Brené Brown - Book Excerpt

an excerpt from
Chapter Seven: Practicing Courage in a Culture of Fear

I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn't):
Telling the Truth About Perfectionism, Inadequacy and Power
by Brené Brown, Ph.D., LMSW

There may be no more powerful relationship than the one that exists between fear and shame. These two emotions often work together to create the perfect emotional storm—shame leads to fear and fear leads to shame. They work together so furiously that it’s often hard to tell where one stops and the other begins.

Shame, or our fear of disconnection, causes us to be afraid of many things. The issues that I see affecting women the most are our fears of being imperfect, ordinary and uncool and vulnerable. In the following sections we’ll explore these struggles and how the elements of shame resilience can help us practice courage and compassion in the face of fear.

Shame and Perfectionism

I think I’ve seen the movie Flashdance at least twenty times. In the 1980s, I wanted to be just like Jennifer Beals’s character, Alex. She was the tough construction worker by day and talented, ambitious dancer by night. Of course, my favorite part of the movie is the dance scene in which Alex auditions for the hoity-toity ballet school.

I’m too embarrassed to tell you how many sweatshirts I ruined and how many leg warmers I bought. Of course, I wasn’t alone. Nothing took the mystique out of my secret Flashdance fantasy like showing up to meet friends for dinner and realizing that all six of us had permed hair, headbands and ripped sweatshirts.

We all wanted to be Alex in Flashdance. She was perfect—ripped clothing looked sexy; welding looked exciting; ballet looked cool and break dancing looked easy. But alas, the perfection was only an illusion. I was disappointed to learn that the film director used four different people to create that audition sequence: Jennifer Beals’s beautiful face, a professional dancer for the ballet scenes, a champion gymnast for the leaping and jumping and a male street performer for the break dancing. All those bad perms and all that money for leg warmers...for what? To try and achieve some level of perfection that doesn’t exist.

If most of us stopped to examine the expectations we set for ourselves, we would discover that, like the scene in Flashdance, our concept of perfection is so unrealistic that it can’t exist in one person. Instead, it’s a combination of pieces or snippets of what’s perceived as perfect. We don’t just want to be good at what we do, we want to be perfect—we want to edit together all the best clips of what we see to form our lives.

So, where does this idea of “editing for perfection” come from? The answer is right in front of us—it’s the shame web. If we look at all of the people in the shame web—family, partners, friends, self, colleagues, group members, etc.—most of us can identify the expectations these people have of us. This is especially true around some of the shame categories like appearance, motherhood, parenting, work and family.

The primary reason the expectations around these issues are so influential is related to how quickly they are imposed on our lives. On the day that we are born, there are immediate expectations that we will be cute and attractive, we will grow up, get married, be successful, become mothers, have natural parenting skills and be loving members of sane and well-balanced families. Complicating matters, we have the media, which makes perfection appear attainable by inundating us with images that are, quite literally, edited for perfection. We stare down at our newborns and fast forward through their lives, thinking and dreaming about their potential. As parents, we even think, “I haven’t screwed anything up yet—they could have it all.”

In some families, these expectations are spoken loud and clear. In other families, they are more latent. But regardless of how they are articulated at home, girls and women have these messages reinforced on a daily basis by what we see on television, the books we read, the toys we are given to play with, the conversations we overhear and what we are taught by educators and peer groups. The powerful effect of these expectations can easily be seen around the issues of body image, caregiving and motherhood—three of the biggest “perfectionism” struggles that emerged from the research. Let’s look at these issues, starting with body image.

Body Image

When I first identified the shame categories, appearance stood alone and was meant to capture all parts of how we look—including body image. But as I continued to collect data, I realized that the specific topic of body image has more than earned its place on the list of shame categories.

While appearance is a broad category that covers everything from body image to clothing, fitness and style, body image is the driving force behind appearance shame. In fact, body image is the one issue that comes closest to being a “universal trigger,” with more than ninety percent of the participants experiencing shame about their bodies. Body shame is so powerful and often so deeply rooted in our psyches that it actually affects why and how we feel shame in many of the other categories, including sexuality, motherhood, parenting, health, aging and a woman’s ability to speak out with confidence.

Our body image is how we think and feel about our bodies. It is the mental picture we have of our physical bodies. Unfortunately, our pictures, thoughts and feelings may have little to do with our actual appearance. It is our image of what our bodies are, often held up to our image of what they should be.

