Curt Thompson: Vulnerability Reframed: Healing Shame & Promoting Human Flourishing

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hi III can't say that we were talking to our table really about this I can't say enough about how significant it has been that there has been so much intentionality built into every aspect of what we've experienced so far everything down to the fact that we're sitting at round tables where whether you know it or not your brains are already in a position in which they're being set up for vulnerability that would be very different if you were sitting in line rows looking at the backs of people's heads so there are certain things about what your conference creators are already doing that in the very physicality of this space is welcoming and being with the action of the God who was here long before we showed up this morning and so I'm but that takes a lot of work will it be fair to say like that takes a lot of energy to think about all these details and so in the very work of putting on this conference we are doing the work of the kingdom of God and that's something I'm just very grateful for because following Jesus is really hard to do it's really really hard to do and I'm grateful to be in a room where there are people who would affirm that because if we're working hard to follow Jesus the thing that we need more than anything is to know that we're not by ourselves in that process the other thing I would say is that I bring you greetings from Washington DC where we're from Arlington Virginia specifically where we live and and I am a psychiatrist which means that given that I work in Washington I'll never be out of a job it's really nice to know that and you know every election cycle everybody's anxious before the election and half of them are depressed after the election I can't lose it's just always money to be made there and so but with that you know what that also says is that if I'm walking with and talking with people in the middle of their lives it's it's also my life that's in the middle of that and I'm pretty imperfect at the work that I do as I tell people I'm a professional center I'm not just a sinner I'm a perfect because I figure if you've been doing something for a really long time and you're really good at it you should be you should be able to call yourself a professional at that I've been doing this since I was born and I practice it every day so I this is who you're getting here and we want to talk about four different things in the time that we have we want to talk about the nature of shame and vulnerability we want to talk about those two things we also want to talk about how do we actually appropriate vulnerability it's a third thing what like we're gonna be vulnerable how do we actually do that in the real world and then the last thing that we want to talk about is what does it mean for us in the face of the way the world is what does it mean for us to become creative vocational outposts of goodness and beauty what does it mean for us to follow Jesus into the space of vulnerability that we may become creative outposts of goodness and beauty vocationally so here would be one place to start let's just start we're gonna we're gonna start with shame but we're quick ly going to come back to its predecessor I mean is anybody here we all will anybody here like oh just take a show of hands anybody here we all kind of had had an experience in this past week maybe even the past 15 minutes where you felt some sense of shame never raise your hands everybody needs to raise your hands because right and don't be ashamed to do that right all right so okay all right so here's the next question who here would like to come up and join me and share in what that moment would be right so nobody's raising their hands right because we we know that this is just the nature of how this very thing where we all kind of get it and we can give lots of different words to this thing called shame we can call it embarrassment we can call humiliation all those kinds of things from a neurobiological perspective I want to give you a way to think about it but before we do that we want to we want to preface that with this little tidbit of development and that tidbit is this we like to say that every baby every baby and we all here in the room were once that every baby comes into the world looking for someone looking for her everybody comes into the world looking for someone looking for him and it never stops and this is crucially important because the first two years of an infant's life is committed to the vocation of creating joyful human attachment I come into the world and I see someone looking at me and they are thrilled that I'm in the room like if you bring an infant into a room and like everybody like all the whole mood changes right I wish it were still true for me this is just it's not it's not that way but but but you get it this is the sense that babies come into the world and they're predisposed then to have provided that there's no significant neuropsychiatric impairment they are predisposed to go then exploring and looking and every time they go explore and look they come back to their parents and say is this okay to do and the parents say yes they go off and explore again they're first exploring their feet because they don't know what their feet are and that's their hands and it's their cribben and so forth and so on it is this inbuilt neurobiological sense of adventure of exploration that is the beginning of creativity this is the beginning it's built into your brain from before the foundation of time now at some point in this baby's wanderings they start to run toward their 18 months of age they start to run toward the begonias you know what begonias are their lovely flowers if you eat them as an 18 month old they will kill you right you probably don't know that a little-known fact that we left from those you know the faith and work conference don't eat the begonias and at that point the parent says no at some point with all of this creative energy all this stuff that we want to do someone says no to this liken this to the break on a car engine that is moving at full accelerated speed so if we imagine a car that has a standard transmission anybody here drive a standard transmission car stick shift right so you know that there is an accelerator and then there's a brake and there's the clutch what happens with little ones and then with teenagers and then with thirty year olds at different levels of development is when someone says no with a certain degree of harshness with a certain degree of dismissal with a certain degree of simply ignoring you things begin to happen in the brain and the way it works it goes something like this we each have in our brain a thing called the sympathetic Drive system it's our fight or flight system but it's also a system that is helpful for us