09/21/2019
Please read for this weeks meeting Monday 7:30 a.m. MST——
This week we need to start by talking about shame. Yes, this is a really different kind of conversation for some of us. As men, we benefit from knowing what shame is and deal with it in our hearts and minds so we can be open about it with those we love and teach our children and our communities to deal with it in love and kindness.
“Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging.” Brene Brown, Shame Researcher
Yes, I’m quoting a woman for our men’s group. She has the best work on the s**t that matters most.
In her book Daring Greatly she goes on to say,
“When shame becomes a management style, engagement dies. When failure is not an option we can forget about learning, creativity, and innovation. When it comes to parenting, the practice of framing mothers and fathers as good or bad is both rampant and corrosive—it turns parenting into a shame minefield. The real questions for parents should be: ‘Are you engaged? Are you paying attention?’ If so, plan to make lots of mistakes and bad decisions. Imperfect parenting moments turn into gifts as our children watch us try to figure out what went wrong and how we can do better next time.”
The truth is that I let my shame issues get in the way of my relationship with Marla in the ’90s, and recently I nearly lost it all. I thought i was above it all. The truth is without a connected group of accountable brothers, I let fear and isolation take me down an ugly road. It is so easy to believe the lie that if I share with even my best friends that I will lose something. Yes, when we are accountable and connected in honest ways we only lose isolation, depression, fear, and hate. There is so much fear and hate coming from men these days, we must band together and find better ways! Please do not let the fear of being honest keep you down.
Marla and I have developed the Feeling Wheel 5.0 to help all of us learn better strategies for relationships. Because...well...shame.
The core of the wheel has three feelings: Shame, Forgiveness, and Love. This is the center of all our conflicts. All our behaviors are related to how we deal with these three feelings. Think of Shame as the giant lie that you are not worthy of love. This is why Marla and I put Shame across from Love. It is because it is the only toxic feeling on the
wheel, and it is, in fact, based on a lie; the lie when any person believes that they are a bad person. And because of the nature of Shame, it sticks to other feelings like Fear, Anger, Jealousy and even Peace (worry much?) and Joy (have sexual shame?). All feelings free from shame are healthy feelings. Feelings are raw information. Our brains are highly efficient at making connections with how events in our life make us feel. We then develop strategies and we repeat what gets us what we expect, which is not necessarily the best outcome.
Just outside the core of the wheel are six feelings that we reference as ”modes.” A mode is a pattern of behavior solidified to help us function and communicate. Think of it as an autopilot program that gets activated in certain situations, designed to protect your heart. Most often we don’t think much about doing these things, we just do them often without much conscious thought. These are often packages of behaviors that once served us well and helped us survive, but are now needing to be updated to serve us better.
The question this week is where does your life hurt? What do you avoid? Why? Can you find a pattern of your behavior that is contributing to the pain? Let’s talk about how we can help each other and get better results for our families and communities.
Let’s talk about how we can build better communities.
