Episode 6 - Shame and guilt

Hi, it's the Imperfect Clinician. My name is Mike.
And Yuen.
This was an eye-opener for us when we first discovered the difference between shame and guilt.
Understanding them allows us to hit pause and notice, even now, how our everyday conversation,
both out loud and the ones in our head, is actually more critical than we would have liked,
and how that affects our self-worth and self-growth.
We take a look into the different reactions to shame and how we react to make us feel better
by escaping the pain that comes with shaming.
Time for music.
Today, we're talking about shame and guilt.
Yes, the Imperfect Clinician today is looking at two of the very and profoundly forming feelings of shame and guilt.
And we're going to ask a question, what they actually are, how do we define them, how do we go about them,
and look at the examples of impact they can have on us and people around us in personal and professional settings as well.
Okay, so what are they? How do we bite this animal?
So I think, in terms of the definition of it, the person that gives the most context
and who did the most research on this is Brene Brown.
So she's a shame researcher, and she's got a tech talk on shame.
I think her definition of, so I believe her definition of shame and the difference between shame and guilt
is how shame is the definition of self and guilt is how we define the behaviour.
So shame is, I'm stupid. Guilt is, I'm stupid for not studying for the exam.
So we're focusing on how we speak to ourselves and how it affects us.
So using shaming language then has a profound effect when you grow up and how it shaped you as an adult.
Okay, so would you agree that shame, according to this distinction, is taking a person as a whole
and is more considered to be a negative feeling,
whereas guilt doesn't always necessarily have to have this negative context
because it targets the particular behaviour or particular action or particular characteristics?
Yes.
Okay, so that gives us an idea of where we can draw the boundary between feeling bad about ourselves
and feeling bad about the actions we might have done, or somebody else, because it could be affecting others.
Yeah, and when you talk about how you reflect on the behaviour, it allows you to work on it.
So a very common one to children or to ourselves, shame, you are messy.
And it's almost like, what's the point of me tidying up? I am messy, full stop.
It's a definition.
It's how I'm defined, whereas you've made a mess on the table, I need you to tidy up.
Or I've made a mess in my room, I need to tidy up.
Well, it's very specific. It's a bit more targeted.
It's something that you can work on.
Yes, the mess has been done in terms of the action, but you can work on it.
Yeah, I take it as very personal.
The feeling of shame as such is more going to the core of where we stand as people,
whether we are talking about ourselves or whether others are talking about us or giving feedback.
And that's where I would link it with both personal and professional, with feedback,
because it's all about being described or being shamed by others.
You can call it feedback, you can call it shaming.
But if you do it in a very unskilled way, you might cause more harm than good.
If you, however, proceed with enticing the feeling of guilt, where you are more specific,
you target a specific area, that gives the person a chance to look into that particular fact and reflect on it and do something about it.
Yes, and I need to clarify that feedback, it's not feedback or shame.
Feedback is an umbrella and how you feedback might include shame language or a guilt way of talking about it.
Oh yeah, feedback is a bit broader than just any feedback we give to people is just a shame. No, no, no, absolutely no.
So I find that by reflecting on how I am when I was growing up,
I feel that when we're being shamed, then we want to hide a part of ourselves.
So it really affects confidence, I find.
It brings up an armour, it brings up defensiveness, and it brings up a lot of self-doubt.
Because if you as a person is being defined by what people around you are saying,
then other people's perception becomes exponentially larger.
And I think we're all worried about what other people might say or might be thinking.
But the shame will increase that to a level that is not beneficial.
Yeah, it can impact us directly.
Have you got any examples so we can discuss and try to dissect it?
So I think some people might relate to this, especially as they are of Chinese descent.
So it's very common to talk about skin colour or what Ibrahim Kendi in his book will mention about colourism.
So it's a common thing when I was growing up that says if your skin is fairer, it's better.
So common things that I would hear growing up is don't go into the sun, you'll get dark.
