156. Name-Calling
When you talk to yourself inside your head, do you call yourself names?
While name-calling was against the rules in school and many families, it may still be part of your vocabulary, especially in how you speak to yourself and those you feel most comfortable around.
Maybe you scold yourself as an idiot, dumbass, or fuckup.
Maybe you complain that your coworker is an asshole, dick, or jerk.
Name-calling may feel like cussing (especially since many names are also swears).
Not something you were supposed to do as a kid, but something that’s allowed now that you’re a grownup.
Not something you’d do in front of all company, but something you feel comfortable doing inside the privacy of your own head.
It may feel playful, innocuous, and ultimately harmless to name-call.
However, this isn’t always the case.
Having someone call you names all day (even if it’s you) may ultimately make you feel like shit.
It may wear you down and get you feeling like there’s no point in trying.
You may begin to believe you are what you say you are. You may come to see yourself as unworthy of better treatment.
And when we name-call others, it can create more distance between us, even if they never hear the name-calling.
It can disrupt our ability to move forward with that person. It can have us seeing them as an enemy rather than someone with whom we have conflict to work through.
And if later, we are getting along better with that person, we may guilt trip and name-call ourselves for having name called them.
This isn’t a moral thing. And it’s not about propriety.
It’s simply about noticing the ways you’ve been doing things, the habits you’ve had for years or decades, and asking yourself if they’re working for you.
The Love Your Job Before You Leave It podcast is all about pausing to question the way you’ve been operating in your life.
Is it the most delicious? Is it deeply satisfying? Might there be a yummier way?
And this week’s podcast episode about name-calling is just another area in which to make that inquiry.
Oh and bonus, I’ll share a story about a time I was called out for this behavior, how I reacted in the moment (spoiler alert: badly), and how I think about the situation now.
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WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
A story about how someone set a boundary with me around name-calling.
Details about how I responded to that boundary vs how I think of it now.
The difference between name-calling and using factual, descriptive language.
How leaning on name-calling can block you from deeper clarity and understanding.
What happens when you normalize name-calling as a way of communicating with others.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about name-calling.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hello, hello, hello, happy Wednesday. I just returned from a week in Savannah, Georgia and it was so fun. It was really gorgeous there, there’s all these really beautiful houses there and a lot of them have very interesting colors. And it’s October, so there were all these fun Halloween decorations and skeletons and pumpkins and all kinds of fun stuff.
And Alex Luchini went with me, so we got to experience Savannah together in the first half of the week. And then the second half of the week I was at a coaching event. Alex and I have been doing a lot more travel this year and it’s been super fun, but it’s also been kind of exhausting and we kind of have had to learn how we do well with travel. And this trip was actually really successful, so we were really happy with it.
We both work remotely. So the first half of the week, we were both working from our Airbnb. And then the second half, I went to my event and she kept working from the Airbnb. And it went off really well, like we were really pleased. We didn’t rent a car, we lived in this nice walkable area so we were walking to the Kroger and getting our groceries. And then walking to all these cute local restaurants and just enjoying how beautiful it is there.
There’s all these really pretty trees there. And they have, it’s like the trees and then there’s like the Spanish moss, which isn’t part of the tree but I think grows on the tree, I’m not sure. I took pictures, I thought it was really pretty. You can probably also find pictures if you Google Savannah, Georgia trees and look at the images.
But we’re also really happy to be home. A week of travel is a lot for me. I sleep a lot better in my own bed, so we’re glad to be back here. Although we’re traveling again soon. We’re going to San Francisco soon for Lesbians Who Tech, so that should be super fun, too.
Anyways, we have a kind of juicy topic for today and I have a story that relates. It’s not from my career, it is from my personal life. But I think that this episode is going to be relevant for both your professional and your personal life.
Before we jump into that, though, I do just want to take a moment to say I would be so pleased and appreciative if you would take the time to follow, rate and review the podcast. Those are some of the ways you can support the podcast that are really meaningful. Also, if you enjoy the podcast and want to share it either via word of mouth, or if you want to share about it on your social media, I would be so grateful. I really want to get the podcast in front of more people, so more people can benefit from the things we teach and talk about here.
Okay, so back to my story. So when Alex and I had just first started dating, this was probably about six years ago, we went on this road trip together. We lived in Seattle at the time separately, and we road tripped down to Portland because I was going to an event there with Alexandra Franzen, actually, who’s amazing. She’s a writer and writing coach and I’ve learned so much from her over the years.
So we were going to this event and I viscerally remember it. We were sitting at the bar in this restaurant and we were talking. I don’t know what we were talking about, but this thing happened where she said something and I was like in a playful kind of flirty way I was like, bitch, duh, duh, duh, duh. That’s kind of a colloquial way that people talk to each other, and I meant something flattering by it.
