Tag: Brene Brown

Shame Resilience

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“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.” – Buddha

Last week when my daughter and I were dropping my son at his daycare, Simon the teacher in the 2’s class was at the check-in table. I was talking to Simon as we did the sign-in and temperature check and then when I went to say good-bye to my son, I distractedly said, “I love you, Simon.” (No, it wasn’t a Freudian slip, I swear). My daughter started to giggle as did I, we waved at my son as he walked away and just slipped out the door laughing.

It was embarrassing to make a mistake in front of my kids. To be clear, I’ve made plenty of mistakes in front of and with my kids but usually privately or before my oldest was socially aware enough to pick up on it. I know from the work of sociologist and researcher Brene Brown how important modeling shame resilience is for kids so that they can see how you can name it, talk about it and survive it instead of keeping it inside where it can percolate for a long time. Just thinking about it and I recall shame that I’ve never given air like the time I was in the toy store with my daughter when she was still in diapers and I overheard one parent say to another, “Someone in here has a poopy diaper.” And it was my kid. <groan>  I still can remember that vividly more than three years later probably because I’ve never talked about it before this post.

Shame resilience was not something that was modeled for me when I was a kid. I had two great parents, my dad who was so likeable and well-intended that it was easy to believe he never suffered and my mom who is such a perfectionist that it’s easy to believe she never did anything wrong. But I remember when I sat my dad to tell his stories when he was in his late 70’s and he told of a story when he had to let go someone on his staff. He’d hired a married couple to play a role in the church my dad was senior pastor of and the husband was noticeably absent. My dad had to let him go and the wife was livid and felt her husband had been terribly mistreated. In the few years that followed she then suffered a miscarriage and her marriage broke up and though those things had no direct relationship to my father, he felt terrible until the end of his days despite the many different ways he tried to apologize over the years.

These were the things we never talked about as a family when we were young. Perhaps that’s too big of an issue to hear about as a kid but it’s the only example I have. So I’m trying to remember that with my kids and stay open to just say a sentence or two. As we left the daycare, I said to my daughter, “That was embarrassing.” She asked why and I said, “Well, I don’t know Simon well enough to love him AND I didn’t properly say good-bye to your brother so I messed up both things.” And then she asked, “What’s embarrassing mean?” It was a great entrée to a little conversation about life. What I said wasn’t wise or big but it was transparent and true which I hope will ventilate my shame and show her how she might endure hers when she feels it.

Whole-Hearted Little People

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“I believe that you have to walk through vulnerability to get to courage.” – Brene Brown

Early yesterday morning there was a fly in my daughter’s room. It woke her up early with its buzzing and between her efforts to get it and to get me to get it, my son was awakened early. Which is why my kids were grumpy last night. When I told my daughter to stop taking the toys away from my son, she said, “I know, I know, I’m the worst kid.” And when I told my son to stop picking the flowers and leaves off the plants in the planters, he lay on the ground drumming his hands and fists. In my observations of these little people, it’s pretty consistent that my daughter internalizes negative feelings while my son externalizes them.

I don’t have a strong belief when it comes to male and female energies. I was brought up to believe that I could be whatever I wanted and so I got my degree in electrical engineering and climbed mountains as a hobby even though both were male-dominated activities. Now I’m a single parent combining the traditional roles of mom and dad and I don’t think much about making a distinction. So it is with complete fascination that I watch these two kids come out with different ways of being.

It made me think of a generalized progression of how we can develop into our stereotypical males and females from where we start. For boys who are taught not to express their emotions through thumping their hands on the floor, they can become stoic and unexpressive. For girls who want to avoid the pain of turning their feelings inward, they can start trying to become perfect.

This reminds me of a fascinating passage I read from Canadian psychologist and author, Jordan Peterson who argues that it’s the thousands years of evolution that has created the conditions for the male and female psyches.

“Women are choosy maters … It is for this reason that we all have twice as many female ancestors as male (imagine that all the women who have ever lived averaged one child. Now imagine that half the men who have ever lived have fathered two children, if they had any, while other half fathered none). It is Woman as Nature who looks at half of all men and says, “No!” For the men, that’s a direct encounter with chaos, and it occurs with devastating force every time they are turned down for a date. Human female choosiness is also why we are very different from the common ancestor we shared with our chimpanzee cousins, while the latter are very much the same. Women’s proclivity to say no, more than any other force, has shaped our evolution into the creative, industrious, upright, large-brained (competitive, aggressive, domineering) creatures that we are.”

