Tag Archives: Brene Brown

Jan9

It’s Not About the Body, Oprah

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Dear Oprah,

I want to york.

I think I’m late to the session.

I just saw a Weight Watchers ad where you made some random, unsolicited confession that you’re not looking to get into a pair of jeans or you don’t have a red-carpet dress to fit into. You lost me at “honey chil’.”

You blathered on about how ‘you’ve been there,’ and how it’s important to “do this together.”

And that you want to “make 2016 the year of your best body.”

I’m so done with you.

You’re so lost. And people look

Up

To

You. 

It’s about accepting the body you’re in. It’s about the spirit. It’s about starting from there … But this approach — making it all about the body, is really what is going to keep people failing and coming back and making you richer. If you examine the root of all these issues, and keep the needle on the health & spirit instead of the body, then people would get better and likely stay that way… but now that you’re a Weight Watchers stakeholder… maybe that’s not so lucrative. Keep the people coming back. Again and again… right? Because nothing says healthy liver and kidney and thoracic system like yo-yo dieting and depression from not achieving.

The reason why you are still dealing with a weight issue is because you’ve made this all about the physical.

Since forever, you’ve made your weight ‘situation’ all about the exterior.

You’ve completely missed the point.

You’re setting the wrong stage.

Just like that time you were wearing your new jeans and you hauled a red wagon full of red meat on to stage, you’re still sending the message that the body is what matters most.

You don’t even talk about it being a “temple.”

Where are the affirmations? Where?!

By the way, what does “Join for free — Purchase Required” mean?

Gah. It all makes me want to scream.

Dearest darling, confused, frustrated, distracted and wanting everyone-to-love-you Oprah:

It’s not about the body. It’s about the health. It’s about the spirit. 

If you believe half the things you spew, the body dies, the spirit lives on. It’s about what’s inside… How many times have you preached that?! 

It’s not about the hips, it’s about the heart.

It’s not about the belly, it’s about the insulin.

It’s not about the bust line, it’s about the pulmonary system.

It’s not about “the points,” it’s about the diastolic and systolic readings.

It’s not about the body, it’s about the life.

Because you talk about “Super Soul Sunday”… I’ll stick with the invisible: the blood pressure, the stress reduction, the diabetes, the insomnia, the heart palpitations, the kidneys, the fears, the inadequacy, the bullying, the abuse, the anxiety, and more which  manifests as our stuffing food / clothes / drugs / booze / risk — whatever the hook — which slowly kills the soul. I think you know what I’m talking about.

When you address the health, when you start talking about drinking more water and eating –anything!– with awareness, and putting your hand over your heart to honor its work, and practicing gratitude, and looking for lessons in life, and transforming stumbling blocks into stepping stones, the health will happen.

It’s NOT ABOUT THE BODY.

When will you wake up and realize that this has teens and mothers and men starving themselves –and dying– for a perfect “body”?

When will you use your powers for good and not to cater to one of the seven deadly sins?

If all we are after is steeped in vanity, we will never succeed.

YOU, of all people, should get that — with the brain trust of philosophical and self-help and spirituality avatars and personalities you have on speed dial — Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra, Pema Chodron, Bréne Brown… these people have spouted consistently that it’s not on the outside what matters but what’s on the inside, that the body is a shell, a container of the soul… and here you go, talking about The Best Body.

I gave up watching you years before you stopped your show. I saw through it all and I couldn’t take it anymore.

Now that you own 10% of Weight Watchers, the jig is up. The stock jumped when you announced your purchase, but it has since dropped 24% — it’s now lower than it was almost a month before you bought. Its price jumped like a yoyo. Similar to the numbers on a scale of someone who isn’t clear or is confused about the reason and the goal of anything worth doing, including weight loss, the direction is lost.

If you want to know how to run this campaign, ask a child of a parent who’s struggling with health.

If you had kids, you’d know: all they care about is having a healthy and present parent. The kids don’t care if Mom looks like a runway model (and a lot of them are super unhealthy) or Jack Sprat’s wife (what was her name?). Kids just want a healthy parent. They want Dad to play catch or to give piggy-back rides. That health is far-reaching: emotional, mental, spiritual, physical — once that is addressed, things will start to dovetail.

