Thank you for this. The article reminded me of modern parenting, in knowing that our kids "aren't giving us a hard time, they're _having_ a hard time," and that they aren't "destructive," they "broke something." I love the idea of applying this distinction between behavior and labeling/othering to everyone. In the same way that we can love the child, but not their behavior, can we expand that to include an increasing number of people (and for that matter, all beings)?
I have quite a different interpretation of the concept of "acceptance" in your intro above. (And to me it doesn't connect at all to the nuances of shame, so forgive me for ignoring the rest of the piece in this comment.)
I think acceptance doesn't(needn't and shouldn't) denote approval: that accepting the existence/truth/reality of something doesn't mean that we *like* it. Acceptance/rejection gets frequently conflated with dislike/like because people start from a place of disliking *and* rejecting something. Being attached to dislike does block us from accepting/welcoming/opening up to something. So then if we hear that we should accept something, we figure we have to flip the sign bit on our emotional valence in order to do that. But I think that's false!
(An aside: Perhaps it can be a useful false: the Ram Dass quote "The world is perfect as it is, including my desire to change it." makes us squirm as we contemplate what meaning of the word "perfect" could possibly apply to this screwed-up world. It pushes us towards realizing that maybe there's no badness/goodness inherent in the world-state itself, but rather only in our relationship to reality. But I think it plays into the misconception of "flip the valence" rather than "let go of the negative attachment".)
My interpretation of Rogers (as well as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Coherence Therapy) is that the move of acceptance/welcoming is of coming to grips with the fact that what is, is. Rationalists use the "Litany of Gendlin" to illustrate: https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/litany-of-gendlin There's an "opening up" sensation associated with this, in contrast to the closed feeling of being in a relation of rejection/flinch/denial/dissociation to the thing.
So, we don't have to flip our feeling, we have to let go of the attachment. It's the *defusion* of our emotional valence (not changing how we feel! though frequently how we feel changes incidentally) from our acceptance that is the thing that frees us up to then work with the thing that we previously were rigidly locked against. It's that spacious freedom that enables transformation! Keep your values, keep your passions, you don't have to let go of your desires — you just need space to accept those too! "I accept this thing, and I accept that I don't like it." gets the job done.
Another way to put it is that all we need to accept is the present, in a way similar to the way that we know we have to accept the past. We can't change either one of them! If we can hold a stance of an okayness/openness towards the present being what it already is, we can still have desires for the *future* (and the existence of those desires is also part of the present). There's no contradiction, and no barrier to action.
As you can tell, I think this is a pretty important psychological concept/frame/seeing/move. To your "I don’t know what to do with that.", I hope this message of "you don't have to do that!" is some assistance.
Thanks James. I think we're in agreement here... I appreciate the nuance you're offering around "acceptance", and that resonates. I think the struggle I'm trying to land is around attachment to outcome (the future) and therefore how that shows up in the present. I'm not open to a world that maintains white supremacy or patriarchy: I'm attached to (and judging of) efforts to maintain those systems. In that sense, I have an agenda, which I am attached to. maybe another way to put it: how do I hold on to that future vision/attachment to outcomes... in the present, in order to make it more likely that we'll reach those outcomes? Does that make any more sense? I can also accept the possibility that i'm the only one hung up on this, and others have already figured it out :-)
Rather than using a toxic/healthy shame distinction, we can also reframe using the intensity of the emotion, and developing "emotional fluency".
Extreme negative emotions tend to push us into fight-or-flight mode that is not very conducive to intentional behavior change.
There should be healthy proportionality between the severity of the social norm that we're violating and the emotional response that we're experiencing as a result of that violation.
As a non-native English speaker, one of the things I most appreciate about the English language is its richness in conveying similar emotions with different intensities.
In our case here, there's an emotional spectrum from "embarrassed" through "apologetic" and "remorseful" all the way to "ashamed" and "humiliated".
Not every transgression should take us all the way to "shame". Noticing and labeling our emotions more accurately may help us user our emotions more effectively in driving the behavior change we seek.
Mmm, thanks for this distinction, Ria. My understanding of the research is that it's a "yes, and." Yes, toxic shame can be internalized as a trauma response (this bad thing happened to me, it must be my fault; it's a claim to agency as a way to survive a traumatic event; shame always accompanies trauma).
And: the repeated exposure to toxic shaming (as an act) can itself be traumatizing (e.g. telling a gay kid they don't belong).
I really like the invitation to think of the boundaries of healthy shame as a function of how big we conceive our "We"... thanks for the suggestion. I do think it touches on to what norm/set of ethics we appeal to: even in the small "We" of a family I can reject norms and advocate for others... by appealing to a different set of principles (perhaps this is the bigger We you're conjuring...)
