Situationship to Soulmate
This podcast is for YOU if: You're feeling stuck in the cycle of hurtful and harmful dating and intimacy experiences. If you feel like no matter how hard you try, you just can't stop making the same mistakes over and over again in your romantic relationships. If you are over "hookup culture" and "situationships", but seem to still attract people who can only give you that level of commitment. If all the people you date and sleep with have one thing in common: they inevitably leave you feeling hurt, confused, and betrayed.
Situationship to Soulmate
Letting Go of Shame: My Story of Healing Trauma and Learning To Love and Be Loved
Do you feel like you mask your true self, just to fit in? Are you feeling frustrated and hurt by your dating experiences, but aren't sure how to change them? Join me as I share why letting go of shame is the key to finding a happier, healthier life, and the key to finding your soulmate. I share my experiences from high school, college, and my twenties, and how a sense of shame shaped my relationships and self-image in a negative way. I also share how my recent ADHD diagnosis was the key that unlocked the understanding of why I felt the need to hide my authentic self.
Transitioning from shame to empowerment, I'll recount how I harnessed the power of social media, personal development, and healing. Hear how I confronted my fears head on, creating a support group for sexual assault survivors and an online community to talk about consent and sexual health. I'll explain how I learned to let go of the need to please others, embraced authenticity, and found a partner who accepts me and loves me in a way I never knew was possible. This episode isn't just about my journey, but a beacon of hope and guidance for those going through similar experiences.
Follow me on TikTok and Instagram @shamelesslyshelly + @situationshiptosoulmate
Welcome to the Situation to Soulmate podcast, your guide to navigating the complicated world of dating and sex in your 20s. I'm your host, shelly. Content creator, mental health counseling graduate student and a trained sex and relationship coach. After going through a lot of traumatic, unhealthy and toxic experiences throughout my 20s, I'm finally ready to use what I've learned over the years to help those of you who are still experiencing it. I went from situationships, bad hookups and settling for less than I deserved to finding my soulmate, all within one year. Let's help you get there too.
Speaker 1:Renee Brown defines shame as the intensely painful experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging. So it's really that feeling that something is wrong with me. I think the way that we differentiate between shame and guilt is that guilt is saying I did something wrong or I did something bad, or feeling bad about something you did. Shame is saying I am wrong or I am bad. Something about you makes you unworthy of love and belonging. It's not just like, oh, this one thing I did, I kind of regret, or like, oh, I feel guilty for hurting someone. It's like this thing happened and therefore that means that I am not worthy of love and belonging. I am not a good person, whatever it may be that you're telling yourself. So I wanted to share a little bit of my personal story, with shame, and hopefully it can help some of you, and maybe you can relate to some of my stories. So feeling like I was flawed and unworthy of love and belonging started in high school. For me it might have started earlier than that, but we're going to start with high school for this. For the purposes of this episode, I was, I guess, what you could call a late bloomer, so I never had a boyfriend in high school at all. I did not even have my first kiss until my senior year of high school. So I was just feeling really behind and really embarrassed that I felt behind. I was watching a lot of my close friends have their first relationships and have their first sexual experiences and I was over here like still waiting to have my first kiss. So I really internalized that and made that mean something about me, even though logically I could see that like there were plenty of other people in my high school who also didn't have relations, you know, who also weren't in relationships, or like logically I could tell myself this doesn't mean there's something wrong with you. But you know, at the time I really felt like there must be a reason why my friends are in relationships and why my friends are having their first kisses and are and are having their first sexual experiences and I still haven't had that. Like there must be something wrong with me to make someone not want to be my boyfriend. This is kind of funny. It's funny now. I was a little traumatized about it at the time, but just a funny side story.
Speaker 1:My senior year of high school, our class came out with a slut list and a still a virgin list. It was literally just a list of names that got texted out to everyone in our school and it was a list of girls that were sluts quote unquote. And it was a list of girls that were still a virgin, or some people called it the prude list. I'll give you one guess which list my name was on. I was like partially excited actually, because a lot of my friends are like oh my god, like this list was probably made by like the popular cool kids, so like that's really cool that they even know your name and they know who you are. So I kind of was like, okay, it's like kind of a flex in a way, like whoever wrote this list knows who I am. But the other part of me was like, oh shit, it must be really obvious that I'm a virgin if I was put on this list like popular kid is like looking at me like yep, she's still a virgin.
