00:00:11
Speaker 1: Jordan Dan is a trauma informed somatic therapist, author, teacher, and speaker based in New York City. She helps individuals and couples restore vibrancy to their lives by reconnecting with the wisdom of their bodies and guiding couples through a dance of rupture and repair. I personally found Jordan on Instagram, where she uses media clips as stimulus for exploring relational dynamics, which is exactly why I like rostering reality TV as well. So I feel like we have a lot to talk about and we have one specific post in particular that I really want to go through today.
00:00:46
Speaker 2: So first of all, Hi Jordan, Hi, so nice to be here with you.
00:00:50
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being here. I was reached out to you because my listeners know this as well. I watch Love Is Blind pretty religiously and I get furious with myself for even watching it sometimes, But to your point, for me, it's just such an interesting case study and like human beings and why we do what we do, why we're driven in relationships, how little we seem to know about how to relate to each other, and like it's very obvious to me watching reality TV exactly what you said, like we don't know how to do repair, or you know, like everyone's leading with their attachment style kind of thing, or their trauma from the past relationships they've had or growing up and things like that, and so I get sucked in. I find it fascinating. But I was watching this season, the Love is Blind reunion, and I had a very similar reaction to one part of it that we'll get into in a second that you ended up posting about. And I thought to myself, Oh my god, thank god somebody's talking about this, because I almost feel crazy thinking the way that I think, because it seems so different than the way our culture is thinking right now on social media and with realities.
00:02:00
Speaker 2: So let's just.
00:02:01
Speaker 1: Get into it. I don't want to talk about it. If you haven't watched fully through Love is Blind and you're currently watching, this will have some spoilers, So just forewarning to anyone currently not finished with the season yet, maybe finish it then come back and listen to this. But you posted about this part of the reunion, which was just difficult for me to watch. But Chris, who's one of the men characters, was pretty shitty during the season. I would say, and he did not treat his partner Jess very well. He talked about her body as a part of the reason he needed to end things with her, wanted her to go to pilates. People were infuriated by these things that he said. Fair enough, right, But we get to the reunion and you can tell he's been through it, And as a person who was also on reality TV and has been drugged through the mud of this, I know how bad it is and I cannot imagine what he was going through with the hate and the humiliation and all that already online. We get to the reunion and they just kind of lay into him and it keeps going, and it keeps going, and it's very obvious that he's shaky, he's sweaty, he looks like he's about to throw up, and it continue going and it became so difficult for me to watch. But the responses from people are like so encouraging and like yeah, go girl, and go nick Lache, and very encouraging of this shaming is what I would call it. So let's start with what were you watching and what was your reaction and what made you want to make this post on Instagram?
00:03:36
Speaker 2: To begin with yeah, I mean, I think I'm just appreciating what you brought in as a kind of identification point for yourself, which is empathy, Like you have some lived experience around this that invites you into you know, what is essentially mentalization and psychology, which is the ability to kind of be aware of the mind and body of another as you also feel your own awareness of your body and your lived experience. And so I think my inspiration is similar to yours, is like a real feeling of empathy of care. Like again, my care and empathy is not gendered, It is not unilateral in any way. I feel a care and empathy for all people. And so, while of course we can't know exactly what Chris was experiencing in that reunion, it's from a somatic standpoint, it's undeniable that he's having a really intense physiological experience. I don't know what that experience is, but what I do know from my clinical work is he's outside of the window of tolerance. He's in a state of overwhelm, whether that's just asociation, rage, you know, shame that actually in that state someone can't actually take in an understanding of what is being offered to them it's too much. And so you know, I think this just took me into the culture at large about thinking about this, like, oh my goodness, people need to actually think critically about the difference between accountability and humiliation, and the difference between accountability and public humiliation, which is that much more intense, is that much more painful, and creates that much more harm for an individual. So I really wanted to tease this out. But what's wild that we can get into the difference between accountability and humiliation because I think we need to really spell that out.
00:06:02
Speaker 3: Agreed, But what is wild every time, honestly, every time I have a post that goes viral, it really takes me into a dark place about our culture because what is.
00:06:17
Speaker 2: Dunning to me is that I'm very clear about what the lens is that I'm presenting. I have a title, I have annotated captions, there is an explanation, which is essentially inviting someone into Okay, here's this piece of content, here's the frame to look at this content from people do not even engage with the frame. There's no critical thought. And what you see in these thousands and thousands of comments is people using content as an opportunity to reinforce their beliefs as they already are. I wouldn't even say beliefs, it's but they see content as an opportunity to react, and reaction is not critical thinking. Reaction is like our most primitive response. There's no humanness in reactivity. I mean, I guess I could argue that from an evolutionary biology standpoint. If we run from a tiger, that's that's that's our humanness. But when it comes to relationships, like if we don't have critical thought, if we don't have the ability to regulate our nervous systems and pause long enough to get the frame, get the context, go beyond our reaction, then we're just robots. We're nothing more than AI. All we're doing is running an algorithm that is a conglomeration of our lived experience. And that's not consciousness and the unconsciousness.
00:07:55
Speaker 1: Oh there's so many things I want to touch on, so let me try to get my mind straight here. I want to go back to humiliation and shame and a difference of that, but I do want to touch on this really fast, because this is exactly what comes up for me when I my like I wasn't I was a part of your clip that went viral because I commented on it, so then I was getting also feedback in the comments section. First of all, some bitch, I was like dying because it's like, all I did was echo what you said and go, oh, my god, exactly what I said at the beginning of this podcast. Thank god someone is talking about this, because that was my body response, that was my mental response, emotional response, all of it. And I feel isolated because the bigger picture response is very much what was happening in your comment section, and this will tie into public shaming, I think. But it's interesting to me to observe exactly what you described the reaction because in my head, and I don't know your the therapist, so we'll ask this question. But in my head, if you're reacting acting in such a volatile way, there's really no difference between that behavior and the behavior you're ranting about.
00:09:06
Speaker 2: So it's like.
00:09:08
Speaker 1: It's just a wild, weird thing to look at because you're going and why are you justified to say that? But he can't you know that feeling where you're going?
00:09:17
Speaker 2: Wait?
00:09:17
Speaker 1: What am I the only one seeing that this behavior is exactly the same thing? And I can kind of get caught on this loop and it is very daunting because it's happening on such a big scale. So then a person like you or me who's seeing it from a different lens, is the lone.
00:09:35
Speaker 2: Wolf voice a little bit.
00:09:36
Speaker 1: You're kind of in this place where you're like, does anyone else see what I'm seeing here? And it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of that happening. So let's touch on that for a second. Is is that behavior kind of of the same thing, of this human reaction to whatever it is and acting out of bad behavior, similar to what they're getting mad at.
