Ep2. The Role of Shame in Relationships

Ever wonder why a single negative comment seems to eclipse a dozen positive ones? Why does shame have such a stronghold on our emotions, and how does it impact our relationships? Prepare to unravel these mysteries with our guests, Dustin Burnham and his friend Robbie. 

Get ready for a journey that begins from the fascinating realm of neuroscience - decoding the biological roots of affects and their intertwining with our relationships. You’ll gain unprecedented insights into the evolutionary purpose of emotions and the swiftness they bring to decision-making. We'll also delve into the intriguing theory of whales having a sense of humor. As we move deeper into the maze of emotions, we dissect the concept of affect theory and its connection to positive emotions. You'll discover how memory and emotion trail affect, using the relatable example of turbulence on an airplane. 

Brace yourselves as we delve into the emotion that leaves the most profound impact - shame. We discuss its dual nature - a tool for teaching appropriate behavior, yet a potential destroyer of relationships if left unchecked. Hear our personal stories of shame and embarrassment, and the universal challenges of parenting. Get ready to rethink your understanding of relationships and emotions, and gain invaluable insights that will illuminate the pathways of your emotional landscape. 

Join us for an episode that is as much a deep dive into the human psyche as it is an exploration of our shared human experiences. Don’t miss this fascinating exploration that promises to leave you with a renewed understanding of your emotional world. 

For more information about Scott and his practice, articles, videos, and more: https://linktr.ee/scottconkright

Transcript

Scott: 0:07

And here we are, hey, scott Conk right here with meaningful happiness podcast. I have Robbie here, who is a good friend of Dustin. Why is here? I have no idea. I tried to ask him so.

Robbie: 0:18

I thought you guys said I thought you guys said come over for beers. I don't know why I'm here yeah, I mean we're gonna smoke a joint yes is the answer.

Scott: 0:38

Beer, whiskey shots. You were. You were a psych major. Yeah, qualifies you to be on the show.

Scott: 0:45

Okay, that's, that's all we needed yeah and this is Dustin second invitation here and as those who have watched previous podcast know that I am all about affect theory and relationships and especially how shame affects relationships.

Scott: 1:02

So one of the things that I want to do with you guys is to have a conversation about how you might envision emotions and affects and so forth working in relationships, especially with your relationship with yourself, and before the, before the podcast, where I would mention jokingly that you study behavioralism and that was what worked for you and interestingly, I don't have a single patient that comes in but it's a that's not true a pedication, say like there's certain behaviors that he or she didn't like, but they mostly didn't like them because it didn't feel good to have those behaviors. My patients come to see me not because of thinking problems or behaviors in general, but because of how they feel and they don't feel good. So it's a curious thing in the 250, 300 years of psychotherapy that we've somehow left affects and emotions out of the theorizing. So it took me to show up to change things and call me your hi, okay, I was like well, you're not the one of the crowd.

Scott: 2:19

I know, I know my door and I was good, by the way, just as in a site, I can barely hear you, dustin, now. Okay, so I just. I just want to make sure the mic in loud and clear, a little hotter a little hot. These will be a little hotter, okay into the microphone directly okay, we're good now yeah all right so okay.

Scott: 2:49

So we're going back to to affects. One of the things that I'm having to do right now is actually educate people about what affects are, because the word is used almost like emotion. So we have affect regulation, affect deregulation in my field we use those terms, but the people in my field use it almost as emotional dysregulation, like they're synonymous. They're synonymous, okay. In fact, affects are the biological basis of emotions. So one of the ways I and you guys can help me out because it's a complex kind of theory in a way, until you get it and then you go, oh yeah, now I get it.

Dustin: 3:28

Yeah, let's make this effective or talk on affect yeah, right.

Scott: 3:33

So I sent a paper to somebody about affect and he goes do you know you misspelled affect throughout the whole paper. Okay, that tells me that I've got some educating to do. Okay, yeah, yeah here I am buddy.

Scott: 3:50

Yeah, so one of the things that's always fascinated me and this is why I, when I stumbled on affect theory, it was so exciting, is it? There's a therapist. At some level you have to ask yourself why do people do what they do? You know, and we all have that, whether you're with therapists, psychologists or not. Have that generally, have that question if you have any curiosity about yourself and other people. Granted, there are a lot of people who have no curiosity about themselves and other people, but if you are one of those people that does try to figure, you know, figure things out. One of the questions is why do people do what they do? Well, we're kind of wired for a reason, and it's a very fascinating one for for being interested in things, which is one of the affects, is interest, interest, excitement, what Sylvan Tompkins, the father of affect theory, pointed out.

