From Shame Spiral to Humility Helix

My initial draft of this article was written a bit more generally than the one that follows, and acknowledged some of the missteps we can take in a variety of relationships with individuals who hold social identities different from ours. Then, Leah Fulton sent Christina Holmgren (she/her) and I the recent Forbes article making the rounds (on my feed, anyway) that asks, "Why is the phrase 'white women' triggering for many white women?" Leah, Christina, and I do lots of thinking and writing (and texting and talking!!) about relationships between Black and white women and what it looks like when white women receive the gift of feedback from Black women about our racism, so I've spent quite a bit of time reflecting on this question and others like it.

While I'm still finding my voice within this (long-overdue) conversation, it's becoming increasingly louder in my head, and I feel compelled to share some thoughts. My answer to the question, at least partially? For many of us, conversations about race can invoke feelings of shame, and it's really hard to move through shame and embrace humility.

In a recent training, we as participants were given the following prompt upon which to reflect and share our responses with a partner: "Share a story about an experience when you came to face to face with your own bias, bigotry, prejudice, or privilege. How did it make you feel, what did you learn about yourself, and how did this influence or shape the person you are or are becoming?" While I have literally thousands of stories I could have shared with my generous, compassionate, and all-around lovely partner Tanisha Andrews, the one I chose was a particularly humbling experience for me.

The story itself isn't really that important (though I do share it in some spaces). The most important element of the story is this: years ago, after I had unintentionally committed interpersonal harm as a result of my failure to confront a microaggression I witnessed (and to which I reacted with my face, but not my words), I received the gift of feedback from a person who had every reason to expect more from me. This person took time out of their day, when they could have been doing ANYTHING else, and invited me recognize what I'd done--what I'd failed to do as the accomplice I aspire to be--and to do better in the future.

I was immediately overcome with shame. At first, my physical reaction was stronger than my emotional one. My sympathetic nervous system sprung into action. My neck and face blushed. My whole body started shaking. I felt nauseated. I knew I had begun sweating through my blazer. Then, my emotions kicked in: I immediately tried to explain away my actions. I started by trying to defend myself, and then quickly realized I couldn't. My intent didn't matter--this person had clearly shared the impact of my actions with me, and their experience of that moment was more important than mine. Then, I switched to profuse apologizing, to which the person responded, "Thank you." Not "It's okay." Simply, "Thank you."

As I walked away, still shaking (and shaken, I suppose), I took out my phone and opened my email. I needed to make sure this person had my apology in writing, and I wanted them to know that I'd never miss an opportunity to do better in the future. I sent them a message, apologizing again, thanking them again, and essentially groveling for their forgiveness.

I then spent the next three days obsessively checking my email, waiting for their response. While I wasn't conscious of it at the time, I expected them to tell me it was okay, that I was okay. I felt like I needed assurances from them that I was still a good person, despite my failure in this particular circumstance. I wanted their absolution. I was stuck in a shame spiral, relying on them to pull me out. I wanted them to invest even more time and emotional labor in me when in reality, they owed me nothing more.

I was fortunate to receive feedback about this particular transgression. Had the person not said anything to me, I likely would have never given the situation a second thought. But, for every time I've actually had someone point out my bias, bigotry, prejudice, or privilege, I know I've messed up, exposed my unconscious biases, denied someone's reality, and committed microaggressions of my own SO many more times.

In every single relationship and situation in which I hold a privileged identity (which is all of them, since I'm white, but that's not the only privileged identity I hold), and despite my efforts to show up as best I can, I know I have absolutely failed to recognize my privilege, said or done something that reveals the implicit bias I have been conditioned to hold, and/or centered my own feelings instead of shutting up and centering others' identities, experiences, and feelings.

In particular, I know this happens consistently in my relationships with Black women, because a) I work to educate myself on the historical and contemporary racial trauma at play in these relationships, and b) on occasion throughout my life, Black women have taken the time to provide me feedback about harmful things I've said and done. But again, for every time I've received feedback, I've messed up and not realized it exponentially more times (cue Christine Taylor gif). I know that I've caused interpersonal harm in that many (read: all) of my relationships with Black women. Does this mean that it might be harder for them to be in relationship with me than with women who share their race? As you can likely imagine, this realization can easily send me back into the shame space.

Breaking Down the Shame Spiral

I'll break down what can happen internally and externally when we're flailing around in a shame spiral.

What does a shame spiral feel like internally? While I'm a little hesitant to acknowledge it, I have to admit that Taylor Swift may have perfectly phrased the thesis of my personal shame spiral in her recent hit song Anti-Hero. While the song is ripe with shame spiral-y lyrics with which many of us probably identify on occasion (e.g., "Sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby/And I'm a monster on the hill." It's a hit for a reason, y'all. ), she absolutely nails it in the catchy-AF chorus, singing, "It's me; hi. I'm the problem; it's me."

