Shame's Greatest Hits: Self-Compassion and ADHD
We're continuing our conversation on self-compassion and ADHD with a walk through the garden of shame. You know that garden, the one with the plants we nourish and carry with us, the blooms we sniff regularly, all laced with the poison of regret and self-doubt. This week, we're tearing up that soil.
The conversation starts with a recap of concepts from The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook by Kristin Neff and Christopher Germer, as well as Neff's TEDxTalk, "The Space Between Self-Esteem and Self Compassion.". Quick reminder of the three core elements presented by Neff and Germer:
Self-Kindness
Common Humanity
Mindfulness
The biggest challenge to overcome, which we seem to struggle with universally, is the idea that just letting go of negative feelings is hard. You can't just read that in a book or hear it in a podcast and suddenly do it. But more important than that: it's ok for it to be hard to find yourself underneath all the shame. You're in there. And as long as you keep talking about it, one day you'll get there.
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Pete Wright:
Hello everybody, and welcome to Taking Control, the ADHD podcast on TruStory FM. I'm Pete Wright and I'm here with Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer:
Hello everyone. Hello, Pete Wright.
Pete Wright:
Oh, Nikki. We're continuing our conversation on self-compassion this week with the greatest hits of shame. Oh, shame.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, shame.
Pete Wright:
The gift that just keep on coming. You're fired up today. That's what I'm hearing.
Nikki Kinzer:
I am.
Pete Wright:
Got a lot of that big shame energy.
Nikki Kinzer:
I do. I want to crush it. As Alan Brown would say, "Crush it."
Pete Wright:
Crush it, again, crush it. So we're going to do some shame crushing today. In addition, we're going to invite you to head over to take control at adhd.com and get to know us a little bit better. Listen to the show right there on the website or subscribe to the mailing list, and we'll send you an email each time a new episode is released. You can connect with us on Facebook or Instagram or Pinterest at Take Control ADHD, or jump into the Discord community, that's where all the cool people hang out. Just head over to takecontroladhd.com/discord and you'll be swept over to the discord login page. If you don't have a discord account, you, you'll be guided through creating an account, but if you do have an account, you can just use your own login and it'll add you to our public chat server.
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Nikki Kinzer:
Not yet, but it's coming.
Pete Wright:
We have no news. News is coming. News is coming.
Nikki Kinzer:
News is coming.
Pete Wright:
All right. Let's talk shame. We're continuing this conversation last week as if we stopped in the middle of our conversation last week, and now we're just picking it up. We're talking about The Self-Compassion Workbook by Kristin Neff and Christopher Germer. Germer or Germer? I'm going to say Germer.
Nikki Kinzer:
I'm going to say Germer.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, let's go with Germer. So now we're talking about this very special chapter on shame.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. Chapter 17. Self-compassion and shame, and I'm going to add, and ADHD.
Pete Wright:
Outstanding.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. Yes. So again, a lot of this information is coming from this book, so I want to give them full, full credit. Definitely check it out. It has great worksheets, or not worksheets, I'm sorry, exercises and different reflections to do. It's not specific to ADHD, but by golly it could be. It's really good, and I've been talking a lot about it this week with my coaching groups, and just really excited to talk to you about this, Pete. So shame is the feeling that something is fundamentally wrong with us that will render us unacceptable or unlovable. How would you define shame, Pete?
Pete Wright:
Yeah, I mean, I think that's pretty much it. Shame is that pervasive feeling that I'm not good enough for whatever I'm doing at any given moment, or that everything I've done I have to feel bad about in some way or another. I'm able to find the thing that is worth regret, and I will hang on to that regret all the time.
Nikki Kinzer:
And I would add that what I see with clients is the fact that they blame themselves for everything. And so the shame comes from, well, this happened and it was my fault, therefore I'm a bad person because this is always my fault. It's always something that I did wrong.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. It's so funny when you say those words out loud, because shame is an incredibly egocentric feeling, it's all about me, somehow. Of course, it's not all about me and the things that I'm perceiving as wrongs that I've done to the world, most people are probably not thinking about it at any given time except me. But that doesn't change the fact that it's very real to my lived experience.
Nikki Kinzer:
And it's not only real, but it's daily. It's happening all the time. And I think that's the distinction with ADHDers is that they're feeling it all the time. So they're always, they've got this heavy, heavy load on their back all the time. It's not just one or two situations, it's like every day I'm doing something wrong. And I have an example, and I've been sharing this example. It just happened yesterday. But man, it hit me hard. And it's so I think relevant.