whenever we are engaged with things and it's always active like right now if we're paying attention if we're engaged if you think of the speaker like has anything interesting to say you're sympathetic drive system is activated the parasympathetic system is the part of the brain that assists the central nervous system to slow down and it's a brake on the system they get to activate it anytime a parent says no but what happens to a standard transmission car when a brake is applied or when the accelerator is released and no clutch is applied what happen the engine stops and the engine doesn't stop quietly right if you were learning to drive a car for the first time the engine and like in the middle of the intersection and it dies on you like this is not a pleasant place to be right the engine jerkily comes to a stop this is what happens in the brain when in the presence of an acceleration the presence of I want to do something I want to learn something I want to be something I have new ideas and things that I want to do something or someone applies the brake and says no and it's when they apply the brake with no clutch when there's no soft landing of this know when there's no sense of no just from a distance don't eat the begonias do as I say by Fiat right to a 15 month old they're not going to listen to that and there's going to be a traumatic event that happens actually literally in the neural networks of the brain in which we feel this shearing effect of what happens when someone is saying no to us without the use of the clutch does that make sense well here's the thing we get this when it comes to things like saying no to the child running for the begonias but do we get it when we're sitting in the boardroom and we won't offer our idea because we don't want the sheering effective no to come at us how many of us have long forgotten let alone chosen not to enter into certain ideas of creativity in the places where we work because we have practiced protecting against someone saying no without the application of the clutch does that make sense you see this is always taking place with us so that it is not just about what happens in newborns and in toddlers it happens in third grade when now we start to make children be anxious because they're worried that they're not going to get to the next grade level because at some point if I don't score well enough on my next third grade test I'm not going to get into Yale so this is from a neurobiological perspective what happens to us with shame and shame has all these other than ramifications it tends to be disintegrating if you've ever been ashamed recently how easy is it for you especially if it's in a moment of deep embarrassment how easy is it for you to think how easy it for is it for you to move how easy is it for you to shift out of that feeling shame tends to be what we call in the business very dis integrating it disconnects the way we think from the way we feel from the way we actually move physically makes it very difficult for us to then move in an integrated unified fashion not only is it disintegrating it's isolating I isolate not just parts of my mind from other parts of my mind the things that I sense image feel think and do from each other I isolate myself from you I choose not to ask the question I choose not to enter into the relationship I literally physically turn away from you and I didn't practice learning how to do that I learn practice how to protect against that ever happening by making sure that I don't ever take steps of vulnerability in that direction now here's the thing we can we can talk about these kinds of things a lot in terms of just how shame operates especially this last piece which is that one of the hallmarks of shame is the presence of condemnation it's the presence of accusation it's the presence of shaming language shaming nonverbal cues and so forth and in fact some of us would think that well I'm ashamed because this person said I was I had like I was well let's see what are smart or storyteller last night like I'm just no good at whatever it is are no good at but after a while we don't even need language to understand shame well what it takes is the glance all it takes is ever heard that sigh and you know that like it's being directed in your attention you know to your direction even from across the room here's the thing all this stuff that we talked about as far as shame and neurobiology is concerned it's all fine but there's one other particular thing that we do as human beings that really sets the tone for this and now this does anybody here heard of Brene brown or anybody here brand yeah her works you know people ask me because she's done work on a nun shame born Billie and everybody asked me what do you think about Brene brown work and I said I think two things number one I said I think we could not be more fortunate to live in a time when someone who is as bright as warm as caring as funny as well-educated is doing work for us in this room that's the one thing the second thing that strikes me is this is that when you look at the response to her work which has been overwhelming you would think that we as a culture have never heard of shame before in our lives you'd think that like we hadn't remembered that 25 years ago a guy with him a John Bradshaw wrote a book called healing the shame that binds you if not most of people in this room would have no idea what 25 you know what you won't remember that right but 25 years ago he wrote there sold millions of copies he got him a PBS special lots of time and energy and attention was paid to shame and now we need somebody else to remind us of this again and 25 years from now we'll need somebody else to do the same thing and I want to suggest that the reason that this is important is because the question that is then raised has to do not so much with this neurobiological or sociological function about how like I feel bad or how we feel bad about each other what's really in play right now is around the question of this in what story do you believe you're living in what story do you believe you're living eventually we as human beings all eventually emerge into telling stories and you're telling stories all the time right here at the table you're telling stories you're telling big stories like we believe in God you're telling little stories like I should have gone to the bathroom we're constantly telling stories and I would have to say that you know most the time I like to believe that I am living in this story that is the biblical narrative but I have to say that there will be plenty of times especially in the last even day like like look like I'm worried that like my talk is not going to be as good as Bill Millikan's talk I'm worried that it's not going to be as funny it's not gonna be as interesting is talking to you as well it certainly won't be as like he's old but I mean like its