RSA Replay - The Power of Vulnerability

much for coming today my name is Tim lot I'm a writer and columnist and novelist and I want to address you I welcome all of you here to the RSA for today's special understand talk before I begin can I just ask you to switch your mobile phones off please or to silent and if this event is being recorded so if you'd like to share the podcast with friends and colleagues they'll be available for free download from the RSA website in a few days time okay and welcome also to those joining us via live web stream and reminded the hashtag is hashtag RSA Brown if you'd like to get involved in this discussion or on Twitter now it's my great pleasure to introduce today's speaker Brene brown as you all know well Rene has made an incredible impact around the world with her pioneering research on vulnerability courage worthiness and shame she's a research professor at the University of Houston and an author the number of best-selling works on bravery imperfection and openness in 2007 she developed connections which is AI psycho-educational shame resilience curriculum that is being facilitated across the United States by mental health and addiction professionals I first came across Rene through her extraordinary TED talk and I will be surprised a lot of you did the same I think it's now had 10 million hits something like that just an amazing number if it's useful it would have what a couple of hundred when you first put it out there you were hoping for a couple of hundred which i think tells you everything about her ideas and I love the fact that has grown from the grassroots is it worth it so this isn't a hype Brene is massively successful I think isn't there in grow the number one in the New York specialists or husband or or will be but that the fact fact is that grew from the massive upsurge of interest from simply a lecture and I think that's a fantastic story of how interconnectedness can make us all a little bit wiser through access to two mines like grenades so and relays also brilliant communication skills because I think it's very unusual for somebody at this level of academia and research to be able to speak to the subject so well and so Whitley and so warmly and I think that's a huge part of her appeal as well so we're absolutely delighted you've been able to join us today and without any further ado join me in welcoming brené Brown thank you I feel like this is very hallowed ground here so um watch your cussing Burnie watch your guessing um I want to thank the RSA for inviting me to be here because I do think this is a very special place and it's an honor to be here for so many great thinkers have come in shared ideas and I really appreciate Tim and your very generous introduction I'm going to talk about something I'm going to talk about vulnerability today but I'm going to talk about an aspect of it that I have real I have not spent a lot of time talking about but I've spent a lot of time thinking about and researching and I want to start with two questions that I really want you to think about and the two questions are what should I be afraid of today and who's to blame what should I be what should scare me and whose fault is it to me these are the most profoundly dangerous questions that we Center our lives around and what they are indicators to me what they're indicators of is a culture of scarcity a culture of not enough and when you think about think about any milieu in your life think about education what are we supposed to be afraid of and who's to blame politics the economy social issues I guarantee you if you turn on the news or open to paper today the focus would be here's why you should be afraid and here's whose fault it is and it what's interesting to me about that is it's not just at a cultural level or community level that stuff happens in my house every week every week with my husband I talked to him about what we should what should be you know why we should be fearful and whose fault it is mostly it's his but you know if something doesn't go well at my daughter's school then I'm like oh my god this is this is gonna have huge implications for our university and we should be terrified right now that she's not getting cursive I know she's four but this is still relevant and so when those questions become the center of conversation in our communities in our homes in our schools in our offices how many of you have ever worked in an office or the central question is what should I be afraid of today and whose fault is it I mean if you've ever worked you should have your hand up it's indicative of scarcity so let's talk about what scarcity culture is and what it looks like scarcity culture I think is best understood with a simple question of never enough and you can fill in the blanks never good enough safe enough certain enough perfect enough relevant enough and perhaps I think one of the most dangerous and insidious messages today is never extraordinary enough somehow in the world we live in today an ordinary life has become synonymous with a meaningless life and it has huge I mean and I've watched it happen not only as a researcher and the qualitative researcher so I sit across from people and look in their eyes and I have a good sense of what's going on in their lives but as a university professor who's been teaching for the last 17 years it's been very clear to me that extraordinary means relevant you know a couple of years ago this is a terrible example but the truth a couple of years ago it was a huge controversy in the u.s. because Rutgers University paid the highest honorarium had ever paid in the history of the university to Snooki the reality TV star at the Jersey Shore this filters into our DNA and becomes messaging for us and so scarcity is about never and you know and the top one is is the big one for all of us personally never good enough yeah which is shame which we all have on occasion that sense that we're not smart enough good enough perfect and