Robbie: 4:44

That's what you're looking so intense spending more time just looking at himself in the camera, I think.

Dustin: 4:54

I couldn't think I couldn't think through that one but thank you.

Scott: 5:02

Dustin, that's I try out. Yeah, so when you go up the evolutionary chain, the ladder, you get you have animals that have more, more affects, okay, that, more feelings. So you? So if you have a pet it was what happens with humans and pets all the time, especially dog, not so much with cats but with dogs is that we attribute and we project all sorts of feelings onto this poor dog. Okay, because they have these facial expressions, are like these looks, they tilt their head, things like that.

Scott: 5:31

Now you can't really do the same thing with an insect, right, but you're not gonna project, oh, I think. I think isn't he so cute? He looks like Koi insects, don't? You don't, really can't. You can't do that with insects, can't do that with flies, you can't do. You know the higher up. What I thought was really curious and I think about this whales apparently are pretty, pretty smart, right? I mean, they're supposed to have big brains and they, I would imagine they have a lot of affect. I don't know how you find out what the affects whales have because we can't talk, but maybe they gave, maybe they have an incredible sense of humor and are really good with metaphor did you hear the one where he went?

Robbie: 6:16

away to whistle whistle click.

Scott: 6:18

The whistle whistle click was pretty hilarious once we figure it out, we're gonna go whoa, have a beer, bro, you are so fun. Yeah, anything that moves starts having affect the more that more that we move around. You know plants don't have affects. Once we started to have to move around, we had to make sense of our surrounding, about what was safe and what was not safe rapidly, and we had to orient ourselves to moving around and so forth. So if you think about it evolutionarily, we're kind of wired in certain ways to be moving around and then, as we got further and further up in terms of our brains, to grow. I mean, human beings are the only animal that gives birth to a child that can't live on its own. And well, until what? 13 or so.

Scott: 7:24

Most boys, what 36 I would say I was going to say we're getting up there. Now we're getting there. I mean, a cold comes out of the mother, you know. It gets up and walks around and can start feeding. Babies can't do that, and so what do babies do? They show a lot of affect in order to get care. So affect are the biological bases of emotion, and there's nine of them, and they orient us to what's important. So things like interest, excitement, orient us to what, to novel things, to new things. So if you've seen a baby, it'll look around. Everything's new to a baby and so it's going to look around to all things that are looking exciting until it craps its pants and then it's in distress. And you know what a baby does when it's in distress it wails. And guess who's also distressed now Sounds like Dustin's problem.

Dustin: 8:30

Indeed. Yes, I currently have a wet nappy, but I'm struggling through it. It's going to be okay. Mama's going to change me soon.

Scott: 8:41

Distress lets people know that something needs to be done. Okay, it's a form of communication, all right, same with the same. With a poopy diaper, you know, you, kind of voluntarily, will have what Tompkins call this smell or disgust. It's another affect. So what Tompkins point is is that if there is no affect to orient us to do something, we're not going to do anything, and without affect, we're not going to have any consciousness of anything. It's only the things that we pay attention to at an emotional level, at an affect level, that inner consciousness. So what do you think of that guys?

Dustin: 9:28

So, robbie, you and I chatted about this a little bit a couple of days ago. I had said, you know, in terms of emotional drives to what do we get excited about, why do we get up every morning? And I said, you know, for most people, I think it's all about conversations with other people, relationships. You know our ability to function within a society, and then you made an interesting counterpoint about people deriving a lot of joy, maybe just from taking a walk in nature, and so maybe it's not all about interacting with other people. If you want to expound on, that a little more.

Robbie: 10:02

Yeah, I think just my initial point was. It sounded like your initial point was just based purely on interactions with other people. I mean that was kind of what I was assuming you meant by it. But I mean, some people don't necessarily derive all of their pleasure necessarily from or from interacting with other people. I think that was really. The only point I was trying to make is that I wasn't necessarily with interactions with other people, but some people are perfectly content living out in the woods and deriving all of their happiness from being out in nature. I think Right.