00:10:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, first place, Does that make sense? Yeah, I'm so glad what you're pointing to because it's this is exactly it. It's like, I don't know if you're familiar with the aur boris, but it's a snail swallowing its own tail that like we're like in the phenomenon you're talking about the phenomenon that is actually part of the phenomenon that's the problem, Yeah, which is in people's reactivity, there's no observing ego, there's no ability to notice one's internal reactions. It's just what we call psychoanalysis, egosyntonic. So it's just like I am my reaction. It's just there's no ability to notice, to observe. It's just it's like again like a computer running, it's just doing the algorithm. And so inside of that, this is the way things are. Anybody who presents anything that is in contrast to that then becomes the perpetrator, and then the person becomes an attacker on that person. And this is again what we're really talking about is our diminished capacity as a culture for repair. This is inherit of this diminishment, which is like a complete lack of capacity to tolerate difference, a complete lack of capacity to notice, Oh I'm having a reaction. I wonder what that reaction is about. But instead what happens is I don't like your difference, and now I'm coming for you. It's like I'm going to kill Really, what's happening is inside of that person's system, it's so uncomfortable to tolerate any dissonance that is different from their reaction that in killing you off, coming to attack you, it's a way to kill off that feeling inside which is like oh it's comfortable to look at something that's in opposition to what I think I feel, because that's the other prayer. It's like reaction, is it really like, uh, contended with a belief system. It's just the belief system running. And so it's like if you won't, if you don't agree with me that Chris is worthy of being stoned in public, then you're a problem. It's like, well, can we actually could we actually just talk about the phenomenon instead, like can you critically engage with the subject matter as opposed to killing off the messenger? It's wild and it's it's like a virus that has infected our entire culture.
00:12:53
Speaker 1: It's interesting you said the stoning example, because that was literally what I felt. Was when I'm watching the reunion, I had these flashes to, you know, past times before any of us were alive, where there were these public hangings or they would torture people and everyone's screaming and whatever, and I'm like, we're doing it.
00:13:11
Speaker 2: It's the same thing.
00:13:12
Speaker 1: If we think we've evolved, we haven't. We've just well now we're just doing it with technology on TV on a reality show instead of hanging someone in public, but you're literally hanging them out to dry in a different way and it will ruin their life in a different way. And all of that is true as well, and so it was really difficult, or it's really difficult for me to just like take that as, oh, okay, this is what we're doing, you know. And maybe that is because I'm using my critical thinking and others aren't. But even when I commented on your post, all I did was say thank you. Oh my gosh, yes, and I got trolled for that.
00:13:50
Speaker 2: It was really weird.
00:13:52
Speaker 1: I actually like even took a moment and tried not to react myself to say, like, is this really what's.
00:13:58
Speaker 2: Happening right now?
00:13:59
Speaker 1: Because what we're doing here, like this is your page you posted about your thought process watching this thing. I said thank you. I had the same one, And then somehow I was getting trolled saying well, you could have turned it off and blah blah blah, and I'm like, but why don't I have to turn it off? Like I'm not the one losing it here? Actually I'm just like noticing something. But it is so quick, like it's which is what makes me think it's the reaction that people respond that way. They just like go at you and want to tear you down for having a different thought, And how much are we seeing that on like a bigger scale, you know.
00:14:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's I mean, but it's so it's so primitive, it's so it's so immature. It's like the lack of awareness that like the ground of civil discourse has been left. And actually it's not even that they're attacking your different position. They're attacking you. Oh yeah, Like the comments that I have gotten are so devaluing, hateful, violent, just towards my personhood, not even towards the idea like that would be a that would at least be a little bit of a shared terrain.
00:15:12
Speaker 4: Right, Wow, Okay, So because I have a different perspective, you want to kill me off?
00:15:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and look at what that looks like writ large on the culture politically, like we have lost the capacity for civil discourse. And I think you're totally right. I think about this so much. It's like reality TV has become the Colosseum. But actually I would argue that at least, you know, in the Colosseum, men were volunteering to go to their death and going to one's death in a way, at least historically publicly in that forum has dignity, it's their sovereignty. One could argue in the willingness to fight like that in public, but I think actually in reality TV, like psychological harm is so much more painful. It's invisible, and that actually there's not a lot of dignity inside of that, and there's not a lot of respect for an understanding of what someone then has to live with but the rest of their life, right, and the wildness of the Internet is that Like if we think about this, just like on a purely like quantum level, if you have a rupture with a friend, you have a repeat, but the ripples of that kind of last a while depends on how good the repair is. But like you might if it's a partner, you remind the partner of remember the time you hurt me, Like that in and of itself, that mirror, that echo continues to show you who you are. But you take that onto the Internet and it's just the echoes, and like longevity, it's disproportionate. Yeah, like someone's mistake doesn't get held in the context of that relationship, it gets disproportionally echoed into the furthest regions of the Internet. And so that people on the street recognize you and have a perception of who you are that is entirely based on a structure, editing, manipulation of a singular narrative, a simplication of narrative. It's just it's it's actually really really tragic.
00:18:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, and to speak to that point, and you know, obviously you mentioned earlier like I was having an empathetic moment observing Chris. I had that thinking before my own experience, but then after going through it myself, it was exponentially greater that I would observe. I could barely watch reality TV for a long time because you once you know what I know, you can see how much producers are manipulating the entire thing. I mean, it is not what you think it is.
00:18:39
Speaker 2: Ever.
00:18:40
Speaker 1: And if you're seeing a scene that has been edited, like you said, to make one person look away and another person look another way, it could have even been a conversation broken up between multiple different times, and they make it look like one thing we have. You know, they'll cut out other things that this could have a response to. You're not taking into account how little sleep people have, how much alcohol has been involved, like what they've been cut off from in their own world and they're you know, floundering on their own or things like that. And in my situation, what was being said about me wasn't even true, but it didn't matter. Nobody cared about that piece of it. They only wanted to roast me to the point of where I was getting death threats. Like people don't understand how bad it is. And so when I now see this happening to someone like a Chris, do I think that he was in the right with what he said and all of that. Absolutely not, And he has some work to do. It sounds like on his own self, his own you know, security issues within himself and like relationships, don't we all though?
00:19:47
Speaker 2: It's what I want to say.
00:19:49
Speaker 1: And if anyone ever thought that when they signed up for reality TV it was going to turn out that way, do you think that they would sign up for it? No, Like, nobody thinks that that is going to be them. That it happens too. And so with that said, it could be anybody, is the point. And I think when you sign.
00:20:09
Speaker 2: Up for these reality shows or.
00:20:11
Speaker 1: You're presented with it like I was, you're presented with something completely different than what it ends up being. And it's not just like everyone is going on these things to be famous or whatever, you know, like everyone thinks they know why someone does it, that they're this type of person that they do it, and that is just simply not true. And I'm saying that as a person who has walked through that. So where is it that we just can like we're missing this whole piece that I just described, Like it's just this one thing, this one singular thing.
00:20:42
Speaker 2: We'll look at that Chris said.
00:20:44
Speaker 1: Something wrong to Jess and then all of a sudden we feel like it's okay to ostracize him and just like roast him publicly and ruin his life completely and not feel guilty about it.
00:20:59
Speaker 2: What is that?
00:21:00
Speaker 3: Well?
