Hey Reader!
Our inner lives show up in our work, whether we like to admit it or not. This is especially true as founders. We all have experiences growing up that shape how we approach the world. Our experiences shape our approach to conflict, our psychological triggers, the emotions we have, and the sensations in our bodies.
These patterns show up in every area of life — including at work! Most problems in performance at work are interpersonal problems on some level. And most interpersonal problems are fueled by our psychological patterns.
The good news is that any work you do to improve your inner experience of life often shows up in your relationships and work as new, better patterns as well.
One of my old patterns is responding to a variety of situations with shame. I brought this up on a recent podcast episode with Andrew Farah, founder of Density.io. The letter from a founder this week focuses on shame and how I’ve worked to change my relationship to it.
Let’s get to it.
Disclaimer: I’m not a medical professional. All of the following advice is based in my own experience and shouldn’t replace seeking help from licensed mental health or medical professionals. Consider this a jumping-off point for your own exploration.
Letter from a Founder
Hey B!
In your podcast episode with Andrew Farah, you mentioned doing some work to overcome shame.
Without going into detail with an almost-stranger, shame has also been a challenge in my life.
I was curious what work you’ve undertaken or what tools you’ve used to change that narrative that creates shame in your life. I’d be grateful for anything you can share!
– A founder hoping to put shame in the rearview mirror
Hey, Shame in the Rearview,
I love this question because it’s personal. And work is personal. That’s especially true for founders.
One Christmas season long ago, I was helping my dad set up a train underneath our second Christmas tree.
I know it was torture for my dad’s budget-conscious mind, but my mom used to get two Christmas trees for the family. One was hers to make beautiful, matching the decor of our home. And one was for my brother and I to put all our fun, kitschy ornaments on.
As we were setting up the train under the kid tree, I got out the vacuum to clean up all of the needles that had fallen on the floor. The combination of a high degree of responsibility and OCD meant I couldn’t stand the mess.
I unrolled the cord, plugged it into the wall, and started cleaning up. Stretching the hose to its full length, I vacuumed around the tree skirt, then around each piece of train track to get every little needle off the floor.
The setting was pristine and ready for the train to be added… until I noticed a piece of tape or cardboard. I had already put the hose back in the handle, so I turned on the vacuum, picked up the piece of trash, leaned the vacuum under, and fed the trash into the main rotating mechanism.
The vacuum made a crunching malfunction sound as it scraped the skin off of one of my fingers. My dad turned from what he was doing and sharply said, “What was that?” I’m sure he was worried I had damaged the vacuum in a way that might require him to take it apart or that I had vacuumed up a piece of train track.
“Nothing, it’s ok.” He turned back around and kept pulling the train out of its box.
The shame flooded over me. I felt dumb for potentially hurting the vacuum and embarrassed that I had hurt myself.
I waited a moment until Dad was busy again, then left the room slowly before running upstairs to find a band-aid. I closed the bathroom door as tears slid down my cheeks. Looking down, I saw that I was bleeding.
After I cleaned the scrape and applied the band-aid, I went back downstairs and acted like nothing happened. We finished setting up the train together.
…
I’m sure I had a relatively insignificant number of formative experiences like this. But there were enough of them, and at the right age, that combined with my personality shaped how I respond to certain situations.
My defense mechanism was to develop a perfectionist mindset for everything I do. “If I’m perfect, I’ll never have to feel that way again,” my little brain reasoned.
And this often worked. Until I encountered projects that involved taste rather than “correct” answers. Or until I ran into projects at the edge of my capabilities as an adult at work. Or until I started making things online, where anyone having a bad day could take it out on me.
The first time someone called me an idiot online, I remember how my body seized up just like when Dad asked, “What was that?” I remember how I carried it around the rest of the day, ruminating on whether I really was an idiot.
I remember the moment at the team retreat when another exec told me that our marketing approach was stupid and that I didn’t know what I was doing. Or at least that’s what I heard, even if he didn’t mean it. I thought about that comment for months, carrying in my body, emotions, and relationships with colleagues as if it were true.
This is not productive. But it’s what shame does to us.
There’s no way a colleague would ever imagine that even a simple comment could trigger a wave of shame washing over me… and yet that’s exactly what would happen any time I received a piece of critical feedback.
Each comment served as another blunt instrument for beating myself up. The internal story I had was that “I’m a piece of shit.” I looked for confirming evidence of that fact in every relationship in my life…
Until it started to change.
One day, on a coaching call with my then-coach, now-friend Andy Crissinger, he suggested a book I might read: It Didn’t Start With You.
The book helped me understand the way these patterns form and how they can get passed down from parents to children, by no intention or fault of anyone involved. It talked about the different ways we adopt our parents’ pain, even though they would never ask that of us or want that for us.
This began a long march towards repatterning my brain. It’s hard to dissect exactly which tools and resources unlocked the change, but over time I found that my shame response began to receded. In its place is something like compassion and understanding. A softness that I’ve always needed but never received. A reaction that only I can give to myself.
If I were designing a similar path for someone to try to repattern their own brain around shame it would look something like this:
- Watch Brené Brown’s TED talk on shame and how it effects us. Brené’s body of work tackles shame in many different ways. Consider exploring further if you enjoy her style like I do.
- Read It Didn’t Start With You and do the suggested exercises.
- Read No Bad Parts and do the suggested exercises.
- Read The Wild Edge of Sorrow and consider using the rituals to process past grief and hardship.
- Seek out a therapist who specializes in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Processing), IFS (Internal Family Systems), or SEP (Somatic Experiencing Therapy) depending on your own research into what might be most helpful.
- Journal about your inner world at each step of the way.
- If you have a life partner, share what you learn with them. Having the support of someone who loves you helps integrate what you’re learning into your day-to-day experience of life.
- Consider working with a coach to help you integrate your learning into your work.
- Spend two weeks noticing when you experience a shame response to something in your life — write it down each time, including the time, place, trigger, and what happened inside of you.
- Start taking opportunities to safely practice receiving feedback from your life partner and close friends — ask for feedback and then talk to them about what you feel as you receive it.
- Start integrating these practices into your work by seeking feedback and noticing how you react at work.
With practice, you should begin to notice that you grow from: trigger-> shame response, to: trigger -> noticing -> choose new response of self-compassion and understanding.
Once you’re able to break the shame cycle, new pathways for learning and growth open up. What used to feel like supporting evidence for how broken we are becomes inputs that we selectively integrate to help us learn and grow towards our goals.
Much love and respect,
P.S. – Things to do next:
- Hit reply and write me a letter about a leadership challenge you’re facing. I might answer it in an upcoming newsletter.
- Listen to Austin Mann on how photography has shaped his life and career.
- Forward this newsletter to a friend who would enjoy it.
- Refer a founder friend to coaching and I’ll pay you $1,000 if we start working together.