Stop Performing Your Life: Escaping the Shame Triangle with Jessica Fern & David Cooley

You've done the therapy. Read the books. Cried it out at a retreat. So why does that critical voice in your head keep winning?

This week, trauma therapist Jessica Fern (bestselling author of Polysecure) and David Cooley (creator of Restorative Relationship Conversations) join me to expose the Shame Triangle: the hidden pattern keeping you stuck in self criticism, shame, and escape. And here's the wild part. They've been married, divorced, and now coparent and write books together. They don't just teach this. They've survived it.

Once you hear this, you'll see the triangle everywhere. In yourself. In the people you love. In the "personality traits" that were never really you.

Press play and let's get MESy.

Connect with Jessica & David:

• The Azurite Way: theazuriteway.com
• Book: Transforming the Shame Triangle
• Jessica
• David
• Ask Jess and Dave Show, submit questions: askjessanddave@theazuriteway.com
• Catch them live at Esalen (Big Sur, CA) this October for the Transforming the Shame Triangle retreat

Thank you for listening! Don't forget to follow along on social media @_insideout.podcast, rate and review. And Join the MESy Mailing List for exclusive content, insights on what is coming up and more! 

Transcript

Welcome to 
The Inside Out Podcast. I'm your host Jojo and this is where we will navigate the mess together. That is mental, emotional, and spiritual. Let's get messy.

speaker-0 (00:27.278)
Hi guys, welcome back. Welcome to Inside Out if you're new here. We're gonna get right into it. And I wanna ask you this: have you ever done the work, the therapy, the journaling, read all the books, maybe done a retreat or two? You've gone deep, you've maybe cried it out, but three weeks later, you're right back in that same loop. That same criticism, that same shrinking, that same feeling like you're performing a version of yourself instead of actually living as your true self.

If you've ever felt that gap between knowing and actually changing, I think this episode's gonna hit a little different. So today I'm sitting down with Jessica Fern and David Cooley, who are co-authors of Transforming the Shame Triangle and also co-founders of the Azure Way. Jessica is a trauma therapist whose book Polysecure actually sparked global conversation about attachment. And David is the creator of the restorative relationship conversations model.

Bringing restorative conversations and justice into our most intimate conflicts. And what makes them the most unique duo is they've lived this together over 20 years of marriage, also been divorced, and now they're co-parenting. So what they've found is that most of us try to solve an emotional and spiritual wound with mental tools. We try to think our way around it. We analyze it, and that wound just sits there. So they call this the shame triangle.

And once they explain it, you guys, I think you're gonna start recognizing it everywhere in yourself, in the people you love, in the patterns you thought were maybe just personality. So you guys give a warm welcome to Jessica and David. You guys welcome to Inside Out.

speaker-1 (02:09.102)
Thank you, Joe. I know. We need you as our content editor. You word things great.

speaker-2 (02:09.74)
Thanks, Trojo, for having us.

speaker-0 (02:15.566)
Well, thank you. So I wanna know what the main reason for writing this book was.

speaker-2 (02:24.194)
Yeah, I think one of the things that Jessica and I have recognized that's been really cornerstone in helping people resolve internal and intrapersonal conflict is the question of dealing with shame. Through our respective private practices, we've recognized that this is something that's really complex, hard to deal with. It's not just a simple emotion in and of itself.

But actually plays a role in so many of the ways that we struggle to be authentic and live authentic lives, especially in the context of our relationships, even the relationships with ourselves. So Jessica was really the one that can let her speak to the the nuance of this, but she was the one that brought to me this question of the internalization of a model called the drama triangle, recognizing that when she was working with clients.

She was seeing this ping ponging between these specific parts and we can jump in more into depth of parts work in a moment. But she was seeing how these internal parts of us play off of each other in a way that we often see people get stuck in the drama triangle dynamics, i.e. the rescuer, the perpetrator, and the villain.

