Discomfortable

Jen Lumanlan   In this episode, I’m joined by researcher, parenting coach, and author Jen Lumanlan to discuss her new book, Parenting Beyond Power: How to Use Connection and Collaboration to Transform Your Family—and the World. I had the pleasure of reading an advance copy of Parenting Beyond Power and even though I’m not a parent, I gained a lot of valuable insight from her exploration of the connection between social justice and parenting. Jen’s book talks about the transferrence of cultural norms like white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism from one generation to another, and offers alternative parenting strategies to help promote new norms of collaboration, equity, mutuality, and care. Taking inspiration from conflict resolution practices like Nonviolent Communication, Jen’s book helps parents connect with the universal needs behind their children’s behaviour as well as their own parenting strategies. This fosters a much deeper and yet more flexible way to connect with children and ensures that everyone gets what they need (but not necessarily what they initially thought they wanted). It’s a simple but radical shift from the kind of power-over parenting that most of us were conditioned to think of as “normal”. In our conversation, Jen and I dig into the way shame plays into parenting and fuels the transmission of unspoken values like white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism (Jen also does a great job of succinctly defining what she means by these terms). Jen goes on to offer several simple tools for trying this needs-based parenting approach for the first time, and furnishes the listener with lots of helpful examples from her own experiences as a parent. I loved hearing Jen talk about the important distinction between setting boundaries and limiting a child’s behaviour, for example, and her surprising take on how often a parent would ideally be using either one of those tools. If you’re a parent (and even if you’re not), I highly recommend checking out this thought-provoking book, Parenting Beyond Power. If you’re interested in hearing more from Jen, she is also the host of her own podcast, Your Parenting Mojo, on which I appeared last year to discuss my own book. Jen also offers courses and other events and is currently touring with her book, so she may be appearing soon at a bookstore near you! Note: this interview was edited for clarity.

Impermanence   One of the ways that I define toxic shame, is that it is an interpretation of the feeling of shame (shame affect) as something global, permanent, and externally referenced. In this episode, I want to explore the permanent aspect of this interpretation because I’ve been experiencing it a lot lately in my own life. I notice this sense of permanence shows up in (at least) 3 key ways. The first is that toxic shame is often interpreted as “there’s something wrong with me”, and the permanent element convinces us that this supposed flaw is permanent. There’s something wrong with me… and there’s nothing I can do to fix it! This is either the way I am and always have been, or I’ve been broken or sullied or contaminated in some way that cannot be undone, healed, or accepted. The second aspect shows up in connection with the way that shame is usually triggered by an interpersonal rupture, some kind of perceived disconnection with an important person or group. In this instance, toxic shame is the belief that the relationship is now permanently broken. This form of shame denies the possibility of repair, reconnection, amends, or change. The third aspect is about the feeling of shame itself. It is the belief that this feeling is permanent. That the pain of shame will be more or less unavoidable in the future. Toxic shame can convince you that this is your life now: suffering without end. And you can see how these 3 elements feed off of one another and build into a vicious shame triangle. Because I am “permanently flawed”, I will be rejected by everyone I love, permanently. And because I’m going to be alone forever, I’m going to be trapped in this feeling of shame for the rest of my life. You can imagine just how disempowering such a belief would be. If you’re going to be trapped in permanent suffering for the rest of your life, what’s the point in even living? In order to confront this painful pattern, we need to spot it! If we can notice that we aren’t in shame all the time—that we do in fact have moments of pride, connection, and joy—we can begin to counter this toxic interpretation with hard evidence. As many wisdom traditions have been teaching for centuries, all feelings are temporary. Ironically, the more we expect to “cure” or rid ourselves of shame forever (a permanent solution), the more it feeds this toxic belief. That’s why I offer shame coaching, free discussions, and group classes, so that we can talk about our shame and reinterpret it in healthier ways.

