When the Body Says “Stop”: What the Flu Taught Me About Healing What We Ignore

#healingjourney #shamework #johnbradshaw #brenebrown #innerchildhealing #traumainformed #emotionalhealth #selfworth #therapywisdom #personalgrowth Jan 20, 2026

“Shame loses its power the moment we stop hiding from ourselves — truth is what sets the soul back on its feet.” -Leslie Noble I’m actually drinking hot tea and writing this from bed right now — old habits die hard (no judging...lol....I know...I know...I should be resting). Even when I’m sick, there’s a part of me that still reaches for reflection, meaning, and the desire to make sense of what my body is trying to tell me. This week, the flu took me down in a way I didn’t expect. One day I was moving through my schedule — clients, martial arts, a girls’ night I’d been looking forward to — and the next, it was just me, a blanket, and sleep. I feel a little better today, but I’m still stuffy, achy, and tired. My body has required patience I didn’t plan for, and honestly, patience I didn’t want to give. There’s something humbling about being forced to stop. Not choosing to rest, not scheduling downtime, but being taken out by something microscopic that doesn’t care about your calendar or your commitments. And as I lay there this week, drifting in and out of sleep, I kept thinking about John Bradshaw’s Healing the Shame That Binds You — not because I felt shame, but because illness has a way of revealing the things we usually override. For anyone unfamiliar: John Bradshaw was a counselor, educator, and pioneer in inner-child and family-systems work. His writing helped millions understand how toxic shame forms and how it quietly shapes identity, relationships, and self-worth. And Brené Brown, a research professor and storyteller, has spent over two decades studying shame, vulnerability, and courage. Her work gives language and clarity to emotions most people feel but rarely name. Both of them have shaped how I understand healing — personally and professionally. And truthfully, shame came to mind this week because this is the exact terrain I walk clients through every day. Shame work is the mud of the healing journey. It’s the part most people want to skip — the emotional swamp they’d rather tiptoe around. But it’s also where the roots are. When clients finally slow down enough to look at the beliefs they’ve inherited about worth, belonging, or being “too much,” that’s when things start to shift. Being sick forced me into the same kind of stillness I ask of them — the kind that reveals what we usually push past. <div> </div> <h2>The Flu Made Me Notice What I Usually Override</h2> I rarely get sick. Twice in six months is unheard of for me. So when my body finally said “enough,” I had to listen. And in that stillness — the kind you don’t choose — I noticed something simple and slightly irritating: I’m far more comfortable moving than pausing. Even with a fever, I caught myself thinking, Maybe I can still see clients… maybe I can still go to class… maybe I can still show up. Not because I felt guilty — but because slowing down feels foreign. Because rest interrupts momentum. Because being human is inconvenient when you have things to do. Bradshaw talks about how we learn to override our internal signals — not out of shame necessarily, but out of habit, conditioning, and survival. Illness interrupts that pattern. <div> </div> <h2>Illness and Shame Share a Similar Pattern</h2> Shame, in Bradshaw’s framework, is like an emotional flu. It’s not about consciously feeling ashamed — it’s about the deeper messages we inherit that quietly shape how we move through the world. Both flu and shame: <ul> <li> slip in quietly </li> <li> flare up when we’re depleted </li> <li> distort our sense of what’s “normal” </li> <li> demand attention we don’t want to give </li> <li> force us to slow down when we’d rather push through </li> </ul> You don’t have to feel shame to be influenced by it. You just have to notice how easily we override our own limits. <div> </div> <h2>What Shame Actually Is</h2> Brené Brown’s research offers one of the clearest definitions of shame: Shame is the intensely painful experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love, belonging, or connection. A few key truths from the research: <ul> <li> Shame is universal. </li> <li> Shame thrives in silence and secrecy. </li> <li> Shame attacks identity, not behavior. </li> </ul> Guilt says, “I did something wrong.” Shame says, “Something is wrong with me.” Even if you don’t feel shame in the moment, the old messages can still shape how you move, give, rest, and relate. <div> </div> <h2>How Shame Shows Up in the Body</h2> Shame isn’t just emotional — it’s physiological. It activates a freeze response in the nervous system: <ul> <li> the body collapses inward </li> <li> the chest tightens </li> <li> the mind fogs </li> <li> the instinct is to hide or shut down </li> </ul> Therapists call shame a binding emotion — it latches onto other emotions (anger, grief, fear) and prevents them from moving through the body naturally. This is why people often feel stuck when shame is present. <div> </div> <h2>Why Shame Work Matters in Healing</h2> Shame is one of the most important — and most avoided — emotional layers in healing work. Not because everyone feels shame all the time, but because shame quietly shapes: <ul> <li> how we see ourselves </li> <li> what we believe we deserve </li> <li> how we set boundaries </li> <li> how we receive love </li> <li> how we tolerate rest, support, or softness </li> <li> how we interpret our own needs </li> </ul> Healing requires looking at shame because: <ul> <li> Shame blocks emotional expression. </li> <li> Shame distorts self-perception. </li> <li> Shame fuels overfunctioning and perfectionism. </li> <li> Shame keeps people silent. </li> <li> Shame hides in the background, even when we don’t feel it. </li> </ul> In other words: Shame is often the invisible thread running through exhaustion, overgiving, and self-abandonment. <div> </div> <h2>How We Heal Shame</h2> Healing shame isn’t about digging for pain — it’s about reclaiming truth, connection, and compassion. <ol start="1"> <li> Naming It Shame loses power when it’s named. </li> <li> Separating Shame From Other Emotions Shame binds to anger, grief, fear. Healing unbinds them. </li> <li> Practicing Self-Compassion You cannot shame yourself into growth. </li> <li> Receiving Empathy From Safe People Shame cannot survive being spoken aloud in the presence of empathy. </li> <li> Understanding the Source Most shame is inherited. Recognizing this helps us say, “This didn’t start with me.” </li> <li> Reclaiming the Inner Child Bradshaw’s core message: shame wounds the inner child. Healing reconnects us with the part of us that is tender and worthy. </li> </ol> <div> </div> <h2>How I Worked Through Shame in My Own Healing</h2> When I look back on my own healing, the turning point wasn’t a single moment — it was the slow, steady decision to tell myself the truth. All of it. The parts other people didn’t want me to say. The parts I needed to say. The parts I never got to say because the room was never safe enough, or the people involved weren’t willing to hear it. Telling the truth — my truth — was the first step in unbinding shame. The second step was taking responsibility for my own healing, while also recognizing what was never mine to carry. I had to sort through the pieces: what was my work, what was my conditioning, what was my survival, and what was the result of other people’s unhealed places. Healing shame required me to strengthen the parts of myself that had been silenced — my intuition, my boundaries, my voice, my self-respect. And at the same time, it required me to release the parts that were never my fault — the betrayals, the distortions, the stories others told about me to avoid telling the truth about themselves. Doing this work gave me clarity. It gave me peace. It gave me unconditional acceptance of what I could change and what I could never change. I couldn’t rewrite the past. I couldn’t force accountability from people who would never own their part in the story. I couldn’t make anyone see what they refused to see. But I could change the way I moved through the world. I could choose peacefulness over performance. Inner confidence over self-doubt. Love — for others and for myself — over the old reflex to shrink or overfunction. I could choose to live from truth instead of survival. In the end, all I could do was heal me. And that was enough. It was more than enough — it was freedom. <div> </div>

