176: How to begin healing shame with A.J. Bond

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Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. I recently researched the topic of shame for content for the parenting membership, which actually ended up going into three modules of content because the topic is so big and I read over 20 books for that episode. And the best of them all was written by My guest today AJ bond. AJ is a former child actor, now a filmmaker, a writer and he as he puts it, ‘shame breakthrusiast’. He is certified as a shame healing practitioner by the Center for Healing Shame. His book Discomfortable: What is shame and how can we break its hold? reviews and interprets the research on shame in a light hearted way that offers real hope for us to live more compassionately, and effectively with our shame. Welcome, AJ, it's great to have you here.

Thanks for having me. Excited to be here. Thanks for the kind words.

So I wonder, this must have been quite a journey for you. How did you get started on understanding more about what shame is?

Yeah, I think a big component for me is growing up gay and struggling to make sense of that and make that fit in the culture that I was being raised in. And so that was just like a truth that I felt like I had to hide. And that I felt was very bad and dark and wrong in this just very visceral way. And then I did a really good job of just hiding that from myself. I just pushed it away out of my consciousness for like a decade. And then I came out of the closet in my 20s and that all seemed fine. But then in my 30s, things just weren't really going well. I felt like I was failing in a number of ways I was failing in my filmmaking career. I was failing in my romantic relationships. So I finally went to therapy. And it was just really fortunate that I had a therapist who was able to say, I think you're talking about shame. And he was able to help me see that this deep, dark, bad, wrong place or feeling had a name and was an emotion and was like a normal thing and that you could talk about it. I actually feel emotion and shivers just thinking about it. That it was like taking this this horrible, unlikeable thing and saying this is normal. This is okay. So that was sort of the big moment was a therapist who got shame.

It's really interesting how that shame was still with you, right? There was a period where you were hiding this even from yourself. And then there's a period where you weren't hiding it from yourself or from other people. And yet the shame was still there, it was still unresolved, still sitting there waiting for that therapist to uncover it. How does that resonate with your experience?

Yeah, it's absolutely true. It was like, around the time that I came out of the closet, Canada legalized same sex marriage, and there was just a big cultural shift. And so my sexuality came out of the shame and was allowed to be seen, but the shame itself was still not allowed to be seen. So it was really only in therapy, as my therapist asked me questions about things that no one had ever asked me and encouraged me that it was safe to like, look at and unearth the shame itself. That's the real difference is to be able to see shame, feel it, talk about it, own it, without feeling like it's this deep, dark thing that owns you. That's the big, big shift.

Yeah, okay, so now we've sort of set the scene for where you came to this work from, can you help us to define shame? Like, what is it? What does it feel like? How do you know when you're in it?

Yeah, it's like different slightly for different people. But kind of the most basic for me is to say that it's this highly unpleasant sensation in your body, that seems to kind of reference you. So it's like feeling bad about yourself, feeling bad about your actions, your essence and or your place in the world, or in a relationship or in the social scene. Any deep discomfort that seems to reference those things is likely to be part of the shame family. And I do think of it as a spectrum. So that kind of at the core of shame is what I'll call shame affect. This is coming from affect theory. And that's just the feeling the unpleasant feeling itself, shame affect. And in like little doses, you might just call it like, shyness or embarrassment. And as it gets higher, you might start to see self-consciousness, guilt, shame. And then even higher humiliation, mortification, self-disgust, things like this. So everything along that spectrum for me is what I mean, when I talk about shame, this whole family. And I just want to note that for some people, it's really hard to feel because it's just so apparent, or they're not comfortable going into their body or their sensations. But there will still be some kind of wrongness or aversion, though, there'll be some way to sense a badness about yourself.

Yeah, it always seems to be social, right? So there's this badness about ourselves. But it's almost seen through the eyes of another person, right? I think that you think that I am not worthy in some way. But it's not just this evaluation of myself. But it's evaluation coming through somebody else's eyes, right. And thinking about your homosexuality, it's acceptance, by family acceptance by society, those things are lacking, and so this comes back to reflect on ourselves, is that right?

Yeah, yeah, I think there can be different versions for different people. I think there's some shame that can be very me with myself. But the most kind of toxic and disempowering kinds are the type where it is this sense of comparison, hierarchy, status, everyone else is somehow better, and I am worse, I'm flawed, I'm bad. And I do think that we are a social animal in a very powerful way, our identity, our sense of self is always in reference somewhat to other people. So it is both intrinsically social, and yet it can be perceived as me judging myself as well.

Yeah. And I think that really gets to where this stuff develops, right? Because I think it starts really early on. Can you talk a little bit about where it comes from kind of how that how does this stuff build up in our in our interactions with our family members?

Yeah, yeah, I think, again, I'm I'll kind of talk using affect theory, because I find that to just be a really powerful way to look at shame. And they talk about shame as the discomfort that comes up when you don't meet the ideals and expectations you have of yourself. So it's just almost like this alarm system saying, like, hey, you said you were this or that you should be this, and it doesn't seem like you are. But the way that we come up with this expectation, and this ideal, are concepts that are conditioned into us or that we create with our own childlike sense making at an extremely, extremely young age. And the other part of shame, you know, I talked about shame ethic being the feeling. But the other half is cognitive shame. It's the story you tell yourself about what the feeling means. And that is also deeply based on the stories that we heard about ourselves, from our caregivers, our peers, our siblings, and from culture at large, again, as children. So not only are the expectations that create shame, often largely based in childhood sense making, childhood experiences, childhood trauma, but the stories that we tell ourselves like, oh, when I feel this, it means I'm bad. That's a story that we came up with in childhood or a story that we inherited in childhood. So it really it really the, again, the most toxic forms of shame are birthed in our childhood experiences and they stick with us.

