This is a detailed recap of the Chiije digital conversation with Chris Hovde and Chisom Udeze
Shame is one of the quietest emotions we carry, but also one of the heaviest.
In a recent conversation hosted by Chiije, Chiije CEO Chisom Udeze and guest Chris Hovde explored what it means to unlearn shame, heal from emotional wounds, and reconnect with ourselves in healthier ways. The discussion moved beyond surface-level wellness advice and into the realities of childhood trauma, emotional survival, toxic environments, and the long journey toward healing.
The event created a space for honesty, vulnerability, and reflection, reminding participants that healing is not linear, and that shame often thrives in silence.
What does mental health actually mean?
Chris opened with something simple: mental health is something every single person has. It is as natural as having a body. He can't understand why we still treat it like something to hide.
"It's like trying to hide your leg or your arm. It's a natural part of being a human being."
For him, mental health sits in three places simultaneously. First, it is potential, the understanding that many of our limitations live in our minds, and that the brain, like the body, can be trained. Second, it is about boundaries, specifically, learning what is his pain and what belongs to other people. With ADHD and high empathy, Chris spent much of his life absorbing the hurt around him. If you take in the pain of the entire world, he said, your inside will not be bright and shiny and happy. He is still learning to distinguish what is his to carry.
Chisom's definition was different, and equally precise. For her, mental health is manual labour. An ongoing, unglamorous process of demanding wellness for herself and doing whatever work that requires. She was direct about the gap between how mental health tends to be talked about, spa days, platitudes, surface-level self-care, and what it actually involves.
But the thing that stood out most in her framing was this: she doesn't only create boundaries to protect herself from the world. She creates guardrails to protect herself from her own mind.
"How do I create boundaries not just that protect me from the world, but also that protect me from myself?"
Because when you are deeply introspective, the pursuit of mental health can become its own arena for self-punishment. Chisom carried shame for decades. And when she finally began unlearning it, she found herself furious, not only at what had been done to her, but at what she had done to herself in response. Learning to stop over-interrogating yourself, she said, is its own form of work.
Where both of them are right now
Chris described his mental health as better than it has ever been and more intense than it has ever been, at the same time. He has a stable foundation now. He has processed a great deal. But he is also, on weekends, doing some of the heaviest emotional work of his life, moving through fear and grief that solidified in his body over forty years. The body, he noted, is wise. It doesn't let you access what is behind the wall until you can actually handle it.
Chisom's shared that does the work, the early mornings, the exercise, the meditation, the practice. She is, by most measures, on track. And then last summer, she was taking a shower and broke down completely. She didn't know why. She didn't understand what was happening. And then she understood: there was so much she had packed under the carpet, so efficiently, for so long, that it finally found its own way out.
She also spoke about not having memories of her childhood. She has tried therapeutic approaches to recover earlier memories. Some have not returned. That, she said, is also what trauma does. It doesn't only hurt you in the moment. It quietly takes things from you, for years, without asking.
The shame that sounds like your own voice
Both Chris and Chisom grew up internalising a version of the same message: when something goes wrong, the problem is you.
For Chris, this came from a childhood defined by a father who was physically and emotionally violent. As a young child, he had what was diagnosed as asthma, and what he now understands was the physiological response of a child who was terrified every hour, never knowing when the next beating would come. It was never asthma. The symptoms, the breathlessness, the irritable bowel, were his body's reaction to constant fear. Every time he had a physical or emotional reaction, it was reframed as something wrong with him specifically. Breaking that cycle, he said, was enormously difficult. Because it was always him.
Chisom's experience had a different shape but the same conclusion. As a teenager, she was assaulted. And then the society around her compounded it. All she had was her own head.
She started to dissociate. She couldn't always tell reality from what was happening in her mind. She knew she couldn't tell anyone because she was already marked as unsuitable, unworthy, ostracised. The last thing she wanted was to be seen as crazy too. So she carried it. She carried the assault, the isolation, the dissociation, and the shame around all of it, quietly, alone, for a very long time.
When the people around you don't respond to what you're actually saying
One of the most striking parts of Chris's story was about how completely he had normalised abuse in an adult relationship. When he mentioned to friends that he was being beaten, they said things like: you'll probably figure it out. Or: you're so strong. So he kept going. He even framed it to a friend as progress, it's much better now, only every quarter. He said it with no emotion. Like mentioning a sandwich.