Or if you come back from a holiday, oh, you got darker and it's seen as less favourable.
So I think to give a bit of context, in ancient times, in Chinese dynasty, the kings and queens are usually indoors.
And other people who are working outdoors.
And so you define people, society's hierarchy based on their skin colour.
And it's something that I see through the culture, consciously and unconsciously as well, I feel.
And if you look at a lot of products that have been sold and marketed,
I notice there is a trend that is slowly changing now, but in the past there was a lot of skin whitening products.
Okay. So would you say that what started as a royalty, recognition of royalty or upper classes,
as the fairer in a skin that transcended later into the beauty definition?
Yes.
Okay.
And so my perspective was largely shaken, re-juggled by you when you say,
oh, you look olive skin, that looks amazing.
And I went, what?
This is not what I'm used to at all.
It's either fair or dark.
There is this quote, Chinese saying that there is one thing that can cover three floors,
and it's the whiteness of the skin.
Okay.
And so it seeps through when it becomes just like a one-liner or a poem of such,
and people use it so unconsciously, not realizing how much impact.
And so I used to be very ashamed of my skin color,
and whoever in the family who is lighter colored will get more praise,
and whoever that's darker colored in comparison will be shamed.
And I think colorism happens in a lot of cultures, not just Chinese cultures, definitely.
Well, it must do.
I mean, in the West, it's always recognition that whoever comes with a better tan from holiday
is seen as, oh, you look healthier, you look fitter, you look better overall.
So it's completely opposite to what we can see on the other end of the world.
So yeah, it's quite interesting.
But I wouldn't go as far as distinguishing the hierarchy here.
I wouldn't treat it as colorism as such.
I would treat it more in terms of the beauty,
but knowing that everybody has fair skin and dark skin is only temporary because you went on holiday,
that's not defining people.
And I don't believe that this is a problem in the Western countries.
I've not come across that.
So it's interesting to see what it's like elsewhere and what are the beauty canyons
and how people can be divided for better and worse by simply the shade of skin.
I mean, it's not even the skin color as such.
I think it's both skin color and shade because that can't be separated.
What about your own experience?
Well, I'm sure that everybody has some stories from their childhood
when the parents were less than happy about the things we might have been doing
and didn't quite convey the message in a way that would promote reflection and improvement in a way.
I had a situation that was, I think, in my late teens where my dad used to be a car dealer at the time.
And in the showroom, there was quite a light carpet.
And if you're a teenager, you think about a billion things,
but not necessarily about the fact that you were walking on.
It's not the priority for you.
And sometime during the winter months, I just went in straight from the outside
and didn't even think about it, walked on the carpet and just stained it.
I mean, it was mainly water from the snow and some dirt, I suppose, as well.
I didn't think about it, but I got a massive personal trip by my dad in front of the staff
and everybody else listening how little I'm going to achieve in life if I don't pay attention to details.
It was a very personal outpouring of...
Attack.
Well, attack, yeah, but outpouring of disillusion,
like something that really can, in an instant, make you a tiny person.
Something that you suddenly believe, yeah, I'm just unworthy.
Full stop.
Though it's not unworthy because I've done something, it's just, what am I?
What am I doing?
Where is it going to take me in life?
Especially, you have to remember that we realize, as children,
that our parents are the best thing on the planet for us.
And the words coming from the mouth have significant and greater weight comparing to anybody else.
So, two things that you mentioned there.
One question that I've got, two really.
One, was there a lot of shame language based on what you're saying?
Like, you can't achieve anything full stop.
This is how you've been defined as a person.
Yeah, that was very personal and it was completely, in my opinion,
then out of proportion to what has actually happened.
And it wasn't about the actual act.
I think it was just, I understand that people get stressed,
I understand that people have got their own things
and then sometimes just the trigger can cause an outpour of love in inverted commas.
But for a young person, it can be quite defining
I think I want to say that even if you use shaming in adults,
we have different reactions to it, as we'll discuss later in the podcast,
but we don't like it.
