A few months ago I attended a symposium called The Problem of Shame put on by the Menninger Clinic in Houston, Texas. With speakers like Brené Brown and Harriet Lerner, it was an illuminating and amusing conference. But perhaps the most interesting thing that occurred was when another participant stood up in the middle of one of the presentations and called-out another table of participants for being on their phones and not paying attention.
The talk in question was titled, “I Thought People Like That Shot Themselves”: The Insidiousness of LGBTQ Shame presented by clinical psychologist Michael R. Kauth, Director of the LGBT Health Program at the Veterans Health Administration in Vermont. It was an intense lecture that was of course very personal for me and clearly for the man who stood up to complain as well.
I can completely relate to the shame this man must have felt when he looked over and saw other people seemingly ignoring this important talk about the very trauma and struggles that he and I and many other LGBTQ+ people have faced in our lives. Given that the whole symposium was about “the problem of shame” and this specific talk was about the problem of LGBTQ+ shame in particular (and that was exactly what he was experiencing at the time), it must have made sense in his mind to stand up and call-out what he saw as the very issue in question.
But the problem is, he made the classic mistake of using shame to fight shame. And what I found fascinating, was that no one at this shame conference even acknowledged that this was an example of shame in action. What could have been a teachable moment and realtime example of the way shame works was more or less brushed off as an awkward hiccup. The speaker just proceeded with his talk, and though the host of the event later acknowledged the interruption by placating both sides, no one noted that it was actually shame or explored its very relevant significance to the whole event.
Earlier in the day, Brené Brown had spoken specifically about the need to acknowledge shame, to talk about it. And I don’t think talking about it just in theory is enough. We need to acknowledge and address shame as it happens because that’s the best way to make it clear what shame actually is! It’s hard for people to connect the theory with the elusive feeling of shame because shame is specifically designed to confound us and hide itself. This could have been a perfect moment to connect the theory with reality.
Brené had also asserted that there was no place for shame in social justice work. I think this is such an important message that so many well-meaning activists are missing, including the man who stood up. If you are combatting injustice with shame, you may actually be making the problem worse because shame triggers our threat response which makes people more resistant to logic, reason, compassion, and healthy change. Our threat response is connected to the oldest part of our brain, our amygdala, and its activation obscures our more human — and humane — neocortex. So it’s just bad strategy.
Of course, the man’s behaviour made perfect sense when you recognized that he was also in shame at the time, so his own neocortex was likely offline. He was being misdirected by his primitive threat response system too! This is all the more reason why it would have been so powerful and insightful to help him, and everyone else, see exactly what was happening in the moment and how it could have been successfully dealt with right then and there!
This episode looks at how the issue could have been handled differently, and also how it could have been discussed at the time in the least shaming way possible for everyone involved.
This episode also references my podcast on clarity.
