Scott, Greg, and Alex examine an excerpt from the literature of Silvan Tompkins, the progenitor of Affect Theory, and discuss how shame and feelings of inadequacy factor into our interpersonal relationships, both romantically and in the workplace.
Join us for an introduction to Tomkins' work and a look into Affect Relational Therapy (A.R.T)- Scott's new and groundbreaking approach to therapy based on the groundwork laid by Tompkins.
Through these discussions we aim to learn, grow, and to achieve meaningful happiness in our lives, and hope you will too!
For more information about Scott and his practice, articles, videos, and more: https://linktr.ee/scottconkright
Scott, Greg, and Alex examine an excerpt from the literature of Silvan Tompkins, the progenitor of Affect Theory, and discuss how shame and feelings of inadequacy factor into our interpersonal relationships, both romantically and in the workplace.
Join us for an introduction to Tomkins' work and a look into Affect Relational Therapy (A.R.T)- Scott's new and groundbreaking approach to therapy based on the groundwork laid by Tompkins.
Through these discussions we aim to learn, grow, and to achieve meaningful happiness in our lives, and hope you will too!
For more information about Scott and his practice, articles, videos, and more: https://linktr.ee/scottconkright
One idea that I had that I was going to do on my own but we could possibly do it tonight like a hybrid version of what I had. What I was thinking of is that I really love Tompkins writings and I want to read you something because I feel like it's beautiful and provocative and it's what got me into really loving what he's doing and convinced that he's onto something. I think the best way to convince you all is to read some of my favorite passages and for us then to discuss it.
Speaker 1:That would be fun. I would like to think it would be fun and I think the audience would find it fun. I hope all of you find it fun. I'm going to read this as best I can. I want you to keep in mind that he wrote this in the 60s and 70s and he has a very unique writing style. I have not looked into how this worked back then. I know that some what do you call it? Affectations or certain styles back then were different than they are now, but throughout the whole book he refers to himself as we in the royal world. Was that more?
Speaker 2:conventional than I don't know, or is that?
Speaker 1:just his unique thing.
Speaker 2:Or maybe he's kind of I don't know if he had a group or a team of people or anything.
Speaker 1:I was wondering the same thing. Is he speaking for him and his team? That sort of thing? I'm not sure. I don't know if you, when I say that, we keep that in mind. I don't know who we are, but who we is.
Speaker 1:But in chapter 18, the sources of Shami Maliation contempt discussed and self-contempt self-discussed. By the way, he has chapter and sub-chapter sections that are sometimes half a paragraph long, which is something unique in and of itself. But I do think that Tompkins is best read out loud and I'm often read him out loud to myself. So again, this is chapter 18, entitled the Sources of Shami Maliation Contempt Discussed and Self-Contempt Self-Discussed. This chapter is concerned with the major conditions, innate and learned, which give rise to Shami Maliation into the closely-alied affects of contempt discussed and self-discussed self-contempt. He's sometimes hard to read because he repeats himself. Let me try this. This will be fun. Let's just keep this going. This chapter is concerned with the major conditions, innate and learned, which give rise to shame, humiliation. You're with me there, I'm good. I followed up to this point as well and to the closely allied affix of contempt discussed and self-contempt self-discussed. Now that makes sense. So self-contempt and self-contempt and self-discussed are allied to shame is what he's saying.
Speaker 3:Aren't those not the same things?
Speaker 1:Well, that's what he's saying.
Speaker 2:They're different things, that's what it gets into in the whole chapter. So he's saying they're subtle differences between the two.
Speaker 1:So he's saying that shame, humiliation, contempt discussed, which is hyphenated, which is another thing. Shame, humiliation is one thing, contempt discussed is another thing, self-contempt and self-discussed is another thing. So he's had-.
Speaker 3:I see how humiliations differ than self-discussed, but I think self-contempt and self-discussed to me are close enough where they mean the same thing basically.
Speaker 1:Well, that's what's going to be. The interesting thing is to delve into this. This is what I find so fascinating. I would normally think you, I agree with you. In my mind they're interrelated or they seem the same. What he does with it is just fascinating.
Speaker 3:I guess what I'm struggling with is how does this relate to my life in the office? Are my life with my friends?