While we normally talk about body image as a general reflection of what we look like, we can’t ignore the specifics—the body parts that come together to create this image. If we work from the understanding that women most often experience shame when we become trapped in a web of layered, conflicting and competing expectations of who, what and how we should be, we can’t ignore that there are social-community expectations for every single, tiny part of us—literally from our heads to our toes.

I’m going to list our body parts because I think they are important: head, hair, neck, face, ears, skin, nose, eyes, lips, chin, teeth, shoulders, back, breasts, waist, hips, stomach, abdomen, buttocks, vulva, anus, arms, wrists, hands, fingers, fingernails, thighs, knees, calves, ankles, feet, toes, body hair, body fluids, pimples, scars, freckles, stretch marks and moles.

Again, I bet if you look at each of these areas, you have specific body part images for each one—not to mention a mental list of what you’d like it to look like and the unwanted identities that you want to avoid.

When our very own bodies fill us with disgust and feelings of worthlessness, shame can fundamentally change who we are and how we approach the world. Consider the woman who stays quiet in public out of the fear that her stained and crooked teeth will make people question the value of her contributions. Or the women who told me that “the one thing she hates about being fat” is the constant pressure to be nice to people. She explained, “If you’re bitchy, they might make a cruel remark about your weight.”

The research participants also spoke often about how body shame either kept them from enjoying sex or pushed them into having it when they didn’t really want to but were desperate for some type of physical validation of worthiness.

There were also many women who talked about the shame of having their bodies betray them. These were women who spoke about physical illness, mental illness and infertility. We often conceptualize “body image” too narrowly—it’s about more than wanting to be thin and attractive. When we begin to blame and hate our bodies for failing to live up to our expectations, we start splitting ourselves in parts and move away from our wholeness—our authentic selves.

We can’t talk about shame and body image without talking about the pregnant body. I think there are stages to the pregnant body—each susceptible to shame in its own way. First there is the woman who wants to become pregnant. I heard story after story about the pressure to be thin and in top shape before becoming pregnant. As we saw from the quote earlier in the book, one woman took her own health and her prenatal care into her hands to avoid being shamed by the doctor because she feared she was “too fat” to be pregnant.

Next there is the pregnant body. Has any body image been more exploited in the past few years? Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for exploring the wonders of the pregnant body and removing the stigma and shame of the pregnant belly. But let’s not replace that with one more airbrushed, computer-generated, shame-inducing image for women to not be able to live up to. Movie stars who gain fifteen pounds and have their stretch marks airbrushed for their “Look! I’m human too!” portraits do not represent the realities that most of us face while pregnant.

Last there is the postpregnant-mother body. When women spoke to me about their postbaby body-image struggles, I heard more than experiences of shame. I heard grief, loss, anger and fear. In addition to the weight gain, hemorrhoids and stretch marks, women struggle with the very real and permanent changes that we often experience after pregnancy and delivery. Again, the media is a very strong force in the expectation-setting done around postpregnancy body images. Within a week we’re expected to be back in our low-rise jeans, midriff-baring T shirts, sporting a five-hundred-dollar diaper bag and carrying our children around like the year’s hottest accessory.

Parenting is also a shame category affected by body image. As an admittedly vulnerable, imperfect parent, I’m not one to jump on the “blame parents for everything—especially the mothers” bandwagon. Having said that, I will tell you what I found in my research. Shame creates shame. Parents have a tremendous amount of influence on their children’s body image development, and girls are still being shamed by their parents—primarily their mothers—about their weight.

When it comes to parenting and body image, I find that parents fall along a continuum. On one side of the continuum, there are parents who are keenly aware that they are the most influential role models in their children’s lives. They work diligently to model positive body image behaviors (self-acceptance, acceptance of others, no emphasis placed on the unattainable or ideal, focusing on health rather than weight, deconstructing media messages, etc.).

On the other side of the continuum are parents who love their children just as much as their counterparts, but are so determined to spare their daughters the pain of being overweight or unattractive (and their sons the pain of being weak) that they will do anything to steer their children toward achievement of the ideal—including belittling and shaming them. Many of these parents struggle with their own body images and process their shame by shaming.

