By Elayne Savage, PhD
Have you ever been publicly embarrassed,
shamed or humiliated . . .
By a teacher in class?
Or a coach?
Or by your peers?
Or your family?
Here are a couple of stories about public humiliation from Don’t Take It Personally! The Art of Dealing with Rejection:
Laurie’s story: Math was not easy for her in middle school. She studied hard for several days for a test. She thought she understood the material, but she got one of the lowest grades in the class. When the teacher read the test scores out loud, Laurie was humiliated. It wasn’t fair to be exposed like that when she had tried so hard:
This reminds me of the time my teacher in high school held up my test paper for the class to see and said for all to hear, “I'm so disappointed in you. You can do better than that.” I felt myself shrivel to about an inch high. My shame lasted all day.
Keith’s story: Whenever he’s around authority figures he expects to be humiliated. As a child, he was often told, “You should be ashamed of yourself for not cleaning your room,” or “for not setting the table right,” or “for talking back.” He would think, “Uh oh, now I’m in big trouble. These people are large and looming and I’m defenseless. I’m waiting to be punished — it’s unavoidable. It’s out of my control.”
Feeling shamed, humiliated or mortified can be overwhelming. These feelings can take over in a flash. In Shame: The Power of Caring, Gershen Kaufman says the central aspect of shame is a feeling of exposure—“To feel shame is to feel seen in a painfully diminished sense . . . the piercing awareness of ourselves as fundamentally deficient in some vital way as a human being.”
Waterboarding in Trumpland
Jeff Sessions was able to come up with "hurtful" to describe the drip, drip, drip of almost daily public shaming after the President called him “beleaguered” and “very weak.” Good for him for mustering the courage to show his feelings. I can see how allowing this vulnerability might be a very big step for a politician.
For me, watching him experience the public humiliation feels bigger than “hurtful.” It triggers distressingly painful memories of the times I was shamed and humiliated as a child.
Whenever I feel publicly humiliated I instantly go back to being the 6 year old in 1st grade at Langdon School, Washington, DC the day my teacher lectured me in front of the class for “tattling” on another student. I was worried about my classmate and only trying to be helpful. Somehow I found myself in big trouble for speaking up.
Just hearing these mocking, attacking, abusive comments on the news makes my skin crawl and my stomach twist into knots. Old memories come flooding back. Some would say it’s a PTSD reaction to early emotional trauma.
Lately there have been plenty of recipients of these abusive outbursts. And when these messages are tweeted out they become cyber-bullying, creating massive emotional damage because it’s so public.
The President publicly called Sean Spicer out several times most notably stating “he was terrible” after Spicer, who had been directed to exaggerate the size of the inaugural crowd, was challenged by the media. And then there was the time when Steve Bannon fat-shamed Sean Spicer.
I especially recall feeling sad for Spicer, a Catholic, when the President excluded him from meeting the Pope at the Vatican. I remember thinking, “Thats no way to reward Sean Spicer’s loyalty to the President when he appeared all those times in front of the cameras.
Spicer was expected to faithfully repeat White House talking points even though he probably knew from news reports many were not true. The President's expectations and commands to Spicer couldn’t help but set him up for derision and rejection by the press as they regularly questioned his sense of reality which was very different from the facts as they knew them.
I found myself wondering if Spicer's decision to not allow video of pressers was so his humiliation from the repeated lying couldn't be seen by the world. Maybe the day came when he decided he just couldn’t take it anymore, gathered up his remaining self-esteem and left the scene.
However, insults were being spread around. Nevada Republican Senator Dean Heller was openly mocked on camera at a White House lunch when the President asked him if he would like to “remain a senator,” because “any senator who votes against debate says you are fine with ObamaCare.” Do you suppose Sen. Heller heard that as a threat to his political career?
And even Tom Price, Secretary of Health and Human Services, sitting behind the President on stage at the Boy Scout Jamboree, was admonished, “By the way, are you going to get the (Repeal ObamaCare) votes? He better get them. He better get them. Oh, he better. Otherwise I'll say, 'Tom, you're fired.' I'll get somebody." Then our President pointed at him, mimicking a hand gun.
And the most recent to be publicly shamed is Reince Priebus when Anthony Scaramucci, the newly appointed communications director, threatened to have him fired for ‘leaking’ and in unprintable language called him vile, derogatory names. It is speculated that his actions may be vengeful — payback from the transition period when Priebus reportedly kept Scaramucci out of a West Wing position.
Being named chief of staff was sort of a set-up for failure from the start since under most presidents the chief of staff’s duties are typically to:
• Select and supervise key White House staff
• Control access to the Oval Office and the president
• Manage communications and information flow
• Negotiate with Congress, executive branch agencies,
and external political groups to implement the
president’s agenda.
I’ve been writing about the chaotic atmosphere in the White House for many months now, and lately ‘chaos’ seems to be the media descriptor du jour. However, lately the fear of being publicly ridiculed and humiliated has been added to menu in the West Wing.
The chaos comes mostly from disorganization because reportedly chief strategist Steve Bannon and the President's son-in-law Jared Kushner have had more direct access to the president than Priebus did. Even though It seems very few policy decisions and plans were actually made, Bannon and Kushner reportedly had the most input. Therefore, there was really no need in this White House for Priebus to perform the kinds of organizational duties usually falling to the chief of staff and it became increasingly difficult to function in the important gatekeeper role, keeping things orderly, disciplined and operational in the West Wing.
Because of this, Priebus, like Spicer was pretty much set up to fail in his job. When he did, he was publicly ridiculed.