I've loved enough promoted enough we're not enough so what we do in response to scarcity culture I think all of us everyday is this we wake up in the morning and we armor up and we we put it on and we say I'm going to go out in the world I'm basically just going to kick some ass I'm not going to let anyone see Who I am and in doing so I can protect myself against the things that hurt the most judgment criticism fear blame ridicule I'm going to armor up and I'm going to be safe and we rationalize and we convinced ourselves that this armor is really smart and we use a lot of different things to armor to perfectionism intellectualizing I mean truly I have to be honest with you before the TED talk which accidentally went viral and was a total experiment I thought let me be vulnerable while I'm talking about vulnerability to small group how bad could it be if a few hundred people think I'm nuts but before that talk do you know what the name of my lecture that I gave all the time all over the name variables mitigating self conscious effect it never went viral but that was my university issued armor you know if all else fails use words that are really big that you're quasi sure what they mean you know so we use a lot of different things to armor right but if you get really really clear about what we're doing every morning when we wake up and decide to armor it's this simple this is what we're protecting we're protecting being hurt for a very simple reason that no one really wants to talk about which is this love belonging irreducible needs of men women and children in the absence of love and belonging there is always suffering and so what we believe is that we can protect our sense of being lovable and being acceptable and being worth connection with armor here's the very worst news from my research the news that above all other I did not want to hear is simply this and I don't even want to say it to you cuz I think it's mean to say it but it's so true and it's simply our capacity for wholeheartedness can never be greater than our willingness to be brokenhearted which is a terrible thing but a truthful thing that we can only love and be loved as much as we are willing to have our heart broken and so when we move through the world like this and with our partners with our children with our friends in classrooms with the people who work for us with the people we work for there are tremendous casualties you know I shared this this is one of the most interesting things I did a lecture in Miami Florida about a year ago and it was being translated through American Sign Language so there were two people signing as I spoke and they came up to me before the talk and they said are there any words that you're going to use a lot that we may need to know about because anything that's weird or clinical and well vulnerability is a word I'm gonna use a lot and they kind of look teach it I said well we have a sign for vulnerability it's this I see what does that mean and she said it means weak in the knees that's like oh god that's not that's not the sign they kind of talked for a second he said well there's only one other sign for vulnerability and it's kind of weird I said well what is it and she said it's this so that would be the one I'm talking about and so rather than walking through the world like this most of us do this and in fact I think the troublesome about thing about doing this is that it doesn't really safeguard us from pain but it does perform accessing the things that vulnerability take this too vulnerable T is the path to love belonging joy intimacy trust innovation and creativity you know think about this for a second 85% of the men and women we've interviewed 13,000 pieces of data 85% can recall a time in school that was so shaming it forever changed how they thought of themselves as learners 50% of those stories involved art and creativity now today I get asked to go into corporations organizations and the number one problem is there's no innovation we don't understand what's happening without vulnerability there could be no creativity there can be no innovation without failure which is maybe the ultimate experience of vulnerability which can't happen when you're locked down like this there can never be innovation but I would argue one of the greatest casualties of invulnerability is this empathy let me ask a question little audience participation you share something very vulnerable with someone and when you look at them what you know is they deeply understand what you're talking about and they get it and they're really right there with you in it how does that feel amazing thumbs up awesome supportive what else jaqen intimate loving connected bigan reassuring safe relief you share something incredibly vulnerable with someone and they don't get it at all and they're just standing across from you how does that feel shame we've got the choir right here okay shame what else I'm saying lost annoying rejected terror isolating okay so from shame terror isolating disconnection not these are not good experiences and interestingly guess what those experiences drive scarcity and so scarcity seduces us into locking up our hearts and then keeps them locked by making sure that there's very little empathy in the world so let's talk about some of the big blocks to empathy that are born out of a lack of vulnerability I loved this photo because it's armored but it's a close-up of armored sympathy so what is empathy and why is it very different than sympathy how many of you think about empathy and sympathy is very different things a few people empathy fuels connection sympathy drives disconnection I'll tell you why empathy it's a very interesting Teresa Wiseman is a nursing scholar actually from the UK who studied professions very diverse professions where empathy is relevant and came up with four qualities of empathy for things that empathy Oh II had always had in common they were perspective taking the ability to take the perspective