Glennon Doyle Melton: 'It's braver to be Clark Kent than it is to be Superman', Lessons from the Mental Hospital, TEDx - 2013

uploaded 31 May 2013, TEDx Traverse City, Michigan, 2013

Hi. I have been trying to weasel my way out of being on the stage for weeks. I am doing fine. But about a month ago I was up early panicking about this. And I watched in all of Tech Talk that Brené Brown did on vulnerability. Dr. Brown is one of my heroes. She is a shame researcher and I am a recovering bulimic, alcoholic and drug user. So I’m sort of a shame researcher too. It’s just that most of my work is done out in the field.

And Dr. Brown defined courage like this. She said, “Courage is to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.” And that got me thinking about another one of my heroes Georgia O’Keeffe and how she said, “Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant. There is no such thing. Making the unknown known is what is important”.

So here I am to tell you the story of who I am with my whole heart and to make some unknowns known.

When I was eight-years-old, I started to feel exposed and I started to feel very very awkward. Every day I was pushed out of my house and into school all oily and fuzzy and conspicuous and to meet the other girls seemed so cool, and together and easy.

And I started to feel like a loser in a world that preferred superheroes. So I made my own capes and I tied them tight around me. My capes were pretending and addiction. But we all have our own superhero capes; don’t we? Perfectionism and overworking, snarkiness and apathy, they’re all superhero capes.

And our capes are what we put over our real selves so that our real tender selves don’t have to be seen and can’t be hurt. Our superhero capes are what we keep us from having to feel much at all, because every good and bad thing is deflected off of them.

And so for 18 years, my capes of addiction and pretending kept me safe and hidden. People think of us addicts as insensitive liars but we don’t start out that way.

We start out as extremely sensitive truth tellers. We feel so much pain and so much love and we sense that the world doesn’t want us to feel that much and doesn’t want to need as much comfort as we need. So we start pretending. We try to pretend like we’re the people that we think we’re supposed to be. We numb and we hide and we pretend and that pretending does eventually turn into a life of lies. But to be fair, we thought we were supposed to be lying.

They tell us since we’re little that when someone asks us how we’re doing, the only appropriate answer is: “Fine. And you?”

But the thing is that people are truth tellers. We are born to make our unknown known. We will find somewhere to do it. So in private, with the booze or the over-shopping or the alcohol or the food, we tell the truth. We say actually I’m not fine. Because we don’t feel safe telling that truth in the real world we make our own little world and that’s addiction. That’s whatever cape you put on.

And so what happens is all of us end up living in these little teeny, controllable, predictable, dark worlds instead of altogether in the big, bright, messy one.

I binged and purged for the first time when I was 8 and I continued every single day for the next 18 years. It seems normal to me but you’re surprised.

Every single time that I got anxious or worried or angry, I thought something was wrong with me. And so I took that nervous energy to the kitchen and I stuffed it all down with food and then I panicked and I purged. And after all of that, I was laid out on the bathing floor and I was so exhausted and so numb that I never had to go back and deal with whatever it was that it made me uncomfortable in the first place. And that’s what I wanted. I did not want to deal with the discomfort and messiness of being a human being.

So when I was a senior in high school, I finally decided to tell the truth in the real world. I walked into my guidance counselor’s office and I said ”actually I’m not fine. Someone help me”. And I was sent to a mental hospital.

And in the mental hospital, for the first time in my life, I found myself in a world that made sense to me. In high school, we had to care about geometry when our hearts were breaking because we were just bullied in the hallway, or no one would sit with us at lunch. And we had to care about ancient Rome when all we really wanted to do was learn how to make and keep a real friend. We had to act tough when we felt scared and we had to act confident when we felt really confused.

Acting — pretending was a matter of survival. High school is kind of like the real-world sometimes. But in the mental hospital, there was no pretending. The zig was up. We had classes about how to express how we really felt through music and art and writing. We had classes about how to be a good listener and how to be brave enough to tell our own story, while being kind enough not to tell anybody else’s. We held each other’s hands sometimes just because we felt like we needed to.

Nobody was ever allowed to be left out. Everybody was worthy. That was the rule just because she existed and so in there, we were brave enough to take off our capes. All I ever needed to now I learned in the mental hospital.

I remember this sandy haired girl who was so beautiful and she told the truth on her arms. And I held her hand one day while she was crying. And I saw that her arms were just sliced up like pre-cut S. In there, people wore their scars on the outside, so you knew where they stood. And they told the truth, so you knew why they stooped in there.