Last, there are the folks in the middle, who really do nothing to counter the negative body-image issues but also don’t shame their children. Unfortunately, due to societal pressures and the media, most of these kids do not appear to develop strong shame resilience skills around body image. There just doesn’t appear to be any room for neutrality on this issue—you are either actively working to help your children develop a positive self-concept or, by default, you are sacrificing them to the media- and society-driven expectations.

As you can see, what we think, hate, loathe and question about our bodies reaches much further and affects far more than our appearance alone. The long reach of body shame can impact how we live and love. The same can be said for caregiving and motherhood.

Caregiving

I was not surprised to hear painful story after painful story about caregiving—especially stories about the struggle to take care of a sick partner or an aging family member. The most difficult experiences centered on taking care of sick or aging parents.

In the mental health field, we recognize caregiving as one of the most stressful life events people face. When women talked about the anxiety, fear, stress and shame of being a caregiver, I could hear the demons of perfectionism in their stories. Regardless of the words spoken, I could hear them comparing the hard realities of their day-to-day responsibilities to their idealized images of stress-free, dutiful and rewarding caregiving.

I’m afraid any image of stress-free, dutiful and rewarding caregiving is a luxury available only to those who have yet to fully engage in this process. When most of us think about the eventuality of taking care of an elderly parent or partner, we get anxious, sad and fearful. In order to quash those uncomfortable emotions we sometimes convince ourselves that it will be different for us—it won’t be as horrible as it is for the woman who sits next to us at work or our good friend whose mother is “a tough case.” We try to escape reality by dwelling in the possibilities of perfection: It will work out just fine. It will be a great chance for us to spend some more time together.

So when we find ourselves actually caregiving, we are not at all prepared for the first time our feelings of “I love you and it’s a privilege to take care of you” turn into “I hate you and I’m ready for you to die because I need my life back.” The stress, anxiety, fear and grief are magnified as shame and self-loathing set in. Are we monsters? How can we feel like this?

We’re not monsters and we feel like this because we are human beings trying to manage a major life event with very little of the support and resources typically offered to people in crisis.
During the interviews, women in caregiving roles were incredibly hard on themselves. They often sounded disappointed, and sometimes even disgusted, by their lack of natural caregiving skills. As I probed deeper about this disappointment, many of them compared their caregiving experiences to parenting. They saw themselves as good, kind people whose nurturing skills had somehow failed them.

People often make the mistake of comparing caregiving with parenting. On the face of it, this might make sense. But if we really examine the differences, we can see how absolutely different they are and how believing they are the same sets us up for shame.

First, and most importantly, we don’t have the same relationship with our parents or partner as we do with our children. We don’t have to bite through our lips not to cry when we are bathing our children. But that’s exactly what I did the first time I bathed my grandmother. And I wasn’t even her primary caregiver. My mom was shouldering the burden of taking care of her and her sister at the same time.

The energy we need to take care of children is fueled by promise. Taking care of another adult is often steeped in fear and grief—especially if this person is at the end of his life or facing an unknown future. Fear and grief don’t fuel us—they usually drain us.

Second, we live in a society that has put systems in place specifically to support parents and children. Schools and child-care facilities are the easy ones. But it’s more than that. Tables, houses, cars, restaurants—they’re all built for families that are defined as parents and children. There are thousands of parenting books and magazines. There are play groups and organized activities. As parents, we are given lots of opportunities to fit in and build connection.

When we are caregiving for another adult—parent or otherwise—nothing fits. Our jobs are on the line because we constantly need to leave work for appointments and medical emergencies. Our partners can no longer make it down the stairs in our house, or our parent absolutely refuses to move in with us (if that’s even a possibility). And worst of all, we feel absolutely disconnected. In order to maintain the energy we need to caregive, we unhook ourselves from our lives and plug into the person who needs our time and attention.