Rupture   Lately, I’ve noticed a particularly insidious message hidden in my shame. Not only do I tend to go into shame when I make a mistake (as I’m sure most people do), but my inner critic adds insult to injury by convincing me that on some level, I knew I was going to make that mistake! And the fact that I did it anyway, even though I supposedly knew it wouldn’t work (or knew it would be a disaster, knew it would hurt people, etc) just proves how “selfish, irresponsible, untrustworthy, deceitful, and evil” I supposedly am. This fuels a particularly painful and demotivating kind of shame spiral. In this episode, I explore how this toxic phenomenon comes to be. Like most toxic forms of shame, these patterns usually form in early childhood. As children, we are helpless little sponges that automatically soak up everything we are exposed to, including language, cultural norms, emotional patterns, etc. And because we are social beings, we are born with the expectation and need to connect with the adults in power over us. This connection comes in the form of their warm attention, emotional attunement, care, support, and love. Whenever that connection is broken, we naturally go into a shame reaction. Because childhood is inherently an egocentric phase of development, as children we implicitly interpret these painful interpersonal ruptures as “my fault”. But ruptures are unavoidable, and what’s more, they are arguably useful! When the caregiver notices the rupture and repairs it, taking full responsibility for the break in connection and reestablishing warm attunement with the child, it can serve as a valuable and necessary learning experience that actually deepens and strengthens the bond between them. But if the adult doesn’t actively repair the connection, then the child will be forced to attempt to make the repair themselves in order to reestablish a sense of safety. In this scenario, not only will the child continue to blame itself for the rupture, but the implicit message to the child will be, “You need to change in order to be fully loved and accepted by the important people in your life (who you need to survive)”. If this happens often enough, the child’s brain and nervous system will wire themselves around the belief that there’s something wrong with the child, that there’s something about it that hurts people and pushes them away. We carry these disempowering beliefs into adulthood and they colour the way we see ourselves and the world. For example, my toxic shame is always telling me that I’m going to hurt people somehow and that I’m likely to fail at whatever I do. So no matter what I try, even with the best planning and intentions, if I make any mistakes, if anything goes wrong (even out of my control), or if anyone is inadvertently impacted in a negative way, my shame can always say, “See, I told you so!” And it gets even worse than that, because if my inner critic can convince me that I “knew” it was going to happen, then it can further shame me for being “reckless”, “irresponsible”, and “wantonly hurtful”. It’s an unfair and overwhelming shame spiral that makes you never want to try, take a risk, or put yourself out there ever again… But if we can spot the pattern, we can break the cycle! To that end, I have put together a 4-week online cohort course starting on August 8th that aims to illuminate how these patterns form and manifest in our lives so that we can notice them, challenge them, and begin to heal them.

Viral Memes   In episode 101, I put forth a provocative analogy for toxic shame that I think captures the slippery and insidious way that it spreads from one generation to another. I see toxic shame as operating like an unconscious viral meme. The thought experiment goes like this: imagine that as a child, you were hypnotized by someone you loved and trusted, or someone who had power and influence over you. While you were hypnotized, this person implanted an idea in your head (kind of like the film Inception). And that idea was that there is something deeply wrong with you! They may not even have specified what was wrong with you, they just left you with this strong belief that you were flawed. And then they took it even further than that. They hypnotized you to hypnotize other people too. Whenever something reminds you of this belief that there’s something wrong with you, you were instructed to try to hypnotize the people around you, the people you love, the people you have power over, in order to implant the exact same idea in their heads as well! This is how the memetic virus spreads. Last but not least, this person hypnotized you to forget that you’d ever been hypnotized at all. And to forget whenever you hypnotize anyone else (just as they themselves have been hypnotized to forget that they’ve hypnotized you). And so from that moment onward, you not only had this idea stuck in your head that you were flawed, but since the hypnosis itself was forgotten by all the parties involved, you actually believed that it was your genuine opinion that you were flawed, that you had decided to believe that based entirely on your own logic and volition. And whenever that belief was triggered, you unconsciously spread this hypnotic virus to anyone around you that you had power over. And they did the same, and on and on it went. While this isn’t a perfect analogy, I think it’s a pretty close approximation of how toxic shame functions. Toxic shame begins in childhood whenever our caregivers, or the adults in power over us, do something to break the connection between us and them, usually triggered by their own shame. Because we are children at the time, we are in an egocentric stage of development, which means that we will naturally fault ourselves for these ruptures, even though as children we aren’t morally, legally, or mentally responsible. So we essentially have no choice but to blame ourselves for the emotional reactions of our caregivers, which wires a belief into our heads that there must be something wrong with us (because we can’t fathom that there might be something wrong with these adults who we depend on for our very survival). Unless these ruptures are noticed and repaired by our caregivers, this wiring will crystalize and carry with us into adulthood. From there, we will unwittingly recreate this exact same pattern of disconnection whenever our shame gets triggered, thus spreading our toxic shame onto our own children and anyone else who happens to be under our power. In this way, toxic shame is an unconscious viral meme that gets passed from generation to generation. But there’s hope! If we can spot the pattern, we can break the cycle. To that end, I have put together a 4-week online cohort course starting in August that aims to illuminate how this pattern lives in all of us so that we can notice it, own it, and begin to heal it.

