Today’s newsletter is about two things that come up every week in my office:

Shame and forgiveness.

Also, conveniently for this theme and my newsletter, the Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, begins tonight at sundown.

For the past week, Jews who observe have been in the midst of a full-on forgiveness spree. We’re encouraged to reach out to those we’ve wronged, to ask for forgiveness, mend fences, atone… Or if that all feels like hard work, post an annoying generic Facebook post like this one I lazily made a few years back:

“If I’ve done anything to wrong you, if you feel hurt by me, or need repair from me, please know that I’m sorry and am willing to work on it with you” – Sylvie, Facebook Circa 2016.

Yes, I was cringe.

And speaking of being cringe….

I want to talk about the hardest kind of forgiveness. Forgiving yourself.

Back in my late twenties, I had a year I can only describe as a bit of a bender.

We’re talking incredibly poor decisions here.

A lot of things I was not only not proud of, but probably pretty darn ashamed of. I won't go into it (this is a newsletter, not a confession booth, and some of you eat breakfast while reading these).

Anyway, as Yom Kippur rolled around, I stood there thinking: oh FUCK. Where does a girl even BEGIN to atone for a year like this one? And I did want to atone. I desperately wanted a clean slate and to get back on the right track.

So I went to my rabbi, fully braced (and maybe even hoping) for a stern telling-off.

Instead, he asked me one question. "Are you still doing the things you feel bad about?"

"Some of them," I admitted sheepishly.

"Then step one," he said, "is you stop doing them."

"Okay. And then what? I think the bible mentions stoning… or lashes or something"

He raised an eyebrow, scratched his beard, and said….

"I don’t think we do stoning anymore…. It’s been a few millennia…. So…. you get on with your life, continuing to try not to do those things anymore. And if you catch yourself doing them again… you stop, you drop it, and you move on."

That was it.

No big lecture or wallowing. No list of my sins read back to me in a scary voice or being tasked with slaughtering a goat (thank God…).

Just a plan. Stop, drop, and move on.

Reader, I stood there and CRIED.

Big, snotty, relieved tears.

Because for the first time I understood that flogging myself harder wasn't atonement; it was just me robbing energy from the person who actually had to go and change (also me).

Beating yourself up and crumpling in shame is a useless, resource-sucking endeavor. I have rarely seen it lead to meaningful change.

I use my rabbi's line with clients to this day…

Someone comes to me drowning in shame about infidelity, or a porn compulsion, or fantasies that would be illegal to carry out, or boundary-pushing behavior…. And I tell them the same thing.

First, we try to stop what's making you feel bad. (And yes, if you feel you're struggling with something, it's making you feel bad. If you genuinely don't feel bad about it… well, carry on, I suppose. Sometimes consequences come to collect later, and sometimes they don't, in which case, congratulations.)

There's a joke I often think of around this time of year.

A man walks into a bar. Orders a drink, takes a sip, and hurls the rest straight into the bartender's face. The bartender splutters, "WHAT THE HELL?!" And the guy immediately crumbles, banging his head on the bar, "I'm so sorry, I'm a terrible person, I'm the worst, I don't deserve to be served, I'm SCUM." The bartender wipes his face, softens, "…mate, it's alright."

Next day. The same man comes in, orders the same drink, takes a sip, and then *splash*, again throws the rest in the bartender’s face.

And again the guy dissolves into a puddle of self-loathing and apology, hitting himself and tearing out his hair.

The bartender says, "Listen, I think you might need to talk to someone. A therapist, maybe?" The guy sniffles, "You know what, that's a great idea," and off he trots.

A year goes by. The bartender doesn't see him. Then one day, he walks in, and he's GLOWING. Healthy, calm, beaming, a man at peace. The bartender's genuinely chuffed for him. He serves him a drink. The guy smiles warmly, takes a sip… and lobs the rest right in the bartender's face. Then sits there. Serene.

"WHAT?! I thought you went to THERAPY?!" says the incensed bartender.

"Oh, I did," says the man, radiant. "It changed my life. I've finally learned to stop beating myself up and accept who I am."

I love this joke because it highlights the trap.

Endless self-flagellation changes nothing. But "accepting yourself" while you're still chucking drinks in people's faces isn't the answer either.

Both “solutions” skip the boring middle bit, which is: you actually have to stop throwing the drink.

The late, great Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who happens to be one of my favorite rabbis of all time (yes, I know, I’m a weirdo… some people have favorite movie stars or singers… I have favorite rabbis… I am who I am...)

Anyway, Rabbi Sacks often talked about the difference between shame and guilt.

Shame is horribly destructive and comes after the whole of you. It tells you with no uncertainty whatsoever… “YOU are bad, YOU are the stain, and the stain doesn't come out.”

So what do you do when you're a permanent stain?

You hide it. You deny it. You drink or take drugs to numb the pain of it. You starve yourself or overeat. You lash out at others, you get defensive. Or you collapse into a heap of "I'm the worst," and you call the heap "taking responsibility."

But all that keeps you exactly where you are, frozen. Not moving forward and not growing… shrinking.

Shame lives in the body too, by the way; I see it in jaws, in collapsed shoulders, chests, hung heads… in breath that doesn’t drop all the way down.

Guilt does something different to a person. Guilt goes after the DEED, the behavior.

You are a good person, but you did a bad thing, and a bad thing can be repaired, repented of, put down.

Guilt separates you from the worst thing you did. That separation matters because it makes change possible. As we tell our children constantly, “You are not your behavior.”

Rabbi Sacks put it beautifully: shame cultures produce stories that end in tragedy, like in ancient Greece or Feudal Japan.

Guilt cultures produce stories that end in hope. In homecoming and redemption.

Yom Kippur is guilt culture's masterpiece.

It doesn't say you're irredeemable.

Instead, it says: here's the mechanism to repair, everyone gets to use it, now go and begin again.

One more thing: I don’t think you should have to apologize to every soul you've ever clashed with.

You don't.

Sometimes the sleeping dog should keep sleeping.

If a friendship ended in a messy, mutual bust-up, emailing "sorry I was a dick, anyway let's carry on not being friends because we don't bring out the best in each other" doesn’t help anyone. It just tears the scab off a wound that had finally healed, and drags someone back into your orbit who was better left out of it.

So…. Apologize when it serves your growth and helps you move forward. When reaching out would only drag you backward? Forgive yourself instead. Resolve not to be that version of yourself again. Give a bit to charity if it helps your heart and call it closure.

Closure doesn't always require the other person's signature. It’s a gift you give yourself.

So that's my Yom Kippur wish for you, whether you're Jewish and fasting tonight or just reading this over a bacon sandwich, wondering how a sexology newsletter suddenly got all religious.

You don’t have to be religious, or believe in anything, to move on from shame.

Just pick the one thing you're still doing that's out of step with who you want to be, and stop it.

That's step one.

Then forgive yourself the energy you'd otherwise waste on self-flagellation, and put it toward the actual change.

And when you slip, because you probably will, because you're human: stop again, drop, and move on.

That, genuinely, is a huge part of what I do with people…the unsticking of shame that's kept someone frozen for years, sometimes decades.

If you're carrying a rock you can't seem to put down, my door is always open. No judgment. I promise.

To those observing: may your fast be easy and your year be sweet. G'mar chatimah tovah.

And to all of you, of any faith or faithlessness: stop, drop, and move on. It's the best teaching I know.

With love, and a clean slate,
Sylvie

P.S. Speaking of guilt trips…. Can I possibly guilt you into coming to hear me speak at the Women’s Networking Alliance Small Business Summit on October 2^nd?