It’s not about the body. It never was. It’s always been about the health. Don’t lose sight of that. Stay focused. It’s not about the body. Never was. That’s why people still struggle. It’s about the spirit. 

Thank you.

 

May22

Perception, Reality, Empathy

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I had a meeting with an administrator at school the other day. She said, “Perception is reality,” when we were speaking about my son and his experiences of late. She followed that up with, “which means to me that we have to reframe the way we think regarding him, and allow for him to have that reality.”

I said, “Ok, good! It’s heartening to hear you say that, because all along in this situation, he’s been made to feel as though he’s off-base and yet he has said to me, quite clearly and consistently, ‘this is how it feels to me…’ and so while I’m thrilled to hear him stand up for himself, I’ve secretly feared that The Big School Machine would see it differently… that he’d be compelled to fight for his perception. But your stance is quite empathetic, isn’t it? That is progress.”

She smiled. She got it. We were on the same track.

I smiled, inside and outside. Her actions, she assures me, are reflective of her appreciation of my son’s appeals.

I’ve been raising my boys to be candid, speak up for themselves, be real, be fair, be kind, but above all, to be strong. As like me, they are imperfect. We screw up, sometimes in an epic fashion. But we amend. We own it.

I’ve told them that not everyone, in fact most people, will be unwilling to agree with their perceptions, and that they also will likely not always agree with other peoples’ perceptions. That disagreement, however, needn’t look like war. That disagreement, is often a bridge to greater understanding and allowing of The Other, so long as we are willing to get out of our own way.

I have a yoga student who amazes me. She’s started a blog, at my suggestion, because she has a very clear voice and she is super energetic. She, like you and I and the guy down the street, is a unique individual. She has an amazing and humbling story, which she has cast aside as something she doesn’t want to focus on, but I see it differently. I’ve absolutely allowed her her own opinion, but her survival of a catastrophic car wreck and subsequent traumatic brain injury and recovery and now being a yoga devotee, has leveled me flat.

She has this thing though, as we all do, about aging and perfection and reality… and then the at-times Oprah-imposed thrust of gratitude for our ever-present abundance. She wrote about it here, “The Art of Perfectionism.” I read that post and as much as I wanted to say, “you’re awesome! let it go! don’t you see how incredible you are?!” I had to sit back, take a few breaths and say… “Ok.”

Enter: empathy. “Feeling with people.”

I’ve read Daring Greatly by Brené Brown. I did a 30 Days of Brené Brown blog challenge. I’ve learned a lot about myself through that and other challenges, actual, life challenges.

Empathy, as Brown explains it, assures that we not necessarily have a personal first-hand experience with the situation. That’s impossible, anyway, as we are all wired differently and also have entirely discrete appreciations (i.e., “How do I know the blue you see is the same blue I see, man?”) which have shaped our perceptions.

Brené says quite clearly, “rarely can a response make something better; what can make something better, is a connection.”

What empathy does require, is the simple awareness that someone else is going through Something and that our appreciation of that other person’s Something is shared. Then, due to that awareness, right there!: a connection, no matter how ephemeral or even shallow, is made.

The Something needn’t be a “bad” Something! It can be an engagement or a divorce, a new job or a firing, or a lottery winning or a bankruptcy, or a book deal or a scandal.

Our appreciation can appear as simple as “Wow! That’s some news. I have no personal experience with that, but I can appreciate that it’s a lot to take in…”

And you’re DONE. Empathy accomplished. The other person is heard and their Something is Acknowledged — NOT EVEN VALIDATED, just acknowledged. Y’dig? (And if they need more from you on the matter, that’s on them… you don’t have to give more.)

That empathetic moment is quite simple — yet it’s one of the hardest things to perform.

Why? Why is it so hard? WHYYYYYY???

Because we have to get in the way.

The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand. We listen to reply.

-Zig Ziegler

We have to be right.

We have to compare.

We have to fix.

We have to feel small inside.

We have to fight.

We have to prove otherwise.

We have to feel less-than or more-than.