Shame and Wisdom   After a long hiatus, the podcast is back with episode 100! In this special episode, I share a conversation I had a few months ago with my friend Virabhadra Colin Bested. Virabhadra has spent the last several years exploring monastic training at Willow Dharma House and MAPLE Monastic Academy. We held an event one rainy afternoon in Toronto with a small group of people to explore the connection between shame and wisdom, comparing and contrasting (mostly comparing) my more Western take on shame with Virabhadra’s more Buddhist-influenced perspective. “There are some very well respected Buddhist teachers who you could translate some of their words as ‘I’ve spent 40 years walking a spiritual path … the only thing I’ve learned is shame’.” – Virabhadra The conversation starts off exploring the toxic side of shame, but then expands to delve into some of the useful and healthy aspects of shame as well, particularly as it is understood through a Buddhist lens. When we don’t live up to our own values or when we cause harm to another person, these are situations where the pain of shame can actually be helpful, motivating, and very human. We also talk about the value of connection as a guiding force in moral decision-making. Rather than ambiguous and subjective ideas of “right and wrong”, the question of, how can I be in deeper connection here? is a compass needle that we both trusted. If you enjoyed this conversation and want to participate in future discussions, I’m starting to offer several new events, including free discussion groups, Shame Circles, a 4-week online cohort course, and more! For more info, you can join my mailing list, add yourself to my Meetup group, or just keep an eye on my events page. If you’d like to connect with Virabhadra, he offers practice support calls exploring themes like spiritual friendship (virtue, samadhi, wisdom; Buddha-Dharma), meditation practice, relational practice (Circling and Authentic Relating), Effective Altruism, and more.

Authenticity   Episode 99 is a weird and special exploration of authenticity that upended my entire notion of what this podcast is and what I want it to be! Authenticity is a concept and a practice that I really value and something that I consider to be one of the opposites of toxic shame. Shame often tries to tell us to change and hide our truth, whereas authenticity is all about embracing and sharing that truth. I’ve already written about authenticity at length in my book, so I’m just going to quote myself here:  To me, authenticity is about cultivating a congruency between our internal state and our external presentation, usually relating to our emotions, our physical sensations, and our thoughts. This is ephemeral material that we don’t usually need to make public in order to be strictly honest. I can truthfully communicate all kinds of information without revealing that I happen to be furious. Being authentic is being honest about what is going on inside of me by voicing or embodying the unseen feelings, drives, and thoughts that I don’t need to share. It’s allowing my emotions to shine through, and expressing my self-awareness to others. Ironically, as soon as I started recording this episode, the theme of authenticity forced me to confront the ways in which the podcast and the persona I take on while hosting it don’t embrace authenticity as deeply as they could. It was challenging and unpleasant to discover—and admit—that the lighthearted, half-laughing speaking style that I often employ on the podcast is actually somewhat of a performance! My goal has always been to take a playful stance on shame and other difficult emotions, which I hoped would make the podcast and the subject matter more accessible, but the tradeoff, I now realize, is that it’s not the most authentic approach.  This episode operates almost as a continuation of the previous episode on Circling, and in many ways actually demonstrates the essence of Circling better than the Circling episode does! I tried my best to actually slow down, notice, feel, and share what was alive and true in my body as I was recording, while also trying to explain what authenticity means to me intellectually—so you get a taste of embodied authenticity in practice and in theory. I found connecting with more authenticity in the recording of the podcast to be a bit of a breakthrough for me and my process, so I’m excited to see how this new approach shapes the podcast moving forward!

