Art of Accomplishment

The Shame Hot Potato

30 min read

Summary

Joe and Brett explore the concept of the “shame hot potato” — a dynamic where people in conflict pass shame back and forth, each trying to make the other feel wrong or bad. This shows up in marriages, companies, and even geopolitics. When someone feels shame and doesn’t want to feel it, they try to hand it to the other person through anger (aggression) or removal of love (passive aggression). The other person then tries to hand it back, creating an endless stagnating cycle.

The key indicators of a shame hot potato are: blame being passed around, focus on what others did wrong rather than one’s own contribution, defensiveness, and the same conflict repeating over and over. Joe points out that if you need to defend yourself against an accusation, it means some part of you believes it — if you didn’t believe it, you wouldn’t feel defensive. The intellectual mechanism is trying to prove who’s wrong; the emotional mechanism is anger and withdrawal of love.

To break the cycle, only one person needs to stop. You “drop the hot potato” — feel the shame, process the emotions underneath it (usually grief, helplessness, or anger), and listen to the other person without defensiveness. Joe shares that the most transformative periods of his life involved being completely undefended, taking on all blame without internalizing it as shame. Great leaders model this: “The buck stops here” shows that responsibility doesn’t require shame. The episode closes with Brett’s insight: “Life is just ego death after ego death, wearing away our rough spots, until eventually the capacity begins to emerge to allow somebody to be wrong on the internet.”

Key Concepts

Key Quotes

“Somebody wants to make somebody else ashamed or is defending themselves in such a way that puts shame on somebody… they feel shame, they don’t want to feel it, so they try to hand it to the other person.”

“If you need to convince somebody that you’re not wrong or you’re not bad, it means you feel like you’re wrong and bad — means you’re in the shame.”

“Shame is the lock that holds the chains of bad habits in place.”

“If you don’t defend yourself, nobody can attack you. It’s like the Zen thing — if you’re being attacked by a sword, be the ocean.”

“Death after death after death, until eventually the capacity begins to emerge to allow somebody to be wrong on the internet.”

“The buck stops here… I can take responsibility and I don’t have to be ashamed in the taking of responsibility. I can be wrong and I don’t need to take on any kind of shame.”

