Becoming Shameless: The Power of De-Shaming for a Happier You and a Better World

How would it feel to feel free from shame? Take a moment to imagine it. If you’d like to get closer to that, join me for Episode 11: Becoming Shameless. 

Everyone has shame and inhibitions we picked up from our culture or past experiences. Even those who mask it really well.  It is absolutely possible to shed that baggage. It is a liberating process.

This episode will walk you through an effective approach to de-shaming that you can do with someone close to you or on your own. 

You will learn how to shed judgment about yourself and others. You will walk away knowing how to release shame, feel more free, more worthy and acceptable, and more connected.

Links mentioned in this episode:

1. De-escalate Stress Quick-Start Class (online) April 12, 2024 at 3pm for only $10. Tired of getting so activated, stressed or anxious? Got a habit you want to kick but keep getting overwhelmed by urges? Learn a simple way to de-escalate anxiety, activation, and urges. You need nothing but your body. Space is limited. Sign up today at https://laurajurgens.com/events

2. For a transcript of the episode, go to: https://sexhelpforsmartpeople.buzzsprout.com/  and click on the episode, then click on the transcript tab.

To sign up for my email newsletter, where you can get special companion worksheets for the podcast and other free resources, go to  https://laurajurgens.com and grab the Touch Play Guide while you're at it.

Get the free guide Find Your Secret Turn Ons to discover the roadmap to your best sex life at https://laurajurgens.com. You can also learn more about me and how to inquire about coaching availability.

Get a transcript of this episode by going to https://sexhelpforsmartpeople.buzzsprout.com/ Click on the episode, then choose the transcript tab.

PS: If you are offended by some swearing, this podcast is not for you.

Transcript

Hey everyone. Welcome to episode 11. Today is all about how to release shame. We are unpacking what shame is and what it does, why you might want to cultivate healthy guilt instead sometimes, and how to join the de shaming revolution for yourself, and also as a gift to other people. Ready to jump in? Let's do it.

Alrighty.

Hello to you today. I hope you're feeling good. And yet I'm also here for you if you are in the other part of life, the part where you're on the struggle bus. I was there over this past week a bit, and you know, it's just normal. So wherever you are today, I am sending some love your way. And when I work with people on uncovering their deepest capacity for connection and pleasure, and you know, when I did that work, I was For myself and still do.

What is always true is that our relationship with ourselves is really what underlies our relationships with others. It's the first thing we need to heal fully in order to reach our capacity to enjoy ourselves in this life and have meaningful connections. That relationship with ourselves is what all other relationships depend on.

So today we're going to talk about shame because shame is something we internalize We hold against ourselves and we harm ourselves with it. No matter who tries to shame us, it only becomes shame when we agree, even inadvertently. And, you know, you may hear that and kind of want to fight me on it, and that's okay.

But listen, let's just check. So if someone says they think you suck for being a Martian, you just find it weird and move on. Right, you might be a touch hurt because they were kind of mean, but you don't feel ashamed about being a Martian because you're not a Martian. So you just don't agree with the premise.

Now look, if there's something about you that you do agree with, let's say you're a really good swimmer and someone tries to shame you for that, they say you're a bad person for being a good swimmer. Yeah, I mean, it just doesn't land. It's when we believe, when we allow ourselves to internalize the agreement, that it becomes shame.

So look, this is good news because no one can shame us without our consent. That means that if we learn how to withhold that consent or revoke our consent, we can actually start being part of the solution. We can help ourselves out of the judgment shame cycle in ourselves. And also the one that's really at large and uncontrolled in the world today.

We live in a very shaming world today, but I want so much for you to feel free. It is so powerful and amazing to release shame. It's oh my gosh, it's it's like maybe the best thing ever. So that's why we're here today to understand it and make choices about how we want to go forward. And to release.

shame that is keeping us from having more joy and connection in our lives. So here's how we're going to do this today. First, we're going to start with defining shame and contrasting it with healthy guilt. We'll look at which is useful and why or why not. Number two is we're going to talk a bit about shame's function in human society and why it's gone all haywire now.

Number three, we're going to get to the nitty gritty of how to de shame. There are five key components and I will explain each one to you. Number four is we're going to try out the de shaming protocol. I'm going to walk you through how to try it out with someone close to you or if you need to on your own, although I recommend finding a de shaming partner, you can do it on your own.

