The Emotion Few Talk About, But Many Feel

Based on 10 years of research, what to make of a life offers transformative teachings on what it takes to navigate your way through periods of fog,

make it past life's inevitable cliffs, and keep the inner fire burning bright, long, and late. Step into frame, with what to make of a life, the instant New York Times best-seller by Jim Collins. Available from Harper Edge, wherever books are sold. Recommendations can be great. Maybe someone recommended this podcast, and here you are. But home projects are a little different. If the podcast isn't your thing, you might lose a few minutes from your day,

but if you hire your cousin's neighbor to mount your TV, you might end up with a lap-sided screen and wall damage.

“I know a guy isn't a good strategy for your home. That's why thumb-tack works so well,”

it matches you with top-rated local pros, with photos, reviews, and credentials all in one convenient place. For your next home project, try thumb-tack, hire the right probe today. Support for the show comes from Odo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder, with it doesn't different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform

that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part, Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odo for free at Odo.com. That's OdoO.com. Welcome to the Curiosity Shop. A show from the Fox Media podcast that we're.

“On Renee Brown. And I'm Adam Graham. We're glad you're here. Absolutely.”

We're talking about today. Hi, okay. We're going to talk. I'm going to tell you

a really quick funny story. We're going to talk about Shane. Oh, I've always wanted to talk about

Shane. Have you? Yeah. I've had a ton of questions for you about it. Okay. This is a really funny story. When we were when I was first doing the Shane research, this was probably 20 something years ago. We were running a group in a domestic violent shelter, piloting a curriculum. And like the third group we ran, the self-nominated leader came up and said, I've met with everyone in the group. We have a proposal. And I said, oh, okay, great. And it's always good to know who the emerging leader is

in a group. So it's a situation. And she said, we don't like the word shame. And I was like, oh, that's going to be tough because it's a shame resilience group. And she said, we would like to moving forward, say, "Shame," instead. And so for the next episode of the next nine weeks, when people would be sharing or when I'd be talking about it or the co-facilitator who's actually the clinician, I was the researcher. You know, someone would say, listen, I was so that really put

me into some really deep shame. And so-- Yeah. That's hilarious. So you take the shame out of shame, but it's pronounced again. Yeah, you know why? Because just the word shame can elicit it. It's got a contagion to it that's hard for people. So-- I can absolutely see that. Can you see that? Yeah. I mean, frankly, I mean, did you see what happened in the Michigan football program last fall? Oh, yeah. Anybody-- I grew up in Michigan. I went to grad school there.

A lot of my family went there. I've been a die-hard Wolverine fan forever. And it's hard not to escape the feeling of shame there. But we want a national championship. So I'm feeling a little about-- You did win the nanny. Congratulations. Thank you. What a-- what a-- what a-- what a slug fest game. It was not-- It was a little ugly. Yeah, it was a little ugly, but congratulations. Thank you.

I will proudly say, "Go, is it this?" Michigan, is this the sign? I've never done that.

Oh, I don't know. I'm big into the signs of the mascots. So we're going to talk about Shamey.

“All right. I'm ready. Okay. So where do you want to start? You want to start with this?”

Game expert. Yeah. I mean, yeah. So I always start with the one, two, three's. One, we all have it. Two, no one wants to talk about it. And three, the less you talk about it, the more you have it. So I am thinking about doing, again, this was two decades ago, doing grand rounds and hospital, psychology department. And afterwards, the head of the psychiatric department came up and said, "This is the first conversation I've been here for 30 years that we've ever

had on Shame." And it's the number one presenting issue we deal with. No one is talking about it. And this exact same time, I was having my PhD students do a content analysis to see in all of the

about shame? And at that time, which again, it would have been 1998, we found one chapter and it

was written by me in 70 texts. Wow. Yeah. This is one of those things that we have become very slow to talk about because of the contagion of the word itself. So when we talk about diagnoses or we talk about issues, we can find some comfort in a us and them, but there is no us and then in shame. To be alive, you know it. Everyone's got it. No one wants to talk about it. The less you talk about

“the more you have it. So I think that we were early and there have been, there were people,”

tangy and daring, great researchers, really doing excellent research and compiling research.

There were some folks in addiction who were talking about shame because that's a really complicated

relationship addiction shame. So the one two three is, I think the big thing to know about shame is you can't talk about it until you differentiate it from what we call the other self-conscious affects. So affects, fancy word for emotion, the other emotions that make us feel self-conscious of the reflection on self. So shame guilt, humiliation and embarrassment. That tracks. That tracks. So far so good. Yeah. So big difference in the one that we use interchangeably shame and guilt.

“Shame, the best way I explain it. Shame is I am bad and guilt is I did something bad. Shame is”

a focus on self, guilt is a focus on behavior. And so I always like this is because I, you know,

I came up teaching this in graduate school for social workers. I always like to say you get your paper back and you've got a crappy grade. And the way we measure shame or guilt, proneness in a person is really by their self-talk. So you get your paper back and you have a D, which I it's hard to kind of conceptualize. I'm like, I'm not liking that. I'm not liking this. You have a D for D, do better. And your self-talk is got him so stupid. I'm so stupid. I'm such an idiot.

