Episode 391: Using Shame as a Compass for Healing with Dr. Frank Spinelli

0:00All right, everybody, I want to tell you about today's sponsor, Wired for Addiction, and honestly, I am so excited about this partnership. You might remember Dr. Evelyn Higgins from when she came on the show to talk about the biomarkers of addiction. That episode landed in such a powerful way for so many of you, and I really believe in the work she's doing. Here's the thing, if you or someone you love has been caught in chronic relapse, addiction switching, or treatment that only works for a while, the issue may not be behavioral. It may be biological, and that changes everything. Dr. Higgins and her team actually measure the underlying biomarkers driving these patterns, dopamine, cortisol, inflammation, mitochondrial function, and then build a personalized plan to bring your biology back into balance.

0:52She put together a free guide for you, the Biology of Addiction 10 Core Biomarkers, downloaded at theaddictedmind.com forward slash wired. That's theaddictedmind.com forward slash wired. There'll also be a link in the show notes. And I want you to know, you are not broken. Sometimes your biology just needs to be understood, and I think that brings a lot of hope. All right, on to this episode. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Addicted Mind podcast. I'm Dwayne Osterland, and I'm so glad you're here.

1:31I remember thinking when I was filling out this survey that it was all there. It was all there. And I was drinking and I was not happy with myself. And I just said, who is this person? I start the book by saying that the bravest thing you can do is look yourself in the mirror and not turn away. And I looked myself in the mirror and I turned away. I couldn't even look at myself. My guest today is Dr. Frank Spinelli, a physician, a trauma-informed coach, and the author of the new book called The Shame Compass. Frank survived abuse as a boy that got buried under silence and self-blame. And for years, he did everything you're supposed to do to heal.

2:14He thought he'd close that chapter. And then the isolation of the pandemic, along with a 47-page Boy Scouts litigation form that made him relive every detail, crack the whole thing back open. That shame he'd been out running for decades came right back. And what he did next is really what this conversation is about. Instead of running one more time, he actually turned toward it. And he asked what that shame was actually trying to tell him. But before we jump in, if this podcast has been meaningful to you, take a moment to rate and review The Addicted Mind on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Even better, write a review.

2:56Those reviews help people who are struggling find this show. And don't forget, follow us on social media so you can stay connected. All right, let's dig into this episode.

3:11All right, everybody, welcome. I have an incredible guest today, Dr. Frank Spinelli. And we're going to talk about one of my favorite topics, I guess, in a weird kind of way, Shane. Yay! Hey. Frank, do you want to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you, and then we're going to dig into this. Sure. Thank you. My name is Frank Spinelli. I'm based out of New York. I'm a physician by training, and I've been doing that for a very long time. And more recently, I work in research with patient-focused research and really gaining perspectives of patients all around the world and it's been really ripe with a lot of information.

3:56Simultaneously to that, I am a trauma-informed coach with Reframe, which really helps people navigate their relationships with alcohol. But because of my specialty and my personal background is trauma, it fits really well with addiction, which happens to be in this case alcohol. But I talk a lot with clients about a lot of their addictions. It's not necessarily only alcohol or substances like drugs, but it could be food. It could be sex. And you know better than anybody, there's a variety of ways that this manifests itself. And the root cause is essentially shame. And if you want, I can just go into my background when I was a child.

4:35Yeah, because we're going to, to kind of set this up, we're going to be talking about your new book, The Shame Compass, which I love that title. and I love that work. So we're going to talk about that, but I think being able to really understand the depth of that work, we have to understand a little bit of your story and a little bit of where all this comes from, right? Because then it all comes together. Yeah, exactly. And I'm happy to do that. So as a little Italian boy from Staten Island, New York, my parents were immigrants from Italy. So really good stock people, hard workers, Italian through and through, and very much Catholic.

