The Shame Box strikes again
So this week one of my people and I were talking about how to improve their relationship with their child and the shifts they’re trying to make to incorporate more of the positive parenting strategies we’ve been discussing. It’s been hard. The reality is it doesn’t come naturally and isn’t what most of us experienced. My person came from the “because I’m the parent, and I said so” mentality mixed with everything is a teachable moment, something often received as criticism or not listening. My person has also struggled with the idea of validating their kid’s feelings as they share the common misconception that in validating a child’s feelings, means there is no accountability only their feelings.
This post isn’t about parenting though, so let me get to the point.
As they were discussing a recent interaction with their kiddo, I moved into sharing the Infamous Shame Box. -By the way, I’m working on version 4.0 (hopefully to be posted soon) that includes four new additions, one just identified by another one of my people last week.-
As we were going through it, my person was quick to see themselves and others in the responses (noticing some generational trends as well). I shared potential ways to respond and boundaries to set to Shame Box responses from others and challenged them to notice when they are falling into one of them, and to reflect on what they may be trying to not feel.
He responded “okay, that is helpful for how to handle with others, but if I’m not supposed to respond from these places, what do I say instead?”.
Until today, I don’t know that I have explicitly addressed that side of the Shame Box and am so thankful that we then delved into a deeper discussion on this.
It’s great to know what to say to others when they’re falling into Shame Box responses, and great to recognize that we are, but what is a healthier response that we replace Shame Box responses with ourselves?
As we continued discussing, I shared that a big part of the healthy response is about genuinely hearing the other person and acknowledging the impact that we had on them as well as taking responsibility.
Acknowledge/validate
To help make this tangible, we’re going to work from an example. So, let’s say your kiddo (or someone else in your world) says “When you yelled at me that really hurt my feelings.”
While we may be tempted to fall into Shame Box responses like semantics (“I didn’t yell at you”), blaming (“Well if you would have listened to me and did what I said, I wouldn’t have yelled”), all=nothing (“Yep, that’s right, I’m the worst parent ever. I screw everything up”), or deflection (“What about when you yelled at me last week, was that fine?”), let’s try acknowledgement first.
“I hear that it hurt your feelings when I yelled.”
The other person feels heard and validated which is great. Perhaps we can even go a step further and take some responsibility as we probably wouldn’t appreciate someone else yelling at us either, it isn’t the preferred response.
“I hear that it hurt your feelings when I yelled. I wouldn’t be okay if you yelled at me either.”
Let’s be honest though, it can feel really impossible to just acknowledge the feelings the other person had and leave it there because our response didn’t happen in a vacuum. In fact, it can feel dismissive of our own experience and feel like we’re taking all of the responsibility. We didn’t yell because we thought it would be fun, they probably had a part in things that led us to that response.
For my person, this response alone also didn’t honor their desire to teach their kiddo how to interact in healthy ways, to take personal responsibility, and to understand that their actions impact others.
So we kept digging in, acknowledgement is important but it isn’t the only piece of the puzzle. We have our own experience and we want our kids (and others) to recognize the impact of their behaviors on others as well. Relationships are bidirectional.
“But…”
We started discussing how we can honor that we were impacted as well or explain why we responded that way did. My person proudly shared how much better they have gotten at “and” in place of “but” (see that post here) and so they recognized that saying something like “It really hurt you when I yelled and it wasn’t a response I would have been okay with from you, but you weren’t listening and I was really frustrated”, would honor their perspective, however, it also negates the acknowledgement entirely. It sounds a lot also like blame and justification.
It comes across as “well if you wouldn’t have…then I wouldn’t have responded how I did, so really it’s your fault”. If you find yourself in these situations feeling that you are justified in your actions/reactions because of what the other person said or did, I would challenge you. While people, of course, have influence on us -for example if our kiddo was being responsive and kind and communicative, we likely wouldn’t yell out of nowhere- no one ever makes us do anything, they don’t have control over how we feel and respond (Control vs. Influence if you’d like to dig deeper).
Aside from the fact that people don’t have control over us and we’re still responsible for ourselves, that belief, that we’re justified and don’t need to own the things we’ve done that caused harm to others, is not helpful to our relationships. It doesn’t make them stronger and probably isn’t something we accept from others when it’s someone doing it to us.
