282 - The Shame Game 2: Endshame
Shame in polyamory
In an ethical non-monogamous relationships or other nontraditional unions, shame can play out in a few different ways:
External shame from our culture from not having a hetero-, cis-, mono-normative relationship.
Specific shameful archetypes in our culture, such as the philanderer, the cuckold, the housewife stuck at home, the other woman, etc.
Dealing with shame directly stemming from parental relationships, family, coworkers, friends, partners, strangers on the internet, etc.
Differences between ourselves and our partner:
Different approaches to dating.
Different approaches to sex.
Differences in respective dating.
Shameful narratives tied to roles and goals:
Failing, i.e. “I’m failing at monogamy”/”I’m failing at non-monogamy"/”I’m not being a perfect poly person.”
“I’m not queer/genderqueer enough.”
“I’m not kinky enough/too kinky.”
“I can’t get an erection so I’m failing my partners.”
Healthy and unhealthy shame
Obliterating shame completely should never be the goal; it’s too unrealistic for something that’s evolutionarily engrained. Instead, we should aim for healthy shame, which can manifest as:
Self-compassion.
The ability to be vulnerable.
Recognition of our own limitations.
Making amends or repairing.
Seeing the big picture.
Taking ownership and responsibility.
Countershaming
Recognizing shame and your own shame response can be critical to releasing its hold on you.
Figure out which shame responses are common for you (attack self, attack other, withdrawal, denial/numbing).
Deploy countershaming phrases:
“I did the best I could at the time, knowing what I did then.”
“It’s not my fault that this happened to me.”
“It’s totally natural and understandable to feel this way.”
“I learned an important lesson from that.”
“I’m doing the best I can to live my ethic/truth/etc.”
“I’m not alone in this struggle.”
It can also be helpful to think of phrases you might use when talking to a child or friend about the same situation in order to countershame them.
Apply some self-compassion (re-listen to episode 274).
Take stock of all the things you’re willing to make right.
Try giving the shame back: ask yourself where the shame came from, and visualize handing or sending it back there.
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we're continuing talking about shame in relationships. If you haven't yet, be sure you go back and listen to part one of this which was Episode 281. In this one, we're going to be continuing on. Last time, we talked about why humans evolved to feel shame in the first place and theories about that, how it can trip us up in our relationships and then this week, we're going to be continuing that, talking about how that shows up specifically in non-traditional relationships as well as getting into some tools and techniques for counteracting the shame that we level at ourselves and also at our partners.
Emily: Let's dive right in, shall we, and talk about how shame plays out in polyamory and other non-traditional relationships. This is a thing I think all three of us have felt at times with any non-monogamous journey that we've been on. I know when I started doing that with you, Jase, there was a lot of challenges that occurred and some of them we're going to talk about right now.
Initially, there's this indirect external shame that comes from our culture at large for just not having a "normal" heteronormative, cis-gendered, monogamous, total normative relationship or whatever that can definitely give a person a lot of external shame that just comes up especially when you're starting out in a new and non-monogamous relationship.
Jase: Anytime you're doing something that's outside of what you think is normal, even if it's really not that normal, it's outside of what you've been taught is normal, there is that feeling of shame, especially before you have really gathered any evidence on your own of this working for you or of this being successful or feeling like you know what you're doing at least. That is really hard.
This applies to other things too, like a decision to stay intentionally single, or to be in a long term committed relationship but not get married or not live together or not have kids or anything that's just not the normal thing that everyone tells you, "You're only happy if you do these things." That it's like anything that goes wrong you're going to think, "Oh gosh, it's because I'm doing this weird thing." Other people are probably going to think that too and tell you that. That compounds this internal shame, then you also get that externally.
Emily: Absolutely. There are also these shameful archetypes that happen in our culture. Things like the philanderer, the cuckold.
Jase: Most people would think of the philanderer as the player.
Emily: Yes. "He's such a player." That's an interesting one because it can be shameful but it also can be held-up in our communities.
Dedeker: Well honestly, that's why I wrote down the philanderer rather than the player. It's because the player is the sometimes revered or admired side of that.
Emily: Like the bachelor or the playboy?
Dedeker: Yes. The philanderer is somebody's deadbeat husband who keeps filling up his secretary to go-- I'm talking about archetypes here. Stuff that's been in our media and our culture and our stories for a long time, both in our real-life stories and in our fictional stories as well.
Emily: Then on the-- Well, sorry Jase.
Jase: No. The reason why I bring up the player thing though, is at least from my experience that that is usually what's leveled against, specifically men who are getting into non-monogamy, is calling them a player as a negative. That's why that one comes up for me but I think both work in terms of an archetype that has some negative things and can be used to shame someone.
Emily: On the opposite side of that is the cuckold, especially with men in general, and that this is like, "Okay, this is a really bad thing to be called or that your wife or your girlfriend or whomever is cheating on you and you have been cuckolded." Was that a thing in Shakespeare?
Jase: Yes.
Emily: Is that where it first came about?
Jase: It was around longer than that, but Shakespeare talked about it a lot. Makes lots of jokes. It's very funny.
Dedeker: Pretty funny?
Jase: So funny.
Emily: Very funny.
Dedeker: That is a thing that I see often coming up with often men specifically is that, it's like even if you're consenting this and you want to be non-monogamous and you're happy with this and you even consider yourself to be a feminist or stuff like that, but that I see a lot of men dating women who that it's still this weird kind of struggle because of these really shameful archetypes of the cuckold, of making yourself look as though you are the cuckold.
Emily: I wonder if that's why things come up like one penis policy.
