What a Shame!

Quite a few years ago-while I was still in University-I was taking part in one *many* group activities (trust me, Social Work has scads of those!). And believe it or not, I was still pretty painfully shy those days.

I don’t remember the activity, but I do remember how that story ended.

The professor asked us to share what our thoughts on the exercise might be. Well, I'd been working on my self-confidence, and had built up some trust with this group of students over the many months. So, I bravely stuck up my hand and shared a few thoughts. I don’t remember what I said (no doubt the fear of the moment wiped out my memory, as nervousness often does!) but probably felt proud of myself.

Sadly, that's not how this story ended.

The second comment, from one of these classmates I trusted, was:

“I noticed the white guy male first.”

It hit me like a sledgehammer in the gut…Shame. I still feel it, as I write this out. It triggered a lot of pretty instant thoughts, and not the “I’m a calm, intelligent, mature and kind therapist” kinds of thoughts.

They could be summed up with a feeling of horrible Shame…how could I have done something ignorant and offended someone else? Have I spoken up too often, or taken up too much space?”

And it was also “Who do you think you are? Don’t you know how HARD I’ve worked to get to this point? Don’t you know how HARD it is for me to push past my insecurity and speak up?”

Fear, and Anger. "Flight," and "Fight." Somehow in that one comment I managed both extremes of the Window of Tolerance (and if you haven’t heard of that concept, check out the link below, but I’m sure I’ll be putting up a video or Blog post about it soon, it's useful in a *lot* of sessions!)

But for today, I want to just focus on "shame," and how much harm this tends to cause us.

(For more in-depth learning: I love a lot of Brene Brown's work on Shame, and would

highly recommend her book "Daring Greatly," where she shares a lot about her research

on shame-where it comes from, how much we use it on others, and ourselves. You can

find her videos on YouTube as well, free of charge!)

We learn it as kids, either by parents or classmates, and sometimes those shaming words and actions still slip out of our adult mouths. "Tu devra avoir honte!"..."You ought to know better!"...no matter the language, those words stung when we were kids (and I'll bet I'm not the only one who can still feel the sting of some of those moments even though I'm now far from kid-aged!)

As adults, it still sneaks into our day to day lives, but often a lot less dramatically. A snicker..comments like "Really? How can you not know that?" or "Now I just know you can *see* the dishes piled up in the sink"...

Little whispers of shame, meant to "course correct" others. This is the main purpose evolution led us to such an intense shame reaction, imo...to get ourselves in line with what the rest of the herd of humans is up to, so we don't get rejected and eaten by bears or some such. But in our modern day life, often the little criticisms...the laundry not put away...the toilet still leaking...the Drive-Thru worker who got your order wrong...the passive-aggressive emails...

Basically, all the times we download our own frustrations onto others. And sometimes we honestly think we're helping them to learn, grow, do better, or at least quit making our life more difficult.

But more often, we either trigger their past memories of shame, or provoke anger. Neither is particularly helpful for learning, aside from "this activity makes me feel bad," "I hate getting emails from this person." or "this person is an a**h&!e."

Don't they know how hard we're working to get through this life? Why don't they ever understand me? Maybe I'd better just keep my mouth shut and not put my opinion out there, which builds distance in relationships, and loneliness.

But! Just because these Shame habits are pretty common in our society, I really think we can do better! And not just in a preachy "try to have an open mind" kind of way.

Because the story I started with, technically hasn't ended!

I was lucky enough that I had the chance to explore where those intense emotions of mine came from. That moment helped me understand how insecure I was, and to practice more self-acceptance. It brought up older memories of things I felt shame about, and by working through them, they don't haunt me in the same ways.

It reminded me that, instead of shaming myself and pushing hard/emphasizing how "I'm not good enough/I'm stupid/I'm failing" to think more about, "What am I accomplishing? What do I still have to learn?"

It also helped me develop strategies to work with, instead of against, the people I care about, when disagreements crop up and new learning needs to happen (usually by both of us!). When someone is angry with me, instead of going with an automatic thought like "Dang they're so stupid/ignorant," which takes me down a less-than-helpful "how can I make myself feel better and win this argument"...I try to assume that, like me, they've probably been doing the best they know how to do to get through life, and ask myself, "what's the best solution to this situation? How can we get on the same page?"

It also helped teach me about things like "privilege" and how to be more open-minded about topics that are out of my comfort zone. But that's a topic for another day I think!

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That's all i have for this week! Check out the link below for info on the "Window of "Tolerance," and some strategies for moving past shame with kids! And since we're all kids at heart-why not think about how it works with everyone else, too?