By ALI CUDBY
A couple weeks ago I might have binge watched Catastrophe, the very fun, quirky English sitcom.
Sorry, not sorry.
So last week, when I found myself pointing the remote blankly at the screen, I decided I needed to ease up on the TV junk food and feed my brain some protein.
I turned on the Ted Talk channel and watched the amazing offering by Brené Brown on Listening To Shame.
In this talk (which I HIGHLY recommend – way more than Catastrophe) Brown makes an observation that goes directly to the experience of every woman in the lingerie fitting room.
Namely, she talks about the difference between guilt and shame. According to Brown, guilt is the belief that “I did something bad,” while shame says “I am bad.”
Guilt is an error – I made a mistake.
Shame is the internalized feeling that when something goes off the rails, it’s because of who you are, instead of what you did. I am a mistake. Shame “drives two big tapes. Not being good enough, and if you can talk yourself out of that one, ‘who do you think you are?’”
We know that the fitting room is a place of extreme vulnerability for any person who wears a bra – woman or man, young or old, straight or gay, thin or curvy.
Too often, when people walk into the fitting room, they internalize messages about their bras, their breasts and their body and drive the express bus past vulnerability and straight to shame.
According to Brown, shame withers in the face of empathy, and empathy is best expressed by the words, “me, too.”
Getting real with “me too” means sharing some part of your vulnerability story with every customer. It’s a lot of work. It’s exhausting and hard and requires Herculean levels of consistently managing your people.
You may not successfully help every customer beat back the shame gremlins every time – but you can dare greatly.
