On… Shame

Does it help to feel bad about our part in the world’s mess?

It seems fitting to start a post on shame by admitting something about myself that I don’t like very much.

I am one of those women drivers that everyone dreads (of which there are many men). 

I have never myself been at the wheel during a car crash, but I frequently irritate drivers around me by failing to abide by the unwritten, intuitive rules of the road. I have come to accept, for example, that given the choice my friends more often opt to offer a lift than to receive one from me, simply because it’s more comfortable for everyone involved. 

But despite my driving weaknesses, I am also very quick to find myself enraged by the careless driving of others, often quickly angered by others’ poor manners on the road. 

Yet this shouldn’t surprise me at all, because this is exactly how shame works. Shame research tells us that we judge where we are ourselves insecure, and we look for those who we think are doing worse off than we are to make ourselves feel better about it. 

I am not an intuitive driver, and yet I often judge others for poor behaviour on the road, because this is how shame works- we judge where we are ourselves insecure.

Which is an insight that has something very helpful to share with those of us who are in the business of trying to change the world. 

Because activists are often accused of a lot of finger-pointing, especially by the media. Of a holier than though approach that leaves others feeling guilty, judged, or alienated and that is often laced with hypocrisy. 

It’s a pretty harsh judgement, and shows just how contagious shame really is, but is there truth in this critique and why can it help us? 

What’s going on if we do find ourselves entrenched in shame about our part in the messy state the world is in? Or when we judge others, maybe political leaders or our friends merrily living their lives without a care in or for the world? Or if we find ourselves embroiled in bitter divides with fellow activists about their differing approach to change-making? 

Are we right to judge and is it helpful? And how, when there is so much that needs to change and so very quickly, can we deliver that feedback to others in a way that gives us the greatest chance of positive impact?

So many questions, and only 2,500 words to explore them! So let’s jump in. 

It’s been a while since I posted an obligatory cute animal photo, so here you are- it’s the best I could find of an ashamed pup.

Shame and Blame

Many readers will be familiar with the work of Brené Brown, who rose to public consciousness after her TED talk on vulnerability went viral.

In 2012 Dr Brown (who I shall refer to as Brené because she feels more like a long lost aunt to me than a world-leading academic in her field) released an audiobook, The Power of Vulnerability, which is a collection of her talks on ‘authenticity, connection, and courage’. 

It is amazing and could quite possibly change your life.

Brené, who wants to ‘start a national conversation about shame’, takes us through her definitions of a variety of tricky emotional experiences such as shame, blame, embarrassment, and humiliation. Just this understanding alone, and being able to name what I am experiencing as I am experiencing it, has helped me enormously. 

Brené argues that we live in a ‘shame prone culture’. 85% of people, for example, endure a shaming experience at school that changed how they thought about themselves for life.

Many of us have grown up in cultures that believe shame can help us become better people by threatening to remove our sense of worthiness if we step out of line. But shame research is absolutely unanimous in its conclusion that this is completely ineffective, especially in the longer term, and actually damaging to our intended outcomes.

This is because shame tells us that we are a bad person, and if this is the case, why would we attempt to change? How could we believe self-improvement is possible? Why would we try?

And that is why it is so deeply problematic when we hear environmentalists talking about human beings as solely harmful to the environment, even as a ‘virus on the planet’. It is designed to shame us into action, but the effect for most of us is the exact opposite. 

High levels of shame, Brené tells us, are directly correlated with high levels of addiction, depression, suicide, crime, and a whole host of other indicators of a society in crisis. 

High levels of guilt, however, are associated with much lower levels of those crisis indicators. According to Brené, this is because guilt says to us, ‘I am fundamentally a person who is worthy of belonging but I am behaving in a way that doesn’t align with that, so I want to change it and I am capable of changing it.’

Brené’s research helped me understand why, during my time as Director of climate lobbying specialists, Hope for the Future, our message to politicians was always most effective when it was something along the lines of, ‘we believe you are capable of better, and we want to help you work towards that.’

Shame stops us from trying to make positive change because we don’t believe we are capable of it.

Shame and Empathy

So shame is generally a damaging and unhelpful experience, but how can we move out of shame when we are experiencing it?

