Daring Greatly Part 2

Before I started doing this work, my honest answers would have been: Scared, angry, judgmental, controlling, perfecting, manufacturing certainty.

Scared, angry, judgmental, controlling, perfecting, manufacturing certainty.

At work, very unwilling if criticism, judgment, blame, or shame was possible. Taking emotional risks with the people I love was always mired in fear of something bad happening-a total joy killer that we'll explore in the "Armory" chapter.

This questioning process helps because, as you can see from my answers, regardless of our willingness to do vulnerability, it does us. When we pretend that we can avoid vulnerability we engage in behaviors that are often inconsistent with who we want to be. Experiencing vulnerability isn't a choice-the only choice we have is how we're going to respond when we are confronted with uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. As a huge fan of the band Rush, this seems like the perfect place to throw in a quote from their song "Freewill": "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."

In Chapter 4 we'll take a closer look at the conscious and unconscious behaviors we use to protect ourselves when we believe we're "not doing vulnerability."

MYTH #3: VULNERABILITY IS LETTING IT ALL HANG OUT.

One line of questioning that I often get is about our "let it all hang out" culture. Can't there be too much vulnerability? Isn't there such a thing as oversharing? These questions are inevitably followed by examples from celebrity culture. What about when Movie Star X tweeted about her husband's suicide attempt? Or what about reality TV stars who share the intimate details of their lives and their children's lives with the world?

Vulnerability is based on mutuality and requires boundaries and trust. It's not oversharing, it's not purging, it's not indiscriminate disclosure, and it's not celebrity-style social media information dumps. Vulnerability is about sharing our feelings and our experiences with people who have earned the right to hear them. Being vulnerable and open is mutual and an integral part of the trust-building process.

We can't always have guarantees in place before we risk sharing; however, we don't bare our souls the first time we meet someone. We don't lead with "Hi, my name is Brene, and here's my darkest struggle." That's not vulnerability. That may be desperation or woundedness or even attention-seeking, but it's not vulnerability. Why? Because sharing appropriately, with boundaries, means sharing with people with whom we've developed relationships that can bear the weight of our story. The result of this mutually respectful vulnerability is increased connection, trust, and engagement.

Vulnerability without boundaries leads to disconnection, distrust, and disengagement. In fact, as we'll explore in Chapter 4, "letting it all hang out" or boundaryless disclosure is one way we protect ourselves from real vulnerability. And the TMI (too much information) issue is not even a case of "too much vulnerability"-vulnerability is bankrupt on its own terms when people move from being vulnerable to using vulnerability to deal with unmet needs, get attention, or engage in the shock-and-awe behaviors that are so commonplace in today's culture.

To more effectively dispel the myth that vulnerability is a secret-sharing-free-for-all, let's examine the issue of trust.

When I talk to groups about the importance of being vulnerable, there's always a flood of questions about the need for trust: "How do I know if I can trust someone enough to be vulnerable?"

"I'll only be vulnerable with someone if I'm sure they won't turn on me."

"How can you tell who's got your back?"

"How do we build trust with people?"

The good news is that the answers to these questions emerged from the data. The bad news is that it's a chicken-or-the-egg issue: We need to feel trust to be vulnerable and we need to be vulnerable in order to trust.

There is no trust test, no scoring system, no green light that tells us that it's safe to let ourselves be seen. The research partic.i.p.ants described trust as a slow-building, layered process that happens over time. In our family, we refer to trust as "the Marble Jar."

In the middle of third grade, Ellen had her first experience with betrayal. In many elementary school settings, third grade is a big move. Students are no longer cl.u.s.tered with the K2 crowd; they're now navigating the Grade 35 group. During recess, she had confided in a friend from her cla.s.s about a funny, slightly embarra.s.sing thing that had happened to her earlier in the day. By lunchtime, all of the girls in her peer group knew her secret and were giving her a hard time. It was an important lesson, but also a painful one, because up to that point she had never considered the possibility that someone would do that.

When she came home, she burst into tears and told me that she was never going to tell anyone anything again. Her feelings were so hurt. Listening, I felt my heart aching for her. To make matters worse, Ellen told me that the girls were still laughing at her when they returned to the cla.s.sroom, so much so that her teacher separated them and took some marbles out of the marble jar.

