Chris: Hi, this is Chris Costello, and I’ve teamed up with Michael Senoff to bring you the world’s best wellness related interviews. So, if you know anyone struggling with their weight, with cancer, diabetes, ADHD, autism, heart disease or other health challenges, please send them to Michael Senoff’s So, you’ve written a book called Why Good People Do Bad Things. Debbie, why do good people do bad things?

Debbie: Well, because we have issues, and all of us know it, and we have these suppressed emotions, and we do bad things, I think really ultimately to heal ourselves. So, our suppressed shame, our fear, our guilt, our remorse, our regret, our grief – all the things we haven’t digested, all the things we hide, deny, try to suppress, that meets the surface of our conscious mind, drive us to do things that we can even imagine. That’s why everybody struggles like, “Why don’t I have any control over what I eat? Why don’t I have any control over doing what I say what I want to do?” It’s because there’s a force called the shadow driving us, whether we’re aware of it or not. It’s driving us. It tells us how big we can get, or how small we must stay. It tells us the risk we can take, the kinds of relationships we can be, how much money we can have, or it limits us in ways that are unfathomable to most people until they start studying it and say, “Why didn’t I learn this in school?” We all have a dark side. There isn’t a human being that I’ve ever met – I’m sure there’s somebody maybe the Dali Lama or somebody has transcended their dark side, but it is there, and it’s not a bad thing. That’s the problem. People make it wrong. I always say, what happens when you’re told not to jump on the bed? They jump on the bed, right?

Chris: Of course!

Debbie: It’s like telling your twin, your dark side, your human side really because we are this beautiful combination of divine and holy and very human implied. So, it tells this human side, this ego part of us, don’t act out. What does it do? It acts out. I describe in Why Good People Do Bad Things as a beach ball. We have these things about ourselves that we don’t like, these parts of ourselves whether they’re an impulse or a dark thought or some fear. We try to hold it beneath the surface of our consciousness. Now, all of us have tried to hold a beach ball under water. It takes a lot of attention, a lot of energy to hold those parts of us under water especially when we don’t even know we’re doing it, and then all of a sudden when we least expect it, one of these aspects of ourselves pops up, acts bad and whatever our thinking, how could I have done that? Now, take the best example, the easiest example is road rage. All of us, I think most of us have been driving one day and all of a sudden somebody cuts in front of us, and all of a sudden we go from peaceful to angry and insane. Why is that? It’s because that anger was already in there. It was already suppressed, and something happened and it was able to take form. We all have this duality. We all have these aspects of ourselves. So, I think it’s part of the human operating system, but I think what we become aware of Why Good People do Bad Things tries to guide is to show you that as soon as you were told, “Don’t be selfish. Don’t be angry. Don’t be a bad girl. Don’t be a bad boy. Don’t do this. Don’t be mean. Don’t take the toy. Don’t be greedy. Don’t have too many cookies.” All these “don’ts” have a split off from who we really are as a human being, which is the totality of every quality, and because we decide what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable at a very young age, we start to create these personas. That’s why so many people really suffer from low self-esteem or lack of confidence because they’ve cut most of it from their authentic self. Self-sabotage is where all of a sudden we’re dieting, and we’re feeling great, and we’ve exercised for five days and we’ve eaten the right things. One afternoon, we come home from work and there’s a bag of cookies and we eat them all. That would be self-sabotage. If we spent money that we don’t have, that would be self-sabotage. Being with your kids and really trying to be more loving and kind, and help them grow and evolve in their self-esteem and all of a sudden, you’re angry about something, and your anger gets laid off onto them. So, those are smaller acts of self-sabotage. Of course, we see them in the media all the time. We still remember Mel Gibson. One of his films that is really acclaimed all over the world is one of these Christian films. All of a sudden, he gets drunk and shouts anti-Semitic comments. Those are the kind of things that are just self-sabotaging. We see it with politicians all the time.

Chris: We’re hearing a lot more lately in the news just about tragic things with the economic stress people are feeling where they go off the deep end. Is the shadow involved with that? It must be.