In my GPS group, we will chat as we're doing our work, which sometimes is good and sometimes is bad, but that's a whole nother story with distraction when you're trying to do work. But we were talking about transitions, and there was a comment around someone feeling really sad and embarrassed that it was taking them so much time to transition between tasks. And I'm guessing, of course, I don't know this for sure, I'm guessing because in their mind, they felt like it was taking too much time. This can't be normal. Something is wrong with me, so I need to have time to transition, but it's too much time and it's my fault. But this, and when I-
Pete Wright:
Because this is paired with the other great SH word, should. This should be taking me less time therefore, I should feel shame about it taking as much time as it did me to do this task.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right. Now, if you hearing that and me explaining that for the first time, do you think that person's a bad person?
Pete Wright:
No, of course not.
Nikki Kinzer:
Because it doesn't make sense, why would that be a bad thing? So my response was that it's not anything to be ashamed or embarrassed about. In fact, it's something that we want to be proud of. We want to be proud that you know yourself so well, that you know how to do your best work well, and that means-
Pete Wright:
And that you are able to predict how long it takes you to do stuff. The task takes as long as it takes, at least you can plan around it.
Nikki Kinzer:
But I'm going to clarify that You don't need to know how long the task is going to take. Well, I guess with the transition you are, with the transition, yes you know what you need, whether that's 30 minutes, five minutes or whatever, that's what you're saying. Yeah. And I think that that is something to be really proud of, that that's something that I need to do my best work, not something to be embarrassed about. And so if we can flip the script a little bit by, this isn't something to be embarrassed about, this is something you need. This is something that you know, need to do your best work.
So we want to let go of that expectation of that should, because it doesn't matter. This is how you work. It doesn't matter what everybody else is doing or what they need. And the acceptance allows you to release this pressure and move on through the day. And I think that something that we have to be really truthful about is we're not getting that stuff all done in a day anyway, regardless. So let's take the shame out of it because you're not doing it anyway because it's too high of an expectation. So I think that there's something about that. Does that make sense?
Pete Wright:
Yeah, it does. And I mean, there are so many directions to take this in. Part of it is, what are the lessons that you're learning about yourself in not just how you feel about the work that you're doing, but how you're organizing the work that you're doing? And are there ways you can approach the work practically in order to alleviate some of the emotional baggage that you're carrying into it? Should you break the task down more fully? Should you, whatever. How can you find yourself in smaller wins in order to move through and not feel bad about that stuff? About the stuff that you're struggling with. That's the part that gets me, but I think, well, I'll hold this for a second. Let's go to your next point, because I have a point.
Nikki Kinzer:
Okay. So in the book, they talk about how shame actually has three curious paradoxes. Shame feels blameworthy, but it is an innocent emotion. Shame feels lonely and isolating, but it is a universal emotion.
Pete Wright:
Well, and I think the third one is the best shame feels permanent and all encompassing, but it is a transitory emotional state that only corresponds to part of who we are. I feel like this is the one that gets me, because it unlocks the worst parts of me as cars on the shame train that I'm dragging behind me, that when I'm in a point when I'm working and feeling bad about something that I'm doing, when I'm living under the weight of shame, it unleashes an increased likelihood of anger or rage when I'm interrupted or when somebody knocks on the door if I'm in the middle of a flow state.
It makes me inflexible to the signals of the world around me. And it's not that I'm just angry all the time, it's that I'm living under the weight of shame. I already am hating myself therefore, it's so much easier for me to hate the world around me. And I think part of that is just all symptomatic of living in the world that we live in and dealing with loss of family and dealing with all those kinds of things. But it manifests in shame. It manifests in the shame state that allows the uglier pieces of me to be whole. And I don't love that.
Nikki Kinzer:
And what's interesting about you saying that is I'm going to actually quote a different book. So this is The Radical Guide for Women with ADHD, and this is what we're doing in our book club right now. And I highlighted this paragraph, and it's exactly, well close to what you're saying. If your beliefs about ADHD and yourself are negative, you'll perceive the world as a more negative rejecting hostile place. When this happens, you're likely to expect negative outcomes and hide away to protect yourself from the vulnerability that can actually draw people together.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. And the inverse of that is also true. My perception is not that the world necessarily is a hostile place, but that the world sees me as a hostile resident of it, because that's shame again, that's the self-isolation, the egocentric, the I'm the star of my shame world, and everybody should hate me now.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right, right.
Pete Wright:
Put the spotlight on me.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, and I think this number three point is really hard for ADHD because it feels so permanent, shame feels permanent. And so it's switching that mindset of trying to figure out how to make it this transitory emotional state.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, transitory.