Ellen's teacher had a large, clear gla.s.s vase that she and the kids referred to as "the marble jar." She kept a bag of colored marbles next to the jar, and whenever the cla.s.s was collectively making good choices, she would throw some marbles into the jar. Whenever the cla.s.s was acting out, breaking rules, or not listening, the teacher would take marbles out of the jar. If and when the marbles made it to the top of the jar, the students would be rewarded with a celebration party.

As much as I wanted to pull Ellen close and whisper, "Not sharing with those girls is a great idea! That way they'll never hurt us you again," I put my fears and anger aside, and started trying to figure out how to talk to her about trust and connection. As I was searching for the right way to translate my own experiences of trust, and what I was learning about trust from the research, I thought, Ah, the marble jar. Perfect.

I told Ellen to think about her friendships as marble jars. Whenever someone supports you, or is kind to you, or sticks up for you, or honors what you share with them as private, you put marbles in the jar. When people are mean, or disrespectful, or share your secrets, marbles come out. When I asked her if it made sense, she nodded her head with excitement and said, "I've got marble jar friends! I've got marble jar friends!"

When I asked her to tell me about it, she described four friends whom she could always count on, who knew some of her secrets and would never tell, and who told her some of their secrets too. She said, "These are the friends who ask me to sit with them, even if they've been asked to sit at the popular kids' table."

It was such a great moment for both of us. When I asked her how her marble jar friends became marble jar friends, she thought about it for a minute and replied, "I'm not sure. How did your marble jar friends get their marbles?" After thinking about it for a while, we both started blurting out our answers. Some of hers were: They keep our secrets.

They tell us their secrets.

They remember my birthday!

They know who Oma and Opa are.

They always make sure I'm included in fun things.

They know when I'm sad and ask me why.

When I miss school because I'm sick, they ask their moms to call to check on me.

And mine? Exactly the same (except for me, Oma and Opa are Deanne and David, my mom and stepdad). When my mom comes to Ellen or Charlie's events, it's a great feeling to hear one of my friends say, "Hey, Deanne! Good to see you." I always think, She remembered my mom's name. She cares. She's paying attention.

Trust is built one marble at a time.

The chicken-or-the-egg dilemma comes into play when we think about the investment and leap that people in relationships have to make before the building process ever begins. The teacher didn't say, "I'm not buying a jar and marbles until I know that the cla.s.s can collectively make good choices." The jar was there on the first day of school. In fact, by the end of the first day, she had already filled the bottom with a layer of marbles. The kids didn't say, "We're not going to make good choices because we don't believe you'll put marbles in the jar." They worked hard and enthusiastically engaged with the marble jar idea based on their teacher's word.

One of my favorite scholars in the field of relationships is John Gottman. He's considered the country's foremost couples researcher because of the power and accessibility of his pioneering work on how we connect and build relationships. His book The Science of Trust: Emotional Attunement for Couples is an insightful and wise book on the anatomy of trust and trust building. In an article on the University of CaliforniaBerkeley's "Greater Good" website (www.greatergood.berkeley.edu), Gottman describes trust building with our partners in a manner totally consistent with what I found in my research and what Ellen and I call the marble jar: What I've found through research is that trust is built in very small moments, which I call "sliding door" moments, after the movie Sliding Doors. In any interaction, there is a possibility of connecting with your partner or turning away from your partner.

Let me give you an example of that from my own relationship. One night, I really wanted to finish a mystery novel. I thought I knew who the killer was, but I was anxious to find out. At one point in the night, I put the novel on my bedside and walked into the bathroom.

As I pa.s.sed the mirror, I saw my wife's face in the reflection, and she looked sad, brushing her hair. There was a sliding door moment.

I had a choice. I could sneak out of the bathroom and think, I don't want to deal with her sadness tonight; I want to read my novel. But instead, because I'm a sensitive researcher of relationships, I decided to go into the bathroom. I took the brush from her hair and asked, "What's the matter, baby?" And she told me why she was sad.

Now, at that moment, I was building trust; I was there for her. I was connecting with her rather than choosing to think only about what I wanted. These are the moments, we've discovered, that build trust.

One such moment is not that important, but if you're always choosing to turn away, then trust erodes in a relationship-very gradually, very slowly.

When we think about betrayal in terms of the marble jar metaphor, most of us think of someone we trust doing something so terrible that it forces us to grab the jar and dump out every single marble. What's the worst betrayal of trust you can think of? He sleeps with my best friend. She lies about where the money went. He/she chooses someone over me. Someone uses my vulnerability against me (an act of emotional treason that causes most of us to slam the entire jar to the ground rather than just dumping the marbles). All terrible betrayals, definitely, but there is a particular sort of betrayal that is more insidious and equally corrosive to trust.

