Episode Description:
In this week’s episode of What If For Authors, we tackle a difficult topic—public shaming. Claire dives into what happens when authors, as public figures, find themselves the target of online attacks or social media pile-ons. She shares practical steps for managing a shame campaign, from getting offline and regulating your emotions to deciding whether you need to bring in a crisis manager. But beyond the tactical approach, this episode digs deep into what shame really is, how it works, and how to transform toxic emotions into tools for growth and self-compassion. Whether you're worried about an angry reviewer or facing criticism that seems to come out of nowhere, this episode equips you to handle public shaming with resilience and grace.
Key Takeaways:
Understanding Shame vs. Guilt: Claire distinguishes between shame, which tells us that we are bad, and guilt, which tells us we did something bad. Understanding the difference is crucial to not letting shame control our responses.
Practical Steps During a Crisis: Claire outlines what to do if you find yourself the subject of online shaming—step one is to get offline, regulate your emotions, and refrain from engaging.
The Role of Empathy in Combatting Shame: Shame isolates, making us feel undeserving of support and empathy. The antidote? Finding a safe, empathetic person to share your feelings with. Expressing your shame helps release its grip and restore a sense of connection.
How Each Enneagram Type Handles Shame: Although Enneagram Types 2, 3, and 4 are in the “shame triad,” every type has a unique relationship with shame. Claire explains how recognizing these patterns can help lessen the hold shame has on your life and career.
Why Self-Compassion is Key: The ultimate goal is to embrace the fact that while good people can do bad things, it doesn’t make them unworthy of love and connection. Self-compassion and honest reflection allow us to experience guilt without spiraling into toxic shame.
Why You Should Listen: If you’re an author who has ever worried about a bad review, social media backlash, or being misunderstood publicly, this episode is a must-listen. Claire’s candid discussion of how shame affects us at a fundamental human level and her practical advice on what to do when you’re feeling attacked will help you build resilience, develop self-awareness, and prepare for the inevitable challenges of being a public figure.
Join the Conversation: Have you ever faced public shaming or harsh criticism? Share your experiences and strategies with Claire by emailing her at contact@ffs.media. If you need support, Claire is there to offer empathy and guidance as you work through these complex emotions.
Happy Writing!
TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of What If for Authors. I'm so glad you're here. My name is Claire Taylor and I'm an Enneagram certified coach for authors as well as a humor and mystery writer. You can check out my latest book, Sustain Your Author Career, by going to ffs.media/sustain. I'm going to tell you right now that today's episode is probably going to make you very uncomfortable to listen to.
It's also probably going to make me very uncomfortable to record. That's because we're going to be discussing one of the most unpleasant human emotions, in my opinion, and in most people's opinion.
But as you know, if we don't talk about it, then it just sort of sits there, right outside of our view. Threatening us ominously. If you are someone who publishes books, congratulations, you're now a public figure. What I mean by that is you've entered into a group of people whom the general population believes they have a right to criticize [00:01:00] and somehow deserve to control.
Now, if you're from somewhere like Texas, where I'm from, just being a woman puts you in the category of, uh, someone others think they have a right to control and criticize. But, I digress. So, once we become public figures, this looming threat begins to appear. Really, as soon as we get on social media, the threat begins.
Or, maybe even as soon as we leave the house nowadays, with everyone having cameras within reach. And that threat is that we will do or say something that leads everyone to turn against us. shunning us. That is a very deep human fear.
If you look at the Enneagram, all nine of the core fears are actually designed to protect against being shunned by everyone else and losing our connection to others. Each type tries different maneuvers, like attempting to be perfect, trying to outperform others, or being the strongest of the group. But [00:02:00] make no mistake, all of it is designed to guarantee your access to connections with others.
Yes, even the self isolation of the five is designed for that very purpose. That's why on this week's episode, I'm going to address a deep concern, one that's often so scary, it's not even vocalized. But make no mistake, it's, it's there. And that is, what if I'm publicly shamed?
