Vulnerability, Courage, Shame, and Empathy | The Arena

Lesson Objectives

• Define shame and examine why we must develop the language to talk about shame in order to develop resilience and increase empathy.
• Recognize how shame, scarcity, and comparison show up in our lives and how they affect engagement, trust, and connection.
• Examine how social-community expectations relate to shame, vulnerability, and courage.
• Differentiate between the four self-conscious emotions: shame, guilt, humiliation, and embarrassment.

Reading Assignment

Daring Greatly - Chapters 3 and 4

Exercise: Exploring Your Arena

The Cheap Seats – these seats include the anonymous critics, those who criticize us but are not connected to our day-to-day lives, and people who are criticizing rather than contributing.

The Box Seats – some of these seats are filled by actual people but often they're simply powerful, institutionalized cultural messages and expectations. These messages and expectations are the "rules" about what's important and what's not, who has access to power and who shouldn't, what groups matter in the world, and which don't. Sometimes we find ourselves enforcing messages about gender, race, class, age, ability, sexual orientation, etc., that may hurt us but that are so ingrained that we actually become the enforcers of the stereotypes and expectations.

The Critics Section – these seats include the messages of comparison, scarcity, and shame. These can represent internal messages as well as messages we get from other people in our lives. Comparison is when we look at how we measure up to our perceptions of others. Scarcity is the message or feeling that we are never ( ) enough. Shame is the painful feeling of being less than, and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.

The Support Section – this section includes the most important seats in the arena: empathy and self-compassion. The people in our lives who demonstrate empathy for us sit here, as do the supportive messages of empathy and self-compassion. These people and messages are the key to overcoming what we hear from the other sections and to finding the courage to show up and be seen.

Look back at your answer to the question, “Where do you want to show up, be seen, and live brave?” That is the life arena we want you to explore further.

01. What does that arena look like for you?

02. When you are trying to show up, be seen, and live brave in this arena, where do you look first?
For example: the box seats, the critics section, the cheap seats, or the support section with empathy and self-compassion seats?

03. What are the messages that you hear from each of those seats/sections?

04. What other areas of the arena do you tend to focus on?

05. Do you sit in your critics section? When you do, what do you tell yourself?

06. Do you sit in your own box seat? When you do, what do you tell yourself?

07. Do you ever sit int he seat of self-compassion? When you do, what do you tell yourself?

08. Do you have people in your arena(s) sitting in the empathy seats? If so. whom?

09. What are some of the other arenas in your life?

Exercise: Shame and the Arena Door

Look back at your answer to the question, “Where do you want to show up, be seen, and live brave?” That is the life arena we want you to explore further.

01. What does that arena look like for you?

02. When you are trying to show up, be seen, and live brave in this arena, where do you look first?

For example: the box seats, the critics section, the cheap seats, or the support section with empathy and self-compassion seats?

03. What are the messages that you hear from each of those seats/sections?

04. What other areas of the arena do you tend to focus on?

05. Do you sit in your critics section? When you do, what do you tell yourself?

06. Do you sit in your own box seat? When you do, what do you tell yourself?

07. Do you ever sit int he seat of self-compassion? When you do, what do you tell yourself?

08. Do you have people in your arena(s) sitting in the empathy seats? If so. whom?

09. What are some of the other arenas in your life?

Your hand is on the door of the arena...

01. What is keeping you from going in? What feelings or thoughts are you experiencing?

02. What messages crop up as you try to enter the arena?

03. Do you find yourself afraid of showing up and being seen because of what people will think?