Jase: Absolutely.
Emily: It's hoping that that doesn't happen and that you don't have to face being thought of in that way or thinking of yourself in that way. Then it's like, "Well, my partner is going to be dating a bunch of women and that's hot, but not men because then I'll be a cuckold."
Dedeker: Yes. With one penis policy there's probably a lot of moving parts involved, generally, at least philosophically and psychologically, but I do think that it definitely falls into the category of the lengths that we will go to to avoid having to feel any kind of shame.
Jase: Right. This episode is not about the roots of all those things, because that's a whole other conversation but the point of this episode is because those exist, because those archetypes or those beliefs or those cultural narratives exist, that that brings up shame if we start to see ourselves looking like those at all, right?
Emily: Yes, absolutely. Then there are the housewives stuck at home. That can bring up a lot of shame.
Jase: While their partner's out having sex with people.
Dedeker: Yes.
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Definitely.
Dedeker: That's one that's come up with my clients a lot. Again, same circumstances. Your brain can be like, "Yes, I'm on board with this and this is fine and I totally agree to this. This is something I want to do," but we still have this image, usually directed at women, not always at women, of being the idiot stuck at home totally clueless while your partner is out having a grand old time, having a bunch of sex with other people. It's like that's a shameful archetype.
Jase: It's like the cuckold one a little bit.
Dedeker: Exactly.
Jase: the flip of that.
Dedeker: Even slightly in appearance being in that position can sometimes bring up shame that you weren't even expecting.
Jase: Yes.
Emily: Totally. Then also being the other woman. That can be a really shameful archetype.
Dedeker: The homewrecker?
Emily: Yes. Oh, boy.
Jase: Or just always being treated as less significant, because, "Oh, you're just the side piece or the whatever." Again, with these archetypes and these models we see all the time, it's like, "Oh yes, it must be that because that's a thing I've heard of," and this thing that you're trying to tell yourself that you're doing or that you're trying to tell other people you're doing, it's like, "I've never heard of that but I know this other thing that seems similar so that must be it," and that has all that shame attached.
Emily: Absolutely. With these shameful archetypes that people might think of, and especially when you're starting out as a non-monogamous person, you can get a lot of flack and a lot of shame directly being thrown at you from your parents, from your family, co-workers or friends, other partners, assholes on the internet, a bunch of people. I know personally, one of my dearest, dearest friends and oldest friends, right when Jase and I were transitioning into becoming non-monogamous, she basically told-- No, she did say, "Well, Jase is not allowed to go to my wedding anymore," and we had a big, big falling out that we've only really repaired in the last couple of years. That lasted a very, very long time, just simply because of my choices in who I wanted to date and the amount of people that I wanted to date.
Jase: Even on a scale of-- For myself with some of my good friends, I didn't have that extreme of a negative reaction from them, but still, some kind of dismissive and negative things like that for a few years at least and it wasn't-- Similarly later, luckily, got to a point where they started to get it just by seeing me do it long enough and some conversations we had in the meantime. Then I also think culturally, maybe there's a little more awareness and acceptance of it now, but then later having that conversation of like, "Hey, so remember when you were first opening up and I said some things like this. I'm sorry about that. That was shitty."
Dedeker: Oh, that's nice.
Emily: That's good.
Jase: Yes. I would count that as the best-case scenario. I guess the best case is they're like, "Hey, me too. Great. Welcome to the club."
Dedeker: I don't know about the best case. The best case is just they're like, "Good job. I affirm you. Well done."
Jase: Still I thought that was pretty good.
Emily: For sure. Dedeker have you had anything like this from various people in your life? I'm sure you have.
Dedeker: Geez, we really got to go down that pathway, huh? Yes. For me, it's mostly been-- I don't know. So many things come rushing up when you ask about that. Of course, family having really a wide variety of reactions from being just absolutely shocked and flabbergasted and upset to just be really confused. Almost I think the thing that gets me especially with my family is that it's like the family also treats it like they're not sure if it's shameful inherently or not. Then the families not sure, do I ask about it? Do I say something and then--
Emily: Do I shame her?
Dedeker: Do I shame or do I not? Is she ashamed? Should I do it? Should I avoid it because she's ashamed? That's also a part of it too that become this shame feedback loop that happens sometimes.
Emily: Interesting.
Jase: I think it's funny though how, looking back now, it doesn't seem as bad but at the time, particularly starting out when you don't have the experience of doing it a lot and being used to those reactions.
Dedeker: The confidence.
Emily: The conviction.
Jase: Conviction or confidence or just evidence to back up your confidence. Because a lot of us will then put on a lot of false confidence to make up for the fact that we don't actually have any of our own proof behind it or evidence to back it up. It's just like, "I believe in this thing." You have to do that to a certain extent to make it through.
Emily: Fake it till you make it. We’ve talked about that a lot.
Jase: It's interesting now, and I guess I'm saying this to be a little bit of a comfort if someone's hearing this section and being like, "Gosh, it's horrible and this is a disaster. I don't think I can do this," is that it does get better.
Emily: Totally.
Dedeker: Another particular way that shame can come up in non-traditional relationships is in the ways that we just shame the people that we love sometimes. We covered this in our part one, just about the ways that shame can show up just in our relationships and how we can shame our partners by dismissing their feelings or discounting their perspective or throwing toxic criticism their way or neglect or things like that.
The same thing plays out in non-traditional relationships as well. The things that I see most often and that I've also participated in most often, often revolves around differences. We talked about that in part one, that shame often comes up in response to stark differences that we noticed between ourselves and another person. Things like, if you're in a relationship with someone and your approaches to dating other people is very different.
