effect of it then.
The effect of shame in my life has been not reaching out, not looking
up and going, hey, can you help me with a wheelchair?
Can you help me with this?
And every time I ask for help, I really battle with it and I feel
my voice break when I do it.
I feel my voice like hesitant.
Can you do that for me, please?
Can you do.
Is it possible you could do that?
It's almost like I haven't got the.
I haven't got.
I don't feel like I've got the right to ask.
And I've reached out now and I've asked my wheelchair and so many
of you have donated £6,500 right now I've got £900 myself, I've
got 3,000 left to go.
And the feeling is just amazing for people to reach out and
help me.
This happened a couple of times before where a group reached
out to me and helped me with an air conditioner and other people
individually have helped out, said, hey, is there anything I can
do to help you?
And I've been like, no, no, no, no.
And even when I asked for the money for this wheelchair, this custom
built wheelchair, that's going to just bring back my independence.
That's just so incredibly amazing.
But even when I ask for that, I almost want to give the money back.
There was a couple that put a thousand pound in the first couple
of days and I was like, wow, can I just give you the money back?
I. I wasn't sure I could live with the guilt of having it.
And I now know it wasn't guilt, it was the shame that I created
by accident.
Of course these people want to help me and I'm not going to get
the money back.
So if you're thinking you're going to get your money back, you're
not.
I'm going to get my wheelchair.
I'll put a link to the GoFundMe.
Because if I do earn enough money, earn enough money, let's see
again.
Earning, earning.
If you do donate enough money, I'll then above the wheelchair.
I'll then get my book published.
Gift of no choice.
And the book's now the right time.
Because recognizing this and going back to the planet analogy,
this planet is pulling on the other planets and they can see the
effect, but they cannot see the planet.
Here's the thing, we gotta shine a light on our emotions.
Not to disclude them, not to push them away.
Shine a light on them, see them, expose them for what they are
and then they'll free us.
Because this has freed me.
Just, you know, just recognizing that it should.
Shame that has been holding me back.
If this podcast does resonate with you, please share it with your
friends.
And really, I want to leave you with one thought.
Just have ask somebody else what they think is holding you back.
Ask them for an honest review of how they see you.
And shut up and listen.
Because what they might have to say might just free you.
It really might just free you.
I'm Stephen Webb, and this is Stillness in the Storms and Hit the
subscribe if you're watching on YouTube and leave a review or
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That would be amazing and incredible and all love you guys.