It's not a pleasant feeling.
It doesn't push you to be, it doesn't motivate you to be better.
That's absolutely true.
But if you're a parent in front of a child, you have additional responsibility,
I truly believe, because your words weigh more.
You have more power.
You have more power.
You are dependent and you essentially are relying on your parents
and you have been relying on your parents for a very long time in your life.
So I feel that when somebody is in a position of power,
parent, I see parent as a leader, a leader in any setting,
uses shame, then they take away the power
or they diminish the power of the other person that they're speaking to,
the person that they're shaming.
And whereas if they use guilt,
they empower the other party to take action,
do something different and be better.
And I can tell you a story about guilt in that strict definition that you mentioned.
There were times that I maybe not have always been the greatest of the students.
I've valued other activities, extracurricular activities in the uni,
probably more than the studying itself.
And when I was in the third year, there was a big biochemistry exam.
And me and a good friend of mine, sending all the love to Adam,
I'm sure he can relate to it very well,
we have been really scared of the exam, really didn't feel ready for it.
So we didn't go for it.
Okay. That's a way of avoiding it.
We never appeared on the exam.
Because of Adam's, at the time, friends' connections,
we were excused on medical grounds.
And then there was a second term, which we also didn't go.
And then there was a third one.
How many times?
Latently, it was just pushed forward and forward, always with a good excuse.
But that was just because of fear of the exam.
I don't know why it was.
And the whole subject as such,
biochemistry was said by the dean of the whole pharmacy department in the uni.
And on one occasion, we were still excused on medical grounds.
And of course, we were in the lab.
So the dean himself rang up the labs, asked if we are there,
and he wanted us to come straight as we were standing to have a chat with us.
And although it wasn't the most pleasant of conversations,
he made it abundantly clear that the behavior that we displayed was just,
we were in so much wrong and in a lot of trouble,
but he never really was talking about us as such.
He was talking about what we've done.
Yes, the behavior.
And he was a great man for giving up.
He could have just dismissed us completely from the uni, from life and everything.
It was all within just one signature at a time.
And he gave us one chance to get it done.
He gave us some time to prepare, and we passed it.
It wasn't with probably flying colors.
Even if we probably later for our answers got the Nobel Prize,
I'm sure we wouldn't have gone higher than the minimum mark to pass.
But it was the past nonetheless,
and I felt that it was the greatest achievement at the time
because we were given a chance.
We were the guilt about what happened.
And clearly realizing what has happened pushed us to try to rectify it and get things done.
And now it's a story and it's a legend,
and we know that after that, that led me to many years in pharmacy,
and that's what I'm doing now.
But at the time, it was a good example of how enticing guilt in a person,
not through dismissing me as the one who cannot achieve,
but focusing on my behavior and, well, at the time lack of action that we took by not going for the exam,
was very, very important for me as a young person to get this chance.
And that's why now I wouldn't dismiss anybody just like that.
I want to dismiss the actions rather than a person.
And I always believe that giving chance is something that I owe to others because I was given a chance then.
And I feel that the trajectory of how it would have gone would be vastly different if shaming was used instead of guilt.
As I say, he could have just shamed us and dismissed us with one signature.
That would have been it. We more than deserved it.
But life is not always white and black.
There's all shades of gray and not necessarily as the book says.
And so how did you think you took the power back when the power was taken away from you when you were younger?
So I think for me, it took me a while.
It took me a lot of reflection, a lot of inner work for me to realize that what society is saying,
what my parents, my relatives are saying, they can be wrong.
First of all, for me to have the awareness of they are shaming me.
Second of all, they can be wrong.
Because I think as a child, you always think, you know, my parents are right.
Whatever they say carries a lot more weight.
I don't know enough, so they are always right.
But now with age, with experience, with maturity, with reflection,
when I then realize actually they are imperfect too and they can be wrong,
and so I feel in doing that, it gives me, I regain the power back.
What about you?