So I graduated from high school and I went on to college, which was way crazier than the mental hospital. In college, I added on the capes of alcoholism and drug use. This Sun rose every day and I started bingeing and purging. And then when the sun set I drank myself stupid. The sunrise is usually people’s signal to get up but it was my signal every day to come down — to come down from the booze and the boys and the drugs and I could not come down. That was to be avoided at all cost. So I hated the sunrise.

I closed the blinds, and I put the pillow over my head when my spinning brain would torture me about the people who were going out into their day into the late to make relationships and pursue their dreams and have a day – and I had no day; I only had night.

And these days, I like to think of hope as that sunrise. It comes out every single day to shine on everybody equally. It comes out to shine on the sinners and the saints and druggists and the cheerleaders. It never withholds; it doesn’t judge. And if you spend your entire life in the dark and then one day just decide to come out, it’ll be there waiting for you — just waiting to warm you.

All those years I thought of that sunrise as searching and accusatory and judgmental. But it wasn’t – it was just hope’s daily invitation to need to come back to life. And I think if you still have a day, if you’re still alive, you’re still invited.

I actually graduated from college which makes me both grateful to and extremely suspicious of my alma mater. And I found myself sort of in the real world and sort of not.

On Mother’s Day, 2002 – I am not good at years – we’ll just say on Mother’s Day, I had spun deeper and deeper. I wasn’t even Glennon anymore. I was just bulimia, I was just alcoholism. I was just a pile of capes. But on Mother’s day — one Mother’s day I found myself on a cold bathroom floor, hung over, shaking and holding a positive pregnancy test.

And as I sat there with my back literally against a wall, shaking and understanding watched over me. And in that moment on the bathroom floor, I understood that even in my state, even lying on the floor that someone out there had deemed me worthy of an invitation to a very very important event.

And so that day on the bathroom floor, I decided to show up. Just to show up, to climb out of my dark individual controllable world and out into the big, bright, messy one. And I didn’t know how to be a sober person or how to be a mother, or how to be a friend. So I just promised myself that I would show up and I would do the next right thing. Just show up Glennon even if you’re scared. Just do the next right thing even when you’re shaking.

And so I stood up. Now what they don’t tell you about getting sober, about peeling off your capes, is that it gets helluva lot worse before it gets better. Getting sober is like recovering from frostbite. It’s all of those feelings that you’ve numbed for so long. Now they’re there and they are present. And at first it just feels kind of tingly and uncomfortable but then those feelings start to feel like daggers, the pain, the love, the guilt, the shame, it’s all piled on top of you with nowhere to run.

But what I learned during that time is that sitting with the pain and the joy of being a human being, while refusing to run for any exits is the only way to become a real human being. And so these days I’m not a superhero and I’m not a perfect human being. But I am a fully human being. And I am proud of that.

I am fortunately and frustratingly still exactly the same person as I was when I was 20 and 16 and eight-years-old. I still feel scared all the time, anxious all the time. Really all the time. I still get very high and very low in life daily. But I finally accepted the fact that sensitive is just how I was made, that I don’t have to hide it, and I don’t have to fix it, I am not broken.

And I have actually started to wonder if maybe you’re sensitive too. Maybe you feel great pain and deep joy but you just don’t feel safe talking about it in the real world. And so now instead of trying to make myself tougher, I write and I serve people to help create a world where sensitive people don’t need superhero capes, or we can all just come out into the big bright messy world and tell the truth and forgive each other for being human and admit together that yes, life is really hard but also insist that together we can do hard things.

Maybe, it’s okay, to say actually today I am not fine. Maybe it’s okay to remember that we’re human beings and to stop doing long enough to think and to love and to share and to listen.

This weekend was Mother’s Day which marked the 11th year anniversary of the day I decided to show up. And I spent the day on the beach with my three children and my two dogs and my one husband. My long-suffering husband you can only imagine. And life is beautiful and life is brutal. Life is brutaful, all the time and every day. And only one thing has made the difference for me and that is this: I used to numb my feelings and hide and now I feel my feelings and I share. That’s the only difference in my life these days.

I’m not afraid of my feelings anymore. I know they can come and they won’t kill me and they can take over for a little while if they need to but at the end of the day what they are is really just guides. They’re just guides to tell me what is the next right thing for me to do. Loneliness – it leads us to connection with other people. And jealousy – it guides us to what we’re supposed to do next and paying guides just to help other people and being overwhelmed – it helps us – it guides us to ask for help.

And so I’ve learned that if I honor my feelings as my own personal profits and instead of running I just be still but there are prizes to be won and those prizes are peace and dignity and friendship.

