CPTSD: Breaking The Toxic Shame/Procrastination Cycle With Self-Compassion

hey guys I'm Heidi Priebe welcome back to my Channel or welcome if this is your first time here on this channel we use different psychological models as means of understanding ourselves better

understanding other people better and overall trying to improve the health of our relationships and our life in general so what that means is getting more of what we do want out of our lives

and our relationships and less of what we don't want and today the psychological model I'm going to be referencing is the model of complex

post-traumatic stress disorder now I'm not going to go too deep into what cptsd is if you don't know I will leave some links in the description of this video so you can go learn a little bit more

before coming back but I also want to make it clear that you don't have to have cptsd to relate to what I'm going to say in this video so much of what I

say is going to apply to anyone who struggles with feelings of toxic shame as well as anyone who may have a very insecure attachment style so the reason

I'm using the term cptsd is because I believe that what I'm about to talk about applies most directly to those with cptsd however if you recognize yourself in this video it doesn't

necessarily mean you have cptsd because the cycle that I'm about to describe is going to apply to people in a wide range of contexts so what I want to talk about

today is the relationship between toxic shame and procrastination and how this can become a cycle that ends up feeling quite self-defeating for a lot of people who struggle with it so the

procrastination or the not getting things done or the watching problems in your life pile up larger and larger over time is kind of what I look at as a

symptom of a more underlying problem the underlying problem being a sense of toxic shame and the belief that everything that goes wrong in your life

that the ways in which you struggle to tend to practical or emotional or relational concerns is due to you just being an inherently flawed or broken person

what I want to do with this video is start to dispel that myth and offer some perspective and some language that might help you reconceptualize why certain

areas of your life tend to get to these kind of emergency points as well as what tools you can use to start slowly reversing that process and the last thing I want to make clear before we get

started is that I am not a licensed psychologist so this is not clinical advice I do have a bachelor's degree in Psychology and a master of science in attachment Theory and research so some

of what I'm going to say is informed from my background in attachment Theory however all I'm doing here is looking at patterns that exist within what I personally have read and observed in

people I know who struggle with complex PTSD toxic shame and insecure attachment patterns so like with anything if there's something in this video that works for you feel free to take it and

leave whatever does not work for you alright without further Ado to get us started off I want to lay out a formula of what tends to happen when someone who

has a strong sense of toxic shame or complex PTSD encounters a life stressor and I want to contrast it to what someone with a more secure sense of self

or a secure attachment style is going to do in the same type of situation and the reason I want to provide that contrast is because I want to start normalizing

some of the challenges that those of us with toxic shame face that we might be wrongly attributing to a failure of the self or something being broken corrupt

or wrong with the self when in fact we are just coming up across stressors that the average person experiences but might not end up in the same kind of downwards mental health spiral around them because

they are able to properly attribute the cause of their stress as opposed to over-assuming responsibility for everything that is going wrong so without further Ado let's look at what

happens when a secure person versus someone with toxic shame attachment wounding or cptsd encounters a major life stressor so major life stressors happen to absolutely everybody it does

not matter what your upbringing was like what your attachment style is life is inherently stressful challenges come up curveballs get thrown in our path relationships involve

conflicts that become challenging right experiencing stress is inherent to being alive so let's say you come up against a major life stressor and I'll give some examples just so we can kind of track

this with something real let's say you suddenly lose your job or you don't have a job and rent is coming up and you don't have a way to make rent that would be considered a major life stressor

let's say you are taking a graduate program and you have a dissertation due and you are ill prepared to finish it on time let's say you are in a relationship and

you're feeling a little bit uncertain and like your partner might not necessarily want a future with you and you're feeling kind of rejected all of these things are normal life stressors they could happen to anybody it doesn't

mean there's something wrong with you however the way someone with cptsd or toxic shame is going to interpret these stressors is going to be very different

than the way a secure person does so a secure person when encountering a life stressor tends to have a sense of self-compassion around it so there's this feeling of something difficult is

happening for me I'm stressed about it and that stress is often seen and acknowledged and accepted but the next step because there is an assumption inherent to the secure world view that

stress is a normal part of life is to find ways to cope with that stress that actually help the problem get solved and I want to be very clear this is much easier for the person with a secure

attachment system to do because it's highly likely that they have a social network that they can reach out to to receive a reasonable level of support it's highly likely that they developed

strong emotional regulation skills in childhood or that they taught those to themselves in adulthood if they earn secure attachment and it's likely that they have not encountered a