There is one thing that parenting and caregiving have in common, and it’s not a positive thing: When it comes to these two issues, everyone is a critic. Chelsea, a woman in her late fifties, spoke powerfully about the scrutiny of caregiving:

My dad died two years ago. It was sudden and unexpected. My family was heartbroken, especially my mom. She has been sick for what feels like forever and he was the one who took care of her. Now we take care of my mom. Or, I should say, I take care of my mom. My older brother is far too busy with his important life. My older sister’s role is to observe and critique my every move. About six months ago, my husband and I realized we could no longer do it—neither physically nor emotionally. We decided to put Mom in an assisted-living facility close to our house. Well, my brother and sister were appalled. My sister actually said, “I can’t believe you’re going to put her in a prison like a criminal.” My brother just said, “Absolutely not,” in this very matter-of-fact tone. Of course, both of them said, due to their hectic lives, they couldn’t do any more than what they were doing. When I told them we had no choice, they said it was cruel and they wouldn’t help pay for it. She’s still living in her house. I still go over there every day on my lunch break or after work. My brother and sister choose to think everything is just perfect, even though my mom is getting worse and it’s getting more dangerous for her to live by herself. And me, my marriage is on the rocks, my boss is always pissed and I’m at my personal breaking point.

Chelsea’s story captures many of the complexities of caregiving. After we look at motherhood and a few of the shared triggers around perfectionism, we’ll examine the resilience strategies that can help us reality-check the expectations that make this complicated issue even more difficult.

Motherhood

While motherhood and parenting are certainly related, they emerged as two distinct shame areas. Mother shame is about our identity as mothers or our identity as women who are not mothers. Parenting shame is focused on how we raise and interact with our children.

Mother shame is an overwhelming issue for women. Every single participant in a mother role identified mother shame as an issue. And, because motherhood is an identity that is so closely tied to being a woman, it became clear that you don’t have to be a mother for motherhood to be a shame issue. As we learned in the powerful guide on understanding infertility, women struggling with infertility talked passionately about the mother shame in their lives. So did women who have chosen to delay having children or not to have children.

Society views womanhood and motherhood as inextricably bound; therefore, our value as women is often evaluated by where we are in relation to our roles as potential mothers. In some communities, the expectation of motherhood has many layers, including norms of what’s too young, what’s too old and what gender babies should be (as if mothers controlled this). Once women hit “the age” set by their community, they begin to feel the need to defend themselves against expectations of motherhood. Women are constantly asked why they haven’t married or, if they’re married, why they haven’t had children. Even women who are married and have one child are often asked why they haven’t had a second child. Women who have four or five kids are expected to explain why they had so many.

Mother shame seems to be a birthright for girls and women. On top of the societal expectation that motherhood defines womanhood, there are some very rigid expectations about what the good mother looks like. There are some very desirable qualities associated with motherhood, and there are some characteristics that are universally unwanted. Interestingly, to be perceived as “trying too hard” was identified as an unwanted characteristic, not only for motherhood but also for all the areas in this category. We want perfection, but we don’t want to look like we’re working for it—we want it to just materialize somehow.

Poof! There It Is

“You don’t have the time or talent to look that messy.” Even though I hear this every time I bring my stack of Meg Ryan pictures to my hairstylist, I still don’t believe her. All I want is Meg Ryan hair. This last time I asked, “I want to look like I just rolled out of bed. How hard can that be?” She spit back, “It takes two hours and ten people to get that ‘natural’ look—get over it.”

We want to be natural beauties, natural mothers, naturally good parents, and we want to belong to naturally fabulous families. Think about how much money has been made selling products that promise “the natural look.” And, when it comes to work, we love to hear “She makes it look so easy,” or “She’s a natural.”

The research participants really exposed an interesting perfection paradox: Imperfection brings shame, and working too hard for perfection brings shame. In this age of instant gratification and celebrity for celebrity’s sake, it is easy to understand how we’ve fallen for the idea that we can just want something bad enough and...Poof! There it is. How many of us have fallen prey to that saying, “It shouldn’t be this much work,” or “It just doesn’t come naturally to me; it must not be my thing.”

Yes, there are naturally talented people. But for most of us, including the celebrities and superstars, achievement is about hard work and commitment. Ninety-five percent of the people who are in great shape and have healthy bodies work at it...a lot.

I know several people who possess parenting skills that I really respect—they work at it. They talk about parenting as a skills-based job that requires training, practice and a significant time investment. They read, they take classes, they practice and they evaluate their techniques and strategies.

The same applies to family and motherhood. There is a direct correlation between input and output. The areas in this category are like other skills-based endeavors: If you have reasonable goals, the more you invest your time and resources and the more you practice, the more likely you are to reach those goals.