Speaker 1:Well, one thing that I'm wanting people to understand is just Just like anything that you learn, like in music, for any skill that you have, you have to learn a certain amount of theory, and so there's certain things you have to learn as building blocks to understand other things. Okay, people here's one of the things that I struggle with in terms of teaching people around psychology Just because you have a mind and just because you have feelings doesn't make you a psychologist. And I don't mean that defensively as a psychologist. I mean that there's a tendency for everybody to be an armchair psychologist.
Speaker 2:Right, they psychoanalyze each other.
Speaker 1:They psychoanalyze oneself and psychoanalyze each other, but they don't have the skill set. But it feels like you have the skill set because you know what your feelings are. I know myself better than anybody, people say all the time that is sometimes true, but that's often not true. I can say that, as a psychologist, I don't always know myself because I can't know myself, which is part of my issue, the issue of why I'm doing this podcast, which is, I think we need other people to know ourselves. We also need categories to put things in. We also need ways of seeing things, understanding things, which is sometimes very complicated. Now, what I'm going to explain here is it sounds initially complicated because it's new, but once you figure out how to move around Tompkins definitions, it's super clarifying. So that's one of the things I love about him, because what he does then, in terms of answering your question, greg, about how does this apply to me at work, or my life, or my love life, or how I feel about myself, it does. It does in terms of once you get the sources of shame, you're going to see it everywhere. So, included, this chapter includes.
Speaker 1:This chapter concludes with a dynamics of self contempt, including the internalization of contempt from others, the magnification and multiplication of internal persecutors, the coping with internal persecution by obeisance and rebellion and the process of apparent objectification of the internalized contemptuous other in acceptance of self contempt. That sounds big and heavy until you unpack it. This next incredibly long paragraph by modern standards is a long paragraph, it's like a Proustian paragraph is one of the most beautiful paragraphs I've read in years. I'm going to try to do a run through of it right now and I'd love to know your reaction is it's called the major sources of shame.
Speaker 1:We have argued that shame is an affect of relatively high toxicity, that it strikes deepest into the heart of man, that it is felt as a sickness of the soul which leaves man naked, defeated, alienated and lacking indignity.
Speaker 1:We have also argued that the toxicity of an affect is directly proportional to its biological urgency, but ordinarily inversely proportional to its relative frequency of arousal. Thus, anxiety is more toxic than distress and, correspondingly, anxiety is ordinarily aroused by life and death's emergencies, which are rarely, relatively infrequent, whereas distress is ordinarily aroused by a wide variety of situations which deviate only moderately from optimal conditions. If shame is so mortifying, it is ill adapted to serve as a general, broad spectrum negative affect, despite its high toxicity. However, there appear to be multiplicities of innate sources of shame, since there are innumerable ways in which excitement and enjoyment may be partially blocked and reduced and thereby activate shame. Man is not only an anxious and suffering animal, but he is, above all, a shy animal, easily caught and impaled between longing and despair. When one adds to the innate sources of shame those which are learned, the normal human being is very vulnerable to a generalized shame bind almost as toxic as an anxiety neurosis. We will now examine some of the major sources, both learned and unlearned, of shame.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had never really thought of shame in that way, of it being kind of a bad evolution, I guess, because I guess our social dynamics are so important to us and to our species but some of the things that we evolved to do when we were living in mud huts and stuff doesn't really apply in the current world.
Speaker 1:Right. So shame has somehow evolved as a signal to tell us that we're disconnected from potentially real or imagined good connections with things that we care about.
Speaker 3:So you don't think it's always been that way? No, I think it's always been that way.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's what he's saying. Some of them are learned, some are innate some are learned.
Speaker 3:I think most shame is learned.
Speaker 1:Please feel shame If they can't reach. You can see the slump of shame in a baby when it can't reach. It's a millisecond. When it can't reach the thing that it wants to reach, it'll do the little slump. But everything is new for an infant.
Speaker 3:That's a good way to put it, so yeah, so it immediately turns and this is something to keep in mind.
Speaker 1:It immediately finds something else interesting, but it still feels the affect of shame the moment. I can't have this. But there's something interesting elsewhere.
Speaker 2:So it's the severity of the feeling and maybe the duration that it lasts that's learned possibly.
Speaker 1:That is learned. That's a big part of it.
Speaker 3:And how you react and manage it and react to it. Right, that's learned too, Right.