00:21:01
Speaker 2: I think this like the frame that is helpful here is maybe starting from a trauma informed lens, which has when you become really trauma informed, you move from experiencing someone's behavior and going what's wrong with you? To experiencing someone's behavior and going what happened to you? Oh? You know, if we look just simply at the behavior Chris demonstrated that has been critiqued, there's some elements of kind of toxic masculinity. We could say, you know, his criticism of her body, his wanting to steal this woman away from his friend. Those are the things that I think are really under critique from the reunion, and that as a starting place to pin that on one person for being responsible for adopting that behavior. We live in a culture that is dominated by patriarchy, where men are a culturated and promoted to behave in these ways. So to make Chris escapegoat for toxic masculinity, as if killing him off is going to solve the problem of this is that that starting place is totally problematic and absolutely untrue. We all have to really comfortable place of wholeness. Like even even with what we're talking about of how someone will go from attacking Chris to then if someone defends Chris then then moves that or not even defends it expresses empathy and really is saying, Okay, yeah, he did something problematic, and can we look at how this might be problematic for him. That's just a widening of a frame. It's not flattening. It doesn't mean that he did anything wrong Like this is also wild. People lack total capacity for nuance, like to say one thing doesn't make the other thing untrue. Like, again, that's a polarization of thinking and that's not nuance, and that's that's not how the world looks. But I think again, like this is if you're familiar with the drama triangle, the drama triangle is this victim, perpetrator, martyr. And people move between these polls sometimes feeling like they're or even they rigidly identified with one position. But in that rigid identification with I'm the victim, and this is what we see in the comments a lot like I'm the victim, And in that rigid identification with I'm the victim, like I'm Jess, I've been wounded, you then fail to notice how in that identification you are then becoming the perpetrator of arm towards someone else. So I really think this comes back inside of your question. I think what we have to come back to is a real understanding of wholeness. We live in a world where we're culturated by society, we're culturated by our families, and inside of that, every dynamic exists. Inside of us. You know, we are both perpetrator and victim, we are male and female, we are all of these. We are sometimes justified and oftentimes not justified. I think the starting place is actually realizing that we contain all of these polarities and that all of these dynamics exists inside of us, and the moment we go it's you, we've left our own wholeness and inside of that, we have tried to outsource some part of us and lodge it inside of another person so we don't have to look at it ourselves.
00:25:21
Speaker 1: Let's touch on the human are I think we had said the public shaming slash humiliation versus accountability at this stage, because I think you're hitting some of those points. And again, like we said, I don't agree with how Chris handled any of the stuff on the show.
00:25:40
Speaker 2: I agree.
00:25:40
Speaker 1: I also think there's probably editing. I have no idea, but for them to be able to get what they got of him, he had to be doing some of it, you know. So it's like, I don't agree with it, and I think.
00:25:49
Speaker 2: He was like a lost puppy.
00:25:52
Speaker 1: I will also remind everyone it's a dating show where where they're dating all those people, so I mean, it is kind of a wild world that they're living in.
00:26:00
Speaker 2: It's not normal life.
00:26:02
Speaker 1: But that does not justify how he spoke to Jess any sort of shaming, body shaming. Never agree. Also the going behind his friend's back to try to talk to Breed. However, then he gets in front of everyone at the reunion, and you can tell he realizes he was wrong, Like or that's how I felt, was like it was very overtly obvious, just in the way he was presenting himself, in the way that when anyone was speaking to him, that he looked he apologized, Like he actually apologized. That's what people are missing too, Like it's not like he's sitting there trying to like double down on his behavior. He's going, I am sorry. So if he can admit wrongdoing, I'm like, okay, well, like a narcissist can ever apologize. So those are green flags to me in that we're all human. We all say it's things that we don't mean, or bad things or whatever at sometimes and the way that we grow is by looking at those things and changing the behavior. But they launch into this like assault against him is what I would say. And they were even bringing up stuff like Jess was labeling why she thought he did it that way. Instead of them asking him, they asked Jess, and Jess is like, well, I think it's because he's worried about his finances and all of this stuff, so exposing all of these like very private things about him now. So again to me, I'm like, y'all are doing the same thing now, So what is making you sit in this place that you feel so justified? Yet the crowd is cheering and Jess is having this like, you know, big like female empowerment moment, And to me, I was like, that's not empowering. What Colin is that his name or the one that was just like yeah, I don't have anything to say to that, and you just like shut it down.
00:27:47
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, I like that. To me, that was like be the bigger person. Move on.
00:27:51
Speaker 1: You don't need to like harp on this. You got the girl like keep going, let's go. But so let's talk about that. What is the difference between holding someone account and then launching into an equally destructive behavior and shaming or humiliating the person to try to prove that you're in the right.
00:28:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, So accountability is naming harm. So if someone's on the receiving created the hurtful impact, they're acknowledging, they're naming what it was that they did. That was harmful. There's mentalization. Like I said before, accountability requires like I'm holding my awareness of myself in my mind and my awareness of you and your experience in my mind. That just from a neuro physiological standpoint, you have to be in the window of tolerance to be able to mentalize. If you're out of the window of tolerance, you cannot hold an awareness of the other person. It's a higher level thinking skill. You need your prefrontal cortex. And then also that there's a possibility for repair, So that means you don't have to forgive me, but it might be possible that there's at least that I can hear about how my acknowledgment of the harm reached you. And sometimes you know, like in trauma research we talk about that can always happen, Like this is where restorative justice comes in. It doesn't. Repair can't always happen between the person, the person who has caused hart and the perpetrator and the victim. But actually there's often a wider holding of that person that's empathetic and can actually support that person so that person remains feeling human, feeling dignified, having their subjectivity intact. And I think that's the real difference of accountability is that they're is a preservation of subjectivity. I am able to remain a person with dignity even though I have caused harm, and that actually that duality, yeah, I'm a person, I have dignity and I also caused harm is what actually allows for metabolization. It allows me to really go, oh wow, I've really seen this mirror, and I'm feeling motivated to really now see myself and start to notice all the other places where I might be doing this in my life to other people, to see how I've done it in my past, and that creates growth and change inside of the person. Humiliation is exposure. There's power asymmetry, asymmetry, so it's like a you know that there's a core or there's a court experience, whether that's actually the court of public opinion or the court of the reunion audience. The person who has caused harm is as you just mentioned, like they don't have their voice and their agency. So even in that example of asking Jess about his motivations, there's an instance of robbing Chris from his own ability to actually mine Well, oh, let me think about that. Like that process of reflection and then being able to say, oh, these are them, might have been the reasons allows him further integration and understanding. And then there's as I said, like shame overwhelmed association inside of humiliation because of that level of exposure, whether it's the Internet or the audience or just even a number of people, that pushes someone outside of their window of tolerance. And actually, as a result of that, no metabolization and integration happens. And actually there's so much research that shows that humiliation what it produces is not growth and change. Accountability creates growth and change if the person is capable. Humiliation creates compliance. I'll do the behavior without any understanding as to why collapse, just which sometimes looks like self harm, retreat, suicide, or retaliation, which means that that person ramps up the problematic behavior because they've been so hurt and they've had no dignity or understanding of their behaviors. Like this is when we see school shootings, this is when we see domestic violence. This is an increase of the problematic behavior that was attempting to be addressed in the first place.
00:33:07
Speaker 1: I've said that a million times, and this is a topic I don't fully want to dive into because it's so divisive. But the school shooting thing, I'm like, when are we going to accept that if we bully people and treat people as an other, that they're going to react every time?