Yeah, and I was trying to think, okay, when does this start, right? How does this begin? And to me it seems to come back to when the baby starts to become mobile, right? Because before that point, it's yes, it cries. And yes, that can be frustrating some of the time. But by and large, what we're trying to do is accommodate the baby's needs to the extent that we can. And then at some point in that baby's first year, the baby becomes mobile. And at that point, we're no longer accommodating all the baby's needs, we're starting the process of socialization, where prohibiting them from touching things, were prohibiting them from doing things. And increasingly, we have these expectations that I've told you five times you shouldn't touch that thing. So why are you still touching that thing? And it seems like these expectations, build and build and build. So as far as I can tell, I mean, this stuff starts in the child's first year late in the child's first year, do you think I'm on the right track?

Absolutely. Even earlier in the sense that I think what a child is really looking for is attunement with a caregiver, a sense of connection, acceptance, love, having its needs met, being cared for. And anytime that doesn't happen, this phrase from Gershen Kaufman comes to mind, the breaking of the interpersonal bridge, and that in Gershen Kaufman's mind is what causes shame, there's so many different ways to define it. And I'm sure we'll touch on a bunch of them. That breaking with the parents, so early on can cause a sense of shame, because I think there's a built-in expectation of this kind of connection in a child. And so this shame keeps coming up, and it's in need of repair, it's in need of the caregiver, noticing a rupture has occurred, and comforting the child and making it clear to the child that it's okay for the child to feel this pain. And it's going to be okay, it's going to be taken care of. So the child doesn't feel all alone and bad, somehow unworthy in a very pre-cognitive way, almost. But it also doesn't feel like its bad feelings are themselves bad. So that does seem core throughout childhood that the parent can give the child that sense of connection, safety, etc. Does that make sense?

It does. Yeah. And I think what you're saying is that I'm tracing it back to the middle of the first year, you're tracing it back even further. And I think this probably comes from the various definitions of watching. I'm sort of tracing it from the inhibition of the Yes, right. And you're facing it from the mirroring, which I think is equally valid, just as important. And saying that when we don't receive that mirroring from another person that that itself is shaming, and that happens from day one, right? This is not the first year, this is from day one. So we can have these potential ruptures very early on. And even I can imagine the two kind of coming together where the baby is sort of excited about a toy or something and the parent is not excited, right? The parent doesn't engage the parent doesn't make eye contact, looks away. And so, then you have that rupture again. And it seems to me that what's most important, no matter where we think it starts is the re-establishment of harmony, right? Like there's some sort of rupture, because there are going to be ruptures in any relationship between two people.

Absolutely.

What happens then?

Yeah, I'm glad you referenced this. So the diminishment, yeah, this is an affect theory, again, that shame actually takes are positive affects, what I call in the book The Yes feeling, and our expectations of positive affect. And shame diminishes them when it seems like they're inappropriate or unsafe. So you're absolutely right, the baby is like thinking it's about to get caregiver attention. And it's so exciting as the expectation of pleasure. And then the caregiver doesn't seem to like notice or pay attention. And shame will come in and be like, no, I guess that's not appropriate. Something's wrong. And it flattens that affect. And it does that continues to do that throughout our lives. The classic example I like, it's like I waved at a friend, I realized it's not my friend and shame immediately, like flattens the excitement and the expectation of pleasure, so that I look more appropriate, acceptable, just sort of neutral, something like that.

I wasn't looking at you.

And so that expectation of pleasure can happen in many different ways for a child, but the key I think, is can the parent recognize not even all the time, but more often than not, or maybe even just I've actually heard someone say like, it's something like 40% if you can recognize 40% of the ruptures and make a repair, that's apparently good parenting.

Yeah. And as you were talking about sort of recognizing your friend, it reminded me of the still face experiment right where you can look that up on YouTube for folks who are listening and watching and see this baby in a chair in a highchair and the parent is sitting right there and the parent has been instructed not to respond to the baby. And the babies just find this absolutely distressing. I mean, it's heartbreaking to watch these babies crying to elicit a reaction from a parent who has been instructed to just have the still face.

Yeah, so you can see shame birthing as a child like, what? What's wrong? What's the what am I doing wrong? Am I bad now? Like, this used to be good. It really is heartbreaking. And I think it's such a vivid example of the way shame as a child birthed in that breaking of the interpersonal bridge.

Yeah. And so you talked about kind of rupture and repair and that you don't have to get this perfectly right. This is not a I have to do this right 100% of the time where my kid is going to be somehow have really terrible outcomes out of this, but relatively low percentage of the time that these repairs have to happen. What does that repair look like? Thinking at the infant stage and also, as we get older, what does a good repair look like?