Speaker 1:So what is the worst thing you can do with any affect, any of the negative effects and shame is the most toxic, painful of all the interpersonal effects is feed it. What do we do when we feel shame? We imagine all the other, we pull in all the other shameful things that we've done and we keep feeding it. And then I did this, and then I did that, and that reminds God. I do this in sixth grade too.
Speaker 1:God, I'm such a loser, and so it's just crazy making Instead of friends and lovers and people around us, people who love us, distracting us and saying, hey, don't worry about her, don't worry about him, don't worry about that, we'll get you another job, come have some dinner, hang out with us. And moderating that and mutualizing it within the group. Our culture tends to isolate and withdraw, and we feed it.
Speaker 2:And it's kind of another result of evolution that we remember the negative things more than the positive things, so that we don't make the same mistake again.
Speaker 3:But most people don't. I mean like the halo and the horns effect. Most people only remember the positive things. I'm thinking about this Well, no, I'm thinking about this through like relationships, like maybe a lot of friends that I have talked to, and I was just telling a friend about this yesterday. He is trying to get back with his partner and I'm like, but you told me all these horrible things he did and he goes, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:And so sometimes in situations like that, people only remember the good stuff and they don't think about the whole thing.
Speaker 2:But you were saying that he was going on and on about all the negative things he did.
Speaker 3:All the good things, like this weekend, oh, and I told him remember when you were telling me about all the bad things, so you were only thinking about the good things, like the halo and the horns effect, where you're all yeah, and so I had to remind him of that and he goes oh, After the breakup.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, okay, so while you were, referencing the halo and the horn effect.
Speaker 1:What did I say? Did I say that that's what you said, but I don't know if the listeners would know what that means.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:So if you could explain the halo and the horn effect.
Speaker 3:Well, and maybe I'm explaining it incorrectly, but oftentimes in a situation people will only think about the good and that's the halo effect, but they don't realize the bad part was just the horns, Am I?
Speaker 1:striking that correctly.
Speaker 3:This sounds good enough to me yeah. And so sometimes, when we're longing for something, we forget about the bad things the horns and only remember the good things the halos and sometimes, when we're making a decision about how to move forward especially if you want to go back into that situation we have to realize that there were bad things as well.
Speaker 2:Yes, and it wasn't all good.
Speaker 3:And so I don't know how I'm giving, how the-.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense, it makes sense, it's kind of like I'm just tired of thinking there's a couple of other phrases.
Speaker 3:We're going to get used to food soon.
Speaker 2:The grass is always greener right, yeah. When he's out of the relationship, he's longing for the relationship when he was in it.
Speaker 3:He ate it, yes exactly, and I'm like you remember how that guy told you you had a loose ass. You don't want to go back to that. Okay, that's one example, I think-.
Speaker 1:Fair enough, I think right. So when you're thinking of a past lover, whatever that's coming back, they're there and they're on good behavior and all the good stuff is there. You forget about how they boiled the rabbit Right, and you're also that's what you need friends for they remind you-.
Speaker 2:Remember when they had a knife and we were trying to chop you up in the middle of the knife we need you to remember that, because you're getting back together with this guy who was like a jackass.
Speaker 1:Exactly, yeah, somehow got off track with the affect, but Well, so yeah if you don't have others in your life that you're in dialogue with, you're going to get into the echo chamber of your own head.
Speaker 3:So how do you so how do you relate this to like workplace scenarios?
Speaker 1:Like if you have a boss or if you have a work structure that doesn't allow you to successfully take ownership of what you're doing and undermines what you're doing yeah, like kind of one-on-one. And undermines your self-esteem around it. That is shame-based.
Speaker 2:And I think workplaces in particular are more difficult places to communicate effectively maybe those types of things because you're dealing with coworkers and your jobs at stake and you're expected to behave a certain way you know professionally. So possibly bringing up issues and problems you may have with somebody else it's more difficult than in daily life.
Speaker 3:It is, it is, it is, and I know a lot of companies are trying to get away from that and have open environments. They have to say we want you to bring your whole self to work, which is bullshit, because you can't bring your whole self to work, otherwise it gets you in trouble. I brought my whole self to work and look what happened to me. Well and it can't work. They're not being honest with that.