There are some practical steps to take when you're being shamed online. And I say when, not if, because if you participate in any form of social media, or just publish books, Someone's going to get a bug up their ass and come after you and trying to make you feel ashamed for whatever it is. So there are some practical steps to keep from baiting a rabid dog, and I'll talk about those. But I also think we need to discuss what shame is, how it functions, and how you can lessen its grip on your head, heart, and body. There's also the matter of Enneagram types 4 being in the shame triad, [00:03:00] meaning much of their subconscious attention is focused on avoiding shame.
Does that mean that they are the only ones who need to listen to this episode? Absolutely not. Everyone can experience shame, so let's just get that out in the open. I will say though, if you're a 4, you're probably going to learn some really useful techniques as we talk about how shame functions. You have the opportunity to learn something that might change your life in this episode.
I know that sounds super braggadocious of me, so I take no credit for the knowledge that I may or may not effectively convey. These are just things I've learned from other people, much smarter teachers of the Enneagram than me generally, and I'm really excited to relay it to you in case it unlocks some new understanding that could lead to a little bit of liberation.
So most shaming nowadays happens online. That's where the public gathers and just to validate your fear Yeah, it is super scary to think about one angry fan or disgruntled author reading something you wrote Possibly out of context or [00:04:00] misinterpreting some action you took as bad faith and then weaving a story about you That doesn't seem very true to you Here's what you shouldn't do if you discover that negativity about you is starting up online.
First, don't strike back. Shame has this way of telling you that if you shame them even more, you'll feel less ashamed. There's a retaliatory energy to it, but make no mistake, that's just an evolutionary advantage of shame to self perpetuate. The first thing you want to do if negativity starts online is to get offline and begin regulating your emotions.
This is your very first task. If that shame has started to stick to you, and it does very easily, it's going to tell you not to reach out for help, because that would mean talking about your shame. So shame lies to us, telling us that if we talk about it openly, we'll only feel [00:05:00] more intense shame. That can be true if you talk to the wrong person about it, so don't do that.
You need to find someone who will show empathy, who will show empathy. When they hear about your shame. I'll talk more about that later, but for now, just trust me. That's the next step. It'll help you regulate your emotions so that you can then think more clearly about what to do next.
I read a book by Chris Syme called Crisis Management for Authors a few years ago. And that talks about how authors can manage a crisis like this in the most effective way, to keep from spiraling and to avoid accidentally feeding the monster. So she recommends not doing or saying anything for the first, I think it was 24 hours, maybe 48 hours, but I think it's 24, to see if it'll just die off on its own, , whatever the drama is, just see if it dies off.
If you're gonna be able to do that though. You need to manage your own sense of shame. If you can't regulate that, not saying anything for 24 hours will become impossible. And by not saying anything that includes vague [00:06:00] posts. Okay. No vague posting, nothing. Disappear from social media for 24 hours. If things still haven't calmed down after that, then you may want to reach out to someone who handles crisis management, depending on how popular you are at the time.
It's definitely more difficult for a shame campaign to gain momentum against an author that nobody knows. If that's you, just wait it out for the 24 hours and focus on managing your emotions of shame and possibly anger. That'll be your biggest task.
If you're more well known as an author, and it's clear the campaign is picking up speed against you, then go hire someone who specializes in crisis PR. It'll probably be the best money you've ever spent, honestly. Does it suck that you have to spend it? Yes. Is it fair? No. But someone who doesn't have actual skin in the game like you do, and who has experience in this area, is guaranteed to do a better job of managing it [00:07:00] than you will.
All you have to do is let them handle it. Or maybe just get a consultation and they can give you some good advice. It depends on the person, but those people do exist. And I'm sure you can find one that, you know, you like, or you vibe with via Google or a personal recommendation and then just go from there.
Okay, so we know the basic practical steps for when something like this happens. It's rare that public shaming occurs in person anymore, like if you're on a stage or something. But I guess it could happen, right? If that's the case, it's going to be really difficult. There's no way around that. If you can, take some deep breaths and use some of the skills to combat shame that I'll talk about now. So shame is a socially focused emotion. It threatens our connection with others, but also with ourselves. We can only ever be as connected to others as we are to ourselves.