A really common one is, well, I want long-term relationships and you just want one night stands and hookups. That could be a point of shame. Either I can be like, "Oh gosh, maybe I shouldn't be wanting this emotional connection. Maybe I shouldn't be longing for that. Maybe I need to be more like you," or it can manifest as, "I'm going to shame you because like how dare you be so shallow or so superficial in your relationships? Clearly, I'm the more enlightened one and you're the one who needs to get with the program."
Similarly, differences in how you approach sex, as well. I can feel like, "Oh, sex just really isn't that important to me, but you're the one who's a horndog over here." Again, I can even shame myself for that and be like, "Oh gosh, I need to get with a program. I need to spruce up my sex drive or bump up my sex drive in some ways spruce it up."
Emily: Spruce it up. Just spread sear in there, a little dusting.
Dedeker: Or I can shame you for just thinking with your genitals and being sex-obsessed. You need to, I don't know, become more enlightened in that way.
Jase: Or both of those can go the opposite way as well of like, "I just want group sex, which is a normal thing for humans and you want to love someone else." Why would you want that? Why am I not enough for you? I'm going to shame you for it or feel ashamed myself that I'm not comfortable with it or that I don't want to do that. Then same with the sex thing. It's like, "Well, I'm going to shame you. You must be sex-negative and that's why you don't want to do this." Either one can go either way.
Emily: I got to say, even for monogamous people out there, this is a thing that one needs to figure out within their relationship as well because if monogamy means something very different than your partner's type of monogamy, then that's going to rear its ugly head probably at some point in your relationship where those are at odds and one might be shamed or not.
Dedeker: Well, I think these do fall under the category of what the government's called those perpetual problems of either this is a problem that is going to be a deal-breaker and we need to cut ties or change the relationship drastically in some way, or it's the kind of thing where we need to learn to accept, I'm different and you're different on this and we can learn to just accept being different and just find a way to make it work.
Another way that this comes up is sometimes you can see in couples that there can be an unintentionally competitive nature to dating outside the relationship, as in, I'm having trouble finding partners and you're not having any trouble finding partners, you have a lot of partners, you're going a lot of dates. Clearly, I'm doing something wrong. You're doing something right or I'm losing and you're winning and that's a shameful--
Emily: I'm less sexy, less desirable than you are.
Dedeker: Yes. That can be shameful as well. Then, of course, on the flip side, then the partner who's having more "success" with finding partners, they can then also feel shamed and guilty for feeling like they're abandoning their partner where they're getting to have all this fun and their partner's not.
Jase: Yes, absolutely. I think that then segues nicely into the last one that is, shame tied to how you're doing at it and then also how you identify with your different roles. In that case, it could be this narrative of like, "I'm doing this new thing non-monogamy and I'm failing at it," or like, "Of course, here I go. I'm failing again at another type of thing," or, "I thought this was going to solve my problems and I'm failing at it or I'm not perfect because I'm feeling jealousy or because I'm feeling competitive." It's like there can be layers and layers of this shaming on top of it. It's like, "Oh, I feel shame for this thing. Now, I feel shame that I experienced that emotion about that thing," and it just can build on itself like that, or this can also come up I find just when you're starting to move into polyamorous communities or queer communities or anything like that of this, "Well, I'm not clear enough or I'm not kinky enough to fit in or I'm not--"
Emily: I'm not dating enough people to be considered polyamorous.
Jase: Gosh, that one comes up a lot of that feeling like, "Well, I want to be polyamorous but I guess I can't be," and so feeling some failure, shame about that. Or could be feeling depending on what your community around you is like. Maybe I'm too kinky. I'm too sexy, not just for my partner but for the community.
Dedeker: Too sexy for my hair, too sexy for this polyamory potluck we have.
Jase: Right--
Emily: All these polyamorous cocktails that are happening right now.
Jase: Too sex-focused, that's what I was trying to say.
Jase: Or things I definitely experienced this from men that I've talked to both in terms of things like play parties or sex parties or in polyamory is this like, "Well, I can't get it up. Therefore, I'm failing my partner or there's something wrong with me or maybe this isn't the right thing for me," or putting a lot of judgments on something that actually has a whole host of other causes. We've talked about that in some previous episodes.
There's a whole lot of ways that you can feel like I'm somehow not living up to a certain expectation outside of the big mainstream culture ones but then even within this smaller culture, feeling like you're failing at those.
Emily: It's unfortunate. All right. Well, let's talk about some healthy and unhealthy shame which the idea of healthy shame initially I was just, "Wait, what? This is a thing." I guess it can be. It's super unrealistic out there to just think that there's going to be a total obliteration of all shame from our lives. It's just probably not going to happen. Even the person who's the most enlightened human on the planet is going to have shame occur for them at times.
Also, we should think about this from a cultural standpoint that cultures use shame in some form for socializing. We talked about this a little bit on the previous episode, that it comes up some when our parents shame us and our kids feel shame because they want to receive love again from their parents. I know that this happened to me a lot when I was growing up. It's really evolutionarily ingrained within us. Brene Brown, talking about her again, she refers to healthy shame as guilt. This is really interesting.
Jase: I've heard this before in other places too, that guilt versus shame.
Emily: Exactly. There's guilt versus shame and then others refer to it as healthy shame versus unhealthy shame. Healthy shame or guilt, this encourages us to take a pause for re-assessment of the situation and/or behavior and then that allows us to move towards re-engaging socially, either with one person or I think on a greater scale, we're seeing this a lot right now that people maybe have time to think about something and perhaps make a change within their behavior and then readjust back into society, back into being okay again.