So I received an email last week and let’s now take to my computer at home.

And it just said, “Dear Glennon, it’s braver to be Clark Kent than it is to be Superman. Carry on Warrior”.

And so today I would say to you that we don’t anymore superheroes. We just need awkward, oily, honest human beings out in the bright, big, messy world. And I will see you there.

You can buy Glennon Doyle Melton's book 'Carry on Warrior' here.

Brene Brown: 'The power of vulnerability', TED Talk - 2011

12 June 2010, TEDx Houston, Houston, Texas, USA

 So, I'll start with this: a couple years ago, an event planner called me because I was going to do a speaking event. And she called, and she said, "I'm really struggling with how to write about you on the little flyer." And I thought, "Well, what's the struggle?" And she said, "Well, I saw you speak, and I'm going to call you a researcher, I think, but I'm afraid if I call you a researcher, no one will come, because they'll think you're boring and irrelevant."

And I was like, "Okay." And she said, "But the thing I liked about your talk is you're a storyteller. So I think what I'll do is just call you a storyteller." And of course, the academic, insecure part of me was like, "You're going to call me a what?" And she said, "I'm going to call you a storyteller." And I was like, "Why not 'magic pixie'?"

I was like, "Let me think about this for a second." I tried to call deep on my courage. And I thought, you know, I am a storyteller. I'm a qualitative researcher. I collect stories; that's what I do. And maybe stories are just data with a soul. And maybe I'm just a storyteller. And so I said, "You know what? Why don't you just say I'm a researcher-storyteller." And she went, "Ha ha. There's no such thing."

So I'm a researcher-storyteller, and I'm going to talk to you today -- we're talking about expanding perception -- and so I want to talk to you and tell some stories about a piece of my research that fundamentally expanded my perception and really actually changed the way that I live and love and work and parent.

And this is where my story starts. When I was a young researcher, doctoral student, my first year, I had a research professor who said to us, "Here's the thing, if you cannot measure it, it does not exist." And I thought he was just sweet-talking me. I was like, "Really?" and he was like, "Absolutely." And so you have to understand that I have a bachelor's and a master's in social work, and I was getting my Ph.D. in social work, so my entire academic career was surrounded by people who kind of believed in the "life's messy, love it." And I'm more of the, "life's messy, clean it up, organize it and put it into a bento box."

And so to think that I had found my way, to found a career that takes me -- really, one of the big sayings in social work is, "Lean into the discomfort of the work." And I'm like, knock discomfort upside the head and move it over and get all A's. That was my mantra. So I was very excited about this. And so I thought, you know what, this is the career for me, because I am interested in some messy topics. But I want to be able to make them not messy. I want to understand them. I want to hack into these things that I know are important and lay the code out for everyone to see.

So where I started was with connection. Because, by the time you're a social worker for 10 years, what you realize is that connection is why we're here. It's what gives purpose and meaning to our lives. This is what it's all about. It doesn't matter whether you talk to people who work in social justice, mental health and abuse and neglect, what we know is that connection, the ability to feel connected, is -- neurobiologically that's how we're wired -- it's why we're here.

So I thought, you know what, I'm going to start with connection. Well, you know that situation where you get an evaluation from your boss, and she tells you 37 things that you do really awesome, and one "opportunity for growth?"

03:54 And all you can think about is that opportunity for growth, right? Well, apparently this is the way my work went as well, because, when you ask people about love, they tell you about heartbreak. When you ask people about belonging, they'll tell you their most excruciating experiences of being excluded. And when you ask people about connection, the stories they told me were about disconnection.

 So very quickly -- really about six weeks into this research -- I ran into this unnamed thing that absolutely unraveled connection in a way that I didn't understand or had never seen. And so I pulled back out of the research and thought, I need to figure out what this is. And it turned out to be shame. And shame is really easily understood as the fear of disconnection: Is there something about me that, if other people know it or see it, that I won't be worthy of connection?

 The things I can tell you about it: It's universal; we all have it. The only people who don't experience shame have no capacity for human empathy or connection. No one wants to talk about it, and the less you talk about it, the more you have it. What underpinned this shame, this "I'm not good enough," -- which, we all know that feeling: "I'm not blank enough. I'm not thin enough, rich enough, beautiful enough, smart enough, promoted enough." The thing that underpinned this was excruciating vulnerability. This idea of, in order for connection to happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen, really seen.