5:16And at the age of 11, I was enrolled in Boy Scouts because it was part of our school, but it was also part of our church. So it was very connected. Unfortunately, from the ages of 11 to 13, I was molested by my Scoutmaster. And what's critical here is that at 13, when I had finally had enough of the psychological and the physical abuse. I mean, this was a variety of different ways of being traumatized. There was the sexual component, but there was also a lot of psychological abuse, a lot of physical abuse, a lot of abuse where the scoutmaster used the other boys. He employed the other boys to beat other boys into submission.

6:00It was really traumatic. I finally told, and my parents did the right thing, and they went to the senior scoutmasters, and they were essentially, in retrospect, shamed into staying quiet. They told them that I would only bring shame onto my family, and everybody would know, and this would not be good for me. And so they agreed to allow the scoutmaster, Bill Fox, to step down. You have to understand, Bill Fox was also a highly decorated police officer, as were a lot of the senior scouts. And so my parents agreed. Life was supposed to go back to where it was. Unfortunately, like you were saying, shame keeps it all hidden, right?

6:42Right. We keep it isolated. We keep it quiet. And I went through my life blaming myself, which is what we do. I didn't know that I had been abused. I thought I had brought that on myself. And the way it was handled only reinforced that, right? So I found by chance in college, the most extraordinary art therapist and she saved my life. And I worked with her for many years and it was because of her that I was able to become a doctor. And then I wrote a health book. And on that book tour, I met up with some old friends that were Boy Scouts with me. And that sparked a very clear memory of Bill Fox.

7:26You know, this was in the 2000s, just when we had Google and stuff like that. So I looked him up and I discovered that the year after we agreed to let him step down quietly without prosecuting or going to the police, Bill Fox adopted a boy. He became father of the year. He was on the Today Show. And I went into probably a real tailspin and I did something crazy. crazy. I found him and I called him. Now you have to remember the best metaphor anybody has ever given me about child abuse is that a child molester doesn't remember every child they molested. It's like an alcoholic remembering every glass of Chardonnay.

8:10You're just another drink. So of course he didn't remember me. No worries there. He did tell me something that shocked me. he not only adopted a boy, he adopted 15 boys over the course of a couple of decades. Many of them had special needs. And I was shocked. I was shocked that he admitted this so willingly. He wasn't even suspicious of me. But of course, I told him, oh, I looked up to you and you were so great. I lied. So I hung up. And for the next two years, I worked with the police, the authorities. And I wore a wiretap. I wore a wiretap. I mean, me, the Staten Island boy wearing a wiretap.

8:55And this was all recounted in my book, The Memoir P. Shai, which was published in 2013. And essentially, spoiler alert, we were able to bring him to justice. And so the point of all this is that at that point in my life, I entered into therapy again, very intensive therapy, and it saved me again. And I became a doctor. I brought my child molester to justice. I had successfully thought I had healed. I mean, I thought this is what you want to be. This is the top of the pinnacle. And I was successful for many years. And in fact, I was working a lot in research with my own patients, trying to understand their childhood trauma, how to understand how childhood trauma impacts people as an adult.

9:45I was finding working with people living with HIV, women who suffered with body image dysmorphia, men who suffered from body dysmorphia, always had this root cause of having something traumatic happen in their childhood. And once I connected the dots, I was able to work with them. And so I thought I was living my best life as a physician because not only had I overcome a childhood trauma, not only had I become successful, written a book, brought my child molester to justice, but I was helping people. It's like everything, right? You did it all totally right. Yeah. Check, check, check, check, check.

10:25Check, check, check. Yeah. All the boxes. And at the same time, it takes incredible amount of courage, an incredible amount of strength to even do all that, right? I mean, especially facing the person who molested you and doing that work. I mean, that takes so much courage. And it took a lot of energy. And it almost really destroyed me. But again, thankfully, thankfully, I could get a therapist. Thankfully, I had the resources. I was lucky. So I felt that I had moved on like many people do. And then something happened to you and me. we had 2020 and that was the COVID pandemic and it was the lockdown and I was living in isolation.