And we have internalized versions of those. And so as she was seeing that and bringing that to me, I was realizing that a lot of people in interpersonal conflict were getting stuck in their capacity to take accountability for the way that they've harmed their partners, was actually being inhibited by shame responses. And that unless we stop and worked on those, we wouldn't get the traction we needed to do the kind of repair work that we wanted to do. So it was this intersection between her observations and mine.

And the realization that we wanted to offer a tool that felt more practical and more nuanced and more specific to the question of shame.

speaker-1 (04:17.194)
Yeah, I really relate to what you started with, where a lot of my clients are people that have done a lot of work already and gone to retreats, read the books, do the workshops, do the all the different types of therapy, and like still we're hitting walls. And so I was like, what is going on? I was very devoted to figuring that out. And people who are wanting transformation, but they're not getting kind of the results that they're

looking for pursuing. And so this is a piece of what I came up with of okay, the wall that we're hitting is this internal constellation of parts of an inner critic and shame and all the ways that we're escaping and performing life instead of actually living life. And then voila once I started bringing it and presenting it, it just really resonated.

speaker-0 (05:14.104)
So you started saying some key things there. You said shame the inner critic and the escaper. And that is the shame triangle. So based on these three parts, how do we really start to tackle and heal the root of shame?

speaker-1 (05:22.243)
Yes.

speaker-1 (05:35.712)
Yeah. So first and in our book we lay out, you know, the concept of it, but then we really do a lot of here's the practic practical work to do, here's a million exercises to try to make this actually this shift happen. but first it is just this awareness of this internal dynamic playing out of starting to recognize that most things that you're struggling with you can sort of trace back to an inner critic voice that's beating you up.

And commenting on everything you did and didn't do. Another part that is shame that feels that and then believes that there's something fundamentally brought wrong or broken or unlovable. And then all the ways that we escape through overfunctioning or zoning out and avoiding and underfunctioning or projecting it out onto others in the world.

speaker-0 (06:28.512)
And David, you started to mention parts work. That seems to be, based on your book, a lot of how to break down and heal these things. Can you walk us through what that means and like really healing the the self criticism and that inner conflict?

speaker-2 (06:50.476)
Yeah, you know, parts where it comes from a modality called internal family systems that was created by Richard Schwartz. And essentially what he helped us realize about our own inner experience is that we have these parts or facets of our own internal experience that hold particular moments in our lives where something was great or really painful. And they kind of get crystallized right in our conversation.

Consciousness also in our nervous systems, right? We remember what life was like in that moment, what things felt like, what we were thinking, what were the stories that were running in our minds. And they carry that messaging with them and get re-triggered often in painful or conflictual moments, whether with other people or even internally in response to life events. And so what we start to see is that we have this symphony.

Of different parts speaking, getting activated within us all the time. And we're sort of moving in between, bouncing back and forth between these different parts. And a lot of us just blend with these parts or completely identify with these parts as if that's the totality of our consciousness. And so one of the really important things that I have s does is make a really key distinction between the parts and what we call self with a capital S, right? And this is the grounded, spacious, compassionate, creative.

center within our being that's able to see parts for what they are and not fully blend with them and thereby create some distance that allows us to relate to them in a much more regulated, safe, secure way. So this distinction between self and part is really key because it gives people a new kind of agency, a new kind of choice, a new kind of capacity to manage their internal experience in a new way.

And so what we're wanting is people to really understand this dynamic between these three specific parts that we're calling the shame triangle parts so that we can leverage the self to relate relate to those in a different way, not to exclude them, not to dismiss them, not to bypass them or quote unquote transcend them, but really integrate them into our lived experience.

speaker-2 (09:08.738)
validate their perspective, recognize the value in their intention and what they're trying to do for us, because that's something really interesting about parts, is they're always trying to do something key for us, but it's the strategy, it's the way they go about trying to make that need get met that really causes the problem. So we're wanting to re educate those parts with the self's help. So that's really sort of a high level view of of the way that parts work works in relationship to the shame triangle.

speaker-0 (09:39.16)
I want to ground it a little bit. We talk about this word shame. And for our listener in the room with us, there's so many aspects of life that we can hold on to and sink into that feeling. What do you find being a the most common or b the most like sticking? Like the one that you really just like can't.

really shift until you start looking at IFS or if you start really approaching the inner critic and the other aspects of this triangle.

speaker-2 (10:19.486)
Mm-hmm. I mean, there's a whole list. I mean, really any aspect of your life could be a reason for having the shame triangle get triggered. It could be body image. It could be money. It could be parenting. It could be friendship. It could be your professional life, your educational life, your sexual orientation, your racial identity. It could literally be any facet of your lived experience. could carry some internalized messaging that you're not doing it right.