disproportionate amount of extreme stressors in their life that's not a guarantee that's not to say that there are not secure people who've experienced extreme stressors however it's less

likely because if you do not have a complex trauma history you're more likely to have a more resourced life in every sense of the term so a secure person who doesn't have a way to make

rent next month or who's going through a significant educational or Relationship Challenge is highly likely to recognize that they need both comfort and support

in order to navigate through that challenge so what they're going to do is go okay I'm stressed so maybe I'm going to need to reach out to my social support Network and lean a little bit

more heavily on my friends family loved ones than I normally do as I'm navigating through this period of difficulty also I'm going to think about where I might be able to Source help so if I'm

struggling academically which professors should I go talk to to see what I should do if I'm struggling financially are there Social Services I can look at that might be able to help me figure out

where I can get the resources I need if I'm in a pinch if I'm struggling in my relationship who might I be able to go talk to or is there a professional I could consult to kind of figure out

what's going on and gain some additional context for myself or some additional skills for myself if that's what's needed to help me navigate through any of these specific challenges and because there's this natural sense of

interconnectedness in the secure world view it tends to be easier for them to go access the services they need as well as the social support that they need to navigate through periods of stress more

effectively now let's contrast this to someone who has complex PTSD insecure attachment or toxic shame or all of the above as it often happens when you

experience a life stressor as a member of one of those groups what's highly likely to happen is that you're not going to recognize your own need for

comfort and support particularly if you have complex PTSD which is the result of early repetitive traumas that leave you with the feeling of hopelessness so

there is a learned helplessness aspect to complex PTSD if you have certain traumas like let's say a specific relational trauma that happens over and

over again and you don't see a way out of it because you are a child when it happens and you're under resourced you might develop this world view of

problems are not solvable as soon as a problem feels a certain level of big and overwhelming there is no way out of the problem I just assume I'm going to be stuck inside of this problem forever

what might not occur to you is that there are social resources that are available to you or that you might need some comfort and social support navigating through the challenge the reason those things might not occur to

you is because you may have internalized from a very young age social systems are not here to help me they're for normal people and I am not normal which is a

core belief of having toxic shame Ergo there are not social support networks that I can reach out to for practical help and you may not even be cognizant of the fact that you have a need for

Comfort period because most people with complex PTSD toxic shame or severe attachment wounding did not receive Comfort on a consistent basis in their childhood you may never have learned

that life stressors are easier to deal with if you have comfort you may have internalized something along the lines of what helps you get through difficult periods is sucking it up pushing down

your feelings and barreling through however your system still needs Comfort even if you have consciously repressed the need for it your system is going to

naturally crave it when you are going through difficult periods so that leads us to what tends to happen next for people who consciously or unconsciously

deny or repress the need for comfort and help when they're facing a life stressor and what tends to happen next is that dysregulation and procrastination pop up

now if you have a very strong need for Comfort help and support however you're not even aware that you have it which is very typical for those with toxic shame

where that feeling of vulnerability may have become a shame-bound emotion so as soon as you feel like you need help you can't figure something out on your own whatever it is shame comes and wraps

that up you're now going to start feeling dysregulated dysregulation happens when we can't directly resolve the feeling that we are experiencing if you have hidden the feeling that you are

experiencing from yourself because it's shame bound it's going to be really hard to resolve it so if I'm feeling kind of vulnerable because I don't know how to pay my rent next month or because I

don't know how to access the resources I need to finish my educational project or because I don't really understand what's going wrong in my relationship or how to stop these problems from happening if

I'm unable to access and directly deal with my feelings of vulnerability I'm going to become disregulated I'm going to start feeling those emotions in places where they don't necessarily fit

so instead of feeling vulnerable maybe I'll start feeling really grumpy or really irritable or maybe I'm going to experience extreme difficulty focusing and paying attention to the projects

that I meant to be working on because my system is desperately trying to seek out the comfort that it needs it's distracted by its own unmet emotional

needs which live in the body however if I'm not acknowledging those emotions in my mind and acting in accordance with them I'm going to experience

dysregulation now the problem is that when we are in this state of dealing with extreme stress it's very important for us to be able to focus to solve those problems right if I have to figure

out how to make rent next month I probably need to focus on getting work if I need to figure out how to get a school project done I probably need to focus on doing research if I need to solve a series of problems in my

partnership I probably need to stay reasonably present with my partner to be able to take in what they're saying and respond in an appropriate way however it gets harder to do all of this the more

