The Curiosity Shop with Brené Brown and Adam GrantThe Emotion Few Talk About, But Many Feel
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
50 min read · 9,713 words- 0:00 – 2:10
Introduction
- BBBrené Brown
[upbeat music] [metal clanging] Hi, everyone. Welcome to The Curiosity Shop. I'm Brené Brown.
- AGAdam Grant
And I'm Adam Grant.
- BBBrené Brown
We're glad you're here.
- AGAdam Grant
Absolutely.
- BBBrené Brown
Okay.
- AGAdam Grant
What are we talking about today?
- BBBrené Brown
[laughs] Okay, we're gonna talk... I'm gonna tell you a really quick funny story. We're gonna talk about shame.
- AGAdam Grant
Oh, I've always wanted to talk about shame.
- BBBrené Brown
Have you?
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah. I have a ton of questions for you about it.
- BBBrené Brown
Okay, this is a really funny story. When we were... When I was first doing the shame research, this was probably 20-something years ago, we were running a group in a domestic violence shelter piloting a curriculum. And like the third group we ran, the self-nominated leader came up and said, "I've met with everyone in the group. We have a proposal." And I said, "Oh, you know, okay, great." And it's always good to know who the l- emerging leader is in a group set- situation. And she said, "We don't like the word shame." And I was like, "Oh, that's, that's gonna be tough 'cause it's a shame resilience-"
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- BBBrené Brown
"... group." And she said, "We would like to, moving forward, say shame instead."
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs] What?
- BBBrené Brown
And so for the next... Yes.
- AGAdam Grant
Why?
- BBBrené Brown
For the next nine weeks, when people would be sharing or when I'd be talking about it or the co-facilitator, who's actually the clinician, I was the researcher, um, you know, someone would say, "Listen, I was so... That really put me into some really deep shame." Um, and so... Yes.
- AGAdam Grant
That's hilarious. So you take the shame out of shame by-
- BBBrené Brown
Which is-
- AGAdam Grant
... mispronouncing it.
- BBBrené Brown
Yeah, you know why? Because just the word shame can elicit... It, it's got a contagion to it that's hard for people, so.
- AGAdam Grant
I can absolutely see that.
- BBBrené Brown
Can you see that?
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah, I mean, frankly, I... I mean, did, did you see what happened in the Michigan football program last fall?
- BBBrené Brown
Oh, yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
I... Anybody... I grew up in Michigan. I went to grad school there. A lot of my family went there. Like, I've been a diehard Wolverine fan forever, and it's hard not to escape the feeling of shame there. But we won a national championship, so I'm feeling-
- BBBrené Brown
You did-
- AGAdam Grant
... a little better
- BBBrené Brown
... you did win the natty. Congratulations.
- AGAdam Grant
Thank you.
- 2:10 – 8:52
The One, Two, Threes of Shame
- BBBrené Brown
the mascots.
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- BBBrené Brown
Um, so we're gonna talk about shame.
- AGAdam Grant
All right, I'm ready.
- BBBrené Brown
Okay. So where do you wanna start? You want to start with your basics?
- AGAdam Grant
You're the shame expert. Yeah.
- BBBrené Brown
I, I mean, yeah, so I always start, like, with the one, two, threes. Um, one, we all have it; two, no one wants to talk about it; and three, the less you talk about it, the more you have it.
- AGAdam Grant
Mm.
- BBBrené Brown
So I am thinking about doing, again, this was two decades ago, doing grand rounds, um, and-
- AGAdam Grant
At a hospital
- BBBrené Brown
... at a hospital psy- psychology depart- psychiatric department. And afterwards, the head of the psychhe- psychiatric department came up and said, "This is the first conversation, I've been here for 30 years, that we've ever had on shame, and it's the number one presenting issue we deal with."
- AGAdam Grant
Wow.
- BBBrené Brown
"No one is talking about it." And at this exact same time, I was having my PhD students do a content analysis to see, in all of the primary texts that are adopted across psychology, social work, counseling, how m- how much are we talking about shame? And at that time, which again would've been twen- it would've been 1998, we found one chapter, and it was written by me, in 70 texts.
- AGAdam Grant
Wow.
- BBBrené Brown
Yeah. This is one of those things that we have c- we have become very slow to talk about because of the contagion of the word itself. So when we talk about diagnoses or we talk about issues, we can find some comfort in a us and them, but there is no us and them in shame.
