LATE BLOOMERS - THE SHAME FILES: Why the things you never talk about are keeping you stuck

Episode Date: May 28, 2025

What if the things you’re most ashamed of — the things you swore you’d never tell anyone — are the very things holding you back? In this episode of LATE BLOOMERS, Rich and Rox open up the “shame files” and share the moments they’ve buried for years: the gambling, the stealing, the lying, the drinking, the secrets, the things they hoped no one would ever find out. Together, they unpack how shame shapes our identities, how we carry guilt that was never ours to begin with, and how hiding the truth keeps us sick, small, and disconnected. From addiction and childhood trauma to money meltdowns and compulsive people-pleasing, this is a raw and honest look at what happens when we finally say it out loud. If you’ve ever thought, “If they knew the real me, they’d leave,” — this episode is your proof that healing starts with honesty.

If it's a flat or a squeal, a wobble or peel, your tread's worn down or you need a new wheel, wherever you go, you can get it from our Tread Experts. Until May 30th, purchase four new Michelin Passenger or Light Truck tires and receive up to $70 by prepaid MasterCard. Conditions apply. Details at michelin.ca. Find a Michelin Tread Experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there at treadexperts.ca. Today we are opening the shame files, the things we never talk about and why they keep us stuck. Oh dear, sounds like a scary one. We are going to talk to you about what shame actually feels like, share with you a couple of areas of life where me and Rich have both been incredibly ashamed,

talk about the cost of hiding shame and then get on to a bit of the good stuff, how to actually help move through it. Welcome to Late Bloomers where we are getting our lives together. Eventually, and I have to just say for anybody watching on YouTube or Spotify where we're on video, you'll notice that we haven't got our normal Late Bloomers cards. That's because I forgot to order them and we ran out. But I've saved the day because the thank you cards I bought and forgot to send to everyone that helped me create my album restoration have now stepped in as a replacement. So two wrongs made a right.

I would like to say though, I love you and you're very creative but you could have cut them with scissors rather than I've got a really jagged top of my card. I don't feel shameful about it though. I'm not a bad person but I did a silly thing. Exactly so let's talk about very briefly what shame is. So what we're not talking about is when you do something wrong, which everybody in existence does, that can cause feelings of guilt. But where a shame, you fundamentally believe that you are a bad person rather than done a bad thing. I think that's quite important. Yeah, I think it's very human. Let's say you have a flirt up with your best mate's partner. Have a flirt up.

I've made myself sound so old. Like you're 40 years old. That's a really old millennial way. I feel like that is an old thing to say when you're trying to sound young. Fine. Look, you have a little flirt with your best mate's partner because you're out drunk one night. You should feel a bit guilty.

You should wake up and go, oh my God, you should maybe speak to your mate. You should maybe think about your drinking habits. So a little bit of guilt, a bit of remorse and a bit of action is needed. However, waking up and feeling like I'm the most disgusting person ever, I deserve to be punished. No one can ever know this about me or I'll never ever be loved. That's shame. It's really kind of hard to describe the feeling, but it is a body feeling. If you think about some of the times you felt shame, what are words that would like to describe what it

actually felt like? Well, before I go into that, you haven't been flirting with my mate. I'm getting friends actually, so flirt away. So I can really relate to this. You feel really heavy, feel sick. It's quite isolating because you could never think about sharing it with someone because it's so like, you're so bad, you don't want to even verbalise it. Yeah, heavy. But it is like a physical body reaction. It's like when you feel heavy and disgusted. Definitely. Within your own self. So it does go further than guilt. Yeah, which is quite, which is quite a normal thing. I think, even though it's a

bit scary, because we're going to be talking about some of the things we're really ashamed of, it's so important to just open the shame files and bring shame to the table. Because shame ruins people's lives. Yep, it definitely does. Stops them from like having happy relationships and chasing their dreams. And you know, it can also lead to some quite devastating outcomes and it breeds in silence. Oh, that's so powerful, but so true. You just don't want to say anything. You don't even want to say it to yourself. You are internally hating yourself. You can never think about sharing it.

So let's get on to our shame files. Confessions of a shame addict. Confessions of a shamer. I'm going to get you to kind of share two things and then I'm going to share two things. Obviously this is not the full list. We're both recovered addicts in multiple different genres of addiction and have also messed up our lives to an extreme extent. So there's, we could have chosen hundreds of things. Yeah. So we're just picking the main ones.