A couple of years ago, a doctoral student told me, “I’d love to write a book. I’ve been collecting material for several years. I just don’t think I can do it.” When I asked her what was stopping her, she stared down at the ground between us and said, “It’s not easy for me. Writing is so stressful. I’m not like you—it just doesn’t pour out of me. Plus I’m not very thick-skinned and they say writers need to be able to laugh off criticism.”

I could sense that she felt some shame as she explained this—part of me felt real empathy for her. The other part of me was a little pissed off. I stood there thinking, “Writing doesn’t pour out of me. I tweeze it out one word at a time. Sometimes it’s not too bad and other days it’s excruciating. And criticism...every writer I know struggles with criticism.” You work at becoming better at hearing it, but it’s painful—especially when it’s personal.

When we believe that success should be effortless, we simultaneously set ourselves up for shame and diminish the efforts of people who are working on their issues around perfectionism; we become part of our own shame web and other women’s shame webs.

How many times have we dismissed someone’s efforts because we have bought into the expectation that “family” or “motherhood” shouldn’t be that hard? Marriage, parenting, health, careers, motherhood—each of these requires a tremendous amount of work. And trying to balance the demands of these five areas might be the defining challenge of our lives.

We need to reality-check our expectations. Just because we don’t sit down and channel the great American novel in one week doesn’t mean we won’t be good writers. And we need to remember that behind every “naturally gifted” person is normally a huge amount of work, dedication and commitment.

Defending Our Lives

When I spoke with women about the pressures of perfection, they were quick to explain that failing to look, love and work perfectly was only part of the problem. Of equal importance is the shame that stems from what we are willing to do to appear perfect or hide our imperfections. When perfection is the expectation and/or the goal, we are willing to put a lot on the line to maintain and protect our image. Here are some women’s stories.

Shame is being married for twenty years and never walking around naked in front of your husband—not even once.
I lie to people all the time. I tell them that my father lives in New Jersey. He’s been in prison for six years. I’m more ashamed of myself for lying than I am of my dad for being in jail. It’s one thing if your family is different because your parents are divorced or something. It’s different if your dad is a felon.
My husband had an affair last year. I haven’t even told my best friend. Everyone loves my husband and thinks we are a great couple. I know if I told her she would think less of both of us—not just him.
I want to go back to school and finish my degree. But with my kids and my part-time job I just can’t imagine being able to do it like I want to. I’m afraid I’ll get a B or C. I don’t want to do it unless I can do it one hundred percent, so I don’t go.
I just tell people my parents travel a lot. Last year I was the only freshman in my dorm whose parents didn’t come up for parents’ weekend. I didn’t invite them. They are racist and hateful and they think the whole world is out to get them. My dad thinks everybody owes him. When I was growing up I was always embarrassed for anyone to come to my house. It’s like they’re from a different planet.
I filter everything I tell my parents. They don’t know I’m gay and they don’t know I have a partner. There’s a lot of pressure in the gay and lesbian community to “come out.” I know it’s important, but you have to be prepared for your parents to walk out of your life. Not many people have to face that reality.
People at work always say, “Everything she touches turns to gold.” Sometimes it’s true, but lately my projections have been way off. The first time I packaged a deal that lost money, everyone in my office freaked out. They blamed everyone but me, when, in fact, it was my fault—I made a bad call. The second time it happened, my co-workers did the same thing. That’s when I realized that I’d become poster child for the department—they couldn’t stand the thought of me making a bad call. In this business, we just need to make more than we lose. No one makes money on every deal, but I’m expected to. My boss told me, “We need you to show people how it’s done—we need you to set the bar.” Now I dread work. I’ve started lying about my numbers and blaming losses on other people.

We are also more willing to use shame, fear and judgment with people who threaten our pursuit of perfection. We can feel threatened when people challenge or criticize us, or we can feel threatened simply because someone is making different choices than we would make.

This came up a lot around parenting, which is a particularly complex issue because we base our level of perfection both on how we are perceived as parents and how our children are perceived. As the examples throughout the book—and certainly several of the ones below—demonstrate, we are very susceptible to using shame, fear and judgment against our children when they engage in behaviors that damage the “parenting image” we are trying to create.