It is said that Priebus may have first heard he was being replaced when the President tweeted out “I am pleased to inform you that I have just named General/Secretary John F Kelly as White House Chief of Staff. He is a Great American and a Great Leader. John has also done a spectacular job at Homeland Security. He has been a true star of my Administration.”
How do you think Reince Priebus felt when he read this tweet?
It occurs to me that the present approach seems to be: “Throw it up against the wall and see what sticks.”
Several individual members of the FBI are being publicly accused of all sorts of ‘conflicts of interest’ in an apparent attempt to discredit them and their investigations.
Most recently the President lashed out at Republicans and called them ‘fools” after they failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He tweeted “Republicans in the Senate will NEVER win if they don't go to a 51 vote majority NOW. They look like fools and are just wasting time……”
Postage Stamp of Game Cocks
It is said that the President likes a good fight and was reportedly upset that Reince Priebus didn't fight back after Anthony Scaramucci's vulgar insults.
Oh shucks, I guess the president had been relishing placing bets on this cockfight! What a disappointment . . .
When Childhood Feelings Get Triggered in the Present
And with each episode of public humiliation coming out of the White House, I’m hearing from colleagues and workplace and therapy clients how they are being re-traumatized remembering early years when they were publicly mocked, bullied, attacked, shamed and humiliated by family or teachers or peers. The early experiences stockpile and can even feel overwhelming when they are triggered years later.
Reactions vary, based mostly on the intensity and frequency of the early experiences. What we told yourself when these experiences occurred, constitutes the messages we carry into your adult years. These messages become our beliefs about ourselves and the safety of our world and the people in it.
You will be able to control the overwhelm of these triggered feelings if you know what the messages were in your early life and who they came from. Then try to separate the 'then from the now." Other tips for moving through feelings of shame are below in the linked blogs on shame and humiliation.
One woman recalls how it felt for her: “At my mother’s funeral a so-called best friend of mother, known for doing charitable works in the community, stood in front of the 50 or so guests at the funeral and shamed my sister and me, telling everyone there what bad girls we had been. That happened over 10 years ago and I am taken aback that recent White House events are reawakening these troublesome memories.”
Another woman offers a more dramatic description of her reaction to these kinds of triggers: “It’s like the tornado hits and I”m Dorothy.”
And these out-of-control abusive episodes coming from the White House greatly affect me, too. I keep telling myself “Just don’t watch or read the news. This abusive behavior is way too upsetting. And yet, I’m somehow drawn to the painful details, again and again.
What about you? Do these dramas bring up hurtful memories and feelings for you, too?
About Loyalty and Betrayal and the Generational Family 'Ledger’
Seems to me in many of these situations there is a common thread of the President's preoccupation with loyalty (and betrayal.) He especially claims his long-time loyal supporter, Jeff Sessions, was disloyal to him when he obeyed the rule of law and recused himself from the Russia investigation.
Jeff Sessions says he consulted with colleagues and ethical experts about what he should do. He says he recused himself due to DOJ regulation 28 CFR 45.2 which states an employee may not "participate in a criminal investigation or prosecution if he has a personal or political relationship with any person or organization substantially involved in the conduct that is the subject of the investigation or prosecution, or who would be directly affected by the outcome." Being an adviser and surrogate to the Trump campaign appears to put Sessions in this category.
And there was an additional factor some say cried out for his recusal: During his confirmation hearing Sessions was not honest in answering questions about his meetings with the Russian ambassador during the campaign.
Sessions recused himself March 2, 2017. Has the President been dwelling on this ‘betrayal’ all this time? And now, five months later, is the the stinging criticism and pressure to resign being turned on full blast?
The other day the President said Sessions not recusing himself was "extremely unfair — and that's a mild word — to the president."
Many of us learn about loyalty and betrayal in our families through generational messages (often unspoken) which have passed down. Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy, founder of Contextual Family Therapy, calls these generational transmissions ‘invisible loyalties’ and describes a ‘ledger’ of justice and injustice, fairness and unfairness, trustworthiness and untrustworthiness and loyalty and betrayal.
When I first read about the ‘ledger’ in my Family Therapy doctoral program, I had an amazing ‘aha’ moment. Yes! I certainly could see how injustices, unfairness and disloyalties had accrued in my family over the generations, and how the resulting anger and resentment had been passed down as well.
Might there have been an invisible loyalty ledger in your family as well?
“There But For The Grace of God Go I”
I can’t help but wonder how it is for other cabinet members, West Wing staff and legislators watching these many public abuses play out. And nobody wants the world to know how disappointed the President is in them!
This reminds me of the stories I hear from clients whose sibling was the one regularly picked on, hit or yelled at by a parent. Clients describe remembering how they cowered just outside the door and wondered “Am I next?”
More about “Invisible Loyalties and the Ledger:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Boszormenyi-Nagy
More about feelings of embarrassment, shame, and humiliation from
Tips From The Queen of Rejection Blog: with TIPS for how to manage feelings of shame:
I’ve Never Felt So Mortified
http://www.tipsfromthequeenofrejection.com/2007/06/ive_never_felt_.html
My Mortifying Personal Experience with ‘Just Locker Room Talk
http://www.tipsfromthequeenofrejection.com/2016/10/my-mortifying-personal-experience-with-just-locker-room-talk-.html
Saving Face or Losing Face
http://www.tipsfromthequeenofrejection.com/2013/10/saving-face-or-losing-face.html
Until next month,
Elayne
Elayne Savage is the author of ground-breaking relationship books published in 9 languages.
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