Dedeker: I like calling it healthy shame versus unhealthy shame as opposed to-
Emily: As opposed to guilt.
Dedeker: -shame versus guilt. I like the distinction, I don't mind it, but I just think that from a linguistic standpoint, we throw out shame and guilt as interchangeable all the time in everyday speech. If I tell you I feel guilty or I feel ashamed, it's not immediately apparent is this toxic, unhealthy shame, or is it healthy necessarily for me? We don't really know until later on. That's why I like using that particular distinction.
For those of you listening, especially if you're following Brene Brown stuff and things like that, that that's- just be aware that that's a common distinction that people make kind of based on her stuff mostly, I think of this kind of shame versus guilt as far as using words.
Jase: It reminds me a little bit of the jealousy versus envy debates that happened in non-monogamy circles were some people--
Emily: Well, you like to-- I'm using the differences I thought, the whereabouts specifically.
Jase: Where I end up coming down on that is that in certain contexts that can be nice to have two different words, especially if you're talking about the two things very close to each other. In that case, jealousy and envy aren't just one's good and one's bad, it's like, no, they're just kind of- can be used to describe different things. However, I feel like in reality, like Dedeker was mentioning, you can't just say, "Oh yes, well, this means this and this means this," because when you say it in any normal conversation with any person without clarifying that right before talking about it, they mean the same thing and can be used interchangeably. That distinction can be useful in certain situations but overall, it's not like by using the right one suddenly everyone understands you in a way they didn't before.
Dedeker: Some of what can distinguish healthy shame from toxic shame is the ways that we react to it. If in toxic shame we do things like we talked about in part one, which is sinking into attacking ourselves or into attacking other people or into numbing or denying or withdrawing in some kind of way. Healthy shame reactions includes things like the ability to have self-compassion or the ability to be vulnerable with someone. That one's huge because I think in moments where we feel ashamed, just taking one of our non-monogamy examples of I'm left at home while you're on a date. Even though I agreed to this, I still feel shame. It's even harder to then be vulnerable about that to your partner of just straight up honest of, " Yes, I'm feeling sad because I'm left at home." That's even harder, but if you're able to tap into that and connect to that ability, be vulnerable, that's an indicator that maybe it's more healthy shame or a healthier response to shame. It includes things like also recognition of our own limitations, feeling humility, being able to say, "Wow. Yes, I tried that thing and it didn't work. Dang, I guess I have some limits sometimes."
Emily: I appreciate that distinction between understanding your own limitations and having humility versus being like, "Wow. I suck. I'm terrible. I'm not attractive." Jase, I'm talking to you.
Emily: Even that tends to happen sometimes which, it also happens with me too but yes, there is a nice distinction there those two things.
Jase: This is super random so bear with me. This reminds me of as a kid watching Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves with Kevin Costner. There's this scene so you meet Friar Tuck and when you meet him, he's drunk and he's being a jerk and is all being pretentious and rude and whatever. Then Robin and his merry men give him a good old fashioned whooping and he ends up falling down on the ground and they yoke him behind that cart and make him walk along. Then in the scene after that, I remember there's one where he's kind of walking along and he says, "Dear Lord, thank you for teaching me humility."
I remember that really struck me as a kid because I guess it was one of the first examples that jumped out to me of someone being intentionally embarrassed for something and reacting to it of, "Yes, I learned something here. I'm glad I learned that thing," as opposed to, "Now this is an enemy for life and I'm going to hate them," because he ends up being on their side. I thought that was- it's just when you were talking about that, I thought about Friar Tuck for some reason.
Dedeker: I like that.
Jase: It's a good example.
Emily: That's good
Dedeker: I like that, it's a good scene. Other cues of healthy shame involved feeling motivation to make amends or repair. This is kind of the shame that comes when you realize, "Oh my goodness, I have hurt somebody," or, "I have messed up in some way and I feel motivated to try to fix it." This can get murky because I do think sometimes we can just be motivated purely by, "I don't want to feel bad about this," as opposed to, "I want to help this person heal or help them repair or make amends in that way." That can get a little bit murky but I do think that having the motivation instead of kind of pulling away and hiding, I actually want to come out and help and apologize or try to fix this in some way is more of a healthy shame response.
Also includes things like seeing the big picture, being able to have a better sense of scale, I suppose, of kind of where your transgressions fit in in the big picture. Having a sense of-- I don't really know a better way to describe it. I don't know if I'm making sense to the two of you right now, but it's like healthy shame response involves being able to just have a realistic sense of what's happened, I suppose.
Emily: I think I had a sort of moment with my partner where I was upset about him not doing the dishes or whatever. We've talked about this and- but the way in which I told him that was pretty upsetting to him because he felt as though that was the way in which his parents used to shame him for doing dishes and stuff like that. I kind of had a bigger, broader sense of okay, I know that my individual telling him like, "Hey, I need help here," is good for me, but I need to learn how to speak to him better than I did. That's the bigger overarching thing is that I learned this thing about him in that moment, and that I felt a little bit of shame about it because I was like, fuck, I could have said this better and I could have been nicer and that sucks. That ultimately contributed to me understanding a little bit more about him, I think.
Dedeker: I think that makes sense. It's kind of being able to see the big picture of not just your own feelings, but the other person's feelings and the background and history here and how it all works together.
Emily: Exactly.
Jase: Now, to take this and compare it back to what we were just talking about with some of the shame people can feel when they're starting out in non-monogamy or doing anything new or being in a new situation or a new community that these examples which you can see here, the healthy shame can involve seeing the big picture and maybe identifying the sources for it. I almost would see not as healthy shame itself, but a way to cope with it in a healthy way, which we're going to get into more in the second half of this episode.