So if you're feeling really disconnected from others and unable to connect [00:08:00] with them, the good news is that you can turn your attention toward connecting with yourself through things like mindfulness, self compassion, physical activity, and so forth. Kind of the added bonus of doing this Enneagram work on ourselves. We're clearing out all the false narratives that make it really hard for us to connect with others. We don't have to focus on fixing our relationships with others. We really only need to work on our relationship with ourselves, and then it naturally becomes easier to connect.
To connect with other people.
Anyway, the important thing to know about shame, outside of it being a socially focused emotion and one that is geared toward creating control over another person, and if you're following along, yes, liberation is the opposite of control, hence working toward liberation of ourselves is a great way to break free of the control that shame has us under.
It is also important to know about shame that the goal is to tell us that we are wrong. It doesn't allow us to see the possibility that we simply made a transgression. [00:09:00] Instead, it tells us that any wrongdoing we may have carried out was a reflection of our own inherent wrongness, or badness, or unworthiness of love.
To be able to disagree with shame, we have to accept the reality that good people can do Bad, harmful things. Caring people can do selfish things. Protective people can do predatory things. Peaceful people can do aggressive things, and so on. We need to agree with the premise that while an action may reflect a deeper part of us, it does not reflect all of us.
No matter what we've done, we can still be deserving of love and connection. This is not a small ask for some people listening. You may already be thinking that you don't believe what I just said. You may believe that a loyal person could never cheat on their spouse. So if they cheat, they must be a fundamentally disloyal person.
Or you might think that any reader with a [00:10:00] true sense of depth and beauty could never enjoy a surface level book. Those two things may seem incompatible to you, but humans are very complex, and that's both good news and bad news. In this case, it's good news.
When we mess up and step outside of our integrity, which everyone will, the best approach is to look at the behavior and say, that was the wrong thing to do. I wish I hadn't done that. I'm going to do my best not to do it again, and in the meantime, I'll try to make things right. Those simple steps, the backbone of a true apology, are not only the best way to avoid shame, but also the best way to show love to ourselves.
It's not I did something I didn't like so now I'm a terrible person who is no longer worthy of love, protection, or connection. It's I did something wrong and now I want to make it right.
This is very important. If we water the seeds of shame through self loathing, not [00:11:00] only do you not deserve that, but it also makes it really hard to bounce back in our careers. There can be a belief that this self loathing, this penance, will somehow make things right, but that's just shame lying to you. To note here, there is a difference between shame and guilt.
So shame is, I am bad, and guilt is, I have done a bad thing. Essentially, guilt can lead to regret, which is a powerful emotion for setting things right and making amends. It calls us to do the uncomfortable work that may be required to repair connections, our actions have frayed or broken.
By that definition, guilt is not the same thing as what my husband and father carry around all their lives, often called a Catholic guilt. So Catholic guilt is generally a deep belief that there's something inherently sinful or wrong about you. In other words, it's just shame. A generalized sense of shame.
So that's why it tends to be so destructive. Guilt, on the other hand, is actually a really [00:12:00] useful emotion. People who can't get to guilt, whose egos don't even allow them to admit that they did something that hurt a connection, become very unpleasant to be in a relationship with over the long term. Maybe even over the short term.
But as long as we're experiencing shame, it's almost impossible to get through that and get to guilt. Shame takes up all the oxygen in the room. So hopefully you're starting to see how unproductive shame actually is, even though when we're in it, it seems to be speaking cold, hard truth to us. We'll feel shame throughout our author careers, whether or not it's cast on us by the public.
So learning to identify when we're experiencing it is a handy tool to have in our toolbox. If you can notice when you're feeling shame, Especially for Enneagram 2s, 3s, and 4s. It might be almost all the time. Especially if you're a social subtype of 4, which is known as the shame subtype. But if you can start to recognize shame, begin [00:13:00] logging what it feels like in your body.