Yeah, I don't feel like I'm an expert in this subject of repair. But what's coming up for me is a kind of balanced response where we're not we're not going to clinging, we're communicating to the child, that it's discomfort hurts us so much, that that can almost itself be a little bit inhibiting for a child. You know, I can think of experiences where I've withheld my own pain from someone because I don't want them to empathetically go into distress. So it's like, I wouldn't want it to be too clingy attachment, but also wanting it to not be disinterest, which is sort of the rupture in the first place, pobably just a missed moment of attunement, or busyness or something like that. So it's, yeah, it's for me, I would long for a kind of boundary, but warm, kind of like a space to witness. Oh, what happened? I'm really curious. Oh, that was like really hard for you kind of creating a space where it's comfortable for the child, to be honest, it's comfortable for the child to ask for repair, which I've actually seen children do they like come back and they ask like, oh, that's bad, something like that. So it's just it's, I think it's really about the welcoming and warmth and openness to have the child express what happened. I don't know that there is much to fix beyond I'm here now, I'm interested in what went down, and I get that. That kind of witnessing and holding space for that's what comes up for me. But again, I'm sort of not an expert. So I actually would, you know, turn it back to you on that.

I guess what comes up for me when you say that is yes, yes, that's what I want. When I'm on, you know, when I'm on the end of the shame, and I'm thinking about it from the parents’ perspective, and the shame that's coming up in the parent at having sort of brought about this shame in the child. It's like, oh, do I have to relive that? Can we just forget about it? Like, can we just pretend that it didn't happen? And then maybe it won't be a big deal. And if I don't have to go through it again, then what if it traumatizes them, and it makes it harder for them. And also, it's embarrassing for me to admit that I did something that, you know, elicited this feeling in my child. And so there's, I think, a very strong cultural idea that when this thing happens, that we should just kind of paper it over and pretend that it does, yeah.

Yes, we have such a culture of get it right the first time, be perfect. And it really is a shame, because as you've already said, it's impossible. And actually, as I understand it, in like the theory of relationship, rupture, repair, that the rupture and repair makes the relationship stronger. So it's actually like having a rupture is not a bad thing at all. It's a beautiful opportunity for a repair, which is a deepening and strengthening of the relationship. So I'm not encouraging purposeful ruptures like this still face experiment. But I would, I would love to get us thinking about shifting away from our perfection, get it right the first time culture and more of a future focused opportunity culture of like, oh, great, like, let's really talk. So when I wasn't paying attention in that moment, like how did that affect you? We're getting to like a deeper level of communication and understanding. And I think it's, again, if I'm looking at what am I longing for in a repair, that the person making the repair can own their experience if they are feeling some shame, but again, in a way where they're, they're entirely owning the responsibility for it themselves. So they're not putting any of their discomfort on to me. But if I sense that they're in discomfort and they're not naming it, that can also bring up shaming me like, are they mad at me? What's going on? Why are they acting like this? Did I do something wrong again? So it's just it's just worth noting that as a person in power as a caregiver, the more we can own and be transparent about some of the discomfort we're feeling it can help to lift concern and responsibility off of those beneath us. So that they understand. Oh, okay, so yeah, you experienced some shame that's why you're like this. It's not my fault.

Yeah, in some ways, it feels sort of a scary line to walk like, I need to say enough about my experience that you see that it wasn't your fault, but not so much that that it puts it on you.

That it becomes your fault.

Yeah, exactly.

Then it becomes your problem.

Yeah. And I'm also, I don't know if this is taking it too meta, but you know, there were there was an initial rupture, and then we're repairing the rupture at a different level. And then it's almost like there needs to be a third layer of how was that repair? Did that work for you? Did that help you to feel more connected to me? Was there anything I said that was reshaming or more shaming, or it didn't make the repair effective, right? And that could help us to deepen the relationship one level further, which in some ways, feels again, intimidating, like seriously after have the three-layer thing. But in other ways, if we care so much about this person, that we don't want them to feel shame, right, then isn't that where we want to be spending our time with them in this sort of super deep relationship building stuff?

Yeah. I mean, what you're describing is what some people call a meta conversation. It's also something that they do in processes like authentic relating. And it's basically, I think, again, we're in a culture where we think like, Okay, I keep a bunch of stuff hidden. And then I do perfect things that you see. And this meta conversation is like, No, I'm actually just gonna kind of keep showing you what's true in the moment. And so it's, it's beyond just a three step thing. It's, there's the possibility of always being ready for the meta conversation move of being able to say, hey, right now, what's happening for us? Like, I noticed, I'm feeling a bit concerned about how I'm impacting you right now, is that what's happening for you. And so it just, it just like, takes us into this really honest, vulnerable, authentic present moment place where we can really just see each other?

Do you have friendships where you do that, and partnerships where you do that?

I have friendships where I tried to do that, and I have a lot of practice doing that in groups of authentic relating, or circling is another modality where we do that. So it's like something I'm quite good at with a stranger. But when it comes to my closest friends or family, it becomes very, very hard. And so I wanted to just name that that's very, very hard, what I'm describing, but it doesn't mean that it's not something that is valuable, that can be experimented with.

Yeah, no, that's a really interesting point, actually, I have been on a bit of a journey that my listeners will know something about, and to discover that very recently discovered that I'm autistic. And so the thought of having that conversation in the moment where I'm understanding what's happening to the other person, and also understanding what's happening to me at this moment, you know, feels overwhelming, like, how could I do that with another person in the moment? And I'm so interested to hear you say, I pick up on this with strangers, because I do the same when I'm coaching, right? I can do this in a coaching relationship. Can I do this with my friends? Can I do this with my husband? Yeah. I don't know that feels that feels very different and scary.