Debbie: Yes, a lot of those people are Why Good People do Bad Things, it’s not psychological therapy although it helps people, but a lot of those people have deep, deep, deep psychological patterns. I’m just talking to those of us who probably aren’t going to go and blow somebody up, but the way we’re going to blow up our own lives is in a much more subtle way. One of the great things we’re seeing right now with all that’s going on is that people haven’t taken care of themselves. They haven’t put away for the future. That would be an act of self-sabotage. Living in homes you can’t really afford. That is an act of self-sabotage. It’s because we disconnect from that authentic voice, we have a guidance side. We have an inner resource that can tell us where to go, what to eat, what to do so that we can have the greatest life for ourselves, and everytime we ignore that voice, everytime we don’t trust our instincts, everytime we go back to a bad relationship or a repetitive pattern, boom, something happens. We stay in abusive relationships for long. People know it’s bad. They feel it’s bad, but they have some unresolved fears, some need of love or attention or something else. So, we stay in relationships that aren’t good for us. We hang out with friends that bring us down. Because I’m a teacher who writes out, I always try to lay out the process for people, and in the book we really talk about the shame. I think the first thing anybody can do that’s listening, is to think about the things you’re ashamed of. Now, of course, most of us would rather do anything that think about our shame, but our shame is the culprit here. Until we can make peace with our flaws, with our mistakes from the past, until we can forgive ourselves for being human, for having parents that maybe abused us, until we can take responsibility for what’s ours and what’s theirs, we will continue to self-sabotage. I also lay out the masks that we wear, the masks of the wounded ego, which there are many. So, when we start to look and see, “What am I trying to prove the world?” What sort of face that is not really true? Do I smile all the time when really I’m upset? Am I a victim all the time like blaming other people for where I am because I’m not taking responsibility for my life? Am I the bully? Do I bully the people around me? We start to look at where our own persona is, and we create that persona of course out of shame of who we believe ourselves to be, which both of those things are false because the one thing I can guarantee anybody who is listening is, you are so much greater than you know. The bigger future to any of us, and that we has human beings are designed to be able to reinvent ourselves over and over again. So, it’s not just about the parts of ourselves that we don’t like, but it’s also the shame around being gifted or being pretty or being bright or being special in some way, and caring a gift which we all have. Many people find out after doing years of work with me, “Oh my god, it wasn’t all these other things. Those were just distractions. Really, I am just embarrassed because I think I have a big contribution to make to the world.” So, our shame and our embarrassment need to be looked at one both sides. Half the time people come in thinking they know what they’re working on, and most of the time, we’re confused we are designed – our ego structure, our human hardware is designed to protect itself. How do we protect is we disguise it. So, we may think the issue is with our mother, and really we find out later maybe they’re with our father. We think our issues are out of the way, but once we lose the way, we realize that our issues around feeling worthy. I have taken all of my teaching knowledge which literally I have taken hundreds of thousands of people now in the last fifteen years around the world through process to really show people it’s not hard as we think it is. It’s not as easy as some would say. It’s not the thinking good thoughts because transformation doesn’t happen in the mind. It happens in the heart.

Chris: Now, what role does unprocessed shame play in causing people to sabotage their success?

Debbie: Everything, I mean really everything. If there is no shame, we will feel good inside, and so you don’t feel good inside, if you don’t feel gentle towards yourself, compassion. The book is ultimately about having compassion for your humanity, for having compassion for the mistakes you’ve made, for having compassion for those impulses that are very human. So, until we can replace our compassion with shame, we’re literally screwed. We’re going to self-sabotage because we feel guilty, and the guilty seek punishment. That’s what we have to remember. We feel guilty about who we are, what we’ve done or what we haven’t done, and it can go back to before you even remember.

Chris: Also, Debbie, why is forgiveness so important in this?