dysregulated you are air go you start procrastinating not because you are a lazy worthless human being but because your system is preoccupied trying to get its underlying needs met and if you

don't know how to get those needs met directly you're going to turn to maladaptive coping mechanisms so maybe I figure out that I can concentrate really well if I take certain drugs maybe I

figure out that I can get support that I don't know how to ask for out of my partner if I start a fight and then afterwards they give me Comfort or maybe I become so afraid of my partner seeing

that I'm struggling and fearing that that's going to make them feel disgusted by me that I completely pull away and isolate myself because I'm just kind of in this freeze response of if anyone sees that I'm struggling I'm going to

get abandoned so to not make the problem worse I'm going to isolate until it is over maybe I figure out that I can Barrel through the day and act tough and strong and like I don't need any help if

I can promise myself at the end of the day I'm going to binge eat or get drunk in order to take off the pressure so we develop these ways of getting our

needs for Comfort met if we don't know how to address that need directly in ways that end up creating further problems in our lives there's a quote that goes something along the lines of

at a certain dosage the medicine becomes the disease so now we find ourselves facing a new slew of problems and or but usually and in intensification of the

original problem if I have not found a way to pay my rent because I've gotten disregulated around the fact that I have a problem that big and then I've been unable to concentrate on work because I'm stressed and don't

know how to get comfort and then maybe I'm eating or drinking more than usual and then maybe I'm spending more money than usual as an attempt to get my system to calm down now I'm probably less able to make rent than I was at the

beginning of the month when the problem first cropped up or maybe by this point the ways in which I've been going about maladaptively unconsciously seeking out comfort from other people either through

creating conflict or through withdrawing are causing new problems within my relationships that have now taken the center stage of my life so this pile of problems keeps growing maybe now rent is

overdue and I still have no way to pay it maybe now my relationship which once had a certain problem has a whole pile of problems because I haven't been able to address the original one in a

well-regulated way and for most people who deal with complex PTSD toxic shame or early attachment wounding this is usually the point where toxic shame arrives so this belief comes online that

the reason I have this problem is because I am inherently shameful bad stupid lazy unmotivated whatever it is I should have just dealt with this at the

time it came up and now look how big it is and now look how many other problems I have in my life and instead of correctly attributing the cause of those problems to the fact that you did not

learn proper coping mechanisms for tackling and sourcing comfort and support around problems you're going to attribute the fact that these problems worsen so heavily towards yourself being

a useless human being you might start telling yourself these stories like I'm lazy I'm unmotivated anyone else would have been able to solve this as soon as it came up I have to hide from other people how many problems I have because

if they saw how many problems I have they would see how worthless and lazy I am and how I can't do anything right so toxic shame in the inner critic at this point might be incredibly online for you

and when we have toxic shame what else comes online in the body a need for comfort so now we are all the way back to the beginning right we have this need

for Comfort we don't necessarily know how to get it we don't feel like we're worthy of comfort if we are in a place of toxic shame and so once again the system gets disregulated and the cycle

starts over again now I say all of this and I outline all of this not to be discouraging I do not think that this is what you are faded to

if you have toxic shame cptsd whatever it is I say all of this because there is something we can use in this process if we insert it at any point that is going

to help us start to reverse it and start an upward spiral instead of continuing that downwards one when we're experiencing stress in life and the first thing I want to acknowledge is that if you are watching this video and

you have complex PTSD I'm going to say there's like a 99 chance that there has never been a point where everything is just going normal for you you have no significant problems challenges or

stressors and then a singular stressor pops out of the blue and this cycle begins you have probably been locked in this cycle for as long as you can

remember because to have complex PTSD often means you have extreme difficulty with forming close relationships regulating your emotions securing consistent resource so it's likely that

you have been in this state of responding to abnormal stressors for as far back as you can consciously remember and so you don't necessarily have the option to just tackle this at step one

like a secure person would and reach out to your support network of secure people who have resources they can lend you that's likely not an option for you or not an easily available option so we

have to look at what we can do at any point in this spiral to start moving it in the opposite direction and what we're going to talk about now is the role that self-compassion and self-understanding

can play in this process I think that for most people with toxic shame the term self-understanding might feel more accessible but I will be using the term self-understanding and self-compassion

interchangeably so the first place you want to be able to apply self-compassion or self-understanding is when you are faced with a significant stressor and you have a need for Comfort it's

unlikely that you're going to wreck your need for Comfort consciously if you have cptsd because again if from a young age you never got Comfort around life