 And you know how I feel about vulnerability. I hate vulnerability. And so I thought, this is my chance to beat it back with my measuring stick. I'm going in, I'm going to figure this stuff out, I'm going to spend a year, I'm going to totally deconstruct shame, I'm going to understand how vulnerability works, and I'm going to outsmart it. So I was ready, and I was really excited. As you know, it's not going to turn out well.

You know this. So, I could tell you a lot about shame, but I'd have to borrow everyone else's time. But here's what I can tell you that it boils down to -- and this may be one of the most important things that I've ever learned in the decade of doing this research.

My one year turned into six years: Thousands of stories, hundreds of long interviews, focus groups. At one point, people were sending me journal pages and sending me their stories -- thousands of pieces of data in six years. And I kind of got a handle on it. I kind of understood, this is what shame is, this is how it works. I wrote a book, I published a theory, but something was not okay -- and what it was is that, if I roughly took the people I interviewed and divided them into people who really have a sense of worthiness -- that's what this comes down to, a sense of worthiness -- they have a strong sense of love and belonging -- and folks who struggle for it, and folks who are always wondering if they're good enough.

There was only one variable that separated the people who have a strong sense of love and belonging and the people who really struggle for it. And that was, the people who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe they're worthy of love and belonging. That's it. They believe they're worthy. And to me, the hard part of the one thing that keeps us out of connection is our fear that we're not worthy of connection, was something that, personally and professionally, I felt like I needed to understand better. So what I did is I took all of the interviews where I saw worthiness, where I saw people living that way, and just looked at those.

What do these people have in common? I have a slight office supply addiction, but that's another talk. So I had a manila folder, and I had a Sharpie, and I was like, what am I going to call this research? And the first words that came to my mind were "whole-hearted." These are whole-hearted people, living from this deep sense of worthiness. So I wrote at the top of the manila folder, and I started looking at the data. In fact, I did it first in a four-day, very intensive data analysis, where I went back, pulled the interviews, the stories, pulled the incidents. What's the theme? What's the pattern? My husband left town with the kids because I always go into this Jackson Pollock crazy thing, where I'm just writing and in my researcher mode.

And so here's what I found. What they had in common was a sense of courage. And I want to separate courage and bravery for you for a minute. Courage, the original definition of courage, when it first came into the English language -- it's from the Latin word "cor," meaning "heart" -- and the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart. And so these folks had, very simply, the courage to be imperfect. They had the compassion to be kind to themselves first and then to others, because, as it turns out, we can't practice compassion with other people if we can't treat ourselves kindly. And the last was they had connection, and -- this was the hard part -- as a result of authenticity, they were willing to let go of who they thought they should be in order to be who they were, which you have to absolutely do that for connection.

The other thing that they had in common was this: They fully embraced vulnerability. They believed that what made them vulnerable made them beautiful. They didn't talk about vulnerability being comfortable, nor did they really talk about it being excruciating -- as I had heard it earlier in the shame interviewing. They just talked about it being necessary. They talked about the willingness to say, "I love you" first ... the willingness to do something where there are no guarantees ... the willingness to breathe through waiting for the doctor to call after your mammogram. They're willing to invest in a relationship that may or may not work out. They thought this was fundamental.

 I personally thought it was betrayal. I could not believe I had pledged allegiance to research, where our job -- you know, the definition of research is to control and predict, to study phenomena for the explicit reason to control and predict. And now my mission to control and predict had turned up the answer that the way to live is with vulnerability and to stop controlling and predicting. This led to a little breakdown --

-- which actually looked more like this. And it did.

 I call it a breakdown; my therapist calls it a spiritual awakening.

A spiritual awakening sounds better than breakdown, but I assure you, it was a breakdown. And I had to put my data away and go find a therapist. Let me tell you something: you know who you are when you call your friends and say, "I think I need to see somebody. Do you have any recommendations?" Because about five of my friends were like, "Wooo, I wouldn't want to be your therapist."

I was like, "What does that mean?" And they're like, "I'm just saying, you know. Don't bring your measuring stick."

 I was like, "Okay." So I found a therapist. My first meeting with her, Diana -- I brought in my list of the way the whole-hearted live, and I sat down. And she said, "How are you?" And I said, "I'm great. I'm okay." She said, "What's going on?" And this is a therapist who sees therapists, because we have to go to those, because their B.S. meters are good.

 And so I said, "Here's the thing, I'm struggling." And she said, "What's the struggle?" And I said, "Well, I have a vulnerability issue. And I know that vulnerability is the core of shame and fear and our struggle for worthiness, but it appears that it's also the birthplace of joy, of creativity, of belonging, of love. And I think I have a problem, and I need some help." And I said, "But here's the thing: no family stuff, no childhood shit."