- AGAdam Grant
Mm.
- BBBrené Brown
To be alive, you know it. Everyone's got it. No one wants to talk about it. The less you talk about it, the more you have it. So I think that we were early. And there have been th- there were people, Tangney and Dearing, um, great researchers really doing excellent research and compiling research. There were some folks in addiction who were talking about shame because that's a really complicated relationship, addiction and shame. So the one, two, threes. I think the big thing to know about shame is you can't talk about it until you differentiate it from what we call the other self-conscious affects. So affect, fancy word for emotion. The other emotions that, that make us feel self-conscious that are a reflection on self, so shame, guilt, humiliation, and embarrassment.
- AGAdam Grant
Mm. That tracks.
- BBBrené Brown
That tracks.
- AGAdam Grant
So far so good.
- BBBrené Brown
Yeah. So big difference in the ones we use interchangeably, shame and guilt. Shame, the best way I explain it, shame is I am bad and guilt is I did something bad. Shame is a focus on self. Guilt is a focus on behavior. And so I always like this as because I, I, you know, I came up teaching this in graduate school for social workers. I always like to say you get your, you get your paper back and you got a crappy grade, and the way we measure shame or guilt proneness in a person, um, is really by their self-talk. So you get your paper back and you have a D, which I- is hard to k- conceptualize. [laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- BBBrené Brown
I'm like, I'm not liking, I'm not liking this. You have a D, um, for, "Dude, do better."
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- BBBrené Brown
Um, and your self-talk is, "God, I'm so stupid. I'm so stupid. I'm such an idiot." Shame. You get your paper back, you get a D, your self-talk is, "God, it was really stupid to go out Thursday night and not study for this test."
- AGAdam Grant
Guilt.
- BBBrené Brown
Guilt. Focus on, you know, behavior versus you. And guilt is adaptive. Would you agree? I mean, guilt is holding something you've done up against your own values and experiencing I guess what we would call-... cognitive dissonance that disco- that psychological discomfort that I did something or failed to do something aligned with my values.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah, or that, that hurt someone else.
- BBBrené Brown
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
Or, and I think, you know, it's interesting. I think a lot of people push back on the idea that guilt is useful, because they've been on one too many guilt trips.
- 8:52 – 14:04
The New Research on Humiliation
- BBBrené Brown
so the other two, this is where my work has dramatically changed. So we have new evidence, and everything I said before about humiliation was wrong. It's, it's different now.
- AGAdam Grant
Wow, that's a strong statement.
- BBBrené Brown
Yeah, yeah, it is, and I'll tell you why. Early on and aligned with other researchers looking at humiliation, we believed that the mediating variable between w- what could make somebody feel guilt versus humiliation was simply the variable of deserving. So I'm gonna give you an example that actually happened when we were doing the research, and this was pretty shocking. We were in a classroom, I think it was fourth grade, and the teacher handed out... And they knew why we were there, and so we had consent from parents, consent from the school district. Handed out the papers and had one left, and said, "I've got one paper left, and it doesn't have a name on it. Anyone here wanna guess whose paper this is that doesn't have a name on it?" And kind of people got very quiet, and the students got fearful, and said, "Suzy, did you get back a paper?" "No." "Suzy does not get back a paper, 'cause Suzy doesn't have a name on it. Suzy, I'm gonna put the name on it for you. S-T-U-P-I-D." So I, I want to, I, I want to... I know. I know look on your face. I want to kinda pause this for a second, let us take a breath, and walk us through a couple things here. So we use that story as an example of several things. The first is the difference between shame and humiliation. So if Suzy's self-talk is, "God, I'm so stupid. Why am I so stupid? Why don't I remember my name?" Shame. If Suzy's self-talk, this is how we used to talk about humiliation, was, "She's so mean. She's the worst teacher ever. I did not deserve that," that would be humiliation.
- AGAdam Grant
Right.
- BBBrené Brown
And we believed early on that humiliation was less dangerous than shame, because there was a self-righteousness to it, and you would report.
- AGAdam Grant
Right. I don't own it.
- BBBrené Brown
I don't own it.
- AGAdam Grant
It's their fault, not mine.
- BBBrené Brown
I don't own it.
- AGAdam Grant
Yep.