And we're going to start with small Sort of manageable shames, okay, rather than the, you know, our deepest, darkest. So we're going to make it accessible. Alrighty. First things first, I want to say that de shaming is a journey. It is a process, not a destination. It is a cultivation, pruning out the rooted shame.

It's not so much an end point because there will always be more little shames or even big ones that arise and become available to be healed. Because you just become ready to unearth them from your past. Or, there are just ways that we're, we walk through the world as fallible human beings and we might have You know, created this habit of shame in our bodies.

The world is a shaming place, so we have to do maintenance, no matter how great we get at this. We can largely unhook ourselves from the deepest shames and even many, most of the little shames, and just know that it's a skill and a process, and so you'll need to keep doing it. Just consider it a practice, any sort of maintenance practice.

It's like weeding the garden. Luckily, it's actually a really fun one, and it's a fun practice. It doesn't sound like it, but it is fun, and it's really rewarding. It feels so good to pull out those splinters of shame. And the challenge, of course, is that it can be vulnerable. But the wonderful thing is we get to admire ourselves.

We just get to admire ourselves for having the courage to be vulnerable. And that feels really good. And because the best way to root out shame is in connection with other people. We'll talk a lot today about how shame thrives in hiding and isolation. So the best way to root it out is to bring it into the light.

And that means our courageous vulnerability in opening up to people actually allows us to have deeper connection and heals a lot of loneliness. Because it's really relatable to feel ashamed, right? It's really relatable to feel vulnerable. So de shaming gets to be this kind of, it's like a super healthy addiction a little bit, for me anyway.

It's kind of like going to get a massage. There's discomfort. But it's in this service of healing and actually feels super good and relieving. So we feel so good afterwards that despite the discomfort, we want to do it again. At least that's how I feel about getting a massage and how I feel about de shaming.

So let's start with some definitions first. Shame versus guilt. So Brene Brown describes these that I'm just going to borrow this directly. I don't think I can improve on it. She says, shame says, I am bad. And guilt says, I did something bad. This is so simple and easy to remember. And just expanding on this great definition, shame is when we feel like we are bad people.

We judge ourselves as unworthy, not good enough or unacceptable because of whatever thing. But the key is that we make the badness about who we are. And this can be conscious or subconscious. This badness or unacceptability and shame as an emotion motivates some particular actions. That's what emotions do.

They motivate particular actions, especially if we're not onto them. So shame motivates the actions of hiding, isolation, and judgment. It actually does not motivate change, which is a common misconception and a reason some people have for hanging on to shame or shaming others. They think somehow making people feel horrible about themselves that they're bad people will motivate change.

And it doesn't ever. All the judgment and the urge to hide that shame gives us. It actually just motivates suppression, repression, and defensiveness. So sometimes we might try to fix, quote unquote, what we think is wrong with us. We think we're fundamentally flawed and we might try to fix that thing, but we do it with sort of pseudo solutions.

They're not real solutions. And we do it in isolation. And they tend to be these sort of false fixes, like distraction or self bullying, that never really happen. helps or makes change. And if you see somebody or you yourself have been feeling bad about yourself for a really long time, or you see someone who's distracting or self bullying for a long time and not making any change, I can promise that there's some shame there.

A couple of classic examples, drinking heavily or binging on social media, or just drinking regularly. It doesn't even have to be that heavy. But Essentially distraction habits, right? Or buying shit we don't need because it promises to fix our supposed inadequacies. Or just like self bullying, thinking that's somehow helping, but we aren't actually making effective change.

Those are some big shame driven activities you may recognize if you are a human being. Because all of us do them at some point. I sure have done every single one of those things. And shame also tends to make us defensive because we don't want to be seen. Here we are, busy hiding for fuck's sake, and sometimes we're hiding this shit from ourselves.

So please don't make me look at this thing that I feel shame about. That is shame. What shame does. All right, in contrast, guilt can actually motivate change. Even though there is the uncomfortable feeling of chagrin oftentimes, which does not feel amazing, it doesn't need to feel amazing. Guilt can actually be really useful because what it does is say to us, Hmm, I did something bad.

Not I am bad. We don't have to identify with being bad. What we're saying is, when we feel guilt, I didn't show up the way I want to, or my behavior didn't match my values. It's not about being a bad person. It's about being a human being with failings and foibles, right, and the potential to do better. It leaves room for the bad behavior to be momentary and not a definition of who we are.