12 Rules for Life – Jordan Peterson

That extremely long view argues that there isn’t much I can do as a parent to affect the expression of the male and female energies and I’m not sure that I agree with that. In wanting my kids to develop as authentic, healthy and kind beings and good citizens of the Universe, I can’t just throw in the towel and chalk it up to human nature. So I’m borrowing from sociologist and researcher Brene Brown’s work on shame and vulnerability, Dr. Tina Payne Bryson and Dr. Dan Siegel’s work on brain integration and regulation, and developmental biologist John Medina’s work to build up our ability to name our emotions, develop resilience from shame and failure and work on walking through vulnerability to arrive at courage. I believe we can work towards being whole-hearted beings regardless of gender and I’m sticking with that.. and getting a good night’s sleep!

Healing the Divide

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“In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.” – Albert Einstein

There’s a divide that runs right down the middle of my family of origin – I call it tree people and forest people as inspired by the phrase “Can’t see the forest for the trees.” The tree people are so good at details that they are the ones you want to invite if you need help painting a room or weeding a patch of garden. The forest people are generally better at navigating the ups and downs of life and are the ones you want to invite when you need advice or help troubleshooting a systemic problem. Even with different perspectives, we managed okay until a tree person sued a forest person. Now it’s hard to see that we all stem from the same ground.

So I’ve thought a lot about the root cause (pun intended) about the pain in my family. And when I read the following passage about belonging in Brene Brown’s book Braving the Wilderness, it resonated as the real reason that my family is divided.  

“Even in the context of suffering – poverty, violence, human rights violations – not belong in our families is still one of the most dangerous hurts. That’s because it has the power to break our heart, our spirit, and our sense of self-worth. It broke all three for me. And when those things break, there are only three outcomes, something I’ve borne witness to in my life and in my work:

1. You live in constant pain and seek relief by numbing it and/or inflicting it on others;

2. You deny your pain, and your denial ensures that you pass it on to those around you and down to your children; or

3. You find the courage to own the pain and develop a level of empathy and compassion for yourself and others that allows you to spot hurt in the world in a unique way.

Brene Brown

My dad was a Presbyterian pastor and so the church defined our lives growing up. Amidst all the wonderful things that came with the church community – friendship, values, service and faith, came an unfortunate side effect of an expectation of conformity to an image of a good Christian kid. As the youngest kid, I think the inferred expectation of having to be a living example was much lower or it just didn’t phase me but I imagine that it was harder for my siblings. As such the feeling of not belonging because they didn’t fit the precise mold began early.

I think about this a lot with my kids. As a side effect of being at home together in this year of pandemic, although sometimes feeling cramped, we have enjoyed the luxury of more time building the base of belonging. Now with schools opening up and more activities available, I am both relieved to see my kids start to branch out and concerned with keeping that feeling of deep connection going. I saw some great advice posted by Tina Payne Bryson, co-author of The Yes Brain: How to Cultivate Courage, Curiosity and Resilience in Your Child: “If you are a parent of a baby or toddler, then I have two big tips for you: 1) Delight in your child. It doesn’t have to be all the time, but find time every day to truly delight in them. 2) Take care of yourself. You matter, too.” It’s great advice because when I delight in my kids, I’m present and celebrating who they are and it not only works for my toddler by also my 5-year-old.

I don’t yet know whether my kids are forest people or tree people. Seeing my family’s experience has taught me that I’m willing to work hard to ensure that my kids know that whichever they are, that we inhabit the same ground, stem from the same Earth and are fed from the same soil. We might not see things from the same perspective but I’m betting that if we know we belong together, we will be willing to share our experience, our lives and our delight. Here’s my hope – if I start with my kids then the goodness of healing will ripple out maybe to my family of origin and then beyond.

Who Are You Listening To?

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“It is the ability to choose which makes us human.” – Madeleine L’Engle

When the pandemic hit last year I had just started watching Season 3 of Bosch on Amazon Prime. One night I turned it on and the story line involving one of my all-time favorite detectives as he navigated departmental politics, the drama of his own life and homicide cases he works left me feeling wrung out instead of entertained. So the next time I was looking for evening entertainment, I had to find something else.

Instead I’ve been listening to podcasts as I clean, exercise and prepare for the next day. On Being with Krista Tippett, Soul Sundays with Oprah, Unlocking Us with Brené Brown, The Michelle Obama podcast and Revisionist History with Malcom Gladwell have given me the sound bites and food for thought for a year. What a difference it has made! Author Simon Sinek on Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead podcast made a comment that put words to this for me – sometimes we work alone but that does not have to be lonely if we have sense of faith and community. Listening to deep and inspired conversations with curious and insightful interviewers has kept me company and inspired in this year of being apart.

