I have been for the past three weeks at the mercy of someone who was intent on shaming me. This woman was in charge of a resource that I rather desperately needed in order to complete a project of many-years' duration. She disapproved of something I had felt, and of a small thing or two that I had done. Mind, I had not violated any rules. But I had incurred her disapproval.
On December 29, 2009, this woman wrote to me in a way that was obviously intended to be shame-inducing. I wrote back to her, but to no avail. Her disapproval continued. Because I knew that I had not done anything truly wrong, I sought a telephone interview. Surely she would realize, after such contact, that she had misconstrued my every motive and action? surely everything would be set at peace afterward, and I could continue toward my goal?
No. I explained that how I had felt about factor x; she disapproved of that feeling. I explained why I had been uncomfortable about factor y. She disapproved of that feeling also. Note that she was not disapproving of actions, or not solely of actions. She disapproved of my feeling the way that I felt.
Where she really tipped her hand, I think, was when she conceded that I am "not evil." Now, when someone tells you that you are "not evil," it conveys only one thing -- that you are evil. At a minimum, it tells you that the question has been raised, and has been given serious consideration. It is not an affirmation of your personhood; it is just one step shy of the most damning judgment that one person can make of another.
Now, all throughout these three weeks, this woman has claimed to have my best interests at heart. She has claimed to be sincerely searching for a solution that would be beneficial to me. In the end, all I had to do, in order to lay claim to the solution she came up with, was submit to a set of rules that would apply to me and me alone. I implored her to come up with a policy that would apply to everyone, myself included. She was adamant, however, that no one else had any need of such a policy. Out of hundreds of people, so she claims, I am the only one who has ever presented this particular challenge. I must, therefore, submit to a set of rules that would apply to me, and to no one else.
Now, this is the very definition of discrimination and shaming. And I have had to refuse to cooperate in my own shaming. And therefore I will no longer have access to this resource. As a result, my work of the past two decades will, so far as I can see now, go rapidly down the drain.
I'm not sure what to do with this experience yet. This post represents nearly my first attempt to come to some kind of terms with it. Interestingly, research has been done on the whole "shaming" phenomenon. I found this abstract, for example, for an article that appears to suggest some of the elements at work. Shaming involves a "mirror" in which another person holds up to us an image of ourselves that we find toxic in one way or another. There are two main ways, it appears, that people react to being shamed: (a) an effort to have the mirror modified (which the author calls 'reconciliation') or (b) rage. If an effort toward reconciliation is made and fails, it seems that a common outcome is depression and paralysis. I have been through those, and I have been through some anger too.
What conclusions should I draw from all of this? First, I guess, I need to understand what has happened in the particular interaction. I can only conclude that the woman in charge of this resource is, in the most fundamental sense, incompetent. She took a situation in which there was a small problem, applied gobs and gobs of shaming and invalidation, and ultimately succeeded in creating a huge and apparently insoluble problem. She should be replaced -- this valuable resource should be taken out of her hands. It won't be, but it's good for me to see how obvious it is that it should be.
Second, I need to realize that there is a lot of incompetence in the world. The newspapers are not full of disasters every day, most of them man-made, because the world is being run by competent, disinterested people. Incompetence, of the kind this woman so flagrantly demonstrated, is everywhere.
Bad faith was another component of this disaster. Although the woman protested that she only wanted what was best for me, that was a lie. I had experienced from the beginning, with a sense of true horror, that she was angling to get rid of me altogether. And now she has.
It's crucial, of course, that I ask myself how I contributed to this disaster, and I have posed that question repeatedly. And I mean often. As near as I can tell, my contributions to the widening gyre were two: (1) I made a suggestion for improvement of the resource almost two years ago; about nine months ago, I repeated that suggestion, only that time in front of a few other people; and (2) on two occasions I disliked another person in the small groups in which I had been placed, and never succeeded in getting comfortable with either one. As to #1, I simply cannot apologize. My suggestion is a good one, other people would also like to see it implemented, and there is no true counter-argument. Still, I need to recognize that the owners of the resource did not approve of me making the suggestion.
As to #2, I really don't know what to say. During the 2-1/2 years in which I used this resource (for which I paid a monthly fee), I was required to work with about 50 people, perhaps a few more. I was uncomfortable with two of them, for a grand total of 4%. As to those two -- the 4% in question -- my grievances were very much evidence-based. I found their attentions to me to be trivial and intrusive. My only wish was that they should leave me alone. That wish, however, could apparently not be granted.
In the second instance, for example, another woman (nearly all the participants are women) would repeatedly misconstrue my words. On one occasion, I reported that I had had a rather good day. She replied by saying, "Don't beat yourself up." A few days after that, I reported that I had not yet had an opportunity to try out Strategy X. She replied, "I'm so glad to hear you've had such excellent results with Strategy X." And so it went, every few days, for nearly three months until finally one day I politely, quitely asked this woman to leave me alone. She went postal, with allegations of her innocence and the depth of her injury. That was on December 29th, and it was the beginning of the end of a huge portion of my life.
I suggested to the owners of the resource that a policy be created for dealing with such situations of personal conflict. The owners have told me, however, that no one else -- in their four-year history of dealing with several hundred people -- has ever felt a need for such a policy. In other words, in a world chock full of conflict, in a country in which the president cannot speak in Congress without having someone shout that he is "lying," this particular corner of it has only one source of conflict -- me.
Of course, even to say that to another human being is to attempt to shame them in a very profound way.
So my conclusions as to my own contributions are (1) I should not have made a (good) suggestion to improve the resource; and (2) I should not have experienced any negative feeling toward any other person in my group. In other words, I should simply be a different person from who I am. (The rest of you better watch out too.)
Well, there will doubtless be more to say in the coming hours and days and weeks. This is just a beginning. I do want to be a constructive, positive person. After an earthquake, though, you do need to clear away the rubble before you can begin to think about building again.
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