Is Your Tough Love Really Helping You?

By Rich Lyle

As an enthusiastic cyclist I start most weeks with an easy gravel ride along the coast, usually listening to one of my favourite podcasts, The Imperfects.

The combination of exercise, being in nature, gratitude for where I live, and the serious content delivered in such a playful way is a great way to set me up for whatever the week has in store. This week was no exception. A beautiful sunrise, an easy ride and a fascinating discussion led by Dr Emily Musgrove about shame.

They covered a lot of ground, including the work of Brené Brown on the importance of self-compassion and the physiological impact shame can have. I highly recommend a listen. The Imperfects – podcast episode

The discussion also prompted me to reflect on my own experiences with shame, how my relationship with it has changed, and how some of this thinking informs the way I approach coaching.

Shame and guilt

I first came across Brené Brown's work on shame when I read Daring Greatly. She makes a powerful distinction between shame and guilt, defining shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” Guilt, on the other hand, relates to something we have done, or failed to do, that doesn't align with our values.

A simple way of expressing the distinction is:

Shame: I am bad.

Guilt: I did something bad.

The distinction really matters. Guilt can invite us to take responsibility for a behaviour, make amends and learn. Shame can turn the behaviour into a judgement about who we are. And I know something about that.

When shame became my way of being

Hearing those words on the podcast took me back to some harder times in my life. The phrase “flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging” described a place I spent a considerable amount of time. Whenever I perceived that I'd made a mistake, said the wrong thing or failed to live up to expectations, I would use it as evidence of how flawed I was as a human being.

I had convinced myself that this extreme version of tough love was necessary. That I needed to be hard on myself. That the criticism was the whip that would motivate me to be better. And for a while, it worked. But when it stopped working, I discovered that it had become deeply ingrained.

The assessment that I wasn't good enough wasn't just an occasional thought. It had become part of the mood and way of being from which I operated. Perhaps the strangest part was that this wasn't how I treated other people. As an empathetic person, I would never speak to someone else in the way I spoke to myself. Yet somehow, I had convinced myself that I deserved a different standard.

An ontological perspective

This is where I find the Ontological approach particularly interesting. Rather than simply asking “How do I stop feeling shame?”, we can become curious about the language and assessments that accompany the experience.

Alan Sieler's work on guilt and shame describes an important distinction around standards. With guilt, we can assess that our behaviour hasn't met our own standards. With shame, we can assess that our behaviour hasn't met our perception of the standards of our community, leading us to believe that our identity has somehow been diminished in the eyes of others. This opens up some fascinating questions:

• Whose standards am I measuring myself against? Where did those standards come from?

• Did I choose them?

• Are they realistic?

• And are they standards I still want to live by?

Alan's work suggests that examining the language and assessments accompanying guilt and shame can create the possibility of relating to them differently, rather than simply being at their mercy.

For me, this is where the ontological perspective becomes particularly powerful. It's not about telling ourselves that “everything is fine” or simply replacing negative thoughts with positive ones. It's about becoming curious about the observer we are being.

What has helped me

I've learned a few things that have made a significant difference.

First, awareness and acceptance.

I need to notice when I'm experiencing shame rather than automatically believing the story that comes with it. There is a big difference between “I am shameful” and “I am experiencing shame.” The latter creates a little space. And in that space, something else can become possible.

Second, self-compassion.

My language to myself matters. If I wouldn't speak to another person that way, why would I believe that speaking to myself that way is somehow necessary for growth? Self-compassion isn't letting ourselves off the hook. We can still own our behaviour, acknowledge where we've fallen short and make amends. It simply separates being human from being defective.

Third, pay attention to the body.

Shame isn't just a mood. For me, it can show up as a sinking feeling in my gut and a heaviness in my chest. Noticing that physical response, breathing into it, moving my body or simply staying with the experience can change my relationship with what is happening. This is one of the things I find particularly valuable about Ontology. We don't only work with the language of our thoughts. We also pay attention to our moods and emotions and to what is happening in our physiology.

Fourth, ground the assessment.

If I'm telling myself “I'm not good enough”, what exactly am I basing that assessment on? What are the facts? What or whose standards am I using? What past events and behaviours are there to support my assessment? And, what past events and behaviours are there to refute my assessment? An assessment can feel like a fact when we've lived with it for long enough. That doesn't make it a fact.

And finally, be a learner.

If I can separate the behaviour from the person, a mistake becomes something I can learn from rather than evidence of who I am.

I can ask:

• What happened?

• What was really mine to own?

• Is there something I need to repair?

• What can I learn?

• Who do I want to be next time?

That feels very different from “What's wrong with me?”

Shame hasn't disappeared

I still experience shame and I suspect I always will. But it doesn't have the grip on me that it once did.

I'm increasingly able to observe it, acknowledge it and become curious about the assessment underneath it. Sometimes I can even find some humour in the situation. And when I can separate the behaviour from my identity, the experience becomes something I can learn from rather than something I need to hide from.

Perhaps that's the real opportunity. Not to eliminate shame or guilt, but to become a better observer of the stories, standards and assessments that accompany them. To ask whose standards we're living from. And to remember that something we have done is not the same thing as who we are. That distinction can create a remarkable amount of space for learning, self-compassion and possibility.

This is where coaching can become useful.

Sometimes the problem isn't the event itself. It's the relationship we've developed with ourselves in response to it. In coaching, I might ask:

• What are you making this mean about you?

• Whose standards are you measuring yourself against?

• What happens when you don't meet them?

• What does that assessment make possible — and what does it make unavailable?

• And what would become possible if you trusted yourself to respond differently?

These aren't questions designed to make an uncomfortable feeling disappear. They're invitations to see whether there is another way of being with what has happened. Sometimes the facts don't change. But our relationship to them can.

Wheelbeing is a personal coaching practice based on Victoria's Surf Coast in Australia. Rich is a Certified Ontological Coach supporting people navigate complexity in life and at work, who are seeking meaningful change by creating space to slow down, think clearly, and see differently. Rich can be contacted at richlyle@me.com