- BBBrené Brown
Right. I don't own it. Also, as a caregiver or a parent, I'm much more likely to hear about humiliation than shame, because with shame, there's nothing to report. I am stupid. I got called stupid. With humiliation, I'm not stupid. I got called stupid. And so really, and so that deserving piece was a huge part of how we thought about humiliation. But I wanna go back, and I have notes here, 'cause I wanna talk through... And we'll come back to Suzy in that example, 'cause it's harsh. Um, this is what's changed my mind about humiliation. It's a series of studies. Let's, let's start, uh, Susan Harter and colleagues examined the media profiles of 10 prominent school shooters between 1996 and 1999. Harter and her colleagues reported that in every case, the shooters described how they had been ridiculed, taunted, humiliated, and teased by peers. Um, they were spurned by someone in whom they were romantically interested or put down in front of other students by a teacher or administrator. All events leading up to the shootingHad a history of profound humiliation. Not enough to move me yet. Then the report prompted a series of studies by Jeff Ellison and S- Susan Harter that found links for peer rejection, humiliation, depression, and anger with both suicidal and homicidal tendencies. Um, and this is really interesting because we ta- we talked about bullying from the South by Southwest stage, right? Their study suggests that bullying alone does not lead to aggression. Instead, individuals who are bullied become violent specifically when feelings of humiliation accompany the bullying. So all of a sudden, in the research, humiliation is taking on a completely different color. Last, and this is a researcher I've followed for decades, Linda Hartling, she ties together a lot of the research from several areas to propose a model explaining how humiliation can lead to violence. She suggests that humiliation can tr- can trigger a series of reactions, including social pain, decreased self-awareness, increased self-defeating behavior, decreased self-regulation that ultimately lead to violence, and I wanna share this quote from Hartling with you. "Humiliation is not only the most underappreciated force in international relations, it may be the missing link in the search for the root causes of political instability and violent confl- conflict, perhaps the most toxic social dynamic of our age."
- AGAdam Grant
Wow.
- BBBrené Brown
So I think what was news to me when I read these, and I, and I changed course in Atlas of the Heart and kinda said, "Let me, let me introduce the rethink here"
- AGAdam Grant
I'd get behind that.
- BBBrené Brown
You'd get behind that, don't you? Um, is bullying alone doesn't lead to violence, but the combination of bullying and
- 14:04 – 18:30
What Is Humiliation?
- BBBrené Brown
profound humiliation.
- AGAdam Grant
Okay, so talk to me about what humiliation is, because from that description, it sounds to me like just a combination of shame and embarrassment.
- BBBrené Brown
So embarrassment, so that's really interesting, 'cause we're, we're talking about the four conscious, self-conscious affects, shame, guilt, humiliation, embarrassment. Embarrassment, the hallmark of embarrassment is fleeting, often funny with time, but the real hallmark of embarrassment is when it happens to me, I don't feel alone.
- AGAdam Grant
Mm.
- BBBrené Brown
I know I'm not the first person to, you know, mispronounce someone's name or walk out of the bathroom with toilet paper on my shoe. So what I think is the definition of how I would think about humiliation based on these studies is internalized public shaming.
- AGAdam Grant
Yep. Yep.
- BBBrené Brown
So I have... So it's a combination of shame, 'cause I can feel shame alone. You know, I can try on an outfit and look in the mirror and then to have that warm wash come over me and be like, the delta between what I thought I look like and what I think I look like, I actually look like is shaming. Or, you know, or I can, um, you know, for me a, a real example of shame as a public person is when someone says something really hateful and personal about me. I don't feel shame about that. I feel shame when I think about someone I love reading it.
- AGAdam Grant
Oh.
- BBBrené Brown
Do you know what I mean?
- AGAdam Grant
Yep.
- BBBrené Brown
Like, I hate that feeling, and then I feel s- I feel I have that, that whole warm wash of small, wanna disappear, um, am I lovable, that kind of thing, and I've got a lot of tools now to get through that, so I'm not very shame-prone anymore. I mean, Jesus, two decades of research. [laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
That, that-
- BBBrené Brown
That's-
- AGAdam Grant
... should be the ultimate armor, right?
- BBBrené Brown
That's the big door prize. Um-
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- BBBrené Brown
But I think that humiliation has a public belittling piece to it that shame doesn't always have.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah. So that makes me think we're using the term wrong in sports then.
- BBBrené Brown
Same one.