of another person or recognize their perspective as their truth staying out of judgment not easy when you enjoy it as much as most of us do recognizing emotion and other people and then communicating that empathy is feeling with people so if Tim called Tim I'm going to use you as an example is that okay Tim called and sad I just finished my rewrites on this article I'm trying to think of something we have in common which is writing I just finished my rewrites on this article and they've sent it back again and I just have this overwhelming feeling that nothing's going to be nothing is going to please these folks so to respond empathically or empathetically you can say it either way I would need to try to understand his perspective stay out of judgment recognize what he's feeling and kind of communicate it back now when you're teaching graduate students who are new to counseling they like to go Oh Tim you must be feeling so sad I feel that with you which is not exactly what in 50 looks like um painfully sometimes maybe but if if I if he said that to me and I went I hate that would you know I've been there I hate that or if I looked at him and sad or talked on the phone even and sad oh god there's nothing worse than just keep on sending it in and send it in in that's sympathy empathy is I'm feeling with you sympathy I'm feeling for you how would it feel Tim if I said oh you poor thing how does that feel for y'all okay so someone just went like this like keep it so sympathy is about feeling for empathy is feeling with and to me I always think of empathy is this kind of sacred space when someone's kind of in a deep hole and they shout out in the bottom and they say I'm stuck it's dark I'm overwhelmed and then we look and we say hey I'm down I know what it's like down here and you're not alone sympathy is dark deep hole whoo it's bad huh huh uh no you want a sandwich if if he is I see yeah it's bad but stuff like that didn't happen to people like me in Texas to someone who said yay other Texans hear Houstonians y'all were my favorite right from the beginning I knew there was something empathically in Texas in the South in general in the US we have the worst saying ever that just smacks and reeks of sympathy which is if Tim called and said I keep sending it in and they keep pushing it back and I looked at you into it bless your heart how did that feel it makes you pretty mad because basically what I'm saying is that sucks but too bad and God is on my side I've decided I can make a million dollars in Texas by simply selling a t-shirt that says if you bless my heart I'll punch your face so empathy is you can't with a locked up heart with invulnerability you cannot be empathic because when you call me empathy is not the default if it he is a choice and it's a vulnerable choice because in order to connect with you I have to connect with something in myself that knows that feeling and when you called man I was just unloading the dishwasher minding my own business in my happy place and now I have to connect with the fact that truthfully I could wallpaper this room with rejection and revision letters and I have to touch base with that place in order to be empathic back so sympathy is one of the things that really gets in the way of empathy and sympathy is also often how we respond when we don't want to be vulnerable to someone else's struggle that makes sense the next one I'm going to get hot talking about it um I just know I'm gonna go into a little shame but then I'll pop right out natural if you're on the first row you're safe um blame how many of you are blamers how many of you when something goes wrong the first thing you want to know is whose fault it is I'm like hi my name is Brunei I am a blamer I need to tell you this quick story so this is a couple years ago when I first realized the magnitude to which I blame I'm in my house I've on white slacks and a pink sweater set and I'm getting ready to go teach and I'm drinking a cup of coffee in my kitchen it's a full cup of coffee I drop it on the tile floor it goes into a million pieces splashes up all over me and the first I mean the FIR to a millisecond after it hit the floor right out of my mouth is this damn you Steve who is my husband because let me tell you how fast this works for me so Steve plays water polo with a group of friends and the night before he went to go play water polo and I said hey make sure you come back at ten cuz you know I can never fall asleep into your home and he got back like at 10:30 chatting it up with his friends and so I went to that a little bit later than I thought ergo my second cup of coffee that I probably would not be having had he come home when we discussed at 10:00 therefore hey let me just ask cuz I'm gonna assume that you're laughing with me not at me how many in how many women in here are thinking that makes absolute sense and how many men in here are thinking oh that's how it works right and so the rest of the story is I'm cleaning up the kitchen Steve calls caller ID and like hey he's like hey what's going on babe yeah what's going on so I'll tell you exactly what's going on I'm cleaning up the coffee that spilled all do like dial tone cuz he knows you're not allowed to laugh you're here in official capacity how many of you go to that place when something bad happens the first thing you want to know is whose fault is it even me even even I'd rather it be my fault then no one's fault because why why if it gives us some semblance of control it gives us some semblance of control but here if you enjoy blaming this is where you should stick your fingers in your ear and do the nuh-nuh-nuh-nothin because I'm getting ready to ruin it for you because here's what we know from the research blame is simply the discharging of discomfort and pain it has an inverse relationship with accountability meaning that people who blame a lot seldom have the tenacity and grit to actually hold people accountable because we expend all of our energy