Thread by @EpiEllie

There’s been some discourse on here about shame-based messaging in public health & I wanna talk about *why* it doesn’t work.

Because understanding the why can help us communicate better. Plus it can help us deal with feelings of shame we may face in our own lives.

A couple years ago, give or take a pandemic, I heard an interesting talk about shame which framed the emotion in a new light for me.

Now, I’m sure this isn’t the only (& maybe not even best!) way to understand shame, but it helped me and I think it will help you.

The idea is:

Shame is the discomfort we feel when we our actions do not live up to expectations of who we should be or when we fail to act the way we “should”.

Shame is a bad feeling & most people try to avoid it as much as possible.

Shame-based messaging relies on the idea people will change their behavior to reduce shame the message triggers.

There’s two problems with this.

First, if you rely on shame-based messaging, you’re spending all your time making people feel awful. No one wants to be around that!

Second, sometimes changing the behavior *doesn’t* make the shame go away.

Often, changing the behavior can even make the shame worse!!!

An example:

If you think it’s important to wash your hands before eating, then you might wash your hands to avoid feeling shame for failing your own expectations for yourself.

Here, the expectations you have and the desire to avoid shame help you live your best life.

But shame isn’t only about our own expectations. We *also* feel shame if we feel we have failed *other* people’s expectations for us.

If *others* think hand-washing is important, u might wash ur hands when they’re around to avoid feeling shame from failing *their* expectations

What if you don’t think it’s important to wash your hands?

If you’re alone, you might not wash your hands & you wont feel shame about it.

You haven’t failed yourself. No expectation = no shame to feel or avoid.

OTOH, even if you don’t think it’s important, if you know your community *does*, there’s still an expectation & so still a risk of shame.

In this case, you might wash your hands—at least when they are around—to avoid shame from failing *them*.

This is the idea behind shame-based messaging: put pressure on people to live up to *community expectations* by doing the thing you want them to do.

For some people, this can be an okay-ish solution.

Their expectations might not include hand washing specifically, but they could include being a “good community member”.

So taking an action to satisfy the community still addresses their own expectations for themselves.

On the other hand, if you haven’t convinced them to want it for *themselves*, then at best they’ll probably only do the minimum needed to avoid others thinking they’ve failed.

But for others, it’s a problem.

What if their expectations include:

•being “authentic”, aka ie only doing things they believe in

• or being “innately good”, aka they think meeting expectations should be easy

•or being a “free thinker”, aka they don’t wanna follow rules

For people like this, taking action to avoid shame that comes from failing to meet *other people’s* expectations is in ^direct conflict^ with their own expectations for themselves.

That is, by not failing others, they might accidentally be failing themselves!

Even worse, they might feel shame when they take the action *even if* they were already planning on doing the thing before you told them to!

Because being told they *should* do it can rob them of a feeling of autonomy and that conflicts with their expectations for themselves!

This is always true, so most people will find a way to reconcile community expectations with their own.

But with shame-based messaging, this can be much harder to do!! Especially if the messenger or group behind the message is perceived as external to the listener’s community.

What does this mean for messaging about behavior change?

Some people already do the thing & want to fit in.

For them, shame-based messaging is unnecessary (but might make them feel smug, which at best will annoy others & at worse increase others’ shame).

Shame-based messaging *might* convince people who don’t care about the action but do still want to fit in — but there’s a good chance they only change in public or superficially.

Because they don’t *really* care.

And then there are people shame-based messaging hurts.

These are the people who don’t want to feel as if they blindly following the rules.

Trying to shame them will make them angry, and can convince them to NOT take action, even if they already agreed with the message!

And then there are those who don’t see the *messengers* as part of their community, or who don’t see themselves as part of the community being targeted.

These people will never be convinced by your shame-based messaging. But may get increasingly angry the more messaging you do.

So, best case, shame-based messaging makes some people insufferably smug & encourages others to act only in public.

Worst case, it creates a feedback loop where even people who wanted to take the action, stop, & in their community the expectation becomes taking action is bad.

So what should we do?

Rather than trying to force our expectations on others, we should explain why an action is useful and how it can help achieve the expectations others *already have* for themselves & their communities.

And if it *can’t* help, we should probably give it up.

Some interesting looking resources here👇🏼

https://twitter.com/revivalcare/status/1661754834477776896

Since you’ve had some time to think about the thread in terms of messaging, let’s talk about how this conceptualization of shame can help you in your own life.

I know my #TeamADHD folks are no strangers to shame! This idea has helped me & maybe it will help you too.

https://twitter.com/epiellie/status/1661729573812203523

Here’s a recap of the idea:

We can think about shame as a mismatch between ourselves or our actions and the expectations we have for ourselves or we think other people have for us.

Like (totally hypothetical of course 😉) when you forget *again* to put the laundry in the dryer, and you think to yourself how an adult should be able to accomplish basic tasks like having clean clothes.

Mismatch between actions & expectations == shame!!

And sometimes shame is good, because it helps us not do things which are actually bad and shameful.

But for many of us, we feel more shame than we should because we expect unreasonable things of ourselves.

So, back to my laundry. It’s sitting wet in the washer *again* & I’m feeling bad *again*. What do I do?

First, I ask myself whether it’s realistic to expect that *anyone* is always perfect at remembering to swap the laundry?

Or is that maybe more a goal than an expectation?

Second, I ask myself whether, even if some people might expect themselves to always be perfect at this, is it reasonable to expect *myself* to be perfect at this, especially now that I know I have ADHD?

The answer my friends is “hell no”

Third, I tell myself that if it’s not reasonable to expect that I would have done this perfectly, then there’s not actually a mismatch between my action (forget) and my expectation (dont always be perfect).

No mismatch means nothing to feel shame about!

Of course this isn’t easy and it’s not magic, but if you practice this way of thinking I hope you will find that feelings of shame about things that aren’t under your control will grow less common.

It’s been helping me.

But there’s one more step!

Because it *is* reasonable to expect that an adult will ~eventually~ get their laundry done!

So now I know that always remembering won’t work, I need a plan to *help* me remember more often.

So, with that, I’m about to go try again — give those clothes another quick wash, set a timer to remind me when they finish, and then (hopefully) actually dry them this time!!

Wish me luck 😄😄

Did the timer work? Lol nope 😅

But then I checked my twitter and *that* reminded me, so the clothes are finally in the dryer!!

I’ll take the win 🥳😄

https://twitter.com/epiellie/status/1661853603840098307