Right, or you need to be doing something different or that something's fundamentally wrong with you. so any of those I've seen be extremely pernicious, right? sexuality is a key one. That's a really tenacious one for a lot of people. Right. There's something wrong with me because I feel or desire the way that I feel and desire. So that's a big one.

speaker-0 (11:13.59)
Is there something from your own life that really got you stuck in shame?

speaker-1 (11:20.172)
Yeah, for me, I think it started growing up in New York City and it was a lot about body image. That, you know, not being thin enough or not looking this way enough or that way enough. And initially I was numbing that actually through like emotional eating, just actually just wanting to disconnect from my body and not think. So I was escaping through disconnecting and numbing out and overeating.

And then flipped my escape strategy into over exercising and over-functioning and over-restricting. and so it's interesting, even though my body then changed actually pretty dramatically, it didn't take the shame away. There was still this fear that, well, what if I gained two extra pounds or five or ten or however many pounds? I'm still running and escaping through.

Yeah, the shame in the inner critic. Mm.

speaker-2 (12:21.439)
yeah. I think a current one for me is parenting. You know, we are the co parents of an eleven year old son and there are just very few examples of things in my life that generate as much shame as some of the feelings that I have around not being a good enough father. there's some really intense experiences around like I didn't respond in the way that he needed, or I'm not available enough, I'm working too much, or

You know, whatever the messaging is, but that's a place that I'm really having to do a lot of internal parts work to to manage that shame that can come up around not being a good enough father.

speaker-0 (13:00.078)
Well, really appreciate you guys sharing that because I think it allows ourselves, the listener, to really get honest and figure out what it is in us that we are burying, that we are critiquing, that we are escaping from. And what I loved in your book is how you you broke down escapism. And you know, he hearing the word escapism, it's like

I think if we're in that denial or that shame and it kind of just keeps that cycle going, we're not really able to pinpoint a the inner critic or even just the escapism route that we take. It might just be so automatic that we just pick up that phone and start scrolling or binging or whatever it is that that is our go-to. Can you break down the escapism just some just some of them?

that we might go to as techniques to to hide from ourselves.

speaker-1 (14:02.784)
Yeah, we can even go back and forth. I'll start with the overfunctioners. So we can escape through overfunctioning through perfectionism, overworking, overachieving, getting busy, like being very busy B, I'm active. You know, we think we're like rocking it at life, but it can actually be a way that I'm not letting myself slow down. Over caretaking. one of my go-to strategies for a long time is I'm gonna overfunction in relationships.

And it's actually a way to escape myself, right, through focusing outward on the other.

speaker-2 (14:37.942)
Yeah. And that's interesting category because often in our society in the United States, we really overemphasize productivity. And so a lot of escaper behavior can actually get celebrated and rewarded. And so that's challenging when people are wanting to live authentic and aligned lives with their inner experience, but then the social narratives are reinforcing this idea that you have to do more or be more. On the other side of that, you've got under functioning.

escapers where you really have the strategy of numbing out and that can be almost anything. You can numb out and disassociate with anything. It could be drugs, it could be sex, it could be scrolling, Netflix, right? It could be anything. but it's really about sort of instead of going into that over hyper functioning, you're under functioning, right? Life feels like too much.