Transcript

so Joe A lot of times when when we’re diagnosing something that’s going on in a team or we’re seeing the Dynamics happening in a group within a course there will be some primary Dynamic where there’s some kind of conflict or maybe there’s some Trigger or some kind of argument or projections going around and there will often be an underlying secondary Dynamic and often what seems to be going on there we’ve come to call it the shame hot potato and we haven’t talked that we haven’t talked about that yet on the podcast directly so I’d love to do this episode on the shame Hot Potato I would love that yeah and let’s give credit to where credits do I think that it’s Tara who came up with that phrase I think Tara was the one who came up with SH the shame Hot Potato yeah I would love that I think that’s so good because it’s not just it’s not just group dynamics where this like happens it’s also in a lot of marriages just um I was just talking to two folks folks in our community who are not yet married and got pregnant and like the whole thing was about the shame Hot Potato like how they triggering each other’s shame and how that just keeps this conflict going and going and going and going and going and going and going yeah great so so let’s define it what what would you define as the shame Hot Potato what is this what are the outlines of this Dynamic yeah somebody wants to make somebody else ashamed or is defending themselves in such a way that puts shame on somebody or the person just feels ashamed and hears whatever the other person is saying as shame right so whatever but they feel shame they don’t want to feel it so they try to hand it to the other person right which is something we do generally with a lot of emotions you know somebody gets anxious and then they like try to hand off their anxiety to people or someone gets angry and they try to like get they get angry at a lot of people this would be like people trying to get like take their shame and make other people feel it got it you know okay you know like you hear it all the time like especially nowadays in the news you’ll hear a lot of people saying they should be ashamed and that would be like the most explicit version of of it most of the time it’s far more implicit than that but that’s what we’re talking about and so the hot potatoes one person tries to give it to the other and then the other person tries to give it back and they just go back and forth trying to and usually successfully inflicting shame on one another got it of course doesn’t solve anything right right and so this this would be something underlying a lot of Dynamics where rather than looking for the solution people are trying to figure out who’s to blame or who got it wrong that might be one pointer to this being an underlying Factor yeah um that that’s right right yeah so the indicators are blame that’s being passed along for sure is a a big one if people are focused on what the other person is did or is doing um instead of how they’re creating their own reality instead of being in understanding their own golden algorithm of how that how they’re creating the situation that’s another big one just if you’re in the same conflict with somebody for an extended period of time like if your marriage has the same kind of fight or if your um if your company has the same kind of problem over and over again or if you’re a country with the same problem over and over again like political system you’re pretty much sure that you’re in a shame Hot Potato because just as shame in our shame episode we talk about how it stagnates emotions it stagnates fights and countries and politics and marriages as well so when you see that stagnation you know like shame guilt that kind of thing is involved Shame Shame slows down the process as much in groups as it does in an individual it’s kind of what you’re saying there correct that’s right that’s yeah exactly and so that’s another indicator that it’s happening yeah okay so what are what are some specific examples of how this might show up in a company for example like a really easy one for a company is you know I was working with a venture capital company every time there was a mistake there was like so much energy put towards who is responsible for the mistake and like partially this person partially that person you know everybody’s just like looking instead of oh how do we make sure we don’t make that mistake again instead of what can we learn here instead of how do we fix it it was who’s to blame you know and that was like the way that they processed mistakes that would be a great example of a shame Hot Potato um another another one that you see a lot is if you see like um you know typically like maybe it’s uh marketing has a conflict with the technology side of the business or product has a has a problem with the sales side of the business right there there’s that conflict if you see that conflict happening over and over again typically what it is is everybody’s focused on what they don’t have what the other part of the team isn’t giving them instead of being focused on their own resourcefulness and so that’s also a really good indicator that there’s a shame Hot Potato happening where everyone’s trying trying to defend oh I’m not wrong I’m not bad but yet feeling wrong and bad and I think that’s a really critical point is that if you need to uh convince somebody that you’re not wrong or you’re not bad it means you feel like you’re wrong and bad means you’re in the shame like if somebody said to me uh you know you’re a horrible father that would not create shame in me