Recently at a church meeting, a speaker told about his teenage son learning to drive.

“We were out for a ride, and I kept correcting his driving. When we arrived back home, my son said I was too critical. I said it was my job to be critical because he was a student driver.

“My son became angry, got out, and slammed the car door.

“Why are you so angry? I asked.

“Because you called me a stupid driver!

“No, I told him. I didn’t call you stupid. I said you are a STUDENT driver.”

The speaker explained how labels such as stupid inflict shame on people, making them angry and sad.

He quoted someone who said, “If you put shame in a petri dish, it needs three ingredients to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgment.

“If you put the same amount of shame in the petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive.”

Wow. Great quote. I was so busy writing it down, I missed the name of its author. Afterwards, I asked the speaker and he said, “Brené Brown.”

When I got home and typed her name into my computer’s search engine, I had my own little petri dish of shame. Brené Brown is so famous, probably everyone knows about her, except me.

My shame, however, didn’t stop me from listening to several of her TED talks. What particularly caught my attention was her explanation of shame versus guilt.

“Shame and guilt are two very different things,” she said. “Shame focuses on self. Guilt focuses on behavior.  Shame: I am bad. Guilt: I did something bad.”

“We’ve bought into this idea that we can shame each other and ourselves into changing. There is not a scrap of evidence that that is true. Shame will not foster a change in behavior. Rather, it sustains it.

“Guilt, on the other hand—which focuses on behavior—is much more likely to result in change.”

As an example, she said to imagine you got a grade of 47 out of 100 on a test. Shame self-talk would be, I’m so stupid. I am an idiot. Guilt self-talk would be, it was not a good idea to go out last night instead of studying. Studying would have been better. Next time, I’ll study.

A child lies to a parent. The parent says, “You’re a liar.” This is shaming. The child, now labeled a liar, will probably continue to lie, because that’s what a liar does.

But if the parent focuses on the behavior, an approach might be, “You told a lie. That is not acceptable. Here are the consequences. And if you do it again, here’s what the consequences will be.” With this, there is a much greater likelihood of a change in behavior.

I’m not ashamed, nor do I feel guilty in suggesting you visit Brené Brown’s website (brenebrown.com). There you will find a ton of free resources, including her podcasts and videos of her talks.