Don't Think I'm Crazy

I've been plodding through the class with Brene Brown on shame. The process has been liberating and overwhelming. Just yesterday I had the first experience where the classroom material and my real life collided. It was a typical Tuesday morning. Tuesday is the first day of my work week, so I have extra e-mails (56 new inbox messages) and phone call messages (5). After a quick dog walk I sat down to work. For some reason... Lily wouldn't settle down, so I had the pleasure of taking shoes, jackets and Thomas the Tank Engine train tracks away from her between phone calls. As I shared in my last blog. Returning phone calls is a huge "move away from". But I did it. By 11 a.m. I had answered all my phone messages. I had read and responded to most of my email. Now, I was ready to work. My husband Perry finished up a meeting and we decided to take a dog walk, before the next work block.
While we were walking, I began to talk about a work project that I couldn't wrap my head around. Perry had asked me to work with a new volunteer and I admitted that the man (a high powered Ad Executive) intimidated me, especially since I had very little vision for the project. All I could feel was the advertisement deadline this Friday. In the course of the conversation we went from sharing, to venting to arguing. Looking back I'm not sure how it progressed. But it did, and by the time we got home from our "de-stressing" walk I was a bundle of nerves and tears. We discovered that we both held the other one responsible for the project and felt forced into it. Perry left in a hurry for his next meeting. I sat at the kitchen table in a pile of tears, no closer to completing the project. In moments my four year old, Jael climbed on my lap and began to envelope me with her body. She kept saying: "Don't be sad Mommy." I couldn't stop crying and therefore did not respond to her request.
Later in the day, I listened to my class podcast. it was about our nuero-biological response to shame. Our bodies actually go into a "fight" or "flight" response when we are shamed. As I listened to the lecture I realized that I had felt shame earlier. The funny thing is that I wasn't shamed by Perry, or by Jael or by myself. I had felt ashamed to contact the Ad Executive. I felt intimidated and dumb when it came to writing an advertisement and I was afraid to feel stupid when I spoke to him. My babbling on our walk was an attempt to put words to what I felt. The babbling had kicked Perry into a "fix it" mode and we had ended up in conflict, divided: him frustrated and me in tears.
Later last night on our last dog walk of the night, we processed the days events. I was able to own my stuff and he was able to own him. We both realized how much pressure we were under to produce and we marvelled at how quickly we had been divided. This was one of those times when I realized how precious relationships are and how much work it is to communicate clearly. So often the thing we are upset about is buried underneath a heap of conversation, encounters and experiences.