00:33:23
Speaker 2: Like I don't.
00:33:24
Speaker 1: I find that a very frustrating topic that people cannot observe that some of this is from the way we're treating each other.
00:33:32
Speaker 2: Yes, and I love what you just said other because this is the difference between subject and object. More subject subjectivity is their personhood, it's their dignity, it's their ability to be a full person. Object objectification is you're not a person, you have no like, it's a one flattening and a one dimensionality. And what you're speaking to exactly is when someone is bullied, they're treated as an object. And if someone is treated as an object, that can absolutely lead to taking someone else's life because they are just treating that other person the way they've been treated. Oh you I've been treated as an object, Well you're an object too. Like if you really feel your own subjectivity and you can't help but feel another person's subjectivity, and inside of that, you can't help but feel the empathy which is the starting place, which is I don't want harm to be cause to.
00:34:36
Speaker 1: You, right, I want to talk a little bit more about shame because I think that's what we're doing, thinking that it will show them, you know, teach them a lesson. And what you said was so interesting to me. It's what I instinctively thought. But when you're shaming someone, or when I've seen this happen, or when it's been done to me, most of the time I just end up shutting down, or I see other people just shut down, shut down, shut down, you disassociate to stay safe. But like you said, it's not integrating, like you're not actually taking in what someone else is saying, putting it into your brain of like oh, connecting the dots, you know, and then actually able to do a change behavior because you have the hope that if I do the change behavior, maybe there could be repair or maybe I wouldn't be such a monster. So when you're shamed over and over and over, the only narrative is not even like the behavior was wrong, it's like I am wrong, and so like if you're wrong completely as a human, what are your options for doing any better? And that's what I don't think people get is like we're literally putting people up out in the court of public opinion, Like we're stoning people back from back in the day, and we're going and then why would he not change his behavior? Or how is this continuing to still happen over and over and over, Like all men are so fucked up, and it's like, well, why are men gonna ever? How are men ever going to learn to be any different? If this is the only way we're like teaching or talking about this, Can you go in further into that?
00:36:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think just to kind of amplify what you're saying, which is, yeah, when whence like shaming someone is essentially like stripping them of their humanity. Like the difference between saying like if I were speaking to Chris, the difference between saying like, when you said that about my body, I felt so hurt. It reminded me of all of the times men have dismissed me on account of how I look, and it was so painful. That is different from you're a toxic man. You don't know you you're so superficial, you don't have any idea of how to read a woman, Like there's nothing that is motivating about that statement. Again, it's objectifying language. You're like everybody else. And so, yeah, I mean shame from a physiological standpoint, it's a collapse. It's an internal collapse. We want to hide, we want to remove ourselves. And if in shaming, there's no good reason to be inspired about changing your behavior to do better by the next person, or do it better with that person the next time. Yeah, so it's just totally defeating.
00:37:41
Speaker 1: You know what else I was just thinking about as you were saying that from Jess's perspective, to shame him and get what she got was probably less satisfying than if she had presented it the way you said and he was able to give a true apology and she could sense that, do you know what I mean? Like I think as humans we can sense into when someone's authentically truly sorry and they want to change their behavior. But because he was put under such a microscope and then tortured the way that he was, I'm not sure she got the closure that she could have gotten. And I don't know, maybe she feels great about it, but like without just trying to stick it to him, Like if she had sat in her own authority and it seems like she's in a great place with the new relationship, So like, what's even the point?
00:38:28
Speaker 5: That's what I felt like, Yeah, I love that you're bringing our awareness back to is the person who has experienced the harm being choiceful about.
00:38:41
Speaker 2: What they'd liked? Would they like repair with the person who has heard them? Or do they want to stew in their righteousness and vindication about having been hurt? Which maybe momentary satisfaction sure, but it's not really leational satisfaction.
00:39:02
Speaker 1: Right, So, if we were going to tell listeners, like an example of how to talk about true accountability in a situation like we witnessed O on Love is Blind, what would an example be of how to talk to Chris about taking full accountability for how he behaved? And then like, what could that conversation could have looked like if they had handled it in a way that was focused on accountability and not shaming.
00:39:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the process of accountability. If you've caused harm, name the name the behavior. Okay, apologize for it, really like a full body in apology, not a performative apology, not I'm sorry, but no explanation. Just name the behavior, apologize, then say I want to hear more about what this was like for you to welcome more expression from the other person and to sit there and tolerate it and support yourself to hear more about what the harm was, and then asking what else what can I do for repair? Like what do you need from me to essentially restore trust and safety in our relationship? And like you know, that's that's what needs to happen in couples, in instances where harm has happened outside of that, like the other person doesn't owe that person forgiveness, like that might be enough, but the naming, the apology and then the invitation to hear more or repair in any way is what the person who has caused hard needs to do.
00:40:53
Speaker 1: Okay, it's super helpful. I have a question for you personally, and this is just for me and some of my friends who I know listen who feel the same way. But since you're a person who seems to be thinking a little differently than like the mass culture right now, how are you taking care of yourself amongst that? Because I mentioned to you at the beginning of this podcast, like I feel very isolated often because my thinking does go to what happened to them? What you know, what's the behind the scenes story here? What are we missing? What are we not being pitched? Like I'm always looking at life that way also with my own behavior, that's how I move through Life's kind of just like, huh, that's interesting, Why did I do that? Or you know, like I feel like I'm a pretty self aware person or I'm constantly like working on that. So what are ways that you take care of yourself? Mixed in with this lack of any of those things that I just said being the main way that our most people seem to be moving or the loudest voice at least.
00:41:52
Speaker 2: Honestly doing what we just did, Like this is a huge like this is a huge form of my self care, which is to create content with nuance, to respond with civility to trolls, to invite dialogue, and to just feel that to like enjoy my own integrity, Yeah, and enjoy my own capacity to see the wider picture, to hold the complexity of human beings and of life Like that feels really good to me, Like I take the light in feeling my own ability to hold the wider frame and feel I take enjoyment actually from not demonizing people. I meantime, I respond to a comment, and I treat the other person like a human, like a human being worthy of respect. I can feel myself like grow a little bit large.
00:42:58
Speaker 1: It's interesting because we often forget how connected we all are. Or that's the way that I think. And so when you're demonizing someone else, you're going.
00:43:06
Speaker 2: To feel that yourself.
00:43:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you act with kindness to someone else, it feels nice within yourself, Like it's just an interesting thing that we miss sometimes and it's so simple. But I love that you just brought me back to that reminder. And even when the trolls are trolling and it's really difficult, it always feels better to either not respond. Usually that's the best option for me, but if I do, to do it from a kind place. Wish them well on their journey and know that we are on separate journeys. They gotta go. Jordan, thank you so much for doing this with me. I love your page. If you guys want to go check it out. I'm going to put all of the links to her Instagram, website, everything substack because you write a lot of articles. I'll also put a link to the article that she wrote about this exact situation in the description of this podcast. Is there anywhere else that you would direct people to go look at work or figure out how to work with you.
00:44:01
Speaker 2: You nailed it all.