I'm absolutely 100% behind you in saying that when you have such a blatant display of shame,
of shaming by your parent or pretty much anybody around you, my parent especially,
you realize that because you do have your own compass of what's right or wrong at some stage,
at any stage, even children very early in the age have got a compass.
It's just those really blatant cases where get this compass right in terms of saying,
right, this was wrong.
This can't, I don't believe it applies to all of me.
I think that somebody is here in the wrong and it's not me.
I can be wrong about doing something in a wrong way.
I might have failed on multiple levels, but it's too obvious to feel like it's directed at me.
And that's where you start to change and you realize that, and it's not the teenager, you know,
protesting against parents and being a generation fighter, whatever.
No, it's just the pure value of your own beliefs that change.
And shape you in a way as a person.
And I think it's a big lesson for us to put in place when we speak to others and we have our own children.
Because I don't think there's a lot of people that would like to multiply the errors of their parents,
errors of judgment.
And as I say, if two adults are talking to each other and they are, you know, shouting and screaming
and shaming each other, they may have slightly different armors, different power to discuss it,
rather than when you're standing from a position of a parent and a child.
If you have two people on the same level, that's slightly different.
Even if, of course, shaming is never good and it's never right and it's always taking the power away of you
and it's diminishing you as a person, it becomes personal rather than focused on empowering you to get better.
And I think you've mentioned something really important that I want to circle back.
You said it really affects your self-worth.
So I think for me to have the awareness allows me, most importantly, to reflect on what is my inner voice,
what my critical voice looks like, sounds like in my head.
Because for me, when I was growing up listening to shaming languages, with years,
it automatically becomes my voice in my head.
Because if you hear, you're not good enough, you grab whatever is in your head constantly,
after 10 years or even longer than that, that is going to be your own judgment in your head.
And so, first of all, having the awareness to reflect on how do we speak to ourself,
how do you speak to yourself in your head when you come across a challenge,
when you come across a difficulty as clinicians, as in a new place of work, in a new job,
in a new role that you take on in both personal and professional setting.
Because based on so many people that I've spoken to, I find that it's almost impossible to separate
how you speak to yourself personally and how do you speak to yourself professionally.
Because we don't have that on-off switch that we can go, right, on a personal setting, I'm shaming myself,
but on a professional setting, I am using guilt.
No, it's how we are built.
And so, I think shame corrodes self-worth and doesn't encourage growth and change.
This is both in the personal and professional setting.
And so, how you speak to yourself, which is the biggest thing, affects how you grow as a person,
as a clinician, as a fill in the blank, as a mom, as a friend, as a daughter, any role that you take on.
And so, what then defines self-worth?
So, we talked about the inventory earlier on in our podcast.
And for me, it becomes very performance or achievement driven.
So, I then, because the shame is corroding my self-worth, I judge my self-worth based on my productivity,
based on my results.
I'll share a story from when I was growing up that it's now upon reflection, it's not okay.
I've heard it so many times when I was younger, I just took it as it is.
That because my family was very academic driven and perhaps Chinese culture in general can be.
And the term that you'll be useless if you can't get all A's has always been drilled into my head.
So, essentially, it's my achievement and my results that A's define my self-worth.
And if I don't achieve that, I will be shamed.
You will be useless. You can't achieve anything in your life.
You won't be able to do anything.
You'll be of no use to society.
And so, having the reflection, first of all, of understanding how I'm functioning,
where it's coming from, allows me to then form new neural pathway, I want to say.
Because these shaming pathways have been in my head for so long that for me to build a new one,
it's going against default.
But guilt can be useful when shamed out of the picture.
So, because of everything that was said, I was very rebellious.
I didn't study for my GCSEs as such, an equivalent of it.
And that was my way of rebelling.
And I got all sorts of threats and I've got all sorts of shaming languages thrown at me.
And I got to A-level and my parents said,
We give up whatever that you want to do, you're not going to do anyway.