Dustin: 10:39

So, yeah, maybe I didn't quite get to the heart of it by saying it's all about interpersonal relationships.

Robbie: 10:43

Yeah.

Scott: 10:45

So from an affect theory point of view, there are two positive affects interest, excitement and enjoyment, joy. Now, interest and excitement can be anything from curiosity to basically anything that you care about fits under interest. So it can be anything that's novel initially. So here's the curious thing about how affects work. The only creature that shows pure affect is a baby. Up until about age two it shows all the affects interest, excitement, enjoyment, joy and they're all on the face. By the way, you can tell by baby's face and its body in certain ways what it's feeling. You know when it's a content, you know when it's interested in something, you know when it's distressed, you know when it's angry and so forth. But nine affects, and I'll go through them later on.

Scott: 11:42

But babies do pure affect. Starting at age two and a half, the infant starts having a memory, can have a memory that it can remember, okay. So it starts having a way to recall events and because it can start doing that, it can start making affect impure. Now you'll probably see with your kid Dustin that as it gets older and older he can have this smirk meaning he knows he's doing something he shouldn't be doing. I love that. Yep, I can tell Right. So once you know that, you go like oh, you know he's now having emotions, yeah, so basically affects our emotions, I'm sorry, affects our memories plus affect, and memories make emotion.

Dustin: 12:32

Okay. So why did people develop that way? Why not just remain as babies and just be perfectly honest with our emotions all the time? What's the benefit?

Scott: 12:43

Well, you wouldn't be able to learn much of anything and repeat anything you know like it's true, we'd be dead if we didn't learn like some things are not okay.

Robbie: 12:55

Art.

Robbie: 12:56

I mean like, go ahead. Aren't emotions evolutionarily prudent for quick decision making? Isn't the reason kind of I mean, that's some theory I think I heard some time ago don't emotions allow you to make decisions more quickly? You know, for example, if we're all living, you know out in the savannas of you know somewhere and we've got a lion attacking you know the group of people I mean, you know we're bringing out that lion because of our affect and our memories of that. So it allows us to make more quick decisions rather than sitting around and be like, okay, well, let's think about what is the lion, you know.

Dustin: 13:36

As he's lying. That's exactly.

Scott: 13:39

Yeah, let me off of your beer, let's have a talk lion?

Scott: 13:43

No, it's not gonna work that way. We're gonna be dead pretty quickly. We're gonna be dead in their lion. Let me explain it this way. So the example I gave in a it's something that I'm writing up right now is think of startle and fear or the lion, but I'm gonna use in this case. It's gonna be turbulence like on an airplane. Okay, what I really wanna stress is that memory comes, memory and emotion comes like a millisecond after affect. So you're on a plane, it's your first time on a plane. You're sitting back in the toilet in like row 2000,. You know where all the turbulence is the worst.

Dustin: 14:23

Okay, You're on American Airlines, which you know is the worst airline, so it's pretty scary Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.

Robbie: 14:31

Finger guns for that guy.

Scott: 14:35

I think you need to explain that, though, because I think we're just bashing American Airlines. Robert, what are you?

Robbie: 14:40

what's your?

Scott: 14:40

connection to them.

Robbie: 14:42

I work for American Airlines and, okay, that's where that ends up.

Scott: 14:54

So, robbie, if I'm correct, if you're the pilot and you're not expecting turbulence, you may still be startled or surprised and you might have a jolt of fear, but, like within a millisecond, you can go like that's turbulence.

Robbie: 15:08

Exactly. Yeah, that's something we discuss. Is that just overcoming even that startle factor? When it comes to kind of a murder situation, taking the startle factor is very quick, it's very sudden, and then it can almost be overwhelming for some people. So you have to try to realize that you've encountered that startle factor and then bring yourself out of it. So we have procedures as well, just for the other. Sometimes it requires the other guy in the cockpit to go hey, we have these call-outs that we make to try and bring you out of that startle factor so they can more logically process the situation.

Scott: 15:39

Wait, thank you, that's an affect. You have no control over it. No matter how many times you're gonna pilot that plane and excuse me, inexperience, turbulence you're still gonna react. And if it's really bad turbulence I would imagine that a big drop in elevation or something like that you're still gonna be afraid momentarily until you get on top of it. I don't know what terminology you guys use for it. Get your shit together, or whatever. Now the guy in the back is the shed his pants is a good thing that he's next to the toilet, because he had no idea what's going on, right?