00:44:02
Speaker 1: Thanks so much of course, so all of that will be in the description of this podcast. You guys, go check that out, and thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1: Jordan Dan is a trauma informed somatic therapist, author, teacher, and speaker based in New York City. She helps individuals and couples restore vibrancy to their lives by reconnecting with the wisdom of their bodies and guiding couples through a dance of rupture and repair. I personally found Jordan on Instagram, where she uses media clips as stimulus for exploring relational dynamics, which is exactly why I like rostering reality TV as well. So I feel like we have a lot to talk about and we have one specific post in particular that I really want to go through today.
00:00:46
Speaker 2: So first of all, Hi Jordan, Hi, so nice to be here with you.
00:00:50
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being here. I was reached out to you because my listeners know this as well. I watch Love Is Blind pretty religiously and I get furious with myself for even watching it sometimes, But to your point, for me, it's just such an interesting case study and like human beings and why we do what we do, why we're driven in relationships, how little we seem to know about how to relate to each other, and like it's very obvious to me watching reality TV exactly what you said, like we don't know how to do repair, or you know, like everyone's leading with their attachment style kind of thing, or their trauma from the past relationships they've had or growing up and things like that, and so I get sucked in. I find it fascinating. But I was watching this season, the Love is Blind reunion, and I had a very similar reaction to one part of it that we'll get into in a second that you ended up posting about. And I thought to myself, Oh my god, thank god somebody's talking about this, because I almost feel crazy thinking the way that I think, because it seems so different than the way our culture is thinking right now on social media and with realities.
00:02:00
Speaker 2: So let's just.
00:02:01
Speaker 1: Get into it. I don't want to talk about it. If you haven't watched fully through Love is Blind and you're currently watching, this will have some spoilers, So just forewarning to anyone currently not finished with the season yet, maybe finish it then come back and listen to this. But you posted about this part of the reunion, which was just difficult for me to watch. But Chris, who's one of the men characters, was pretty shitty during the season. I would say, and he did not treat his partner Jess very well. He talked about her body as a part of the reason he needed to end things with her, wanted her to go to pilates. People were infuriated by these things that he said. Fair enough, right, But we get to the reunion and you can tell he's been through it, And as a person who was also on reality TV and has been drugged through the mud of this, I know how bad it is and I cannot imagine what he was going through with the hate and the humiliation and all that already online. We get to the reunion and they just kind of lay into him and it keeps going, and it keeps going, and it's very obvious that he's shaky, he's sweaty, he looks like he's about to throw up, and it continue going and it became so difficult for me to watch. But the responses from people are like so encouraging and like yeah, go girl, and go nick Lache, and very encouraging of this shaming is what I would call it. So let's start with what were you watching and what was your reaction and what made you want to make this post on Instagram?
00:03:36
Speaker 2: To begin with yeah, I mean, I think I'm just appreciating what you brought in as a kind of identification point for yourself, which is empathy, Like you have some lived experience around this that invites you into you know, what is essentially mentalization and psychology, which is the ability to kind of be aware of the mind and body of another as you also feel your own awareness of your body and your lived experience. And so I think my inspiration is similar to yours, is like a real feeling of empathy of care. Like again, my care and empathy is not gendered, It is not unilateral in any way. I feel a care and empathy for all people. And so, while of course we can't know exactly what Chris was experiencing in that reunion, it's from a somatic standpoint, it's undeniable that he's having a really intense physiological experience. I don't know what that experience is, but what I do know from my clinical work is he's outside of the window of tolerance. He's in a state of overwhelm, whether that's just asociation, rage, you know, shame that actually in that state someone can't actually take in an understanding of what is being offered to them it's too much. And so you know, I think this just took me into the culture at large about thinking about this, like, oh my goodness, people need to actually think critically about the difference between accountability and humiliation, and the difference between accountability and public humiliation, which is that much more intense, is that much more painful, and creates that much more harm for an individual. So I really wanted to tease this out. But what's wild that we can get into the difference between accountability and humiliation because I think we need to really spell that out.
00:06:02
Speaker 3: Agreed, But what is wild every time, honestly, every time I have a post that goes viral, it really takes me into a dark place about our culture because what is.
00:06:17
Speaker 2: Dunning to me is that I'm very clear about what the lens is that I'm presenting. I have a title, I have annotated captions, there is an explanation, which is essentially inviting someone into Okay, here's this piece of content, here's the frame to look at this content from people do not even engage with the frame. There's no critical thought. And what you see in these thousands and thousands of comments is people using content as an opportunity to reinforce their beliefs as they already are. I wouldn't even say beliefs, it's but they see content as an opportunity to react, and reaction is not critical thinking. Reaction is like our most primitive response. There's no humanness in reactivity. I mean, I guess I could argue that from an evolutionary biology standpoint. If we run from a tiger, that's that's that's our humanness. But when it comes to relationships, like if we don't have critical thought, if we don't have the ability to regulate our nervous systems and pause long enough to get the frame, get the context, go beyond our reaction, then we're just robots. We're nothing more than AI. All we're doing is running an algorithm that is a conglomeration of our lived experience. And that's not consciousness and the unconsciousness.
00:07:55
Speaker 1: Oh there's so many things I want to touch on, so let me try to get my mind straight here. I want to go back to humiliation and shame and a difference of that, but I do want to touch on this really fast, because this is exactly what comes up for me when I my like I wasn't I was a part of your clip that went viral because I commented on it, so then I was getting also feedback in the comments section. First of all, some bitch, I was like dying because it's like, all I did was echo what you said and go, oh, my god, exactly what I said at the beginning of this podcast. Thank god someone is talking about this, because that was my body response, that was my mental response, emotional response, all of it. And I feel isolated because the bigger picture response is very much what was happening in your comment section, and this will tie into public shaming, I think. But it's interesting to me to observe exactly what you described the reaction because in my head, and I don't know your the therapist, so we'll ask this question. But in my head, if you're reacting acting in such a volatile way, there's really no difference between that behavior and the behavior you're ranting about.
00:09:06
Speaker 2: So it's like.
00:09:08
Speaker 1: It's just a wild, weird thing to look at because you're going and why are you justified to say that? But he can't you know that feeling where you're going?
00:09:17
Speaker 2: Wait?
00:09:17
Speaker 1: What am I the only one seeing that this behavior is exactly the same thing? And I can kind of get caught on this loop and it is very daunting because it's happening on such a big scale. So then a person like you or me who's seeing it from a different lens, is the lone.
00:09:35
Speaker 2: Wolf voice a little bit.
00:09:36
Speaker 1: You're kind of in this place where you're like, does anyone else see what I'm seeing here? And it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of that happening. So let's touch on that for a second. Is is that behavior kind of of the same thing, of this human reaction to whatever it is and acting out of bad behavior, similar to what they're getting mad at.