We have to somehow, even though it’s a direct violation of empathy, find some form or relevance of that information, that Something, to fit into OUR LIVES or we risk feeling…

Irrelevant.

Which we are… at that moment, because The Something isn’t about us. It seldom is and it likely won’t ever be about us, THANKFULLY (for we have enough going on in our lives, right? but we don’t want to think about our lives… we want to think about other peoples’ lives so we don’t have to think about our lives… i do it all the time…)!

It’s about the Owner of The Something.

All this act of … sharing requires is that We Hear and See The Other. That’s all. And maaaaaaybe… just maybe we can see ourselves –identify the need within ourselves to have Our Own Thing– in that other person? Just a smidge? Eeency weeny itty bitty bit? And what’s more: let them have Their Own Thing? That’s a connection right there. 

"we're all a little crazy," -my sage brother

“we’re all a little crazy,” -my sage brother.

I’m not asking you to see yourself in others; I’m asking you to see Others in yourself — let it be about them, not you, allow yourself to open…

So I was thrilled when the administrator said, “his perception is reality and we have to take that into consideration; just because we don’t have that experience, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t…”

And my heart sang. LA LA LA LA LAAAAAAAAA! Your blue might not be the same blue as my blue, but I trust that you know I have my own blue and I trust that your blue is great for you!

So remember: when The Other shares Something, you don’t have to go digging into your data vault of relevance to see if you’ve got something better, or similar, or worse or bigger or smaller.

You can just sit there and say, “Wow. That’s some news. I have no personal appreciation of that [BECAUSE I AM NOT YOU AND THAT NOT BEING YOU REQUIRES THAT I GET OUT OF MY OWN WAY TO SEE THAT YOU ARE SEPARATE, a’hem] but I can appreciate that it might [NOT “will”] take some time to adjust to that…”

Try it. And here’s a great thing: just being empathetic with that person doesn’t mean you’re on their bus. It doesn’t mean you’ve attached yourself or that you’ve taken a blood oath of permanence. It just means — AT THAT MOMENT — that you’re appreciating their situation.

So can you do that? Can you just… allow someone else to have Their Own Something?

Here’s the best video I’ve ever seen about this.

Thank you.

 

Dec26

30 Days of Brené Brown — Day 25: #guts #character #advocacy #vainglory

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Welcome to Day 25 of “30 Days of Brené Brown.” I am feeling sheepish today because I learned last night from a wonderful friend and cousin-in-law, the Amazing Kat Hurley who’s just published her own very memoir, i think i’ll make it, that Oprah Winfrey and Brené Brown have been doing some awesomeness class together and I had no clue.

I’ll tell you what: I’m not trying to co-opt on that action. I hope I’ve not made too much of a dent in their endeavor’s success. My apologies if I have stolen any of their thunder. I have to admit this: I really want to like Oprah. I can’t. She never returns my calls. That’s not friendship.

Moving on.

Today’s quote is …

If you want to make a difference, the next time you see someone being cruel to another human being, take it personally. Take it personally because it is personal! (p 272)
― Brené Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me: Women Reclaiming Power and Courage in a Culture of Shame

I’ve actually almost gotten in a cat fight over this very behavior. I saw a mother treat her toddler daughter horribly in a Red Robin restaurant. I wrote about it here in my Jung series.

Ok. So I still think about that moment and I wonder, “Was I being cruel? Was I not seeing that woman in her pain and could I have been kinder to her? Could I have been softer to her?”

I think at that point, I was so ramped up that it was almost impossible for me to be OK with it. That little girl needed an advocate and I happened to be there.

I think this all the time when I see public displays of assholicry: if this is how you are, out in the open with seemingly NO self-awareness, how bad must it be at your home?

As I look back on that quote, I can’t help but think of Kat, my cousin-in-law and her memoir. She has worked hard, insanely hard to confront her demons and trudge on, “I fight fear every day!” she said with her megawatt smile at an annual Christmas party.

At a tender age, Kat indeed saw cruelty and (let me know if I’m overstepping here, Kat) took it all in and then had to do what no one should ever have to do. What she did and what she endured, scoped out her life and her missteps and victories in a way that makes me personally jump for joy every time I see her.