It works because it's such a tempting response when we mess up (whether or not we've received feedback about our actions). Our shame spiral lets us slide easily into negative self-talk, such as:

• It's me.

• I'm bad.

• I'm the WORST.

• I'm the problem.

• I'm irredeemable unless they forgive me.

Sometimes our internal shame spiral sentiments may even contradict each other, which reveals the infuriatingly inconsistent nature of this unhelpful mental space. But the theme is easily recognizable. You see it, right? It's giving major main character energy, and not in a good way. Like in a Regina George kind of way. Me. Me. Me. Me.

In the experience above, not only was I desperate to atone for my actions and to receive absolution from the person who gave the feedback (while subconsciously knowing if it wasn't available, I could easily find it from a friend willing to absolve me), but I was also obsessed with predicting when I might be able to show up differently in the future. It was all about me.

My shame spiral would prefer to spend most nights playing reruns of the day's events behind my eyelids and my Nodpod, foraging for mess-ups, wrong words, missed opportunities, and failures of all magnitude. Just an entirely unproductive not-so-merry-go-round of thoughts.

What might a shame spiral look like externally? While my understanding of the internal experience of a shame spiral has started to take shape, I've also begun to identify what it might look like externally, in the form of my words or (re)actions.

In my personal experience, the external manifestations of my shame spiral most often take shape when I receive feedback about a misstep, mistake, or microaggression I've committed within a relationship. Sometimes this happens in one-on-one situations; other times I may receive individual feedback while in front of a larger group (gulp). Most recently, this happened when I used the phrase "low hanging fruit" in a meeting, and a Black colleague informed me (and everyone else in the meeting) of the phrase's racist origin and underpinnings. (I pushed through my shame--how could I not know this?!--and apologized for my lack of knowledge and thanked her for taking the time to educate me.)

When someone tells us we've wronged them or others, we may think we feel misunderstood, hurt, or even angry, and we feel compelled to insert our own feelings into the situation. Our shame spiral's voice snakes its way to our mouths, and we start to speak aloud on its behalf, often saying things like:

• I would never do/say anything "like that" intentionally.

• You're wrong.

• You're overreacting.

• I'm not racist.

• You're being too harsh.

• I didn't mean it.

• I don't believe you.

Back to what we think we feel in these situations: misunderstood, hurt, and angry are the most common for me. I may think I feel these things, but if I dig a little deeper, I realize each of these feelings is actually firmly rooted in shame. We feel embarrassed about our transgression; perhaps our cultural and/or geographical socialization (e.g. "Minnesota nice") has taught us that dialogue like this is inherently uncomfortable, that discomfort is bad, and therefore these conversations should be avoided at all costs. Perhaps we're so committed to denying our own contributions to oppression that any suggestion otherwise sends us spiraling.

Robin D'Angelo and Tema Okun argue that binary "good/bad" thinking lead us to react defensively when we receive feedback about our own racism (see my example above). Saira Rao and Regina Jackson explicitly name perfectionism as an additional contributing factor for white women. If someone tells me I've done something wrong in a culture that consistently sets unattainable ideals for white women (in other words, I already always feel like I'm not enough), that can realllllly mess with my sense of self, you know? Here comes the shame spiral...

My shame spiral can get really hungry when I receive the gift of feedback. It roars louder and louder with phrases like the ones above, pulling me further and further into its depths. I don't know about you (not another intentional T. Swift reference, I swear) but sometimes when I'm feeling angry, hurt, or misunderstood, another external manifestation of my shame spiral can take center stage: tears.

Many of us, particularly white women, may find ourselves tearing up or even fully crying when confronted with our contributions to racial oppression. We may claim this reaction is not intentional, not manipulative, not meant to invoke sympathy and avoid accountability, not purposefully intended to change the subject and the dynamic.

However, I ask us to consider an interaction or conversation in which someone has started to cry because they feel angry, hurt, or misunderstood by us (when we have simply shared our feelings with them). What do we feel that person expects from us in that situation? Comfort? Sympathy? An apology? Denial of our feelings and an unquestionable valuing of theirs?

As Ruby Hamad describes in her Guardian article "How white women use strategic tears to silence women of colour" (and her subsequent book White Tears/Brown Scars: How white feminism betrays women of color), our tears interrupt the conversation, center our emotions, imply that we're the ones who've been wronged, and suggest that "being accused of racism is somehow worse than being subjected to it."