00:10:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, first place, Does that make sense? Yeah, I'm so glad what you're pointing to because it's this is exactly it. It's like, I don't know if you're familiar with the aur boris, but it's a snail swallowing its own tail that like we're like in the phenomenon you're talking about the phenomenon that is actually part of the phenomenon that's the problem, Yeah, which is in people's reactivity, there's no observing ego, there's no ability to notice one's internal reactions. It's just what we call psychoanalysis, egosyntonic. So it's just like I am my reaction. It's just there's no ability to notice, to observe. It's just it's like again like a computer running, it's just doing the algorithm. And so inside of that, this is the way things are. Anybody who presents anything that is in contrast to that then becomes the perpetrator, and then the person becomes an attacker on that person. And this is again what we're really talking about is our diminished capacity as a culture for repair. This is inherit of this diminishment, which is like a complete lack of capacity to tolerate difference, a complete lack of capacity to notice, Oh I'm having a reaction. I wonder what that reaction is about. But instead what happens is I don't like your difference, and now I'm coming for you. It's like I'm going to kill Really, what's happening is inside of that person's system, it's so uncomfortable to tolerate any dissonance that is different from their reaction that in killing you off, coming to attack you, it's a way to kill off that feeling inside which is like oh it's comfortable to look at something that's in opposition to what I think I feel, because that's the other prayer. It's like reaction, is it really like, uh, contended with a belief system. It's just the belief system running. And so it's like if you won't, if you don't agree with me that Chris is worthy of being stoned in public, then you're a problem. It's like, well, can we actually could we actually just talk about the phenomenon instead, like can you critically engage with the subject matter as opposed to killing off the messenger? It's wild and it's it's like a virus that has infected our entire culture.
00:12:53
Speaker 1: It's interesting you said the stoning example, because that was literally what I felt. Was when I'm watching the reunion, I had these flashes to, you know, past times before any of us were alive, where there were these public hangings or they would torture people and everyone's screaming and whatever, and I'm like, we're doing it.
00:13:11
Speaker 2: It's the same thing.
00:13:12
Speaker 1: If we think we've evolved, we haven't. We've just well now we're just doing it with technology on TV on a reality show instead of hanging someone in public, but you're literally hanging them out to dry in a different way and it will ruin their life in a different way. And all of that is true as well, and so it was really difficult, or it's really difficult for me to just like take that as, oh, okay, this is what we're doing, you know. And maybe that is because I'm using my critical thinking and others aren't. But even when I commented on your post, all I did was say thank you. Oh my gosh, yes, and I got trolled for that.
00:13:50
Speaker 2: It was really weird.
00:13:52
Speaker 1: I actually like even took a moment and tried not to react myself to say, like, is this really what's.
00:13:58
Speaker 2: Happening right now?
00:13:59
Speaker 1: Because what we're doing here, like this is your page you posted about your thought process watching this thing. I said thank you. I had the same one, And then somehow I was getting trolled saying well, you could have turned it off and blah blah blah, and I'm like, but why don't I have to turn it off? Like I'm not the one losing it here? Actually I'm just like noticing something. But it is so quick, like it's which is what makes me think it's the reaction that people respond that way. They just like go at you and want to tear you down for having a different thought, And how much are we seeing that on like a bigger scale, you know.
00:14:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's I mean, but it's so it's so primitive, it's so it's so immature. It's like the lack of awareness that like the ground of civil discourse has been left. And actually it's not even that they're attacking your different position. They're attacking you. Oh yeah, Like the comments that I have gotten are so devaluing, hateful, violent, just towards my personhood, not even towards the idea like that would be a that would at least be a little bit of a shared terrain.
00:15:12
Speaker 4: Right, Wow, Okay, So because I have a different perspective, you want to kill me off?
00:15:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and look at what that looks like writ large on the culture politically, like we have lost the capacity for civil discourse. And I think you're totally right. I think about this so much. It's like reality TV has become the Colosseum. But actually I would argue that at least, you know, in the Colosseum, men were volunteering to go to their death and going to one's death in a way, at least historically publicly in that forum has dignity, it's their sovereignty. One could argue in the willingness to fight like that in public, but I think actually in reality TV, like psychological harm is so much more painful. It's invisible, and that actually there's not a lot of dignity inside of that, and there's not a lot of respect for an understanding of what someone then has to live with but the rest of their life, right, and the wildness of the Internet is that Like if we think about this, just like on a purely like quantum level, if you have a rupture with a friend, you have a repeat, but the ripples of that kind of last a while depends on how good the repair is. But like you might if it's a partner, you remind the partner of remember the time you hurt me, Like that in and of itself, that mirror, that echo continues to show you who you are. But you take that onto the Internet and it's just the echoes, and like longevity, it's disproportionate. Yeah, like someone's mistake doesn't get held in the context of that relationship, it gets disproportionally echoed into the furthest regions of the Internet. And so that people on the street recognize you and have a perception of who you are that is entirely based on a structure, editing, manipulation of a singular narrative, a simplication of narrative. It's just it's it's actually really really tragic.
00:18:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, and to speak to that point, and you know, obviously you mentioned earlier like I was having an empathetic moment observing Chris. I had that thinking before my own experience, but then after going through it myself, it was exponentially greater that I would observe. I could barely watch reality TV for a long time because you once you know what I know, you can see how much producers are manipulating the entire thing. I mean, it is not what you think it is.
00:18:39
Speaker 2: Ever.
00:18:40
Speaker 1: And if you're seeing a scene that has been edited, like you said, to make one person look away and another person look another way, it could have even been a conversation broken up between multiple different times, and they make it look like one thing we have. You know, they'll cut out other things that this could have a response to. You're not taking into account how little sleep people have, how much alcohol has been involved, like what they've been cut off from in their own world and they're you know, floundering on their own or things like that. And in my situation, what was being said about me wasn't even true, but it didn't matter. Nobody cared about that piece of it. They only wanted to roast me to the point of where I was getting death threats. Like people don't understand how bad it is. And so when I now see this happening to someone like a Chris, do I think that he was in the right with what he said and all of that. Absolutely not, And he has some work to do. It sounds like on his own self, his own you know, security issues within himself and like relationships, don't we all though?
00:19:47
Speaker 2: It's what I want to say.
00:19:49
Speaker 1: And if anyone ever thought that when they signed up for reality TV it was going to turn out that way, do you think that they would sign up for it? No, Like, nobody thinks that that is going to be them. That it happens too. And so with that said, it could be anybody, is the point. And I think when you sign.
00:20:09
Speaker 2: Up for these reality shows or.
00:20:11
Speaker 1: You're presented with it like I was, you're presented with something completely different than what it ends up being. And it's not just like everyone is going on these things to be famous or whatever, you know, like everyone thinks they know why someone does it, that they're this type of person that they do it, and that is just simply not true. And I'm saying that as a person who has walked through that. So where is it that we just can like we're missing this whole piece that I just described, Like it's just this one thing, this one singular thing.
00:20:42
Speaker 2: We'll look at that Chris said.
00:20:44
Speaker 1: Something wrong to Jess and then all of a sudden we feel like it's okay to ostracize him and just like roast him publicly and ruin his life completely and not feel guilty about it.
00:20:59
Speaker 2: What is that?
00:21:00
Speaker 3: Well?