Kat has taken that “we are here for a reason” thing and let it drive the beat of her heart and power the pumping of her blood.

I won’t give away her story. She is still living her story; we all are.

Brown’s quote raises for me my own involvement in a very difficult proposition: if you see someone being cruel to someone else, and you take it personally, is that all there is? Are you done? Are you off the hook? Of course you could take it personally — and you might. Doing that, just taking it personally, is empathy. You have been there yourself; you have felt the humiliation that the target of the cruelty feels… of course you have.

So, if, you were like me, how do you let that be the end of it? How do you defend the oppressed while not being terse or cruel to the offender? How do we keep it in check? How do we know the context? How do we?! What if the person who is now the target was actually the antagonist a moment before we witnessed anything? It’s SO HARD to know when what is going on is enough context.

In the case of that little girl and her frustrated mother in the Red Robin, it’s easy to see who is the protagonist and who is the antagonist. In Kat’s story, it’s quite clear who was being cruel and who wasn’t.

BUT… what if you’ve got a situation of some really screwed up, entrenched dynamics of the Baby Jane and Blanche Hudson variety?

Where the where do you begin to undo THAT web?? Who do we defend? Those two women were simply fantastic and CRAZY.

I think Brown’s quote presumes that there is a good guy and a bad guy; or maybe it’s not that simple: everyone’s feeling wronged. So how to call attention and then work to end the cycle?

I guess we just do what we can to stay present and not see the cruelty as a truly personal act. To take some of that truly personally edges too closely for my comfort to psychosis and it can create unhealthy ownership of all the cruelty in the world, of which there is plenty… but there is also plenty of good too.

I remember when I first started therapy, I was encouraged to look outside myself to see that my story is universal: that everyone suffers from time to time and that anger, while powerful and motivating, needn’t be the force that got me up every morning.

So then I did my best to actively look at life that way; that I’m not so alone. There is injustice and pain everywhere. Everyone needs a shoulder. That shoulder can be me. But my shoulders are already heavy and then there’s so much sadness and everyone should have a reason to be angry and then they are angry and then I should be ok with their being angry or else I would be fearful and then judgmental and then that just makes more targets and more meanies and then everyone is sad and then I get sad and I want to be happy I mean that’s why I’m in therapy anyway right so am I selfish for not wanting to be sad when there is so much sadness everywhere?

Then what? Y’dig?

So, yeah… I guess: take it personally, but then try to work it out. It’s not personal. It’s just a bummer. We can all become cruelty vigilantes and that would be good… but then there would be the vainglorious among us…

This is starting to feel like an Escher nightmare.

yikes.

yikes.

I didn’t like this quote so much. Her energy is right, the intention is there, but I feel like there is a lot missing which could explain what she’s really trying to get into.

In the meantime, go check out Kat’s book. She’s great.

Thank you

Dec19

30 Days of Brené Brown — Day 18: #shame #empathy #memoir #writing #mycatsadick

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I really should’ve thought this out better.

I was in a slump, losing a parent will do that to you, but I didn’t plan this out. Christmas is in a week. I’m officially behind, the cleaning ladies come tomorrow and my living room looks like this:

don't let my son happen to you.

this is an improvement. we’ve taken away a few boxes. don’t let my son happen to you. is it snowing in my living room? it may as well be.

Welcome to Day 18 of “30 Days of Brené Brown.”

Here is today’s quote: 

If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive.
― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

I love how that picture of Mom has her looking at this quote. She tried for years to share her story with me, but I was not that empathetic listener. I was not a kind responder. I didn’t want to hear her story. I didn’t give a shit about it, I just wanted her to fix her situation. But I shouldn’t have been even one of the people to whom she chose to lament. I was a kid.

Moving on.

The way I’d manage this quote is a bit too close to the post I recently wrote with Biff Tanner in it, so I will try not to repeat much of that. The point is to me, quite simple: share your story or let the shame build up.

When shame builds up, we risk spiritual immolation. Not inflammation, although that might happen too because of all the stress hormones we don’t release when we feel like crap about our story.