11:09And in that period of isolation, all the external structures that had been holding me together, the work, the office, the professional, the personal connections were gone, were gone. And as you know better than me, shame lives in isolation. It does not grow in community. So once you have eliminated community, and here we were, everyone living in isolation, I started to feel the shame coming back because it was always below the surface. Simultaneously, I was involved in a Boy Scout litigation. I was suing the Boy Scouts of America with a class action suit that involved, I believe, 90 ,000 men, 90 ,000 survivors.

11:58And part of that required at the same time that I fill out a very detailed questionnaire. And I believe and I attribute that my spiral, my rock bottom moment, whatever you want to call it, happened at that moment. I remember thinking when I was filling out this questionnaire that it was all there. It was all there. And I was drinking and I was not happy with myself. and I just said, who is this person? I start the book, The Shame Compass, by saying that the bravest thing you can do is look yourself in the mirror and not turn away. And I looked myself in the mirror and I turned away. I couldn't even look at myself.

12:42And that's what I said. You know what? What if shame is not something we need to move away from? What if we leaned into it and used it not as indictment but as information? What if it is pointing you in a direction because you're out of alignment with your own core values? And so I realized it wasn't the alcohol that was the problem. The problem was that I was using alcohol to mask the fact that I didn't want to look at the shame. And when I thought of direction and leaning in and focusing on it, I just thought of what if I I used shame as a compass and then I developed the framework, which has become the compass framework.

13:27And fortunately, I've been working with that. Can you go back a little bit? Because, you know, you were talking about how, you know, the pandemic comes along and we're all starting to isolate. And that shame right below the surface, but it's not quite conscious. It's like percolating there. And if you've had trauma in your history, right, and shame and trauma go together, right, it's like, but I had everything right. I had everything right. I did everything right. I did everything right. I had everything right. What more can I do? And I think that's where the missing piece is. You know, addiction and shame are not separate problems like you just said.

14:13They're the same wound. They're just expressed differently. So shame drives a compulsion. Shame survives with sobriety. And shame unendressed is what relapse happens as well. So it's all intertwined. People, we call the shame spiral. What? I tell myself I'm a bad person. So therefore, I use something to make me feel better. And then I feel bad about myself for doing that. And so then I tell myself I'm a bad person. And then I repeat the cycle. It's the same thing. Spirals down into that really dark, dark space, right? That we can easily, like when you kick off a shame spiral, it can get really dark really fast.

14:56And then you're unworthy of anything, right? You're just not worthy of connection anywhere, right? And that's why people get confused between shame and guilt. Because guilt is, I did something bad and I feel badly about it. Whereas shame is, I'm bad. And so one is behavior. Guilt is, oh, I said something snarky to my sister. You know what? I'll apologize. I can learn from it. It's healthy. Shame is identity. I'm a bad person inherently. And the key difference there is not only the identity versus behavior. It's the fact that the person, the voice that is telling you you're bad is probably not your own voice.

15:40It was installed by someone else who has their own problems. when you were probably too young to even understand what was happening. So you store it away in your mind as a fact. And that fact is about you and you live with it and you believe it. And so that's what makes shame so inherent. You're never going to move away from shame. Shame is an emotion. We have to have it. But it's learning shame literacy. How do you interpret what it's telling you instead of just blindly listening to it and following it? Yeah, I love that. And I love that idea. Like, yeah, we can't be shameless. It's part of who we are.

16:18And it's part of being human. It's an important part of being human. But I like the idea of like shame literacy, shame resilience, all of that. So tell me a little bit as we go through this story, right? Here you are, the pandemic's going along. And your structure to keep that shame down or away or avoided or whatever is starting to fall apart. And then all of a sudden, you get this new piece of information from the Boy Scouts to fill out this form. And so your shame has already kind of fallen apart here. You're already drinking. And then this comes in. I remember I was filling out the form, you know, 47 pages.