Remember when I mentioned historical trauma between Black and white women a few paragraphs back? We must also bear in mind the story of Emmett Till, and the pivotal role a white woman's tears played in his murder at the age of 14. A white woman, Carolyn Bryant, accused Till of grabbing and whistling at her, which led to her husband, brother-in-law, and a group of other white men kidnapping Till and brutally beating him to death. We don’t need Benoit Blanc on the case to understand how Bryant's accusation (and tears) led to Till's kidnapping and murder. Bryant eventually recanted her story, admitting to the fact that Till had not actually committed the fabricated transgression that cost him his life. At FOURTEEN YEARS OLD. I remind us of this story (only one of many of its kind throughout history) to underscore the fact that white women's tears carry MUCH more meaning than many of us realize.

Sometimes the shame is so overwhelming, so persistent (and often still masked by misdirected anger), we decide we need to "process" with someone. What does "processing" actually look like? To whom do we turn when we want to feel better in these situations? Often, the most appealing space is one in which we know our reality is likely to be affirmed.

We seek our own version of Regina's clique: The Plastics--"friends" who treat us with kid gloves, who know the response we want is the one that tells us we're not bad, we're not the worst, and it wasn't our fault. This group has its name for a reason: they're all fake, gossipy, inauthentic, and, frankly, unreliable when we really need them.

For those of us committed to always learning and growing in regard to recognizing privilege and working toward equity and inclusion within our industries and communities, it's important that we recognize opportunities to be better in relationships within personal and professional settings. However, it's even more important that we not get sucked into (or even worse, stuck in) our not-really-helpful-for-anybody shame spiral.

I propose we move through the dangerous shame spiral and into something more useful. When we inhabit the unproductive, self-centered, and potentially harmful shame spiral space, we miss out on the utility of humility. When we begin to recognize our shame spiral, we can then transform it into a humility helix.

Building Up the Humility Helix

A humility helix is so much stronger than a wimpy little shame spiral. A helix's multiple points of connection are literally evolutionarily designed for strength. A helix is built like a staircase or ladder, providing a structured and supported path for movement forward instead of pulling us down, down, down into a pit of shame.

The rungs of my personal humility helix consist of five guiding questions upon which I reflect daily (which has allowed me to reclaim my nights from my shame spiral). I'm committed to consistent engagement with the questions, no matter how uncomfortable I might become in the process of reflecting on them. While I attempt to address each of these questions individually here, my responses to them often intersect and inform one another.

How might my social privilege or unconscious biases been at play (in a particular situation or within a relationship)?

When thinking about social privilege, we begin by asking ourselves the following question: What realities of other people's lives have I had the privilege to never (or rarely) consider? We must also begin with the recognition that we all hold multiple intersecting social identities. The image below can help us identify which of our social identities have been historically privileged and granted unearned power (those close to the inside of the wheel) and which have been historically marginalized and denied power (those close to the outside of the wheel).

I am speaking here about systemic and institutionalized privilege, not individual privilege. This means that those of us who hold one or more historically privileged social identities must recognize and interrogate the unearned benefits we have received throughout our lives as a function of that identity (or identities), regardless of other challenges we may have faced.

Our social identities also shape our unconscious biases. Our unconscious biases influence so much of how we operate, and facing them is really challenging and humbling work. It involves asking ourselves lots of questions, and sitting with what the answers reveal, as difficult as they might be. To start: What assumptions have I been conditioned to make about individuals who hold social identities different from mine? In her phenomenal TED Talk, Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie describes The Danger of a Single Story and models the humbling act of facing our misguided and unfair assumptions about others.

We must then ask: How do these assumptions influence my relationships, behavior, and decisions? This might be the harder question, because once we ask it, the answers will never stop coming. Perhaps when serving on a hiring committee within my organization, I realize that I'm more likely to favor candidates who share my social identities. Perhaps when reflecting on my social circle, I realize that most of my closest friends (and perhaps even my kids' friends, if I have kids) share my social identities. These are just two examples of a truly endless list of revelations.

Once we have begun to unveil these biases (no matter how late we may be to the party--remember, my whole argument here is that shame doesn't do anyone any good), we must act diligently to interrupt them as we engage in the process of unlearning them. Only when they become conscious, when we can recognize and name them, can we then begin to push them aside and let go of biased assumptions we may have historically allowed to influence our actions, words, decisions, relationships...basically, our entire lives and everything we do.

Did I mention? This is challenging work, and shame can easily paralyze us during the hard moments. Humility serves us as we recognize the ways we've been conditioned to deny and ignore the systems built to privilege some and exclude others (not to mention our complicity within these systems), as well as the agency we have to acknowledge and interrogate our biases.