I'm so glad that you mentioned that. Because no, you can't always do it. In fact, sometimes it feels deeply unsafe. And if your system is anything like mine, sometimes discomfort gets whisked away because it will dysregulate me to look at it. And if I'm in a leadership position, my brain will sometimes whisk these things away, so that I can stay in my window of tolerance. So again, it's not about always being able to do it in the present moment. But it's something that we can pay attention to after the fact even like, oh, what happened? I kind of went all everything got blurry. I got all confused. Oh, I was angry. Oh, my goodness, I was angry and it did not feel safe to notice that. So now that I've seen this, if I want, I can go back and make a repair. I can say, Hey, I just want to name that in that conversation. I actually went into some anger which is really uncomfortable for me. But I really value this connection. So I just wanted to be honest about that's what was happening for me if you were wondering why I got all quiet and weird, that's what it was.

Yeah.

So again, it's like, I can't always do it in the moment, it's not always safe for people who, like me have basically felt the systemic societal norm was against them, you know, minorities, people with different sexual orientations, trans people, this will be increasingly unsafe to do in the present moment. And so you have complete liberty to decide if that's something you even want to do. And to do it after the fact if that's safer. It's just an option.

Yeah. Okay. And so before we sort of leave this, where does it come from behind you? In the book, you mentioned a number of times this sort of cultural evolution aspect and how we evolved to be around the same pretty small group of people for a lot of the time, can you connect those dots for us?

Yeah, it's a good based on what I just said, it's, you know, I'm basing this on evolutionary psychology, the belief that we evolved for millions of years in small packs, we’re a pack animal. And in that small pack, if we got kicked out, we were going to die. Yeah, that's we weren't going to get adopted very unlikely. They're very territorial. And so in the historical setting of I'm in a tribe, and I noticed that I am actually different than the tribes norms, it actually is safest for me to try to fit in, for me to try to be inauthentic if I have to. Because if I get kicked out of this tribe, I will not survive, and so on. Well, I don't know if it's unfortunate, but that is still the way we're wired. Essentially, we've been modern societal creatures for such a short amount of time. And there's been some estimated 300,000 years where the modern human lived in a tribe. So it's just worth noting that shame will often feel like it's connected to survival. And I think it will feel deeply unsafe to be different, it will feel deeply unsafe to name difference. And in the world that we live in now, that's really negatively impacting for lots of people, because we're all still trying to fit into some kind of norm. And so our society, even though it encompasses millions of people will still broadly have things as we've seen, like White supremacy, and heteronormativity, patriarchy, these concepts will be adopted by most people, because that's what feels safe. Even though in some of these cases, it doesn't really matter as much like, if I get kicked out of this yoga class, I'm not going to die, but shame might make it feel like that. But then it's also worth noting that for some people, their differences really are having an impact on their safety and their quality of life. People of color are coming to mind, trans people, so it's increasingly less life or death, the shame difference thing, but it's not, that's not always true. And so, you know, sometimes I get really, like, you can be honest about your shame, like, you know, it's safe. But I have to remind myself that it's not always safe. For people that live in a country where it's illegal to be gay. It's not safe to voice that shame and that truth. So again, I really want to encourage people to trust their boundaries and trust their system and decide for themselves what is and is not okay.

Yeah. And as you're saying that I'm thinking about, sort of how do we move past this shame, sort of shame-based world and thinking about in groups and out groups, and how certain brands of politicians like to promote those differences, right? There's us and we're hard workers, and we're deserving and there's them who are not hard workers and not deserving of help and, and these divisions are stoked in multiple ways in our society. And it seems to me that the path forward is not to require everybody to be the same, but to recognize that there are multiple kinds of differences. And all of those are okay. Do you see it the same way?

Absolutely. Yeah. A culture that has more plurality, openness to disagreement, openness to difference. I had a guest on my own podcast a while back, Paloma Medina. And she talked about how we get into this sort of mindset, where everybody has to agree everything has to be one way and she was like, no, no, like back when we lived in tribes each tribe probably had its own different way. And it was like, live and let live. And so I think there is a possibility to get back to a place where we don't all need to agree on everything. I imagine there's sort of some core values of tolerance that would be necessary to make this work. So we'd have to kind of agree on a few key things. But then beyond that, it could just be so beautiful, to not have to win every argument to not have to be right all the time to just be like, well, this is the way I see it. This is one possibility. And not have to have this this mindset of convincing everyone to be part of our religion, or convincing everyone to be part of our political party or convincing everyone to think correctly. I would I would love that.

Yeah, the idea of moving to holding two things at the same time, two different things that both of those things can be fine and true and good. So shifting gears a little bit into kind of the experience of shame. Are there common reactions that people have when they're feeling when they're experiencing shame?

Yeah, there's a brilliant researcher named Donald Nathanson, who wrote a book, again, based in affect theory, called Shame and Pride. And his observation was that there's actually kind of four broad categories of reaction that we tend to go into when we're feeling shame. And he calls it the Compass of Shame. And so at the top of the compass, he has avoidance of shame. This is the reaction where it includes things like denial, repression, and numbing, like addiction type thing. So this is where we just don't want to look at the shame. So it's a kind of psychological withdrawal from it. And one way that we do that is I'll get drunk, that's a very classic way to avoid shame is I'll just get drunk, and I won't have to look at the shame. Or I'll pretend like everything's fine. and I'll smile. And we'll just pretend like I'm not feeling shame right now.

