Practices

When someone tells you they have failed, the most useful thing you can do is nothing clever. Let your face stay soft and keep looking at them.

Shame is braced for disgust, so it reads your face before it hears your words. A quick reassurance can even land as a rush to move on. Slower is…

Shame is visible before it is spoken. Shallow breath, eyes down, shoulders curling in, a voice gone small: the body says it first.

Learn your own version so you can catch it early, and learn to spot it in others without pointing at it like a diagnosis. When you notice the…

When someone's shame fills the room, check your own state before you say anything. If you start to shrink, or to worry that you are handling this badly, they will feel it.

Shame is catching. The particular risk is a quiet spiral of your own, along the lines of I am no good at this, which pulls you out of the room at the…

Change the sentence from 'I am bad' to 'I am feeling bad right now'. It is a small grammatical move and it changes what you are actually dealing with.

One is a permanent description of you, the other is weather. Weather you can wait out, describe, get curious about, tell someone about. Try saying…

With someone carrying old shame, ask about the closeness itself. Is it alright that I am sitting here with you? Would a bit more space help? Then adjust, and let them see you adjust.

Small changes work best. Shifting your chair back slightly, looking away for a moment, softening your voice, then checking what that was like for…