Regardless of my intent, what was (or what might have been) the impact of my words or actions?

As I mentioned above, most of us rarely receive feedback when we've said or done something racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, abelist, or otherwise harmful. When we do receive feedback, at the very least, we can commit to never making the exact same mistake again.

But again, that's the least we can do. We must also identify potential future situations in which our learning from the present can serve us and others. This recognition comes not only from experience, but also from the process of educating ourselves about others' lived experiences within a web of systems built to oppress, exclude, ignore, and appropriate their voices, cultures, and realities.

One of the primary ways I seek to educate myself takes the form of buying, consuming, and reflecting on the work of folks who have taken the time to educate others on how to recognize and interrupt our own contributions to systemic oppression. Some of this education is also inherently entertaining (our family highly recommends Black-ish, partly for the explicit educational elements, but--if we're honest--mostly for the innumerable talents of Tracee Ellis Ross, Yara Shahidi, Marsai Martin, and the iconic Jenifer Lewis).

Lots of amazing folks are doing this work right on this platform, like Misasha Suzuki Graham (she/her), Sara Blanchard, Shereen Daniels 🇬🇧🇯🇲🇬🇾, Steve Ferreira, Tara Robertson, Max Siegel 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈, Lauren Jones, Patricia Conde-Brooks Ed.D., Dr. Jade Singleton, Madison Butler 🏳️🌈🦄, Lily Zheng, Rahimeh Ramezany 🧕🏻, Ashani Mfuko (She/Her), Dr. Autumn BlackDeer,and so, So, sO, SO many others.

We must stay engaged in (or at least witness to, if we're not ready to dive in, contribute, and co-sign...YET) these conversations to fully understand the impact of our words and actions.

What learning can I take from the situation?

Again, at the very least, we can always commit to not repeating a particular transgression about which we have received explicit feedback. But our learning must not end there. Once we're consistently engaged in our own personal reflection and education, we can begin to uncover where our mistakes and lack of knowledge come from, which is often much deeper than we realize.

Once we have begun to identify the oppressive (hegemonic if you're nasty) systems that work harder than Kris Jenner to ensure that power in all senses stays where it's always been throughout our nation's history, only then can we start to understand that we have truly been conditioned to perpetuate this imbalance of power. We actually have quite a bit of unlearning to do, which requires asking critical questions about ourselves, our history, and our role(s) in oppressive systems.

How might I remedy the situation?

This question is challenging to answer in any simplistic way, and depends a great deal on the nuances of the situation. However, I recently learned a relatively foundational way to frame it from my 13-year-old, who told me: "Don't be sorry. Do sorry." (Future article on parenting teens not forthcoming, obviously.) For me, doing sorry in the context of the humility helix has two primary components:

1. Process with a friend who will allow and challenge you to think critically about the situation. Note: this person should not be someone you've harmed (obviously), but should instead be someone outside the situation who is also committed to recognizing, interrogating, and interrupting their own contributions to systemic oppression. This person provides honest feedback and does not automatically affirm our denial and defensiveness. I'm so grateful for the many friends in my life who provide this space for me.

2. Apologize without seeking or expecting absolution. When someone takes the time to tell us we've harmed them or others with our words or actions, we should, without a doubt, apologize. The key here is apologizing, thanking them for the feedback, committing to doing better in the future, and leaving it at that. We are not owed absolution or assurances that we're still good people. That's our own work to do. On occasion, reflection within the humility helix may lead us to identify transgressions about which we have not received feedback. When this happens for me, I communicate, "I've been reflecting on [situation], and I now recognize the bias inherent in my words/actions. I apologize for any harm I may have caused, and I will not make this mistake again in the future. You don't need to respond."

What will I do differently in the future?

Basically, see above. Our learning from particular situations as well as our commitment to educating ourselves and engaging in critical reflection should lead to fewer transgressions by us, and may potentially lead to stronger relationships in a variety of contexts. Why wouldn't we want that?

Additionally, we can model humility by sharing our moments of discomfort, learning, and commitment to doing better in appropriate spaces and relationships (I do this quite a bit in educational spaces, and I also know that my whiteness allows me to lean into humility and vulnerability in ways that are inherently more risky for my Black friends and colleagues).

The shame spiral's siren song can so easily lure us in as we work to recognize privilege, unconscious bias, and the ways they influence our lives. I posit that this reality is at play in white women's resistance to recognizing and owning our historical and contemporary contributions to racial oppression, particularly in regard to women of color. But like Taylor said, It's us. Hi. We're the problem. It's us. Building a humility helix requires a commitment to acknowledging the inclination we have toward shame, working through our resistance and desire for denial, and immersing ourselves in the process of critical reflection.