Well, for me, it was just the first two that came to mind. Mine are the main ones, I think. Okay. So then Mr. Main Ones, let's start with your first one. Something in your life that has caused you the most shame. I've talked about my gambling addiction before and some of the actions. So I haven't picked that exclusively, but actually the debt that I got in as a result of gambling, I felt a huge amount of shame about. Well, I couldn't tell anyone.

So I was trying to hide it. I remember times where I'd run out of money in my bank account, so I needed cash. So I was getting cash out of a cash machine with my credit card, which comes with super high interest, loads of charges, just to try and cover up my behavior and debt. Because I was obviously a responsible adult as well. I was a bank manager with kids and a home and a mortgage. So yeah, it was incredibly like that when you say when I was talking about how stressful it is. It was so stressful. Like in the moments you don't even really have time to think about the shame

and it really sinking because you're in like absolute sort of fight or flight panic mode. How do I get to tomorrow without the mortgage bouncing or the council tax bouncing and stuff like that? It's like so stressful. But then when you get into, you know, getting through the week or getting through the month, you get time to reflect and that is where just the amount of shame and negativity, of this cloud of debt that was hanging over me. So you're in this debt, you're spending money, your wife at the time doesn't know, no one in your family knows, no friends know.

It's like a secret activity almost. And what's important to note actually, because being in debt isn't a shameful thing, but I was being in debt because I was spinning slots. That's where the shame comes from. It wasn't like because I didn't earn enough money and I needed to feed my family. This was to feed the bookies. You felt like feed the bookies. You were putting yourself there. So at that time, what was the story you believed about yourself? What was the shame story? Do you know what? In a really unhealthy way, I've never verbalized this and I've only

thought about it since you literally the second asked me that question. What, how I got through it was I would like almost pretend like I was some movie character, some like edgy movie character. And like I'd almost justified the behavior in my head. It was like almost trying to shroud it with, oh, I'm like, cool, to get through it. Because the reality and the hidden sort of depths of the shame, I couldn't face. It was like, well, until I did. Yeah. And that was, but you know, the other side of that is, I would often speak to myself when I wasn't in that frame of

mind, just about like how despicable I was, how like, how pathetic it was to not be in control of these actions. I've talked about that before with gambling. It's like I didn't have control and I firmly believe that. And that's really difficult for someone like me to comprehend because I am in control of everything. It's like a bit of an oxymoron. I think that's as well the strong word despicable. So did you feel that you as a human, as a person was despicable? Yeah, yeah, yeah. 100%.

That's the shame, isn't it? It rewrites your identity into the worst moment of your entire life. What changed for you when you finally shared that story? Oh, God. Like loads. It was hard. Obviously, I was telling my then wife that I'd spent all of my money and our money. Well, no, I protected it. It was always my money, but I was in loads of debt, which of course has an impact on her. So just before doing it, I just drunk loads of cider, I remember, to get the courage to share it.

And then I did, and it was horrible. It was horrendous. The actual conversation was brutal. But then you can't, it's like the weight is lifted. The day after it's like, thank God for that. I haven't got any secrets anymore. I don't need to, I need to like face the reality, but at least I haven't got that cloud anymore. Yeah. It's out in the open to deal with. Yeah. And I guess it becomes, you know, we've said shame is heavy, frozen, secretive. You throw it away from that when you put it on a table.

Okay, so thank you. I didn't know some of that, so I'm getting to know you even more. There you go. What is your second shame file that you're going to open? It was probably, you know, this is probably lowers the tone of the conversation even more from the gambling debt, but it was probably based on my abuse. And that was really, and it's quite common actually that the shame, because you feel feel especially as a man, I can't speak

for women, I can speak for me and as a man and society means that you need to be strong and protect other people and stuff like that. So when something happens to you and the abuse I can speak to, you feel less of a man. So just for anyone that doesn't know, you were abused by a family member when you were eight. So trigger warning, we're going to talk a little about that. And if that's something – sounds weird to say you're interested in – if that's something you've been affected by or you're interested in, we do have an episode called One in Six where we go into more detail. What's really strange there though, that's

his shame. He was an old man doing that to a young boy that he was meant to be protecting. Why did you feel shame? Weakness, I think. Because you feel you feel like you should have, should have done this, should have done that. I'm just less of a, less of a person. It happened to me. I should have done something to stop it. I'm not strong. And you just feel, yeah, you just feel sort of, I guess, pathetic is, is, is a word. So that's the other one was I am despicable. You're gambling. The abuse led you to I am pathetic.