I don’t remember exactly what I was saying, but I was saying something about how capable she is or how wonderful. And she, in the kindest, gentlest way possible said, “Hey, I know you meant that playfully, but I don’t let people call me names.” And, y’all, I had such an intense reaction to this.
So this was 2017, and while I had done therapy and a bit of coaching at that time, I didn’t have a lot of the emotional skills and tools that I have now and I did not have a good reaction to this. Oh, and I got Alex’s permission to share the story. I think it’s really important to say that.
So basically what happened was even though Alex was super gentle and super kind in the way she gave me that information, I felt personally extremely attacked. Which is so funny because in retrospect I can see so clearly how she wasn’t attacking me at all. But at that time, it was so difficult for me and so painful for me to be corrected or to hear criticism that I couldn’t handle it very well, or I didn’t handle it very well.
And it’s so interesting, because now it’s been six years and I have podcast episodes about the ability to hear negative feedback, and how listening to feedback can actually give you the blueprint to be able to do the thing you want to do. And I have all these skills now and these tools, and I’ve practiced them. But at that time, six years ago, I didn’t have any of that.
And I think it’s so important for you, as my audience, as my clients and my listeners to know that it wasn’t that long ago that I really struggled with so much of what I teach now. And, of course, I still struggle with things and continue to learn and grow. But let’s go back.
So it’s 2017, we’re in Portland at that bar, out of town from where we lived for that event. And she says that to me so gently. And it was a mess. Honestly, I was upset for probably at least an hour. And I think the only reason I stopped being upset is that we went country dancing that night, and country dancing is kind of like my church. It’s like the thing that I love so much and it always puts me in a better mood.
But I want to break this down with you. Like what happened in that interaction? Why was it so difficult for me? This episode is about name-calling, but there’s a couple things that are happening here.
So thing one is, I was extremely emotionally reactive at that time. While I really craved connection and I really craved having this deep, intimate relationship with Alex, it was really hard for me to show up and actually be available for that. And I didn’t have a lot of the tools that I would need, and have since come to have, in order to be able to actually be in intimacy with her.
I talk on the podcast all the time about how conflict can create intimacy. The interesting thing is, at the time that this happened, I had actually already read a lot of John and Julie Gottman’s work about that concept. And so I understood that intellectually, but it was really hard for me to actually receive information.
And even when the other person was being gentle with me, was being kind to me, and was saying to me like, “Hey, I don’t think anything badly of you. I realize a lot of people speak to each other like that. It’s just a no for me,” I took it so personally. I took it like caps lock personally. And I made it about me, and I made it about me and her, and I made it about her thinking I was a bad person, which she, of course, didn’t.
And, in a way, I sort of made myself the victim, like she had hurt my feelings. She had said this thing to me, when really she was the one who had been spoken to in a way that didn’t feel good to her. I mean, I guess you could say we were both spoken to in ways that didn’t feel good to us. But in retrospect, I had used a word that can be considered disrespectful and can be considered name calling.
And even though I had said it playfully, it was out of bounds for her. And at the time, what she said and the way she said it felt really terrible to me. But in retrospect, I’m like, oh, I think that was actually incredibly kind and respectful, the way she did it. I just couldn’t handle it. I could not handle the information.
Now, obviously, we were able to work through that conflict. Probably thanks in large part to the fact that Alex is very, she has a lot of equanimity and she’s inflappable in a lot of ways, unflappable, however that word is. And so she was able to just be with me while I went through my feelings roller coaster, and then eventually came out the other side.
So it’s actually good information too, even though I didn’t handle that well at all, it didn’t ruin our relationship. Our relationship was able to tolerate that conflict. But in the years since, I’ve learned so much that I would be able to handle that conversation and that kind of feedback really differently than I was able to then.
Okay, so this is actually also a really great example of setting boundaries. Alex set a boundary with me and I did not react well to it, but she set it in a really clear, succinct way and didn’t make it about me or about the behavior I was doing being unacceptable. She just said like, that’s a no for me, right? I think even at the time she was very understanding of a lot of people do speak to each other like that. Like that is a thing that a lot of people do, like it’s casual but it’s not for her, right?
And something I think is really interesting about this is she was like the first person in my life, I think, to say anything like that to me. Now, obviously, I attended school from the ages of second grade up until graduation. And so in school people were like, oh, no name calling. I don’t even remember if that was a rule in my household growing up. I don’t think it even was, but probably we got in trouble for stuff like that.