Shame. You get your paper back. You get a D. Your self-talk is. God, it was really stupid to go out Thursday night and not study for this test. Go, guilt. Focus on, you know, behavior versus you. And guilt is adaptive. Would you agree? I mean guilt is holding something you've done up against your own values and experiencing, I guess, what we would call cognitive dissonance. That psychological discomfort that I did something or failed to do something aligned with my values.

“Yeah, or that that hurt someone else. Yeah. Or and I think, you know, it's interesting. I think”

a lot of people push back on the idea that guilt is useful because they've been on one to many guilt trips. Right. But I think the evidence is incredibly strong. We know that in romantic relationships, guilt is a driver of repair. You want to write your wrongs. You probably know Becky Shamburg, a research on leadership, showing that leaders who are prone to guilt are actually more responsible leaders because they worry about letting others out and they try to do the right thing.

And I think it's, I think it's, I think it's a much more functional emotion than most people realize. Okay. So let's pause here and I want to, I want to talk about adaptive guilt versus I'm taking on shit that doesn't belong to me. Yes. Please do. Which can be gendered. Yep. You know, like I am responsible for everything and everyone. And I feel guilt that doesn't belong to me. And so I think we have to make the distinction on guilt as defined by taking self-responsibility

for your choices and how they impact other people. I think that's adaptive. Yeah. I think so too. We had one more layer down to that, which is I think there's a difference between I look at my behavior and I recognize that it doesn't measure up to my standards or other people's standards versus somebody else is imposing guilt on me and trying to make me feel bad and manipulate me into then doing their bidding. Oh my god, that's huge. Yeah, that's huge. I think

and the most in the purest form of guilt being adaptive, it's self-reflective. It's self-evalidive. You know, I think, and this is a gender issue. I mean, I think women, you know,

and because a lot of stuff is shoved our way. Yeah. Yeah. And the reason we pick things up off of the

ground, I'm going to have to say is also socialization. Okay, so we have shame and guilt. I did

“something bad. I am bad. And you have to remember that shame is the feeling and belief that we are”

flawed to the extent that we are not worthy of love and belonging in connection. This is very survival based stuff, which is why people have a hard time talking about it. So the other two, this is where my work is dramatically changed. So we have new evidence and everything I said before about humiliation was wrong. It's different now. Wow. That's a strong statement. Yeah. Yeah. It is. And I'll tell you why. Early on in a line with other researchers looking at humiliation,

we believed that the mediating variable between what could make somebody feel guilt versus humiliation was simply the variable of deserving. So I'm going to give you an example that actually happened when we were doing the research and this was pretty shocking. We were in a classroom. I think it was

“fourth grade. And the teacher handed out and they knew why we were there. And so we had consent from parents,”

consent from the school district, handed out the papers and had one left. And said, I've got one paper left. And it doesn't have a name on it. Anyone here want to guess whose paper this is that doesn't have a name on it. And kind of people got very quiet and the students got fearful and said, Suzy, did you get back a paper? No. Suzy does not get back a paper. Because Suzy doesn't have a name on it. Suzy, I'm going to put the name on it for you. STU-PI-D. So I want to, I want to, I know,

I know look on your face. I want to kind of pause this for a second. Let us take a breath and walk us

through a couple things here. So we use that story as an example of several things. The first is the difference between shame and humiliation. So if Suzy's self-talk is, God, I'm so stupid. Why am I

“so stupid? Why don't I remember my name, shame. If Suzy's self-talk, this is how we used to talk”

about humiliation, was she so mean, she's the worst teacher ever. I did not deserve that. That would be humiliation. Right. And we believed early on that humiliation was less dangerous than shame, because there was a self-righteousness to it and you would report. Right. I don't own it. I don't own it. I don't own it. Right. I don't own it. Also, as a caregiver or a parent, I'm much more likely to hear about humiliation than shame, because with shame there's nothing to

report. I am stupid. I got called stupid. With humiliation, I'm not stupid. I got called stupid. And so really, and so that deserving piece was a huge part of how we thought about humiliation. But I want to go back and I have notes here, because I want to talk through and we'll come back to Suzy in that example, because it's harsh. This is what's changed my mind about humiliation. It's a series of studies. Let's start Susan Harder and colleagues examined the media profiles of 10 prominent school

shooters between 1996 and 1999. Harder and her colleagues reported that in every case, the shooters described how they had been ridiculed, taunted, humiliated, and teased by peers. They were spurned by someone in whom they were romantically interested or put down in front of other students by a teacher or administrator. All events leading up to the shooting had a history of profound humiliation. Not enough to move me yet. Then the report prompted a series of studies

by Jeff Ellison and Susan Harder that found links for peer rejection humiliation to pressure and anger with both suicidal and homicidal tendencies. This is really interesting because we talked about bullying from the South by Southwest age, right? Their studies suggest that bullying alone does not lead to aggression. Instead, individuals who are bullied become violent specifically when feelings of humiliation accompany the bullying. So all of a sudden in the research humiliation

is taking on a completely different color. Last, and this is a researcher I've followed for decades, Linda Hartling. She ties together a lot of the research from several areas to propose a model explaining how humiliation can lead to violence. She suggests that humiliation can trigger a series of reactions including social pain to crease self-awareness, increase self-defeating behavior,

decreased self-regulation that ultimately lead to violence. And I want to share this quote from

it may be the missing link in the search for the root causes of political instability and

violent conflict, perhaps the most toxic social dynamic of our age. Wow. So I think what was news to me when I read these and I changed course in Atlas of the Heart and kind of said, let me, let me introduce the rethink here. I keep behind that. You get by that, don't you? Is bullying alone, doesn't lead to violence, but the combination of bullying, and profound humiliation. Support for the show comes from Odo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder

with it doesn't different apps that don't talk to each other, introducing Odo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part, Odo

“replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of”

businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odo for free at Odo.com. That's Odo.com. All day, Bob's ice cream looked gloomy and gray, although he had big ambitions, his social, lacked creative vision. That bad. Maybe vamp at up at hand? I have an idea. Bob launched Canva and got into gear. Create the video in the Vampire Team and make it the funnier, I mean, it went viral. Bob's business? I went viral. Now, imagine what your dreams

can become when you put imagination to work at Canva.com. Once upon a month Sunday morning, Bob's dig at busy without warning. A realtor in need of an open house sign, no 50 of them, and designed before nine. My bad hurts. And he might eat tools to help with this point? Uh-huh! Bob made her move. She opened Canva and got in the groove. Well, creating canvas sheets, create 50 signs big for suburban streets. And in a quick,

all complete suite. Now, imagine what your dreams can become when you put imagination to work at Canva.com. Okay. So, talk to me about what humiliation is because from that description, it sounds to me like just a combination of shame and embarrassment. So, embarrassment. So, that's really interesting because we're talking about the poor conscious, self-conscious affects. Shame, guilt, humiliation, embarrassment. Embarrassment, the hallmark of embarrassment,

is fleeting, often funny with time, but the real hallmark of embarrassment is when it happens to

me, I don't feel alone. I know I'm not the first person to, you know, mispronounce someone's name,

or walk out of the bathroom, a toilet paper, or my shoe. So, what I think is the definition of how I would think about humiliation based on these studies is internalized public shaming. Yep. So, I have, so it's a combination of shame because I can feel shame alone. I can try on an outfit, looking at the mirror, and then to have that warm wash come over and me and be like, the delta between what I thought I look like and what I think I look like, but I actually look like

is shame. Or, you know, or I can, you know, for me, a real example of shame as a public person is when someone says something really hateful and personal about me, I don't feel shame about that.

“I feel shame when I think about someone I love reading it. Oh. Do you know what I mean?”

Like, I hate that feeling. And then I feel, I feel, I have that that whole warm wash of small want to disappear and my lovable, that kind of thing. And I've got a lot of tools now to get through that. So, I'm not very shame-prone anymore. I mean, Jesus, two decades of research you take. That should be the ultimate armor. That's the big door prize. Um,

but I think that humiliation has a public belittling piece to it that shame doesn't always have.

Yeah, so that makes me think we're using the term wrong and sports that and we talk about teams being humiliated by other teams. Usually that doesn't lead them to feel unworthy or unlovable. Right. They, I think oftentimes they realize, okay, we, we were not up to the standard. We wanted

“to be at, so they were humbled that they weren't humiliated. I think it depends. I, okay, so this is,”

this is so interesting. I think it depends on how the narrative the team tells itself. Certainly, I had been with teams post-trouncing in locker rooms where the feeling was humiliation

You are not worthy of that field. You are not worthy of this jersey. You are not worthy of this franchise.

So, I, so it leads me to something else and I, I want to not forget to go back to the Susie. Shame, the one thing that's really hard about the self-conscious affect shame humiliation and embarrassment and guilt is that they're highly individualized. So, I tell this example often. If I forgot your birthday or Allison's birthday, like, how dare you? How dare. Yeah, out and swipe. Today, I would probably have a glimmer of embarrassment or guilt and say, hey,

happy belated birthday. Yeah. I hope it was a great one and can't wait for what's going to unfold this year. If I forgot your birthday when my, when Ellen, my oldest, was somewhere between 0 and 5, I would have gone straight into shame. Because I was trying to balance being a PhD student getting a, getting a position as an ABD, a marriage and everything I, everything I failed to do

“was a reminder of how half-ass I was. So, what is shaming for me can be humiliating for you?”

Can be mildly embarrassing for someone else? Yeah. It's highly, so when you say, what language do we use to describe the sports team in the locker room? It depends on their narrative. Right. That makes a lot of sense. Does that make sense? It does. Okay, so one, one follow question because I, I want to talk about how to deal with shame. Yeah. What, what do you do for Susie? I, I've often had a hard time relating to people's experiences of shame. I've lived a lot of

guilt and embarrassment in my life, but shame is pretty foreign to me. I get, I get when kids feel it because they don't know any better than to internalize. They haven't, you know, often they haven't developed a sense of self and so, you know, I did something wrong, can really quickly bleed into

there's something wrong with me. Well, I've always been puzzled by, why don't people outgrow shame? Like, as an adult,

“you should know, if you're not severely harming other people or doing on anything unethical,”

you're probably not a terrible person. Why, why is that so rare for people to, to realize that? Is that, I know it sounds like a ridiculous question, but, no, it's, it's a genuine one for me. No, it sounds like a genuine question. It sounds like an important question and, and it's really important because you're not the first or 500th person who's asked me that question, and I think it's really important because the antidote to shame is empathy. And so, when you don't

understand shame, it can lead you to empathic failure with people who are in it sometimes, not because you lack empathy because it's like, you're not, you don't really think this makes you a terrible, unlovable person, right? That's exactly my response. Right. It's actually worse. Like, well, that's just irrational. Like, this, this specific thing you did or the choice you made, why is that casting a shadow on your whole sense of self and character?