Yeah. And how long did you live with that shame? God, I don't know. You could say until I was 18, you could say until I was in my 30s. That's a whole nother story. I think I originally shared it at 18, but I didn't really process it properly until I was mid-30s. Yeah, I think, and we'll get on to this, how you share it and who you share it with

is incredibly important for it to become healing. So it probably was with me in therapy a bit older where that story started to shift and change. Right, let's just keep it low shall we? What about yours? Is there any like nice bits in it? Yeah, we get some nice bits of it. Hold on guys. Hold on tight. It isn't all depressing. Put your crash helmets on.

Okay, so opening my shame files, there's just so much. So the two things I've chosen today, first of all, it's essentially my 20s. Or the whole decade. Pretty much. Right, okay. Which is gonna sound crazy to some people, but it's, to be more specific and

more honest, it is the person I became when I was drunk or intoxicated on other substances. Which was all the time, it's fair to say, or a lot of the time. So yeah, I would be drunk pretty much every night. Other substances maybe two or three times a week. So yeah, pretty much all the time. Horrendous things wouldn't happen every time, but they would happen a lot. And I hated who I had been. I hated myself for, I don't know, stealing money off a friend to buy drugs, for cheating on and lying about it to numerous partners and for just being aggressive, unstable, untidy, just unreliable, just like the lowest of the low, the worst of the worst. And I think even now I can struggle because who I am today is so allergic to who I was then and how I used to live. Maybe it's a cop out saying the whole 20s, it's probably stealing, cheating and drunk

driving. Right. That's the trio right there. That's the trio. Yeah. And how, so, you know, for me, mine was about, I guess, specific things and I shared it. Like, what's your story? Like how, because that isn't just fessing up to it, is it? No, no. So, I think, I thought I was just disgusting, horrible, deserving of punishment. Like, and it's strange when you hate yourself to that level, you actually carry on those behaviours. Because you hate yourself. It's

a self-fulfilling prophecy. It didn't change when I got sober, it actually got worse. It's like when a smoker stopped smoking and they're like, oh, I hate anyone that smokes. When I got sober, it's like I just was, saw it so clearly, how awful, how horrible I had been. Although it was a bad medicine, you had the medicine of the alcohol. You never fully feel the shame. And when you do, oh, if I'd done something bad... Let's have a drink. Let's have a drink. Oh, I've cheated on my girlfriend. Let's have a drink. Just, yeah, I just kept myself numb the whole time. So I never actually had to face what I had done or who I was. And

for quite a long time, I hated the pre sober version of me, like really, really hated. And sometimes when a friend or someone that has known me from those days into now would see some of the things I'd post on social media. So I'd say something like I used to be disgusting and selfish and now I'm really working hard. And I'd have friends reach out and be like, rocks, just want to let you know, I remembered you as being actually really helpful and kind. I'm not rewriting myself as helpful and kind. I stole money. I cheated on people. I drunk drove, I did awful things, but it had poisoned my entire identity as just disgusting person. I'm still like working on it,

it still comes up in therapy, but I can talk openly about it. For instance, for a very long time, I wouldn't ever want to say that I stole money or I cheated on people because people will hate me, they'll write me off. I'll never be seen as a nice person. Whereas now I can kind of go, kid, not your finest moments. Lucky you didn't get arrested or cause someone injury, but also you were going through a lot. So it's kind of time and looking back with a bit more kindness. Also having step kids. I see Seir making all the mistakes, not knowing he was bad, but making some mistakes that I used to make and I can look at them with love and understanding. That helps. My second one, man, I am still knee deep in this one. It's really difficult.

It's a bit of a long story, so I'll try and sum it up. I got some money after my mum died of cancer when I was 22. There was a lawsuit with the NHS because they'd made a mistake. So she didn't have to die. We won the lawsuit. I got a load of money, a chunk of that money, 150,000 pounds was, I fell for a fraud. Someone told me I was buying property. I wasn't, I didn't speak to a lawyer. I didn't investigate. I was so stupid and I got defrauded out of 150,000 pounds of my mum's cancer money. I have hated myself for that. It's making me want to cry. So I think I still might do a tiny bit. And I kept that secret. I couldn't tell anyone because how do I tell my brother and my dad