So, I encourage you to embrace healthy guilt when it's suitable, because it actually helps us do amazing things, like become a better friend, communicate more kindly, embrace consent culture. Stop being racist, or sexist, or ableist, or whatever. It helps us take in and improve ourselves with feedback. And we can do that because we're saying, Oh, it was the behavior.

that wasn't good. It's not that I'm a bad person. But we can't make those changes. We can't improve with feedback very well when we just feel shame because it makes us so suppressive and defensive. So guilt allows us to be worthy but flawed with room to do better. I say picket every time. So why do we even have shame if it's so shitty and not useful?

Well, the sort of prevailing hypothesis that I subscribe to. So humans are social primates that spent millennia evolving in small tribes. It is only very recently that the population exploded and we lost our wee tribes. And we now have, you know, billions of people, the internet, isolated nuclear families.

But back in small tribes, I do think shame was probably useful during human evolution because everyone was mutually dependent. Every single person mattered. Their strengths mattered and their differences were valuable. So there are some modern anthropological hypotheses that suggest we were probably, therefore, because of that mutual dependence, a lot more tolerant of each other's differences and sort of normal foibles, but at the same time, we really needed a foolproof way of making sure everyone shared.

Because resources were very scarce and, you know, kind of hit and miss, right? Hoarding would be a life or death problem. So there's some hypotheses that shame is, was used to keep people from hoarding resources. If it's shameful to do that, and it's the thing you are most judged for, even shunned for, potentially kicked out of the tribe for, It would be absolutely life or death devastating and that's why shame feels so bad to us.

It feels like we're going to die because at one point in time it was life or death. So that's a hypothesis I think seems fairly plausible. We don't have any actual evidence of, there's no sort of, you know, archaeological record of behavior at that level. But it was probably also not that common for people just to get shamed for being themselves because variation was good in a small tribe.

So we see small tribes today where people are valued for very different skills and capacities. They are important, right, for everybody's survival. So now contrast that with modern life and we have shame gone wild. We have billions of people with very little to no accountability to each other. There are really no consequences that are obvious to people for judging other people, at least on the surface.

I really believe there are consequences inside us, but people don't realize how caustic that judgment is while they're doing it, and it's part of sort of externalizing the judgment from the shame they already feel. There are also governments, religions, cultures, and businesses that have historically shamed people for their own benefit.

And that's been passed down through generations as social norms, because of course parents so don't want their kids to feel shame. It's such a hard emotion to feel. They try to buffer their children from it by forcing them into whatever the quote unquote accepted role is. So shaming boys for being emotional or not athletic, right?

Shaming girls who are not. are assertive or big or strong or smart or sexual, shaming poor people for wanting more wealth as greedy. That's all been very helpful to people in power over the course of human history. And of course, there are people today who benefit from our shames too. We have productivity shame.

Oh my gosh, how many people feel that if they're not constantly busy? There's this voice that says, I'm lazy and I'm bad for being lazy. Gosh, I used to have that so badly. And, you know, it's still occasionally rears its ugly head, but I have worked on it so much that I recognize it and I'm really good at catching that dog.

The productivity shame has benefited the sort of ever since the Industrial Revolution. Well, and maybe before that, too, right? Productivity shaming surfs? I don't know. But it certainly benefits a lot of businesses today. People overwork and feel guilty about it when they're not working. So I think, I don't want to go on too big of a tangent about COVID and its impact on society, but I think there's been some changes there.

There's also perfect parent shame. Right? That's a big one we see today. All the shame about our looks and bodies. Oh my God, that stuff makes a shit ton of money for some people. There's billions of dollars of industry on people feeling horrible about how they look and about their body. And of course, the cultural aspects get out of hand and the messages are often unintentional.

They get internalized as children very early. And you can tell because you hear them from kids sometimes, like, things you would never say as an adult, and you wonder where these kids get it from. You're like, holy shit, but it just came out of their little face, right? You know, it reminds me, when I was a kid, I had all this shame about my eye shape.

I have very almond shaped eyes. And when I was a little kid, these other white kids would sing racial slur songs at me about being Chinese. And I can only imagine how much worse it would have been if I actually identified as Asian American and then turned that shame on my identity and my family. But I still felt really bad about my eyes.