16:57It's not going to happen in one sitting. It was something that you have to remember the details, like how many times, explicit details of sex, where they occurred, how many times. And I just remember like blacking out at one point and the next day I said, that's it. This is where it stops. You know, pandemic drinking was very common. Alcohol was considered essential. Liquor stores were open and encouraged. And so millions of people developed alcohol use disorder. That was because we had a shared experience of this isolation. This was uncharted territories for us. And so it was frightening. And I can understand where addiction was closely linked with this.

17:41But simultaneously having to deal with an old trauma and the shame of the questionnaire and what it brought up really caused me to spiral. So I call that my rock bottom moment. You know, it wasn't a DUI. It wasn't an accident. Thank the Lord. but you know it was still a moment in time where I said I'm done this is it it's a switch went off in my head and I immediately started working on what is this shame telling me I have been trying to avoid it I've been trying to outrun it but what if I just stopped and I just took it in and said to myself, what is this really all about? And, you know, part of the book, aside from the shame compass framework is, uh, other vignettes that I learned.

18:29So one of the things that I root myself in is called the four P's. So, you know, this is a typical thing that everybody experiences. You ever go to work or you, you ever talk to somebody at a party and they say something to you and you just get triggered, you get activated and immediately you want to snap at them. And this happened to me with my boss, who was a very brilliant person that I used to work with. And he said something snarky. And I immediately thought to myself, what? And interestingly, I had been working on these different scenarios. And I said to myself, wait a minute, pause. That's the first P.

19:08And two, be present in the moment. Okay, so I stopped talking. I was present. I was thinking about what he was saying. And I was pondering. And I said, I'm not hearing him. I'm hearing Bill Fox. I'm hearing my child molester talk to me. Well, guess what? I'm not 11 years old. I'm a grown-ass man. I'm a physician. And this has nothing to do with what's going on with him. He is probably having his own scenario. So pausing, being present, pondering the situation, and what are the possibilities of how to answer this. And once you train yourself to do this over time, you can have shame literacy or fluency and develop resilience.

19:55And so that was the beginning of developing the framework. And so then I developed the seven stages and really filled in the context with them. But it all came from the fact that it isn't the childhood trauma that haunts you. It is the representation in the present. And for many people who suffer childhood traumas, what they do is try to relive them in the present, in loops, in the hopes that they will right a wrong. But you know what? We never do. And that's what makes it unhealthy. And we get stuck there in that. We do that over and over. Oh, yeah. Which is the definition of insanity. Yeah. Oh, my gosh.

20:39Tell me a little bit about that moment where you, you know, shame, it's like we want to run and hide, right? We don't want anybody. When we have shame, it's like, don't, you know, hide your head in shame, right? Close your eyes. Don't let anybody see you. Not even, don't even see yourself, right? Like I can't even see myself. But you had that moment where you said, hold on a second, hold on a second. I am going to look here. Tell me about that process, because I think that's the first step, maybe the first moment of pause, right? But it's so when shame is there, it can be so, so hard. It's very hard.

21:16And I think for me, it was looking in the mirror. There's a wonderful book called where it's involving mirror work. And it was very important for me to acknowledge that if I was going to do this, that I was going to do this. You know, I was really going to make a concerted effort daily to practice this. And, you know, again, it was a matter of breaking it down into concepts. So, again, like if you take the compass framework, the first C is confronting, right? So it's not about confrontation in a sense, but it's about stop running. Start noticing. Start looking at what is it your environment looks like.

22:01So often, the most ambitious person at work may be someone who's suffering with the most shame because why? We stay busy. We achieve more. We drink more. We scroll more. We're doing, doing because we don't want to sit. We don't want to sit with it and think about what's going on in our lives. Because again, it takes that. We have to notice before we can see what is even possible. Yeah. And so we start there and we start to notice. And how do we start to move from that moment to the next? Well, the next one is a great follow-up. It's the O for observing. So again, imagining like you're a scientist and you're observing the situation with a little bit of distance.

