On Shame

Thoughts from our CEO and Co-Founder, Amy Elizabeth Fox:

The "original bargain" – this is what my teacher Patrick Connor calls the tacit agreement we each make to see ourselves through the eyes of our early caregivers. Of course, virtually all of our parents and guardians will not have had a chance to do their own trauma healing. The implication of that, therefore, is that our self-image (in loyalty and fidelity to them) will be shaped by their pain and their karma and their inability to see us clearly. That means we wind up imbibing their criticism, believing and internalizing their subtle hints to make ourselves smaller and their reflections that shape our self-esteem in distorting and damaging ways.

Executives often come into our leadership programs with a cloak over this internal war against themselves. They only slowly understand the harshness and brutality of their inner conversation. Most of us make ourselves wrong all day long in the quiet resources of our interiority.

We suffer mistakes, we punish failure, and we put ceilings on our greatness and luminosity and courage in the hopes of keeping ourselves in some safe zone, not taking up too much space.

My teacher Thomas Hübl, PhD has a beautiful definition of humility that I love. It involves occupying the right size that life asks of you. Not playing small and certainly not acting grandiose. Just a willingness to occupy your natural space and gifts.

Instead we make ourselves into self-improvement projects, diabolically delaying self-approval to the next goal post and on that achievement we get a momentary reprieve until we set our sights on the next benchmark that we tell ourselves will bring self-acceptance and relief.

Truly, only attending to the inner life and meticulously unwinding this earliest, pre-verbal dimension of our psyche's agreements can be the liberating force that allows us to rest in self-blessing, self-love, and peace.

When we can start to see how these dynamics operate under the radar all the time and listen deeply enough to discern these overly critical voices, we can begin to accept them, integrate them, and let them go.

In recent decades, much has begun to be spoken about shame in the personal growth field by authors such as the late John Bradshaw, Brené Brown , and most recently, my friend Rosi Greenberg in her wonderful book Everyone Has A Sam.

It is time to take shame and self-acceptance into the leadership canon. We cannot overlook this driving force any longer. Coaches know this. They find this dynamic lurking in even the most successful and potent leaders on the planet. A much younger part still striving to be good enough and privately concerned that they are not. We can and must extend each other a loving hand out of this morass to take up the global challenges we now face.