Speak Shame

What if everything you thought you knew about shame was wrong? In the Season 4 finale of Speak Shame, Dr Connie is joined by Dr. Judith Pilla – psychotherapist, shame researcher, and author of How Shame Runs the World – for a conversation that will change how you think about one of our most powerful and least understood emotions. Dr. Pilla reveals why shame isn't simply a negative emotion to be eliminated. It's an evolutionary signalling system every human carries. She breaks down...

Monika Molander spent three decades trying to earn love through achievement: top universities, a career at Google and Meta, and relentless perfectionism. From the outside, an impressive life. On the inside, an unshakeable belief that she still wasn't enough. In this episode of Speak Shame, Dr Connie talks to Monika, self-leadership and embodiment coach and survivor, about the eating disorder she developed as a teenager, the sexual abuse she experienced while living abroad, the years she spent...

Emily Jacob went on a date in 2008 and woke the next morning to find she had been raped. What followed were six years she calls "the abyss" – years of surviving, struggling, and slowly finding her way back to herself. In this episode of Speak Shame, Dr Connie talks to Emily – founder of Reconnected Life, trauma-informed recovery specialist, keynote speaker, and survivor – about the gap that exists between disclosing sexual violence and accessing proper therapeutic support, and why she ...

Shannon Freedman was driving to work when a freeway accident left her fighting for her life and ultimately missing a quarter of her brain. Doctors didn't think she'd survive. In this episode of Speak Shame, Dr Connie talks to Shannon – financial consultant, rapid transformational therapist, and brain injury survivor – about the two decades she spent believing she wasn't capable or worthy after her accident, and the mindset shift that finally set her free. Shannon shares what it's really like ...

At 13, Madeleine Black was gang-raped. For decades, shame kept her silent, but she came to realise: the shame was never hers to carry. In this powerful episode, Dr Connie is joined by two-time TEDx speaker and author of Unbroken, Madeleine Black, who made the extraordinary decision to forgive the men who raped her – not for them, but for herself. Madeleine shares her journey from trauma, silence, and a psychiatric ward at 14, to writing her book and speaking on global stages about sexual viol...