but you know what I mean I like I want to be Tim Keller right you get you were where I want like with hair I mean I want III want to be and I'm worried we got so shame is already talking in my story and if that's the case then where is the biblical narrative in that moment in what story do we believe that we're living so if we look at the biblical narrative we would suggest that shame is not just an artifact if you look at the research on shame shame has just talked about like it's a virus that happens to be in the universe it just happens to be this thing that happens to be there the biblical narrative I would suggest suggests otherwise it suggests the chain is actually the primary vector that evil uses to destroy the entire creation it is that emotional element of everything that we call sin I would suggest that when we read the biblical narrative and look at Genesis chapter 3 that the experience of shame actually shows up before anybody eats any fruit it is that which evil wields all day every day and most of where it is active is not in these large moments of traumatic event most of these moments happen dozens and dozens of times all day every day in small statements that I say to myself like I should have done this I should have done that I wasn't good enough at this I wasn't good enough at that and like I don't need to tell you like the list goes on and we are so busy doing this we don't even know that we're doing it we even repeat these things to ourselves non-verbally right 60 to 90 percent of all human communication is given and received non-verbally if that's the case I don't even need language to live shame into my practice life imagine the degree to which this is having an impact on our vocational creativity from a biblical perspective we would say then that shame is important because evil is really serious about not just making us feel bad evil really is serious about dismantling the entire created endeavor that God is about and if we don't believe that story we will not take shame seriously and you will not recognize when you leave these doors and you feel the pressure of how hard it is to do the work that we are being called and encouraged to do we will wonder like why am i I'm just not working hard enough at this right I want to be a good Christian but I just not working hard at being or sitting I was like this is what evil wants it like evil hates that this meeting is happening but I you know I'm a modernist we're smart we're savvy were educated we don't really believe that evil does that kind of thing I want to invite you to consider that when you lock when you walk out of here you're gonna have a bull's-eye on your chest will we take that seriously so then what does it mean if this is if this is what evil is trying to do what does it mean for us to be vulnerable so let's just say that from the very beginning God has an idea about vulnerability but God has an idea about vulnerability that begins with joy right he says let us just let you know the right there was nothing and then God said let there be light never is still nothing you could just see it a lot better right so there's all the oh there's a lettuce make like little B light that to be water let the B land let there be the New York Mets let there not be the New York Yankees because that's of the devil there's all these things right and every time he does it there's this joyful this is joy that's going on and then we get to Genesis 1:26 and we're all like we know this theology let us make mankind in our image but what's striking about this is that even this conversation is an invitation of vulnerability because here's God having a conversation he's being reflective about this let us wait let us make let us make mankind in our image he doesn't the scripture doesn't say and God said there was mankind and you can imagine the Holy Trinity sitting around considering this let us make mankind in our image you can enjoy Jesus as part of this he's like oh I see where this is going you know I'm not really sure I like this idea right there there is a sense in which God already gets what it means to be vulnerable and then you get to the end of Genesis 2 and he's made all this wonderful stuff and then there is this phrase right in it it tells us and the man and the woman were naked and they were unashamed now I'm wondering why is it that the scripture says they were naked and unashamed why doesn't the scriptures say they were naked and happy right because if I'm Adam and she's naked I'm happy not true my wife is here so I can get away with that so right so there is this sense in which one of the things that we see like MIT doesn't say they were naked and unafraid they were naked oh no they were naked and unashamed because it would seem that the writer is drawing our attention to what's coming next and the role that evil wants to play with this shame that is ultimately a harbinger of abandonment it's ultimately the the warning sign that says if you don't pay attention to this being left is coming departure is coming I want to suggest this that we were made to most powerfully create when we are vulnerable human beings do at least one thing we create a lot of stuff that's really impressive I don't know that there's anything that is more impressive that gets created when we are having sex and having babies right because one leads to the other and they're both very messy and they both require great vulnerability but what's interesting about this is that the way the brain operates is that when I recognize my need for you in any creative endeavor in any creative endeavor the moment I'm able to say I don't have the answers to this problem the moment I'm able to say I've run out of ideas the moment I need is moment I say I need your help we create space for two or more brains to do that which one brain cannot ever do by itself this means that we were made to create primarily and powerfully out of states of vulnerability but we kind of got this all backwards in our culture we think that we need to have like all the answers if I'm the CEO of a company I can't afford to not have the answers because my board will give me another like I have a different job but if we look at Jesus if we look at the one that we call the Son of God who said hey guys like I need your help like I can't pray this by myself will you please stay awake like if Jesus needs help I need help how does vulnerability work so in in in the book that we have although you know Byron Byron borders just great guy and he's got all these books out there that he does not want to take home with him so you should go buy them all just especially mine and just go just by and in the book one of the things we invite the readers to look at is this passage in Hebrews that gives us a bit of a template for what does it mean for us to appropriate this in the 12th chapter of Hebrews where it reads therefore since