00:21:01
Speaker 2: I think this like the frame that is helpful here is maybe starting from a trauma informed lens, which has when you become really trauma informed, you move from experiencing someone's behavior and going what's wrong with you? To experiencing someone's behavior and going what happened to you? Oh? You know, if we look just simply at the behavior Chris demonstrated that has been critiqued, there's some elements of kind of toxic masculinity. We could say, you know, his criticism of her body, his wanting to steal this woman away from his friend. Those are the things that I think are really under critique from the reunion, and that as a starting place to pin that on one person for being responsible for adopting that behavior. We live in a culture that is dominated by patriarchy, where men are a culturated and promoted to behave in these ways. So to make Chris escapegoat for toxic masculinity, as if killing him off is going to solve the problem of this is that that starting place is totally problematic and absolutely untrue. We all have to really comfortable place of wholeness. Like even even with what we're talking about of how someone will go from attacking Chris to then if someone defends Chris then then moves that or not even defends it expresses empathy and really is saying, Okay, yeah, he did something problematic, and can we look at how this might be problematic for him. That's just a widening of a frame. It's not flattening. It doesn't mean that he did anything wrong Like this is also wild. People lack total capacity for nuance, like to say one thing doesn't make the other thing untrue. Like, again, that's a polarization of thinking and that's not nuance, and that's that's not how the world looks. But I think again, like this is if you're familiar with the drama triangle, the drama triangle is this victim, perpetrator, martyr. And people move between these polls sometimes feeling like they're or even they rigidly identified with one position. But in that rigid identification with I'm the victim, and this is what we see in the comments a lot like I'm the victim, And in that rigid identification with I'm the victim, like I'm Jess, I've been wounded, you then fail to notice how in that identification you are then becoming the perpetrator of arm towards someone else. So I really think this comes back inside of your question. I think what we have to come back to is a real understanding of wholeness. We live in a world where we're culturated by society, we're culturated by our families, and inside of that, every dynamic exists. Inside of us. You know, we are both perpetrator and victim, we are male and female, we are all of these. We are sometimes justified and oftentimes not justified. I think the starting place is actually realizing that we contain all of these polarities and that all of these dynamics exists inside of us, and the moment we go it's you, we've left our own wholeness and inside of that, we have tried to outsource some part of us and lodge it inside of another person so we don't have to look at it ourselves.
00:25:21
Speaker 1: Let's touch on the human are I think we had said the public shaming slash humiliation versus accountability at this stage, because I think you're hitting some of those points. And again, like we said, I don't agree with how Chris handled any of the stuff on the show.
00:25:40
Speaker 2: I agree.
00:25:40
Speaker 1: I also think there's probably editing. I have no idea, but for them to be able to get what they got of him, he had to be doing some of it, you know. So it's like, I don't agree with it, and I think.
00:25:49
Speaker 2: He was like a lost puppy.
00:25:52
Speaker 1: I will also remind everyone it's a dating show where where they're dating all those people, so I mean, it is kind of a wild world that they're living in.
00:26:00
Speaker 2: It's not normal life.
00:26:02
Speaker 1: But that does not justify how he spoke to Jess any sort of shaming, body shaming. Never agree. Also the going behind his friend's back to try to talk to Breed. However, then he gets in front of everyone at the reunion, and you can tell he realizes he was wrong, Like or that's how I felt, was like it was very overtly obvious, just in the way he was presenting himself, in the way that when anyone was speaking to him, that he looked he apologized, Like he actually apologized. That's what people are missing too, Like it's not like he's sitting there trying to like double down on his behavior. He's going, I am sorry. So if he can admit wrongdoing, I'm like, okay, well, like a narcissist can ever apologize. So those are green flags to me in that we're all human. We all say it's things that we don't mean, or bad things or whatever at sometimes and the way that we grow is by looking at those things and changing the behavior. But they launch into this like assault against him is what I would say. And they were even bringing up stuff like Jess was labeling why she thought he did it that way. Instead of them asking him, they asked Jess, and Jess is like, well, I think it's because he's worried about his finances and all of this stuff, so exposing all of these like very private things about him now. So again to me, I'm like, y'all are doing the same thing now, So what is making you sit in this place that you feel so justified? Yet the crowd is cheering and Jess is having this like, you know, big like female empowerment moment, And to me, I was like, that's not empowering. What Colin is that his name or the one that was just like yeah, I don't have anything to say to that, and you just like shut it down.
00:27:47
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, I like that. To me, that was like be the bigger person. Move on.
00:27:51
Speaker 1: You don't need to like harp on this. You got the girl like keep going, let's go. But so let's talk about that. What is the difference between holding someone account and then launching into an equally destructive behavior and shaming or humiliating the person to try to prove that you're in the right.
00:28:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, So accountability is naming harm. So if someone's on the receiving created the hurtful impact, they're acknowledging, they're naming what it was that they did. That was harmful. There's mentalization. Like I said before, accountability requires like I'm holding my awareness of myself in my mind and my awareness of you and your experience in my mind. That just from a neuro physiological standpoint, you have to be in the window of tolerance to be able to mentalize. If you're out of the window of tolerance, you cannot hold an awareness of the other person. It's a higher level thinking skill. You need your prefrontal cortex. And then also that there's a possibility for repair, So that means you don't have to forgive me, but it might be possible that there's at least that I can hear about how my acknowledgment of the harm reached you. And sometimes you know, like in trauma research we talk about that can always happen, Like this is where restorative justice comes in. It doesn't. Repair can't always happen between the person, the person who has caused hart and the perpetrator and the victim. But actually there's often a wider holding of that person that's empathetic and can actually support that person so that person remains feeling human, feeling dignified, having their subjectivity intact. And I think that's the real difference of accountability is that they're is a preservation of subjectivity. I am able to remain a person with dignity even though I have caused harm, and that actually that duality, yeah, I'm a person, I have dignity and I also caused harm is what actually allows for metabolization. It allows me to really go, oh wow, I've really seen this mirror, and I'm feeling motivated to really now see myself and start to notice all the other places where I might be doing this in my life to other people, to see how I've done it in my past, and that creates growth and change inside of the person. Humiliation is exposure. There's power asymmetry, asymmetry, so it's like a you know that there's a core or there's a court experience, whether that's actually the court of public opinion or the court of the reunion audience. The person who has caused harm is as you just mentioned, like they don't have their voice and their agency. So even in that example of asking Jess about his motivations, there's an instance of robbing Chris from his own ability to actually mine Well, oh, let me think about that. Like that process of reflection and then being able to say, oh, these are them, might have been the reasons allows him further integration and understanding. And then there's as I said, like shame overwhelmed association inside of humiliation because of that level of exposure, whether it's the Internet or the audience or just even a number of people, that pushes someone outside of their window of tolerance. And actually, as a result of that, no metabolization and integration happens. And actually there's so much research that shows that humiliation what it produces is not growth and change. Accountability creates growth and change if the person is capable. Humiliation creates compliance. I'll do the behavior without any understanding as to why collapse, just which sometimes looks like self harm, retreat, suicide, or retaliation, which means that that person ramps up the problematic behavior because they've been so hurt and they've had no dignity or understanding of their behaviors. Like this is when we see school shootings, this is when we see domestic violence. This is an increase of the problematic behavior that was attempting to be addressed in the first place.
00:33:07
Speaker 1: I've said that a million times, and this is a topic I don't fully want to dive into because it's so divisive. But the school shooting thing, I'm like, when are we going to accept that if we bully people and treat people as an other, that they're going to react every time?
