As a counselor, I am often tasked with helping people create and experience change in their lives. I often walk this road with couples. I often talk to them about the fact that they have to choose to be vulnerable or to not be vulnerable, but without vulnerability I don't know how change happens.
The problem is shame. We often have a reaction to shame that we can't seem to get around and this slows or stops the change process. I've taken to doing something risky in session. I actually have clients watch the below video in session. Then we talk about it.
Sometimes, we talk for just the rest of that session. Other times we talk for multiple sessions about how shame and fear work against change. Now, I'm asking you to watch it and let's talk about it. You comment, I'll respond. I'll add some posts of my thoughts on these topics over the upcoming days, and months.
I think this is the main reason why having realistic and healthy social expectation is so important. Since our culture is driven by media, it creates the expectations that we measure ourselves against, but those expectations are so completely unrealistic that we all feel a level of shame for not being able to achieve that level.
I can remember the time (over a few months) when I realized that I needed to make my own expectations to meet and more or less forget what everyone else expected of me. Hopefully I was able to pass those things along to my kids in some measure, if for no other reason than keeping their sanity.
Of course, the downside to that is it’s difficult to tell whether your expectations are pushing you in the right direction. But it’s gotta be better than what is expected of men today.
This reminded me of something someone said to me about my participation in a very anti-Christian and amoral forum where I advocate both for Christianity and morality. He said that I had moral courage. My first thought to that was it just meant that I didn’t care what they thought. This kinda put those two things together.