“Shame loses its power the moment we stop hiding from ourselves — truth is what sets the soul back on its feet.” -Leslie Noble

I’m actually drinking hot tea and writing this from bed right now — old habits die hard. Even when I’m sick, there’s a part of me that still reaches for reflection, meaning, and the desire to make sense of what my body is trying to tell me.

This week, the flu took me down in a way I didn’t expect. One day I was moving through my schedule — clients, martial arts, a girls’ night I’d been looking forward to — and the next, it was just me, a blanket, and sleep. I feel a little better today, but I’m still stuffy, achy, and tired. My body has required patience I didn’t plan for, and honestly, patience I didn’t want to give.

There’s something humbling about being forced to stop. Not choosing to rest, not scheduling downtime, but being taken out by something microscopic that doesn’t care about your calendar or your commitments. And as I lay there this week, drifting in and out of sleep, I kept thinking about John Bradshaw’s Healing the Shame That Binds You — not because I felt shame, but because illness has a way of revealing the things we usually override.

For anyone unfamiliar: John Bradshaw was a counselor, educator, and pioneer in inner-child and family-systems work. His writing helped millions understand how toxic shame forms and how it quietly shapes identity, relationships, and self-worth.

And Brené Brown, a research professor and storyteller, has spent over two decades studying shame, vulnerability, and courage. Her work gives language and clarity to emotions most people feel but rarely name.

Both of them have shaped how I understand healing — personally and professionally.

And truthfully, shame came to mind this week because this is the exact terrain I walk clients through every day. Shame work is the mud of the healing journey. It’s the part most people want to skip — the emotional swamp they’d rather tiptoe around. But it’s also where the roots are. When clients finally slow down enough to look at the beliefs they’ve inherited about worth, belonging, or being “too much,” that’s when things start to shift. Being sick forced me into the same kind of stillness I ask of them — the kind that reveals what we usually push past.