Yeah, I think that, I don't know that really have a great answer for this. I mean, I think for a lot of us who were raised with a healthy dose of shame, so that being good and being right and being all these things felt conditional for love, I think shame is a very hard thing to overcome. I think the other thing is one of the most common and profound expressions are functions of shame is perfectionism. Perfectionism, like, when perfectionism is driving, shame is writing shotgun.

Because perfectionism is the belief that if I can look perfect, do it perfect work, perfect, and deliver it perfectly, I can avoid or minimize shame-blane humiliation. Right. And, you know, you know how many adults struggle with perfectionism. Right. And so, I think it comes to the idea that, and I would not say it's just parenting. I would say we're learning more and more that it's hard-wiring. I think that's another thing I've radically shifted on,

that for a long time we would all say those of us who studied self-conscious affect, parenting is the number one predictor variable of shame. I think it's definitely in a variable,

“I think kids can come hard-wired for a sensitivity of self-criticism. What do you think?”

I mean, this has been probably my biggest revelation from reading developmental psychology and behavioral genetics in general, is that I think, overall, we overestimate nurture effects and

underestimate nature effects. I don't understand. Which, anyone who's had a second child in any

realises, like, parents of one child are really strong believers in nurture. And then all of a sudden, number two arrives, and you did, you think you did the exact same things, and they react to really

Yeah, and I'm wondering, you know, it's, I think about my own kids, like, what was it

like to be raised by a shame researcher? Um, I can tell you that, that Ellen's kindergarten teacher called me one day and said, "Wow, I completely get what you do," and I said, "Why?" and she said, "We had the Glitter Center today," and I looked over at Ellen and I said, "You are a mess!" and she sat straight up and she said, "I may be making a mess. I am not a mess." Yeah. Wow. Yeah, and so I think that, that's fantastic. I think that ability, and I've experienced it

in you, like in whatever the research term is for shit-tun, you have a tremendous ability to separate behavior and put behavior on a table and dissect it without being emotionally

“or invested in that. Yeah. That's my job. That's what I do. Yeah, but I also think it's your job,”

and my job, and anyone that does what we do to understand that that's probably more rare than it

is common. Yeah, and I struggle with people who don't do that instinctively. Yeah. Like, this is a logical error. Thanks to that stop confusing the person for the action. And I think that's good leadership, and I think that can be really good leadership, because a lot of times what I'll have to tell people is if we're doing a postmortem on something that went wrong, I have to say very distinctly, "Hey, we're looking for failures in systems,

not failures." People as failures. We're looking for failures in systems. We're looking for failures in systems. We're looking for choices, you know, and shame-prone-ness is two things at the same time. Very tough to lead someone that's deep into shame-prone-ness, because when they go down, they don't get back up easily. Two, it is absolutely leveraged to get productivity out of people. Yeah. And we'll talk about that in a minute about how shame shows up at work. So I think it's really

important to understand the difference between shame guilt, humiliation, embarrassment. I want to go back to the conversation. Well, we're serious. We debrief with the teacher and said, help us understand what's happening. Talk about separating behavior from character, by the way.

Yeah, I mean, my first impulse, even as somebody likes to do that, and does it frequently,

would have been to say, "Fire that teacher." No teacher who thinks it's okay to do that to a student

“should be employed in this profession. I agree. You should not be trusted with children.”

I agree. And I mean, we do have, we have two things about teachers and administrators and coaches that are important. Don't hear one without the effort. One, 85% of all adults we've interviewed over two decades can remember something so shaming that happened at school. If forever changed, how they thought of themselves as learners. Wow. Two, over 90%, can remember a teacher, a coach, or administrator who absolutely helped them believe in themselves. So there is nothing we can draw

from that except for the sheer power those folks have. Yeah, big time. And more people use it for good, but shame can be used as a classroom management tool for sure. Wow. So when we ask the teacher, tell me what you were thinking. Tell me how you experienced Susie's response to what you said. And she said, she's so smart. She's such a good kid. She is not putting her name on papers. She's forgetting basic things. Do you know what happens to kids like her when they're held

back in fourth grade? Do you know what chances she has a being successful if she's held back in fourth grade? We cannot let her be held back in fourth grade. Wow. That teacher has a broken

“mental model of her gender. Well, I, I don't know that she has a broken mental model. I think”

she has a real lack of options for skills building. I think she has not thought through, I think she believed probably similar to how she was raised, but it's an assumption we didn't get into it. If I, if I, if I torment enough, and a lot of parents and parents do this. If I torment enough, you'll change. As opposed to saying, I need to call an art. I need to get a special involved. I need to understand what's happening here. She cannot afford to be held back.