Brown says, ‘someone who responds with empathy and understanding.’

The other thing is this: not everyone makes you feel safe. Sometimes we think our story is SO shameful that no one will respect us after we tell it. Or worse: that people will think we’re lying just to get attention. Or worse still: that your kid will feel a need to fix you. Bad move.

If that’s the case, this is where therapy, writing, journaling, singing, playing an instrument, volunteering with kids, the homeless, for literacy guilds or art galleries or prisons or doing your own creating comes in. The point is for you to get with others and read some books. Don’t watch Maury Povich. Don’t watch Judge Judy.

Talk to your dog. Dogs are great listeners, they don’t judge and they just want to help. Don’t bother with cats. They’re dicks. They’re not even sympathetic, but they may as well be.

Empathy is something altogether different from sympathy. Brown recently shared a video on her homepage that has solved the mystery for me. It has also created a confusion in me as well, but that’s for another post.

Here’s the video:

Didn’t that just clear everything up for you? It did for me.

So that brings us back to finding a safe place when you’re ready to let your freak flag fly. For years, I just spewed it out of myself. I wasn’t like a person at a bus stop telling random strangers my story, but I’d say that once I picked up on a person’s willingness to Be With Themselves, I felt I could share eventually and get to know them better.

My mistake? I confused that with a relationship. I confused it with emotional intimacy. I confused it all. It’s not that people are ill-equipped (some are, that’s just the way it is) it’s that I was hemorraging and I had no idea. I couldn’t sustain a “normal” relationship with anyone other than to pick up people who were hemorrhaging too. That was not a good environment. While we could hold each other up, we also got sick of each others’ stories and all that verbal vomiting starts to really stink up our hair after a while. That kind of vapidity can NOT survive in normal oxygen.

That’s where therapy is great. But finding a group of empathetic people helps too. How do you do that? You read. You google your situation. Mine: “survivors of dick cats.” Turns out there isn’t one. So I started writing about my dick cat and awesome people like my blogger friend Mary chimes in to let me know her cat’s a dick too. And my other blogger-artist friend Lillian has a cat who looks just like my dick cat (I’m not sure her cat’s a dick like mine). So while we’ve never had a meeting or written any bylaws, we have found community.

The next point is this: you have to be willing to risk your pride. You have to be willing to say: “This ____ story sucks; about ___% of it is actually my doing and the other ___% is because of circumstances that are beyond my control, yet I feel shame for 100% of it.”

What happens next is … what happens next.

You either encounter people who nod silently and truly get it (that’s an empathic response) or you get people who look at you like this:

she can't help you.

she can’t help you.

Like I said… Cats …

When you find that person, group, thing, try to do this: try to come up with solutions to help yourself not feel shame. Make lists of the amazing things you do which discount the shame. Find the source of the shame and dissect the hell out of it to make sure it goes where it belongs: not you. Remember the post I did about holding that bag of someone else’s shit? That. Make sure you put it where it belongs. Most likely the shame is out of proportion and completely not yours.

That’s what comes though of sitting with this stuff and really examining your story. What else comes of it? You start to see patterns, you start to see humanity in the story, you start to see that even though what happened to you sucks or whatever, it’s not personal. That event… it’s part of your path. And then… only then, when you can accept it all as part of your path which makes you who you are and helps you live a better, smarter life… THEN you are on your way.

That’s where I am in my thinking about my memoir (which is a lot of Freaking Work). It’s coming along well enough the stories are flowing and they’re not all sad and that helps me remember that my story isn’t all sad. It’s good. I love to write so much that I find even telling a less-than-happy story can be enjoyable just by going with the energy that helps me tell the story.

But what about your group? What about the empathizers? What if you can move on before they can? Or what if they can move on before you can?

It’s all part of the plan too. Here’s what IS personal: the timing of your recovery. If you get healthier first: you HAVE to pull chocks and create some distance but stay empathetic. It’s part of your survival. The other people are no less important, but remember that old adage about throwing the lifesaver: make sure it’s anchored to something that ISN’T you, lest you drown too.

Shame: it’s not helpful; picking it apart is. You can do this. 

Thank you.