Browse through Facebook for three hours, and just forget that that's out there and not deal with it.

Yeah, so that's, that's at the top of the compass. And then as we move around, on this side, there is the attack, longitudinal line. And on one end, is attack self. And this is sort of the very classic reaction to shame. Like, I'm the worst, I'm so bad, like, I'm so stupid. And this can also include like your inner critic, it can include self-harm, and it's basically blaming yourself for everything. And then on the other side of the attack line is attack other. And this is where we don't want to take any responsibility. We go into blaming, we want to shame back, we want to shame someone else. This can even be like violence and aggression. In fact, you know, Brene Brown talks about this, and James Gilligan, who's a violence researcher says the same thing that shame and humiliation are the root cause of all violence. So that's on the attack other side. And then at the bottom, we have actual withdrawal, like physical withdrawal, this is I will literally run away, I will avoid you, I will never talk to you again, I'll sneak off to the bathroom and hide, things like that. So it's also worth noting that a lot of these reactions are very similar to fight or flight. And some people will add fun or people pleasing to fight or flight as well. And I think you could plot that between denial and attack self, like that's where people pleasing shows up. As in, I'm not going to tell you, I mean, shame. I'm not going blame. I'm going to just try to please you so that the connection, the harmony is everything.

Yeah.

That's my go to reaction.

And I know that you're trained through the Center for Healing Shame. And because I read about it in your book, I went to did one of their intro level trainings as well. And I know they talk about healthy shame. Do you use the concept of healthy shame?

Yes, absolutely. I think that shame is a very necessary emotion for us to have. It's the feeling when I make a mistake, and I actually think, yeah, that was a mistake. That's an expectation or an ideal that I really want to hold on to. And it's necessary for me to feel bad as a way of orienting my system towards learning growth and change. So that kind of shame is so healthy and so necessary and is one of the beautiful things about being a human that we can feel bad when we've gone outside of our values or made a mistake, and we can use that bad feeling ideally as motivation to repair, to make amends, to fix it, and to learn. So that is a healthy reason to have shame and a healthy reaction to shame. The problem is when we get into what people might call toxic shame, and that is when in this can happen in a few different ways. On the one hand, it might be that we make a mistake, but then instead of interpreting it as just one mistake, we think I'm a bad person, there's something deeply wrong with me, I'm flawed. And when you think you're a bad person, it's like there's no hope. So it doesn't motivate growth, change, making amends repair. It's like, oh, I have to hide this, or I'll be rejected. Or I have to like, beat up on myself, or I have to, like, dramatically change in ways that are unrealistic. So that's the side where you're kind of being motivated to do things that actually deter you from making it right and deter you from learning. It's, it's more about hiding, avoidance, etc. So that's a toxic reaction to shame. But I would also say that there's expectations that we can have of ourselves that are unrealistic and unhealthy. The expectation that we're all going to be straight, for example, was an unrealistic and unhealthy expectation for me to hold. So that's also a form of toxic shame. For me, these external expectations that aren't really my opinion, but I've adopted them, again, as a child. And other expectations might be having to weigh a certain amount having to look a certain way that we can't look, you name it, the possibility for unrealistic, external, externally imposed expectations is huge. And it really comes down to wanting to fit in with everyone else over wanting to accept ourselves. So those are all kind of toxic forms of shame.

Yeah. And I think what you're describing there is what you call in the book, The 123 Punch of Shame, is that right? But one of them is the feeling. One of them is the thought and then that drives us to do a certain kind of behavior. Yeah?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. The first punch is that really unpleasant shame affect, the pain of shame. In the second punch, are these stories that we got from childhood, I'm bad, I'm the worst. And then there's our threat response system, or our compass of shame responses, that instinctively push us towards the defensive strategies, we already have behavioral impulse, that's really hard to avoid. Just you get hit with those three things. And it's really hard to stay centered in your values, to see that you have a menu of possibilities, it just all that goes away, and it just sort of you lose yourself. So yeah, that's what makes shame so powerful.

Yeah. And one thing that stuck out for me as I was reading, that the feeling the thought, the drive the order in which those three come in, and very often in our culture were raised to kind of do things the other way around to think that things happen the other way around. Right? Like we glorify rationality, we think that our thoughts are everything that there is about us, and that our thoughts are creating our emotions, when actually probably it's the other way around. And the feelings are coming first and then that creates the story which creates the thought and then thinking about the biological drives, you know, we have these drives that have to be explained in some way. And of course, that reminded me of the Capilano suspension bridge story where the researchers had these guys walk and they were all guys walk across the Capilano suspension bridge, which is super rickety, attractive female researcher at the other end offers her phone number. And the majority of the men walking across this rickety bridge want her phone number because they're misattributing their fear that they felt as they were going across the bridge for desire. And people who walked across a very safe low concrete bridge mostly didn't ask for the researcher’s phone number and didn't follow up to call her. So we have these drives and this you know, this sexual attraction is an example of the drive in that study. And we think we have to explain them in some way. Oh, my explanation is I'm attracted to this researcher when actually the explanation is you were afraid walking across this scary bridge. So it's so interesting that how you draw out this you know, the feeling the thought the drive is more often than what actually happens, but we think that it happens the other way and we try and make up these explanations.