Thank you for this. The article reminded me of modern parenting, in knowing that our kids "aren't giving us a hard time, they're _having_ a hard time," and that they aren't "destructive," they "broke something." I love the idea of applying this distinction between behavior and labeling/othering to everyone. In the same way that we can love the child, but not their behavior, can we expand that to include an increasing number of people (and for that matter, all beings)?
I have quite a different interpretation of the concept of "acceptance" in your intro above. (And to me it doesn't connect at all to the nuances of shame, so forgive me for ignoring the rest of the piece in this comment.)
I think acceptance doesn't(needn't and shouldn't) denote approval: that accepting the existence/truth/reality of something doesn't mean that we *like* it. Acceptance/rejection gets frequently conflated with dislike/like because people start from a place of disliking *and* rejecting something. Being attached to dislike does block us from accepting/welcoming/opening up to something. So then if we hear that we should accept something, we figure we have to flip the sign bit on our emotional valence in order to do that. But I think that's false!
(An aside: Perhaps it can be a useful false: the Ram Dass quote "The world is perfect as it is, including my desire to change it." makes us squirm as we contemplate what meaning of the word "perfect" could possibly apply to this screwed-up world. It pushes us towards realizing that maybe there's no badness/goodness inherent in the world-state itself, but rather only in our relationship to reality. But I think it plays into the misconception of "flip the valence" rather than "let go of the negative attachment".)
My interpretation of Rogers (as well as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Coherence Therapy) is that the move of acceptance/welcoming is of coming to grips with the fact that what is, is. Rationalists use the "Litany of Gendlin" to illustrate: https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/litany-of-gendlin There's an "opening up" sensation associated with this, in contrast to the closed feeling of being in a relation of rejection/flinch/denial/dissociation to the thing.
So, we don't have to flip our feeling, we have to let go of the attachment. It's the *defusion* of our emotional valence (not changing how we feel! though frequently how we feel changes incidentally) from our acceptance that is the thing that frees us up to then work with the thing that we previously were rigidly locked against. It's that spacious freedom that enables transformation! Keep your values, keep your passions, you don't have to let go of your desires — you just need space to accept those too! "I accept this thing, and I accept that I don't like it." gets the job done.
Another way to put it is that all we need to accept is the present, in a way similar to the way that we know we have to accept the past. We can't change either one of them! If we can hold a stance of an okayness/openness towards the present being what it already is, we can still have desires for the *future* (and the existence of those desires is also part of the present). There's no contradiction, and no barrier to action.
As you can tell, I think this is a pretty important psychological concept/frame/seeing/move. To your "I don’t know what to do with that.", I hope this message of "you don't have to do that!" is some assistance.
Thanks James. I think we're in agreement here... I appreciate the nuance you're offering around "acceptance", and that resonates. I think the struggle I'm trying to land is around attachment to outcome (the future) and therefore how that shows up in the present. I'm not open to a world that maintains white supremacy or patriarchy: I'm attached to (and judging of) efforts to maintain those systems. In that sense, I have an agenda, which I am attached to. maybe another way to put it: how do I hold on to that future vision/attachment to outcomes... in the present, in order to make it more likely that we'll reach those outcomes? Does that make any more sense? I can also accept the possibility that i'm the only one hung up on this, and others have already figured it out :-)
I really enjoyed reading your article.
Reminds me of the rule in sportsmanship: play the ball, not the man. Otherwise you get a red card.
Good game Brian 👊
Rather than using a toxic/healthy shame distinction, we can also reframe using the intensity of the emotion, and developing "emotional fluency".
Extreme negative emotions tend to push us into fight-or-flight mode that is not very conducive to intentional behavior change.
There should be healthy proportionality between the severity of the social norm that we're violating and the emotional response that we're experiencing as a result of that violation.
As a non-native English speaker, one of the things I most appreciate about the English language is its richness in conveying similar emotions with different intensities.
In our case here, there's an emotional spectrum from "embarrassed" through "apologetic" and "remorseful" all the way to "ashamed" and "humiliated".
Not every transgression should take us all the way to "shame". Noticing and labeling our emotions more accurately may help us user our emotions more effectively in driving the behavior change we seek.
Mmm, thanks for this distinction, Ria. My understanding of the research is that it's a "yes, and." Yes, toxic shame can be internalized as a trauma response (this bad thing happened to me, it must be my fault; it's a claim to agency as a way to survive a traumatic event; shame always accompanies trauma).
And: the repeated exposure to toxic shaming (as an act) can itself be traumatizing (e.g. telling a gay kid they don't belong).
I really like the invitation to think of the boundaries of healthy shame as a function of how big we conceive our "We"... thanks for the suggestion. I do think it touches on to what norm/set of ethics we appeal to: even in the small "We" of a family I can reject norms and advocate for others... by appealing to a different set of principles (perhaps this is the bigger We you're conjuring...)
Agreed! I will amend the TL;DR to try to better capture this nuance. I appreciate you, Ria. 🙏