there’s nothing in me that feels like Oh I’m a horrible father right so there wouldn’t that wouldn’t create shame in me but if somebody said something that actually would trigger me then something that I actually believed about myself then I would there would be this need to defend myself typically so the important thing there is that if you actually believe the thing then you’ll think you need to defend it if you don’t believe it you won’t need to defend it so you have to buy into the shame to be to start really defending yourself so if someone said to you you are a horrible salesperson and you believed it you’d be like no I’m not let me explain blah blah blah blah blah if there’s some part of you that believed it but if there was no part of you that believed it you wouldn’t need to do that you wouldn’t like immediately get defensive you might explain yourself but you wouldn’t do it in any kind of defensive way and so that’s part of what how the shame Hot Potato goes back and forth Yeah couple pieces there I mean one what you said about like believing it there could also be like whether or not it actually bothers you like I could believe I’m a horrible violin player and if at my first violin lesson I’ll be like yeah great I’m a horrible violin player I’m not going to defend that yeah very well said yes that’s right yeah and another piece here is that and it has to bother you yeah great yeah and and another piece here is that you can use defensiveness as a as a breadcrumb back to this pattern wherever you see defensiveness in yourself or in another in a team in a in a dynamic that that’s where you can look for where the shame Hot Potato might be getting passed around that’s right that’s exactly it yeah okay so You mentioned in uh countries also earlier that this is a dynamic how does this show up how do you see this showing up in politics oh my God I mean like look at any kind of political mess in the world whether you know it’s American politics or politics in the Middle East if you look at it it’s a whole bunch of people feeling like somebody else is wrong and bad and and it also indicates that they feel like they’re wrong and bad like there’s no way you can look at any two sides of of like politics or war and not see that like there is some way in which both sides are being defensive both sides are ashamed both sides are not acting you know in full alignment with who they are there there everybody is making some sort of compromises and it feels like shit and so they’re just passing the shame Hot Potato back and forth so so what are what are the mechanisms by which the shame hot potato gets passed around yeah so um externally it’s anger and uh removal of love so it’s aggression or passive aggression is the other way to say it so um and and and so so anytime that you see that happening let’s let’s take a marriage as an example perfect example in a marriage right so one person typically gets more angry one person typically removes Love sometimes both do it this is like the way to feel ashamed and the the interesting part of this is that in on a nervous system level like the often the only thing you have to do to make somebody feel like they’re bad is get angry at them it’s not actually what you said it’s just like oh if I get angry at you a lot of people immediately go Oh what did I do wrong or if you remove love they immediately go oh what did I do wrong on a nervous system level and so so that behavior going back and forth is just what passes the shame back and forth so if you see that happening if you see the defensiveness and the blame happening the anger the passive aggressive then that’s the that’s the emotional and nervous system mechanism for passing it back and forth the intellectual mechanism of passing it back and forth is very much about like who trying to figure out who is wrong like trying to figure out who did it wrong and like you like almost all of YouTube’s political diatribes are people you know like making a case that the other side is wrong like how often do you see a political diatribe saying oh here’s how we might be able to correct ourselves here’s it like it’s just like this constant defense and so I remember this time in the marriage with Tara and I marriage where I had to come to the conclusion she’s always right that from her point of view she is right her truth is right it is something that I should seek to understand should is a strong word but if I seek to understand how what she’s saying is true for her it is a completely different discussion than if I am trying to show her how she’s mistaken right yeah the latter does not work very well it does not work people seem to repeat it though and particularly repeat it because it’s effective at passing on the shame okay so I have proven to you that you’re wrong the other person feels ashamed and it’s like somehow there’s this like surrogate of relief there’s like this kind of relief it’s like a the kind of relief that like a video game gives you it’s like oh you can you can be out of it but it never never really actually heals the pattern and so there’s a lot of you know in a lot of relationships it’s like whoever can argue better is the right one instead of oh let me fully understand what makes you think you’re right you can fully understand what makes me think I’m right and together we can both learn how to grow and become better people from it that’s when you’re not passing the shame hot potato and so so that’s the intellectual side is is like the defensiveness trying to justify your behavior argue for it etc yeah both both sides seeing the other can