Yeah, I might even say that it's feeling drive thought in some cases, but the, your point is exactly right in my mind that I'll think I want to be getting angry at this person. This is what I want because they wronged me when really it's like well, let's just let's just back, back up. Okay, I was feeling shame. There was a disconnect, you know disconnection when I felt shame, and these are just the most obvious thoughts and reactions to go with that. And then when I see that, and I just accept that that's okay. It kind of opens up a menu wherein I can talk about those things. Because it's not like, I think this is where we get into trouble is we start to notice it all, but then we want to reject it. It's like, oh, well, now that I noticed my shame, I don't have to do the impulse to be angry or attack other. But I find that actually, what I do have is just the ability to name it and see it. But not to like necessarily get rid of the impulse. That doesn't mean I have to do it. But there's like this, this balance of accepting it all without doing it, or without believing it. That becomes the most powerful discernment in this shame punching bag game.

Yeah, so it's like, it's, it's fine for me to feel anger, right, especially as a woman conditioned, it's not okay to feel anger. Yes, it's okay. Anger, is what we do with that anger. That's the important part. We can tell the person I am feeling angry right now. And still save ourselves from the actual lashing out in anger saying something mean, which then makes all kinds of other shame inducing.

Yeah, anger’s very healthy, I'm discovering. This is, you know, I come from a background where anger was shamed away. Anger was bad. Anger was violence. And when we're in a, like, people pleasing type of reaction, and they talk about this, at the Center for Healing Shame, your anger response gets frozen because it's like, it's kind of the opposite of people pleasing, if I'm angry at you, I want to create harmony and warmth, even if it's fake for my safety. And that actually can kind of trap me in attack self. I can't see from that vantage point where my anger is frozen, that actually other people have maybe contributed to this situation. And that actually might be very natural for me to have boundary setting anger, where I say, hey, like, actually, this, this wasn't okay, the way that went down. So when I talk about the reactions to shame, it doesn't mean like they're all 100% bad. Sometimes getting angry is exactly what we need to do. I think the way in which attack other becomes problematic is when it's misdirected anger. So the real anger is actually from childhood, where I was never able to say, hey, it's not okay the way I was treated, but I am now misdirecting it in the present moment at you. So that's an example of misdirected, secondary anger coming out. And that anger will just last forever, in my experience, because it's not addressing the real cause of the anger. But if you have legitimately crossed my boundary, and I want to muster the energy to say that I'm personally on a journey of trying to find how to skillfully do that, and support that.

Yes, not an easy task at all. Okay. So and it, obviously, we're coming back to childhood again, right? The misdirected anger, and I think that also has links to the idea of I should write or I have to, I see that that idea coming up in parents all the time, I should do this to prove that I'm a good parent to make sure that I'm raising kids, and I'm doing my part, and if they if they get messed up, then at least it won't be my fault, right? There's, there's so much shame linked to that and going back to our own childhoods, and what we want to repeat from what our parents said, what we definitely don't want to repeat from what our parents did. So what's going on when we hear these in our own minds? I should I have to, what do you see happening there?

Yeah, likely, that's our own childhood conditioning. That's our own norms that we unconsciously accrued through childhood sensemaking, culture, family norms, peers, etc. And in a way, we're taking our own shame, and we're putting it on our children in those moments when we pass down those shoulds. And often, that's how we got them as well. It's intergenerational shame and trauma. And so it can be very powerful to notice when that's driving your behavior because then you can own it. Oh, I got really angry because when I was a child, there was a lot of pressure on us to be quiet, so that's just like a leftover in me that came out towards you, but I want you to know that that's my thing. And it's actually not, I want you to just be yourself, I don’t know I'm sort of making this up as I go along. But once again, you're naming what it is and who's responsible for it, so that the young people beneath you or the people that you lead can see that that's your stuff and they don't have to hold it for you. Yeah, the shoulds that we hold are shoulds that were given to us. So often, it's like, our parents are like, here hold these should, and we're like holding them for them. And then eventually we internalize them, and there are shoulds. And then we pass them on to our employees, and our spouses and our children. So it's a really powerful journey to start unpacking your childhood conditioning those messages, and being able to see them and name them.

Yeah. And it seems as though the alternative to that, which is just basically having somebody else decide how we're going to live our lives, right. Our parents, are these the text message messages we're getting from our external culture, that those voices are deciding how we're going to live our lives, the alternative to that is developing our values, and that we are the ones who get to decide what's important to us. Is that right?

Exactly, yeah. And I want to name that, once again, those shoulds aren't just going to magically disappear. So it's, it's again, a journey of noticing and accepting the shoulds. So you can be like, Oh, my, these old shoulds coming up. And now that I see them, I'm going to look at my own value structure that I've created, which is different, because I'm a modern human with my own sense making now. And so I'm actually going to listen to this value. And this, there's going to be some tension, there might be a wrestle. And you might even be, you might even hold it as an experiment, you might even be able to say, like, I have a should right now, that's like, well, I should always be really professional. But my value in this moment actually feels like I want to be more vulnerable and authentic. So I'm going to try that. And let's see what happens. I'm going to curious what the impact is, on those who are around me, or working beneath me or my children.