"I just need some strategies."

Thank you. So she goes like this.

And then I said, "It's bad, right?" And she said, "It's neither good nor bad."

"It just is what it is." And I said, "Oh my God, this is going to suck.

 And it did, and it didn't. And it took about a year. And you know how there are people that, when they realize that vulnerability and tenderness are important, that they surrender and walk into it. A: that's not me, and B: I don't even hang out with people like that.

For me, it was a yearlong street fight. It was a slugfest. Vulnerability pushed, I pushed back. I lost the fight, but probably won my life back.

 And so then I went back into the research and spent the next couple of years really trying to understand what they, the whole-hearted, what choices they were making, and what we are doing with vulnerability. Why do we struggle with it so much? Am I alone in struggling with vulnerability? No.

So this is what I learned. We numb vulnerability -- when we're waiting for the call. It was funny, I sent something out on Twitter and on Facebook that says, "How would you define vulnerability? What makes you feel vulnerable?" And within an hour and a half, I had 150 responses. Because I wanted to know what's out there. Having to ask my husband for help because I'm sick, and we're newly married; initiating sex with my husband; initiating sex with my wife; being turned down; asking someone out; waiting for the doctor to call back; getting laid off; laying off people. This is the world we live in. We live in a vulnerable world. And one of the ways we deal with it is we numb vulnerability.

And I think there's evidence -- and it's not the only reason this evidence exists, but I think it's a huge cause -- We are the most in-debt ... obese ... addicted and medicated adult cohort in U.S. history. The problem is -- and I learned this from the research -- that you cannot selectively numb emotion. You can't say, here's the bad stuff. Here's vulnerability, here's grief, here's shame, here's fear, here's disappointment. I don't want to feel these. I'm going to have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin.

 I don't want to feel these. And I know that's knowing laughter. I hack into your lives for a living. God.

 You can't numb those hard feelings without numbing the other affects, our emotions. You cannot selectively numb. So when we numb those, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness. And then, we are miserable, and we are looking for purpose and meaning, and then we feel vulnerable, so then we have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin. And it becomes this dangerous cycle.

One of the things that I think we need to think about is why and how we numb. And it doesn't just have to be addiction. The other thing we do is we make everything that's uncertain certain. Religion has gone from a belief in faith and mystery to certainty. "I'm right, you're wrong. Shut up." That's it. Just certain. The more afraid we are, the more vulnerable we are, the more afraid we are. This is what politics looks like today. There's no discourse anymore. There's no conversation. There's just blame. You know how blame is described in the research? A way to discharge pain and discomfort. We perfect. If there's anyone who wants their life to look like this, it would be me, but it doesn't work. Because what we do is we take fat from our butts and put it in our cheeks.

Which just, I hope in 100 years, people will look back and go, "Wow."

And we perfect, most dangerously, our children. Let me tell you what we think about children. They're hardwired for struggle when they get here. And when you hold those perfect little babies in your hand, our job is not to say, "Look at her, she's perfect. My job is just to keep her perfect -- make sure she makes the tennis team by fifth grade and Yale by seventh." That's not our job. Our job is to look and say, "You know what? You're imperfect, and you're wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging." That's our job. Show me a generation of kids raised like that, and we'll end the problems, I think, that we see today. We pretend that what we do doesn't have an effect on people. We do that in our personal lives. We do that corporate -- whether it's a bailout, an oil spill ... a recall. We pretend like what we're doing doesn't have a huge impact on other people. I would say to companies, this is not our first rodeo, people. We just need you to be authentic and real and say ... "We're sorry. We'll fix it."

But there's another way, and I'll leave you with this. This is what I have found: To let ourselves be seen, deeply seen, vulnerably seen ... to love with our whole hearts, even though there's no guarantee -- and that's really hard, and I can tell you as a parent, that's excruciatingly difficult -- to practice gratitude and joy in those moments of terror, when we're wondering, "Can I love you this much? Can I believe in this this passionately? Can I be this fierce about this?" just to be able to stop and, instead of catastrophizing what might happen, to say, "I'm just so grateful, because to feel this vulnerable means I'm alive." And the last, which I think is probably the most important, is to believe that we're enough. Because when we work from a place, I believe, that says, "I'm enough" ... then we stop screaming and start listening, we're kinder and gentler to the people around us, and we're kinder and gentler to ourselves.

That's all I have. Thank you.