raging for 15 seconds and figuring out who's fault something is accountability by definition is a vulnerable process it means me calling you and saying hey my feelings were really hurt about this no no no no and talking it doesn't it's not blaming blaming is simply a way that we discharge anger which is really hard and blaming is very corrosive in research in relationships and it's one of the reasons we miss our opportunities for empathy because when something happens and we're hearing a story we're not really listening we're in the place where I was making the connections as quickly as we can about whose fault something was the last one is interesting let me ask y'all some questions when you are sharing something I want to do a show of hands and I kind of want you to look around the answers when someone when you're sharing something very vulnerable and raw with someone how many of you like the person you're talking to to look you right in the eye raise your hand how many of you like the person to kind of look away or look down how many of you when you're sharing something really vulnerable would like the person you're talking to to reach out and embrace you how many people would like that person to stay physically away from you while you're talking you're the people I would hang out with okay how many of you when you share something vulnerable with like for the person across from you to say something back right away how many of you prefer that person to stay quiet okay so do you see what happened in here just now empathy is not scripted I can't say okay go forth and be empathic here's the decision tree you know if they say this do this empathy is about being present with someone and if you're present and engaged and you take the armor off you'll know what the person across from you needs but more importantly if you screw it up and you see in the eyes of the person that you're you know who's sharing with you that you screw it up you can go back and say no to them okay wait I'm just a hugger I'm here I'm with you keep telling me I want to know I want to be in what I want to be in this with you the reason why I think that exercise is so helpful is again we all need different things from empathy there are no hard and fast rules about what empathy looks like or sounds like but there is one that I will share with you from the research it is rarely if ever does an empathic response begin with at least I had a yeah and we do it all the time because you know what someone just shared something with us that's incredibly painful and we're trying to silver lining it I don't think that's a verb but I'm using it as one we're trying to put this a little lining around it so I had a miscarriage at least you know you can get pregnant I think my marriage is falling apart at least you have a marriage John's getting kicked out of school at least Sarah isn't a student how does that feel off puts it awful awful awful but one of the things we do sometimes in the face of very difficult conversations is we try to make things better instead of leaning into if I share something with you that's very difficult I'd rather you say I don't even know what to say right now I'm just so glad you told me because the truth is rarely can a response make something better what makes something better is connection and so I want to close with this picture because how many of you when someone shares something with you do you worry about saying the right thing are being helpful for sure I think most of us so I love this photo and the reason I'm sharing it with you is because sometimes the most profound and eloquent examples of empathy happen without any words and sometimes not even with eye contacts to me if I'm sitting next to you and I say wow I feel like everything's just the wheels are falling off right now and things are out of control and someone just puts their hand on top of my hand and squeezes that says with touch I think the two most important words in my work which are me - thank you all very much I really okay oh that was wonderful um thank you Brene and I'm just gonna ask Renee a few questions before I pass it out to the audience to get your questions I was interested on you touching him between the way that men and women seem to express their empathy and their vulnerability differently and I was just wondering I mean I couldn't see the hands going up in the audience when they you gave that example of how they react differently to their blaming for instance now how does that work and have you got some concrete examples to it from your research the gendered pieces is you know a huge question because you can't really talk about gender and vulnerability without talking about shame and so if you back it up to shame what we know is that the biggest shame trigger for men is perceptions of weakness for women it's effortless perfection not only should you do it all and do it for everyone and do it perfectly but you shouldn't let people see you sweat over it and so how how difficult is it to be vulnerable as a man when shame is about being perceived as weak and culturally we mistakenly think vulnerability is weakness so it becomes very difficult to even when we talk about empathy to even reach out and say I'm struggling or this is hurtful to me and for women it's hard to say I'm struggling because the mythology is that we can do it all and we can keep all the balls in the air and do it perfectly and so the one thing I talk about a lot is that I think the place we have to start is understanding that we have to support each other men and women have to really support each other and understand that vulnerability is the path back to each other and the path to intimacy here you show me a woman like let's say we were married and what men tell me all the time is you know women say they want Vanar ability and they say tell me you're afraid and you know show me and show me yourself but the truth is they're disgusted by it so what men do is they get very good