But a lot of the stuff we got in trouble for us kids, we do as adults. It’s like we grow up and now we can say cuss words and whatever, and so we do. But Alex saying that to me was a really interesting, pivotal point for me, which I didn’t realize at the time, because her setting that boundary really brought to my attention how much it is colloquially acceptable to use name-calling in relationships.
And since then, I’ve had situations where I coach my clients, and maybe they’re talking about someone in their life that they’re having a problem with. It could be a significant other, it could be a boss, it could be their parent, it could be a sibling, it could even be a friend or a frenemy. And they say like, she’s a bitch, he’s an asshole, she’s a drag, that kind of stuff. And I have paused my clients sometimes and basically pointed out, this is name-calling.
And not in a judgmental way. Like name-calling is just a form of language. But also, I think a lot of people don’t realize that that kind of thing is name-calling and that that is not the same as using factual, descriptive information.
One of the things that’s been really interesting doing mindset work is understanding the difference between the factual description of something and the kind of colloquial ways we talk about it that are more subjective. And that subjectivity, again, can be in the form of something like name-calling, but it can also be not name-calling exactly, but just using kind of more of a subjective frame.
And I know I’m getting a little bit into theory. So as an example, right, if it’s 37 degrees outside, that’s the factual information. If I say it’s cold, that is a subjective assessment. That’s not name calling, right? But if I were to call the cold night air a bitch, that’s name-calling, right? This cold weather is a bitch, that’s name-calling. I mean, I’m name calling the weather, so it’s a little bit of a silly example.
Let’s take a work example, right? Let’s say I got some negative feedback from a supervisor. If I say my boss is a dick, that’s name-calling. If I say my boss gave me shitty feedback, that’s not exactly name calling, but it is a subjective assessment. Whereas if I say my boss said I need to work on my grammar and really ensure that I’m double checking that before I post blogs, that would be more of a factual accounting of what happened.
So the reason I wanted to talk to you all about this today is I think a lot of people think of name-calling as something that’s playful, innocuous, maybe even harmless. And I think that’s not always the case. And I think sometimes it can be really harmful.
For one thing, if you are in a situation where you’re going to have conflict with someone else and you want to talk to them about a way that their behavior has impacted you, if you use name-calling, I think personally, it’s more likely that they’re going to become emotionally reactive and upset. And it’s going to be more difficult for you to have functional conflict that leads to a good outcome, leads to more intimacy, leads to change in their behavior, if that’s what you’re looking to request from them.
I also think it’s just not as useful, right? If I say my boss gave me shitty feedback, the only information there is that I think the feedback was shitty. It doesn’t tell me anything about what the actual feedback was so that I can either ascertain, okay, this hurt my feelings, but maybe it’s useful. Or I can ascertain, actually, it’s really inappropriate for him to say that to me. To me, it doesn’t give us enough information. It’s a shorthand that actually I think is reductive and robs us of a sense of understanding.
And here’s the other thing that I think is really important. When you normalize name-calling, when you think name-calling is just a normal way to talk to people, then you probably name-call yourself. And you probably name-call yourself a lot more than you name call anyone else. And you probably think doing that is okay, versus thinking it’s kind of a rude disrespectful way to speak to yourself.
So as much as I see people name-call their significant other, name-call their boss, name-call their parent, name-call their sibling, name-call people on TV, I see people name-call themselves more. I see people call themselves an idiot. I see people call themselves a fuck up. I see people call themselves lazy, which again, that’s not really a name-call, but it’s more like saying shitty feedback, right?
So just think about the difference between you saying like, God, I’m so lazy versus like, gosh, I really just haven’t completed that chapter of my novel, right? One of those is a subjective assessment that’s a shorthand that actually doesn’t have as much useful information in it. And the other one tells us what we’re actually talking about.
And I do think it’s kind of rude and disrespectful to call yourself lazy. Again, it’s not exactly a name-call. But it’s like a judgmental kind of condescending assessment of what’s happening that is going to make you feel like shit instead of helping you figure out how you got to where you are, and how you could get to where you want to go.
In fact, it’s not just how you got to where you are, it’s where are you, right? Like if you say to yourself, you’re a lazy idiot, that doesn’t tell us where you are. That tells us you’re judging and shaming and blaming yourself. Versus if you say to yourself, I haven’t written the chapter of my novel I was supposed to be working on and I’m so frustrated with myself, now we know where you are.
We know what’s actually happening. And then we can, from there, decide what’s going to help us get to where we want to go. If where we want to go is writing that chapter of our novel, calling ourselves a lazy idiot is probably not going to help. It doesn’t make me want to write and I doubt it makes you want to write either.