Nikki Kinzer:
Transitory, yes. So interesting I think. And then they go on, and this is actually something that we learned. You actually long, long, long time ago shared the Brene Brown TED Talks.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, yeah. That was really impactful.
Nikki Kinzer:
Impactful, still very much so. And this comes from the book, but it also comes from Brene Brown. I mean, this is where I first heard it, is that there's this difference between guilt and shame. Guilt refers to feeling bad about a behavior, I did something bad. Shame is to feel bad about ourselves, so I am bad. Guilt can actually be productive because it can actually motivate us. We can learn from those situations and apologize if we need to, do something different next time. Shame is unproductive because it paralyzes us and renders incapable effective action. And that is really important, I think, for ADHD to understand is that when we start to feel shame, it paralyzes us and it doesn't move the needle forward. And especially when you're looking at phone calls you're avoiding, tasks that you're avoiding, things that have this incredible emotional shame around it.
It's not helping. It really is stopping you. So if we can start to unravel or untangle according to Sari Solden and Michelle Frank untangle some of that where we're feeling that shame and start to look at it a little bit differently, then we can start really opening up the door to action with more compassion with ourselves. So if you make the phone call that you haven't made, and let's say it does go bad, you can have compassion around that and know that you tried or whatever it might be. But if we sit in the shame, then we don't even make the phone call and we keep feeling bad. But what if we make the phone call and that person is like, "Oh my God, I'm so sorry I didn't call you. I've been so busy." Or whatever. We just don't know until we have that action. So that's my point there. Does that make sense?
Pete Wright:
Yeah, it does. And I think it is, for me, when I'm at my best. I get into the, it's like Schrodinger's phone call. Do you know about Schrodinger's cat?
Nikki Kinzer:
No.
Pete Wright:
So this is a philosophical thought experiment where there is a hypothetical cat in a box and the box is closed, and you can't see whether the cat is alive or dead in the box. And maybe, I mean, there are some ways that the thought experiment is played out where they say, "There's poison in the box." And you don't know if the cat's alive or dead because you can't know if the cat has eaten the poison. All you know is, while the cat is in the box and the lid is closed, it is both alive and dead. And so Schrodinger's phone call, you don't know if the call is going to go well or it's going to go poorly.
All you're doing is painting the picture of the dead cat in your head and living as if it is dead, when in fact, the call could go great. It really could, it could go well and poorly at exactly the same state because you haven't taken action yet. And so that's really the whole idea is to present this state of actionlessness that you have to be aware of the fact that you're standing at a fork and it's up to you to define, you have agency about whether or not you pick up the phone and dial it, or if you leave it on and just continue to suffer about this story that you can't ever write the end to.
Nikki Kinzer:
Interesting. I've never heard that before, but it's so true. So true. So a long, long time ago when we talked about shame, you talked about a quote that came, I think from one of your friends and-
Pete Wright:
That was Dr. Dodge.
Nikki Kinzer:
Dr. Dodge. Friend of the show. And shame is maintained by silence. Do you remember the quote?
Pete Wright:
Well, yeah. It's Shame hates the sun, shame hates the sun.
Nikki Kinzer:
That's what it is, shame hates the sun.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. When you live in shame, you're living in the dark. And when you shine light on whatever it is you feel ashamed about it withers and dies. And so the whole metaphor is about just pick up the phone, tell the person how you're feeling, be open about the state of your world and your actions and where you are at a project or whatever. Once you essentially pull the bandaid off, then things are allowed to begin healing. But nothing can begin healing until you shine a light on it.
Nikki Kinzer:
Quote here from the book, self-compassion is the ultimate antidote to shame by relating to our mistakes and kindness rather than self-judgment. Remembering our common humanity instead of feeling isolated by our failures and being mindful of our negative emotions, I feel bad. Rather identifying with them, I am bad. Self-compassion directly dismantles the shame. And if you remember last week we talked about these three areas of self-compassion. We talked about self-kindness, we talked about the mindfulness piece of it, and-
Pete Wright:
Oh, kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness.
Nikki Kinzer:
Thank you. Yes. And that's what that sentence that I just read is doing, it's putting that self-compassion around that shame. So the goal or the mission is to practice responding with compassion rather than shame. And I want to, again, highlight that there's lots of great exercises to practice in this book and certainly want you to check it out. I'm going to switch gears a little bit, going to a different book that I've been studying. I'm like a librarian this week.