You know, I felt like they were somehow wrong and inferior for many decades later. And, you know, Being called all kinds of names as a kid. I was called a dyke and a loser or being made fun of for having asthma as a kid and not being athletic enough to feel worthy. These are by seven year olds and I bet you had those experiences too.

Kids can be really mean and some awful stuff comes out of their mouth that gets stuck for years in our minds and our nervous systems. But it's not the little kids fault and it's not our fault. But it is a window into culture because that is what they're showing us. They're parroting the culture at large.

And we get shamed so much for just being ourselves these days, especially if you have any sort of quote unquote difference to the predominant or like privileged norm. So if you are in a marginalized identity of any kind, you are. Black, you are indigenous, you are a person of color, you are mixed race, you are from another country than the one you are growing up in, you are female, you are queer or perceived to be, you are trans or genderqueer, you are poor, You are a small man or a big woman, you're disabled, and all kinds of others.

So, all that shaming for just being ourselves, that is culture at work. But shame really only works if we buy into it. And it doesn't mean it doesn't still feel mean, but it doesn't necessarily make us want to hide and isolate ourselves if it's just mean. It's when it's shame that it does that. So, as adults, we get to choose on purpose.

What and who we judge, including ourselves, and what our values are around judgment. And I wonder, what if we decided not to judge ourselves or others so harshly? What if we gave all the little kids of the world better examples as adults, and we let ourselves heal by releasing judgment? What if we let all of us be acceptable and worthy people, even with sometimes flawed behavior?

And to me, that's a much better world. It feels much better. And you know, people behave way better when they're not acting out of shame. All of us do, me included. So we are here today to work on unhooking from the shame matrix. And the key thing is to do it with other people. This sounds challenging. It did to me at first, anyway, maybe it doesn't to you, but it did to me at first.

I think it does to almost everybody because shame wants us to hide and isolate and judge ourselves. So the cures are all about connecting, sharing with others and bringing the bullshit messages into the light so that we can see them and reject them. And this is one of the reasons why affinity groups and support groups are helpful for people.

Because there are so many shared shames that get de shamed in community, when you can see others that share your identity and bring compassion to their struggles, some of it, you can automatically say, Oh, well maybe I'm not so bad for that either. So groups around body, looks, behavior, addictions, desires, disabilities and abilities, life experiences, personal history.

Groups around those things can automatically feel kind of normalizing and validating because they tell us that no matter what, we aren't fundamentally flawed human beings for having these traits. And I'll say, you know, even if it's behavioral, if you've done some shitty shit, we've all done some shitty shit, guilt is the way better option because it allows us to do better.

So I want to offer to you before we go through the five components of de shaming that whatever your shames are, I fully believe you are acceptable and worthy of love no matter what. And I want to invite you to take a moment and look inward and see if you can first believe that about other people too.

So start by taking a moment to think of someone in your life who you want to give grace to. You want to allow them to, you know, fuck up sometimes and still be worthy of love and acceptance. And see how it feels. to just offer that to them. That, hey, okay, you, you are allowed to mess up and I'm still going to love and accept you.

And now see if it might be just a little bit possible to believe that of yourself also. See if you can say to yourself, and let's just try it as an experiment. It's okay if it feels awful. Here's the experiment. No matter what my flawed human behavior, I am acceptable and worthy of love. So just try it out.

See how it feels. For some of you, it will feel amazing. It's a reminder. It's kind of a coming home feeling because you've been there before. For some of you, it feels incredibly out of reach, and maybe there's some grief. It feels really hard and uncomfortable. And that's okay. I have been there too. You can get out of there.

So just remember it's a process. It's not a like one podcast I'm going to listen to and never feel shame and shitty about myself again. I work with people on this stuff regularly for many weeks to get it internalized and then maintain it. But we're just going to get you started today from whatever starting point you are at.

All right, five components of de shaming. So shame wants us to hide. So the number one place to start is a shame share. Bring it into the light. And this is the extra vulnerable part and the one that takes a lot of courage. So when you start, I want you to start small with a small shame first, okay? Because shame says (quote) " everyone will reject me if they know," right? That's kind of what it says internally. The truth is that we all have shame. It is a human emotion. Nobody gets out of this life without it. And when someone shares and they find that someone else holds shame too, and then the person doesn't reject you in the face of your shame, it pulls shame's teeth.