So one of the things I want to illuminate here is, again, name-calling and this shorthand, subjective, judgmental language doesn’t help us understand where we are. And it doesn’t help us get to where we want to go. And it usually makes us feel a lot of upset feelings about ourselves or the other person, whoever we happen to be name-calling. And it often gets us into these vicious cycles where we feel bad, versus helping us get to our goal, whatever that may be.
Now, I’m not suggesting you lie to yourself and say you think you’re doing great, or say you think your spouse is doing great if you don’t. I am suggesting you use more of that factual language to assess where you’re at, and to talk about where you’d like to go. So if you’re like, my partner is a dick and I’d like for them to be a saint instead, that doesn’t tell us fucking anything, right?
Versus my partner hasn’t unloaded the dishwasher a single day this week, and I’d like for them to unload the dishwasher every other day. That tells us what’s happening where you are, and it tells us where you want to go. And it’s probably going to be a more useful frame in actually making the request of that person to unload the dishwasher on a regular basis.
And let’s talk about how you talk about you, right? If let’s say you want to, I don’t know, maybe you’re launching a business. And part of that business is doing email marketing, so you want to start a newsletter.
If you’re like, “Oh, I’m such a failure because I haven’t started my newsletter,” we do have some useful information in that frame, I haven’t started my newsletter. But we also have this name-calling, this judging, this shaming, and that’s going to make you feel bad and you’re probably not going to open up Mail Chimp and start the newsletter.
Versus I haven’t started my newsletter and I feel kind of yucky about it. Okay, we know you haven’t started it. We know you feel yucky. What needs to be addressed there? And then where do you want to go? You want to start the newsletter and probably you want to feel good about it because feeling yucky feels yucky, right?
So in that case it’s like, I haven’t started my newsletter and I feel yucky. I want to start the newsletter and I want to feel proud of myself. Okay, now we know where we are. We know what has happened. We know where we want to go. And then it’s just like, what do I need to say to myself to get myself to do that? Probably not I’m a failure, because probably saying I’m a failure is going to make you want to close your laptop and throw it at the wall.
So if name-calling feels bad and isn’t helpful, why do so many of us do it? And I’m going to be honest, I don’t 100% know the answer to that, but here’s my guess/observation. I think name-calling is very normalized in a lot of our cultures. I grew up in Ohio. I’m white. I thought I was heterosexual, turns out I’m not, but I thought I was when I was a kid. And in a lot of ways, I kind of fit into mainstream dominant culture.
I’m a woman, not a man, but I saw myself in the media a lot. And something else I saw in the media a lot was name-calling. And something else I saw at school a lot was name-calling and that kind of judgmental, disrespectful language. Like you’re lazy, you’re a dumbass, whatever.
That kind of stuff was very normalized in my childhood. I don’t know that I heard that from my parents directed at me, I don’t really remember. But I definitely heard it from students directed at other students in my school, and I definitely saw it a lot in TV and movies.
And I think a lot of us internalize this, whether we heard it from other kids, whether we heard it from TV or movies, whether we heard it from unkind teachers, whether we heard it from our own parents, or whether we even heard it from other people saying things to other people. Like sometimes people’s parents didn’t say things like that to them, but they said that to other people or they said that at or about other people.
There’s lots of ways we can internalize it, but I think it’s a big part of the fabric of a lot of cultures. And I think a lot of people don’t realize how harmful it is. And that’s really interesting because I’m pretty sure it is actually considered abusive to name-call. But because what we do socially doesn’t always reflect what therapists or mental health practitioners know, I think a lot of people think it’s normal and okay. But I no longer personally believe that.
Now, as always on the podcast, I want you to make your own decisions. But I just want this podcast to kind of invite you to pause and think about the language you use when you talk to and refer to yourself and the language you use when you talk to and refer to others and what’s at the heart of that language. Because I think you’ll find that what’s at the heart of name-calling is not kindness.
Even if what you’re name-calling yourself about is something that really matters to you, right? Like, let’s say you’re in a job that feels really terrible and you don’t like it and you want to leave. And you’re struggling with getting your resume together, you’re struggling with getting job interviews.
You might name-call yourself about that to kind of try to motivate yourself. But name-calling is not motivating. It’s not yummy. It’s not loving. It doesn’t feel good. And it makes it feel like you live with someone really mean because it’s a mean way to talk to yourself.
Now, I realize that there’s a risk with this episode that I’m going to sound like I’m uptight. I’m like, oh, it’s so mean to use this language, like I’m some kind of uptight 1980s mother character. And I’m willing to take that risk. If you listen to the podcast, you probably know I have a sailor mouth. I say a lot of cuss words. I’m kind of out there. I’m kind of silly. So I want you to take it by looking at the whole of who I am.
