Happily as We Go: Shame, Trauma, and the Work of Healing

Raised on Shame | Season 2, Episode 3 | Featuring Paul Schulte

What happens when the life you were taught to want is the very life you need to leave behind?

For many of us, shame begins long before we have the language to recognize it. It develops in families where appearances matter more than honesty, in religious communities where belonging comes with conditions, and in relationships where we learn to question our own experiences rather than the expectations placed upon us.

In this episode of Raised on Shame, I sat down with Paul Schulte, an addiction counselor and EMDR therapist with more than two decades of experience, to explore the shame we inherit, the trauma we carry, and what becomes possible when we begin living according to our own definitions of happiness.

Our conversation moved through religious trauma, family secrets, the AIDS crisis, the ethical responsibilities of trauma therapists, and the relationship between authenticity and belonging. But beneath all of these topics was one central question:

How do we recognize when the shame we're carrying was never ours to begin with?

When Family Secrets Become Shame

Paul grew up gay in a deeply religious Catholic family in conservative Orange County, California. His parents had military backgrounds, he had six brothers, and the expectations surrounding masculinity, religion, and family identity were unmistakable.

From the outside, his family was expected to present a picture of perfection. Inside, there were experiences of violence, alcoholism, abuse, and secrecy.

We talked about how family systems can normalize experiences that children have no framework for questioning. When something is all you've ever known, it can take years, sometimes decades, to recognize that what happened wasn't healthy or acceptable.

This is one of the reasons I believe it's so important to distinguish between secrets and surprises in families. Surprises are temporary and eventually shared. Secrets, particularly those involving harm, often require children to carry responsibilities and shame that were never theirs.

We also explored how difficult it can be to leave harmful systems when those same systems provide identity, community, and belonging.

Two things can be true at once. A family or community can meet some of our needs while simultaneously causing harm. Recognizing that complexity is often part of the healing process.

Religious Trauma and the Cost of Belonging

After high school, Paul turned down a four-year scholarship to the University of Southern California to enter a monastery. He spent four years immersed in religious life before eventually leaving.

For much of his early life, he had been following a path shaped by what he believed he was supposed to do rather than what felt authentic to him.

His experience raises important questions about the relationship between faith, identity, and shame.

What happens when acceptance requires us to deny parts of ourselves? What happens when the institutions that promise belonging also reinforce the belief that something about us is fundamentally wrong?

Religious trauma is not simply about losing faith. For some people, it involves grieving a community, an identity, a worldview, or the future they once imagined.

Healing may involve rebuilding a relationship with spirituality. It may involve leaving religion behind. It may mean finding an entirely different understanding of meaning and belonging.

There is no single correct destination.

Grieving a Generation: The AIDS Crisis and Collective Trauma

One of the most moving parts of our conversation was Paul's account of coming out during the AIDS crisis.

At a time when he was beginning to embrace his identity, he was also watching members of his community become seriously ill and die.

Rather than experiencing the freedom and connection that might have accompanied coming out, he found himself caring for dying friends and participating in a community fighting to be heard.

We discussed the profound impact of collective trauma, particularly when an entire community is experiencing loss simultaneously.

Paul also reflected on how the COVID-19 pandemic brought back memories of the AIDS crisis and how processing his earlier grief through EMDR helped him remain present with the suffering of others.

This part of our conversation reminded me that grief doesn't always have a clear beginning or ending. Sometimes it lives beneath the surface for years, resurfacing when something in the present reminds us of what we survived.

And sometimes healing means finally allowing ourselves to grieve what we didn't have the space to grieve when it was happening.

Why Therapists Must Do Their Own Work

As two trauma therapists, Paul and I spent considerable time discussing something I believe is essential to ethical clinical practice: therapists must be willing to examine and address their own unresolved trauma.

Learning a therapeutic protocol is important. Understanding the research is important. Developing clinical skills is important.