Something worth pointing out is that I think that the ones that you mentioned, Dedeker, about either recognizing your own limitation, learning humility, or being motivated to make amends or repair, those are the ones that from the stuff we talked about last week about the evolutionary basis, that's what it's for. It's so that we feel this discomfort because we did something wrong and so we want to seek to make it right.
That doesn't quite apply with what we're talking about, about just feeling shame for who you are or something like that. That's kind of an example where just to be clear, I feel like we kind of jumped from one topic to the other so I just wanted to bring that up of that those are sort of fame over identity is kind of an example of something that I would say. I can't think of a healthy version of that, I can't think of a healthy instance of that, whereas shame over having done something wrong or missed something or misunderstood something and caused some hurt because of it or just embarrassed yourself because you didn't read the room or whatever it is on a scale from large to small. The point of it is that it's supposed to motivate you to try to make things better somehow.
Emily: Yes, saying something that was unacceptable to some people and then learning from that mistake, which I think is happening a lot currently in our society. These are like good things to be potentially shamed about and then learn from.
Jase: In the second half of our episode, we're going to talk about some techniques for counter shaming. When we're feeling this in ourselves, what can we do to encounter it healthfully? Counter it, and counter it, and counter it in a healthy way. Before we do that, we're going to take a quick break to talk about how you can support this show and to keep this content going, and growing, and making sure that this podcast is available for everyone for free.
Dedeker: All right. Let's talk about counterspells of counter shaming and the encounters against in the shaming encounter.
Emily: Wow, a close encounter of the shame kind.
Dedeker: Of the shameful kinds, yes. We do love counterspells on the show though, in general.
Emily: Definitely.
Dedeker: First things first is that just recognizing that a shame response is coming up in you, I find is often key in releasing its hold on you. I think it's really important to take stock of the common shame responses we talked about earlier. Think about which ones tend to be your go-to. The things we talked about in part one are things we tend to attack ourselves with criticism or intense perfectionism, or we tend to attack other people by pinning the shame on them or the blame on them or the critique on them, or you can respond by completely withdrawing, and just wanting to hide, and just wanting to crawl under a table into a little hole. Or we can respond with denial, or numbing, or self-medicating and stuff like that. This is really an opportunity. Once you've listened to this episode of just be a magical scientist it just take stock of what are the moment that shame comes up for you in your day to day life. I think you'll be surprised how often it is.
Emily: Once you do that and check out your own personal shame and how much it comes up, then it's time to do some counterspells, some counter shaming phrases. We're going to talk about a couple of phrases here that maybe you'll say to yourself that you can try out. It's good for you to tailor these to your particular situation or your shame points, make it personal for yourself.
Dedeker: Let me clarify also that these are best deployed when you can acknowledge that this is toxic shame coming up as opposed to healthy shame. If you did something wrong, we don't want you to just be like, "Oh, it's okay Yes, "I'm awesome, actually." Hey, listen to that. If you recognize that maybe yes, someone is shaming you over your identity or something that happened to you or you're shaming yourself over something that this is probably the key moment to deploy counter shaming measures.
Emily: Absolutely. All right. Here's one. I did the best that I could at the time knowing what I did then. That's a good one. Especially when we're looking back on our younger selves and maybe having shameful moments about that like, "Wow, I was not as smart as I am now or is knowledgeable about X, Y, Z thing now." That's okay. It's not my fault, but that happened to me. How about that one?
Dedeker: I think that shame often goes hand in hand with survivors of trauma quite often, where I don't think there's necessarily a lot of trauma survivors out there who directly go to like, "I caused this to happen to me," but it's like your brain can come up with so many things of the ways like, "I did not make the right choice," or, "I did not get out of there in time," or, "I trusted this person when I shouldn't have." We already come from a very victim-blaming culture as it is, so it can be very easy to internalize that shame as well. Having a counter phrase like that like reminding yourself like, "No, it's not my fault that this happened to me," it can be helpful or something similar to that.
Emily: Absolutely. How about, "It's totally natural and understandable to feel this way." If you have feelings of anger or you're upset about something that is being done to you, that is not okay, it's okay for you to be upset and to feel those feelings, and have them fully, and to remind yourself about.
Jase: Yes. I think that's why we took the time to talk about a lot of examples of how this can show up in relationships in non-monogamy and about identities to just hopefully help notice that of, "Yes, this is normal. This is natural. A lot of people feel this way and it doesn't mean that something's wrong with me."
Emily: Yes. Any identity that you are. How about, "I learned a really important lesson from that."
Jase: Yes, that's the--
Dedeker: Instead of total shame and like, "I suck, I'm awful," "You know what, this was a teachable moment."
Jase: That's the fire talk example.
Emily: Exactly. "I'm doing the best that I can to live my ethic or my truth, my best self, my best life, et cetera."
Dedeker: I think this is one that I try to arm clients with sometimes because it's like in that instance, let's say, when you're at home and your partner is off on a date and maybe you are totally okay with it, you're not feeling a lot of jealousy, but there's still this weird shame coming up, that sometimes it is good to remind yourself like, "You know what, I'm rejecting these shameful archetypes that culture has given me and I am making the choices for me to live what I think is the right life for me." Affirming phrases like that, that affirm the fact that like, "No, I'm making the choice that works for me and I'm not submitting to being shamed by other people."
Jase: Yes, that's great.