And also, I think it’s really interesting that it could in our culture be considered uptight, to not want to use abusive language towards myself and others and to encourage you to kind of consider that about whether you want to do that. That’s how normalized it is to call people an asshole, to call someone a prick, to call someone a bitch, to call someone all kinds of things. And I just want you to pause and question that.
That’s what this podcast is always really about. It’s about like, hey, what if we pause and question the way we’ve been doing things? What if we pause and question the way we’ve been thinking about things? What if we pause and question like what are the rules we’re following? Are they our rules? Do we like them? Do we like what happens when we follow them?
And I think that you’ll find that when you pause and then make your own decisions about how you want to think, how you want to talk, how you want to be, how you want to live your life, you’re going to get a life that feels more satisfying and delicious.
It might not look just like my life. You may, and probably will, make different choices about what’s included and what’s not. But just because something’s always been included in the way you think, feel and talk to yourself doesn’t mean it has to stay included. And it doesn’t mean it’s aligned with you having a wonderful experience in this world.
So that’s kind of what I want you to consider today. And I just want you to take a minute to imagine what would your life be like if you never name-called yourself again? No matter what you did, no matter what happened, no matter the ways you failed and messed up, no matter the ways you succeeded and did great. We can’t control other people, but what if you personally never name-called yourself ever again? What might that be like?
Being in the coaching space I heard a lot about people saying like, I’m just not mean to myself anymore. It’s just not a useful way to do things and it doesn’t feel good. And I remember being like, how do they do that? But over the years of working on things with myself and learning new stuff and practicing the tools that I teach y’all about, I sometimes have gotten to, and sometimes I’m in the process of getting to, a place where that makes total sense to me and feels achievable.
It feels like it’s within my grasp. I’m like, oh, that’s how we were taught that we get things done. That’s how we were taught that we achieve, but it doesn’t feel good and things I achieve that way don’t feel good either, so what if I just don’t do it?
And I’m also here to promise you and tell you that you can still hit big goals and have massive achievements and breakthroughs and create a spectacularly wonderful life without name-calling yourself, without being mean to yourself and without trying to motivate yourself with that judging, shaming unkindness.
And you don’t have to do that work on your own. You can come and do that work in a fantastic community in my small group, Satisfied As Fuck. Or you can come and do that work in a cozy private container one on one with just me. I would love to help you work on this because I’m ready for a world where people don’t name-call themselves and where they are having a wonderful time.
And also, we’re going to have some struggles too, but overcoming those struggles with satisfaction and delight and with kindness and gentleness towards ourselves. That’s what I wish for.
All right, that’s what I have for y’all this week. Have a lovely week and I will talk to you next time.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We’ll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you’re feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hello, hello, hello, happy Wednesday. I just returned from a week in Savannah, Georgia and it was so fun. It was really gorgeous there, there’s all these really beautiful houses there and a lot of them have very interesting colors. And it’s October, so there were all these fun Halloween decorations and skeletons and pumpkins and all kinds of fun stuff.
And Alex Luchini went with me, so we got to experience Savannah together in the first half of the week. And then the second half of the week I was at a coaching event. Alex and I have been doing a lot more travel this year and it’s been super fun, but it’s also been kind of exhausting and we kind of have had to learn how we do well with travel. And this trip was actually really successful, so we were really happy with it.
We both work remotely. So the first half of the week, we were both working from our Airbnb. And then the second half, I went to my event and she kept working from the Airbnb. And it went off really well, like we were really pleased. We didn’t rent a car, we lived in this nice walkable area so we were walking to the Kroger and getting our groceries. And then walking to all these cute local restaurants and just enjoying how beautiful it is there.
There’s all these really pretty trees there. And they have, it’s like the trees and then there’s like the Spanish moss, which isn’t part of the tree but I think grows on the tree, I’m not sure. I took pictures, I thought it was really pretty. You can probably also find pictures if you Google Savannah, Georgia trees and look at the images.
But we’re also really happy to be home. A week of travel is a lot for me. I sleep a lot better in my own bed, so we’re glad to be back here. Although we’re traveling again soon. We’re going to San Francisco soon for Lesbians Who Tech, so that should be super fun, too.
Anyways, we have a kind of juicy topic for today and I have a story that relates. It’s not from my career, it is from my personal life. But I think that this episode is going to be relevant for both your professional and your personal life.
Before we jump into that, though, I do just want to take a moment to say I would be so pleased and appreciative if you would take the time to follow, rate and review the podcast. Those are some of the ways you can support the podcast that are really meaningful. Also, if you enjoy the podcast and want to share it either via word of mouth, or if you want to share about it on your social media, I would be so grateful. I really want to get the podcast in front of more people, so more people can benefit from the things we teach and talk about here.