When my husband and I told my parents that we had decided not to have children, they fell apart. They kept asking, “What’s wrong with you?” and “How could you do this to us?” My mom actually said, “It’s a disgrace to the family—everyone will think something’s wrong.” I had known it would be hard, but it was far worse than I imagined.
My partner’s dad was on one of his regular tirades, yelling at her about being lesbian. He was calling her “a butch” and telling her she was an embarrassment to their “well-respected” family. Then, right in front of me, he says, “And of all things, you have to be a butch with a colored girlfriend.” I remember just standing there thinking, “He did not just say that.” We’re not talking about Archie Bunker here; we’re talking about a fifty-year-old, overeducated oil-and-gas executive. Shame really causes people to act crazy.
My husband is very tough on our son. He puts a lot of pressure on him. He wants him to get perfect grades and be the best baseball player at the school. I try to soften my husband up, but it never works. I see my son’s stress. I used to talk about it with the other baseball moms, but I’ve stopped. They started giving me a really hard time. They said the other kids think my husband is cruel and unfair. The other mothers think my husband and I are ruining my son’s life. I have no idea what to do. I just stay quiet.

In more extreme cases, our inability to expose imperfections can mean putting ourselves and/or the people we care about in real danger:

When I was pregnant all my girlfriends said, “Oh, just wait, just wait, you’re going to feel a love that you’ve never felt before, it’s amazing.” They’d go on and on, and after my first child was born, my son, I got really depressed and I actually didn’t feel anything toward him. I just felt sad and overwhelmed and really wanted to go back in my life to a time before I was even pregnant. To feel like that when you look at your new baby, I was so ashamed, I thought, “My God, I’m going to be one of those mothers that you know...my son’s going to turn out to be a crazy person and I’m a crazy person.” My husband was so freaked out. I think he thought he was married to a monster. I don’t think he knew what to say, and my mother-in-law just kept saying, “Something is wrong, she’s not normal, something is wrong, she’s not normal.” For two months my life was a living hell. I wouldn’t go to the doctor because I was too ashamed. Finally, when it got so bad I could barely function and I was afraid my family was going to put me away, I forced myself to go to the doctor. The doctor explained that some women experience depression after having a baby and it could be based on my hormones. She said it could happen to me even if I’m normally a loving person. I got on medication, which that’s pretty bad itself, but it’s not as bad as feeling nothing toward your child. Within two months, I felt normal again. I just look back at that time and know that was the darkest place I’ve ever been.
I’m ashamed at how much I absolutely hate my body. I mean, I hate my body sometimes so much that I wish I’d get sick, I mean really sick. So sick that I lose thirty or forty pounds. I don’t want to die, but if I could just be sick enough, I don’t even care how miserable I’d be, but if I could be sick enough to lose thirty or forty pounds and then be well, it’d be worth it. I mean, can you imagine hating your body that much? It’s like I’m ashamed of my body and I’m ashamed of how much I hate it.
My daughter is on drugs and my son in junior high is failing school. When your only job is raising your kids and they’re both failures, then you’re a failure. My friends keep telling me I need to get help for my daughter, but I don’t know what to do. I can’t tell my husband; he’d go nuts. I know she drinks and drives, but if I take her car away, he’d want to know why.
At some point I realized that refusing to see a doctor because I was ashamed of my body and being overweight was tantamount to suicide. It had to get that bad before I could force myself to go to the doctor.
Sometimes I have unprotected sex. I know it’s stupid, but it’s such a turnoff to guys. It’s hard enough being thirty and single; I don’t want to be the safe-sex police on top of that. If I ask and they pretend like they don’t hear or say they don’t want to—I’m not comfortable making it an issue.

As these quotes demonstrate, pursuing perfection can be as dangerous as it is unfulfilling. Sometimes, the risks we take are not as obvious as the ones above. One example of this is my own struggle with being perceived as an overprotective and uptight mother.

Between my experiences as a social worker and Steve’s experiences in pediatrics, I’ve seen a disproportionate number of bad things happen to children. Sometimes it’s difficult for me to tease out the fear from the reality-based concerns. Two issues that are particularly important to me are gun safety and seat belts.

If Ellen is invited to play at someone’s house, I want to make sure there aren’t loaded guns in the house. And I want to make sure that she’s properly restrained in a car seat if she’s going to be in a car. For the past few years she’s been young enough that we accompany her to play dates. But as she gets older, that’s changing.