Speaker 1:Um, so that's when, like the shame really started for me, I think, and this feeling of like there is something wrong with me because I am still waiting to have my first kiss or I'm still waiting down my first boyfriend. So I went into college and really kind of let that shame get the best of me. I actually ended up lying to a lot of my friends in college because I was embarrassed that I'd never had a boyfriend before. So when friends would ask me like about my past dating experiences or about past boyfriends, or when they would talk about past boyfriends, I felt really awkward and I felt really ashamed and embarrassed. So I kind of started just like embellishing stories from high school to make it sound like I'd had a boyfriend. So you know, I would talk about like the boy who asked me to prom my senior year as if we were like in a relationship, as opposed to the fact that we were had actually only gotten like two dates and, yeah, I just kind of like made it sound like more than it was. Or another guy in high school who had had a big crush on me and I had kind of friendzoned him. I also kind of turned that into a different story of like oh yeah, we dated for a little bit and then I broke up with him, said he wasn't really feeling it, when in reality it was like we went on a few dates and then I friendzoned him over Facebook Messenger. Shout out to everyone who remembers messaging people on Facebook if you're too young to remember that, that's fine. I just feel old.
Speaker 1:At the time I really didn't see anything wrong with these white lies. I felt like it doesn't matter, like I was trying to kind of have a clean slate and like meet new friends in college and almost like create this new identity for myself. Slight side note, but I was diagnosed with ADHD last year and I've now realized that I was masking. So if anyone listening is neurodivergent, you will understand. I was like masking my true self to try to fit in. So one of the ways I did that was by telling these lies about dating and relationships in high school to try to fit in with with people around me who had had those experiences. And now, when I look back, I can see that like I was basically letting shame and fear of being judged or fear of being rejected get in the way of just allowing myself to meet and make friends authentically and to show my new friends like the genuine side of me. So switching gears a little bit, but still staying on this track of shame.
Speaker 1:I had a few different experiences in college that really added to my shame and was my first real experience with trauma. So I was sexually assaulted multiple different times throughout college and I chose to be alone in this truth. And, just like I chose to not tell my friends that I had never had a boyfriend in high school, I also chose to not tell my friends when I was assaulted and I really just like, took on all of this, all of this trauma and the things that I went through, and I decided I'm gonna. I'm gonna deal with this on my own, just like I tried to deal with the fact that I was single on my own and just lied about it. I, you know, I basically lied by omission about these, about the fact that that some of my experiences were not consensual and I would again kind of embellish them like I did, you know, when I was talking about dates I went on in high school to make them sound like relationships. I would basically make light of and kind of change around details of sexual experiences that I had, because I was not.
Speaker 1:I think I was in denial for a little bit. But then, even when I wasn't in denial, I think I just I just felt like if I said it out loud, if I, if I told people what really happened, it would make it real and I was very much like avoiding it and avoiding that. And when you avoid things, that just adds more shame. Let me just say, for anyone listening, if you have experienced any sort of sexual trauma, if you are trying to carry all of this trauma on your own, let me just tell you from experience it will backfire and you are putting more shame on yourself by not opening up to people about it. Now, I'm not saying you have to like do what I do and talk about it on a podcast or have a TikTok channel where you talk about it, but again, just find one person that you feel safe and comfortable with and you trust and open up to them about what you've been through, and I promise it is so relieving and it feels like a weight's lifted off your shoulders the first time you actually talk about it with someone.
Speaker 1:Back to me when I graduated from college, I still had all this shame, the shame of feeling like a late bloomer from high school, the shame of sexual assault in college, and so I went through my 20s basically doing the same pattern over and over again which I have talked about in past episodes. I would basically get into a relationship with someone who I was not compatible with and I did not truly love, but I would cling to them and try to make it work for longer than I should have, because I was afraid of being alone and I had all this shame and I felt like, oh, if someone wants to date me like that, I must. I must want to be with them too, because this is what I've always wanted and I've always wanted a relationship. Like when I was in high school, I always wanted a relationship, and now I you know, now that I've found why better hold on to it. In between those relationships, I would have a series of situations which, of course, I've talked about on this podcast, hence the name of the podcast. But you know just these people who, basically, were causing me to abandon myself and abandon my needs to fit what they wanted. I wanted a relationship, but I kept saying yes to situationships and I was just dating and being intimate and hooking up with people who clearly did not want what I.
Speaker 1:When I was in high school, my dad gave me this metaphor that has just really stuck with me all these years. I told him that I wanted to be an actress, because at the time when I was in high school, I really wanted to be an actress. And he asked me basically, what are you doing to make that happen? He told me, like you can't just say you want to be an actress or wish to be an actress, you have to actually take action to make that happen. And the metaphor he told me was like imagine there is an invisible alien that is watching you in your life. They don't understand when you say I want to be an actress, but they're watching what you're doing. They're watch, watching your actions. And will that invisible alien know that you want to be an actress by just watching what you're doing? I'm sharing this because it really reminded me of how I was with dating. I was saying I wanted a relationship, but my actions were not showing that. Like if the invisible alien was watching me, it would not have any clue that I wanted a relationship based on the types of dates I was going on or the people I was dating, or the fact that I kept saying yes to situationships and saying yes, I'm fine when someone said they didn't want to date me even though I knew I wanted a relationship. So I was basically my actions and my words were not lining up. So this kind of confusion and lack of connection between what I knew I wanted and the patterns I was displaying and the actions I had continued until 2021.