- AGAdam Grant
When we talk about teams being humiliated by other teams, usually that doesn't lead them to feel unworthy or unlovable, right? They, I think oftentimes they realize, "Okay, [laughs] we, we were not up to the standard we wanted to be at," so they were humbled, but they weren't humiliated.
- BBBrené Brown
I think it depends. I... Okay, so this is r- this is so interesting. I think it depends on how the narrative the team tells itself. Certainly, I have been with teams post-trouncing-
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah
- BBBrené Brown
... in locker rooms where the feeling was humiliation, and the coach drove that home.
- AGAdam Grant
Yep.
- BBBrené Brown
They drove, they... The coach drove home, "You are not worthy. You are not worthy of that field. You are not worthy of this jersey. You are not worthy of this franchise." So I, so it leads me to something else, and I, I wanna not forget to go back to the s- Suzy. Shame, the one thing that's really hard about the self-conscious affect, shame, humiliation, embarrassment, um, and guilt, is that they're highly individualized. So I tell this example often. If I forgot your birthday or Allison's birthday, like-
- AGAdam Grant
How dare you?
- BBBrené Brown
How dare... Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah.
- BBBrené Brown
Allison's wife. Today, I would probably have a glimmer of embarrassment or guilt and say, "Hey, happy belated birthday."
- AGAdam Grant
Yep.
- 18:30 – 29:09
Why Don’t People Outgrow Shame?
- AGAdam Grant
with shame-
- BBBrené Brown
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... and what, what do you do for Susie? I- I've often had a hard time relating to people's experiences of shame. I, I've [laughs] lived a lot of guilt and embarrassment in my life, but shame is pretty foreign to me. Uh, I get, I get it when kids feel it, because they don't know any better than to internalize. Like, they haven't... You know, often they haven't developed a sense of self, and so, you know, like, I did something wrong can really quickly bleed into there's something wrong with me. What I've always been puzzled by is why don't people outgrow shame? Like, as an adult, you should know if you're not severely harming other people or doing un- anything unethical, you're probably not a terrible person. Like, w- w- why, why is that so rare for people to, to realize that? [laughs] Is that... It's... I know it sounds like a ridiculous question, but-
- BBBrené Brown
No
- AGAdam Grant
... it's-
- BBBrené Brown
It sounds like-
- AGAdam Grant
It's a genuine one for me.
- BBBrené Brown
No, it sounds like a genuine question, and it sounds like an important question. And, um, and it's really important, 'cause you're not the first or 500th person who's asked me that question, and I think it's really important because the antidote to shame is empathy. And so when you don't understand shame, it can lead you to empathic failure with people who are in it sometimes, not because you lack empathy, but because it's like you're not... You don't really think this makes you a terrible, unlovable person, right?
- AGAdam Grant
That's exactly my response. [laughs]
- BBBrené Brown
Right.
- AGAdam Grant
It's actually worse. Like, well, that's just irrational. Like, this, this specific thing you did-
- BBBrené Brown
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... or the choice you made, like, why, why is that casting a shadow on your whole sense of self and character?
- BBBrené Brown
Yeah. I think that... [sighs] I don't know that I really have a great answer for this. I mean, I think for a lot of us who were raised with a healthy dose of shame, so that being good and being right and being all these things felt conditional for love, I think shame is a very hard thing to overcome. I think the other thing is one of the most common and profound expressions or functions of shame is perfectionism. So sh- perfectionism, like, when perfectionism is driving, shame is riding shotgun, because perfectionism is the belief that if I can look perfect, do it perfect, work perfect, and deliver perfectly, I can avoid or minimize shame, blame, humiliation.
- AGAdam Grant
Right.
- BBBrené Brown
So... And you know, you know how many adults struggle with perfectionism.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah.
- BBBrené Brown
Right. And so I think it comes to the idea that... And I would not say it's just parenting. I would say we're learning more and more that it's hardwiring. I think that's another thing I've radically shifted on.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah.
- BBBrené Brown
That for a long time we would all say, those of us who studied self-conscious affect, parenting is the number one predictor variable of shame. I think it's definitely an, a variable. I think kids can come hardwired for a sensitivity of self-criticism.
- AGAdam Grant
Mm-hmm.
- BBBrené Brown
What do you think?