There just is no power there. So once you get An experience of this, it gets fun to share shames with trusted people. And that's your caveat. Do not just share shames willy nilly with everyone and don't just throw your big ass shame at people without any preparation. So first off, you need to pick your people.

Some people are stuck deep in judgment, or they get very triggered by particular shames. You want to share with people you can trust to receive your share gently. And you learn that by titrating in little bits and pieces, maybe sharing something that feels a little uncomfortable, but not like a deep, dark secret, right?

See if they can hold those well, if they can meet you without judgment and listen, and then you can try out bigger ones. You build trust. The second caveat is just also remember to check yourself for reciprocation capacity. If you cannot reciprocate that day, if you don't feel like you can show up for someone else with zero judgment, just being in support, curiosity, and openness, then it is not the gay.

for you to receive a shame share, which is okay. No shame in that. But just make sure that you have checked in with yourself if this is going to be reciprocal, that you are capable of reciprocating. All right. And when you do pick a partner, start with a small shame share first. Ask first. We don't just spring a shame share at people.

So you can say, for example, Hey, I'd like to get something off my chest that has felt hard for me to own or share, or that I've been judging myself about. Would you be willing to listen without judging me? That's asking for what you need, and that's absolutely okay. Okay, so number one is shame share, thoughtfully, right, consensually starting small with a trusted partner.

Number two is for the receiver of the share to start. As the receiver, what you want to do is See how you can relate. The idea is to join in the experience of feeling shame around something similar, or even the same, if you've had that. And it should be true, right? Don't bullshit your way through this.

People will know. We don't need to make it about us, the receiver, to express empathy and that we can relate. And then as the sharer in this role, this sort of joining part, this is the joining step, your job as the sharer is to lean into the sensation of feeling joined. Getting community around a particular flavor of shame normalizes it and de isolates us.

So here's an example. A lot of folks have shame for having a sadistic side or a sadistic kink, but everyone can relate to sometimes wanting to punish someone. Literally all of us have felt like we wanted someone to be punished at some point in our lives. So even if sadism isn't our kink, we can join and empathize with someone who's admitting to that desire.

You can see how even if it's not the specific experience we've had, we've had an adjacent experience. And so we can express that to the person who has just vulnerably shared that they feel shame around this thing. All right, number three, get curious. Curiosity is in my book, the best cure for judgment and shame is all about judgment.

So you want to ask some questions. Where did this shame really come from? Does everyone actually agree that this is shameful? Is it possible that it's more okay than I think it is? What if the opposite of what I think is true, or at least equally true? So for example, if I think I, if I have shame around the size of my thighs and I think they should be smaller, what if I asked myself, maybe my thighs should not be smaller?

Is it possible that they shouldn't be? That they're actually just the right size? What would it feel like to decide you are acceptable for this thing, or even kind of great for it? And if it's behavioral, if it's something you did, ask if healthy guilt might be a better option in this situation. So number three is all about getting curious and it can really help to have somebody else help you to get curious because sometimes we're so stuck in our shame that we just can't see any other possibility.

We can't see the possibility that our thighs might be a perfectly acceptable human size, that there is no rule from the universe on high that says what circumference somebody's thighs should be. We might not be able to see that. So having a friend or someone close to us help us with that curiosity can be really great.

All right, number four, shaking your fist at culture together. So this one is all about putting the fault back where it belongs. And by fault, I mean the fault for the judgment in the first place. Remember that shame culture is optional. You do not have to buy into it. You get to claim your right to decide for yourself and rebel against it.

So, for example, I used to have a lot of shame about being a person with a vulva and a vagina. I really, I was, and it was really extra shamey because I felt like I was being a bad feminist because I didn't like my pussy and you know, I had been just growing up as a woman, growing up as a girl. I had been shamed a lot for just existing in a female body, and I had internalized that.

Culture said that it was yucky that I had female genitals, that there was something yucky about them, which I can tell you was really hard as a bisexual woman who's attracted to women. I was sort of like, Oh, I can be bisexual from the waist up, but I'm totally freaked out by everything else. So I felt really ashamed and I couldn't tell people about it.

I felt so much shame. But when I realized that it wasn't mine, it was from living in a patriarchal, misogynistic culture. And I got to say, you know what? Fuck that. That's a bunch of bullshit and I'm not buying it anymore. And I was so disappointed. It was so liberating to be able to do that. So figure out where the shaming came from and send it back.