In fact, this betrayal usually happens long before the other ones. I'm talking about the betrayal of disengagement. Of not caring. Of letting the connection go. Of not being willing to devote time and effort to the relationship. The word betrayal evokes experiences of cheating, lying, breaking a confidence, failing to defend us to someone else who's gossiping about us, and not choosing us over other people. These behaviors are certainly betrayals, but they're not the only form of betrayal. If I had to choose the form of betrayal that emerged most frequently from my research and that was the most dangerous in terms of corroding the trust connection, I would say disengagement.

When the people we love or with whom we have a deep connection stop caring, stop paying attention, stop investing, and stop fighting for the relationship, trust begins to slip away and hurt starts seeping in. Disengagement triggers shame and our greatest fears-the fears of being abandoned, unworthy, and unlovable. What can make this covert betrayal so much more dangerous than something like a lie or an affair is that we can't point to the source of our pain-there's no event, no obvious evidence of brokenness. It can feel crazy-making.

We may tell a disengaged partner, "You don't seem to care anymore," but without "evidence" of this, the response is "I'm home from work every night by six P.M. I tuck in the kids. I'm taking the boys to Little League. What do you want from me?" Or at work, we think, Why am I not getting feedback? Tell me you love it! Tell me it sucks! Just tell me something so I know you remember that I work here!

With children, actions speak louder than words. When we stop requesting invitations into their lives by asking about their day, asking them to tell us about their favorite songs, wondering how their friends are doing, then children feel pain and fear (and not relief, despite how our teenagers may act). Because they can't articulate how they feel about our disengagement when we stop making an effort with them, they show us by acting out, thinking, This will get their attention.

Like trust, most experiences of betrayal happen slowly, one marble at a time. In fact, the overt or "big" betrayals that I mentioned before are more likely to happen after a period of disengagement and slowly eroding trust. What I've learned about trust professionally and what I've lived personally boils down to this: Trust is a product of vulnerability that grows over time and requires work, attention, and full engagement. Trust isn't a grand gesture-it's a growing marble collection.

MYTH #4: WE CAN GO IT ALONE.

Going it alone is a value we hold in high esteem in our culture, ironically even when it comes to cultivating connection. I get the appeal; I have that rugged individualism in my DNA. In fact, one of my very favorite break-up-kick-a.s.s-no-one-can-hurt-me songs is Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again." If you're a person of a certain age, I'd put money down that you've rolled down the window and defiantly sung: "And here I go again on my own....Like a drifter I was born to walk alone...." If Whitesnake isn't your cup of tea, there are bootstrapping anthems in every imaginable genre. In reality, walking alone can feel miserable and depressing, but we admire the strength it conveys, and going it alone is revered in our culture.

Well, as much as I love the idea of walking alone down a lonely street of dreams, the vulnerability journey is not the kind of journey we can make alone. We need support. We need folks who will let us try on new ways of being without judging us. We need a hand to pull us up off the ground when we get kicked down in the arena (and if we live a courageous life, that will happen). Across the course of my research, partic.i.p.ants were very clear about their need for support, encouragement, and sometimes professional help as they reengaged with vulnerability and their emotional lives. Most of us are good at giving help, but when it comes to vulnerability, we need to ask for help too.

In The Gifts of Imperfection, I write, "Until we can receive with an open heart, we are never really giving with an open heart. When we attach judgment to receiving help, we knowingly or unknowingly attach judgment to giving help." We all need help. I know I couldn't have done it without reinforcements that included my husband Steve, a great therapist, a stack of books a mile high, and friends and family members who were on a similar journey. Vulnerability begets vulnerability; courage is contagious.

There's actually some very persuasive leadership research that supports the idea that asking for support is critical, and that vulnerability and courage are contagious. In a 2011 Harvard Business Review article, Peter Fuda and Richard Badham use a series of metaphors to explore how leaders spark and sustain change. One of the metaphors is the s...o...b..ll. The s...o...b..ll starts rolling when a leader is willing to be vulnerable with his or her subordinates. Their research shows that this act of vulnerability is predictably perceived as courageous by team members and inspires others to follow suit.

