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.
"Toxic shame tells us we don’t belong, and offers no path back to belonging: we internalize it as trauma."
Shame is a trauma-response, not a trauma in itself! Shame came into being because I had a very natural, spontanious action as a child and that action was met with disapproval or denying or... the only thing that made sense was to 'think' that there was something wrong with me! In order to belong, as a child, I had to suppress that particular natural behaviour.
It becomes 'toxic' as it becomes core of my identity / personality.
What you describe as 'healthy shame' is when I realise that the group I belong to, is really way bigger than the one I knew from childhood (my family, my village, my...). It's an expansion of the 'we'... "these are also people from my country" ,"these are also human beings" etc.
So, the difference is where do the social norms come from, and how conscious and aware are we of them? from my family of origin, or the foster home I grew up in, or the street boys I grew up with, or the justice group I'm part of... or the group of professionals I identify with... or...or... or...
I guess the first step would be: can I have compassion for the part in me that 'judges' other people for how wide - or not - is their circle of belonging (hence the social norms they stick to)?
And as James Baker here below... I'm not going into the details of the rest of the article... but 'no' to "we have to fight toxic shame"... no, first we have to accept it that it lives in us, then see where it comes from, then widen our circle of belonging... etc.
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.
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.
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 👊
Can I make a comment on this line:
"Toxic shame tells us we don’t belong, and offers no path back to belonging: we internalize it as trauma."
Shame is a trauma-response, not a trauma in itself! Shame came into being because I had a very natural, spontanious action as a child and that action was met with disapproval or denying or... the only thing that made sense was to 'think' that there was something wrong with me! In order to belong, as a child, I had to suppress that particular natural behaviour.
It becomes 'toxic' as it becomes core of my identity / personality.
What you describe as 'healthy shame' is when I realise that the group I belong to, is really way bigger than the one I knew from childhood (my family, my village, my...). It's an expansion of the 'we'... "these are also people from my country" ,"these are also human beings" etc.
So, the difference is where do the social norms come from, and how conscious and aware are we of them? from my family of origin, or the foster home I grew up in, or the street boys I grew up with, or the justice group I'm part of... or the group of professionals I identify with... or...or... or...
I guess the first step would be: can I have compassion for the part in me that 'judges' other people for how wide - or not - is their circle of belonging (hence the social norms they stick to)?
And as James Baker here below... I'm not going into the details of the rest of the article... but 'no' to "we have to fight toxic shame"... no, first we have to accept it that it lives in us, then see where it comes from, then widen our circle of belonging... etc.
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.