Yeah, and I wonder if you'd be willing to talk a little bit about your unconscious values that you talk about in the book, and how those show up and how we can navigate those in the context of our conscious and chosen values.

Yeah, I think these shoulds are all going to start off unconscious. And so there's going to be this like, tension between the unconscious values that have been pushed into shadow land, like, I'm my. So this is really interesting opportunity for shadow work here. Because there's sort of like a part of me that might be that I might judge as really superficial, because it wants everyone to give me attention or something. And so I'll shove that into the shadow, but in the shadow, it will actually be even more powerful. So I'll have this unconscious value for attention. But then I'll have my sort of conscious value of holding space for others or something like that. And if I can't kind of own and see this unconscious value, it will just sort of overshadow and make this value seem kind of inauthentic or something like that. This value will read I think as what they call virtue signaling or something like that. So it becomes very important to look at the things that we hide from ourselves. And we need to do that with a lot of self-compassion, and a lot of acceptance, that it's okay for a part of me from childhood to want a lot of attention, that makes complete sense. And I can bring that part out, and I can talk to it, and I can be friends with it. And I don't always have to put it in the driver's seat either. So this is where parts work becomes really important. And I'm a big fan of internal family systems and focusing and other forms of parts work, because it's just so true, that I am not one homogenous value of holding space for others. No, I have all these different values. Some of them I didn't choose, some of them I have chosen as an adult, some of them are from different ages. And I want to kind of be able to see them all and welcome them all. That's the most important thing, because that's where I have the most menu, the most optionality. Does that give that what you're asking?

Yeah, I think it does. And it sort of leads to a question about therapy. And I know you're a massive advocate of therapy, and I am too, but there really aren't enough therapists in the world, for all of us to, to go and do this, and it just isn't access accessible to everybody. And I've been thinking a lot about community healing right there. There didn't used to be therapists. Therapists are a relatively recent invention in human history. And instead, we used to process these things in community with other people. I'm thinking about no internal family systems. There's a big thing on sort of self-therapy and doing this work yourself or with a partner or with a friend, with somebody who isn't a trained professional, who can kind of witness us and our shame-related feelings and accept us in all of our humanity. I'm wondering, have you seen that kind of healing and action anywhere? Have you experienced it? What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I love what you're saying. You're absolutely right. And I feel like even in the therapy world, there is a movement towards more egalitarian kind of relationship anyway, where there's more self-disclosure and things like that it's sort of like moving more towards a community member or a friend. So absolutely, I think that, in an ideal world, the time where we really work on our self-consciousness and our sort of self-awareness, and our vulnerability, and our truth, wouldn't just be one hour a week, it would be a practice amongst our, our friends, our system, our family. So it's sort of like my dream, that we would all be making a conscious and open effort to do the healing in public with each other. And it's not going to necessarily all be the same again, let's see each person their own healing, and their own style of doing so. But I would absolutely love to see more peer groups that do, especially in a group setting, group sharing, and but always with an eye towards like, this isn't just an exercise or a ritual, this like could be real life. This isn't just a practice, this could be like, the day-to-day. So yeah, I love that idea. I don't know, if I, I'm suddenly feeling a little bit of subconscious shame, like a little bit like, what did I just say? I just said a lot. But I feel like it wasn't judging that it wasn't as juicy as I wanted it to be or as insightful.

yeah, thank you for living your value in the moment.

That’s a little bit of shame coming up, and I can feel it.

And that's how it can be in a relationship, you just illustrated the very thing that you were speaking about.

and I feel better.

See, you are brilliant. You can you can relax in your radiance and brilliance. And yeah, this doesn't have to be my one hour a week of shame practice that, as we were talking about earlier with the meta conversations, it can just be part of how we are in relationship with other people. And maybe then we could all feel more fulfilled kind of live in a way that that we actually get to express what's really going on with us instead of hiding away this this part that that feels shameful.

Yeah. And I think there is a culture that's like, oh, you know, don't talk about certain subjects. It's not professional, or it's not played or it's not upbeat. And I'm so a proponent of let's just talk about our shame. Let's talk about shame in theory. Let's talk about our shame in the past. And then when it comes up in the moment, let's see if we can notice it and name it in the moment if that feels safe. If and when that feels safe. And we're doing.

Yeah, okay. So you're leading us sort of into a conclusion here, where I'm starting to think about, well, where do we start with this. And I think that's an amazing place to start even just noticing it, even if you're noticing after the fact, right. And I'm actually think about sort of feeling triggered. And when you're feeling triggered by your child's behavior, often you don't see it coming, you see it after it's happened. And you look back and you're like, Oh, that's not how I hope that was gonna go. And then over time, you're able to create this little pause between the triggered feeling and the response. And then you can breathe and actually take an action that's based on your values instead of the reaction that was coming in that split second. And what I'm hearing from you as an echo of that process, right, is that I can look back right now maybe, and see, oh, yeah, I felt something that indicates shame, maybe a physical sensation, maybe a feeling maybe a drive, a biological drive, that indicates that I was feeling shamed. And perhaps I can work towards noticing that in the moment, creating a pause, and then choosing a response based on my values instead of the instinctive thing that happened. Do you see a connection there?