challenges or you internalize this belief that unless something so overtly traumatic has happened to me that absolutely anybody would be incapable of functioning in the face of it I do not

have a need or I do not deserve support care and compassion from other people what secure people naturally know is that being alive is inherently difficult and you need comfort for it you don't

have to be going through something intense and traumatic to need comfort people need comfort on a day-to-day basis they need comfort for being a little bit tired they need comfort for

having a little bit of stress at work they need comfort for having a bit of a tense situation with someone they're close with and having difficulty feeling settled in that relationship until they

figure out what's going on people need a reasonable amount of comfort every single day and especially when you are going through some sort of stress needing Comfort is a normal experience

to have and the reason I want to emphasize that is because if you sat down as someone with complex PTSD and looked at the intense Matrix of all of

the challenges and struggles and practical and interpersonal difficulties that you probably have in your life as a product of having complex PTSD you would

recognize that if you dropped a secure person into that they would be almost overwhelmed by a need for comfort okay so the fact that you are feeling

distressed and disregulated is not weird and it's not because you're a bad shameful person who can't cope with anything if you have a very difficult life you have a very high need for

comfort and if you're unable to recognize that need for comfort the natural response is dysregulation of the system so if you can at step one that point where you're feeling stressed and

overwhelmed by either one or a complex Matrix of problems in your life if you can recognize and give yourself validation around the fact that it's

normal to be wanting Comfort at this point that might be the first step in getting less dysregulated around all of these problems if you can look at the

fact that you can't make rent next month or the fact that you have a giant pile of overdue bills or the fact that you have relationships that are in disarray or the fact that you're really struggling to keep up with your

educational commitments as problems that naturally require comfort and support that might not solve the problem but it legitimizes the problem right

and if you're able to follow the threads of these problems back in time until you're able to undo some of that toxic shame around the fact that you have them

that could also be helpful so are you in chaotic relationships all of the time because you're just a worthless human being who hates being happy or are you constantly in chaotic relationships

because you didn't learn appropriate relating skills as a child you didn't have secure relationships modeled for you and you don't actually have the skills you need to navigate

relationships effectively but if you did have those skills you would probably use them that's probably closer to the truth then I'm just a piece of garbage who doesn't know how to love or be loved right

if you look at your financial challenges not through the lens of I'm just lazy and didn't work hard enough but through the lens of I have been low or high

level dysregulated consistently for most of my life and it's really hard to be productive and creative when you're dysregulated might feel a little bit easier to understand why you're

experiencing chronic financial difficulties same with difficulties focusing or paying attention or with not procrastinating right it is a natural result of being dysregulated to not be

able to focus well so does this solve the problem no it does not solve the problem however it legitimizes the problem in your own mind if you can stop

shaming yourself for these problems and understand that you would not have chosen them nobody would choose to have an abnormal level of stress in their

life Ergo they must be the result of your system trying to solve some deeper problem that it's been incapable of doing like I don't know how having healthy human connection having a sense

of self-esteem and self-worth creating stability in your emotional life if your body is distracted by needing those things and not having them it's not going to naturally want to focus its attention on doing more practical

concerns so again that's not to be discouraging it is to legitimize the fact that you have all of these problems I remember having this Moment of clarity years ago when I was in a place in my

life that I now kind of look back on as almost my rock bottom emotionally where I was so dysregulated and dealing with so many issues in my personal life and

in my professional life and it was the first year of covid so the world was a mess and I had this one project that I was struggling so hard to complete and I was getting paid a lot for the project

and there's big expectations on me for it and I remember waking up one morning and just looking at my life almost like I was a complete Outsider and looking at the true intensity of the personal

problems I was dealing with at that point in my life and the true intensity of the Practical problems I was experiencing at that point in my life and going if my client the person who