only happen if both sides are in agreement that there’s not a that none of them are wrong that there’s just more awareness that can be brought to the situation or that it’s not bad to be incorrect or that they need to be right yeah it doesn’t require both sides it in a marriage you don’t I wouldn’t suggest being married to somebody who who can’t get there like I think the the whole thing about marriage is you know wanting to grow and learn together but the but like in a political conversation or a business conversation if the shame Hot Potato is going back and forth it only requires one person to stop it you just drop the hot potato drop the Hot Potato yeah like feel the shame process the emotions that are underneath it and listen to the person and see what’s true for them and what’s going on and and ask questions and and be impartial like that can that can solve a hot potato inside of an organization or a marriage all the time so why doesn’t this happen more often what makes what makes the what makes the the game of hot potato continue part of it is just a lack of awareness right I think people like when I was working with this couple this weekend one of the things that I noticed is they they just weren’t aware that and and and they even intellectually saying it I would say it to them and they weren’t aware of it and it wasn’t until I got to a point where I was having them do this experiment which is just look at one another and say there’s nothing in me that wants you to feel ashamed or bad right now and that was the confrontation needed for them to actually really see it to really feel it the first was like wait I I don’t feel comfortable saying that so oh so you do want them to feel ashamed what’s that getting you right there is that aspect of it and then the second aspect which I think is for them to be able to say it in a way that felt good is they realized that they had to give themselves that same that same Grace that same gentleness and so so often times the thing that’s stopping people is that is their feeling their own feeling of shame if I’m going to feel shame then you should feel shame that’s the subconscious thought process there so the first one is to really get in touch with oh do I really want this person to feel ashamed and emotionally you know there might be like yeah I do when you really sit with it you realize anytime someone feels ashamed they just like repeat the pattern so it’s a horrible thing to want people to feel um to feel all the pain and grief underneath that that’s amazing um but then you also have to get in touch with the fact that you’re feeling that shame and you’re and it’s very hard to give somebody else the gentleness and Grace that you’re not giving yourself yeah yeah on the intellectual side it’s easy to be like oh yeah I I don’t need to want myself to be in shame right but on a subconscious level when we’ve been patterned in conditioned to believe that shame will actually make us safe and protect us from attack right how do you how do you stop that how do you how do you stop this process when that’s the subconscious process that’s going every time you’re not just literally consciously remembering this at the moment yeah it’s just feel what’s underneath the shame it’s always feel what’s underneath the shame the shame is so the shame is it’s not just the shame if I feel shame I’ll be protected from future attack it’s the shame right now is protecting me from an emotion I don’t want to feel whether that’s attack or whether that’s grief or whether that’s anger but it’s protecting you from an emotion in this moment and so if you feel what’s underneath then you have movement again then you have the lack of stagnation again and so that’s the critical that’s the real critical piece is to on the emotional level is to really to feel it the and on the intellectual level it’s really a deconstruction of of the right and wrong piece like there’s there’s there’s this thing and it happened with a couple and it’s happened in many companies I’ve worked in too where they’re it’s like it’s it’s a little bit beyond right and wrong good and bad it’s it’s like it’s essentially there’s something wrong with me and if you can and see that right so I’ll give you a really good example if you can see that there’s not something um inherently wrong with you and that is like a great relief of the shame and so I’ll give you an example um I or anybody gets angry at one of their kids okay there’s another parent the kid could do the same thing so let’s say the kid spills milk one parent gets angry one parent doesn’t the kid has an essentially done anything wrong but they’re going to feel wrong if their parent gets angry they’re not going to feel wrong if their parent doesn’t get angry right and so if you look at anything that you’ve done there’s somebody on this planet that’s going to have understanding for that who’s going to have gentleness for that so there’s some World in which like you never deserve the punishment there’s some World in which you’re not essentially wrong and so if you can see that if you can see like oh yeah I made a mistake but that doesn’t mean I’m bad it doesn’t mean I didn’t have good intentions underneath it doesn’t mean that I’m not trying if you can give yourself that like level of relief I’m not saying that you don’t want to fix it I’m not saying that you don’t want to you know take action to like understand yourself more clearly and to not repeat patterns that are destructive I’m not saying any of that I’m just saying that essence of I’m bad I’m wrong because I did this if you can see through