Sometimes I find myself silenced by the shame of appearing obsessively worried. I don’t want to be perceived as that “hysterical, hovering mom.” I’ve had to really reach out to my connection network for support and help reframing the issues.

A friend of mine who works in a teen-pregnancy prevention program told me what she tells the kids: “If you aren’t comfortable enough to talk about condoms with someone, that means you don’t know them well enough to have sex.” Now, rather than thinking, “I hope they don’t think I’m crazy,” I think, “If I’m too ashamed to talk about these issues, I’m probably not comfortable enough with these folks to let Ellen go to their house unsupervised.”

Perfectionism and Shame Resilience

To better understand how each of the four elements of shame resilience can help us overcome perfectionism, I’ll share another story about one of my personal struggles with perfectionism.

When I was pregnant with Ellen, several companies, including a computer manufacturer, had advertising campaigns that featured young mothers working from home. Invariably, the ads portrayed the mother, in her bunny slippers, working away at the computer while her child gazed lovingly at her from the play mat situated right next to the desk. The commercials would always end with the mother simultaneously receiving praise and validation from her child and from her professional colleagues.

I thought about that image every day. I wanted to be just like the commercial. I would picture myself in a cool T shirt and size-eight yoga pants (I’ve never been a size eight), with a loose ponytail (I’ve had short hair for the past decade), a laptop, a cooperative baby smiling from the play mat, exciting work and loads of personal and professional validation. Suffice it to say that someone at that marketing agency did their homework—I’m sure I was the targeted demographic and I fell for it, hook, line and laptop.

One day, when Ellen was about two months old, my vision was realized. I was one of three researchers being considered for a community evaluation project. I had a phone interview with two community leaders scheduled for 1:00 P.M. I had everything scheduled down to the minute. Ellen nursed at noon and was sound asleep by 12:55 P.M. The call came in promptly at 1:00 P.M. I had all my questions prepared, a cell phone with a mute button and a headset ready just in case. It was perfect...until 1:05 P.M.

About five minutes into the interview, Ellen started crying. Not screaming, but crying. At 1:06 P.M. she stopped crying and started screaming. She screamed so loudly that both of the interviewers asked if everything was OK. I quickly replied, “Everything’s great—please continue.” As they explained the project, I went into Ellen’s room, holding down the mute button and periodically testing its power by repeatedly asking, “Can you hear me? Can you hear me?”

By the time I got to her crib, the front of my T shirt was soaking wet with breast milk. Ellen had a certain “call of the wild” that would immediately send my milk making into overdrive. Ellen was screaming because she’d had one of those explosive poops that shoot up the back of the diaper and don’t stop until the entire back of the onesie is covered.

All of a sudden, as I’m evaluating the crib damage, I hear the dreaded “Ms. Brown, are you there?” “Yes, I’m here. I’m just taking notes so I can more thoroughly think through the project. Can you tell me about the project funding?”

Whew. It worked. As they started explaining important things that I should have been writing down, I kept one hand on the mute button, pushed Ellen against the crib bumper and slid her into my arm. Poop was everywhere. I managed to get her undressed, clean her off with a dozen wet wipes and carry her, naked, back to my room.

She was still crying and at this point milk was literally dripping off my shirt. I laid her on my bed long enough to get one arm out of the T shirt, pulled my drenched bra down around my waist, pulled the nursing pillow around me and started feeding her. As soon as she was quiet, I came back to the call. I managed to make a few coherent statements before all hell broke loose.

The stress of the situation was too much for my body to take. Within seconds I was riding the wave of a serious diarrhea attack. At this point, I was standing up with the nursing pillow around my waist, tears pouring down my face, my T shirt hanging down my back and trying to do the pressed-cheek penguin walk around the room.

As gracefully as possible, I took myself out of the running for the position and thanked the interviewers for their time. I just sat there, holding Ellen and crying. I felt ashamed about my inability to pull off my vision of working-mother perfection. It was one thing to take myself out of the running for the research position, but it was even worse to look down at little, naked poop-smeared Ellen, and feel like I had let her down too.

A few weeks later, Steve and Dawn suggested that I apply what I was learning about shame to this situation (I’m no stranger to the “shame researcher, heal thyself” comment). As I thought about it, my shame turned into disappointment followed by disillusionment, followed by a healthy dose of “I’m never going to fall for that smiling-baby-laptop-bunny-slipper bullshit again.”