Okay, so back to my story. So when Alex and I had just first started dating, this was probably about six years ago, we went on this road trip together. We lived in Seattle at the time separately, and we road tripped down to Portland because I was going to an event there with Alexandra Franzen, actually, who’s amazing. She’s a writer and writing coach and I’ve learned so much from her over the years.
So we were going to this event and I viscerally remember it. We were sitting at the bar in this restaurant and we were talking. I don’t know what we were talking about, but this thing happened where she said something and I was like in a playful kind of flirty way I was like, bitch, duh, duh, duh, duh. That’s kind of a colloquial way that people talk to each other, and I meant something flattering by it.
I don’t remember exactly what I was saying, but I was saying something about how capable she is or how wonderful. And she, in the kindest, gentlest way possible said, “Hey, I know you meant that playfully, but I don’t let people call me names.” And, y’all, I had such an intense reaction to this.
So this was 2017, and while I had done therapy and a bit of coaching at that time, I didn’t have a lot of the emotional skills and tools that I have now and I did not have a good reaction to this. Oh, and I got Alex’s permission to share the story. I think it’s really important to say that.
So basically what happened was even though Alex was super gentle and super kind in the way she gave me that information, I felt personally extremely attacked. Which is so funny because in retrospect I can see so clearly how she wasn’t attacking me at all. But at that time, it was so difficult for me and so painful for me to be corrected or to hear criticism that I couldn’t handle it very well, or I didn’t handle it very well.
And it’s so interesting, because now it’s been six years and I have podcast episodes about the ability to hear negative feedback, and how listening to feedback can actually give you the blueprint to be able to do the thing you want to do. And I have all these skills now and these tools, and I’ve practiced them. But at that time, six years ago, I didn’t have any of that.
And I think it’s so important for you, as my audience, as my clients and my listeners to know that it wasn’t that long ago that I really struggled with so much of what I teach now. And, of course, I still struggle with things and continue to learn and grow. But let’s go back.
So it’s 2017, we’re in Portland at that bar, out of town from where we lived for that event. And she says that to me so gently. And it was a mess. Honestly, I was upset for probably at least an hour. And I think the only reason I stopped being upset is that we went country dancing that night, and country dancing is kind of like my church. It’s like the thing that I love so much and it always puts me in a better mood.
But I want to break this down with you. Like what happened in that interaction? Why was it so difficult for me? This episode is about name-calling, but there’s a couple things that are happening here.
So thing one is, I was extremely emotionally reactive at that time. While I really craved connection and I really craved having this deep, intimate relationship with Alex, it was really hard for me to show up and actually be available for that. And I didn’t have a lot of the tools that I would need, and have since come to have, in order to be able to actually be in intimacy with her.
I talk on the podcast all the time about how conflict can create intimacy. The interesting thing is, at the time that this happened, I had actually already read a lot of John and Julie Gottman’s work about that concept. And so I understood that intellectually, but it was really hard for me to actually receive information.
And even when the other person was being gentle with me, was being kind to me, and was saying to me like, “Hey, I don’t think anything badly of you. I realize a lot of people speak to each other like that. It’s just a no for me,” I took it so personally. I took it like caps lock personally. And I made it about me, and I made it about me and her, and I made it about her thinking I was a bad person, which she, of course, didn’t.
And, in a way, I sort of made myself the victim, like she had hurt my feelings. She had said this thing to me, when really she was the one who had been spoken to in a way that didn’t feel good to her. I mean, I guess you could say we were both spoken to in ways that didn’t feel good to us. But in retrospect, I had used a word that can be considered disrespectful and can be considered name calling.
And even though I had said it playfully, it was out of bounds for her. And at the time, what she said and the way she said it felt really terrible to me. But in retrospect, I’m like, oh, I think that was actually incredibly kind and respectful, the way she did it. I just couldn’t handle it. I could not handle the information.
Now, obviously, we were able to work through that conflict. Probably thanks in large part to the fact that Alex is very, she has a lot of equanimity and she’s inflappable in a lot of ways, unflappable, however that word is. And so she was able to just be with me while I went through my feelings roller coaster, and then eventually came out the other side.
So it’s actually good information too, even though I didn’t handle that well at all, it didn’t ruin our relationship. Our relationship was able to tolerate that conflict. But in the years since, I’ve learned so much that I would be able to handle that conversation and that kind of feedback really differently than I was able to then.
Okay, so this is actually also a really great example of setting boundaries. Alex set a boundary with me and I did not react well to it, but she set it in a really clear, succinct way and didn’t make it about me or about the behavior I was doing being unacceptable. She just said like, that’s a no for me, right? I think even at the time she was very understanding of a lot of people do speak to each other like that. Like that is a thing that a lot of people do, like it’s casual but it’s not for her, right?