- AGAdam Grant
I, I mean, this is, this has been probably my biggest revelation from reading developmental psychology and behavioral genetics in general, is that I think overall we overestimate nurture effects and underestimate nature effects.
- BBBrené Brown
100%.
- AGAdam Grant
Which anyone who's had a second child immediately-
- BBBrené Brown
Yeah, I mean-
- AGAdam Grant
... realizes. [laughs] Like, parents of one child are really strong believers in nurture, and then all of a sudden number two arrives, and you did... You think you did the exact same things, and they react really differently, and all of a sudden you realize, uh, there is, uh, there's a lot of pre-wiring that happens here.
- BBBrené Brown
Yeah. And I'm won- You know, it's, it's... [laughs] I think about my own kids, like, what was it like to be raised by a shame researcher?
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- BBBrené Brown
Um, I can tell you that, uh, that Ellen's kindergarten teacher, um, called me one day and said, "Wow, I completely get what you do." And I said, "Why?" And she said, "We had the Glitter Center today, and I looked over at Ellen and I said, 'You are a mess.' And she sat straight up and she said, 'I may be making a mess. I am not a mess.'" Yeah. [laughs] I mean, like-
- 29:09 – 38:05
How to Help People Out of Shame?
- BBBrené Brown
Um, okay.
- AGAdam Grant
All right. So what do we-
- BBBrené Brown
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... do about it?
- BBBrené Brown
Okay.
- AGAdam Grant
I would, I would love to learn how to be more empathetic and help people out of shame as a parent, as, you know, a colleague, but also [laughs] how do you help people deal with it internally too?
- BBBrené Brown
Okay, so shame resilience is really interesting. You remember Petri dishes?
- AGAdam Grant
I do.
- BBBrené Brown
Yeah. So if you put shame in a Petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially into every corner and crevice of your life: silence, secrecy, and judgment. If you douse it with each of those, it will grow into everywh- everywhere.
- AGAdam Grant
Can we call it silence, secrecy, and scorn? I just wanted to alliterate. Move on.
- BBBrené Brown
Oh, yeah. I was like-
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- BBBrené Brown
... "Wait, I'm trying to think, like, do, is that the same?" Judgment is really dangerous for shame.
- AGAdam Grant
Yep.
- BBBrené Brown
Um, but I appreciate the alliteration call-out. Um, okay, if you have shame in a Petri dish, the same amount, and you douse it with empathy, you have created a hostile environment for shame. Shame cannot survive empathy because what empathy does is empathy first and foremost helps us-Believe and see I can be seen and I'm not alone. And shame needs... Shame doesn't do well when you wrap words around it. It doesn't wanna be spoken. It wants to live kind of, you know, inside building, building, metastasizing. So empathy is the antidote. Um, let's start with, I think this is interesting, and I'll put a PDF up on the show notes. Let's talk about how we... The three kinda most common ways we deal with shame when we go into it. Have you ever gone into shame?
- AGAdam Grant
I don't... I honestly don't know if I have.
- BBBrené Brown
It'd be unusual.
- AGAdam Grant
I, I c- I can't think... I, I can think of, uh, feeling intense guilt and embarrassment. I don't think I can come up with an example of a time I felt it, shame.
- BBBrené Brown
I love it. Um-
- AGAdam Grant
Which is why I'm so useless [laughs] when other people are feeling it. I'm like, "Eh."
- BBBrené Brown
No, I-
- AGAdam Grant
It's foreign to me.
- BBBrené Brown
I mean, I don't... There are some affects that I don't have a ton of experience with that I think I can get close enough to and understand, so I don't, I don't think that's... The lift might be better- bigger to understand. So three kind of ways we protect ourselves from shame, and this is... These are called, I love this, strategies of disconnection, and they're from the Stone Center at Wellesley. Again, Linda Hartling's work. One, when we're in shame, we move away. We withdraw, we hide. Two, we move toward. We people please. And three, we move against. We use shame to fight shame.
- AGAdam Grant
Okay. So this is a version of fight, flight, or fawn.
- BBBrené Brown
It is absolutely... It is absolutely tied to our defense mechanisms, 100%. So I'll tell you a very quick story that I've used for, again, forever, just to illustrate it. So very quick story. Um, and I, and I d- I think it's interesting 'cause a lot of my early stories were about navigating being a new mom in academics, where they're like, "That's cute conceptually. Don't look like a mom, smell like a mom, or act like a mom." Right? I mean, we're from the same tower. So I got invited by the Nobel Women's Initiative, all the living Nobel Peace Prize winners, to go to, to be on their board and go to a meeting. Charlie was only six months old. I was really afraid about... I was afraid to go. Um, Ellen, I know this is not a big deal for a lot of people, but she was having her first swim meet, and Steve and I were swimmers.