It took one friend who stopped him and said: are you actually listening to yourself? Being beaten at all is not okay. Chris passed out in his arms. It was the first time anyone had mirrored back that what he was describing was not acceptable. Until that moment, the silence of everyone around him had confirmed his shame.
He also spoke about calling friends when he was suicidal. Some said: call me when you're ready for lunch again. Others said: you can do it, you're so strong. Both responses, well-intentioned as they were, sent him back into himself. He thought: maybe I'm exaggerating. Maybe it's not that bad. Maybe I can keep going.
Chris made a point that stretched beyond his own experience: in Norway, workplace psychological safety is a legal requirement at a very high standard. Which means, he said, that most people are going to work in a technically illegal culture, too scared of a colleague, not getting acknowledgement from a manager, not able to release their potential. The standard should not be at least I'm not being beaten. The standard should be optimal.
How Chisom thinks about coping, clarity, and rage
When the conversation turned to how you distinguish between a coping mechanism and something genuinely subconscious, Chisom's answer was layered.
She compartmentalises, she is, she said, a grade-five compartmentaliser. She can see something happening and decide: no. Not now. You don't get space in my head yet. She can dissociate from things quickly. She acknowledges this is partly a survival skill built in childhood, and partly still useful.
But she is also aware of what she is carrying. She knows she has a lot of rage inside her. Rage she has not fully looked at yet, because she doesn't know what it looks like when it comes out. So she ties it up, rationalises it, and puts it in the ocean until she is ready.
Her practice, when she is ready, is radical responsibility alongside radical grace. She looks at a situation clearly: what is it, exactly? What can she take responsibility for? What is hers to carry, and what was put on her by someone else? And critically: how does she drop the thing that was never hers to carry in the first place?
She also named something important: the privilege embedded in advice like just leave the job or just distance yourself. Not everyone can. People stay in toxic relationships because leaving would cost them their immigration status. Because where they came from is not safe. Because there are children, or finances, or a hundred other things that make the exit impossible. Chisom doesn't flatten these realities. She holds them.
What she advocates instead is clarity. See your situation precisely, without flinching, without wishful thinking. Name it for exactly what it is. That, she said, is where strategy begins, only once you can see clearly what you are actually dealing with.
"See it. Name it. Then you can start thinking: what are my options? What can I do? What can I not do?"
On family, obligation, and who gets to decide
The conversation became very concrete when it turned to toxic relationships within families, the ones you can't simply walk away from. The gatherings, the confirmations, the reunions.
Chris is not going to his nephew's confirmation because his father, who was abusive throughout his childhood and whose violence Chris believes contributed to his mother dying younger than she should have, will be there. He has been told: but he's your dad. He has heard: we should all be there. His body cannot make itself go into that room. Not as a protest. Not as a decision. His body just can't.
"Do what makes you good. Not what's expected from you."
Chisom agreed, and added something useful for anyone who doesn't even realise that no is an option. She described situations where people would go to a difficult family event simply because it was expected, never once considering she could not go. The question Chisom asks: what actually happens if you don't go? Will the people who love you stop loving you because you didn't perform cohesion?
She has a particular freedom here that came from a painful place: she knows how to be alone. She learned it at 13, when she had no choice. What's the worst that can happen? People don't really speak with or to her. She has already lived through two years of that. It no longer has the same power.
They also talked about what happens when you can't anticipate it, when you're already in a room and someone who has harmed you walks in. Chris's answer: accept that you might freeze. Accept that you might be polite when you didn't want to be. Take the learning afterwards and do it a little differently next time. Progress, not perfection. Chisom's answer: she has had to look people in the face and say, simply, I'm not going to have a chat with you. It is uncomfortable. It is also possible.
What they are still working on
Chris still feels fear in his body every time he posts something on LinkedIn. The voice that says who are you to have an opinion, the voice his father put there when he was a child, is still present. He pushes send anyway, sometimes sweating. He calls that progress.
He also spoke about the duality he lives with: he would wish to have been a completely different person, to not have lived what he lived. And at the same time, he loves life. He has joy. He has love. He wants a meaningful life and to be there for the people he cares about. These things coexist. He is, in his words, all of it and probably nothing, learning to work with the berries he has.