Yeah, totally. I love that. And I would also note to bring it back to repair, that noticing after the fact is great, and you can make a repair if you need to. So like even better, perhaps, that I really want to emphasize that like a culture of repair is something I'm longing for, where that's just built in. It's just built in that leaders and parents are going to make mistakes, and then they're going to come back and take responsibility for them. That would be a beautiful culture. So yeah, you will absolutely see shame after the fact, more often than not, because it's so unpleasant. And that's great. That's an opportunity to learn. And if necessary, you can make a repair.

Yeah. And it seems like mindfulness is a really key component to this, right? Like the being really conscious in the present moment about what is actually happening to me, is a critical skill to be able to see to see that shame both after it's happened and while that's happening.

Yeah, absolutely. Big fan of mindfulness, meditation, pausing, slowness. The longer I pause before I respond, the more likely I am to see what's really going on.

Yeah, is there any advice you would give to people who are just getting started here who are listening to this episode, and they're thinking, oh my goodness, I can feel that there is so much shame in my life right now, maybe because they can't even identify the subjects that it comes out. Like it's about body image, it's about my child, which specific experience my child is having, and how that reflects on me something like that. And they're not quite sure what is the next, the first next step to take? What would you say to to that listener?

This is what comes up for me in this moment, I would recommend some journaling around these three things that you just mentioned, if they can just find some time to look back at a recent experience where they think they might have felt shame, and kind of like, put themselves back into that. And then I would really encourage them to just get curious about what does it feel like in my body when I revisit that? So which is to say, where might shame live? What might it feel like? What where is it it's in your chest? Is in your stomach? What is the shame affect sensation? Write that down. That's a really important piece of self-awareness to start to kind of memorize that feeling. And then the stories, what are the stories about me that are coming up? And particularly, what are the stories as you mentioned before, that I think people are thinking about me? What are the stories about what people feel about me in that moment? What are the stories about my place in the social hierarchy in that moment? So you can start to write those down, those will start to be themes, you'll see patterns. And then that's, that's just a great place to start. Now you're getting self-awareness about how shame shows up in you. And that kind of taking it further step when you have the space and time would be to look at those stories and say, where did this show up in childhood? Are there some patterns here? What are the associations? So there's some moments that were similar? Where did these stories come from? Where did this idea where's, and that's where you start to get into where the expectations and stories were born. And that's the place where you can actually do some really, really profound healing by noticing that those expectations and stories weren't really accurate, and weren't really fair for you to have been burdened with. And you can start to do a journey where you let that stuff go.

Yeah, and I love that so much. And if I could add one step to what you're saying about nursing the patterns, nursing stories, nursing where the stories come from, it would be to open up the possibility just to ask the question, is it possible that my story is not true? Is it possible that there is another explanation for what happened here? And I think just the possibility that there is another explanation that somebody else sees it differently, that a thing happened, that wasn't actually our fault that somebody else did something. And that's what created this situation, or that there's expectation, this this story that we've been telling ourselves about this event in our head, is it possible, there's some other reason why that might have happened, opens up the idea that this isn't about me, this isn't about my shame, I didn't cause this thing. And for me, that I think promotes an enormous amount of potential healing, just to know that that possibility is out there.

Yeah, I love that. And I think that, that goes back to that childhood experience as well. Like, you interpret it like, I'm bad. That's how it starts in childhood. Ah, the interpersonal bridge broke, because I'm not worth interpersonally with. But then it's like what other story could be there? Other reason? That's so important.

Yeah. Awesome. Where can listeners find you AJ?

Well, I have a website. It's www.discomfortable.net. And on there, I have some podcasts and essays and links to the book, if they want to read discomfortable the book. And I also do coaching, if people want to do a sort of deep dive into their own specific shame. I do work around that. And I'm certified by the Center for Healing Shame. So I use their modality. And I also do some internal family systems work, which I'm currently being trained in. So that's new. And yeah, that's pretty much it.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here and for writing the book. It was really awesome to have this conversation. So thank you so much.

Yeah, thank you. I really appreciated how prepared and detailed and deeply in it you were for this, it's really meaningful that I felt like I was really right there with you.

Thank you, and just in the spirit of the interview that we're doing part of that is because I enjoy the research and enjoy having an in depth conversation. And part of it is the potential shame of being caught not having done the research. That you might say, well, actually, I covered that on page 39.

It's so nice to hear that for me to know like yeah, we're both in here with our strategies to avoid shame together. It's lovely, I feel like more closely connected to you.

Super. Well I hope listeners can take something out of even just that little, you know, 30 seconds of interaction and see, you know, this is how relationships develop. And so all of the references for all of the books and materials that I read in preparation for this interview, as well as the broader content that I'm producing on shame, as well as links to AJ’s book and website can be found at yourparentingmojo.com/discomfortable.

Of all the places to get parenting advice, Your Parenting Mojo has been the most consistently helpful, easy to implement, and effective that I've come across. I'm Brianna Watts from Fredericksburg, Virginia. And if you'd like this information, please pass it on to your friends. Go to the website to subscribe. And thanks for listening. And by the way, as easy as it is to fast forward through ads, I think we can all agree that it's really convenient to be able to listen to this information without ads, and also to support small businesses and really put our money where our mouth is for the kinds of things we want to support. So please consider being a patron of Jen’s, buying her a cup of coffee, helping support the podcast and keeping this information out there for all of us so that we can use it to support our family’s healthy growth and development. Thank you.