00:33:23
Speaker 2: Like I don't.
00:33:24
Speaker 1: I find that a very frustrating topic that people cannot observe that some of this is from the way we're treating each other.
00:33:32
Speaker 2: Yes, and I love what you just said other because this is the difference between subject and object. More subject subjectivity is their personhood, it's their dignity, it's their ability to be a full person. Object objectification is you're not a person, you have no like, it's a one flattening and a one dimensionality. And what you're speaking to exactly is when someone is bullied, they're treated as an object. And if someone is treated as an object, that can absolutely lead to taking someone else's life because they are just treating that other person the way they've been treated. Oh you I've been treated as an object, Well you're an object too. Like if you really feel your own subjectivity and you can't help but feel another person's subjectivity, and inside of that, you can't help but feel the empathy which is the starting place, which is I don't want harm to be cause to.
00:34:36
Speaker 1: You, right, I want to talk a little bit more about shame because I think that's what we're doing, thinking that it will show them, you know, teach them a lesson. And what you said was so interesting to me. It's what I instinctively thought. But when you're shaming someone, or when I've seen this happen, or when it's been done to me, most of the time I just end up shutting down, or I see other people just shut down, shut down, shut down, you disassociate to stay safe. But like you said, it's not integrating, like you're not actually taking in what someone else is saying, putting it into your brain of like oh, connecting the dots, you know, and then actually able to do a change behavior because you have the hope that if I do the change behavior, maybe there could be repair or maybe I wouldn't be such a monster. So when you're shamed over and over and over, the only narrative is not even like the behavior was wrong, it's like I am wrong, and so like if you're wrong completely as a human, what are your options for doing any better? And that's what I don't think people get is like we're literally putting people up out in the court of public opinion, Like we're stoning people back from back in the day, and we're going and then why would he not change his behavior? Or how is this continuing to still happen over and over and over, Like all men are so fucked up, and it's like, well, why are men gonna ever? How are men ever going to learn to be any different? If this is the only way we're like teaching or talking about this, Can you go in further into that?
00:36:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think just to kind of amplify what you're saying, which is, yeah, when whence like shaming someone is essentially like stripping them of their humanity. Like the difference between saying like if I were speaking to Chris, the difference between saying like, when you said that about my body, I felt so hurt. It reminded me of all of the times men have dismissed me on account of how I look, and it was so painful. That is different from you're a toxic man. You don't know you you're so superficial, you don't have any idea of how to read a woman, Like there's nothing that is motivating about that statement. Again, it's objectifying language. You're like everybody else. And so, yeah, I mean shame from a physiological standpoint, it's a collapse. It's an internal collapse. We want to hide, we want to remove ourselves. And if in shaming, there's no good reason to be inspired about changing your behavior to do better by the next person, or do it better with that person the next time. Yeah, so it's just totally defeating.
00:37:41
Speaker 1: You know what else I was just thinking about as you were saying that from Jess's perspective, to shame him and get what she got was probably less satisfying than if she had presented it the way you said and he was able to give a true apology and she could sense that, do you know what I mean? Like I think as humans we can sense into when someone's authentically truly sorry and they want to change their behavior. But because he was put under such a microscope and then tortured the way that he was, I'm not sure she got the closure that she could have gotten. And I don't know, maybe she feels great about it, but like without just trying to stick it to him, Like if she had sat in her own authority and it seems like she's in a great place with the new relationship, So like, what's even the point?
00:38:28
Speaker 5: That's what I felt like, Yeah, I love that you're bringing our awareness back to is the person who has experienced the harm being choiceful about.
00:38:41
Speaker 2: What they'd liked? Would they like repair with the person who has heard them? Or do they want to stew in their righteousness and vindication about having been hurt? Which maybe momentary satisfaction sure, but it's not really leational satisfaction.
00:39:02
Speaker 1: Right, So, if we were going to tell listeners, like an example of how to talk about true accountability in a situation like we witnessed O on Love is Blind, what would an example be of how to talk to Chris about taking full accountability for how he behaved? And then like, what could that conversation could have looked like if they had handled it in a way that was focused on accountability and not shaming.
00:39:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the process of accountability. If you've caused harm, name the name the behavior. Okay, apologize for it, really like a full body in apology, not a performative apology, not I'm sorry, but no explanation. Just name the behavior, apologize, then say I want to hear more about what this was like for you to welcome more expression from the other person and to sit there and tolerate it and support yourself to hear more about what the harm was, and then asking what else what can I do for repair? Like what do you need from me to essentially restore trust and safety in our relationship? And like you know, that's that's what needs to happen in couples, in instances where harm has happened outside of that, like the other person doesn't owe that person forgiveness, like that might be enough, but the naming, the apology and then the invitation to hear more or repair in any way is what the person who has caused hard needs to do.
00:40:53
Speaker 1: Okay, it's super helpful. I have a question for you personally, and this is just for me and some of my friends who I know listen who feel the same way. But since you're a person who seems to be thinking a little differently than like the mass culture right now, how are you taking care of yourself amongst that? Because I mentioned to you at the beginning of this podcast, like I feel very isolated often because my thinking does go to what happened to them? What you know, what's the behind the scenes story here? What are we missing? What are we not being pitched? Like I'm always looking at life that way also with my own behavior, that's how I move through Life's kind of just like, huh, that's interesting, Why did I do that? Or you know, like I feel like I'm a pretty self aware person or I'm constantly like working on that. So what are ways that you take care of yourself? Mixed in with this lack of any of those things that I just said being the main way that our most people seem to be moving or the loudest voice at least.
00:41:52
Speaker 2: Honestly doing what we just did, Like this is a huge like this is a huge form of my self care, which is to create content with nuance, to respond with civility to trolls, to invite dialogue, and to just feel that to like enjoy my own integrity, Yeah, and enjoy my own capacity to see the wider picture, to hold the complexity of human beings and of life Like that feels really good to me, Like I take the light in feeling my own ability to hold the wider frame and feel I take enjoyment actually from not demonizing people. I meantime, I respond to a comment, and I treat the other person like a human, like a human being worthy of respect. I can feel myself like grow a little bit large.
00:42:58
Speaker 1: It's interesting because we often forget how connected we all are. Or that's the way that I think. And so when you're demonizing someone else, you're going.
00:43:06
Speaker 2: To feel that yourself.
00:43:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you act with kindness to someone else, it feels nice within yourself, Like it's just an interesting thing that we miss sometimes and it's so simple. But I love that you just brought me back to that reminder. And even when the trolls are trolling and it's really difficult, it always feels better to either not respond. Usually that's the best option for me, but if I do, to do it from a kind place. Wish them well on their journey and know that we are on separate journeys. They gotta go. Jordan, thank you so much for doing this with me. I love your page. If you guys want to go check it out. I'm going to put all of the links to her Instagram, website, everything substack because you write a lot of articles. I'll also put a link to the article that she wrote about this exact situation in the description of this podcast. Is there anywhere else that you would direct people to go look at work or figure out how to work with you.
00:44:01
Speaker 2: You nailed it all.
00:44:02
Speaker 1: Thanks so much of course, so all of that will be in the description of this podcast. You guys, go check that out, and thank you so much for listening.