Robbie: 16:17

Those little r-sec bags in the back of the seat are for more than what you think.

Dustin: 16:24

You put wet wipes next to him right.

Scott: 16:28

So the affect of fear in that startle is gonna be different for you, robbie, than the guy in the back, because you have a memory of lots of different turbulences. Okay, that makes things different for you than somebody who's never experienced turbulence before. Now the line tamer. If the line comes bolting out out of nowhere, it's gonna be startled and frightened as well, but will probably from memory know what to do versus you or me or anybody else. The line coming at me out of nowhere not good news.

Scott: 17:08

I have no idea what to do with lines. I don't think I can take one on. I think they're fairly large, at least the ones I've seen. So that's the difference when you're interested in something or something catches your eye, especially if it's a novel thing, a novel like we see a sparkling something over there, you're going to orient to it and then emotion's going to come and you go oh, that's a sparkler. Now if you're a baby, you've never seen a sparkler yet you might be even frightened. I've seen babies around sparklers like they don't think they're so fun. It takes later on where you realize what it is To have them is fun.

Robbie: 17:48

All those crying Santa baby photos, all the babies crying in Santa's lap.

Scott: 17:54

Exactly. You learn about Santa later and then have this associations to Santa and what Christmas is that makes Santa tolerable? We have a huge Santa fan here.

Dustin: 18:05

Who was this in a stranger's?

Scott: 18:12

lap. I never did that. Well it does. It's a Christmas, yet Can I sit?

Scott: 18:17

in your lap. So again, we're all going to have the same affix, but we're going to have different emotions about the affix. So the one that I'm really interested in is shame. So shame is shame. By Tompkins definition is any partial reduction of a positive connection with somebody. The problem is is that shame is on a continuum and for most people shame is always thought of as embarrassment, humiliation, mortification, you know, on the extreme end. But on the low end we need another word for it, and I have a friend, my friend, Joel, came up with one shame injection. I'm not sure if that's going to work, Shame injection, but thinking like, when, anytime you're again, if it's a partial reduction in the positive feelings you're having with somebody, if somebody cancels on you and you're looking forward to it, you're going to do what I call.

Scott: 19:13

Or you might do what I call the slump of shame, where you're like oh, bummer, man, dude, you let me down, you know that you just or like it's 11 o'clock at night, you need to go to bed and you told your wife or your friend or whoever that you were going to help finish the IKEA bookcase and it just won't come together and you do that slump. Right, it's a partial reduction in the positive or potential positive about finishing the bookcase. So it can be done in a relation to a, to an object or a task as well, If you can't complete it and you're frustrated. That frustrated or rejecting, deflating sense at a low level is also shame. Anything that deflates in a relationship to a task or to a person, that causes deflation is a form of shame, which is a reduction of a penis pump as it deflates?

Dustin: 20:05

Would that be part of that as well? Could, you say more yeah, so when you deflate a penis pump.

Robbie: 20:14

I think here comes an actual shame.

Dustin: 20:18

I'm just trying to relate to my life.

Scott: 20:20

That leads us into the more personal part of this.

Robbie: 20:29

He was only ashamed about the my Little Pony penis pump.

Dustin: 20:33

That's right. Yeah you don't want. It's too much. Yeah, that's extreme. Now that makes sense, that I would, almost. I would wonder if micro shaming would be another term that might, you know, be interesting. They're just like micro aggressions. Micro shaming, you know, just a small. I think micro aggressions are micro shaming. No good point. Okay, it's the same kind of concept, yeah, yeah.

Scott: 20:55

Keep in mind that it's important to recognize how shame works in that way. For instance, with your son Dustin. The only way your son experiences love from you is through your interest and enjoyment of him. And you know enjoyment, enjoyed and an interest and excitement. He wants that from you and he wants to know that you're getting it from him. That's really the only way that we show connection with other people.

Scott: 21:25

So if that's missing in the relationship, you know it's, you know it's not a very loving relationship, but anytime that you say you're mad or upset with with your son, he's going to feel dejected, he's going to deflate, he's going to be upset about it and he's going to want that connection back. No, it's appropriate, it is totally appropriate for you to shame him in the right amount for a behavior, but not him, and that's a distinction that that, for parenting, I really want to make. Is it? Your son really needs to know, unlike you, that you can't take your penis out anywhere that you want to, you know, because you can get arrested, which has happened several times with you right?