at pretending to be vulnerable just vulnerable not to get off the hook but not so vulnerable that they really cause a lot of problems in their relationships so I always say if you show me a woman who can sit with a man who's in deep vulnerability and fear I'll show you a woman who has some awareness about this work and has done it and most importantly who does not derive her power from that man okay so this is our strategy available as it were the more the more independent you are in terms of your psychology the more able you'll be able to provide that empathy as what you're saying yeah yeah yeah and it goes the other way you show me a man who can sit with a woman in struggle and just hear her and as opposed to trying to fix it do you hear the rumbling yeah I'll show you a man who's aware of his work and who doesn't derive his power from being Oz all-knowing and all-powerful and so it really comes down to people always say why do you talk about shame as the key to being vulnerable it's because worthiness a sense of worthiness as a prerequisite for showing up and being seen in our lives how do you show up and be seen when you're terrified of what people will think so you as it were have to stop looking outside of yourself for external validation would you say that and you've got to as you put it on your own story about what's happening in your life and and we lie and have faith trust in your own interpretations as opposed to accepting other people's face value is that correct I just wish I could say it like that uh yeah so let me ask you something I'm you've had this tremendous success over this have you taken external validation from that it's a great question of course I think early on I did but then I ran into the very painful part of when you hit yourself worth to what people are saying externally that when you read really shitty hurtful comments our people are really negative then you've hitched yourself forth to that too and so like I have a very like I have an assistant who goes through all my emails and the rule is send me what's constructive I don't want to sometimes she'll aggregate the positive ones around some feedback but I don't want to know if you think I'm a worthless piece of and I don't want to know if you think I changed your life and changing the world those are not really constructive for me and if you think that I should be looking at this body of literature if you think I could do this better or you think I did something well that's helpful but it's very dangerous when we hit our self-worth to what we accomplished because that can you turn in a split second so I try very much in fact if you opened my wallet right now in the green room you would see a tiny piece of paper and so one of the things I tell people often is you should carry with you on a very small sheet of paper a list of people whose opinions of you matter and it should be a very short list and so there are three names on my list and so that's what and though the people there on my list are people who love me not despite my imperfections and vulnerability but because of them and if everything went away tomorrow they would still be there because they were there before everything happened today so yes and no I'm human but I'm also really practice not to do that I think it's so dangerous and there's no sustainability in it yeah so you think it all went away tomorrow you'd be cooler I think I dressed I think it depends on it depends on why it went away if it went away because something bad happened I think I'd freak out and because people lost interest yeah I think I'd be okay because I feel like I made a contribution and that's a big thing like you know I think all the questions you're asking right now really point to something that's new for me in my life which has been the last year getting super clear about my values and so one of my other things in my purse I'm all it's very important to me you take my money but don't take my mental health it's like a little mantra that I live by that says at the end of the day at the end of the week at the end of my life I want to be sure that I contributed more than I criticized and so I think if it went all went away I think I feel that I can made a contribution and we started a conversation right okay I just asked two more questions because I'm very aware that the audience wants to ask to but simply for people who are not familiar with your work I possibly online or wherever I think it's very important that you explain to people what the difference between shame and guilt is because I think a lot of people have those two concepts mixed up in their mind and and I think it's really key to your work that there is a big gap between those two concepts it's so funny because the people who really like I know like we've talked it you get to work in your bones you live the work but people who really know the work like I talked about a thousand different things but the people who really like have their head and hearts around it always come back to that question like it's such a so I think what happens is when I talk about shame people often say guilt because there's kind of shame guilt humiliation and embarrassment and they're they're all kind of what in research what we would call self conscious effects or emotion and in order to really move through this work and understand that you have to separate them out and the big two that we confuse is shame and guilt so shame is I am bad and guilt is I did something bad so shame is a focus on self guilt is a focus on behavior and it seems like semantics it seems like kind of an academic pet peeve thing but it's really not because outcomes are hugely different so just just so you can try to start to you know make sense of it how many of you in here if you did something that hurt Tim's feelings how many of you in here would be willing to say I'm sorry I made a mistake that's guilt focus on I made a mistake shame I'm sorry I am a mistake huge difference between