Pete Wright:
I know. Look at you.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. So in the book with the Radical Guide for Women with ADHD by Sari Solden and Michelle Frank, this whole thing I'm going to talk about it struck me, the first time I read it was several years ago, it was pre COVID. And it's hit me in a way that I continue to think about it to this day. I think it's that powerful. The crux of the ADHD journey has as much to do with letting go of the false beliefs you have about yourself as it does with adding tools and strategies. This is what you need to recognize first and foremost, because this link, the one that binds your challenges to your worth, is far worse than any symptom of inattention could ever be. What does this mean to you, Pete?
Pete Wright:
Well, I hate it because it's paralyzing to me a little bit because it is an observation of an awareness that I know is true, but really struggle with personally. I know that letting go of false beliefs that you have about yourself is critical, and I have yet to figure out how to do it myself in my lived experience reliably and repeatedly. You know what I'm saying? It's just hard. It's just hard. And I hear this all the time. You have to let go of those things. Let go of the feelings of negativity. And I'm sure I've said them on this show, you've got to let go of those things. And yet, it's an impassable canyon of grief and doubt, and it's incredibly hard to do. And I have-
Nikki Kinzer:
Do you believe you can do it?
Pete Wright:
Yeah, I'm sure down the road there's a version of me that has been able to do it.
Nikki Kinzer:
What about today?
Pete Wright:
Yeah. I don't know. I don't know.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
That's what I'm saying. I get it. I get that-
Nikki Kinzer:
But what about hour by hour? I mean, if we break it down from not, oh, this is the person I am where I can just always separate these, but just right now in this hour, is there something that I can do that's going to make this work for me and not against me?
Pete Wright:
Yes. And I could say, I think the secret to that and where you're going is probably whatever's in front of me, minute by minute, even more, but really celebrating capability minute by minute. Right now, I have to edit a podcast. I know how to do that. I believe in my set of skills and the tools and technologies that I have in front of me to be able to do that. As long as I don't look up, as long as I don't look up and gaze around me at other things that could distract me from that effort, I feel like I can let go of any false beliefs that sneak in about my-
Nikki Kinzer:
But I want you to let it go even if you look up.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. And that's what I'm saying, it's so hard.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right, yeah, yeah. And so if you look up. It's still okay.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Yeah. But if I look up and I see a-
Nikki Kinzer:
I can physically see you getting uncomfortable.
Pete Wright:
No, no, no. But it's true. It's really legit. And I can feel myself, I can look up and I look at a discord chat and I see somebody post something that I feel like I should have an answer to, but I don't have an answer to, so I guess I better go back to bed. You know what I'm saying? That's the part that is a constant mountain. It's not like I'm climbing a mountain to be able to let go of all my false beliefs, it's that there are a bazillion mountains. There's always another mountain. And when I get to the other side of that mountain, new mountains are cropping up as if they're just being invented right there, like if there are always new mountains. So I guess in that light, my version of self-acceptance is to realize as soon as I conquer that mountain, as I climb that mountain, that there are going to be new mountains to climb, and I just have to keep climbing them. Don't stop climbing.
Nikki Kinzer:
With acceptance and compassion.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, yeah. Knowing that that's the mountain is finding acceptance and compassion. When I get to the top of it about whatever thing it is, I just have to internalize the fact that I know that about myself. There will always be mountains. I will always have to be looking out on the horizon.
Nikki Kinzer:
And that's the humanity of it. Because it's not just you, everyone as humans, ADHD, no ADHD, we all have mountains. And so if we bury ourselves in shame and negative self-talk, then we stay there and we keep believing that it's always going to be hard, this is always going to be this way. But if we can be more compassionate with ourselves and understand this is a universal feeling, and this is life, life is messy, it's just messy and gross sometimes, but it also can be beautiful and joyful.
Pete Wright:
Well, and the challenges are not consistent. I look at my task list today. I'm looking at Pete's today, and I see a whole lot of things on there that are fine, they're totally fine. And I see a second set of things that are totally fine in any other context, but I haven't gotten myself to do them. And that's the shame. There's nothing in here that is outside of my scope of ability, it's just I can find somebody. I'm not going to lie. It's my own mother. I've let my mother down on something that I just haven't done because I have continually reprioritized other things in front of it, and it's against my self-interest. It's just one of those tasks. It's not a hard task.
Nikki Kinzer:
So what would you tell me if I just said that to you? How would you respond to me?
Pete Wright:
How would I respond to you and say, well, I would tell you, "That's okay." I'd tell you it's fine. It's okay. It'll get done when you have space to do it. It's not a project that's on a hard deadline. In fact, there's kind of a fuzzy unknown deadline out there that is just out there because it has to do with federal regulations and legislation and things like that, that are being set by the government. Who knows when those deadlines will be set. And so it's probably going to be just fine. I have the papers that I need to work on sitting on my desk, and it's not like it's out of sight. I have it. I look at it every day, and so it's going to be fine. It's going to be fine.