Speaker 1:In 2021, I was in kind of a rut. I was Feeling really ashamed and sad about being single. Almost all my friends were in relationship, just felt really, really lonely and I didn't really feel excited about my career. I wasn't really sure where I wanted to go with my career. I didn't really have any real hobbies. I spent most of my free time watching TV and drinking wine and I just like knew something needed to change. But I it took me a while to actually start to make change happen and Finally I did decide. I was like I need to take action instead of just hoping that things will change. I need to actually make a change in my life and and so I basically decided to show that invisible alien that I wasn't just someone who sat around wishing for things. I was actually going to take action and make them happen.
Speaker 1:So I had started my TikTok account in 2020, but in 2021 I really started taking it more seriously and I started creating content around topics that I would never have had the guts to talk about when I was younger. I Thought about the types of questions and the things that I feel like I was scared to talk about or scared to ask someone about when I was that like scared high school or freshman in college and I started talking about those topics and being authentic and vulnerable through my videos on TikTok, and I shared things like my sexual assault experience. I answered questions about sex and sex ed and sexual health. I advocated for feminism and equality and social justice and Women's reproductive rights, and my account kind of just kept growing. I really started feeling like I'd found something that I really felt passionate about and I really enjoyed doing. I also started really focusing on my own self-growth and personal development. I Started learning how to process and work through my trauma. I Then started a Facebook group for sexual assault survivors and I started holding these weekly Support groups for survivors.
Speaker 1:So I really was like you know what I am done with pretending like the sexual assault I went through did not happen because it did happen and I Learned to heal from it and then I started helping other people heal. I also did a group coaching program around sex and relationships and I learned all about my attachment style, love, languages, what I truly wanted out of a relationship and intimacy. I finally started just being myself and letting go of that mask and letting go of that need to like, please other people and to be who I thought they wanted me to be. And the main way that I did this was From letting go of shame, really started trying on the idea that I was worthy of love, that I would find love, that I did not need to settle for these situations, ships that were not making me happy. You know, I never had understood before when people would say like, oh, you'll meet someone. You least expect it.
Speaker 1:But really that is what happened for me, like I moved to New York City, I Was wanting a relationship, was not necessarily thinking I would find one, you know, immediately after moving to a new city and it kind of was just, it just worked out. I feel like I was basically like so busy building a healthy and happy life for myself and figuring out how I could be happy that I didn't even have time or room to be like Feeling sorry for myself for not having a relationship. And then next thing I knew I found the relationship that I'd been looking for. I realized that I had a choice. I could take this opportunity to be with a man who really, truly accepted me and loved me for who I was and Was everything I had been looking for, or I could let fear and shame get in the way and I could just keep doing what I'd been doing and, you know, go back to my old ways of dating people who didn't make me feel good, didn't care about me, you know. You know I, and luckily I'm very glad that I chose to take action and say yes to a relationship that I knew deep down was really what I'd been searching for all along.
Speaker 1:I remember having this feeling that this person and this relationship was exactly what I'd been looking for all these years. And that was really scary at first because, you know, I was scared that I wasn't ready for it or maybe I don't deserve this. That shame that I'd had for so many years kind of came back and made me feel like, oh, he's such a good guy, he's such a good person, like maybe I don't deserve him. But again, like I said, luckily I have faced my fears. I didn't let shame get in the way and I said yes to when he asked me to be his girlfriend and it's been an amazing two years and about two years and two months now.
Speaker 1:I also did something really different with him and this relationship that I wanted to talk about real quick. I took a path of complete honesty in our relationship. So, unlike with you know, when I got into college and was kind of lying to my friends, I was like I'm not going to lie to him, like I am going to tell him everything about me, everything about my past. And you know I hope that he accepts me and loves me. And you know I told him about sexual assault. I told him about past experiences that I was not proud of things I've done that are really that I still felt a lot of shame about, was trying to let go of, and I realized in the past, in my past relationships, I'd been trying to hide parts of myself and I really was like I'm not willing to do that anymore. I don't want to be with someone for the rest of my life who I am not honest with. The relief I felt when I was just honest with him about everything and it was like, okay, now he knows everything about me, he knows everything about my past and he's still choosing to be with me, that's a pretty good sign. You know, like it's much better to just let someone know the truth of who you are and let them choose for themselves if they want to be with you then to either hide from someone or to just decide for them like they're not going to want to be with me.