Scott: 22:08

Well, I had to show people that my little puppy fortunately I can joke about that because there are people who haven't learned that. But you want your son to know that right, and you also want him to know how to behave, to do all sorts of things, to not run out in the street. Those sort of things are critical. That's what shame is for and the motive we have, a motivation psychologically to reconnect to people that we care about, and so we learn to do what we're told because we want to please our parents and others around us and we want to look good in other people's eyes. So if we do something if only the case of the South Carolina the Murdoch say think that it is the dad who oh, is it the, the judge or something that kind of that?

Robbie: 22:56

The lawyer, yeah.

Scott: 23:00

The lawyer? Yeah, the son apparently was piloting a boat and the father got him out of that.

Scott: 23:08

A kid got killed because he was drunk, the son was, and then, a year later, I think, the dad killed the mom and the son. It's just a weird case. But if you think about it, I mean what I was reading was going like this is just weird. People, the whole thing is just wild, like how this all happened.

Scott: 23:29

But if you're, if, if you lose your reputation in a community and this is where this all started that sort of shaming is a is a negative sort of shaming. Right, you know, like you now have lost good feelings from a community that you wanted to be connected to, okay, if you do something bad at work, you screw up other people. See that there's a sense of humiliation or shame that comes from that and you'll want to try to make up with your people around that, right, yeah, and get in good standing with them again, and that's a positive. It means, like you know, if you were raised well enough, that bit of shaming will keep you from making that same sort of mistake or you'd be attentive to it, and so it models.

Scott: 24:15

Shaming helps model behavior. But what happens with a lot of people is that, especially in relationships, is that they don't realize how the small shaming part you know, like the rejection, name calling, putting people down or just stonewalling, all the bad things that people do in relationships can feel like the micro, micro shaming and like a thousand paper cuts and then three years down the line in that relationship there's so much resentment and anger that somebody leaves the relationship, cuts it off, has an affair. Bad things start happening in the relationship without people knowing that those little micro, micro aggressions or micro shaming need to be repaired just as much as a big one.

Dustin: 25:02

Yeah, it's almost like you could do a math equation like 10 little mean things are just as bad as one super mean thing. You know. As far as like negativity towards, I don't know exactly how our brains process that, but it seems like you could probably figure out okay over the course of a month if you know 100 happy things happened and 100 sad things happened. It kind of cancels out and you're kind of neutral towards that party.

Robbie: 25:25

Don't people tend to hold on to the sad, the bad, the bad? They hold on to the bad stuff much longer than they do the happy things, don't they?

Scott: 25:32

Right, right. It only takes one shaming incident to negate everything that's good. One of the truisms about affect theory is that negative affects always precede or always trump positive ones. In relationships, we really have to work towards fostering, maximizing positive effects and minimizing negative ones. So that goes with parenting, that goes with having any sort of relationship. If you are forever bringing negativity into the relationship, you're basically killing it off. You know, you may say like lots of wonderful things about me, for instance, and you say, like you say, one negative thing, like you said, robby, that's the one I'm going to keep. When I get evaluations, when I do workshops, they're usually very positive and there's always like one person that says, but he did this and I didn't like this, and it's like can I remove this one? This is the only negative one and it's the only one I'm going to pay attention to. Now. I'm going to hunt that person down and make her change his mind, because that's all that's going to be on my mind.

Dustin: 26:53

What a cruel irony of life. But that is a good point that we can have 10 great interactions in one negative one. We remember the one negative one.

Scott: 27:02

That's the joke, because I'm on the committee for one of the associations I do workshops for and one of the jokes is that out of all 20 or 30 evaluations you can always remove one of them. You know you just like one gets to be thrown out. I like that, but of course we don't do it. But that would be nice, yeah.

Dustin: 27:22

Remove the outliers.

Scott: 27:23

Exactly right For statistical reasons, of course. Yeah, not for our own, not my feeling of shame. So curious what associations you guys might have. I know I've thrown a lot of stuff out there and probably a little bit all over the place. But I do know that whenever I bring up the word shame people have an immediate reaction to it, and sometimes it's helpful when I describe from AFFIC theory what it's about. But there's no way to have a neutral reaction to the word shame. So I'm curious if anything popped up for you shame-wise or feeling-wise or AFFIC-wise.