I'm imagining is going to judge me so harshly if I do not do a perfect job on this project if they were truly waking up in my life in my body in my

relationships in my experience and having to navigate through this day would they be able to get this project done and I realized probably not they would probably have to stop and triage

and deal with all of these other things that I so consistently deal with that I don't even think of them as problems anymore that they wouldn't be able to get within a mile of the project and it's really hard to have those moments

of clarity with ourselves because when you are adapted to Chronic problems and to Chronic dysregulation it becomes the water that you swim in you don't think this is abnormal and things that most

people don't deal with however it helps as often as you can to stop and contextualize that yourself is it possible that anybody in this situation would be equally as stressed out and

experience an equal level of difficulty focusing or getting things done as I am and if you can have compassion for yourself in that moment then you are

experiencing a moment of security a moment in which you're able to recognize I am an inherently valuable person just like everybody else which means that when I experience stress I

need help and comfort just like everybody else and every time we have a moment where we're successfully able to recognize that we start slowly training our brain to think in a slightly

different way the more moments we have where we recognize we are inherently valuable we are not choosing the challenges and difficulties in our lives and that it's normal for us to need help

and support in navigating through them the more we slowly inch our way towards that secure world view where we're able to recognize I can ask for help there is

no reason why someone else should get help and not me I need comfort and support and Care from other people there is no reason why I should not have those things even though everyone else should

now I want to be clear that doesn't mean that any one particular person owes you endless care love support and attention but it means that it would be a reasonable thing for you to do at some

point along the line to build out a social support network in which you're able to give and receive support and comfort around everyday concerns and everyday stressors both the abnormally

big ones and the smaller ones that you might currently deem kind of insignificant now let's drop it down a level let's say you aren't able to have that moment with yourself at the point where that need for Comfort comes online

and you do find yourself getting a bit dysregulated can you instead of shaming yourself for being lazy and not directly tackling the problem in this moment notice and accept oh I'm feeling

dysregulated my system is just out of whack today I feel grumpy I feel anxious I feel angry I am not arriving in this moment with the presence that I need to tackle this task and solve my problem

and can you ask yourself the question what is it that I need do I need comfort do I need help do I need support do I need rest and is it possible to give

that to myself instead of denying that I have needs instead of denying that this has an impact on me instead of pulling back and trying to isolate myself from everybody or trying to get Comfort out of people

without directly asking for it can I take a minute and just recognize I am feeling off today can I attend to my feeling State instead of trying to fight

the uphill battle of attempting to solve this problem when I am not in a state to solve it and in the way that I'm tending to my feeling State can I make sure that I'm

not creating new problems for myself so can I be a little bit mindful in this moment of which coping mechanisms I can turn to that are actually going to help me get closer to the solution of this

problem rather than further away from it can I give myself compassion and self-understanding and use that compassion and self-understanding to

start spiraling upwards towards the secure response so the goal here is lessening the resistance we feel to our own dysregulation and procrastination

and accepting that when those things are happening for us it's usually because our systems have a deeper need that they're trying to get met and if we can meet that need in an Adaptive way then

we're going to experience an increased sense of Regulation which pretty much always makes problem solving a lot easier now I want to drop it down One More Level let's say you've already arrived at the place and this is

probably where most of us are starting from if you have a history of complex PTSD where the problems have significantly worsened and you have this sense of normal people do not let X Y or

Z problem get this bad and toxic shame is kind of creeping into the corners of your worldview can you in that moment when thinking about that problem take

the time to explain to yourself gently and in a non-shaming way why you are having that problem what sequence of events led you to this

point in your life where it's possible that you have such a problem that an intelligent worthwhile person like yourself has not yet found a way to solve is this

because you don't know how to ask for the help or resource you need to solve this problem is it because you feel too much shame to access the help or resource that you need to solve this

problem is it because you don't know how to regulate yourself enough to solve this problem is it because you developed a Redemption fantasy as a child in order to survive a terrible childhood in which

reality was not doing you any favors when it comes to staying sane and now you're having trouble letting go of that Redemption fantasy so instead of dealing with these problems you're dissociating into some sort of fantasy where they're

all fixed none of those things are inherently shameful they're all normal responses to having had a difficult life and it might be helpful to remind yourself at this point that you are

definitely not the only person in the world who has had the problem that you currently have and the reason why other people in the world have had this problem is because this problem is the

natural outcome of a certain sequence of events that happen to those people and that also happen to you now that doesn't mean it was an identical sequence of events but it means that two have arrived at the place where you have

arrived at a certain number of things had to have happened and a certain sequence of events happened to a lot of other people as well that ended them up with the same problem as you and sometimes if I'm at that point where my

problems are very bad I like to do a loving kindness meditation where I just take a moment and Center myself and draw into my awareness all of the people in the world who have

this problem or a similar problem and see if I can breathe in an awareness of that and breathe out a sense of compassion for all of us you are definitely not the first person to have

the level of financial challenge that you have or the level of relationship challenges that you have or the level of mental health challenges you have there are so many other people in the world

with very bad problems and those problems did not happen to them because they are corrupt bad worthless human beings those problems happen to them because a sequence of events led them there