Circling   In Episode 98, I describe one of my favourite practices, Circling. Circling is an interpersonal relational modality that I’ve been playing with and training in for a number of years now, and it has been one of the most powerful tools I’ve found for improving my self-awareness and authenticity. Circling is often described as a social form of mindfulness. Like meditation, Circling helps me to notice my emotions in the present moment, even aversive ones like shame. But unlike meditation, Circling invites me to then immediately share what those emotions are with others, which is a useful vulnerability, authenticity, and honesty practice. And Circling also invites others to reveal what impact my sharing has on them, which is often surprising and insightful, and part of what makes Circling a powerful tool for meeting my needs for connection. Circling is also related to another modality I really enjoy called Authentic Relating, which I did an episode about a few years ago. So what is Circling exactly? In this episode, I attempt to answer that question to the best of my inexpert ability. There are several schools of Circling each with their own guidelines, so in this explanation, I’ve synthesized some of my favourite Circling principles to give you an overview of the practice. Keep in mind that these are just my understandings and preferences for Circling, so this description is in no way definitive or endorsed by any of the official Circling schools. Here are some of the loose guidelines I like to include when Circling:  Welcoming everything Staying in the present moment Sharing impact Owning our experiences Checking our assumptions Noticing our reactions instead of just enacting them Staying at the level of sensation Staying curious Weaving shared reality Committing to connection The main action of Circling involves a small group of people sharing what’s alive for them in the present moment of being together. While sitting in a group of people, I might notice an emotion or sensation arising in my body. Circling invites me to share whatever that sensation is using ownership language, which is taking full responsibility for whatever is happening in me. And as I share, there is likely to be a ripple of impact on each person listening, and in Circling, any or all of them are welcome to share whatever the impact is on them, also using ownership language. And so on, back and forth, in a kind of, well, circle. People are also encouraged to ask each other curious questions in order to fully understand what it’s like for each person to be in the circle. For me, perhaps the most revolutionary part of Circling is that it’s very rare for me to have conversations that revolve around the present moment at all. In my culture, it’s much more likely that we’ll be talking about the past (“You won’t believe what happened to me yesterday…”) or talking in theory space (“The problem with Neoliberalism is…”). I quickly discovered that talking about what I’m feeling, in the moment that I’m feeling it, is quite vulnerable because I can’t actually control or predict which sensations will emerge from my body at any given time. Learning to notice, accept, feel, and express those feelings, without being controlled by them, has been a game changer. If you want to try Circling there may be groups in your area or you can find Circles online. If you want to learn more about Circling, try it, or do a training, here are some organizations I’d recommend checking out: Circling Institute (founder Guy Sengstock is often credited as one of the main creators of Circling), Circling Europe (I’m currently taking and enjoying their SAS training), Circle Anywhere, The Connection Insitute (I took and enjoyed a number of their trainings, especially UnTriggered).

Shame Affect   In Episode 97, I tackle some common questions that people confront when they begin exploring their shame: what does shame actually feel like? And how do you spot it when it’s happening? We all feel shame, but because it is so uncomfortable and aversive, it is a feeling that we often unconsciously avoid, repress, numb, or react to before we even realize we are feeling it. You can probably bring an old memory to mind of a time you made a mistake or experienced some rejection or scorn or embarrassment, and that’s likely to bring a feeling of shame with it, but it’s usually going to be a more controlled and distant shame sensation than when it is unexpectedly triggered in the present moment. I find that there are 3 levels of difficulty when it comes to talking about shame. They’re all uncomfortable, but the “easiest” level tends to be just talking about shame in theory. A harder level is to talk about your own shame. But the hardest shame to notice, hold, and talk about is any shame that you are actually feeling in and about the present moment. This episode looks at my personal journey of working backward to uncover and sit with the present moment experience of shame. It may be different for different people, but the key for me was figuring out what my defenses to shame were. I memorized what those experiences felt like in order to get closer and closer to seeing the shame that preceded them. For me, I surmise that any situation wherein I feel “triggered” or threatened—but there is no actual physical danger present—is likely to be a result of shame. It’s a perception of social threat. So I memorized what my threat reaction felt like and got better and better at noticing that sensation as it was happening. From there, I was able to determine that there was in fact another, even more unpleasant sensation that came before it: shame! So I began memorizing that sensation as well. And now, when I notice that shame feeling as it’s happening, I can embrace it so as to avoid going into my threat reaction or unconsciously falling into any other unhelpful kneejerk defenses.