Wow. But it's just, it's such a misdiagnosis of the problem. To think that, well, she doesn't care enough. And therefore, I'm going to mock her in front of the class. And now, all of a sudden, she's going to feel so much fear of being in that situation again that she's going to be attentive to detail and careful. But how does that? You just, you just described how

across the country. Like, this is how the world in many ways works. We will humiliate shame and

mock you into believing you are not worthy of connection. And then we will sell you the beer or the sweater or the eye shadow that makes you lovable. So I don't know that her thinking, while the demonstration of it was one of the most painful things I have ever, and I wanted to, you know, run out and stop it, but you can't. We did give her some tools and she did end up calling the art, which is that a national term, or like, bringing together a bunch of folks from the school and

administrators, council school counselors outside testing folks to figure out what was going on. I have to tell you that like shame is how a lot of pillars of capitalism are built in work and certainly

advertising in media. So interesting. I've never seen it through that lens at all. Yeah, I mean,

if everyone imagine what would happen and the diet, cosmetic, plastic surgery industries, if today, everyone woke up and looked in the mirror and said, I'm amazing. I'm worthy of love and belonging. I mean, industries would collapse within 24 48 hours. It would be the airline post 9/11. Like, a lot of things work because we've commodified what will make us feel less ashamed. So so you're an outlier. Good to know. Thank you for causing me that.

What do we do about it? I would love to learn how to be more empathetic and help people out of shame as a parent, as, you know, a colleague, but also how do you help people deal with it internally, too?

“Okay, so shame resilience is really interesting. You remember peach redishes?”

I do. Yeah, so if you put shame in a peach redish, it needs three things to grow exponentially into every corner and crevice of your life. Silence, secrecy, and judgment. If you doubt it with each of those, it will grow into everywhere. Can we call it silence, secrecy, and scorn? I just wanted to obliterate. Move on. Oh, yeah. I was like, wait, I'm trying to think like, is that the same judgment is really dangerous for shame? Yeah. But I appreciate the illiteration

call out. Okay, if you have shame in a peach redish, the same amount and you doubt it with empathy, you have created a hostile environment for shame. Shame cannot survive empathy.

Because what empathy does is empathy first and foremost helps us believe in sea. I can be seen,

and I'm not alone. And shame needs, shame doesn't do well when you wrap words around it. It doesn't want to be spoken. It wants to live kind of, you know, inside building, building,

“metastasizing. So empathy is the antidote. Let's start with, I think this is interesting, and I'll”

put a PDF up on the show notes. Let's talk about how we, the three kind of most common ways we deal with shame when we go into it. Have you ever gone into shame? I don't know. Honestly, don't know if I have. It'd be unusual. I can't think, I can think of feeling intense guilt and embarrassment. I don't think I can come up with an example of a time I felt it. Shame. I love it. Why I'm so useless when other people are feeling it. No, I'm for it to me. I mean, I don't,

there are some effects that I don't have a ton of experience with that I think I can get close and up to and understand. So I don't, I don't think that the lift might be better, bigger, to understand. So three kind of ways we protect ourselves from shame. And this is, these are called, I love this, strategies of disconnection, and they're from the Stone Center at Wellesley, again, Linda Hartland's work. One, when we're in shame, we move away. We withdraw, we hide,

two, we move toward, we people please. And three, we move against, we use shame to fight shame. Okay. So this is a version of fight flight or fun. It is absolutely, it is absolutely tied to our defense mechanisms, 100%. So I'll tell you a very quick story that I've used for, again, forever,

“just to illustrate it. So very quick story. And I, and I think it's interesting,”

a lot of my early stories were about navigating being a new mom in academics, where they're like, that's cute conceptually. Don't look like a mom, smell like a mom or act like a mom. Right? I mean, we're from the same tower. So I got invited by the Nobel Women's Initiative,

Charlie was only six months old. I was really afraid about. I was afraid to go.

Ellen, I know this is not a big deal for a lot of people, but she was having her first swimming,

and Steven, I was swimmer. Of course, that's a big deal for me. I could decide what to do. I talked to Steve, and it was kind of a scary situation because sure in a body from Iran had just won the Nobel Prize, and there was a lot of threatened violence against the summit.

“So I was like, oh my god, am I gonna go? Am I gonna miss Charlie? Am I going to miss the swimming?”

Am I gonna, is there gonna be violence that we're gonna have to, you know, like, there was a lot of things. And so Steve was like, you gotta go. So I went. First day back in Houston, I'm in Carpool. I see this woman walking up to me. And man, this woman is so dangerous. I mean,

she's just a, she's a hard person for me in every context. She's the kind of person that

after she talks to you, you're like, I feel slime to shift one of the two. Wow. Yeah, so she walks up, and I rolled on my window, and she got, I mean, this much, and I'm like, hey, we're in Carpool line. She's, we're being, and I said, you know, and my, my thing that I say to myself mantra, don't shrink, don't puff up, just being your sacred ground. So I was like, oh, I was out of town for work, and she was, who do you care those babies while you were gone?