The antidote to shame, according to Brené, is empathy, which says ‘you are not alone’. 

The practice of empathy is coming to see how, under the same circumstances as another person, you can imagine doing what they did or being where they are, even if you deeply disagree. It removes the ‘us and them’ dynamic, and replaces the roadblock with a challenge to approach jointly.

It is empathy that can enable us to say, ‘I get it, I know why you’re avoiding this or doing that, is there a way we can look at this situation from other angles together too?’

Empathy helps to shift conversations from defensiveness to openness, and clearly has a lot to say to us about how we approach our efforts to change/ save/ survive in the world.

Brené’s also has a three step guide to dealing with our own shame...

1. Identify it and know we’re in it. According to Brené we are ‘not fit for human consumption’ when we are in shame because our ability to be empathetic to ourselves and others becomes shut down. So our first step is to realise we are in shame, and take a step back to take care of ourselves.

2. Reality check. Next, put this shame trigger into perspective. Question the assumptions that you or others are making about your own worthiness. Brené gives the example of beauty standards for women; many women carry shame about their physical appearance that is not theirs to carry. A reality check is to ask whether this shame trigger really needs to make us question our value as a human being.

3. Share our story (with people who have earned the right to hear it). The single biggest thing we can do to tackle shame is to talk about it, but we must be careful to do this in places that are safe for us and with people who can show empathy. I can 100% vouch for this. Some of the most healing experiences of my life have come when I shared my fears or something I was ashamed of with a friend and they have heard me and love me still. Sharing such a shameful thing actually made our friendship stronger. It cultivated resilience. 

Pavement Rage

I’ve already talked about road rage in this post, but what of something I’m calling pavement rage? By this I mean the emotions that come with navigating social distancing during the pandemic.

Never before have judged so harshly and frequently those who come too close when I’m out and about (don’t you know there’s a pandemic going on?) but, interestingly, I have also found myself judging those who are, in my opinion, a little overzealous (calm down, we have to be able to get on with our lives). Why? Because I myself then feel judged, which is just one of the ways that shame is so contagious. 

And this is what happens when the stakes are high; judgements become more frequent and stronger because we feel threatened, which is why avoiding a shame vortex is such a minefield for the climate movement. 

‘Pavement rage’ is the difficult emotions experienced when navigating social distancing.

Take the two radically different advertising approaches by the UK Government in encouraging adherence to lockdown rules during the pandemic, for example.

One advert shows a close up shot of a very unwell covid patient, complete with an oxygen mask, and the tagline, ‘look her in the eye and say you never bend the rules’.

The other is of a woman looking longingly out of the window with the tagline ‘every day at home is making a difference’, or a man in glasses with a facemask and the tagline, ‘every foggy lens makes a difference’

I don’t know about you, but I know which one shuts me down, and which one makes me want to do the best I can for the pandemic (You can view the different advertisements here.)

Accidental Shame Triggering

So, listening to Brené I am more convinced than ever that shame is not a helpful way to effect change, both in ourselves or others. But of course, sometimes we might find ourselves triggering a shame response in another person without any intention to do so at all. 

We might find ourselves completely baffled by a defensive or hurt response we receive from someone, maybe even feeling ashamed of ourselves for what we have said, though we are not entirely sure what we did wrong. 

One accidental shame trigger which we may find ourselves especially prone to falling into as people who want to do good in the world (I know I do), is advice giving. 

One of the first things I was taught as a coach in training is not to give advice. This might seem initially counterintuitive; if someone wants to improve something in their life and they go to a coach for help, why wouldn’t a coach help them with advice?

During training I learned that when we have figured out a problem ourselves, we tend to forget some of the steps we took and much of the pain we went through to get there. And so a person struggling with a problem and hearing how we overcame it can quickly find themselves feeling like they also should be able to figure it out quickly and with ease, just as we appear to have done. 

And this is what I believe lies at the heart of a great deal of the misperceptions of the climate movement as judgmental, hypocritical, or simply naive. (If in doubt about this stereotype, I invite you to do an internet search for any of those descriptions plus ‘climate change’ and you will quickly see what I mean). 