that I've lost my mum's money when they were sensible? My brother bought a house, I don't know what my dad did. But it would have been sensible. So I kept it secret for so long and it would like, every year I'd send an email to the guy that did this to me and be like, please, please, tell me what's happening. Nothing would ever happen, but I like the feeling of being frozen, hating myself, desperate. Like I can feel twinges of it now, but how I felt over the last 10 years,

just absolutely horrendous. And it meant I never asked for help and I just went through it alone. And I think still, I still carry some, I'm an absolute useless idiot. I'm still identifying rather than being able to go, you know, I got defrauded and I was a bit naive. I find it quite hard to get to logic. You were like one of the first people I told. Do you remember? I don't remember the exact specifics. I obviously remember the story vividly.

And then I've told my therapist only recently. So this is 10 year old shame that's still having its way with me but I'm walking towards it and trying to break that down. Oh, that's rough. Oh, shame is heavy and frozen. I feel terrible. Okay. So where do we go to lighten the mood a little bit? Well, let's talk about, just briefly, the cost of hiding it all. Well, I think, you know, it's a couple of things for me.

One is the energy that it takes, like the mental energy that it takes. To keep it secret. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you're always thinking about it and you can't share it. Like it's, it's, you know, they say that, what's that saying? A problem shared is a problem halved. Like it's so true. Like, because it's, if it's all, that's all you can think about, all you can think about, all you can think about, can't say it. So you're like just exhausted at the end of the day. And the other thing that's really interesting, you know, you know, I said,

you know, some of this gambling stuff. I like made myself this character, this edgy, cool character. Like it, it makes you behave in that way. Like it, when it becomes your identity, it can make you act in ways that you're not proud of, like so I must be this despicable human, okay cool what does a despicable human do? It doesn't care about anyone else, he's selfish, he's like and stuff like that, so it almost takes over your personality or it did with me anyway.

And then you become like, if I think about what people would have described me as when I was drinking and working in the bank and I'm like so far away from that now, I'm like a different person and I'm the real person now who is, don't really like going outside. I'm quite introverted. I like playing video games. And you're lovely. You're so lovely. Well, and so yeah, I think it rewires, it did for me. It rewired my personality. Yeah.

Same for me. I'm useless. I'm pathetic. I'm a loser. And then you end up, well, what does a useless, pathetic loser do? And you live that way to almost keep reinforcing the way that the shame makes you feel.

Yeah, like wearing it as a bit of a badge of honour, like this is me, Helmoth making light of it sometimes. Any other costs of keeping it secret? Probably just lack of intimacy, because you can't be intimate or vulnerable with someone if you've got all of this secrecy. Like you just can't, you're not your real self. And it's really, so it's, you know, you probably don't even really know who you are, let alone be able to be your authentic self with someone else. Yeah, so shame tells you you can't tell anyone. shame tells you you can't tell anyone. But then by not telling anyone, you never have that lovely connection, the cuddles, the moments of truth, the support that can actually help

you heal. That's one of the saddest things I think it robs you of, is the ability to feel true intimacy. Because I think we both know having walked through some really tough times, not together in terms of things between me and you, but in our own lives together, it's only because we've been able to share and hold it together in those crucial moments. I think it might be time to lift the mood a little bit. Yeah, well, come to the end of the bloody episode. Oh, right. Yeah, well, let's make it a bit happy at the end. Sorry about that lads by the way.

Lads and those in between. We do like to keep it, normally- Keep it real. Slightly upbeat, but we've kept it too real. Okay. How to help yourself or someone else that is feeling the crippling reality of shame. I've got four things. Of course you have. Not three.

I love a number. No. Ready? Go on. Number one, speaking out caveats to the right person. So when you spoke out on a drunken night out when you were 18 about being abused when you were eight years old. So your brothers and sisters, they weren't the right people to talk to. You were all drunk. There wasn't an emotional connection or safety. And actually, there was one.

But yeah, there was one. Yeah. But it deeply impacted you for years and probably sent you further into shame. So you have to tell the right person about what you're ashamed of. The right person is someone who you know will not judge you, will listen, will give you a cuddle if you need, will listen, will give you a cuddle if you need, will be empathetic. They need to be safe and I just want to stress that so much because if you tell the wrong person, I remember one day trying to say to my dad that something bad had happened to me when I was young. He was just like, no recollection of that. And I was like, no, like nothing.