And I said, their father, Steve, and she said, oh, my God, it must be so hard to let other people raise your kids when you're out of town working all the time. And so one of the things that's really helpful is people who have the highest levels of shame resilience, they can physically recognize shame, because when you're in shame, you are not safe for human consumption. Do not talk, text, type, do not do anything. And so I know my, my shame, when I'm in shame, and if you're

going to find this so interesting, time slows down, I get tunnel vision, my armpits tingle. It is the exact same we have found in the research for 20 years trauma response. Wow. Like if I'm driving down the highway and it's raining and the pick and the 18 wheeler jackknives in front of me, time's going to slow down, I'm going to get tunnel vision, my armpits are going to tingle. Wow. I'm in flight or fight. So I'm like, oh my God, don't talk, text or type,

don't talk, text or type. And I said, like, I went into a totally scripted moment. I said, oh, I've got to pull up for the line, nice seeing you. So I raised my window back up and the car in front of me had not moved. So I literally went up three inches and then did not make high contact with her while she stood right here. I was like, because what would moving away look like? It would mean grabbing my kid, getting home, hiding from carpool, hiding from the other moms at the school,

just disappearing. What would moving toward look like? I would say, oh my God, I know it is so hard to let other people take care of my kids and you're the best mom ever. What is the risk throwing up in your own mouth? Then you've got moving against and this is where I go. Yeah, you

“want to ask where I literally would have said, have you seen your kids in school? You should let”

someone raise them. You know, that's where I'm going. I kind of want you to say about it. I know,

I know, but the problem is none of those are me. All of them would cause downhill,

shit show. So what did I do? So here's Scheme resilience. I got Ellen put her in the car, got home, got to start on her homework, got her a snack, went into my closet, closed the door, called my best friend and started crying and said, why am I such a half-ess mom, half-ess scholar, half-ess wife, half-ess researcher, you know, and she's like, you know, we just ended up laughing, which is normally often the case in the situations, but I reached out for connection. She responded with deep empathy,

and I was okay. But these shame shields, these kind of ways, patterned ways of, and they call them strategies for disconnection because you're disconnecting from the pain of shame. Right. Do you have a strategy? But in the process, you're disconnecting from your own values. No, that's it. No, that, okay, say that again. In the process, I mean, I don't want to say it,

“word for word. I think what's happening is you're choosing to avoid shame, but you're also”

losing sight of your own principles. That's it, because what if I would have been really shitty to her? You might have regretted it. I would have regretted it, for sure. There is a part of me that wants to say, but just as a matter of justice, you should be able to say something like

I'm leaving it at that. Yeah, I don't think, I think, okay, so help me, help me with this.

This is Adam Cranskin, who helped us with shame. Well, if I know. One of the things that we've learned is that when you go into shame, you come out of your prefrontal cortex and you get very limbic. Right. Yep. So coming up with smart fun things to say, not usually happens a day later. Yeah, you get the judge's distanced at your extra moment.

“That's what I should have said. That's what I should have said. Yeah. And that's why I just do,”

I borrow this from someone that was one of the first early qualitative researchers research participants. She said one of the things that she developed when she was in shame is to go like this. Pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain. And she goes, am I crazy? And I said, no, you're really smart, because you're bringing your prefrontal cortex back online. That is very smart. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Well, okay. So I guess I do have a way of of doing this. Mostly to help other people

when they encounter it. What I like to encourage people to do is just to have a mantra that will be a more effective way to connect to their values. My favorite one is I'm not going to let other

people define my worth. That's really powerful. God, but it's so frickin' hard. Or to do it in the moment,

right? Yeah. I don't, I actually think, would you agree that you'd have to be pretty squarely in this part of your brain to act on that, not to say it? It could be the stepping stone from

“fight flight fun. It might be. Or I think fight flight freeze and fun are all actually options,”

because I think a lot of people in shame just, they just, yeah. Yeah. That's right. So do you think to say the mantra is step one of the neural pathway back to the front? It could be. Do you know what I'm saying? Like one of the things we do when we teach this work and facilitate this work is we tell people, this is hard because you're building new neural pathways. Yeah. Yeah. And ideally, right? That then leads to a bigger internal dialogue or conversation with a friend around why am I putting weight

on what this person thinks. I don't even like this person. Of all the people that I might hand over the power to define my value. She would not be high on that list. I mean, that's it. You know, and people, when I've told that story before about the, about the, the mom at the school,

they always say to me, why don't you, did you circle back and say, hey, I want to talk to you?

And I'm like, how know, I, that's an investment. Yeah. And I don't. That relationship is not worth it. That's not worth it to me. Have you heard from her since you've told the story to recognize yourself