Nikki Kinzer:
So what do you think?
Pete Wright:
Well, but it's me and it's my mother.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right, right.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. How can I be such a terrible son?
Nikki Kinzer:
I mean, does it feel different? When you said, I have shame around it, you stopped. You just said, I have this task and I have shame around it, and it has to do with my mother. And then when I asked you, what would you say to me? You started not only being more compassionate about it, but you also started thinking about how to get started on it. So you moved yourself forward after you gave me a little bit of a break. Hey, don't worry about it.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
And started seeing it as it is.
Pete Wright:
But this is the thing we started uncovering last week, that when you're talking about shame, I like you more than I like myself in this context, so it's easier for me to be-
Nikki Kinzer:
But I want you to like yourself just as much-
Pete Wright:
And that's the mountain, that's the mountain.
Nikki Kinzer:
... More, actually, I want you to like yourself more. And that's a really important piece because that goes into people pleasing when we say yes, because we like that other person more. We are doing it at the expense of ourselves, and that is not okay, and sometimes you have to disappoint other people to protect yourself.
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Nikki Kinzer:
I want you to like yourself more, and we're going to get you there because we're going to take this shame. We're going to kick it to the curb.
Pete Wright:
And then we're going to crush it. And that's what I've been thinking about all week and why when we first got on the call, I was exhausted because it's been a week of sorting through those feelings around everything that's on the list and stuff that isn't, is like, what is it that's causing that kind of negative and to at least reflect for people who are listening. One of the other things I've been thinking about a lot is the perception that I have of myself versus the perception I have of myself as a podcaster that other people hear when they hear me, and I feel like it's okay to bleed a little bit and say, "This is just crushing. There's no facade. This is lived experience, every day is figuring out this mountain metaphor, and it's real and legit, and my God, you guys, I get it. I get it. And-
Nikki Kinzer:
So we deal with self-kindness, that common humanity and mindfulness of it.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right. Yeah, and I want to say, again, this is why this quote from The Radical Guide I think is so important, and I'm going to say it again. This is what you need to recognize first and foremost, because this link, the one that binds your challenges to your worth, is far worse than any symptom of inattention could ever be. That is so important to understand that task for your mom and your symptom of for whatever reason, avoiding the task is around ADHD. It's hard getting started. I mean, all of these things-
Pete Wright:
Any number of things, yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Any number of reasons that it could tie back to your ADHD, but it's never going to be worth worth your self-worth. It does not attach that. Or we have to just dismantle it, I guess. I'm not sure exactly what I'm trying to say here, but it's such an important piece.
Pete Wright:
It's huge. It's huge. And it's so easy to... I can legitimately look at other people and counter every one of their feelings of negative self-worth and their shame and their compassion, and find compassion to help them find compassion. But looking in a mirror is a nightmare scape.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, absolutely. Wow. Good stuff, Pete.
Pete Wright:
Well, I hope so. I don't know.
Nikki Kinzer:
Thank you for walking through this with me, because I know that this was a little... It's uncomfortable because I am putting the spotlight on you and asking you hard questions, and I appreciate you being vulnerable on the show to answer them.
Pete Wright:
Well, I hope it's useful for someone out there to listen and know you're not alone because holy crap, you're not alone.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, and this isn't just a one and done thing. This is something that was also said in our group that acceptance is not just, oh, I'm accepting this, I'm done. It doesn't work that way.
Pete Wright:
Oh, Look, I'm valuable now. That's not how it works.
Nikki Kinzer:
And it's the same thing with this, "Oh, I've listened to this podcast. I have no more shame." Yeah. That's not what's happening.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. I'm ticking off, oh, those are false beliefs. Okay, now I get it.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. My hope is that it brings the listener awareness so that they can start to identify where they see this in themselves and be kinder and be able to walk through it just like you did with the mom's task, with that task for your mom. Be able to see, okay, wait a minute let me tell a different story. And I love the cat in the box.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. You don't know. Schrodinger cat.
Nikki Kinzer:
That's really good too. You really don't know until you open the box. Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. Thank you.
Pete Wright:
All right. Well, thanks everybody for hanging out and listening to the show. We appreciate you downloading, listening, all the great things you do with the show. Thanks for your time and your attention. Don't forget, if you have something to contribute to the conversation, head over to the show talk channel in our discord server, and you can join us right there by becoming a supporting member at the deluxe level, or better. On behalf of Nikki Kinzer, I'm Pete Wright, and we'll see you right back here next week on Taking Control The ADHD Podcast.
