I liked quite a bit about the talks, at first. It all felt so affirming and familiar, you know? I mean, who doesn’t grapple with being vulnerable – in personal relationships, in the body, in the world? Who doesn’t struggle with shame? Who doesn’t struggle with connection? Very few people.
But something was missing. A lot was missing, actually. In fact, so much was missing that what Brown had to say ultimately didn’t have much staying power for me.
What was missing was both utterly vast and stunningly simple: social context. Nearly everything that Brown talked about – our fear of vulnerability, our lack of connection, our sense of shame – was with reference to individual psychology, with absolutely no acknowledgment that different people occupy different contexts that bear on all of these questions.
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But let’s face it: Disconnection is not going to be solved just by overcoming shame. People from any marginalized group can do all the personal work on themselves they want, but that work is not going to magically get them off the margins and connected into the larger society. If you’re on the margins, it’s not your attitude that’s got you disconnected. It’s stigma and systemic exclusion.
I can be the most psychologically healthy, spiritually evolved, kick-ass disabled person on the planet, and that is not going to solve the social, sensory, and architectural barriers that enforce my disconnection from the able-bodied world every single day.
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In psychotherapy, I have experienced this
omission of social context as deeply shaming, deeply disconnecting, and deeply alienating. It has put all of the responsibility for changing my attitude, my outlook, and my internal narrative on my shoulders without ever addressing the outside forces that make that change so difficult. Do I bear responsibility for how I walk through the world? Absolutely. No question. But that’s not all there is, and the idea that it’s all up to me dooms the whole project of “feeling good about myself” to failure.
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Do I think that people in the field of social work, like Ms. Brown, or anyone with therapeutic training means to be shaming or disempowering? No. I don’t. In fact, I think most are quite well-intentioned and want to help people, and I think that their work has its place. It has certainly helped me in other respects.
But without social context, their work becomes deeply problematic, and many of the issues that arise are reflected in Brene Brown’s videos.
---- by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg "Shame and Disconnection: The Missing Voices of Oppression in Brene Brown's 'The Power of Vulnerability'"
full article here:
http://thebodyisnotanapology.tumblr...shame-and-disconnection-the-missing-voices-of