Paloma Medina   In Episode 96, I interview TEDx speaker, educator, coach, and entrepreneur Paloma Medina. I first met Paloma when I took her masterclass The Neuroscience of Equity and Inclusion in Portland several years ago, and I was immediately impressed with her commitment to science while exploring this difficult and important topic, as well as her ability to frame potentially shame-triggering topics in highly accessible ways. I’ve since trained under Paloma several more times and have wanted to have her on the podcast for a long time.  This conversation went in directions that I wasn’t expecting and was all the more fascinating as a result. I know I’m starting to say this a lot, but I found this interview so inspiring and insightful, and it has had a profound impact on my thinking ever since.  The most impactful concept from the conversation was the realization that my system has been completely colonized by a monocultural way of thinking. This phenomenon, like so much of my cultural conditioning, just felt like “reality” and was therefore functionally invisible to me until Paloma pointed it out. As a result, I, like so many others, have been looking at the world as a kind of zero-sum game, as if there is only one “right” or “best” way to do things and everything else is “shameful”. And a key part of this mindset is the idea that we need to convert everyone to that one “right” way, to bring everyone to our side, recruiting for the monoculture. Even in the interview itself, I started to notice my brain defaulting to this way of thinking. Meanwhile, as Paloma notes in the interview, many indigenous cultures have been holding a more pluralistic approach in which there are many different ways to be and different things to value, and it’s more about finding your small niche community and letting others do their own thing. Paloma suggests that this cultural plurality is how physiologically modern humans actually existed for around 300,000 years before monocultural thinking began to take over in the last 10,000 years (note: in the interview, Paloma says “3 million years” a few times, but she meant 300,000 years).  Another important point that Paloma discusses, also looking at this long and stable period of pre-modern pluralistic culture, is that human lives were not human-centered or ego-centric in the way that they are now. Pre-modern humans lived in an eco-centric way, viewing nature and other animals as equal “persons” who were essentially just their own small niche communities that everyone had to coexist with as well. Given that humanity can’t convert nature and most animals into a monoculture without destroying them, this eco-centric worldview seems like an essential component of pluralistic cultural thinking. This pluralistic eco-centric way of thinking strikes me as having much more utility than zero-sum monocultural missionary thinking in terms of both human well-being and environmental health, which are of course ultimately more interconnected than we often like to admit. And yet I can see how monocultural human-centric thinking lives in me in such a powerful way, and I’ve been contributing to it in many unconscious ways, which brings up a lot of grief. I can see now how I’m often trying to convert people to my way of thinking and being, convert people to my values and strategies (this podcast being a prime example). I think a big part of this urge is from the shame I feel when I’m not aligned with my in-group, so I try to convince everyone to join me so I can feel safe about embracing the culture that I think works best for me. In this way, I feel very humbled by Paloma’s perspective and I’m excited to dig in further! If you’re interested in learning more about Paloma’s work and potentially connecting with her, you can check out her website here. Note: this interview was edited for clarity.

Hopelessness   Hopelessness is one of those tricky emotions, like shame, where the unpleasantness of feeling it is amplified by the fact that I don’t want anyone to know that I’m feeling it. Not only do I experience hopelessness as a kind of emotional prison in which my world seems devoid of any avenues for finding joy or meaning, but shame tells me it’s my own fault for being hopeless, like it’s a choice. And to make matters worse, shame says if I tell anyone when I’m feeling hopeless it will somehow make it more true! Which makes it especially difficult to escape from said emotional prison when I can’t even ask a friend to smuggle in a metaphorical chisel hidden in a birthday cake. Whether I like it or not, hopelessness has been showing up a lot for me throughout the pandemic, and I know I’m not the only one (it’s worth noting that I recorded this episode in January, before Russia’s current invasion of Ukraine, but it feels even more fitting now). I notice that my hopelessness is also often paired with another emotion I don’t want anyone to know I’ve been feeling, which is helplessness. I have an old expectation that I need to always be hopeful, optimistic, purpose-driven, and capable of pulling myself up by my own bootstraps, so when that expectation is thwarted, not only is it inherently unpleasant, but shame swoops in and says, “Hey, you shouldn’t be feeling this! This isn’t the kind of person you are!” The addition of shame to these already demoralizing feelings adds yet another sensation into the mix, patheticness. It makes for quite a trio, feeling hopeless, helpless, and pathetic. As I began exploring and talking about these hopeless feelings though, I realized that I was conflating the feeling of hopelessness with the belief that things actually are hopeless. In Affect Theory, an emotion is seen as a combination of a physical sensation and the cognitive stories we tell ourselves about what that sensation means. As a child, whenever I felt this specific unpleasant sensation, I must have looked around at the circumstances and the world and came to the conclusion that that feeling meant there was no hope. And as I grew up, that explanation got wired into my brain, so every time that feeling came up, it automatically triggered the thought: things must be hopeless! And I just believed it. Perhaps the most startling demonstration of this effect came in January when I was talking about hopelessness in a Curios‘ book club. At that time, coming off the high of the holidays and new year, I was actually feeling quite hopeful and optimistic. But as I talked about the hopelessness I’d experienced the year prior and imagined the feeling, something unexpected happened. I felt a sudden hit of the emotion in my body, just briefly. But what was so surprising, was that for the few seconds I was in that feeling, I truly believed that things were hopeless again! And then as soon as the feeling passed, I went right back to thinking things were hopeful. It was shocking and humbling to see how quickly and easily my own sense of “reality” could be hijacked by an emotion! I actually jumped in and out of the emotion a couple of times with the same polarizing effect. This experience was highly instructive! Now, when hopelessness arises, I try to remind myself that it’s really just a feeling, not a belief. My hopelessness has no bearing on the actual potential for joy and meaning out there in reality. Just like how I deal with shame, I can accept and feel the hopelessness, allowing it to pass naturally without believing that it’s true, without identifying it as what I really think, and without acting on it (or not acting because of it, as the case may be).