Krista Tippett’s podcast with Nicholas Christakis, professor of sociology at Yale, was so uplifting to hear his message about how our species is wired for good – to love, to cooperate, to teach each other stuff.

I loved hearing one of the rare interviews with psychiatrist Dr. M Scott Peck did with Oprah. She asked how he got so much done and he replied that he got so much done because he spends two hours a day doing nothing. He used to called it his thinking time but then people felt free to interrupt him so he renamed it his praying time and then no one dared.

When Brené Brown interviewed psychologist and author, Harriet Lerner, it was a master class in apologies. I so related to the point she made that adults often use a child’s apology as a launching point for a lecture instead of “thank you for saying that, I appreciate it.” Her point was that neither children nor adults feel much like apologizing when that is likely to happen.

Michelle Obama interviewed her mom, Marian Robinson and they laughed about how Marian used to foster independence in her children by letting them get themselves up and ready for school, “it’s up to you” she would quip, “I already got my education.”

One of the Brené Brown podcasts was with neuroscientist David Eagleman whose research at Stanford shows that our brain is constantly changing and making new connections. He made the point that even in the hour of listening to the podcast, our brains would be changed by it. And I believe it was in the same interview that he said who we are is shaped by the five people that we spent the most time with. It is that point that sticks with me as I consider how to spend my precious free time. Who am I listening to and is it what I want to be shaping me?

Parenting in a Pandemic

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“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” – Pablo Picasso

On this 263rd day of coronavirus shutdown, my five-year-old daughter asked me “What are we doing today?” as she has for most every day. It made me realize that parenting and parenting in a pandemic has made me a leader. Which probably makes me a little slow to get it, especially if you go with University of Houston researcher Brene Brown’s definition of a leader as “anyone who holds him or herself accountable for finding potential in people or processes.”

I don’t think of myself as a leader. Instead I think of myself as independent and that is how I choose to become a parent as a single person. I also think of myself as a nurturer and that has fostered my relationship with my healthy kids. But naming that I’m called to be a leader of my little family has some usefulness – it makes the work more intentional and it makes exploration, play and boredom seem like essential tools of the job. It also amplifies my gratitude that I can say on many days, “I don’t know, your aunt or nana will be here soon!” Because parenting in a pandemic is hard and even leaders need a break!

The Practice of Gratitude

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“Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life.” – Rumi

I read this excerpt from Lynne Twist’s book The Soul of Money and instantly identified with it:
“For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is ‘I didn’t get enough sleep.’ The next one is ‘I don’t have enough time.’ Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it. We spend most of the hours and the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don’t have enough of…. We don’t have enough exercise. We don’t have enough work. We don’t have enough profits. We don’t have enough power. We don’t have enough wilderness. We don’t have enough weekends. Of course, we don’t have enough money – ever. We’re not thin enough, we’re not smart enough, we’re not pretty enough or fit enough or educated or successful enough, or rich enough – ever.

“Before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we’re already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something. And by the time we go to bed at night, our minds race with a litany of what we didn’t get, or didn’t get done, that day. We go to sleep burdened by those thought and wake up to the reverie of lack… What begins as a simple expression of the hurried life, or even the challenged life, grows into the great justifications for an unfulfilled life.“

The one component that feels so scarce right now is me-time, time when I want to do what I want to do. Between having 2 young kids, working and trying to keep some order in the house that gets ripped into pieces every day as we are all stuck in here during the pandemic, I think it’s probably factually correct to say that my discretionary free-time is at an all-time low. BUT as I read the passage above, I realized that I don’t have to grieve that fact every day.

Lynne Twist, the author of the passage above, suggests we can believe that we are enough. Brene Brown, the University of Houston researcher who excerpted the passage above in her book The Gifts of Imperfection finds that her research shows practicing gratitude is what creates joy in our lives, no matter the circumstances. And she suggests that gratitude isn’t a passive thing that you espouse but something that truly needs to be practiced – like the piano.

It’s funny how easy it is to see in my own life once someone points it out to me. And I can see that my attitude of gratitude or belief that I’m enough can affect the lives of my children intimately. Because I have these years when they are young and still at home with me, even if it’s a little longer because of the pandemic, to set the tone by which they receive the world. In this week of Thanksgiving, it is such a perfect time to start some lasting traditions of naming the things we are grateful for every day.