- AGAdam Grant
Of course that's a big deal.
- BBBrené Brown
That's a big deal for me. I couldn't decide what to do. I talked to Steve, and it was kind of a scary situation because Shirin Ebadi from Iran had just won the Nobel Prize, and there was a lot of threatened violence against the summit. So I was like, "Oh my God. Am I gonna go? Am I gonna miss Charlie? Am I going to miss the swim meet? Am I gonna... Is there gonna be violence that we're gonna have to..." You know, like, what's, what... Like, there was a lot of things. And so Steve was like, "You gotta go." So I went. First day back in Houston, I'm in carpool, and I see this woman walking up to me. And man, this woman is so dangerous. I, I, I... I mean, she's just a, she's a hard person for me in every context. She's the kind of person that after she talks to you, you're like, "I feel slimed or shived," one of the two.
- AGAdam Grant
Wow.
- BBBrené Brown
Yeah. So she walks up, and I roll down my window, and she go- I mean, this much. And I'm like, "Hey." We're in carpool line. She goes, "Where have you been?" And I said, you know, and my, my, my thing that I say to myself, mantra, "Don't shrink, don't puff up. Just be in your sacred ground." So I was like, "Oh, I was out of town for work." And she goes, "Who took care of those babies while you were gone?" And I said, "Their father, Steve." Um, and she said, "Oh my God, it must be so hard to let other people raise your kids when you're out of town working all the time." And so one of the things that's really helpful is people who have the highest levels of shame resilience, they can physically recognize shame because when you're in shame, you are not safe for human consumption. Do not talk, text, type. Do not do anything.
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- 38:05 – 42:55
Reconnecting Your Prefrontal Cortex Post-Shame
- BBBrené Brown
with shame. All right?
- AGAdam Grant
We'll find out.
- BBBrené Brown
One of the things that we've learned is that when you go into shame, you come out of your prefrontal cortex and you get very limbic.
- AGAdam Grant
Right. Yep.
- BBBrené Brown
So coming up with smart, fun things to say-
- AGAdam Grant
Not easy
- BBBrené Brown
... usually happens a day later.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah. You get the George Costanza jerk store moment.
- BBBrené Brown
[laughs] Yes.
- AGAdam Grant
"That's what I should've said."
- BBBrené Brown
That's what I should've said.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah.
- BBBrené Brown
Yeah. And you... That's why I just do... I do- I borrow this from someone that was one of the first early qualitative researchers, research participants. She said one of the things that she developed when she was in shame is to go like this, "Pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain." And she goes, "Am I crazy?" And I said, "No, you're really smart because you're bringing your prefrontal cortex back online."
- AGAdam Grant
That is very smart.
- BBBrené Brown
Do you know what I mean?
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah. Well, okay, so I guess I do have a way of, of doing this, it, mostly to help other people when they encounter it. Um, what I like to encourage people to do is just to, to have a mantra, right? That will be a more effective way to connect to their values. My favorite one is, "I'm not gonna let other people define my worth."
- BBBrené Brown
That's really powerful. God, but it's so freaking hard.
- AGAdam Grant
It's hard to do in the moment, right? [laughs]
- BBBrené Brown
Yeah. I, I don't... I actually think... Would you agree that you'd have to be pretty squarely in this part of your brain to act on that? Not to say it. It, it could be the stepping stone from fight, flight, fawn.
- AGAdam Grant
It might be.
- BBBrené Brown
Or I think fight, flight, freeze, and fawn are all actually options 'cause I think a lot of people in shame just-
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah
- BBBrené Brown
... they just... Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah.
- BBBrené Brown
Um-
- AGAdam Grant
I think that's right.
- BBBrené Brown
So do you think to say the mantra is step one of the neural pathway back to the front?
- AGAdam Grant
It could be.