“at it? No, I never heard from her. Interesting. I think I think certainly you're bringing up something”

that's really important to understand, which is a lot of the research on shame now will talk about unwanted identity is really that the quintessential illiciter of shame is unwanted identity. And so one of the exercises we have people do is it's very important to me to be perceived as it's very important for me to not be perceived as right because your shame triggers are the identities that other people might attach to you that you don't want that's it any part of that's it. Yeah. So I think

it's unwanted identity is a really big part of it. And I think once you get into that work, you're in therapy. Like, I mean, like, you're really trying to figure out where do these identities come from? Like, I'll give you an example from my family. It was very shaming in my family growing up to be seen as high maintenance. Like, three girls in a boy. I'm the oldest sister. Go figure. We had to be like baseball hat, no makeup, let's go. If you had to, if you're on a car trip

and you had to use the restroom and you were like, can you pull over it and it was on the wrong side of the freeway, not the direction you're going. That's high maintenance. You know what I mean? Like, and so it took me 20 years to undo that. Wow. And now you say I'm complex. I am complex. And but now still, I mean, like literally last weekend. See, it was like, we were driving from Houston to Austin. He's like, I'm going to pull over at, you know,

at the, at the truck stop. And I'm like, it's on the wrong side of the, it's like, okay, you sound like you're dead, you know. And so those things and one of the identities are tough. That's powerful. Yeah. Support for the show comes from Odo. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder? With it doesn't different apps that don't talk to each other. Introducing Odo,

it's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all in one fully integrated platform

Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odo for free at odo.com. That's Odo.com. Okay. So this, this makes me think about imposter syndrome. Because in a strange way, there's an, it's not an unwanted identity, but it's an unearned identity,

or it's an unearned image. So how does shame relate to feeling like an imposter? Not good enough. Just not good enough. Not smart enough, not good enough, not NBA enough, not experienced enough,

not enough. And so I, when we talk about imposter syndrome, I always go to HBR article,

stop telling women they have imposter syndrome. That'd be where you 2021, where Shika Tulshan,

“Jodi Annbury, like this article, I think it was the most downloaded article of 2021 on HBR.”

This is really important because, let's talk about this. Let's get into it. I think imposter syndrome is real. I think people can feel like that for sure. And I think some leaders and cultures go out of their way to make sure people feel like imposter. Then it becomes very dangerous when people internalize that. Yes, degree. Yes. I'm so glad you made that distinction because a lot of the discussion I saw about that HBR article,

I thought missed something really critical. Which is, there's an MIT professor,

Bistema Tufik, who is one of our PhD students. And she's done these amazing studies. It's the most rigorous work on imposter syndrome period, where she just surveys people on how often they feel those everyday imposter thoughts. I guess they're, sorry, let me say that a little differently.

“She surveys people on how often they feel like imposter syndrome. But it's not a syndrome, right?”

It's not I'm a fraud. It's maybe I'm not as good as other people think I am. Maybe I'm not up to the challenge of this big roller promotion that I've gotten. And she finds that when people have those thoughts more often, they actually end up working more persistently. They end up learning more

from other people because this is related to our discussion and metacognition. They know there's a

gap between what other people expect of them and where they are currently. There's a sort of a confidence versus expectation gap. And they want to, you know, work hard and learn as much as they can to close the gap. And it becomes motivating, right? To say, okay, I've got to live up to those expectations. That I think is a healthy way of dealing with those feelings. What you're describing is something very different, which is making you feel like you're not good enough. And trying to

use that as almost a weapon to induce shame and motivate you to become a more indentured servant of the organization. Yes. It would be really interesting for I would love to understand. I would love to see data. Maybe it already exists. I would love to see research on what are the variables that exist externally and within a person where the gap between confidence and confidence leads to positive. Yes. And when does it get internalized and lead

to shame, self-doubt and underperformance? That is the, that's the question. That is the question. Yeah, I just know that I can tell you for me, early in my academic career, I had a lot of imposter syndrome and it was engineered. I had, I had some of my own and I was aware of it, but some of it was very intentional to drive kind of fear in, and what it was really is to drive reference of tenure faculty. Wow. Right. It's going to put you,

“we're going to put you in your place. Yes. Yeah. And I think, you know, it's, it's interesting because”

when I think about that you actually just resolved a puzzle for me, or you gave me, you gave me an idea about how to resolve a puzzle, which is, this article comes out and it talks about how, you know, women are constantly told they have imposter syndrome. Whenever I bring up imposter syndrome, people stereotype it as, you know, a problem that's more pronounced among women than men. But what I, what I didn't get until just now is, but men don't internalize it the same way.

I know when I felt like an imposter, I just look at that and say, all right, I'm not there yet. Let me, let me, let me go and, like, put on a growth mindset and try to figure it out.

well, this must mean that I'm, I'm not capable. And what happens when you're in a culture

like today, where in the military, you've seen black men, women, women, women discharge from positions of duty when they're excellent military leaders, when you've seen black women systematically moved out of the workforce. So, so it's not just, wow, I'm really in secure folks. It's also like you've got cultural forces that are beating you down. No wonder you feel like an imposter, you've been told your whole life that you shouldn't be there.