In our eagerness to share our planet-saving ideas with others, even with the best intentions, as activists we can forget the process we ourselves went through, and continue to go through, in waking up to climate change and coming to do something about it.

This is the beauty of the coaching process, and why I have become so interested in a coaching approach to climate activism.

A good coach takes the view that the client is the expert on their own life, and that they have many capacities to find their solutions to life’s challenges. The role of the coach is to help make that process as effective and efficient as possible.

A good coach takes the view that the client is an expert in their own life, and has many capacities to find the right way forward for themselves.

As activists, we too can take a similar approach to climate activism, coming alongside those we seek to influence with empathy and a curiosity to explore what making a difference looks like for them, trusting that the desire to do good is there.

Is What We Do Ever Enough?

I find this approach helpful in freeing me from an undue sense of responsibility for others’ responses to climate change which has in the past led me to feel resentful, ashamed that I am ineffective, and eventually burned out. 

Because climate activism is ripe for shame triggering.

We might have gone vegan, quit flying and joined our local protest group and yet feel powerless when the shame rushes in, knowing our carbon consumption is still many, many times more than that of most people across the globe. Or maybe we simply can’t live up to our own environmental standards, and despair of ourselves wondering how, when the world is burning, we can lack such discipline.

More widely in our lives, we might have achieved every goal we ever set, and found ourselves infinitely more capable than we ever imagined and yet, at the strangest of moments still question whether we really deserved any of it, wondering if we are going to be found out as a fraud.

But what if shame could actually become a gift to us? What if, every time we felt shame, instead of finding the quickest way to get rid of that feeling, perhaps by setting new markers for success or maybe blaming ourselves or others, we used shame as a reminder to learn to love ourselves unconditionally? 

It’s easy to love ourselves when we’re ticking all our own boxes, but what about when we fail, make mistakes, fall short of the mark, let people down? That’s when the real practice of self-love begins. That is the gift that shame can unlock for us, if we let it.

Shame and Trauma

This isn’t a way of viewing shame that is likely to come naturally to most of us. In her chapter on shame Brené asks her audience to list the physical symptoms of shame, such as sweaty hands, a change in heart rate, clouded thinking, or a feeling of spiralling downwards. 

We experience shame in this way because it is a form of trauma. 

Human beings are pack animals. We need each other in order to survive and therefore we experience feelings of unworthiness or rejection as a threat to our survival, as a deeply traumatic experience. 

Learning to work with our shame in helpful ways is therefore a practice that may take us some time, because it’s not how we are naturally predisposed to experience it. 

So, to finish this week’s post I will end with a shame excersize that I was introduced to when having some coaching myself. 

I would like to invite you to create a permission slip to make mistakes, to get things wrong, to fail. 

If you are someone that tends to beat yourself up for the mistakes you make, I invite you to download and print off these mistakes permission slips which I made for myself and those I mentor. You can use them specifically when you make a mistake, or maybe just post them around your house as a preemptive measure.

These permission slips are a reminder that when we make mistakes, there is a place for congratulating ourselves for having tried, for having reached out of our comfort zone, for being willing to take risks, and for all the lessons we are about to learn because of it. 

Shame research tells us that a more positive attitude towards mistakes means we are less likely to make them, and more likely to take responsibility for ourselves when we do, learning from them and recovering faster.

There is a place for congratulating ourselves when we make mistakes, because mistakes are a sign that we are stretching ourselves and learning something new.

Change-making by its very nature is risky business. An issue like climate change is challenging the human species to adjust its behaviour faster and more radically than many currently believe is possible or plausible. 

And yet, that is what we must do. So, every day we will be faced by the ways our work might not be enough, and this can be a huge knock to our resilience. 

But learning to love ourselves, even when we fail, can help us to keep getting back up and trying again which is exactly what the world needs right now. People who are willing to get back up and try again, regardless of how well we think we’re doing, because we will not let shame have the last say about who we really are. 

About Me I’m Jo,

formerly the founder Director of national climate change charity, Hope for the Future. I am currently researching eco-anxiety and how we can build emotional resilience in our response to the climate emergency.

Welcome to Climate.Emergence- a place to emotionally process what on earth is happening to us and our planet.