Supporting the metaphor of the s...o...b..ll is the story of Clynton, the managing director of a large German corporation who realized that his directive leadership style was preventing senior managers from taking initiative. The researchers explain, "He could have worked in private to change his behavior-but instead he stood up at an annual meeting of his top sixty managers, acknowledged his failings, and outlined both his personal and organizational roles. He admitted that he didn't have all of the answers and asked his team for help leading the company." Having studied the transformation that followed this event, the researchers report that Clynton's effectiveness surged, his team flourished, there were increases in initiative and innovation, and his organization went on to outperform much larger compet.i.tors.

Similar to the story above, my greatest personal and professional transformations happened when I started asking hard questions about how my fear of being vulnerable was holding me back and when I found the courage to share my struggles and ask for help. After running from vulnerability, I found that learning how to lean into the discomfort of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure was a painful process.

I did believe that I could opt out of feeling vulnerable, so when it happened-when the phone rang with unimaginable news; or when I was scared; or when I loved so fiercely that rather than feeling grat.i.tude and joy I could only prepare for loss-I controlled things. I managed situations and micromanaged the people around me. I performed until there was no energy left to feel. I made what was uncertain certain, no matter what the cost. I stayed so busy that the truth of my hurting and my fear could never catch up. I looked brave on the outside and felt scared on the inside.

Slowly I learned that this shield was too heavy to lug around, and that the only thing it really did was keep me from knowing myself and letting myself be known. The shield required that I stay small and quiet behind it so as not to draw attention to my imperfections and vulnerabilities. It was exhausting.

I remember a very tender moment from that year, when Steve and I were lying on the floor watching Ellen do a series of crazy, arm-flinging, and knee-slapping dances and tumbles. I looked at Steve and said, "Isn't it funny how I just love her that much more for being so vulnerable and uninhibited and goofy. I could never do that. Can you imagine knowing that you're loved like that?" Steve looked at me and said, "I love you exactly like that." Honestly, as someone who rarely risked vulnerability and always steered clear of silly or goofy, it never dawned on me that adults could love each other like that; that I could be loved for my vulnerabilities, not despite them.

All of the love and support I received-especially from Steve and Diana, my therapist-allowed me to slowly begin to take more risks, to show up at work and at home in new ways. I took more chances and tried new things, like storytelling. I learned how to set new boundaries and say no, even when I was terrified that I was going to p.i.s.s off a friend or squander a professional opportunity that I'd regret. So far, I haven't regretted a single no.

Going back to Roosevelt's "Man in the Arena" speech, I also learned that the people who love me, the people I really depend on, were never the critics who were pointing at me while I stumbled. They weren't in the bleachers at all. They were with me in the arena. Fighting for me and with me.

Nothing has transformed my life more than realizing that it's a waste of time to evaluate my worthiness by weighing the reaction of the people in the stands. The people who love me and will be there regardless of the outcome are within arm's reach. This realization changed everything. That's the wife and mother and friend that I now strive to be. I want our home to be a place where we can be our bravest selves and our most fearful selves. Where we practice difficult conversations and share our shaming moments from school and work. I want to look at Steve and my kids and say, "I'm with you. In the arena. And when we fail, we'll fail together, while daring greatly." We simply can't learn to be more vulnerable and courageous on our own. Sometimes our first and greatest dare is asking for support.

CHAPTER 3.

UNDERSTANDING AND COMBATING SHAME.

(AKA, GREMLIN NINJA WARRIOR TRAINING).

Shame derives its power from being unspeakable. That's why it loves perfectionists-it's so easy to keep us quiet. If we cultivate enough awareness about shame to name it and speak to it, we've basically cut it off at the knees. Shame hates having words wrapped around it. If we speak shame, it begins to wither. Just the way exposure to light was deadly for the gremlins, language and story bring light to shame and destroy it.

VULNERABILITY AND SHAME IN ONE BOOK!.

ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL US?.

OR.

DEFENSE AGAINST THE DARK ARTS.

Last year, after I had finished a talk on Wholehearted families, a man approached me on the stage. He stuck out his hand and said, "I just want to say thank you." I shook his hand and offered a kind smile as he looked down at the floor. I could tell that he was fighting back tears.

He took a deep breath and said, "I have to tell you that I really didn't want to come tonight. I tried to get out of it, but my wife made me."

I chuckled. "Yeah, I get that a lot."

"I couldn't understand why she was so excited. I told her that I couldn't think of a worse way to spend a Thursday night than listening to a shame researcher. She said that it was really important to her and I had to stop complaining, otherwise I'd ruin it for her." He paused for a few seconds, then surprised me by asking, "Are you a Harry Potter fan?"