22:46And you have to do this with kindness and compassion. And I say that, and I want to say it again, kindness and compassion are not just nice to haves. There is neuroscience to back up that when you treat yourself with compassion and kindness, you can open yourself up to the possibilities that one, this is not your fault. Two, you didn't ask for this. Or three, whatever happened to you was something outside of your own doing. And so you observe it. You're confronting, you're not running, you're staying put, and then you're going to observe this. And then you're also looking for physical signs of how this makes you feel, which comes later on.

23:32And then the next is the M, which is mapping. Now, mapping is very important because understanding what the source is, is always crucial. So for example, with me, very simple. I was molested. We know that. 11 to 13. Now, I'm not insinuating that we need to go back and do a deep dive. That is something you may want to do with the shame compass, but in association with a clinical psychologist, if you feel that you need to, or they feel you need to. But it is important for us to understand the origin. Because then when I'm in the present and I'm understanding that I'm being activated, I could say to myself, wait a minute, this is a Bill Fox situation.

24:14This is Boy Scouts all over again. Root yourself into the present. Who am I? What is going on here? Why is this activating me? And talking to yourself, parenting yourself, which is so critical. Yeah. And I think that's such an important piece because if you're caught in that loop and you're in that spiral and you're not doing these steps, you know, observing with that kindness and compassion, you don't get the, I know this sounds hard, but you don't get the value that this experience is giving you. So you can't grow from that. Once again, you're caught in that insanity of repeating this over and over and over again and not even realizing you're doing it.

24:51You know, one of the other things you mentioned really well is that it's not easy. This doesn't happen naturally. No one taught you this. So you have to teach yourself. And I think one of the most important things when I talk about the power of the pause, which by the way, is your secret power. How are you going to pause when someone is activating you, right? You can't, you're going to be, you're activated. So what do I recommend when you're on the phone or when you're with your partner, your wife, your husband, your best friend, and they're talking when they stop talking, don't answer. Count to two, count to three, and then speak.

25:30What does it show you? One, it shows whoever you're talking to that you're listening. Two, it's training your brain to say, okay, Frank's going to answer when he's ready. He's not going to let shame kick in and override this process. So you have to practice when you're not activated. And it takes a lot of effort, especially for an Italian New Yorker. I'm ready to answer you immediately because I'm all excited, but it is very important for us to train ourselves, especially if we had childhood trauma. And that is all part of the process of, you know, moving through the framework. And I love what you're saying there, because I think you're letting people know that this is something that this is a skill you grow.

26:15You can follow this compass framework, right? And you grow it as you do it. None of us like just, I mean, if we could just do it, we would have done it already. right well i mean that's that's what i think people have to understand like these are skills that we can grow and we can use a framework like this to be able to move through that process right so let's go a little farther if you don't mind like going down the compass path so next um next is the first piece so it's processing and and in this i talk about the three bodies and so You have to understand that with the three bodies framework, shame doesn't just live in here.

26:54It lives in your body. It lives in your stories. It lives in the relationships you have. Healing has to happen in all three. Immediately, if you're activated, what happens? I might drop my shoulders. I might feel discomfort. I might start sweating. That is a somatic experience. That happens. And it's because your body is storing this in your nervous system throughout your body, but especially with your nervous system. And so you may want to identify, okay, I'm feeling something. What is that? Oh, I used to feel it in my chest. I used to feel like it was like a turbine. And I would say, uh-oh, okay, I'm getting that turbine feeling.

27:35Hmm, I know what this is. This is shame popping up. I must be activated by something and acknowledging it. And guess what? Just not judging it. Okay, this happens. We get it. You're good. The second part is the story body. So this is the narrative layer that it is the belief and the script and that inner voice that tells you, interprets for you what's happening. And it's very critical that you understand that that voice in your head, that person who is very consciously willing to tell you the blooper reel of everything you've ever did wrong is probably not your own voice. And I call this the unreliable narrator.