The Flu Made Me Notice What I Usually Override

I rarely get sick. Twice in six months is unheard of for me. So when my body finally said “enough,” I had to listen. And in that stillness — the kind you don’t choose — I noticed something simple and slightly irritating:

I’m far more comfortable moving than pausing.

Even with a fever, I caught myself thinking, Maybe I can still see clients… maybe I can still go to class… maybe I can still show up. Not because I felt guilty — but because slowing down feels foreign. Because rest interrupts momentum. Because being human is inconvenient when you have things to do.

Bradshaw talks about how we learn to override our internal signals — not out of shame necessarily, but out of habit, conditioning, and survival. Illness interrupts that pattern.

Illness and Shame Share a Similar Pattern

Shame, in Bradshaw’s framework, is like an emotional flu. It’s not about consciously feeling ashamed — it’s about the deeper messages we inherit that quietly shape how we move through the world.

Both flu and shame:

slip in quietly
flare up when we’re depleted
distort our sense of what’s “normal”
demand attention we don’t want to give
force us to slow down when we’d rather push through

You don’t have to feel shame to be influenced by it. You just have to notice how easily we override our own limits.

What Shame Actually Is

Brené Brown’s research offers one of the clearest definitions of shame:

Shame is the intensely painful experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love, belonging, or connection.

A few key truths from the research:

Shame is universal.
Shame thrives in silence and secrecy.
Shame attacks identity, not behavior.

Guilt says, “I did something wrong.” Shame says, “Something is wrong with me.”

Even if you don’t feel shame in the moment, the old messages can still shape how you move, give, rest, and relate.

How Shame Shows Up in the Body

Shame isn’t just emotional — it’s physiological. It activates a freeze response in the nervous system:

the body collapses inward
the chest tightens
the mind fogs
the instinct is to hide or shut down

Therapists call shame a binding emotion — it latches onto other emotions (anger, grief, fear) and prevents them from moving through the body naturally. This is why people often feel stuck when shame is present.

Why Shame Work Matters in Healing

Shame is one of the most important — and most avoided — emotional layers in healing work. Not because everyone feels shame all the time, but because shame quietly shapes:

how we see ourselves
what we believe we deserve
how we set boundaries
how we receive love
how we tolerate rest, support, or softness
how we interpret our own needs

Healing requires looking at shame because:

Shame blocks emotional expression.
Shame distorts self-perception.
Shame fuels overfunctioning and perfectionism.
Shame keeps people silent.
Shame hides in the background, even when we don’t feel it.

In other words: Shame is often the invisible thread running through exhaustion, overgiving, and self-abandonment.

How We Heal Shame

Healing shame isn’t about digging for pain — it’s about reclaiming truth, connection, and compassion.

Naming It Shame loses power when it’s named.
Separating Shame From Other Emotions Shame binds to anger, grief, fear. Healing unbinds them.
Practicing Self-Compassion You cannot shame yourself into growth.
Receiving Empathy From Safe People Shame cannot survive being spoken aloud in the presence of empathy.
Understanding the Source Most shame is inherited. Recognizing this helps us say, “This didn’t start with me.”
Reclaiming the Inner Child Bradshaw’s core message: shame wounds the inner child. Healing reconnects us with the part of us that is tender and worthy.

How I Worked Through Shame in My Own Healing

When I look back on my own healing, the turning point wasn’t a single moment — it was the slow, steady decision to tell myself the truth. All of it. The parts other people didn’t want me to say. The parts I needed to say. The parts I never got to say because the room was never safe enough, or the people involved weren’t willing to hear it.

Telling the truth — my truth — was the first step in unbinding shame.

The second step was taking responsibility for my own healing, while also recognizing what was never mine to carry. I had to sort through the pieces: what was my work, what was my conditioning, what was my survival, and what was the result of other people’s unhealed places.

Healing shame required me to strengthen the parts of myself that had been silenced — my intuition, my boundaries, my voice, my self-respect. And at the same time, it required me to release the parts that were never my fault — the betrayals, the distortions, the stories others told about me to avoid telling the truth about themselves.

Doing this work gave me clarity. It gave me peace. It gave me unconditional acceptance of what I could change and what I could never change.

I couldn’t rewrite the past. I couldn’t force accountability from people who would never own their part in the story. I couldn’t make anyone see what they refused to see.

But I could change the way I moved through the world.

I could choose peacefulness over performance. Inner confidence over self-doubt. Love — for others and for myself — over the old reflex to shrink or overfunction. I could choose to live from truth instead of survival.

In the end, all I could do was heal me. And that was enough. It was more than enough — it was freedom.

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