I stalled for a second while I tried to connect everything he was saying. When I finally gave up, I answered his question. "Yes, I am a huge fan. I've read all of the books several times, and I've watched and rewatched the movies. I'm hardcore. Why?"

He looked a little embarra.s.sed before he explained, "Well, I didn't know anything about you, and as my dread built up about coming tonight, I kept picturing you as Snape. I thought you'd be scary. I thought you'd be wearing all black and that you'd talk slowly and in a deep, haunting voice-like the world was ending."

I laughed so hard that I almost spit out the water I was drinking. "I love Snape! I'm not sure that I want to look like him, but he's my favorite character." I immediately glanced over at my purse, which was still tucked under the bottom of the podium. In it my keys were (and are) attached to my beloved LEGO Snape keychain.

We shared a laugh about his Snape projection, then things got more serious. "What you said really made sense to me. Especially the part about us being so afraid of the dark stuff. What's the quote that you shared with the picture of the twinkle lights?"

"Oh, the twinkle light quote. It's one of my favorites: 'Only when we're brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.'"

He nodded. "Yes! That one! I'm sure that's why I didn't want to come. It's crazy how much energy we spend trying to avoid these hard topics when they're really the only ones that can set us free. I was shamed a lot growing up and I don't want to do that to my three kids. I want them to know they're enough. I don't want them to be afraid to talk about the hard s.h.i.t with us. I want them to be shame resilient."

At this point we were both teary-eyed. I reached up and did that awkward "are you a hugger?" gesture, then I gave him a big ol' hug. After we let go of our this-stuff-is-hard-but-we-can-do-it embrace, he looked at me and said, "I'm pretty bad at vulnerability, but I'm really good at shame. Is getting past shame necessary for getting to vulnerability?"

"Yes. Shame resilience is key to embracing our vulnerability. We can't let ourselves be seen if we're terrified by what people might think. Often 'not being good at vulnerability' means that we're d.a.m.n good at shame."

As I stumbled for better language to explain how shame stops us from being vulnerable and connected, I remembered my very favorite exchange from Harry Potter. "Do you remember when Harry was worried that he might be bad because he was angry all of the time and had dark feelings?"

He enthusiastically answered, "Yes! Of course! The conversation with Sirius Black! That's the moral of the entire story."

"Exactly! Sirius told Harry to listen to him very carefully, then he said, 'You're not a bad person. You're a very good person who bad things have happened to. Besides, the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters. We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are.'"

"I get it," he sighed.

"We all have shame. We all have good and bad, dark and light, inside of us. But if we don't come to terms with our shame, our struggles, we start believing that there's something wrong with us-that we're bad, flawed, not good enough-and even worse, we start acting on those beliefs. If we want to be fully engaged, to be connected, we have to be vulnerable. In order to be vulnerable, we need to develop resilience to shame."

At this point, his wife was waiting by the stage stairs. He thanked me, gave me another quick hug, and walked away. Just as he reached the bottom of the stairs, he turned back and said, "You may not be Snape, but you're a d.a.m.n good Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher!"

It was a conversation and a moment that I'll never forget. On the way home that night, I thought about a line from one of the books where Harry Potter was detailing the fate of several unsuccessful Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers: "One sacked, one dead, one lost his memory, and one was locked in a trunk for nine months." I remember thinking, "Sounds about right."

I won't go on with the Harry Potter metaphor because I'm sure there's one or two of you out there who haven't had the chance to read the books or see the films, but I have to say that J. K. Rowling's incredible imagination has made teaching shame a lot easier and way more fun. The allegorical power of Harry Potter lends itself to talking about everything from the struggle between light and dark to the hero's journey and why vulnerability and love are the truest marks of courage. Having spent so long trying to describe and define unnamed emotions and experiences, I find that Harry Potter has given me a treasure trove of characters, monsters, and images to use in my teaching. For that, I'll be forever grateful.

I didn't set out to become a wild-eyed shame evangelist or a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, but after spending the past decade studying the corrosive effect that shame has on how we live, love, parent, work, and lead, I've found myself practically screaming from the top of my lungs, "Yes, shame is tough to talk about. But the conversation isn't nearly as dangerous as what we're creating with our silence! We all experience shame. We're all afraid to talk about it. And, the less we talk about it, the more we have it."

We have to be vulnerable if we want more courage; if we want to dare greatly. But as I told my Harry Potter friend, how can we let ourselves be seen if shame has us terrified of what people might think?

Let me give you an example.