And so you're doing anything to create a buffer between you and whatever the trigger is that reinforces that idea that I can't handle it. It's better to just shut down and put it all out of my mind to not fun you know, focus on the pain of the relationship between shame and the inner critic.

speaker-1 (15:51.756)
Another way that we can escape is through feelings. And this might seem counterintuitive, but it can be easier to say stuck in anxiety, depression, or anger than to actually be in connection to our true deepest shame. So a lot of people escape through this, yeah, anxiety, depression, anger, even raging out. Or or almost like aggressive positivity.

can be this way of escaping as well and to not actually feel the raw experience of what's happening.

speaker-0 (16:25.398)
Mm.

speaker-2 (16:26.604)
Yeah, and you can kind of get that in the the realm of spiritual bypass. Yeah. People are just wanting to put a positive spin on anything because it's too painful to look at. You know, and you can also project it onto other people. And so if we feel like someone's triggering our own shame, often what we'll do is we'll start to make them the bad guy, right? Or the villain in the scenario, and we'll start to project our own shame onto other people. And so it's easier to then be in conflict.

Right, than to actually be with the discomfort emotionally of our own shame.

speaker-0 (17:02.954)
Let's talk about conflict. Especially when conflict arises in relationship. You talk about how to facilitate a deeper connection through conflict and deeper intimacy. What does that look like?

speaker-2 (17:20.462)
Well, in this case, what we're really talking about when we talk about conflict between two or more people, we're talking about how do we process emotional hurt. Right. So if I feel hurt by something you've done or not done or said or not said, there's the sense that I need something to be repaired. I need something to be addressed, right? Hurt always needs attention. And so if that's not happening, that starts to create more distance, more sense of disconnection.

Right. And then that starts to erode our sense of safety with that person, right? Because we're often we're talking about attachment-based relationships. So the people with whom we form strong emotional bonds, we have what we call an attachment. And so when those ruptures happen through conflict, there needs to be some way to address them. There needs to be some way to hold your emotional hurt in a way that actually gives you the sense that I care about you and your feelings and your emotional needs.

And so if there's no process through which that happens, then things start to just deteriorate and we start to associate the other person with lack of safety and connection over time that diminishes intimacy. So if we don't have the capacity to be with the things in ourselves that produce shame, we're not going to be able to hear feedback from our partners when they start to tell us that something we did triggered that very thing.

So if I can't be with my own anger because for me anger is shameful or wrong or bad, it's going to be really tough for me to allow you to be angry in a relationship, even when it's justified, because you're telling me that you're angry about something I did and the impact of my behavior on you. So this is one of the fundamental ways that shame really inhibits repair, relational repairs. I can't hear you when you're telling me something valid and justifiable.

about my actions and their impact on you because my shame's too loud. So we're really wanting people to understand that kind of interference that gets generated by our shame parts and then inhibits our capacity to really repair conflict in a way that feels restorative.

speaker-0 (19:29.228)
I'm gonna ask a probing question because I like to I like to get under the under. I'm sure a lot of people are wondering, well, you've been married and divorced, and now you're co-parenting, co-authoring, co-everything. How? How do you not let the shame come in? How how is there not like how do you not let that inner critic take over in what is such a multifaceted relationship that you guys have built?

And not just from like raising a human, but really raising consciousness in other people and the books you put out. And Jessica, you you wrote two other books and you co wrote another book together. How how has all of the entire kitchen sink of crazy thoughts of like how and shame? And I I don't even I don't even know where to even like how to even navigate asking this question, but like

speaker-1 (20:11.66)
Hm.

speaker-0 (20:26.178)
How have you broken out of that shame triangle to to live it, to teach it?

speaker-1 (20:34.378)
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's probably many different ways. I mean, some of it and it's not that it never shows up. It's that when it shows up, we have tools and skills and capacity to navigate it. And I think we're both at a place where the majority of the time, not a hundred percent of the time, when either one of us feels, Okay, I'm on the drama triangle, I wanna turn you into the villain or I'm trying to rescue you, or I'm feeling the inner critic in me or the outer critic.

going for you so that I don't feel bad. There's the the pause, there's the space, there's enough self access to say, okay, but I don't want to make that choice. That's not how I want to show up in relationship. So we have a deep commitment to, even when things are hard or we feel like shit, to not be shitty to each other.