And so, then I get a bit of control back because there is less criticism around me.
And I studied really hard and I got the grades that I wanted.
And with the grades, I've got a scholarship.
And that completely, unexpectedly, for my parents was a good news.
But they didn't expect that because of how I was, in inverted commas, performing or not performing.
So, you did the job in a way.
Yeah. So, because I wasn't performing and they thought everything that was you, shaming, threatening, whatever didn't work,
we might as well leave it to it.
And because they left me to it, I was able to see how I am, focus on the behavior
and do better.
But that is thanks to your own compass of seeing what's right, what's wrong for you,
or what can benefit you and what you want to prove, mainly to yourself, but also to your parents.
But what's the alternative to shame? Not alternative, but how can we replace it?
I would say I would agree with alternative because guilt is better.
You know, guilt encourages action.
It allows me, you, to think about solutions and how can we learn from the mistakes and how can we move forward.
And can be motivating as well.
If you are giving feedback about something, even if you may not necessarily agree with it,
it's not something that affects you as a whole person, but it does affect you, your actions.
And it gives you power that shame takes away.
Guilt gives you power to do something about it.
And I think guilt can be motivating.
And I think there is one more part of the equation, which is anger.
And I think anger, quoting Rage Against the Machine, is a gift.
And I think that anger is a gift in that respect, that finally you reach the point that you are so angry about something
that you decide to take action and change it.
Whether it's about yourself, whether it's about others around you, but it can play a very positive function, in my opinion.
And so have you got any stories about how guilt changes your behaviour or your interaction?
Well, I probably mentioned that before.
I enjoyed the extracurricular activities that were unrelated to any educational growth.
And spending a lot of time with friends was the main.
Classic extracurricular.
Yeah, that I enjoyed doing.
I remember when I was a teenager, we agreed with, say, with my mum on occasion that I would be home by nine in the evening.
And as it appeared, I might have on occasion come back at one o'clock in the morning, all happy and jolly.
And so that was a bit of a stretching.
You have to bear in mind that we go into times where there was no mobile phones and it wasn't the easiest to.
And you're not going to be bothered about looking at a phone somewhere, at friends and all that.
If you're having fun, just to say, mum, I'm fine.
You're not going to make this extra effort because you think, right, I'm safe.
Everything's fine.
Of course, it looks differently from the parent perspective.
But it was stretching the trust that I was given to agree the actions.
And at the time, my mum could have just said that, right, that's it.
You're not trustworthy and we're just not going to play that way.
And that would define me as a person.
It would be a shameful language.
It would create this feeling that, right, I cannot be trusted at all.
But that didn't happen.
Instead, my mum said that she was worried and she said that I didn't hold up to the promise.
Well, I couldn't ring or it was difficult, more difficult than it is now.
And we agreed a joint conclusion that I will let Mummy know if I was going to come later just for her peace of mind.
And it was eye-opening for me because my mum focused on what actually happened and not on me as a person.
She truly believed that I was, that was an error of judgment and not the error of my self in a way.
And this was using the guilt language, enticing me to do something about it.
And yeah, I showed my mum, says, Mum, if it would have been really boring, I would have come in early.
But because it was so exciting, there was so much fun, for whatever reason, I just was late.
But we agreed that I would make an extra effort and try to find a phone.
Now with, you know, very young children having their phones, that becomes to be less of an issue.
But at the time it was a big thing and stretching the deadline of where you're supposed to appear at home by four hours
was probably a bit too much for my mum to handle.
I don't blame her because I think I'll be equally worried from a perspective of one as well.
I would be worried now as well. Don't get me wrong.
But I think it taught me a lesson of how it can be handled, you know, consciously.
Yeah.
You don't say that's it. You agree some sort of action.
So you give the power back to me.
I'm sure that if I carried on stretching that for a longer time, that could have led to some more severe consequences.
And I didn't want to check it because I knew I was in the wrong.
Again, going back to your compass of thinking what is right, what is not.