Emily: How about, "I'm not alone in this struggle"? That's great. It's really necessary. You're not, there's so many who share in your struggle, whatever that may be because we all have them. This is a really good thing to think about that you wrote here Dedeker which is that sometimes it's helpful to think of what you might say to a friend or to a child in order to counteract this shame that happens because we tend to be a lot more forgiving and a lot kinder to those around us as opposed to ourselves internally. It's good to step outside of yourself in that moment and think about what you might say to a friend. Give them a benefit of the doubt, give yourself the benefit of the doubt.
Dedeker: I know some people who will go more “woo-woo” with this and go toward like, "What would you say to your inner child?" Like your inner five-year-old or whatever. So nice people visualize that, but also just thinking about like, "What would you say to your child who is in a similar circumstance?" Maybe they can't be in an identical circumstance, but if they're just feeling shame about, "Yes, I'm left at home and my friends are off playing." What would you say to them to comfort them and encourage them? What would you say to your partner who's feeling this way or to a close friend, but that can help grease the wheels as a word to make a little bit easier to think about stuff that you might want to say to yourself?
Jase: If you want some more ideas about ways to exercise self-compassion, if you go to Episode 274, we talk a lot more about just self-compassion in general. That's definitely something that can help in these cases once you've recognized that it's shame feelings that's coming up. Along with that, like we said at the beginning, the point is not to say, "No, I'll never mind, shame, I'm fine. Everything's fine." It's to take stock of what's going on and ask yourself, "Are there some things that I could be doing to make things right? Are there things that I'm willing to do to make things right? What are those?"
Part of that is also asking, "Is there maybe nothing that I can do to fix the thing that's already happened, but what can I be doing to make this not happen again in the future, or to make things better in the future, or to be more compassionate or more aware in the future?" You're kind of seeing which of those are true and which ones can you do.
Dedeker: I think that's super relevant when it comes to any kind of activism or social justice work. I think really easy low hanging fruit is to talk about things like white guilt or white shame, which I think often white guilt as we see it is like white people recognizing like, "Oh, wow, things are bad, things have been bad for a long time, and I'm just waking up to it."
We can go into that unhealthy shame response of either just attacking yourself like, "Oh my god, I'm so bad. I'm a part of this oppressive group of people and I'm just like so terrible, or attacking other people, or that withdrawal or the denying," all the bad responses that I think we see.
Emily: Then ultimately, not doing anything to change.
Dedeker: Then ultimately, not doing anything. I think that's why guilt gets tossed up as like, "This is not useful. Your white tears are not useful to me."
Emily: Totally.
Dedeker: Versus being able to both carry some self-compassion as well as like Jase was saying, taking stock of like, "Okay, well, what are the things that I can do that I am willing to do to help make things right?" Now, this last one is a big one. Basically, it's a practice in giving the shame back.
Jase: Now, when you say that, the image that comes to my mind is just shaming everyone else so that you don't have to feel shame, but we just talked about being bad. What is this?
Emily: I have the image of like a shame ball and you're serving it back like a volleyball.
Dedeker: Yes, like punts. Is that what you do?
Jase: No.
Emily: I don't know.
Jase: I don't think punting is a thing in volleyball.
Emily: I don't know what it is the thing and but yes.
Dedeker: No, it's not about if someone shames you, you're just like, "Well, no, no, no, no. I'm going to shame you right back." It's not that. This is a little bit more of a meditative exercise, a visualization exercise. I know a lot of therapists who do this work. It can be really helpful to ask yourself if you're feeling some kind of unhealthy shame coming up in you. It's really helpful to ask, "Where did this shame come from and who gave this to me?" Some variation on that.
I know for me, whenever I ask myself that question, it's very evocative of often I can just bring the exact memory to mind of the first time I felt that I was shamed for this thing that I want to do, or being this particular way, or carrying this particular identity. There's so many things. I think, for me, especially with sex, where I've realized all this shame that I carry about particular sexual practices never came from me. They 100% came from all these other people.
Sometimes that can just be a real brain buster in and of itself of realizing that you've received the shame from someone or from something. It can be helpful to do a deep meditative visualization of handing the shame back to that person, to that place, to that thing, not even necessarily in an aggressive way or in a violent way, but just like, "Hey, this isn't mine. It's actually yours. How about you take it and you carry it and deal with it?"
Emily: That's really cool.
Dedeker: Again, not like that's going to be necessarily a super-duper magic spell that's going to make it all go away. I do find that it can be helpful to help alleviate some of that heaviness.
Emily: Well, even going there in your mind and understanding where these things originated from, that's really huge, because I don't think that we think about that very often. We just think about the moment in time where we feel shame which is right then or continuous pattern. That's very interesting.
Jase: That's great. I want to give that a try. I feel like the one I've been more familiar with is the one of talking to your inner child, like you mentioned earlier. I guess similarly going back to like when did this shame start and talking to the you at that point. I like this idea of giving it back to. That's interesting. Like finding the source rather than just talking to yourself, your younger self.
That's relevant to something that I wanted to mention here on this topic too of-- I guess what I find with any uncomfortable thing. We made the analogy in the last episode of shame being to our social world, what pain is to our physical world. It's this quick indication of you need to do something different to stop this pain from happening. With shame, sometimes like we're saying, sometimes there's not something that you can do to fix the thing that's already happened. You can end up in this situation where, even if you're aware that it's shame, and you've thought about what could I do to make this better, and it's, "Well, I can't do anything to fix what already happened without actually making it worse and hurting people more."
