Change Your Brain Every Day - A Psychiatrist's Top Tips for Dealing with Shame & Guilt

Episode Date: June 19, 2026

Every day you are making your brain better or you are making it worse. Stay with us to learn how you can change your brain for the better every day. And there are 13 dragons from the past. And we've talked about the abandoned, invisible, and insignificant dragon. That's my primary dragon. We're going to talk about my secondary dragon today. the inferior or flawed dragon. And you can find out about your dragons

at Know Your Dragons.com's free questionnaire that'll know which of the 13 you have. Tanna has 10 of them. I have five of them. There's the anxious dragon that the pandemic has just exploded. The wounded. dragon that we talked about yesterday.

And today, we are going to talk about the should and shame dragon. I love the artwork on this. And why do I say this is one of my secondary dragons? So have any of you grown up in a culture of shame or guilt or shoulds or must or have to? Well, I certainly did. And it's common in Middle Eastern cultures. It's common in Asian cultures. It's common in Jewish cultures.

and if you grew up in a spiritual tradition, it's very common in Catholic cultures, but also Baptist cultures and anywhere where there is a clear moral code of ethics, which I'm actually a fan of, but that shame you, threaten you if you don't conform. And I often say, so I grew up Catholic.

My mother was very serious about the whole thing. I was an altar boy, literally until I was 19, even when I was in the army, as a young soldier, I was an altar boy. and there was culture of we do things this way, and there wasn't really a great explanation. It was we do things this way or you're going to burn in hell. And so I remember when I was six or seven,

and I told my mom a lie, or at least she thought I told her a lie. and she started crying. And she said, I never thought I would have a son who's going to hell. And I'm like, what does a young child do with that information? I mean, it grates on you,

it wears on you. and so I know about this dragon. And so this is a dragon that's origin story. And for each of the dragons in the book, I talk about their birth story or their origin story, what triggers them, how they cause you to react.

What's the upside of the dragon? Because clearly there are things you should, should and should not do. This is not about advocating for an amoral society. That's not what I would ever think. But we have to be careful with it. So we don't have people, we don't try to motivate people with shame and with guilt.

So the origin story is you're raised in a shame-based, culture. You've been humiliated in the past. You were embarrassed, belittled, judged, or criticized by other people or even by yourself. So what triggers the should and shaming dragon? What causes this dragon to breathe fire on your emotional brain making you feel sad? Mad, nervous, out of control. Disapproval from someone important, such as a spouse, a boss, a coworker, or even yourself. Or perceive disapproval from a higher power, however you relate to that higher power. And how does the should and shaming dragon cause you to react? You feel guilty.

You feel foolish. You feel distressed, exposed, wanting to hide or withdraw. You're overly sensitive, overly submissive. Sometimes you can even engage in self-harming behaviors such as addictions or overeating just to calm down this dragon. And this is the dragon that provides the seeds for anxiety. depression and obsessive thinking. I want to just talk about the upside of this dragon.

And I said this before, of course, there are things you should and should not do. Morality is essential for the greater good. That's why we have rules and laws, and I'm a fan of reasonable rules and laws. Shame and guilt can be helpful if these emotions serve your life calls, but they are so hurtful and make you feel bad, small, or disconnected. Shame can motivate learning, but overall, it's not useful.

So how do you tame? And this is one of the most common dragons. among my patients. And those of you that have heard me talk about ants, automatic, negative thoughts, there are nine different kinds of ants. And one of the ants goes with this dragon. It's called guilt beating ants. And that's where you think in words

like should, must, ought to, have to. And it's not a good motivator of behavior. You've been telling yourself you should lose weight. But you might have been telling yourself that for decades, but you didn't lose weight. You just felt bad. And then you overate to Medicaid feeling bad. So I want you to get rid of the words should, must, ought, and have to.

and replace them. So this is strategy number one. Replace I should with I want to. Or if it fits my goals, too. Now, those of you have been following me, know I lost my dad in May. And for the last five years, he was one of my best friends.

Now, if you read, your brain is always listening. And you also see it was a source of stress and trauma for me when I was growing up. But as we got closer, I often would get the thought, I should go see him. And I realized that didn't make me go see him. So I replaced, I should go see him with I want to go see him. Or it fits my goals to go see him. Because it did. It fit my goals to have a good relationship with my dad because I knew I wasn't going to have him forever, which turned out to be true. So whenever you think you should, you must, you ought to, you have to, I just want you to replace it with I want to. or it fits my goals to.

And if you don't want to, and it doesn't fit your goals to, don't do it, like it should be kind to my wife. It's so much better to say, I want to be kind to my wife, or it fits my goals to be kind to my wife. So that's strategy number one.

Number two is no end guilt is helpful and no when it's not. So morality is important. Ethics are important. Telling the truth is important. One of the dragons we'll deal with later on is the trouble with the truth dragon, telling the truth. Otherwise people won't trust you. And that becomes really problematic for you.

So know when it's helpful and know when it's not. three, behavior is way more complicated than most people believe. We do brain imaging at Aeman clinics, and we've done it for 30 years. We're the world leader in looking at the brain for psychiatric or brain health, mental health issues. And it's really easy to feel bad about your past. or about other people's past.

It's much harder to go, why? Why did I act like that? I was on New Life Radio this week with Steve Arterberg. And Steve came to the clinic and got scanned. We were talking, it's a call-in radio show, to one of the people who called in who had a son that was psychotic and depressed and suicidal. and talking about

he should come to one of our clinics. And Steve said when he got his scan, it was a, quote, no wonder moment. It was like, well, no wonder I couldn't concentrate or no wonder I had memory problems or no wonder I struggled in my relationships, no wonder.

So the third strategy in dealing with the shouldn't shaming dragon is to just realize behavior. you're complicated. There's a lot of reasons why people act the way they do, and sometimes it could be because you had an injury decades ago for a chronic accident you really never even thought about. Or your brain works too hard or not hard enough, or you have an algae to gluten or dairy, corn, and soy, and that is causing inflammation in the brain. And so, That's a very important strategy.

Number four is see your younger self. The younger self you're still judging with love and compassion. And too many of my patients are so hard on themselves. And I want you to start talking to yourself like a good friend would, or like a good coach would, or like a good parent would. It's so important to be kind to yourself rather than to be harsh. And then the fifth strategy is when you feel shame, talk to someone you trust about the shame you feel.

hiding from shame, expands it, facing it, begins to take away its power. And King Solomon said, there is nothing new under the sun, odds are, if you're struggling, a lot of people you know are struggling with the same issues. I remember when I was a young psychiatrist and I was actually the chief psychiatrist, when I was in the Army then in Fort Irwin is in the middle of the Mahavi Desert.

And when I was there, I had the idea, my commanding officer, when I met him, I'm like, you know, he's just so normal and he's just such a great guy. And three weeks later, he's like in my office telling me about stuff in his life. And then I saw the priest and I just loved the priest. and then three weeks later he was in my office. And I just came to realize that if you think people are better than you, you think they're more normal, then you are what it likely means is you don't know them well enough. So let's tame the should and shaming dragon

because you don't want that dragon running. your life. Change, I should. Do I want to? Or it fits my goals too.