that intellectually through deconstruction that offers a tremendous amount of relief from the shame hot potato and you see great leaders do this all the time you know they’ll say like oh we’re not going to spend any time figuring out who’s to blame we’re gonna figure out we’re gonna spend time figuring out how to make sure this doesn’t happen again is the way that a leader would happen or another one would be a leader in an upright saying the whole thing is my responsibility I’m the leader I take full responsibility now how are we going to fix it like somebody who can show that I can take responsibility for this and I don’t have to be ashamed in The Taking of responsibility I can be wrong and I don’t need to take on any kind of Shame that’s another that’s the kind of leader we really want to follow you know the buck stops here was the famous what was it Eisenhower or Truman I can’t remember but like it was on on the desk it’s like I’m I’m the one responsible that shows people that shame this isn’t about shame this is just about taking responsibility yeah and one one thing I’m curious about here is if you if you do the intellectual deconstruction on the belief the belief system of that I’m bad or wrong but it still exists somewhere deep somatically then my taking responsibility for it could still be done in a subtly shamey way that I might not see what do I do about that like let’s say I’ve done something that I on some deep moral level legitimately believe is wrong like I’ve stolen something or I’ve hurt somebody intentionally and intellectually I’m like okay yeah I’m not bad and wrong but every fiber in my being feels wrong about it then what do you do in that kind of situation yeah it’s a great question so again the most important thing is to feel the emotion that’s underneath that so if you’ve done something that you really feel is essentially bad so a way that you don’t want to be then there’s probably a tremendous amount of grief there and probably a tremendous amount of helplessness and if you feel that grief and helplessness then the behavior is far more likely to stop than if you feel shame I know I’ve said it before on the podcast but shame is the lock that holds the chains of bad habits in place and so if you get into a shame cycle it’s a stagnation and you’re more likely to repeat that behavior um so but feel the emotions that are underneath and that’s going to make a significant difference also you know if you think about it as um a kid if you tell a kid they’re naughty all the time they’re gonna start behaving naughty if you tell a kid they’re dumb all the time they’re going to behave dumb same if you do it to yourself if you label yourself that way so whether it’s true or not true is somewhat irrelevant what’s relevant is what’s effective like what’s the effective way to like we all know that companies that are constantly blaming one another are less effective than companies where everybody takes responsibility same thing with us like it’s the same thing if we’re constantly blaming ourselves we are less effective than if we take responsibility in a non-shameful way not responsibility like I’m bad see you know so it is very much an upright very empowered I mean that’s the other thing about it is when somebody says the buck stops here or when somebody says no I’m not going to defend myself around that that like I won’t I won’t be defensive then then it’s a deeply empowering act it’s scary to do at the moment because you’re like oh my God I’m gonna give someone’s going to take advantage of me but when you do it you realize oh like nobody if you don’t defend yourself nobody can attack you it’s like like the I think it’s a Zen who have the thing of like if you’re being attacked by a sword be the ocean like there’s no defense in the ocean like they can whack away at it they’ll just Tire themselves out and it’s actually as you know I’ve been on Twitter for the last couple months actually me on Twitter um instead of just having some like dormant account and it’s one of my favorite Parts about Twitter is that occasionally I get crazy attacked and I’m like oh wow and it like I’m like oh how how do I be undefended here how do I like and often times I just I can like laugh there was some guy named like lurker mc lurk face or something like that who was like trolling me and I was like oh wow I get and then I could just like laugh and so it’s just like there’s something there’s something really sweet about that for me in social media it’s like this Perpetual exercise about how to be non-defended in my Approach with people a big part of the the journey here is getting down to the Nuance of when I’m feeling what’s underneath the shame how do I notice if there’s still a little bit of shame in it because somebody could receive whatever attack on Twitter or X and they can laugh and the laugh could be defensive the laugh could be like over the top like power over the other person the laugh could be just like laughing at the way that I was wrong maybe or yeah like arrogant or something that’s great if you don’t feel empowered and invigorated then you’re still in it you’re still in the shame yeah so that’s another piece here is like if I’m feeling the feeling perhaps the grief that’s underneath the shame yeah somewhere in there if I’m not also feeling empowerment if the process doesn’t lead you to empowerment yeah if the process doesn’t lead to empowerment so there could also be a fear of feeling empowerment too if I feel empowerment I should instead feel shame to block that because that might have been something I was conditioned