28:17And I talk a lot about it because I listened to that unreliable narrator. And I used to spend many hours going, shut up, Frank, just shut up. And finally, one day I said, stop calling that voice Frank. And I don't know for all you Stephen King fans, but one of my favorite books and movies is The Shining, and the little boy Danny has a voice in his mouth. He calls Tony. So I started calling that voice Tony. And whenever I was hearing Tony, I would just say, all right, Tony, enough. And the important distinction there was I did not want to yell at myself anymore. It wasn't my voice. The second part was what Tony was saying to me wasn't necessarily a fact.

28:58It was a thought. And you have to distinguish what are the facts and what are the thoughts. And so every time I would hear that voice, like, for example, you really screwed up that meeting. What an idiot you were. I knew you couldn't do it. Wait a minute. Wait a minute, Tony. The meeting went well. My boss actually said, oh, nice job. Yeah, I did get held up on that one question, but I'll get back to that. You know what I mean? Talking yourself out of it, because otherwise you'll just spiral again. Oh, you're right. I did a terrible job. You know what? You might have remembered it like I should have, but I didn't.

29:33Anyway. So it's important for us to break it down. And then finally, the relational body is how shame plays out in connection with other people. The walls we build, not the boundaries, the walls we build, because why? Shame likes isolation. So we build walls. It's a very different thing than boundaries. Boundaries are where I end and you begin. They're normal. It's just a distinguish or a differentiator. Walls are, nope, don't, you know, talk to the hand. And it's very important. So that's where the processing means going through all threes for a matter, because there's no way out of somatic shame.

30:13The body has to come first. And there's a wonderful book called The Body Keeps the Score, which really illustrates a lot of that. I mean, as you're talking, I'm thinking about this and I'm thinking about how, you know, shame comes into so many dynamics of the relationship to ourselves, the relationship to others, what we choose to do or not do. And really, when we're in that shame spiral, most of those decisions aren't going to align with our true self, right? And then we're off doing things we don't want to do or acting in ways we don't want to act or whatever that aren't aligned with us. And it's like the shame is such a strong, dominant, emotional body experience, as you're saying.

30:54And that's why this work is so important. It's a stronghold on you. And, you know, just to make sure, we were talking about this prior, but this isn't exclusively for people who are abused as children. There are many people who feel shame as adults. You could have had a very bad breakup. You could have been cheated on. You could have lost your job. When you think about the number one reason women, adult women experience shame, it's body image. It's the way they feel about their bodies. The number two, motherhood, being a good mother, being a single mother versus being a stay-home mother, being someone who can't become a mother.

31:34There is intense shame that goes along with that. And then with men, you know, the top two that come to mind immediately are an inability to be the caretaker for a family or certainly, you know, having fantasies in the bedroom. That is a very common shame for both men and women being unable to express to their partner what would give them pleasure because they're afraid of what they're going to say about them. Oh, yeah. Shame and sexuality. Huge, huge. culturally that's just everywhere right so you're talking about all these different dynamics that of shame how it can come in and impact us from trauma but also from society from culture and religion politics where you live and if we're listening to that shame like we were saying earlier we're not going to be living our true selves we're going to be listening to tony Yeah, I mean, he gets around, so be careful.

32:37Yeah. So as people go through this, I want to know a little bit about your transformation here, because you did all that work early with your trauma. And now this, I kind of see it as like this even deeper level that you did. Tell me about that transformation and where you are now, I guess, with that. Well, I mean, it's been years now since that, you know, I developed it and was implementing it into the work that I do, particularly with my clients and through Reframe and really opening my eyes to the fact that when you're working with people who experience trauma, when you're working with people who are unhappy with their relationship with substances or food or sex, that it's really not about the culprit, which let's say, for example, for reframe most likely, it would be alcohol.

33:33It's not really about alcohol. And I would start every meeting by saying, I'm not really going to talk about alcohol because alcohol isn't your problem. Alcohol is the vehicle again for what you're using to numb, escape, hide from. What we really need to get underneath is what is it? What is causing you to be out of alignment with your value. So when I say to people, what do you value most for me? I'll give you one, you know, top of my head. Kindness. I love kindness. I think kindness is a choice. It doesn't come naturally for a lot of people. Kindness, compassion, maybe loyalty. And our core values change over time because we change a little bit.

