In families and organizations, the person who names the elephant in the room typically becomes identified as “the problem.” This happens because everyone carries a false sense of shame about the unspoken truth, and the person who speaks it becomes the target for that shame.
Joe was the one who brought up his father’s alcoholism, and the entire family—including Joe himself—agreed he was “the bad one.” Meanwhile, his father was drinking vodka before breakfast and was not considered the problem. This dynamic is remarkably common: the truth-teller becomes the scapegoat, which reinforces the group norm that nobody is allowed to say the thing.
“The person who speaks to it feels like they are doing something wrong and they are the wrong one and they are the one causing the problems—to the extent that they believe that, they contribute to a group reality field.”
The same dynamic plays out in business. Nobody wanted to tell the struggling rock star he looked terrible because they didn’t want to be blamed for ruining the shoot—as though saying something true was their fault, rather than the situation’s.
Related Concepts
- Shame gets passed back and forth in fights
- Shame stagnates behavior
- Own your internal elephant before addressing the external one