Chisom is still working on grace. Radical grace, for herself and for others. She holds herself accountable. She holds other people accountable. She sees things clearly and names them. And she is learning, still, to let that naming be enough. To say the thing and let it release from her body. To not carry what is not hers.
"My pain has to mean something. If by being honest about it, someone resonates, someone understands they are not alone — that matters."
She also said that she has felt alone at every decade of her life. As a child, as a teenager, in her 20s, in her 30s. Approaching 40, she still feels it. These conversations, she said, are one answer to that. If she had heard people talking like this when she was 18 or 20, she might not have felt so completely alone for so long.
What actually helps: tools from both sides
Chris, when asked about tools especially for men: the statistic that helped him most when he was suicidal was that 90% of people come out of a depressive episode within 6 to 12 months. Just knowing that gave him something to hold. He also spoke about somatic approaches, EMDR, meditation, physical release and his scepticism of talking-only therapies. The brain, he said, is what got us into the bad place. Thinking our way out has limits. The body needs to be part of it. And if a therapist is not moving you forward within a reasonable timeframe, find someone else.
He also spoke about friends who came to his door, put him in a car, and drove him to the forest when he couldn't walk himself there. Be the person walking for someone else for a while, he said, when they can't do it themselves.
Chisom spoke about a friend, Anna, who rang her bell every single day when Chisom was going through depression. Some days Chisom opened the door. Some days she didn't. On the days she did, Anna came in, sat down, read her book, made a meal, didn't demand conversation, didn't require Chisom to be okay. “She was just present, she was just there.”
"People who are going through things don't want to be a burden, and they don't want to ask. So if you can, show up. Even when they don't pick up the call."
What to take with you
Chris: treat yourself like your own best friend. Ask what you would tell that person to do, to live, to protect. Picture the life where you flourish. Then take one small step toward it today. Say no to one draining project. Speak up to one person treating you badly. Take a 10-minute break. Every lip gloss counts.
Chisom: even when everything outside of you is out of your control, even when you look at the system clearly and confirm that you have no external power, no one can take away how you speak to yourself. How you see yourself. How you speak life back into yourself. That is where she started at 13, alone, with nothing but her own mind. That is still, years later, where she returns.
"They could take everything away from me. But they couldn't take away how I saw myself."
Key Takeaways
On shame: Shame doesn't announce itself. It sounds like your own voice telling you that you're overreacting, that other people have it worse, that you should be able to figure it out. It doesn't care how much you know or how much work you've done. Unlearning it is ongoing.
On clarity: Before you can figure out what to do, you have to see your situation precisely, without flinching, without wishful thinking. Name it for exactly what it is. That is where strategy begins.
On obligation: You are not required to show up somewhere that harms you simply because it is expected. Ask the real question: what actually happens if you don't go? And know that no is always an option, even when it doesn't feel like one.
On healing: There is no single timeline. Some things move quickly. Some things, especially those rooted in childhood, in family, in systems that were supposed to protect you, take longer. Both are true, and neither should be imposed on someone else.
On talking vs. doing: Talking is not the only way to heal. The brain got us into the difficult place, and thinking our way out has limits. The body holds trauma too. Somatic approaches, EMDR, physical movement, these matter alongside, or sometimes instead of, talk therapy. If a therapist is not moving you forward, find someone else.
On showing up for others: You don't always need the right words. Show up. Ring the bell. Sit in the room. Make the meal. Don't require the person to be okay. People who are struggling rarely ask for help because they don't want to be a burden, so if you can, just be there.
On small steps: You don't need to transform. You need to take one step today toward something safer, something more nourishing, someone who makes you feel a little less alone. Those steps accumulate into something you couldn't have imagined from where you started.
On power: Even when everything outside you is out of your control, no one can take away how you speak to yourself. That internal voice, how you see yourself, how you speak life back into yourself, is where it starts. And it is always within reach.
This conversation was hosted by Chiije as part of our event series on mental health and radical self-care. Our next event is on May 19th — join us at chiije.com.
Chris and Chisom are available to connect directly on LinkedIn if something in this conversation stayed with you and you'd like to continue it.
If you are struggling, please reach out to a mental health professional or someone you trust. You do not have to carry it alone.