Debbie: Because we can’t really get to compassion until we forgive, until we open our heart and realize that, “Wow, I did things, and I’m sorry I did them, and now I have to let them go. I can’t beat myself up.” That’s why understanding is power here. Understanding your humanity, understanding the design, really learning from other people’s examples, what makes me tick? Then we can come to this place of forgiveness, not just for other people, but we must forgive ourselves because until we forgive ourselves, we continue to get into pick the wrong job, pick the wrong relationship, do something, buy a car that’s going to blow itself up all the time. There’s a million ways to self-sabotage, and not listening to our instincts, and the only way to get our instincts to a place where we can trust is to take the step of forgiveness. The hard part, I think Chris is people try to forgive in their head, and forgiveness is the process of the heart. That’s why understanding and wisdom and exploration can help people get to that place inside their heart where they can start to say, “Wow, I made that mistake but so did the other forty million people, too. Would I forgive them? Yes, I’d forgive them. Maybe I deserve that same level of forgiveness and compassion.” You must feel forgiveness. That is what forgiveness is. I see it all the time. People will say, “I did this forgiveness work, and I did that forgiveness work, and I’ve forgiven my mother.” But, yet they close their eyes, and they say, “Why are you resentful towards?” The past will come up. I see it today as issues. We all come in with particular issues, and those issues whether we know are not are there for our own evolution and our own growth. So, you could be working on the same mother issue for twenty years, or the same father issue or brother or weight issue, and they think that we’re learning that spiritual life is a daily practice, and forgiveness is a daily practice. So, to see ourselves really as the child that we were – I always ask people who are beating themselves up, I say, “If you had a daughter or a son and they’re six years old, would you just go slap them, beat them up?” Most of us today wouldn’t do that, but would have it done it to us, but we wouldn’t do that. So, if we can picture really who we are is that two year old that three year old that four year old that ten year old, where did that part of us go. It’s still there and if we can see the innocent part of ourselves and say, “Do I want to beat her up today? Do I want to push him in harm’s way today?” We would say, “No,” and that’s what helps us open our hearts. It’s a heart opening process really learning to love oneself, and when we love ourselves, we don’t self-sabotage. We don’t do bad things. I mean, we will all mistakes, but we will really, really set ourselves up and be gentle with ourselves. The outer world is a reflection of our inner world, so we know how bad we are to ourselves by looking at what’s going on in our outer world, and most of us, the feeling is inside. Maybe we were abused, but not we’ve become the abuser. So, we have to forgive and be gentle and be kind, and learn to love ourselves, which I believe is the hardest thing a human has to do in this lifetime.

Chris: How did you come to write this book?

Debbie: I did a lot of bad things. My whole life was a bad thing. When I was young, I was a drug addict. I was a drug addict for twelve years. I went through four different treatment centers. I really suffered in my past, and today I can see that who I am as a writer, Why Good People do Bad Things is my sixth book, and all of my book have been on the shadow, the dark side, learning to live an incredible life, learning to ask the right questions. I could have never written any of these books if I hadn’t gone through all of the pain and all of the hurt, and dumb things to embarrass myself and shame myself and feel bad about myself because it’s been that healing process that I can share with people today.

Chris: How old were you when you got involved with drugs?

Debbie: I was thirteen. I had an abortion. I did so many bad things, but I really I actually wrote the book because I got involved with somebody else who was doing bad things. That was really a whole new level of teaching people how still, even if we stopped having our bad behavior, if we don’t keep inner work, we’ll just detract ourselves in a business relationship or a personal relationship or something in our family that we’ll get involved in with somebody else that’s doing something bad. I have six books, Chris. I have a movie coming out, and I’ll probably have at least ten more books because of my shadow, because of my dark side. I hold it today really as something to be I mean, Carl Jung the great Swiss psychologist said the gold is in the daughter, and that one does not become enlightened by imaging figures of light, but by making their darkness conscious. I know that that’s true, and I know that no matter what anybody’s been through, there’s light at the end of the tunnel. I know the darker the thing you’ve been through, the greater the light on the other side. So, I feel grateful today for even the most terrific experiences in my life because they have led me to explore the human psyche in a non- psychological way, in a spiritual way, and taught me to have the daily practice of loving who I am.

Chris: In Why Good People do Bad Things, you also talk about toxic emotions. What are toxic emotions, Debbie?