And something I think is really interesting about this is she was like the first person in my life, I think, to say anything like that to me. Now, obviously, I attended school from the ages of second grade up until graduation. And so in school people were like, oh, no name calling. I don’t even remember if that was a rule in my household growing up. I don’t think it even was, but probably we got in trouble for stuff like that.
But a lot of the stuff we got in trouble for us kids, we do as adults. It’s like we grow up and now we can say cuss words and whatever, and so we do. But Alex saying that to me was a really interesting, pivotal point for me, which I didn’t realize at the time, because her setting that boundary really brought to my attention how much it is colloquially acceptable to use name-calling in relationships.
And since then, I’ve had situations where I coach my clients, and maybe they’re talking about someone in their life that they’re having a problem with. It could be a significant other, it could be a boss, it could be their parent, it could be a sibling, it could even be a friend or a frenemy. And they say like, she’s a bitch, he’s an asshole, she’s a drag, that kind of stuff. And I have paused my clients sometimes and basically pointed out, this is name-calling.
And not in a judgmental way. Like name-calling is just a form of language. But also, I think a lot of people don’t realize that that kind of thing is name-calling and that that is not the same as using factual, descriptive information.
One of the things that’s been really interesting doing mindset work is understanding the difference between the factual description of something and the kind of colloquial ways we talk about it that are more subjective. And that subjectivity, again, can be in the form of something like name-calling, but it can also be not name-calling exactly, but just using kind of more of a subjective frame.
And I know I’m getting a little bit into theory. So as an example, right, if it’s 37 degrees outside, that’s the factual information. If I say it’s cold, that is a subjective assessment. That’s not name calling, right? But if I were to call the cold night air a bitch, that’s name-calling, right? This cold weather is a bitch, that’s name-calling. I mean, I’m name calling the weather, so it’s a little bit of a silly example.
Let’s take a work example, right? Let’s say I got some negative feedback from a supervisor. If I say my boss is a dick, that’s name-calling. If I say my boss gave me shitty feedback, that’s not exactly name calling, but it is a subjective assessment. Whereas if I say my boss said I need to work on my grammar and really ensure that I’m double checking that before I post blogs, that would be more of a factual accounting of what happened.
So the reason I wanted to talk to you all about this today is I think a lot of people think of name-calling as something that’s playful, innocuous, maybe even harmless. And I think that’s not always the case. And I think sometimes it can be really harmful.
For one thing, if you are in a situation where you’re going to have conflict with someone else and you want to talk to them about a way that their behavior has impacted you, if you use name-calling, I think personally, it’s more likely that they’re going to become emotionally reactive and upset. And it’s going to be more difficult for you to have functional conflict that leads to a good outcome, leads to more intimacy, leads to change in their behavior, if that’s what you’re looking to request from them.
I also think it’s just not as useful, right? If I say my boss gave me shitty feedback, the only information there is that I think the feedback was shitty. It doesn’t tell me anything about what the actual feedback was so that I can either ascertain, okay, this hurt my feelings, but maybe it’s useful. Or I can ascertain, actually, it’s really inappropriate for him to say that to me. To me, it doesn’t give us enough information. It’s a shorthand that actually I think is reductive and robs us of a sense of understanding.
And here’s the other thing that I think is really important. When you normalize name-calling, when you think name-calling is just a normal way to talk to people, then you probably name-call yourself. And you probably name-call yourself a lot more than you name call anyone else. And you probably think doing that is okay, versus thinking it’s kind of a rude disrespectful way to speak to yourself.
So as much as I see people name-call their significant other, name-call their boss, name-call their parent, name-call their sibling, name-call people on TV, I see people name-call themselves more. I see people call themselves an idiot. I see people call themselves a fuck up. I see people call themselves lazy, which again, that’s not really a name-call, but it’s more like saying shitty feedback, right?
So just think about the difference between you saying like, God, I’m so lazy versus like, gosh, I really just haven’t completed that chapter of my novel, right? One of those is a subjective assessment that’s a shorthand that actually doesn’t have as much useful information in it. And the other one tells us what we’re actually talking about.
And I do think it’s kind of rude and disrespectful to call yourself lazy. Again, it’s not exactly a name-call. But it’s like a judgmental kind of condescending assessment of what’s happening that is going to make you feel like shit instead of helping you figure out how you got to where you are, and how you could get to where you want to go.