This not only helps you better identify it in the future, but it also brings you out of being in shame into observing it. Which immediately helps over identifying with it. Observing our emotions rather than being consumed by them is what we call mindfulness. Oh yeah. Mindfulness is effective because it depersonalizes our emotions.
These emotions are things that are happening, but they're not necessarily the truth of the universe or the truth of who we are. So when you feel ashamed, What does it feel like? Does it feel like tightness in your chest, tingling in your arms, a foggy brain? It could be anything. So the important thing is to notice when it's creeping up on you.
And the more frequently you notice it, the faster you'll be able to recognize it. And the sooner you'll be able to start taking steps to relieve yourself of it. The first thing you want to do when you're feeling shame, and this is gonna feel counterintuitive because of [00:14:00] the lies shame tells us, is to find someone you trust, someone empathetic and tell them, I am feeling a lot of shame about blank, whatever.
So this is immediate relief from shame because it counteracts shame's desire to make us feel separated and disconnected from other people. Empathy connects us with others, so by finding an empathetic listener, you're quickly shining a light on shame's lie in a way that's pretty impossible to dispute.
If you're not sure who in your life would be that empathetic listener, this is where a good therapist might come in handy. It's also where faith in a loving God can be really helpful, reminding you that your connection to the collective will always be there because God is everything, God is forgiving, and God doesn't judge you.
If your version of God is not that loving and forgiving, this won't work. You may be trapped in [00:15:00] shame. You'll likely always live with a cloud of shame over you if you've crafted God in the image of a judgmental human.
So anyway, that's just a tip for my deconstruction friends. If you don't believe in God, you can just ignore that part.
Now I understand this is a podcast for authors. So let's bring this back to your author career. It's damn near impossible to write through a thick fog of shame. Unless maybe you're writing some sort of angry manifesto. Which, those don't sell that well, so maybe we want to reconsider. Um, but also, why would you even try to write something?
Through a thick fog of shame. It's incredibly demotivating. If you notice that shame is the presiding emotion when you sit down to write, your writing time might be better spent addressing that shame rather than trying to use it as some sort of fuel for the story you're crafting. The world could certainly stand to have more stories about [00:16:00] shame, where people experience it and navigate it, but those stories don't exist.
don't actually need to be written from a place of deep shame. In fact, if you try, you might end up crafting stories that encourage people to feel more shame in their lives. Because again, shame is designed to proliferate. As a side note, you've probably heard me use the words good and bad and right and wrong more in this episode than in any other.
And Enneagram one, although my inclination as a one is to use that language. I have to be mindful about not putting right and wrong where it doesn't belong. So, the reason I use the words right and wrong a lot in this episode is because those are the words generally used in literature about shame. Am I a bad person, rather than I did a bad thing? So, bad can mean whatever it means to you. You could replace bad and good, right and wrong, with whatever labels your Enneagram type [00:17:00] tends to overuse.
For instance, a four might use original or authentic as good, and ordinary or unoriginal as bad or wrong. An 8 might use strong as right, and weak as wrong, and so forth. So it's not just coming from my Enneagram 1 filter, all of this language. Although it is really nice to not have to self filter quite so hard for this episode.
Uh, just a little treat for me. Okay, so I've kind of poked at this from a few different angles, but just to spell it out. Shame decreases our sense of connection to ourselves. The stronger that sense of shame, the more disconnected we are. That disconnection from self is also what we call self awareness.
I'm not talking about the sort of self consciousness where you're overthinking things at a party. Self awareness is simply the awareness of the patterns we tend toward, so that we can observe them rather than be consumed by them. Once we can observe through self awareness, we're [00:18:00] able to make different decisions, and that's usually the only way we can make different decisions.
So connection to self determines self awareness and vice versa. The measurement of that connection is what we call the levels of development in the Enneagram. Sometimes these are called levels of integration, but I like development. Uh, there are nine levels of development for each type, three healthy, three average, three unhealthy.
If you wanna read more about this specific to your type, Rizo and Hudson cover it extensively in the wisdom of the Enneagram and on the Enneagram Institute website. So shame has a way of spiraling us down these levels of development. It disconnects us from the truth that we are already, the thing we seek to be.