Yeah. And then we've got, you know, an administration that is the ultimate act of like

“colonialism and unqualified. So, like, so I think, yeah, I think, I, I, the big takeaway for me is”

imposter syndrome, shame, micro macro lens. Look at both, humiliation, you know, micro humiliation,

we see it tied to violence, but look at humiliation from a macro, look at the current administration in the US, humiliating every day for the last three weeks. Europe, our allies, humiliation from a macro perspective. And I think this was Linda Heartlings, you know, thesis here when she said, not only the most underappreciated force and international relations, it may be the missing link in the search for root causes of political instability. Yeah. Like, how long, how many times are you

going to use your authority to tell people and other countries and other cultures that they're less than, you know? I mean, I was just going to ask you what your biggest takeaway was, and you

“just nailed it. I think my biggest takeaway on shame, on imposter syndrome. So, that's will not”

to laugh. No, yeah, shame. It takes all the wind out of the shame. It does. Shame, humiliation, imposter syndrome is, understand what they are and look at them from both a micro and a macro lens. You know, and I think all three of those have in common, deep internalizing, of things that don't belong to you. And I think a great final note on internalization is just aplico, the French woman who has, you know, when that court case came about about her husband,

not only sexually assaulting her, but drugging her and inviting her 50 strangers to do the same. Just disgusting. They said, you don't have to face them in court. You don't have to bring them in,

and her response was, so powerful. This is not my shame to carry. We will put the shame on the right

people. This is not my shame to carry. So a huge externalization of that doesn't belong to me, yes, which is very powerful because it's so rare, because individual choices to not internalize are very difficult in a world where the social messages are so strong. I think that's that's so

“important. Yeah, I think my biggest aha, as I think about this conversation, is”

it connects to something one of my mentors Sue Ashford often talks about, which is past hauntings. And when you talk about, when you're you're explaining to me why people continue to feel shame about these unwanted identities that, you know, as an adult, they could know better. That's not me. There's so many of them are related to our past hauntings. Oh, yeah. That, you know, the things we were ashamed for as children, those got internalized. And I think that, that just, that was a

light bulb moment for me. I mean, I mean, hugely, yes, past hauntings. And we didn't talk about this, but I think it's worth taking a minute because the past haunting brings up something for me about how shame shows up at work. Because we think of our personal and professional selves as different, but they're one integrated self, past hauntings that are personal. And I love the framing that you're putting on this, also show up at work and professional shame. And so two things

I want to say, one, the number one shame trigger at work across the board has not changed in our research over 20 years. The fear of your relevance. Think about what that means in today's

fear of your relevance. I'm so, I'm so glad you said that for now because you just answered a

question that's been in the back of my mind since our South by conversation. What was the question? It's about, it was about the shame-based fear of being ordinary as the definition of narcissism. I thought that was profound. Haven't stopped thinking about it since he brought it up last month. And yet, it turned on me. There are non narcissistic reasons to have a shame-based fear of being ordinary, which is I want to make the best and highest use of my time. I want to make a unique

contribution. I want to add value and the threat of not being able to do that from AI. I can see how

“that can lead to pervasive shame. And I think that's what we're up against right now. I don't even”

think we're, I don't even think AI is presenting as a skills issue as much as it's presenting as a trust and agency issue. So the fear being irrelevant. So is one way that shame shows up at work. But let me just list some others. Back channeling comparison, favoritism is a huge shame trigger for people at work. You asked hunting a parent's favoring. Oh my god, or a teacher. How am I, I was, I was doing work in a company that was switching from servers to cloud. And they literally named like

them like old school and cool kids. And the top leaders would always in public stuff associate

more with the cool kids, the, you know, the cloud kids. And it was, it was like people were calling and sick. People were leaving after 20 years. Like, it's just favoritism. I'll tell you the other big shame trigger hidden gossiping, sarcasm, tying people self worth through their productivity to try to get people to produce more teasing. These are always that shame shows up at work. And I always say if you're looking for shame at work, it's like looking for a termite in a house. If you

walk through a house and you don't see termites, you still have the inspection before you buy the house because they could be behind the walls. And that's usually where shame lives in organizations. If you literally walk through an organization and you see shame, that would be like, that would be like looking at a house and seeing termites on the wall. This is not good. And I'm going to give you a great example of where this happens. Finance. Every quarter, they post everyone's numbers,

then the person with the highest number, packs up all their stuff and pushes anyone out of the

“office that they want. You know, so empathy is the antidote. Understanding, I think your, your shame”

triggers your unwanted identities. Understanding the shame shows you used to self-protect because they move you away. You know, from I think who you want to be and then being able to share your story with someone who's running the right to hear it and having an empathic response back is so powerful because shame dissipates the moment you know you're not alone that you can be seen and cared for. Shame is like shit. I can't hold on. The idea that shame shields are like a bandaid instead of a

cure. There's another they got hot for me. Oh my god, there's something else that, but you're protecting yourself in the short run, but you're not actually putting yourself in the position

to deal with the experience in the long run. And my aha too is I've never been able to articulate

quite as clearly as you have in two decades of talking about shame shields. They move, they move you away from your values. So while they may offer temporary relief in the second that you fight back with shame or you people please or you disappear downstream they cause more damage and more need for repair. Well, you said it. You were saying you had to do that, but you're finally really helped. I mean, myself. Yeah. I was just reflecting it back to you. I like the reflection.

Well, this was an amazing conversation. Yeah. And I'm excited about the next episode. See you next time. The curiosity shop is produced by Bernabey on education and research group and granted productions. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app. Repart of the box media podcast network. Discover more award-winning shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. Support for the show comes from Odo. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder?

With it doesn't different apps that don't talk to each other. Introducing Odo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best

“part? Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over”

thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odo for free at odo.com. That's odo.com. Support for the show comes from Odo. Running a business is hard enough.

It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform

that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part?

“Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over”

thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odo for free at odo.com.

That's odo.com.