shame and guilt and so what we know from the research is that shame is highly highly correlated with addiction depression aggression violence suicide bullying and almost more importantly that guilt is inversely correlated with those outcomes meaning the more someone is able to separate themselves from the behaviors the less likely likely it is that they'll end up in that such in those situations or suffering from those struggles and so the implications are huge especially around I think you and I have talked about parenting you know as it turns out there is a tremendous difference between your bad girl and you're a great kid but that was a bad choice and I just I mean I'm just going to cut you short because I would ask one more quick question about shaming girl which slightly puzzles me if you you say that doing something that you don't that you wish you hadn't done is I the difference between I am bad or I did something bad if you do something bad over and over again isn't that then I am bad it isn't that in a way saying that is part of who I am and therefore is it not saying I mean I I've had this discussion many times through my own life saying and I was saying and I just did something bad yeah but you always do that you know and therefore that's who you are ok so I'm suggesting that maybe the gap between shame and guilt isn't quite as clear-cut as you put it so I've thought a lot about that question as it relates to parenting and as it relates to school and behaviors in school at work I'm going to come down on the side that still think there's a huge difference between shame and guilt and here's why when we see people change behaviors make amends when we see positive behavioral change you can almost always track it back to guilt guilt is basically it's uncomfortable but I'm a fan of it because it's cognitive dissonance it's I've done something and I'm holding it up against my values and it doesn't feel right and so that can that's guilt and other researchers use different words for the effects but for most part chain researchers use that is guilt so it makes sense to me shame is shame corrodes the part of us that believes we can change so let's say you're my child and you lied at school and there's a big difference between listen to em in lines not okay and hey Tim you're a liar then the question becomes you lie again and you lie again and at what at what point is it not hey you lied but hey you're a liar from a parenting perspective to me it's the point at which I give up believing you can make different choices okay that carries on throughout life yeah because there's something very self fulfilling about when I'm a cheer or I'm a liar and it's Who I am how do I do something different yeah okay thank you very much that's fantastic and could we have some questions from the audience now um yes sir just wait to the microphone please any yeah I was wondering if you found from your research whether and there are different triggers for shame with gay men and lesbians because obviously spoke about the triggers to dentists being influenced by the expectations that men and women have with each other and is that different in same-sex relationships so it's a great question um I'll break it into two parts relationally and GLBT relationships the relational dynamics are very much the same however when we talk about shame triggers what we're seeing in a lot of the new data is that shame triggers for men straight men not always the same shame for gay men for example in the gay community appearance and body image can be huge issues one that's emerging recently that I'm seeing more and more of in the interviews is aging we have a lot of people tell us in the gay community man you hit 45 you're invisible in this community so I think there are different and but what's also interesting is it's kind of you know a lagging indicator sometimes about what will happen with straight men because for the first time we're seeing more and more straight men talk about appearance and body images shame triggers relationally here's what I would say when I say everything's the same what I mean by that is connection intimacy love and belonging are connect our connection intimacy love and belonging but whenever there is oppression and homophobia and heterosexism or racism or classism there becomes a whole new web of things to manage in relationships which not only caused struggle in those communities but create unearned privilege in majority majority of culture so I think my answer is relationally people connect and love each other the same in terms of shame indicators or triggers those can change in different communities and I think we're learning more and more about that okay thank you yes hold on a second the lady there with a striper Thomas hi there the question I want to ask was you use the word guilt and shame but word the always often comes up as well is remorse and being remorseful what do you think of that word and what does it mean to you it's a great question and what we find in the research is that remorse and regret two different constructs I think are functions of guilt and rarely functions of shame when it's very interesting and Wellesley in Wellesley the University at the stone Center which is a research center within Wellesley did some very interesting research on shame and our responses to shame and what they found is that our responses to shame very much aligned with kind of the old fight flight freeze and so when we're in shame the pain of shame is so debilitating that we normally don't get to regret and remorse we're usually rationalizing our behavior in order to get out from underneath the pain so really when you see someone make a heartfelt apology or make amends in a meaningful way I have never seen in my experience shame be the motivator behind that but when someone really feels remorse and regret that's often a function of really holding up a behavior against a value that we hold important and I can't I think that can