we have such a great cloud of witnesses let us throw off all that sin that so easily entangles and distracts us running with perseverance the race that has been set before us fixing our eyes on Jesus the author and finisher of our faith who for the joy set before him endured the cross scorning its shame and who now sits at the right hand of the Father so here's a first question in your not just in your small groups in church but in your vocational domains and we all have vocational domains that are multiple right if if if you're a male you are somebody's son you could be somebody's brother you could somebody's husband father if you're a female you all these different things that we do we are not just things that we do for a living we do things as weak we can be artists or even not doing that as it for a living like we could be like we could be musicians that just sing in the choir you don't get paid for it but we are also parents and we're also friends multiple different domains in those domains who is your great cloud of witnesses if I asked you for three people who would those three people be who if I were to go to them and ask tell me everything there is to know about this person everything I don't want just vital statistics I want every I wanted to know the last time he looked at Bernard Rafi I wonder the last time that she gossiped about the pastor in the church I want to know everything who would they be how well-known are we how able are we to live in to what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 8 where he says there are those who think they know who do not know as they ought for the one who loves God is known by God notice he doesn't say the one who loves God knows God not that knowing God is not important like we love to know things what's so striking is that power actually comes in the presence of being known by others and that requires great vulnerability but not vulnerability just in terms of those people in my church community who are the people with whom I will be vulnerable even in my vocational community great cloud of witnesses and if we're gonna do this if we can name these people I'm gonna net then necessarily then throw off things that distract me we like to say that attention is the ignition key of the brain of the mind nothing happens that does happen without a shift in attention how well are we paying attention to what we're paying attention to if sin is that which distracts me so easily how do I use my great cloud of witnesses to draw my attention to that and run with perseverance one of the things that we say is that if we want to make permanent changes in our brain structure one of the most effective ways to do this is if we practice small things many many many many times and practicing big things for a few times so if you really want to learn things the more you practice in short sections the more effectively you will incorporate this then if you try to take that long section and practice it fewer times that's about perseverance that's about practicing things that's about recognizing that when you leave here to do what you want to do with what's come out of this conference when you leave here it's going to take practice don't worry God's not worried either he's well aware that this could take a long time and he's not worried about it neither should we be run with perseverance and in the course of running with perseverance we do what Jesus did and what did Jesus do I want to suggest that when Jesus came out of his baptism hearing the voice of his God say I'm so glad you're here he went into the desert looking for the devil he didn't go into the desert waiting for the devil to find him he went into the desert to do his own inventory of where will shame show up so one of the things that we invite people to do on a regular basis is to construct a shame inventory you get a three by five card and in the course of your day you just make a little mark about how many times the shame show up sensations images feelings thoughts how often does it show up and the very act of paying attention to it changes the neural network pattern of it being in your life to the degree that we then invite people to pay attention to this question do you really believe that the Trinitarian God is this excited that you're on the earth so how many of you people I wonder this morning when you woke up you saw them you didn't if it's true that the Trinitarian God is on the face of the earth were they not in your bedroom this morning you wake up when the alarm goes on holy cow it's like the Holy Spirit like in my room and there's like gosh we've been waiting for you all night because you're going to this conference today and there's this shrink that's gonna talk and besides him that you've got other great people who are gonna talk but how many of us live aware that the Trinity is that pleased that we are on the earth I would venture to say that they're going to be many moments between now and the end of this day where I will be tempted to live as if the Trinity is not that pleased that I am here but to the degree that I am actively paying attention to that reality paying attention to that element of the biblical narrative and paying attention to it in the context of community one of the things that I begin to do is to with intention see how I become an extension of that community in my vocational calling every place I go everything that I do it creates the opportunity for me to consider the way vulnerability can now allow me to become one of a number of people who are co-creating outposts of goodness and beauty if it were not possible for you to be ashamed in inappropriate ways if it were not possible for you to be afraid of being abandoned how many new ideas would you offer what new risks would you be willing to properly take how would we then be able to live out not just as churches but live out in all of our vocational domains that picture of the body that Paul paints in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 where he describes what it means to live in a group of people in which shame is not going to exist that we don't say to someone else we don't need you nor do I allow myself to say I'm not enough for this group whether it's my ideas my innovations or even my fears what will those things be that we will co-create if shame is not allowed to be a part of the conversation what will it mean for us to be people who are creating outposts of goodness and beauty in long-term permanent ways practicing persevering in community such that we live the kingdom that is coming but that is not yet and that's my invitation thanks be to God
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Channel: Center for Faith & Work
Views: 23,454
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Length: 31min 38sec (1898 seconds)
Published: Wed Feb 03 2016
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