We can’t be the only ones justified to respond the way we do and if we wouldn’t accept it, we probably shouldn’t do it. And if you’re justified, then maybe they were to for the response that led to your response. If I say “well I only yelled because you weren’t listening”, then you could respond “well I wasn’t responding because you kept interrupting me “ and then I could respond “well I was interrupting you because you wouldn’t stop talking” and you could say “well I kept talking because you weren’t listening to what I was saying” and, and, and… we will always feel justified by the step before, and nothing will get resolved or repaired.
“And…”
Back to my person, they knew “but” wasn’t the answer so they considered the response with “and” instead, as they had been practicing, “It really hurt you when I yelled, it wasn’t a response I would have been okay with and you weren’t listening and I was really frustrated.”
Both things may exist in this statement, and the “and” helps them to both be held simultaneously. However, how much will the other person feel like we’re owning our impact if we end with a redirection to our experience? This allows our hard work at acknowledging and validating to fade into the background a bit, because now we’re talking about us. Also, in this context it still feels a lot like blaming the other person and justifying our own actions.
As a caveat, do you KNOW they weren’t listening or are you assuming an absolute truth that is actually based in perception? I won’t go into this too much here other than to ask you to consider the difference between “you weren’t listening” and “it didn’t seem/feel like you were listening” or “I wasn’t feeling heard”. In the first, we’re deciding what their intention was and making it truth rather than addressing our experience of their behavior and our perception, and starting with “you” is almost certain to inspire defensiveness. True, they may not have been listening but it is also possible that they didn’t hear you, they were processing internally still, they thought that if they responded in that moment, it would make things worse, or they misunderstood what we were saying, etc…so what looked like willful ignoring may have been something else. It’s not our place to ascribe truth to perception.
Okay, okay, so acknowledge, but don’t let them off the hook, hold accountability, but don’t justify, don’t turn perspective into truth, don’t use “but”, but “and” in this context can feel like we’re focusing on our own experience and the acknowledgement loses focusOkay, okay, so acknowledge, but don’t let them off the hook, hold accountability, but don’t justify, don’t turn perspective into truth, don’t use “but”, but “and” in this context can feel like we’re focusing on our own experience and the acknowledgement loses focus. Okay, okay, so acknowledge, but don’t let them off the hook, hold accountability, but don’t justify, don’t turn perspective into truth, don’t use “but”, but “and” in this context can feel like we’re focusing on our own experience and the acknowledgement loses focus. So what do we do??.
Putting it all together
Taking all of this into consideration, my person and I came up with the formula. Explanation “and” then acknowledgement.
We start with the explanation so we don’t take away from the acknowledgement, while also allowing us space to acknowledge our own experience and what contributed to where things were, as well as hold some accountability for the other person, without justifying, because they didn’t make us respond the way we did. Remember that your explanation is also your perception, we can’t ascribe intent to the other person, only share how we received it.
“It didn’t feel like you were listening, and I was feeling really frustrated“
Next we use an “and” so both things can exist. Then acknowledge what the other person said and is feeling, validating their feelings and taking responsibility.
“and it hurt your feelings that I yelled. It wasn’t a response I would have been okay with.”
Notice that this opens up for the other person to feel heard and hopefully in a less defensive stance in which they can then address other aspects of the situation as well and their role.
“It really didn’t feel good and I can get that it was really frustrating for you to feel like I was ignoring you and not listening. I thought I understood what you were saying but I guess I didn’t.
Let’s see this with one more example.
Your friend called you to vent about a fight they had with their mom. You’re in the middle of juggling a million things so you talk to them but are very distracted. I mean they get that you are trying to get your kids ready for bed and finish up laundry and you’re working on training your puppy, right? The next day your friend says “I’m really upset with you, it’s like you didn’t even care what I had to say yesterday. I really needed your support.” It’s tempting to tell them all the reasons why it’s unfair of them to expect that you just drop everything, and they’re being really selfish, and it’s not like they haven’t done the same thing to you. You want to defend yourself and protect from the shame of having caused unintentional hurt to someone you care about.
Instead let’s try explanation “and” then acknowledgement (with responsibility).
“I was super busy last night. I had a million things I was doing at once, AND I hear that you were really needing support and it left you feeling unimportant to me. I didn’t realize that you were needing me to slow down with you and it hurt to not feel prioritized.”
We won’t get it right every time and the more we can resist the urge to protect against our shame, and hear the other person, the stronger our relationships can be.