34:17And whenever I feel that people say, oh, I slipped up, I had a bad night, I drank too much. I said, well, what's going on? It's not about, oh, let's talk about the alcohol. It's not about the alcohol. It's about what's going on with you in your life, with the dynamics you are having to deal with. And once you realize it all goes back to you, okay, what's happening in my world? Well, you know, I might be losing my job. You know, I have three kids. I don't know how I'm going to, and I feel incredibly shameful about that. Well, that makes a lot more sense than I had some drinks last night, which we'll get over.

34:55And I don't want to minimize alcohol use disorder. There are people who should never drink, and there are people who really have an issue with alcohol. But for many people, especially during the pandemic, we used alcohol as a Band-Aid because we were just so sad and isolated and lonely. And we have to heal that. And so I learned from that. Yeah, and you have to heal from that. And you know what? It all goes back to being kind to yourself, being compassionate, being patient. I think we feel that there is this binary, I have to be good or bad. And it's not that way. There's an in-between where I say very often to clients, you are becoming the person you want to be.

35:43That doesn't happen overnight. But the good news is you want better for yourself. There are so many people who don't even know they want better. They're stuck. And so I think the hope for me in writing it was obviously a catharsis. I wrote the book where it's not memoir, but the first quarter is about my experience. And then we go into the framework and how, and I give examples of clients I've worked with and other examples outside of the realm of child sexual abuse, because not everybody had that experience. But certainly understanding that the first step is looking at yourself in the mirror and saying, you know what, this is not who I thought I could be.

36:26I want more. I want to be better than this. And hopefully the book will give you the inspiration to do just that. Awesome, Frank. I really enjoyed this conversation. Before we stop, though, I'd love to ask every guest one question. Uh-oh. And someone out there, maybe they're stuck in that darkness of shame. Maybe they're really having a hard time. And you could tell them one thing. What would you want them to know? Oh, I would want you to know that you are not alone, that whatever you experienced, you didn't deserve it and that you didn't bring it on yourself. But more importantly, if you are listening to this, I want to say how proud I am of you because this is hard.

37:16And just by being here, you're doing the best you can. Oh, I love it. I love it. All right. Where can people find you? How can they get a hold of you? Where can they find the book? Give me the title, the full title again. Well, it's the Shame Compass. It's a radical framework for trauma healing and self-acceptance. You can find it wherever books are sold and Barnes and Nobles or Amazon, anywhere, really. You can find me at my website, frankspinelli.com, or you can follow me on Instagram or Facebook. I do every couple of days, I do a shame video on Instagram or YouTube and they're like less than 60 seconds.

37:58And I'm trying to get the message that there is no shame in your game. You can be proud of it. You just have to lean into it. I love it. I love it. I will put all the links in the show notes at theaddictedmind.com as well. So you guys can get them there as well. Just go to the show notes. Frank, thank you for coming on. And I'm going to say just having the courage to share your wisdom with everyone out there so that we all can grow. Well, thank you very much. And thank you for all you do. And thank you for having me. You're welcome.

38:39So that conversation with Frank is going to definitely sit with me for a while. What really struck me, and I love this reframe and I can't agree with it more, is that shame isn't something we're supposed to get rid of. It's information. It's pointing us toward the place where we're out of alignment with our own values. Frank didn't heal by making his shame go away. He got there by learning to read it and by pausing before reacting to it. There's something really hopeful in that, I think. Now, if you want to go further with this, take a look at Frank's book, The Shame Compass. I'll have all the links in the show notes at theaddictedmind.com.

39:15And if this episode gave you a little bit of hope, do me a favor, rate and review The Addicted Mind wherever you're listening. Write a review if you can. Share this episode with someone who needs to hear it. And follow us on social media. Every review, every share helps someone out there who's stuck in the darkness find a conversation that might just be the start of something different. So thanks for being here. And I'll talk to you on the next episode.