Robbie: 28:07

Yesterday my wife actually she went in for a procedure, I guess, to treat sinusitis. They put this little balloon thing up your nose which, I guess, widen the sinus passages so she can breathe a little better, so the sinusitis can drain a little better, because she used to get sinus infections a whole bunch. But I guess she had a vagovasal syncope I think is the word I just found out about it yesterday, or the phrase I guess where it just causes her blood pressure, like the side of blood or any kind of. I guess some sort of undue stress can just cause her blood pressure to drop and when her blood pressure drops she just faints and I'd never actually seen it before. She's gotten a little lightheaded, whatever, and sat down and been fine, but yesterday I guess it was so bad that she actually fell and fainted.

Robbie: 28:54

Like we were still in the doctor's office, thankfully, and had one of the doctors with me, I was on one arm and I was on one arm trying to carry her back to one of the chairs and she just went totally white and lips went purple and her pupils dilated and well, she just collapsed there on the floor and I kind of started to panic a little bit and just trying to Jess. I'd never seen it before. Just call her name Jess, jess, jess, jess, jess, jess, jess. I was on the verge of tears myself and I felt kind of stupid for it.

Robbie: 29:23

That, like at work, I've had a few issues randomly come up and I'm able to calm down and deal with it a little more logically. But this time I was on the verge of panic and I felt kind of stupid for not being able to think logically. Thank God I was in a doctor's office. I can imagine if that had happened here at home or elsewhere, where I felt kind of embarrassed, that I kind of responded in that way, I'd be able to act and behave logically. What if that had happened, like I said, away from a doctor's office, where it happens later in life and I just panic and can't think logically about how to address it logically? So that was my most recent shame event.

Scott: 30:07

Well, thank you for that. And that's, by the way, I think it's always courageous to talk about a shame event, because we're often taught to be ashamed of our own shame. I think you kind of reference that indirectly, like what the hell is going on? I shouldn't be feeling this and I wish I weren't feeling this and that feeling of a startled shock that you had, plus it sounds like fear and then shame around your reaction, like I don't know what to do. So it's quite the cluster. I don't think we can bleep it out. It's quite the cluster, fox, when those things happen, because we get cognitively disoriented when we feel shame, which is adds as to it. So there were three affects going on at the same time.

Scott: 30:52

And, yes, it was a good thing that. It was a great thing that she was in a doctor's office. You're not a physician, unless it's not something that you know, so you're not expected to know it. But there's still an evaluation that we make of ourselves when we're feeling helpless in a situation like that with somebody that we care about. So it's omnipresent in our lives, but usually not at such a frightening way, which is frightening, see. I've seen that several times where people just faint, when I was taking blood a few years ago, a guy next to me, a big burly guy, was taking blood, taking next thing. So he was on the floor. The nurses knew what to do and I was like what the guys almost embarrassed for you as feeling shame for my two. Like it's, it's just blood you. There was not even any blood sorting out any place.

Robbie: 31:44

it wasn't a money by the that the the only flesh wound, the the little jab you baby notes.

Scott: 31:57

I can jokingly say that, but that's, people get really frightened at needles and other things and they often feel shame for it.

Robbie: 32:05

So your wife is okay oh yeah, she's doing just fine good good, good well, she's Canadian, but she's Canadian.

Scott: 32:12

There is that problem that's a whole different issue. Is she French speaking Canadian?

Robbie: 32:19

because now she took it. It's not really French up there, by the way yeah she. She left in maybe high school and moved to Florida and she forgot all that nonsense. Okay, that's close one.

Dustin: 32:36

Dustin any where's your where's where your thoughts and feelings right now uh, yeah, as far as shame, the the biggest source for me is usually when I'm not as good of a father as I could be. Um, it's always a struggle when, um, you know, my son is three, is testing boundaries, um, so he's trying to push me and see if, uh, you know what he can get away with and how he can challenge me. Um, so I'm usually pretty calm and um and happy with my behavior towards him, but I do get angry with him sometimes. And when I feel like I'm angry with him and it's not fair, and I think about it later and I realize he was behaving a certain way just out of curiosity or, you know, normal three-year-old stuff, and I was mad that he didn't do exactly what I wanted, um, I'm definitely ashamed of myself.

