Shame Only Serves to...

Arejay discusses the detrimental effects of shame, emphasizing how it keeps things stuck, people playing small, and attention on the wrong thing.

Episode Transcript

(00:12):
So the other day, I had postedin my school community a little
bit about shame, and thatstemmed from another group that
I was in, and we weredialoguing, and a woman had
realized she hadn't capitalizedon opportunity the way she could

(00:33):
have if she had been a bit moreprepared, and So she was like,
shame on me, and I, you know,responded that shame only serves
to keep things stuck, peopleplaying small and attention on
the wrong thing. So what if,instead of, you know, shame on
me, what if you declared how itlooked different, right? Like

(00:58):
what that change is going to bemoving forward? And I wanted to
talk a little bit more aboutthat, and why, why? Why it keeps
things stuck and people playingsmall, and why it keeps the
attention on the wrong thing,right? So when we're feeling

(01:20):
shame, or when we get shamed forsomething, it'll keep things
stuck, because the first initialreaction is to kind of like,
push the thing away, right?Like, let's put it in the
closet. Let's hide it behind thecurtain, and so you move it into
this space where you haven'tactually gotten rid of whatever

(01:41):
the thing is, it's still likeback there lurking, but you're
not willing to put attention onit, and you're not willing to
look at it and examine it in away that would result in any
sort of like learning. You can'tget that golden nugget that is
in every experience if you'renot willing to look at and

(02:04):
explore that more closely,right? So if you're just like,
Oh, we're just gonna freeze bythis or tuck it away, or like,
let's pretend that didn't evenexist. Well, it still exists.
You're just now not engagingwith it. And because you're not
engaging with it, like it'sgoing to stay exactly where it

(02:24):
is. Then, in terms of shame,keeping people playing small,
like you can literally see this,like, if you've ever seen anyone
be shamed for something, theirbody language completely
changes, right? It's anautomatic shrinking that happens
like they kind of, the bellygets drawn in, their chest,

(02:46):
sinks down their head, kind of,you know, points down, down
toward the ground, and theyliterally make themselves
smaller, right? They kind ofjust collapse and condense onto
themselves. And that's like thephysical response, but it's
still this same idea of tryingto hide and not be seen, and

(03:09):
it's this retraction, right? Andif you experience that enough,
when you're trying to dosomething right, like that
experience of being wrong, andthen, like, having that
completely displayed and made abig deal of, eventually you stop
trying for whatever it is right,like, if you feel wrong enough,

(03:32):
and if you feel every time youtry, it's just Wrong. Eventually
a person stops trying. And thenshame also serves to keep our
attention on the wrong thing.And what I mean by this is like,
if you've ever been shamed forsomething, you the automatic

(03:54):
response is like to focus on notdoing the thing you got shamed
for again, or not letting it becaught, right? But there's a
knot in there somewhere, and sorather than focusing on the
change, we're trying not to dothis thing right. But our brains
don't process not very well,like the way our brains work.

(04:18):
They will process the actualthing first, and then it has to
loop back around and insert theknot for it to comprehend the
the context in the concept,right? Which is the same reason
why when, like, you know, if youdon't want someone to look down,
you tell them to look at yourather than Don't look down.
Because as soon as you say,don't look down, the first thing

(04:39):
they do is look down, notbecause they're trying to, you
know, disobey you, butliterally, because it's what the
brain processes first is lookdown, and then it circles back
around to add in that, don't,you know, and then it's like,
Oh, I'm not supposed to do that.But by the time it can process
that, like you've already donethe action. So whenever we're

(05:03):
shamed for something, whether itbe from somebody else or from
ourselves, like we focus on notdoing the thing, which makes it
more likely that we're going todo the thing again, in all
honesty. And what we shouldfocus on is like, what is the
actual action that we want? asopposed to what action. Are we

(05:25):
trying to avoid. So that is whyI say that shame only serves to
keep things stuck people playingsmall and attention on the wrong
thing.