We are already worthy of love and that doesn't change. We are already safe and taken care of. we already have the guidance we need. We are already significant and meaningful in this world and on and on. So shame tells us that's not true. That means to [00:19:00] move toward integrating these truths. We have to tackle shame.
We have to develop tools and practices that we can reach for when shame inevitably tries to take us down. And it's best to put these practices into place and develop these tools when we're not able to.
By the time that happens, it's really too late to start the practice. It just won't work. So here's one place you can start. I want you to think about your author career. And I want you to dig up one piece of shame you feel about it. You'll feel shame about it in some kind of way. Everyone does. It's a very universal experience.
If you feel like shame is, it's not there that you don't have anything you feel at least a little bit ashamed about, keep looking. You've probably created a lot of razzle dazzle to avoid calling the shame what it is, because shame is just that painful. It's just that painful to admit that we're feeling it.
Maybe you've fallen asleep to it, or it feels more [00:20:00] like anger to you, but keep looking until you find it. It's there. And if it takes a lot of work to find, that's a really interesting thing to know about yourself, that you bury shame pretty deep so that it's hard to address.
If you're able to write down what that shame is, Do that. If you're not in a place where you can write, maybe you're driving or it's just not safe to do so, I don't know, then pause this and say aloud to yourself what that shame is. Then I want you to think of one person you can express that to, someone who will offer you empathy.
I want you to run this experiment so that you can observe the relief you get from speaking the shame to the right person versus holding on to it. You may find that you immediately feel better, and that writing or a marketing task that seemed impossible before now seems much easier. Interesting. So maybe that's writing the next scene, or reaching out to an established author who offered to promote your book but you couldn't respond to because of [00:21:00] Some feeling you were having.
It could be anything.
But we want to run the experiment mindfully to begin reprogramming your brain's response to shame in small amounts before that shame floods you. I guarantee you if you haven't been doing this work diligently, your brain's response to sever connection. Disappear. Check out. Fight back.
Something that harms connection. That is what shame will trigger as a response inside of you. And as we've discussed, that's the opposite of what we want to do. Yeah, the idea of being publicly shamed is a nightmare. But this is something we can prepare ourselves for ahead of time to better respond when it happens.
And the benefits of preparing ourselves for the future will also immediately impact our present. And possibly even improve our relationship with the past. So to answer the question, what if I'm publicly shamed? I'll say this, it will suck. [00:22:00] It will be painful, but there are practical steps you can take to avoid making it worse.
And there's a lot of work within your control that you can do to make this pain less intense and help it pass more quickly. So that's all inner work centered on how we respond to shame. It's possible that if we're publicly shamed. It's because we did something that we wish we hadn't done, something that we regret.
Not just because the shaming occurred, but because what we did wasn't in alignment with our integrity, or it hurt someone unintentionally. But only when we work through the shame can we reach the guilt associated with what we did, feel regret. And use that guilt and regret to work toward repair, where humans and humans fuck shit up.
It happens. The people we never got apologies from are often the ones most consumed by shame. They can't reach the point of guilt and regret. So we don't, we don't want to be those people, right? So [00:23:00] let's work together and reach out to each other when needed so that perfection and never messing up isn't a prerequisite for a long, sustainable author career.
We can take comfort in knowing that we get to be human and be in the public eye. The pain that comes from someone being disgruntled or genuinely hurt is part of the process, but it's not insurmountable by any means. So that's it for this episode of What If for Authors, and I'm so glad you joined me.
I've coached authors who've gone through the massive public pylons before, and I understand the soul crushing nature of it. But of course I've also faced public attempts to shame me, sort of a natural consequence of being a woman writing religious satire. What I've learned from my own experience and from working with others going through it is that shame is never productive. If you need help dealing with shame, you can reach out to me. If you don't know anyone else who can offer you empathy without judgment, send me an email. Let that be your starting point.[00:24:00]
You have support. You have connection. So send me an email at contact@FFS.media. I'm Claire Taylor, and I hope you'll join me again next week for another episode of What If for Authors. Thanks.