Dustin: 33:17

I like to think that, um, I think about these things beforehand, expect his behavior to not always be ideal and then approach it calmly, and I'm just not always able to do that. Um, so that's, uh, that's definitely a source of shame for me. When I'm, you know, I think in some way that I'm creating little micro traumas for my son that he'll never recover from. You know, that's like, oh my god, what am I doing? You know that that's definitely.

Scott: 33:40

That's. That's unfortunate. Parenting is an impossible profession, you know, it's like it's impossible to do perfectly.

Dustin: 33:46

And likewise, like with my daughter, every time I screw up I'm jokingly say like there goes another $225 for another therapy session exactly lots of money for therapy by the time she was 18 yeah, I'm just gonna write him a check every time I'm mean to him yeah, there it goes is. That is that your son's college fund? No, it's his terrible exactly.

Scott: 34:13

Fortunately she turned up pretty well. But you know it was it was I was. She was over. Fortunately it's great she's back in town and living here, so we get together every week for dinner and talk and all that we're. I'm reminded of different things that she reminds me of, mostly my perfect parenting, but occasionally my screw ups. But I don't think she remembers this one. But there was one time that she was biting me all the time like take my fingers and like I was. I kept stopping doing that, stop doing that. If she did it again, I put the finger and I bit it lightly she got sweet, sweet vengeance was it the right thing to do?

Scott: 34:51

I? I'm mortified just even sharing it.

Dustin: 34:55

I bit my kid it's the fact that she's missing her pinky digit, that's really good yeah, that was a lot, yeah, but she learned her lesson don't know.

Robbie: 35:13

What did you learn?

Scott: 35:15

she'll never play the piano, but it's fine yeah, I look back and go oh boy, I'm glad she's around, because there were times that I just thought where is the off button? I'm just gonna put her outside, put her in a cage, it's so hard sometimes you know you have hard day you're not, especially that you're sick and everyone in the family is sick. And then the kid is just so distressed and angry and you're like I'm sick too, I'm sick too, we'll act. You gotta like calm down and stop acting like a baby.

Dustin: 35:51

Yeah, you little three-year-old right, you know how dare you actually get three-year-old, you three-year-old you can't do it.

Scott: 35:58

Where are we? Do you have?

Robbie: 35:59

kids? I do not. No, no, two pugs, yeah, it's two. Uh, two dogs in a cat okay.

Scott: 36:05

Well, those are kids in the way. That's what do you do when I miss brave? Do you feel bad?

Robbie: 36:11

oh yeah, you know, yelling at them, and all he's doing is looking at me with the the eyes, and why are you so stupid? And then, of course, I'm yelling at bug.

Scott: 36:23

I'd plug, you know and you're because you're like, just because you're like mistreating them and they just love you exactly.

Robbie: 36:29

They don't know. Yeah, that's why I hate them that they could just you're humiliating to be around people like me, you know why can't I reason with you?

Scott: 36:43

yeah, they can't take a joke. They don't know irony. Well, this has been good. I mean, I appreciate your sharing around that. I think I'd love to do what I'm parenting. Maybe come to one of your podcast, dustin, yeah, we'll chat again.

Scott: 36:59

That'll be fun definitely because I think I think that's an issue that a lot of parents have is not you know when? When your kid melts down and target it, you're mostly feeling shame or embarrassed, you know so. Embarrassment is a form of shame. So, like your kids is on the floor wailing yeah, and you're mostly like you're not cared about, you're not so much concerned about the kid, you're concerned about what all the parents around you are thinking about you.

Dustin: 37:25

Yeah, right, that's. That's always a challenge. I I do my best to block all that out and think, okay, what is good for my son right now, and I don't care about other people are thinking you know what's gonna be the most important thing for him? Which?

Dustin: 37:38

is not always easy to do, but that's always the goal that I go into it with and that that helps me a lot little preparation where I go all right, he's probably gonna misbehave. We're gonna be at dinner for two hours. At some point he's gonna spill something or run to another table or misbehave, and some old judgy lady is gonna say, oh my god, he doesn't have any control of her child. You know what a terrible parent. Um, do I care if I think about it beforehand? I really don't. You know, I wouldn't want to talk to the horrible old lady anyway, so I really don't care what she thinks about me.