But if my mum was using the shaming language, I would just rebel against it.
Yeah.
And that wouldn't end up well for any of us, really.
And so we elaborated on how we've encountered both shame and guilt in our upbringing.
I think it's good to see how we can reflect on the self-shame or self-critical voice in our head.
And so if we make that differentiation again to say, shame, I'm not good enough.
Guilt, I'm not good enough in handling a difficult conversation with the team member.
Or I'm not good enough in a clinical area, asthma, let's say.
And you can then work on that and say, what other support do I need?
Because I'm not good enough almost being full stop.
I'm never going to be good enough.
It doesn't matter what training and support I need.
And if you say I'm not good enough in X, Y, and Z, something very specific.
You have control.
You have power over that.
And you can do something about it.
And the same thing when we give feedback to pre-regist students, people that we work with,
that we are more in a position of power.
Because I'm sure when we speak to other clinicians or other stakeholders who are in a position of power,
how they speak to us will have an impact on us as well.
And so us clinicians as leaders need to impart our power to those who have less than us so we can empower them.
And I think it's a responsibility on us to work on how we give feedback
and use the actions rather than people that we notice.
And this can allow us to build a partnership between ourselves
and try to find a solution to a problem rather than a solution to a person.
What is a solution to a person?
If you dismiss somebody as a whole, unwillingly, without noticing in front of others,
that may mean that you're just going to get rid of the person.
Your retention of your staff as a leader will not be possible.
And how we feed back to others, especially people who are learning, who are less experienced than us,
matters for their growth.
I've never been jealous of anybody else's knowledge,
and I've always been trying to pass on as much as I know to people who know less, whoever they might be.
There are some clinicians that don't feel that way, I guess.
There must be people who don't find time for it,
but I think it's important to make an effort to improve people by giving good feedback.
And so I know you've had some trainee clinicians with you previously.
What did you find helpful based on your experience?
Yeah, the example that comes to my mind was about one girl who was of a different culture background
and where the seniority was very important.
And talking back to anybody who was older or more senior in a position was a great difficulty.
It was seen as disrespectful.
Yeah, it was seen as disrespectful and was a no-go, essentially.
So we had to work on this as a behavior.
And obviously, me working with a team of others,
we made it clear that we need to improve their self-confidence to talk to others.
Because when you become a fully-fledged pharmacist or clinician in general,
you are expected to run the team in a way, to be a leader.
And to be an effective leader, you have to remember about your responsibilities and your...
Assertiveness.
Assertiveness to allow others to delegate, to pass on tasks to anybody else.
And the situation that this brings to my mind was about the bin.
I said, how am I going to tell her how to ask others?
And I said, we're going to try her to ask others to empty the bin for her.
And I said, oh, my bin looks a bit full.
And she started to tidy it up.
I said, no, no, no.
Can you ask one of the guys to do it for you?
Oh, and she stopped and thought about it.
And it was, you could see that there was a barrier and there was C, the block, okay?
The border.
And she did it.
But it was quite funny because initially she said, Mike says, could you take the bin?
I said, no, no, no, no, no.
I want you to try to ask another person who was much older than her and much more senior
in a way to see, could you do that for me?
And it was like a step by step approach to try, repeat after me, essentially, to do it.
And then it sort of clicked.
And we realized that by targeting this particular action and not just saying, oh,
you're never going to do it, this is just pointless.
By targeting this specific example and working on it with her,
turned her to be a great pharmacist later on.
And that seniority was just assumed rather than the true, you know, the true reflection
of what the world around is.
And so it was a good example of trying to entice guilt to some extent in being unable
to talk to others, but working step by step on overcoming it.
Yeah, because you're working on the behavior of...
On a specific behavior, exactly.
And you didn't want to, you know, just dismiss it and says, right, deal with it,
because this is putting pressure on her as a person.
You also give the tools that are essential to empower a person to change in a way.
And you didn't use the shaming language of you are not assertive, full stop.