This is something that comes up in the 12-step programs and stuff like that is during this step of making amends, you don't want to cause more harm while doing that. Sometimes even right after the fact going and apologizing for something could open that up and make that fresh for that other person, especially if it's a situation where they were like, "Don't ever talk to me again," because of this thing for you to then break that to go and apologize to them, that's a tricky situation.
In real life, you do end up in situations where you just have to live with it. I think that's where these exercises of talking to either your inner child or finding ways to hand that shame back, not to the person who you've wronged, but to whoever later on equated that with you being a bad person not just doing something wrong. It reminds me again all sorts of stream of consciousness on this one.
It reminds me when I was younger and my half brother was really young, maybe two or three, something like that. There was something that he wanted to do but he kept messing with my stuff. Finally, I was like, "Kaylee, you can do this but only if you stop being bad." My stepmom was like, "Hey, don't say that to him. Don't ever say that he's being bad, but just that he's doing something that's bad." For her, that distinction was important. I was like, "Yes, that's the part we all miss about each other and about ourselves when we think about doing something bad makes you a bad person."
Emily: This reminds me of the book that I just finished. You want to talk about race and talking about how the Walt Whitman quote Dedeker that we contain multitudes and just said that so many of us we all are going to do bad things in our life, but we also will hopefully do things that make up for that maybe in ways and maybe they can't always totally make up for something. We are both, we have things that we have done that have been bad, and we have things that we've done that have been great. That is the case for all of us.
To know that when we think about shame, I think is very important because there can be these moments that live with us forever perhaps that we are feeling shame about but know that we also have these other sides of us that do great things. That's good to recognize both in ourselves and in others.
Dedeker: I think there's no certain amount of shame that, again, like we said, pretty much every culture on the planet uses shame to socialize in some way because it is effective. The shame that we carry for doing something bad in the past can be the thing that prevents us from doing it again. That teaches that lesson 100%. Again, that's why we have to reiterate that this is not about just never feel shame about anything completely obliterate it from your life.
Emily: It's probably healthy to do so. Let's talk about healthy shaming. None of what we're talking about today means that you should never send up for yourself and your relationships, or that you should never disagree with your partner over differences that the two of you have, or that you shouldn't say anything or do anything that might make your partner feel uncomfortable or ashamed because that will happen, that will come up.
We can't as people be totally free of shame and it's unlikely that we'll be able to go through our relationships while maintaining that our partner never feels any type of shame in their lives and in this relationship. It's important to make sure that we're mostly seeing healthy shame responses in a relationship rather than toxic, overbearing, upsetting, angry, shame responses or toxic shaming of one another.
Dedeker: Basically, what I don't want to have happen is I anticipate people being like, like if your partner calls you out on something and you feel ashamed about it, that I don't want the knee jerk reaction be like, "You're shaming me. Stop that. You're not allowed to criticize me," or, "You're not allowed to ever say what you want or disagree with me or stuff like that because that makes me feel ashamed." "Don't weaponize this shit," unofficial motto of the Multiamory Podcast.
It gets a little bit subtle and a little bit nuanced, a little bit tricky, and I'm going to propose a test to both of you. Let's make it into a game show. Is it healthy shaming or is it toxic shaming? I'm your host, Dedeker Winston. Welcome. Come on now. Emily and Jase too this episode of healthy shaming versus toxic shaming.
Jase: I'm so glad to be here. Shout out to my mom. I don't know what people say when they get up on game shows.
Dedeker: Okay. I'm going to tell you a little story, almost based on a real-life experience of mine. I'm going to use me and Jase as the players in this story.
Emily: Almost based on a real-life experience. Okay.
Dedeker: It's not. I promise you this is not-- I've really done this already. Geez. I'm going to tell the story. I promise it's not actually based on a real experience I've had with Jase but in another relationship. I'm just going to--
Emily: Use the name Jase, because everybody knows who that person is.
Dedeker: Geez. Can we make this any more confusing? I wonder.
Jase: I'm confused. Am I on the game show or am I in the game?
Emily: You can say it to me. You're both. You're somehow miraculously in the game show and the game.
Dedeker: Okay. Nevermind. Screw up the game show. Poof, the game show is gone. I'm just going to tell the story.
Emily: Please tell it.
Dedeker: Let's say. All right. Jase and I parted ways. Jase's headed off to a date and I had other plans that night. I just going to stay at home that night. Now, Jase comes home from his date, let's say three hours later, and I'm visibly upset. I say to Jase like, "When you left for your date, you took our only house key with us, and I've been locked out of the house this whole time. I've been here for three hours. I tried calling you and I tried texting you and you didn't see my messages and you didn't check your phone. I've been stuck outside the house and I finally had to break into the house waiting for you to get back."
Emily: Dang, how did you break in? That's badass
Dedeker: That's not important.
Jase: This is not a real story.
Emily: It is a real story regarding you.
Jase: You're right.
Dedeker: Jase, how are you feeling?
Jase: Super guilty?
Dedeker: Are you feeling some shame?
Jase: Oh yes, so much shame.
Emily: You're feeling some.
Dedeker: Here's the question. Was that toxic shaming or was that healthy shaming?
Emily: Healthy. You are just stating facts. You were like, you didn't check your phone and I've been sitting outside and that sucks, damn it. I'm going to break in. Well, now we have a broken window and it's all your fault, asshole. No, I'm kidding.
Jase: Well, you're right. I would say healthy because there were no judgments made about like, you're a bad person or the date was bad, but that this happened to me and I was stuck here and so I'm upset about it. I don't know either.
Dedeker: Trick question, actually.
Jase: There's no shaming at all.