speaker-2 (21:28.192)
Yeah. Yeah. And if we are, 'cause that's still prepare it, we recognize that it's something that has to be addressed, you know.

speaker-1 (21:30.84)
Can repair it, right?

speaker-0 (21:37.324)
What is your method of repair after a fracture? 'Cause clearly there have been fractures and major repair to even get to where you both are sitting right now in the same house. How did how do you repair?

speaker-2 (21:54.902)
Yeah, one is naming the parts, you know, saying the inner critic was really active for me when I lashed out at you when you were saying that you were frustrated with the fact that I didn't show up and make our son's lunch the day that I was supposed to make it. Right. Or whatever it is. So really recognizing the parts, speaking for them and about them almost like we'd be speaking for someone else. By really saying that part was active for me, I recognize it.

And I see its impact on you. Right. So we're really contextualizing what was going on for us, not making it the other person's responsibility. This was happening for me. I see how I reacted to what you said. And I can really hear how that had a negative impact on you based on what you're saying in terms of feedback. So we're wanting to be able to name and contextualize what's going on for us, not as an excuse or to diminish or dismiss the other person.

But to contextualize and show that we have that level of self-awareness, especially around parts. And then we want to normalize the taking of accountability around recognizing impact specifically. I see how, or if I don't see, then I want to make the effort to understand how I've impacted you. So that's a question that we've really normalized. Like what was the impact of this versus you always do that, you never do this.

Or write something about my character. You're just you don't care about our relationship versus making these kinds of suppositions or projections about my truth. Right, she's really focused on what's the impact of that. When you don't show up in the way that you say you're going to, I write X, Y, and Z now in terms of impact.

speaker-1 (23:47.318)
Yeah, and to use maybe different words than we have, a lot of it is putting the ego aside for a few minutes and that defensiveness that just wants to spring forward and, you know, attack back or say, No, I didn't, or yes I did, or you got it wrong. And really just hold like shelfing it, right? And staying more grounded and okay, I'm I wanna be relational, I wanna hear, and I also knowing I'll get my turn to say what I need to say. That's a a key piece too.

is knowing I'm actually talking to someone who even if he's dysregulated now, eventually we'll get to a place where we can have a regulated conversation. He does care. And that's not an assumption that everyone's holding.

In their relationships, right.

speaker-0 (24:35.48)
Takes a lot of trust.

speaker-1 (24:36.866)
Right. Yeah.

speaker-0 (24:41.794)
being in the know that that person isn't gonna just like abandon. It takes it takes a very strong and healthy relationship to be able to do that, which is which is a beautiful thing because a as you said, you can't just think your way out of the shame. You can't just be like, okay, I I I see it. There's so much inner work and outer work because of naming it, because of putting your ego aside, because of all of these

these tools that you, you know, that you spoke of that really allows for this to transform because it's not just sitting in it.

speaker-2 (25:22.24)
Yeah. Yeah, and there's two in terms of skills and getting granular about what are the things we're really wanting to help clients cultivate, you know, one is self awareness. That's the beginning, that's the cornerstone. All of this work really depends on deepening and expanding our own self awareness, sometimes to a very right, very detailed level.

And part of what we're wanting to track are these three different centers in our being. We're wanting to track our beliefs and our thoughts and the stories that the mind creates in moments of distress or interpersonal or intrapersonal conflict. We're also wanting to be able to track our feelings and needs. You know, what is it that I'm feeling and needing from myself or another person? And then physically, and sometimes this is one of the lesser developed skills.

Is being able to track your own somatic responses. What does dysregulation and regulation look like in your individual nervous system? And do you know how to have some sense of choice and agency around how to bring yourself back into a zone of tolerance? Which means not being so dysregulated that you can't process without really having enough self energy online that you're not getting flooded or completely shutting down when parts get activated.