- BBBrené Brown
Do you know what I'm saying? Like, one of the things we do when we do, when we teach this work and facilitate this work, um, is we tell people this is hard 'cause you're building new neural pathways.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and ideally, right, that, that then leads to a, a bigger internal dialogue or conversation with a friend around, why am I putting weight on what this person thinks? I don't even like this person. [laughs] Like, of all the people that I might hand over the power to define my value, she would not be high on that list.
- 42:55 – 50:10
How Does Shame Relate to Imposter Syndrome?
- AGAdam Grant
Because-
- BBBrené Brown
Uh-huh
- AGAdam Grant
... in a strange way, there's an... It's not an unwanted identity, but it's an unearned identity, or it's an unearned image. So how does shame relate to feeling like an imposter?
- BBBrené Brown
Not good enough. Just not good enough. Not smart enough, not good enough, not MBA enough, not experienced enough, not enough. And so I, when we talk about imposter syndrome, I always go to HBR article Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome, February 2021, uh, Ruchika Tulshyan, Jodi-Ann Burey. Like, this article, I think it was the most downloaded article of 2021 on HBR. This is really important because... Let's talk about this. Let's get into it. I think imposter syndrome is real. I think people can feel like that, for sure, and I think some leaders and cultures go out of their way to make sure people feel like imposters. Then it becomes very dangerous when people internalize that.
- AGAdam Grant
Yes.
- BBBrené Brown
Do you agree?
- AGAdam Grant
Yes. I, I'm so glad you made that distinction because that, I, the, a lot of the discussion I saw about that HBR article, I thought missed something really critical.
- BBBrené Brown
Such as?
- AGAdam Grant
Which is, um, there's an MIT professor, Basima Tewfik, who is one of our-
- BBBrené Brown
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... PhD students, and she's done these amazing studies, it's the most rigorous work on imposter syndrome, period, where she just surveys people on how often they feel those everyday imposter thoughts. It's, I guess they're... Sorry, let me say that a little differently. She surveys people on how often they feel like imposters.
- BBBrené Brown
Okay.
- AGAdam Grant
But it's not a syndrome, right? It's not, "I'm a fraud," it's, "Maybe I'm not as good as other people think I am. Maybe I'm not up to the challenge of this big role or promotion that I've gotten." And she finds that when people have those thoughts more often, they actually end up working more persistently. They end up learning more from other people because, like, this is related to our discussion of metacognition. They know there's a gap between what other people expect of them and where they are currently. They, there's a sort of a, a confidence versus expectation gap, and they wanna, you know, work hard and learn as much as they can to, to close the gap. And it becomes motivating, right? To say, "Okay, I've gotta live up to those expectations." That, I think, is a healthy way of dealing with those feelings. What you're describing is something very different, which is making you feel like you're not good enough, and trying to use that as almost a, a weapon to induce shame and motivate you to become a more indentured servant of the organization.
- BBBrené Brown
Yes. It, it would be really interesting for... I would love to understand, I would love to see data, maybe it already exists, I would love to see research on what are the variables that exist externally and within a person where the gap between confidence and competence leads to positive-
- AGAdam Grant
Yes
- BBBrené Brown
... and when does it get internalized and lead to shame, self-doubt, and underperformance?
- AGAdam Grant
That i- that is the, that's the question. That is the question.
- BBBrené Brown
Yeah. I just know that I can tell you for me, um, early in my academic career I had a lot of imposter syndrome, and it was engineered. I had, I had some of my own, and I was aware of it, but some of it was very intentional to drive kind of fear in... And, and what it was really is to drive deference of tenured faculty.
- AGAdam Grant
Wow. Right, it's gonna put you, we're gonna put you in your place.
- BBBrené Brown
Yes.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah. And I think, you know, it's, it's interesting because when I think about, that you actually just resolved a, a puzzle for me. Or you gave me, you gave me, you gave me a, an idea about how to resolve a puzzle, which is, this, this article comes out and it talks about how, you know, women are constantly told they have imposter syndrome. Whenever I bring up imposter syndrome, people stereotype it as, you know, a, a problem that's more pronounced among women than men. But what I, what I didn't get until just now is, but men don't internalize it the same way. I, I know when I've felt like an imposter. I just look at that and say, "All right," like, "I'm not there yet. [laughs] Let me, let me, let me go and, like, put on a growth mindset and try to figure it out." Whereas a lot of the women that I've worked with will be in the same situation and say, "Well, this must mean that I'm, I'm not capable."