Dedeker: No, there's shaming because you're so ashamed. This is a trick question because the answer is that we don't know yet if it's toxic shaming or if it's Healthy shaming because the important part is what happens right after this moment.
Emily: Oh boy, what happened Dedeker? What happened?
Dedeker: Well, because is it I then spend the rest of the evening giving Jase a silent treatment and grumping at him or is it we sit down just like, "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to." I'm like, "Yes, I know. You didn't mean to. I know." It was just annoying and I was upset but let's find a way. Let's make a second house key for some reason. We don't have one.
Emily: You’ve got one copy. How dare you?
Dedeker: We've stayed in some places together where they only give us one house key.
Jase: That’s true; Airbnb sometimes will do that.
Dedeker: Or do we sit down and work it out and then reconnect? We're like, "Okay. Let's go cuddle on the couch and watch a movie or something like that for the rest of the evening." Ultimately, healthy shaming emphasizes repairing the bridge and the connection between the two of us. To give a big call back to the beginning of part one where we talked about that psychologists defined shame as the response to when the interpersonal bridge is broken, that healthy shaming can happen, but it's so important that that bridge is restored.
I think this is really, really apparent with parenting specifically, because of course, it's like intentionally or not, your kids are going to feel shame in some way, because of the fact that you need to discipline and socialize and tell them what's wrong and what's right and know you can't run naked in the street and stuff like that. They're going to feel shame. If the connection is never restored, if the attachment is never really restored, that can really devolve into a more toxic shame response. Does that make sense?
Jase: Yes.
Emily: Yes, but I didn't appreciate your trick question.
Emily: You should feel shame about it. No, I'm kidding.
Dedeker: I do feel a little shame that I was a little bit sneaky with you making this fake game show and everything just to lure you into my trap.
Jase: I know and then pull the game show out from under us, right at the last moment.
Emily: There was a lot of things to be shameful over Dedeker.
Dedeker: Okay. What I want to leave y'all with is I'm going to read this quote by Brett Lyons who is one of the therapists who runs the Center for Healing Shame in Berkeley. He said, "How can you tell whether your attempt to discipline or get what you want is toxic or healthy? When we're engaged in toxic shaming, we tend to be indifferent to or annoyed with the reaction it produces. There's a lack of concern for the child or adult being shamed. We repeat the shaming words often like a broken record, and we don't make an effort to repair the broken connection. Healthy shaming is occasional, carefully done and any broken connection is quickly restored."
That's why I don't want people to feel like you can never disagree or you can never have complaints about a partner's behavior or stuff like that. It's just the important part is that it's like at the end of the day, we do still care about each other's feelings and we're still working on repairing the connection, even when there's been a disconnect.
Emily: It's not like an us versus each other thing. It's like, "Okay. The two of us are going to combat this problem together." Maybe you feel shame in the moment, but then the two of you come back together. It's like after play. What is it? Aftercare?
Dedeker: Aftercare.
Emily: Aftercare.
Jase: When I think about a lot of really key pivotal conversations that Dedeker and I have had in our relationship, there's definitely a moment of someone brings up something uncomfortable, the other person, maybe both people feel some shame about it. Then we were able to fix it and learned a ton from that and we're able to change some significant things through that. It could be anything from how we handle chores to how we talk to each other or how we are in public or whatever it is that there is that moment of going through shame to get to connection. I hadn't quite thought of that in that way. It makes a lot of sense when you think of it this way of it was about repairing, making a change and then repairing the connection, as opposed to just being indifferent or just annoyed at it and just repeating over and over again. That's really cool. I like that differentiation.
Emily: Very much.
Dedeker: I think what we see online with public shaming online, I think this is why there's so much controversy around the--
Emily: Cancel culture.
Dedeker: Is it not--I don't know is the fact that it's like, "Yes. There's some instances where someone should be shamed and should feel shame," and so often it plays out as a toxic shame where it's like we're totally indifferent to the impact of how this person or the reaction. There's a lack of concern for their well-being really and it's just about the shame.
Emily: Again, a very easy to do when you're behind a screen of a computer or something. Not to say that there are people out there that maybe should be canceled but it is a broader question of what kind of shame would we want versus what kind of shame are we getting out there in all of our relationships?
Dedeker: I think a lot of criticism that gets leveled at online communities is the fact that we just really haven't figured out. We got the shame part figured out, yes. We got that on lock, but we haven't figured out the like, how do we then heal and bring someone back into community? Both the person who was affected and the person who did something bad. We haven't figured out how do we then restore the bridge like our--
Emily: Andy-- Damn it. Izenson.
Dedeker: Andy Izenson.
Emily: I was like, "Irenson? No, Andy Izenson." That episode.
Dedeker: We all just know how to burn the bridges and that's about it. Anyway, again, if people are interested in learning more about this, I highly recommend that they check out the Center for Healing Shame. Their website is healingshame.com, pretty easy. They mostly do workshops and training for people who are therapists or counselors or coaches. However, they do offer a specific workshop for healing shame and relationships that is open to couples as well. In my experience, they're fairly non-monogamy and polyamory-friendly as well. Go check it out.
Jase: Great. For our patreons, we're going to be doing a little bonus episode in a couple days for this. If you want access to that, you can join us on Patreon. For that, we're going to be talking about a sort of interesting study that tried to create a computer simulation of shame and guilt responses. We're going to just nerd out on that for a little bit in the bonus episode.
Emily: There was actually a fake game show.
Dedeker: Jeez, I'm seeing some shaming.
Jase: Were we a part of this study?
Emily: I'm just razzin’ you.
Jase: Anyway, we'd love for you to join us for that.