So we're really wanting people to have this awareness of what's happening inside of you in real time and what's needed to make the right adjustments to the thoughts, the feelings, and the somatic cues to keep you regulated. And so that's a beginning skill that takes time to develop, depending on how much of the work you've already done.

speaker-1 (27:00.864)
I think it's pretty advanced, honestly. It's more like it's a baseline skill and yet a lot of skills that we need at baseline take a lot of work to get there.

speaker-2 (27:10.478)
Yeah. Yeah, I think the second piece is the communication, right? Being able to once build on your awareness, can you then talk about your parts? Can you name them in a way that you're taking ownership of them versus making someone else responsible for your internal experience? So the way that we describe our internal experience is key too. So awareness and communication of what we're aware of are

two of the big components of this work and making it successful.

speaker-0 (27:45.142)
You co founded something called the Azure Way. Azure is a crystal. Mm-hmm. Can you tell the name and what this is?

speaker-1 (27:56.362)
Yeah, the well what it is is it's just an online platform for us to offer teachings, courses. we're starting this year with online content and we'll be expanding it into in-person retreats eventually, and we're starting with our teachings and we're also onboarding through time new teachers and their content that aligns with us in in the Azureite way.

before I say anything about the stone, do you wanna add to that, Dave? Just what we are?

speaker-2 (28:28.194)
Yeah, you know, it's it's really we're wanting to create a place where people have these opportunities to deepen the skills. It's one thing to read the book, it's another thing to attend the class and do demos and workshops with other people who are doing the same kind of work in real time. So this is really the impetus for us is we're wanting to have a platform where people are able to really dive into the work in an immersive and experiential way. Mm-hmm.

speaker-0 (28:56.798)
I love that because I think, you know, there's there's so much information out there and it's kind of just like grab what you can and see what works. But having a place that's dedicated to go to, whether that's for the retreats, for the teachers, for the specific work that you need to do, I love that that's gonna be all on one platform and that people can have access to that. So to the Azure Way website, it'll be linked in the show notes.

speaker-2 (29:18.638)
Yeah guys.

speaker-1 (29:24.27)
Yeah. And we it was actually during a shamanic journey that I was doing. And I had just seen, so it's Dave and I and Christy Decatur are the three co-founders of the Azurite Way. And I had just seen Christy and I was on a plane flying home and I was doing a journey on the plane. And the guidance I was getting was clear. I was being told it's called Azureite.

And at that time I had no clue. I was like, what the hell is Azurite? And I wrote it down. And and the guidance was like, go look it up. You know, you're gonna appreciate this. And so I look it up and it is, it's a mineral. It's beautiful. It's kind of this depending on, you know, exactly what it is, it's this deep blue and turquoise and purple and it's all about connecting sort of the earth, like heaven and earth, right? The spiritual side of us to the practical.

And it's all about transformation and how that transformation happened. So I was like, okay. Here it is. And it was funny, even Christy was like, Can you do another journey? Cause at first Dave and Christy were like, we don't know about this word. And you know, like, go have a branding conversation with your spirit guides. And I did a second one. And my guides were just clear. They're like, just trust that this is the name. And we have, yeah.

speaker-0 (30:49.538)
Wow. Yeah. Beautiful. So

speaker-1 (30:50.55)
Yeah. So use your guides for your branding is the takeaway.

speaker-0 (30:55.51)
Sometimes you just get these downloads. I mean I I have them all the time and people just look at me and it's like, what? I mean, that's how I came up with Inside Out. The mess. Like what that just it just came. It wasn't like a conscious decision. Right. At least not that I'm aware of, because I'm like, I'm still like, wait, what? How did this happen? I can't even tell you the timeline of how it happened because it just did. Yeah. That's beautiful. I love that. The

speaker-1 (31:16.438)
It just happened.

speaker-0 (31:22.058)
The the mess framework is so interesting with what you talk about because mental, emotional, spiritual, it's not just this like mental and I mentioned this before. It's not just mentally like being aware of it. It's like, how does it show up emotionally for you? And then spiritually, like how do you really rewire that? So I want to get messy with you guys mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Mentally. What is one thing that you really want people to know after hearing this conversation and

opening up, you know, parts of your life and the book and what is one thing that would be like if they could walk away with this, you'd be like, Yeah, that's good.