move behavior somewhere over there yes the lady with the pink top yeah please always wait for mine thank you very much indeed it's wonderful to have an outing on these subjects you mentioned about emotional resilience or grit in terms of working through stuff when someone has kind of debilitated you and you talk about shame being extremely debilitating what if the working through with that person just you know debilitates you to the point of I mean you know how can you how are you supposed to work through stuff like that I'm not sure it's possible your instinct is to run you know run and hide won't never see them again yeah buzz because it's so destructive well you know the sympathy stuff you're talking about it's just was a very brilliant illustration of the difference so I think your question is is really important and if I understand I want to make sure I understand what you're asking how do we work through shame when it's so debilitating and so painful and we just really want to disappear so prefrontal cortex right where we organize rationalize the executive Center and then the limbic system which is kind of fight or flight survival mode the truth is when something shaming happens we get hijacked by the limbic system you know in a dozen years of research I've never ever seen heard or experienced a single person tell me oh yes and then so-and-so responded this way and I went into deep shame and I said oh I'm a wash and a feeling of smallness and loneliness and that's not what happens the three responses they come came up with Wellesley is we move away we move toward and we move against so imagine shame puts you in a corner right and you feel emotionally cornered some of us put our hands over our face and slide down the wall and just want to disappear that's moving away some of us move toward which means we will people please our way out of that corner and then some of us move against which means we will come out of that corner swinging and you shame to fight shame and so what I would tell you is this every example every interview I've ever done about the question that you asked has told me this from the time something shaming happens to the time that you start figuring out what to do about it there's time like I know if I experience shame I know exactly what I know I'm in it because of the physiology so people with high levels of shame resilience one of the things they're keenly aware of is their physiology so when I'm in shame I'll tell you exactly what happens time slows down I get tunnel vision I get really hot and my armpits tingle if I'm driving down the freeway and the car in front of me slams on its brakes that's exactly what will happen to me as well shame is a trauma response and what I know is that before I can start doing the work I'm going to need 15 minutes alone at least I'm going to cry for sure and then I'm going to cuss like a sailor on leave and so I've had situations where I've walked out of my dean's office I've walked out of faculty meetings many occasions I've walked out of the room with my children so to think that we can experience shame and then somehow get back from the limbic system to back up here where we can do the work and talk about it it doesn't happen the best thing you can do like my mantra is win and shame do not talk text type or email Thank You Polly yeah okay let's go back to the middle now this gentleman over here please hello I have two questions brief questions they're coming on Twitter one from Roman Krishna rich that's how you say it how is digital twittle Twitter culture shaping our capacity to make ourselves vulnerable does it help or hinder and the second one from an RSA colleague laminate Pelle I can't say that either parameter how would you link being vulnerable to becoming a more socially and environmentally responsible human being is there a link okay so let's take Romans question first how does Twitter and social media to make sure I understand how to Twitter and social media increase or decrease our capacity for vulnerability you know this is what I think about social media it's like fire you can use it to warm yourself when you're freezing or you can burn down the barn you know it's all how you use it and so I think there are wonderful occasions where people have used Twitter and Facebook and social media to facilitate connection and there are people who you know here's the big here's the big myth live tweeting your bikini wax is not vulnerability you know sharing your children's most intimate feelings about your impending divorce on Facebook is not vulnerability vulnerability without boundaries is not vulnerability and just because you can't see the people on the other end doesn't mean that your making smart choices and so to be honest with you I I think social media is great for communication but I think connection happens between people in person because if I called Tim if I send out a Facebook the thing that said just got laid off today devastated I'll get 50 comments or responses that say God really pulling for you so sorry they suck hope you find your dreams blah blah blah it's nice but if I call Tim and I say hey Tim it's Brunei I got laid off today I'm devastated embedded in that is vulnerability because embedded in that is a bid for connection with you and that takes far more risk and has far more reward when he said even if he says you know what my kids are in the room right now give me ten minutes stay right by the phone I'm going to call you back we'll work through this we'll talk about this so I think it's how you use it but don't mistake communication for connection the question from Pamela how does vulnerability make us more socially environmentally aware is that right I think there's totally a link because I think that what we need in this world and I sound like a bad American 70 song is love sweet love everyone under 40 is like huh it was a great song and we need fierce love we need like juicy fierce courageous ballsy love in this world