Speaker 2:And it can't really work, because you can't be having that level of conflict at work.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly. And, like I remember, I had a one-on-one and it was just so shame-based. All I was told was what I'm not doing, what I can't do, no confidence, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. And once I started a job, and on the very first day I'm in the office and I'm with my other co-worker who had been with the company for a while, and my boss says well, greg, I expect David to probably be much further ahead of you and do much better than you, because he's been with the company for a while. And that made me feel bad, like I've already been set up for failure.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, that sort of just feeds back into what you already think about yourself.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, that did not help me and I didn't succeed at that job.
Speaker 1:Well, anything that doesn't give you pleasure. Competency, which is one of those terms that I just love, that comes from Epic Theory, which is that you know that even sometimes just tiny pleasure of like oh, I figure this out, Like figuring out how to use audacity or the new myth tonight, or whatever, or learning to make Calzone, it doesn't matter Putting together an IKEA bookcase, we all need competency pleasure. Throughout the day I fixed the copying machine, the paper jig, you know those things we go like got it nailed, it done.
Speaker 1:You need those positive little first, throughout the day, those little dopamine hits throughout the day Coming from things that you did actively, not from looking at your phone and seeing somebody else do it, which is a big difference. Your phone doesn't give you competency pleasure. It gives you ideas of what competency pleasure could look like and it gives you a hit of dopamine.
Speaker 2:It gives you a hit of dopamine, but not the satisfaction of doing something.
Speaker 1:But not the satisfaction. So it's kind of fake dopamine. Yeah, you know, it's the cheeseburger version of a carnivore, flamingo or whatever good stuff. Right, it's not as good.
Speaker 2:It's basically a substance. It's a facsimile of the real thing. It's a facsimile of the real thing.
Speaker 1:The idea of competing in unhealthy ways that are not about building up people's pride and competency and focusing on their faults are all shame-based, and that's what they did to me.
Speaker 3:That's what a couple of bosses have done, but it makes me think something's wrong with me so clearly it's my fault and not theirs. Maybe that's all part of the shame too, I guess.
Speaker 2:Because you're predisposed to thinking that, yeah, like going in, that he must be me.
Speaker 1:So if you have a background in which you've already convinced that you're undeserving the certain way, or that you're at fault, or that you have faults or you're not good enough in whatever ways, and you need a bunch of good stuff, and I'm terrified about the next company I go into, because what if it's a shame-based culture too?
Speaker 3:Then the same thing happens.
Speaker 1:Well, that's what I'm writing about right now is the issues of competency, pleasure, shame versus pride, managerial styles. I have yet to encounter one person that's told me I really prefer a shame-based environment.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Like.
Speaker 3:I really like being abused at work. I also wrote an article on leadership on LinkedIn, but I'm afraid to publish it because it might sound bitter in my current state of mind. Well, why don't you have us read it?
Speaker 1:so that we could. That's what we need each other for. That's another big part of what I'm talking about meaningful happiness. What does that mean? I got a lot, by the way. When I first came up with meaningful happiness, almost every psychologist friend of mine colleague said that's so corny or they were trashing it and they said what does it mean? I said it means exactly. I believe that what you're doing with your patients is trying to help them get to a place of meaningful happiness. However you define that, your definition of meaningful happiness in mind may not be the same thing, but I can tell you I think it's more than just being on a bulk curve.
Speaker 1:I think some things are like being a human. We like positive feelings. Positive feelings like interest, excitement, enjoyment, joy. The two positive affects and affect theory pretty much cover everything. They do cover everything that we value, anything you're interested in, anything you enjoy, mm-hmm. Okay, that covers everything. It is inherently pleasurable. All the negative affects are inherently punishing. Distress is inherently punishing. Shame is inherently punishing as an experience. It's mortifying when you find out that you've lost a job but somebody's broken up with you, that you didn't get into this college or that, or it doesn't anything. Were you anything if you wanted a connection with it? Missing the train causes like they're all things. I'm so stupid to miss the train again.
Speaker 1:They're all things that you want to avoid, the things you want to put because you want desperately, you want to catch the train, you want to have that girlfriend, boyfriend, that relationship.
Speaker 2:If you miss the train, then you'll be late to work, and then you feel all the time, right, all the time you're gonna get admonished for being late and exactly it sets off a whole so you have to think of shame.
Speaker 1:So it's such a unique definition that Tompkins has that I think is so powerful. Anything that you want, that's positive. If there's a barrier, causes shame.