speaker-1 (32:01.886)
Yeah. I want people to know that that mental voice in your head that sucks can actually change. And it's not about it just going away, but it actually can transform into a voice that is no longer beating you up or attacking you, but actually into like an inner coach, into an ally.

speaker-2 (32:24.01)
I love that. Yeah. Yeah, and I want to echo that by saying we have a lot of choice in terms of what we experience mentally. You know, so there's a choosing that can happen when we start to recognize the difference between a part of us that's saying something versus really being grounded in self. Right. And when we're grounded in self energy, life is different. We're in a literal different state of being. And so I'm really wanting people to connect thoughts with states of being.

And to explore what the choices are like. What where is even just s small degrees of change possible for you to start choosing? And how does that feel? How does that change your state of being in a real way?

speaker-0 (33:06.548)
Emotionally. What's one thing that you want people to feel?

speaker-1 (33:12.642)
want people to well, the distinction we make that feels really important is making the separation between feeling shame and actually the story, or just feeling anything actually, feeling your raw experience of great things, challenging things, neutral things, that then shame gets put over it. Like I'm not supposed to feel those things.

Whether it's my desire or my guilt or my upset or my anger or excitement. So I just really want people to actually start feeling your true feelings without putting story on top, the mental piece of what it means.

speaker-0 (33:56.11)
Rid of that inner critic and just get rid of it. But again, transform it and just know that it's part of it.

speaker-2 (33:57.878)
Yeah, that would get

speaker-1 (34:05.742)
Yeah.

speaker-2 (34:07.254)
Yeah, and I would this is sort of a segue between the emotional and the somatic, but I'm really wanting people to be able to feel safe. What does it mean to feel safe with big emotions or intense emotions? Part of what drives so much of the escaper strategy is is it doesn't feel safe or manageable to be in proximity to our own shame. So I want people to really explore the capacity that we can cultivate over time to be in the presence of shame.

and not collapse or not feel like we've got to numb out or not feel like we've got to get away from it and feel anything else except shame. So I'm really wanting people to have a sense of safety and resilience in response to their own right spectrum of inner experiences, inner feelings.

speaker-0 (34:55.039)
Mm. Spiritually.

If you could wave a magic wand and have people believe this one thing about themselves, what would it be?

speaker-1 (35:07.178)
Hmm. Their love?

speaker-2 (35:14.872)
Yeah. That you are your own greatest ally. You can be your greatest source of support, resilience.

speaker-0 (35:24.374)
I love that. Well, you guys, I want you to plug everything that you're doing. I want you to talk about the I want you to plug the book. I want you to plug your website, your social media. This was such an amazing conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time to break this down and talk about your new book. And yeah, where can people find you?

speaker-1 (35:45.526)
Yeah, thank you, Jojo. So my website is jessicafern.com and my books are there. and the Azureite Way is our website for Azureite. And then we also started our own little show, the Ask Jess and Dave show, where people just submit their questions and we answer them and we kind of tackle one question usually per episode. So ask Jess and Dave at the Azureite Way.

That is the email address to submit questions. So yeah, if you want to hear more from us, send us your questions, we'll answer them.

speaker-2 (36:18.99)
Yeah, and if people want to connect with me directly, they can go to restorative relationship dot com. And so that's my personal website for the work that I do with partners.

speaker-1 (36:30.784)
Yeah, and this fall you'll see actually more courses on the Azureite Way, this, you know, click and watch kind of thing versus live courses that you have to be live at. and we're gonna be at Esseln in California in October, which is really excited doing a transforming the shame triangle retreat. That's yeah.

speaker-0 (36:48.462)
So cool.

speaker-1 (36:53.92)
The pretty spectacular place in the world. So yeah.

speaker-0 (36:57.39)
Amazing. Well you guys, thank you so much. And this will all be linked in the show notes, and you know where to find me at underscore insideout.podcast. Also on Substack. All linked in the show notes. And have a great week, guys. Bye.