- BBBrené Brown
And what happens when you're in a culture like today, where in the military you've seen Black men and women, brown b- women and men, women discharged from positions of duty when they're excellent military leaders, when you've seen Black women systemically moved out of the workforce. So, so it's not just, "Wow, I'm really insecure, folks," it's also, like, you've got cultural forces-
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah
- BBBrené Brown
... that are beating you down.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah. No wonder you feel like an imposter. You've been told your whole life that you shouldn't be there.
- BBBrené Brown
Yeah. And then we've got, you know, an administration that is the ultimate act of, like, cronyism and unqualified. So, like, so I think, yeah, I think-I, I, I, I... The big takeaway for me is imposter syndrome, shame, micro/macro lens. Look at both.
- AGAdam Grant
Yes.
- BBBrené Brown
Humiliation, you know, micro humiliation, we see it tied to violence, but look at humiliation from a macro. Look at the current administration in the US humiliating every day for the last three weeks Europe, our allies. Humiliation from a macro perspective, and I think this was Linda Hartling's, you know, thesis here when she said, "Not only the most underappreciated force in international relations, it may be the missing link in the search for root causes of political instability."
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah.
- BBBrené Brown
Like, how long or how many times are you going to use your authority to tell people in other countries and of other cultures that they're less than, you know?
- 50:10 – 57:23
Biggest Takeaways About Shame, Guilt, Humiliation, and Embarrassment
- BBBrené Brown
I think all three of those have in common deep internalizing-
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah
- BBBrené Brown
... of things that don't belong to you. And I think a great final note on internalization is Gisèle Pelicot, the French woman-
- AGAdam Grant
Ugh
- BBBrené Brown
... who has, you know, when that court case came about, about her husband not only sexually assaulting her, but drugging her and inviting her 50 strangers to do the same-
- AGAdam Grant
It's disgusting
- BBBrené Brown
... they said, "You don't have to face them in court. You don't have to bring them in." And her response was so powerful. "This is not my shame to carry. We will put the shame on the right people. This is not my shame to carry."
- AGAdam Grant
Yes.
- BBBrené Brown
So a, a, a huge externalization of, "That doesn't belong to me"-
- AGAdam Grant
Yes
- BBBrené Brown
... which is very powerful because it's so rare, because individual choices to not internalize are very difficult in a world where the social messages are so strong.
- AGAdam Grant
I think that's, uh, that's so important.
- BBBrené Brown
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
I think my, my biggest aha-
- BBBrené Brown
I-
- AGAdam Grant
... as I think about this conversation is it connects to something one of my mentors, Sue Ashford, often talks about, which is past hauntings.
- BBBrené Brown
Mm.
- AGAdam Grant
And when you talk about, like when you were, you were explaining to me why people continue to feel shame about these unwanted identities that, you know, as an adult they could know better, "That's not me," um, so many of them are related to our past hauntings.
- BBBrené Brown
Oh, yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
That, you know, the things we were shamed for as children, those got internalized, and I think that, that just, that was a light bulb moment for me.
- BBBrené Brown
I mean hu- I mean hugely yes, past hauntings. And we didn't talk about this, but I think it's worth taking a minute because the past haunting brings up something for me about how shame shows up at work. Because we think of our personal and professional selves as different, but they're one integrated self. Past hauntings that are personal, and I love the framing that you're putting on this, also show up at work and professional shame. And so two things I wanna say. One, the number one shame trigger at work across the board has not changed in our research over 20 years, the fear of irrelevance. Think about what that means in today's workforce with AI.
- AGAdam Grant
Oh, my gosh. That's huge.
- BBBrené Brown
Right. The number one shame trigger at work is our fear of irrelevance.
- AGAdam Grant
I'm so, I'm so glad you said that, Brené, because you just answered a question that's been in the back of my mind since our South By conversation.
- BBBrené Brown
What was the question?
- AGAdam Grant
It, it's about, it was about the shame-based fear of being ordinary-
- BBBrené Brown
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... as, as the definition of narcissism. I thought that was profound. I haven't stopped thinking about it since you brought it up last month. And yet it dawned on me there are non-narcissistic reasons to have a shame-based fear of being ordinary.
- BBBrené Brown
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
Which is I wanna make the best and highest use of my time. I wanna make a unique contribution. I wanna add value, and the threat of not being able to do that from AI, I can see how that could lead to pervasive shame.
Episode duration: 57:23
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