Debbie: Toxic emotions are the emotions that we’ve made wrong or the people around us have made wrong that we don’t allow healthy expressions for. So, hurt, we all get hurt, but most people can’t just say, “Wow, that just hurt me.” So, they suppress it. They deny it. They eat over it. They gamble over it. They drink over it. They do drugs over it, and they don’t express their hurt. It becomes this toxic emotion or sadness is a toxic emotion. These are normal emotions. People have these. If somebody dies, I hope that you feel some sadness. If you lose something you love, it’s healthy to experience some sadness. If somebody violates your boundary or somebody else’s boundary or your child’s boundary, should you get angry? That is a healthy emotion, but if we don’t find healthy ways to express them, then they become toxic, and then they can explode. I use the example – I like to write in metaphor because it really helps me. A volcano, they happen because there’s no steam. The lava is beneath the surface. If there’s a place for that steam to come out, we don’t have to have a volcano. It’s when there isn’t enough places for that energy to come out, that all of a sudden it explodes. I’m not a scientist. I’m sure I didn’t do that well, but you get the point.

Chris: Now, I know there are listeners who are going to want to look you up, Debbie. Can you share your website with us?

Debbie: Yes, DebbieFord.com, and on it, we have a self-sabotage quiz. I do a weekly shadow blog or newsletter that I send out with different exercises on it, and I have a movie coming out on the shadow.

Chris: What is the shadow going to delve into? Obviously, the shadow, but can you tell us a little preview on what you’re doing there.

Debbie: I have my shadow process, which I’m know for, and it’s a three day process where people go through the emotions, and then I called in the people who were some of my greatest teachers – Deepak Chopra and Marianne Williamson and James Von Prod, and then shared some shadow stories. There’s some amazing stories that actually brought to life like the beach ball effect so people can understand their toxic emotions brought to life – how we get jammed with these great vignettes so people can see, we have all the maps of the wounded ego. We have famous people as the seductress and the people pleaser and the bully, and just try to make it real life so that everybody can relate. I’ve been previewing it. I just preview it and it’s amazing because when people see it, they feel safe to open up and allow those doored emotions that cause them to repeat the same repetitive patterns over and over again to be released. That’s what we’re looking for, healthy ways.

Chris: What’s the deal with the politicians? They have these great successes and wonderful things they do for the world, and then have these terrible falls. What’s going on there?

Debbie: Most people who want to have that much power and that much importance, usually their shame would be that their unimportant or they’re nobody. That’s how when I talked about earlier how the shame creates our persona. So, it’s never surprising to me because they haven’t dealt with their inner world. They haven’t dealt with their shame, and then all of a sudden, boom, what happens, it rears its ugly little head, but with their bad behavior. I believe we’re all to evolve, to become the greatest expression of our loving hearts. So, it doesn’t matter who you are, you’re going to have to deal with your shadow in some way so that you can find love so you don’t have to sabotage yourself, so you don’t have to do things to destroy or bring pain to what you really love because that’s the greatest self-sabotage. Your life is going great. You’re in a great relationship. You’re a politician. You have great success, and then, boom, you do something. How self-destructing is that? Right now, we have the media who is just amass with other people’s shame. We used to say sex sells, and now shame sells. All the reality shows are filled with shame. We see these things every night on the news – shame, shame, shame on you. But, really the shame is inside of us, so when we’re focusing on all they’re doing, and we’re pointing our finger at them, as I show in the movie with one finger pointing out at them, there are three fingers pointing back at you. We should just deal with our own stuff instead of spending so much energy dealing with other people because it really ultimately gives you no relief except a moment of instant gratification where you can say, “Well, at least I’m not a bad as them. We’re not that stupid.” It’s in the movie, the forgiveness. We have circles, an inner circle and an outer circle, and the inner circle is blindfolded, and people are saying, “I forgive myself for…” and it is just like a giant confessional. Afterwards, people feel better than they’ve felt in twenty or thirty years. We’re doing the interactive version of the shadow movie, where people will be able to do the processes after they understand and watch part of the movie.

Chris: Check out the website at DebbieFord.com, and also you want to pick up a copy of Why Good People do Bad Things. It’s a great book. Debbie, thank you so much for joining us.

Debbie: Thank you so much for having me.