for each other for the planet and you can't get to love without vulnerability and so as long as we stay guarded at things like racism and homophobia and classism and you know those things that pin us down and make us feel small we'll still thrive I think you've got time for one more question okay this lady over here Renee hi thanks very much for the opportunity to hear you today it's been wonderful and I run a network for women who are childless by circumstance so they wanted to be mums and it either isn't working out or hasn't worked out and one of the issues they have is when is trying to make a connection seeking empathy for the pain they're in and whenever they speak to someone this happens a lot most of us have had this experience and try to talk to someone about the pain they're in about not being a mum they get closed down with what I call miracle baby stories which are kind of a little bit about all the well at least you can travel and sleep in like that was my life's goal and and what's really difficult in those moments when they get offered the miracle baby stories like don't worry I know this woman she met this guy at the bus stop he was on remand they've now got twins you know uh-huh yeah is is that close that makes the the person who's got the pain feel shame and close down and I'm often asked you know what do I do in that situation how do I open a connection and I wondered how do you open a connection or is it even possible in that situation to start that dialogue because it's about their pain often yeah they don't want to feel it okay so this is a really really important question did everyone hear the question so this was such an important question that when I wrote I thought it was just me my first book on shame the entire chapter is around infertility not being able to have children the whole chapter because when I was going back and looking at the data I was so struck that the women I had interviewed who talked about infertility when they were I was interviewing around shame every one of them was in past tense when I was struggling he had this and I was like god that's so weird because a lot of them were in present tense and I went back and I asked these women like first of all I thought was a coding error on my part so I was panicked as a researcher I was like so I went back with a random sample of these women and said I've noticed all of these are in past tense and what every one of them said to me is I can't speak for the other women you've interviewed but in the midst of my struggle I could have never talked to you about it I could only talk to you about it because I've come to some resolution what I have learned is that it is when we talk about empathy and empathic failure it is one of the top issues around empathic failure so do you have any children no I couldn't have children I can't have children are we been trying for three years then you get the stories about oh you know what just relax all right do you want mine you know are those kind of things which is so painful and so what I think has to happen is in doing this interview I met a woman who ran a fertility center and she said what we ask is we ask all the women that we work with to write a letter that says here's how I feel here's what I need here's what's not helpful and here's what support looks like and my best friend at the time was going in her third year of infertility and it saved our friendship because look I study empathy for a dozen years I didn't know how to respond I didn't know what to do and so what it forces a lot of people to do and it's not just that it's there are other issues that are as difficult but what it forces people to do and it goes back to what you said about owning our story is it forces people to orphan that part of their story when they're talking to people because I don't want to put you in the situation where you don't know what to say and then I'm reminded about how shitty things are so and the problem is you can't we can't orphan our stories because the only way we can change our story and have control over the ending is to own it you know and so to me this is about shame resilience one of the elements of shame resilience is asking for what you need so let's take it out of your realm into any realm it is very common on my short list of people if I call Steve or actually my sister it's very likely that this is what you'll hear hey it's me I'm going to tell you what happened I don't want you to say a freaking word and then I'm going to hang up and don't you dare call me back I'll call you ever and you know they'll say go oh this happened this happened and I and then I did this and then I can't believe I said this dial tone two days later two hours later hey it's me are we going there we're not going there no not yet what's going on have you talked to mom because I asked for what I need and that is inherently vulnerable but I think if you love someone and you've got a struggle that you're not getting response back to then it's incumbent upon you to reach out and say I love you here's what I need from you and here's what it's look like yeah make a really big deal out of my birthday this year right thank you very much Pranay well look we've run out of time so I'm afraid we're going to have to line up the session thanks all again for coming I'm for some great questions there yeah I thought now there's going to be copies of daring greatly outside in the foyer now and Brenner will sign your copy for you it would be really helpful if you could file out the room as swiftly as possible or after we finish because event taking place immediately after so if you'd like to get your book signed join the queue it will form in the foyer and before you do please join me in thanking our you

Channel: RSA

Views: 487,049

Rating: 4.8563466 out of 5

Keywords: Brene Brown, Tim Lott, Vulnerability, Ted, The RSA, RSA

Id: QMzBv35HbLk

Length: 61min 26sec (3686 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 04 2013