But none of those things replaces the work of understanding ourselves.

When clients disclose experiences involving violence, abuse, shame, or grief, they are often taking an enormous interpersonal risk. Many have spent years believing their experiences are too much for other people to hear.

If a therapist responds with visible discomfort, judgment, avoidance, or an inability to remain emotionally present, that reaction can reinforce the very beliefs the client came to therapy hoping to change.

Paul shared experiences of seeking professional help and being told that his experiences were beyond what the therapist could address.

We explored the distinction between an appropriate clinical referral and a referral motivated primarily by a therapist's discomfort.

Of course, practicing within our competence is an ethical obligation. There are situations where specialized treatment, additional training, or referral is necessary.

But discomfort alone is not the same thing as incompetence.

Sometimes the most ethical response is to seek consultation, pursue additional education, engage in our own therapy, or collaborate with other providers while maintaining an established therapeutic relationship when clinically appropriate.

For me, this conversation reinforced the importance of attunement. Our clients need more than someone who knows what intervention comes next. They need someone who can remain present, curious, and compassionate when the difficult material emerges.

Authenticity, Acceptance, and the Work of Becoming Whole

Toward the end of our conversation, I asked Paul what he would say to someone who feels forced to choose between authenticity and acceptance.

His response centered on the idea of integration.

So much of shame involves dividing ourselves into acceptable and unacceptable parts. We learn to show people what we believe they want to see while hiding the experiences, identities, and emotions we fear will cost us connection.

But living that way is exhausting.

Healing invites us to consider what it might look like to stop organizing our lives around other people's approval.

That doesn't mean belonging stops mattering. Human connection remains essential. It means learning to build relationships where belonging doesn't require abandoning ourselves.

Authenticity isn't about becoming someone entirely new. Often, it's about allowing ourselves to become more fully who we already are.

The Shame We Borrow

Near the end of the episode, I asked Paul what he most wanted someone carrying deep shame to hear.

His answer stayed with me:

"Your shame is borrowed. You borrowed that shame from somebody else. That shame does not belong to you. You have to give it back."

I think about how many people spend their lives carrying shame that originated in someone else's behavior, beliefs, expectations, or inability to love them well.

Children carry shame for their parents' addictions. Survivors carry shame for the abuse they experienced. People carry shame for identities they were taught to hide, for relationships that ended, and for lives that didn't unfold according to the expectations they inherited.

But the fact that shame was handed to us doesn't mean it belongs to us.

Part of healing is learning to recognize where those beliefs originated, questioning whether they're true, and deciding what we no longer need to carry.

Maybe There Is No Happily Ever After

Because this season of Raised on Shame is about deconstructing happily ever after, I ended our conversation by asking Paul what that phrase means to him today.

His answer was refreshingly simple.

Maybe there isn't a happily ever after.

Maybe there's just happily.

We talked about gratitude, acceptance, and the possibility that happiness isn't a permanent destination we eventually reach once we've healed enough, accomplished enough, or finally gotten everything right.

Maybe happiness is something we practice in the middle of an unfinished life.

Not because everything is good. Not because the pain has disappeared. Not because we've figured everything out.

But because we're learning to live more honestly, more intentionally, and with greater compassion for ourselves.

Maybe instead of happily ever after, we can learn to live happily as we go.

One step at a time.

Listen to the Full Conversation

In Season 2, Episode 3 of Raised on Shame, Paul Schulte and I explore religious trauma, growing up gay in a deeply religious family, surviving the AIDS crisis, the importance of therapists doing their own healing work, and the freedom that comes from releasing inherited shame.

If you've ever questioned the expectations you grew up with, struggled to reconcile belonging with authenticity, or wondered whether the shame you're carrying really belongs to you, I hope you'll listen.

Raised on Shame, Season 2, Episode 3: Happily as We Go: Shame, Trauma, and the Work of Healing

Hosted by Kimberly Wilder, LMHC