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Finding your voice in an unequal power arrangement-especially when the more powerful person (a teacher, doctor, boss) is shaming you-takes a great amount of courage.
Consider my therapy client Margot, whom I first met when she was a high school senior, full of talent and energy and a huge gift for empathy and connection. She also was vulnerable to deep depression and would later be diagnosed with manic-depressive illness. During her freshman year of college, she made a suicide attempt after a boyfriend broke up with her. Needless to say, it was the year from hell for Margot, and terrifying for her family who loved her.
When Margot returned home over spring break, she visited her favorite teacher in high school, a man who had mentored her and believed in her promise. After some catch-up conversation, the teacher said, "I was so sorry to hear about your suicide attempt, Margot. To be frank, I felt very disappointed. I didn't see you as the sort of person who would do such a thing." When they parted, the teacher gave her a hearty pat on the back and said, "I miss the old Margot. I know that strong gal is still in there somewhere!"
Margot had suffered enough, and was struggling mightily in her brief therapy with me to keep sight of her competence and strengths. She felt flattened by these words from a teacher who had once showed her the greatest attention and respect. Now, as he shamed her for her apparent "weakness," he invited Margot to see herself as "the sort of person who would do such a thing." What sort of person is that? And what did he mean by "such a thing"? Plus, there was no "old" or "new" Margot. There was only Margot. She felt like a truck had hit her.
This 18-year-old girl, whose self-esteem was already badly bruised, wrote this teacher a note letting him know how badly this interaction had left her feeling. Her first draft was a long rant in which she vented her anger and cited extensive findings from the research literature on suicide. If Margot's intention were only to show her teacher the full force of her feelings-and to shame him in return--this letter would have done the job.
But as I questioned Margot in therapy, she clarified that her primary intention was to make this teacher understand that he had no right to talk to her in such a hurtful and insensitive way.
Of course, we can't "make" other people understand anything or feel badly for their misdeeds. But given Margot's intention, this long, emotionally intense letter would simply have let the teacher off the hook. Unless he was a very highly-evolved person, he would surely have reacted with defensiveness.
When we blame the blamer (or shame the shamer), that person will wrap himself up in a blanket of rationalization and denial, and avoid feeling accountable. Also, people on the defensive rarely read long, critical letters, so I often coach people to "say it shorter." I doubted if Margot's teacher would do more than casually eyeball such a detailed critique.
Margot took a more courageous route by sending him a three-paragraph letter that he could not so easily disqualify or put aside.
She wrote:
You've been such an important person in my life. I came back to see you needing your support. It hurt me to be told that I've disappointed you, as if I'm some kind of failure. I left your office feeling like I was a smaller person, who didn't live up to your standards. Maybe that's what you believe, but it didn't help me to hear it. I also need to tell you that I don't believe that I am a lesser person because of my suicide attempt.
In this bold note, Margot offered her teacher the opportunity to consider his behavior, take responsibility for it, and to apologize. She left open the possibility of healing the disconnection between them, which made sense given how important he had been to her. To his credit, he called Margot at home and apologized, explaining that his insensitivity came out of his own anxiety about losing her and the fact that several years earlier, another student had committed suicide during her freshman year of college.
That this teacher rose to the occasion is far less important than that Margot wrote the letter. How incredibly brave for a young woman just out of high school, recovering from a major depression and the near loss of her life, to talk back to such an important authority-to let him know that she would not accept his invitation to view her suicide attempt and vulnerability to severe depression as shameful, lesser, weak, or wrong.
Courage is not blasting or blaming the other person, cutting them off, or parachuting from afar for a dramatic, hit-and-run confrontation. Just the opposite.
Genuine courage is carefully planning how to invite the person who has harmed you back into the conversation, so that the two of you have the best chance of talking together over time in a real way.
This is the hard route Margot took, the path that evokes far more anxiety than venting emotion in an uncensored, reactive way.