Yeah.
And I think it really... shame really affects culture at work.
And I find that it really affects... I mentioned earlier on about defensiveness.
And for me, defensiveness is like an armor that I put on,
everyone puts on when we're in a situation.
And it becomes second skin that you don't even realize is there.
And it really avoids us from being our best self.
So we did some... we found some research from Linda Hartling and Jean Baker Miller
at Stone Center Wellesley College.
So they found three primary responses to shame.
So they're essentially saying when we encounter shame, we either move away,
move toward, or move against it.
So if we break it down, we'll bring in some of our own experience
and share a bit of a brief story onto that.
So what was your understanding of moving away?
Okay, so the example of shame by moving away in response is to shame
when we disappear in our own lives and don't talk about it.
So for example, when my parents were divorced, we didn't really discuss it.
Yeah, and what about you?
I think for me, my parents hit me.
I don't talk about it because in the UK that's classed as physical abuse
and it's normal to have a cane at home.
And so I think I find that what I've seen in myself
and a lot of people that I speak to is it goes hand in hand with secrecy.
So Brené mentioned that the less we talk about it,
the more control it has over us.
So essentially, it will sit, fester, and take more control.
And it's a vicious cycle of because I'm shameful, I don't want to talk about it,
so I want to keep it secret, and then the cycle continues,
moving towards shame.
So that is people pleasing.
So I've done this before myself,
and I think it's still an ongoing practice for me to learn how to draw boundaries.
But for me, whatever they ask me to do, I will do
because I was shamed by you, so I am saying yes at the expense of myself,
both in personal and professional settings.
So you might come across situations where you say yes to everything that's being asked,
got offered, and then you go back and you think,
how can I take on all of that without something giving?
My own well-being, my rest, my balance.
But it goes also in hand with the teenagers,
when you challenge them, or teenagers challenging each other,
and you're calling them, oh, you're a wuss.
There is a lot of shame in calling somebody a wuss,
because it defines them as the person.
And I think it's quite important to think about it.
So you are doing certain things, regardless how it's going to impact you,
against yourselves just to please people.
So that's moving towards shame.
What about moving against?
So moving against is using shame and aggression to fight back.
So this can be an argument, perhaps some of our arguments,
when we're not our best self.
So you're not helpful.
Yeah, you're not helpful.
You are rude, you are inconsiderate.
And that defines you as a person.
If I start with the shame language and say to Mike, you're not helpful,
and you all say to me, you're inconsiderate,
essentially, first of all, it doesn't get anything done,
because we're just shaming each other and not dealing with the problem,
and both of us getting really upset.
But all three ways really move you away from your true self,
because when you look at that, you go, is that who I am?
Is that who I want to be?
Is that how I want to react to a situation?
Is that your authentic self?
Yes.
We're going to go back to it in, I think, next episode.
In the next episode, we'll talk about authentic self in a bit more detail.
And so we then operate based on fear.
So we talk about fear and embracing vulnerability in our last episode.
And because we're not our best self,
we're more emotionally driven,
where the rationality part of it becomes the backseat instead of the driver.
And I think it's really helpful when you are a clinician,
you can identify, first of all, the shame language in your head,
the shame language that you hear in the people that you work with,
in patience, and how you can identify it and help them change it to a guilt language.
And hopefully, with what we've shared, you can reflect, you can relate to it.
Hopefully, some of our personal experiences that we've shared growing up,
and it will allow you to reflect on how you are, how you're speaking to yourself,
and then apply it to a wider circle and rise.
Thank you all for listening.
Yeah, I just want to say that I do love my parents,
and the things here were given as an example to say that nobody's really perfect,
and we all make mistakes, and by recognizing it and by talking about it,
I think that it can really make us better for the future.
And as clinicians, we have this additional responsibility over our teams
to improve people's worth and to recognize the effort to give people tools
to be better themselves, because that's going to impact on our practice and our people we care for.
Thank you.
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