in my past feel or display happens a lot yeah yeah good good catch yeah the the at the end of the day the you can you don’t have to worry about it too much because you can just act on the shame that you can sense and the more you act on that the more you sense the shame shame is an incredibly stagnating and shitty feeling but act on you mean not acting it out I mean like loving the shame and inquiring and seeing what’s beneath it and yeah exactly if you if you thank you yeah if you if you give the attention to the shame then you just become more and more sensitive to it and becomes more and more unacceptable for for yourself or others like when I see somebody else in shame it’s just like for me it’s like it’s like oh no oh no like if I’m interacting with somebody and I see their shame I’m like oh no like here it like this is going to be dramatic you know what I mean and and so I I there’s nothing in me that wants anybody to be ashamed I don’t want to stop if they feel ashamed that’s their that’s their role that’s what they need to do and get through whatever they’re getting through but like the idea of like I want you to be ashamed because somehow I think that’s going to stop something you know like like like look at what human beings do and you know that they feel ashamed if they do some of the crazy stuff that human beings do you can’t not unless you’re you know maybe one of those few sociopaths you can’t not feel ashamed doing it it’s why people who do some of the most horrific stuff have to be high all the time or drunk all the time or you know on methamphetamine all the time if you look at like what wars do to people heroin all the time because it just we have this feeling of shame in us and and it just it perpetuates the whole thing instead of feeling the grief underneath it like if everybody if you look at a war if like if I took a war situation and I could snap my fingers and everybody could fully feel the grief and the anger and the helplessness of that war everybody top to bottom of both sides of the war the war would be done it’d be over it’s the fact that everybody can’t do that and they’re in shame that perpetuates the whole thing and that’s true with a marriage or in a company so that I guess that’s another way to look at it is like if you’re in a war with yourself if you’re in a war in your marriage if you’re in a war in the company like that that’s an indicator of Shame yeah yeah it’s another way we’ve talked about this before where taking the conflict and bringing it internally to yourself rather than being in Integrity with yourself and then showing up in a way that cannot maintain the shitty Dynamic something has to change yeah yeah that’s right and I and the other thing that’s really important my experience is I’ve gone through a couple stages in my life where the only thing I could do is be non defended the only thing that I could do is just every day show up and say I’m sorry or you know like like I I accept full responsibility I’ll take on all of the blame and shame from you I won’t I won’t take it on I won’t give it to myself but I’ll take all of that on and to me that has been like the biggest gift of my life by far as far as an emotional process my kids my wife obviously bigger gifts but the but the as far as an emotional process has been a gigantic gift for me it’s um it like it erodes away we’re all narcissistic on some level but it erodes away our narcissism so so quickly because it it requires us to feel if we do that we have have to feel all the stuff and and narcissism to a large part is just not feeling feelings on the emotional level on the intellectual level it’s very much about our each of our narcissism is the way that we put ourselves above others quietly or out and I could see that being exactly the way this is done too somebody could be coming from the Savior like okay I’m going to take on everyone’s shame I’m going to process it I’m going to be the one who’s better here and what happened how how do you do it the way you just describe not this other way and just notice what you just did is you took all the emotion out of your voice to be able to maintain that role you I’m gonna be the one I’m controlling my emotional state it’s the opposite of that it is the oh it is the it is the it is the like feeling all the pain feeling the helplessness it’s I love the metaphor of Jesus in this particular way because it’s like he didn’t just get on the cross in the metaphor he why have you forsaken me he felt the pain like it wasn’t just like I’m great this is no problem we’re all going to be in Kingdom of God today like it was it was like he felt all of that struggle and and and the result in that metaphor the result is is that like there was a death of the personality and right like so the the the the sense of self dies through that process that undefended process is like it it is like it is the one of the quickest ways I know to to to like burn through our false sense of self yeah death after death after death until eventually the capacity begins to emerge to allow somebody to be wrong on the internet so good I stole that from a tweet so good can you repeat that that was so good well yeah um death after I mean life is just ego death after ego death each time we’re wearing away our rough spots and our edges until eventually the capacity begins to emerge to allow somebody to be wrong on the internet exactly or in the marriage or in business or in politics yeah that’s it beautiful thank you Brett yeah thank you Joe what a wonderful podcast thanks

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