Shake your fist together with your partner, with your shame share partner, whether it was religion, something your fucking uncle said, you know, or media or culture at large, whatever it was, send it back. Now the last, the fifth step is to make de shaming a favorite toy. Play with it often. Make it a lifestyle.

Practice the steps a lot. It gets easier every time and you get to feel more and more free. Do it with friends, family, lovers. Because the truth that I have found is that less judgment for ourselves always equals less judgment for others. Judgment is a habit. When I was I was judging myself harshly all the time, I was also judging other people more harshly.

And when I was judging other people, I was also judging myself. And you can break the judgment habit in yourself and help de shame yourself and also the world by practicing de shaming a lot. It is a gift to everyone for you to have less shame, it is a gift to everyone to liberate yourself from. the sort of cycle of judgment and really embrace curiosity and acceptance.

Okay, so if you don't have a shame share partner, one, don't be ashamed about that. Try to find one. But if you can't, That's okay. Here's what you do. Write your shames down on paper so that you can get it out of you and onto a neutral surface where you can see it as separate from you. Then see if you can imagine someone else you care about having the same shame.

Imagine someone you always give the benefit of the doubt to. So like your best friend or your child, if you give the benefit of the doubt to your child. Imagine them having the same shame. and see if you can see it from the outside. And if your kid's, you know, a toddler and would never have, you know, whatever this kink that you're ashamed of, imagine them as an adult having it.

What would you think about them, your kid or your best friend, if they had that shame? Would you think they were a horrible person? Then you can do, so that takes place of the shame share, and then you can do the next two steps in your journal, the get curious and shake your fist at culture, and of course the last step, practicing.

So your exercise, either doing it in your journal or with your partner, is you know, come up with at least five small shames. Spend a couple minutes thinking about them, write them down, and start small, right? Stuff that maybe feels kind of scary to reveal, but isn't the deepest, darkest, most horrible thing that you've ever thought about yourself, right?

And if they're not front and center, one way to find them is to start by writing the sentence down. I should be blank. I should be, or I should not be, all these places where you should yourself are places where you hold some amount of shame, usually, especially if they make you feel unacceptable or bad as a person, not just kind of mildly guilty.

We all have these lurking. Write them down. And then when you have your de shaming partner, if you have one, or follow the other protocol if not, and I'm going to go through this, but grab, grab the transcript at the link in the show notes if you want the step by step. So take a couple deep breaths together and then, you know, choose who's going to go first and speak it.

I feel ashamed that ________ (blank) take a couple more breaths if you need to. This is the hard part, but speaking it aloud is really powerful de shaming. So get it into the light. If you're the receiver, just listen without judging. You are there just to listen and remain open hearted. So in step number two, as the receiver, you're now going to join them in the experience of feeling ashamed for something as close to what they expressed as you can get, something adjacent or similar if possible.

And if not, just imagine how it would feel and allow yourself to empathize. Briefly share the empathy that you understand or you can imagine, right, that situation and normalize it. that they feel shame and that it's okay. Number three, get curious together. Try asking some of the questions that I posed earlier.

You know, what if this is more normal or okay than you think? Is it possible that it's more common or acceptable? What, how would it feel if your kid or your best friend did that? You know, how would you get to feel if you didn't judge this thing so harshly? So the receiver's job is to just help the person get curious wherever they might be blinded by the sort of judgment around it.

Number four, shake your fists together at the culture. And if you're the receiver, help them figure out where it's coming from. Maybe even just ask, where do you think you got the idea that this was so wrong? Where in your past have you received messages that are shaming around this? And then just thank each other and switch.

And that's what you do. See if you can practice regularly with yourself, with partners. Just ask yourself how and who can you do this with to create a habit of de shaming instead of judgment in your life. Okay, here's your reminder that the de escalating stress in the body workshop is online April 12th, 2024, coming up and it's $10 and you can get tickets at laurajurgens.com/events, which link is also going to be in the show notes, okay, and the link to the transcript. So go forth my dears and de shame yourself and the world. If this podcast was helpful for you, please consider going to Apple Podcasts or Spotify and leaving a five star review. Not only do I really appreciate your time doing that, but five star reviews can really boost the show visibility, which helps people just like you who need it, be able to find it.

Thank you so much. I'll see you here next week.