Speaker 1:When I reflect back on this shame that I felt for so many years around relationships and sex, I realized that I was kind of isolating myself and causing myself to feel really lonely by shutting myself off from people in order to try to not get hurt or to try to not be too vulnerable or to try to be who I thought other people wanted me to be and you know, to avoid being judged. And at age 28, I was finally able to stop feeling alone and stop isolating myself and really allow myself to be completely vulnerable with my new partner, but also with the community that I built for myself on TikTok and with just friends and people in my life, just learning to be more myself. If you're listening and you feel like you're resonating with a lot of this and you feel like, yes, I have a lot of shame and I don't know how to get rid of it or I don't know what to do about it, I just wanted to share with you that I felt like that for a long time, like I felt very stuck and very like I don't know what to do. I just know that something needs to change. So if you are relating to a lot of what I've talked about and you're wondering if things will ever change, I'm here to tell you that they will change and they can change, but you need to be willing to take inspired action and to really take action, like I did, and not just hope that things will change, but really be like you know what. I'm going to make things change. I'm going to make a change in my life and I think the first step to doing that is to de-shamify, to get rid of your shame. So I wanted to give you some tangible advice, because I know I always hate when people are like let go of shame, but then they don't tell you how to do that and it's like, okay, but how do I do it? So I'm going to give you just a few quick tips how things you can start today, right now, to start letting go of shame.
Speaker 1:So my first tip is get to know what the main areas that you feel shame around are, because we can't really let go of shame until we've actually admitted to ourselves or others that we're not like that shame is there, if that makes sense. So just try to think about what tends to trigger you to feel shame. The first step is just acknowledging I recognize that I have shame in these areas. The next thing I have is talk to yourself the way you talk to someone you love. So if you are feeling a lot of shame about something or about yourself, chances are you are talking really negatively to yourself and you are almost shaming yourself. So I want you to really think about how could I talk to myself the way that I would talk to my best friend or my partner or my sibling or whoever it is in your life that you really care about. Learn to talk to yourself the way you would talk to them. So if there's something that you feel a lot of shame around, think about how you would talk to your best friend if they were telling you that they were feeling that, and talk to yourself about it and really catch yourself when you are having the negative self-talk spiral and stop yourself and be like this is not productive. How can I talk to myself in a nice way? Another tip I mentioned earlier in the episode but talk to someone you trust. Find, pick out at least one person that you really, really trust and talk to them about what you're feeling. Telling one person, you will feel so much better and also chances are they will relate to you Like I've had so many experiences where I finally talked to friends about something that I went through or something I was feeling, and they were so receptive to it and they were so empathetic and they actually related to it way more than I thought they would.
Speaker 1:Another quote by Brunet Brown that I really like. She says shame cannot survive being spoken. Once you start talking about your shame, it loses its power Because, like I talked about in this episode, I think the main reason I had so much shame was that I wasn't talking about it, I was ignoring it, I was trying to avoid it and that just caused more shame. Shame cannot survive being spoken, being called out, being talked about by people, having a group of people that you can empathize with. That's why I really recommend that you talk to a friend and then that you, ideally, you do what I did and you find communities or you build your own communities of people who you can relate to. So you know, when I chose to stop drinking, I started going to these online support groups for young women who would stop drinking and that helped me so much. And, like I said, I started my own support group for sexual assault survivors and we met once a week for a few months and that was really helpful for me. And then starting my TikTok account like just meeting people online and sharing my stories and sharing advice and education with people. I feel like connection is like the main connection. Empathy, I would say, are like two key words for shame. Figure out how to have more of more empathy and more connection in your life and you will be able to let go of shame.
Speaker 1:And the last tip, really quick, is look into nervous system regulation. I have been doing more of this lately and it has been really helping me. So look into nervous system regulation and somatic work and basically there's a lot of different things you can do to really let your body know that it's safe to let go of shame and let go of trauma. There's a few people on TikTok that I love who talk about these topics. Dana Dozi is one of my favorites. It's D-A-N-A-D-O-Z-Z-Y-Y. She's a nervous system coach and she has some really great content. I also really like the workout witch. She does somatic exercises to release trauma and stress and they're really super easy exercises you can do and you really do feel more relaxed and it basically is like helping you to just release stored trauma and stress.
Speaker 1:So I hope this episode was helpful for you. I know I feel really good after recording this episode, so I hope you feel good after listening to it. And yeah, as always, I would love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out to me on Instagram or TikTok at shamelesslyshelly is my personal TikTok and I also have accounts for this podcast, situation Shipped to Soulmate, on TikTok and Instagram, so I would love to hear from you, would love to chat about these topics and, yeah, I will talk to you in the next episode. Thanks for listening to the Situation Shipped to Soulmate podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with someone you think would enjoy it, and don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast so it can reach other people who need it. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok at Situation Shipped to Soulmate and feel free to shoot me an email at SituationShippedtoSoulmate at gmailcom. See you next time.