Scott: 38:07

That helps a lot to her at all.

Dustin: 38:10

Right, you know she's lovely and I, that'd be super, you know. But so that that definitely helps. But you're right. So often we consider the feelings of a hundred people around us who will never meet again and don't matter, and not the feelings of the person who's most important, who's your child, and so that is. That's a constant struggle.

Scott: 38:29

I think a lot of parents struggle around that. I mean, yeah, it takes a lot of patience and it takes. It takes a village in some ways. It takes other parents in discussions and finding out that what's normative in kids I mean depending on the family that you grew up when a kid losing it's, losing his temper or doing something bad in public would be considered not okay at all and would be severely punished for it. Right, come from a family like that. Your inclination is wanting is to want to do the same thing to your kid, like at an emotional level, mostly out of shame, boy, like the parents in your head, in that person's head, are saying you're a horrible parent, I never let you get away with that, right, yeah, and so they have even more of a struggle to do what you're doing, dustin, which is to slow down and say like this is normal, this is normal normative behavior.

Dustin: 39:21

Robbie, have you ever been on an airplane where there was just a totally insane situation, where like a kid just was inconsolable and the people around were like losing it like you've ever had to? Like man, I might need to land this plane because these people are like crazy no, I haven't had a situation.

Robbie: 39:35

Well did have um, I was just that's the reason you guys locked the door yeah that's the real reason, like yeah, that's just that's.

Robbie: 39:45

That's their problem. I don't care. But no, I mean nothing that where I've been flying, um that I could think of. I do remember one time where I was, I was sitting in the back deadheading somewhere, um, with a previous airline and, uh, we had just taken off out of Orlando. Uh, climbing up out of Orlando, a guy sitting in the back just had a full-on panic attack stood up. We're maybe climbing through, just the first few thousand feet stood up and it's like no, I need to go back, I need to go back, I need to go back. Just having a full on anxiety attack, um, in the cabin and we had to turn around and land back in Orlando because the guy couldn't handle being in the airplane. So, yeah, that was, that was probably. I think that was probably the most severe case I've ever been a part of. At least, I wasn't flying the plane, but I saw the guy having a you know the panic attack.

Scott: 40:37

Hmm, but inconvenience to do anything to try to console them or no, the flight attendants took care of that.

Robbie: 40:46

Yeah, nothing I could really do you were in yeah, exactly.

Scott: 40:53

Yeah, have you had it, Dustin? I've had a flight. I did a flight from here in Atlanta to San Diego With a baby right next to me wailing for four, four hours, four and a half hours, ever along. Take you know which was I Mean? I felt bad for me, I feel bad for the mother, felt bad for the baby and everybody around was bad-mouthing her.

Dustin: 41:14

Yeah oh.

Dustin: 41:15

I know, and it's not, it's not. Parents fall the. And then there's the opposite. I was on a flight where it was a pretty old child, probably 10, 11 years old, who was kicking the back of my seat, just Like really annoying. And so I turned around and his mom was right next to him and I said very nicely hey, buddy, do you mind? You know, don't kick my seat. It's just, it's kind of annoying. And his mom lost it on me. She started really screaming at me on the airplane how dare you don't talk to my son like that. You know all that. And I Turned back around. I said you kick my seat, all you up, buddy. I could totally see where this is coming from.

Scott: 41:49

That was, that was an interesting one, you didn't tell them both that you bite, which is what I would have said, you know.

Robbie: 41:57

I.

Scott: 42:02

Yeah, no, that's horrible. Yeah, I Kicked. No wonder that kid is out of control. Yeah, my mom allows him to be out of control, Disar. Yeah Well, thanks guys. This has been really. This has been really good.

Robbie: 42:16

Thanks for having me. I this is my first podcast.

Scott: 42:25

Yeah, you're cool.

Robbie: 42:28

I'm wearing a t-shirt.

Scott: 42:46

I need. I need to get him. What is that? A cup holder. It's a tumbler, yeah, a tumbler. I need one of those with the meaningful happiness logo on there, there you go yeah. I like it Well. Thanks a lot, Really appreciate you guys. Nice meeting you.

Robbie: 43:01

Yeah, that's me too, scott.

Scott: 43:03

And I'll get this thing done and send it out to you guys. Fun.

Dustin: 43:06

All right, appreciate you guys Take care Adios. Adios.