and if you can take a moment to have compassion not just for yourself but to feel a sense of connectedness to everybody who has that problem and whoever will have that problem you can

give yourself a moment of reminder that you are not alone and it is not inherently shameful to have really bad really intense problems that you don't

know how to solve other people have that experience as well most people with complex PTSD have that experience right now in this exact moment and you might want to even take a moment

right now to pause and draw your awareness to that how many people out there at this exact moment are probably struggling with

toxic shame complex PTSD symptoms relational difficulties attachment issues the world is full of those people and it was not any of their faults that

they developed those problems and it's not yours however what you do with it is up to you you get to choose the way that you internally represent the problems you have

and the more compassion you're able to have for them in any given moment the closer you're getting to being realistic about how to solve them at the end of the day the thing that is going to keep

you the most stuck if you have toxic shame is the belief that the reason you have larger than average problems is because you are broken and shameful and there's something wrong with you that is

not true of you it is not true of anybody and you are not the exception to that rule nobody chooses a life filled with complex problems and an inability to regulate around them not a person on

Earth would choose that you are not the exception and the way to reverse engineer this entire downward spiral and get to a place where you're able to function at least in a given moment like

a secure person is to start treating yourself with self-understanding and compassion in the places where you have once only had toxic shame and when that toxic shame arrives and when it takes

over the system it can feel incredibly overwhelmed coming it can feel paralyzing it can feel disorienting it can feel impossible to cope with however

there is a line I love that goes feeling shame does not mean you are shameful and in those instances where the toxic shame is present and it feels really intense

what I want to challenge you to do is can you have that feeling in your body can you recognize it can you name it as shame this is Shame Shame Shame I'm

feeling shame and then at some point in that process can you draw your awareness to the fact that shame is a feeling it is not a truth about who you are or

about your character or about the core of you shame is just a feeling and if you can learn to have compassion for yourself in that moment when the shame is in your body and have empathy for

yourself as a person who is experiencing toxic shame even for just a moment you're going to be able to start climbing your way out

of this compassion allows toxic shame to start lessening because you realize your problems are not personal they are a natural consequence of the life that you have led and the

circumstances that you've been through and the coping mechanisms that you developed as a result the less personal your problems feel the less dysregulated you're going to be every time you think

about them the less dysregulated you are when you're thinking about your problems the more realistic of a handle you start to get on what it's going to take to fix

those problems as well as what type of support you're going to need emotionally in the process of fixing them getting a realistic handle on what it's going to take to fix your problems as well as

what type of emotional support you're going to need in the process allows you to start sourcing the actual Solutions and actual support and actual help that you need to start solving the Practical

problems in your life and the more the Practical problems in your life start getting solved the more regulated you become overall because you start developing a safer and more secure

life for yourself and the safer and more secure and more well-regulated your life is the more relaxed and the less overwhelmed you're going to feel the more relaxed and the less

overwhelmed you feel the more your system is naturally going to be able to relate calmly to other people because you aren't chronically in a state of dysregulation that affects your relationships and the more you're able

to calmly form relationships with other people the more support and the more comfort you both give and receive and the greater a sense of belonging and Community you experience and the more

you have a sense of belonging community and resource the more you are now working your way into secure territory and the more you work your way into secure territory the more you're able to

recognize when life gets stressful what you need and how to solve your problems holistically now of course this is an incredibly long

process however any time you're able to stop in a moment where you would have once berated yourself and blamed yourself as a morally flawed human being for the problem that you're having

and you're instead able to choose self-understanding self-compassion and proper contextualization of the problem every

single one of those moments even if you can only do it 1 25th of the time gets you one step closer to that eventual place where you are secure and resourced

it is a long journey I'm not going to pretend it's easy but the good news is you don't have to do it perfectly a secure life and a secure attachment

system gets built through a series of moments in which for even one minute you are able to show up with compassion in a place where you could once only show up

with shame and self-hate over the course of a lifetime those minutes of self-compassion and self-understanding add up to a life where eventually the

balance starts tipping in the favor of self-love and once the balance has tipped in that favor you're going to find that upward spiral starts happening on its own alright that's all I have to

say for today on that cycle of toxic shame procrastination and how we can start giving ourselves compassion in those moments to start breaking the cycle at any point as always let me know

what's coming up for you guys as you go through this video I love you I hope you're taking care of yourselves and each other and I will see you back here again really soon

[Music] thank you