You're just cut off and it just makes it all worse. Like, use your old noggin. Has this person got a lovely history of listening, warmth and empathy? And also that's what great therapists are for as well. So that's what great therapists are for as well. Number two is that the antidote to shame is connection. So finding communities and groups where you hear the words, me too. Now you can speak about your first GA meeting. 100%.

And what happened to you. Yeah, I was all of a sudden, I was like, I felt at home, not in anything. And I burst into tears, because you felt like you're the only person in the world that does it. You're the worst person in the world. And then everyone else was like,

yeah, I've been there, mate, I've been there. It's okay, you'll get through it. And it's like, oh my God, burst into tears. You cried for like an hour, the whole meeting. And look, in a strange way as well, although it was maybe not quite on the level of some of the other shame I felt, I felt a lot of shame about my ADHD. Messy, disorganized, late, all over the place, teenager in an adult body. And we've shared our life for three years on the internet. And every video is like me too. I do not feel shame about my ADHD anymore. And a huge part of that is because I found community and the people that watch our videos made me realise I'm not alone. So I just need

a group of people who have been defrauded out of £150,000. Do you reckon? I need to go and look into it because maybe that would help. But yeah, finding community and connection because nobody is alone. There's always someone that has been through it and can understand. Number three is rewriting the story. It's like how you said, you were bad, despicable, awful. How does that person live? It's the same the other way round. So rather than seeing yourself as despicable, you get to see you were in pain. You were a human being in pain, suffering at the hands of an addiction that you had found because you'd been suppressing a whole load of abuse and neglect from childhood. When you start to look at that person, if you were in pain, you then get to go, well, I'm a good person. I'm a brave person. I'm someone that

shares my stories, walks head on into difficult things. So you get to rewrite your identity, because your identity now is totally not despicable, awful, bad boy. Jason Vale That's well hard to do, though, what you said. I completely agree with you. Emma Cunningham Rewrite your story. How did you do it? I think it's really small steps. It's like really just being kinder to yourself. Starting with the sharing, starting with the community. I think those steps probably need to, it all needs to be all at the same time. And then over time, you'll rewrite your identity. And that could take years. Yeah.

Yeah. I feel the same way. I felt like the worst person ever, world's biggest loser my whole life. And sometimes it still catches up with me. And you need to back it up as well, right? Like you can, you can say, I'm a despicable person. What would they do? Oh, they'd be selfish, treat people badly

and stuff like that. You can't just, you can't just speak your way into that. Your actions about being nice to people and being a kinder person need to back it up. Otherwise, you just become a narcissist to say that you're the nicest person in the world. You have to start living a different life, walking that path every single day to give yourself evidence of change. But yeah, it takes time and it is hard. And the final thing is to wonder and to look at whether you're carrying somebody else's shame and to understand to put that down. So in your situation, you were carrying your granddad's shame. The shame in that situation does not belong to you. He wouldn't feel it.

You end up feeling it. And that's so common in survivors of abuse. I sometimes think looking at me, I feel so ashamed of so many things, being a bad person. Very often I wonder am I carrying my dad's shame? He was a serial cheater, absolutely horrible to my mum for decades. And he's never felt that. He numbs himself out, I'm sure it's in there somewhere. But I feel like I sometimes feel devious or horrible. He in fact calls me that. It's sort of like projecting it onto me. So noticing in a situation, are you carrying somebody else's shame? Because if you are, you get to say that belongs to you and put it down. Yeah. Interesting, by the way. to say that belongs to you and put it down. Yeah. Interesting, by the way, this is probably for another time

and we'll never know, but you talked about my granddad wouldn't have felt the shame, your dad never felt the shame. So this we don't know. They certainly have never shared it. But we don't know what these people think. They're, but we do, do you know what I mean? Like, and we never will know. Cause we've

been in, not that we've ever done stuff quite like that, clearly to people, but people would have looked at me thinking that I don't care or never felt it. Super interesting. I guess if you're a roughly well adjusted ish human being. I don't know if we would use those words for your granddad. But you would assume that there would be shame down there, but perhaps their defences were just so strong. The denial, the projection, numbing still living in it. So unfortunately he's dead so we can't listen to this episode. And my dad hates me, so he won't. But if they could, late bloomers, guys. Oh, man. Yeah.

That was a fun one. What an episode. Guys, if you've liked it, please like, subscribe, give us a follow, leave a comment. And if not... Don't worry about it, just move on. Don't worry about it. Hope you've enjoyed The Shame Files and we'll see you next week.