Now when my first-time-mom friends tell me how they are going to work at home with their newborns, I’m quick to share my story. They often respond by asking, “Can’t you just plan your work around the baby’s schedule?” or “Can’t you just make sure she goes potty before the call?” I lovingly tell them, “Only in the commercials.”

When I applied the four elements of shame resilience to this situation, here’s what I learned:

Recognizing Our Shame Triggers: I did not want to be perceived as incapable of balancing motherhood and work. I did not want to be perceived as needing help. I wanted to be perceived as one of those “laid-back, balance everything, don’t need help” working mothers. I’m still not sure about the origin of the messages that fueled that identity. I know some of them came from what I saw growing up in my family.
My mom didn’t work outside the home until I was in my late teens. She was the room parent, the Girl Scout leader, the swim-team mom, the carpool coordinator, etc....That’s the picture I had in my head for me, but with work somehow added to the vision. I’d just do what she did, plus work full time and finish graduate school.

The whole idea that “something would have to give” wasn’t for me. That was for the other mothers—the ones who couldn’t do it all. I figured that I belonged to a different group of moms—you know, the ones in the commercials. I liked their messages better:

Buy this laptop and working from home with a newborn will be easy and you’ll be hip, cool and funky.
Start your busy “work from home” morning with our coffee and you’ll live in a cool loft in SoHo and have great clothes.
If you buy our detergent, you’ll find yourself walking on the beach with your baby in one hand and your promotion letter in the other.

Practicing Critical Awareness: There are expectations that women can do it all—the superwoman syndrome. Despite my best efforts and the lessons I’ve learned, I sometimes still think I can do it all, and all at the same time. I think the expectation exists as a result of women striving for equality in the workforce, yet not getting the support and help that is necessary for real equality.

I also think the need to do it all at the same time, especially work and mothering, is related to the fact that we view motherhood as unpaid, unimportant, easy work. The reality is that raising children is more difficult (and rewarding) than any job I’ve ever had. You just don’t get formally evaluated, validated or paid.

Lastly, the entire debate over “going back to work versus staying at home” is reserved for women who have the resources to think of work as an option. We often blame women for taking on too much—for choosing the superwoman lifestyle. Many women have to “do it all” or their kids don’t eat.

For me, part of practicing critical awareness is constantly decoding messages. Sometimes when people make comments about our choices, it feels shaming and we don’t know why. Here are some of the conflicting underlying messages that fuel our shame and self-doubt:

You are what you earn.
Motherhood is easy—what else do you do?
You should have a real job. You need your own money and identity.
You should be at home. That’s your job.
If you were a better mother or better professional, you could do both easily.

Reaching Out: When it comes to my personal struggles with appearance, family, parenting, motherhood and work, I’m one hundred percent dependent on my connection network. I depend on them for advice, guidance, support, feedback, validation, praise and sometimes I need them for plain old handholding or baby-sitting.

I’ve worked very hard to build this network—it’s now big and strong. I also depend on these people to lean on me. I know it sounds funny, but I want to be in relationships that work both ways. Receiving empathy is a wonderful gift, but so is offering it. Both giving and receiving make me a better person and help increase my shame resilience.

My shame web around these issues is primarily the media and myself. I constantly work on it, but I’m still vulnerable to magazines and movies. I have to be vigilant about practicing critical awareness and talking to my connection network about these topics. There are also friends and family members who can push buttons—especially about parenting and work.

Speaking Shame: If the goal of speaking shame is learning how to express how we feel and ask for what we need, then I’d say I’m getting better. I’m definitely better at the former. Like many women, I often find it difficult to ask for what I need—especially if I need help or support.

During the interviews, an interesting pattern emerged around help seeking. It seems that many women struggle to ask for help or support. So often, we are the caregivers and helpers. We convince ourselves that we shouldn’t need help so we don’t ask for it. Then, we get angry or hurt because no one offers. We think, “Doesn’t he see me drowning?” or “Why won’t she do something?” This can quickly escalate into a blame-and-shame situation: We need help, but we don’t ask for it. We get angry because we don’t get it. We feel ashamed for even thinking someone would help us when we knew they wouldn’t.

For me, asking for help is a work in progress.