In fact, it’s not just how you got to where you are, it’s where are you, right? Like if you say to yourself, you’re a lazy idiot, that doesn’t tell us where you are. That tells us you’re judging and shaming and blaming yourself. Versus if you say to yourself, I haven’t written the chapter of my novel I was supposed to be working on and I’m so frustrated with myself, now we know where you are.
We know what’s actually happening. And then we can, from there, decide what’s going to help us get to where we want to go. If where we want to go is writing that chapter of our novel, calling ourselves a lazy idiot is probably not going to help. It doesn’t make me want to write and I doubt it makes you want to write either.
So one of the things I want to illuminate here is, again, name-calling and this shorthand, subjective, judgmental language doesn’t help us understand where we are. And it doesn’t help us get to where we want to go. And it usually makes us feel a lot of upset feelings about ourselves or the other person, whoever we happen to be name-calling. And it often gets us into these vicious cycles where we feel bad, versus helping us get to our goal, whatever that may be.
Now, I’m not suggesting you lie to yourself and say you think you’re doing great, or say you think your spouse is doing great if you don’t. I am suggesting you use more of that factual language to assess where you’re at, and to talk about where you’d like to go. So if you’re like, my partner is a dick and I’d like for them to be a saint instead, that doesn’t tell us fucking anything, right?
Versus my partner hasn’t unloaded the dishwasher a single day this week, and I’d like for them to unload the dishwasher every other day. That tells us what’s happening where you are, and it tells us where you want to go. And it’s probably going to be a more useful frame in actually making the request of that person to unload the dishwasher on a regular basis.
And let’s talk about how you talk about you, right? If let’s say you want to, I don’t know, maybe you’re launching a business. And part of that business is doing email marketing, so you want to start a newsletter.
If you’re like, “Oh, I’m such a failure because I haven’t started my newsletter,” we do have some useful information in that frame, I haven’t started my newsletter. But we also have this name-calling, this judging, this shaming, and that’s going to make you feel bad and you’re probably not going to open up Mail Chimp and start the newsletter.
Versus I haven’t started my newsletter and I feel kind of yucky about it. Okay, we know you haven’t started it. We know you feel yucky. What needs to be addressed there? And then where do you want to go? You want to start the newsletter and probably you want to feel good about it because feeling yucky feels yucky, right?
So in that case it’s like, I haven’t started my newsletter and I feel yucky. I want to start the newsletter and I want to feel proud of myself. Okay, now we know where we are. We know what has happened. We know where we want to go. And then it’s just like, what do I need to say to myself to get myself to do that? Probably not I’m a failure, because probably saying I’m a failure is going to make you want to close your laptop and throw it at the wall.
So if name-calling feels bad and isn’t helpful, why do so many of us do it? And I’m going to be honest, I don’t 100% know the answer to that, but here’s my guess/observation. I think name-calling is very normalized in a lot of our cultures. I grew up in Ohio. I’m white. I thought I was heterosexual, turns out I’m not, but I thought I was when I was a kid. And in a lot of ways, I kind of fit into mainstream dominant culture.
I’m a woman, not a man, but I saw myself in the media a lot. And something else I saw in the media a lot was name-calling. And something else I saw at school a lot was name-calling and that kind of judgmental, disrespectful language. Like you’re lazy, you’re a dumbass, whatever.
That kind of stuff was very normalized in my childhood. I don’t know that I heard that from my parents directed at me, I don’t really remember. But I definitely heard it from students directed at other students in my school, and I definitely saw it a lot in TV and movies.
And I think a lot of us internalize this, whether we heard it from other kids, whether we heard it from TV or movies, whether we heard it from unkind teachers, whether we heard it from our own parents, or whether we even heard it from other people saying things to other people. Like sometimes people’s parents didn’t say things like that to them, but they said that to other people or they said that at or about other people.
There’s lots of ways we can internalize it, but I think it’s a big part of the fabric of a lot of cultures. And I think a lot of people don’t realize how harmful it is. And that’s really interesting because I’m pretty sure it is actually considered abusive to name-call. But because what we do socially doesn’t always reflect what therapists or mental health practitioners know, I think a lot of people think it’s normal and okay. But I no longer personally believe that.
Now, as always on the podcast, I want you to make your own decisions. But I just want this podcast to kind of invite you to pause and think about the language you use when you talk to and refer to yourself and the language you use when you talk to and refer to others and what’s at the heart of that language. Because I think you’ll find that what’s at the heart of name-calling is not kindness.
Even if what you’re name-calling yourself about is something that really matters to you, right? Like, let’s say you’re in a job that feels really terrible and you don’t like it and you want to leave. And you’re struggling with getting your resume together, you’re struggling with getting job interviews.
You might name-call yourself about that to kind of try to motivate yourself. But name-calling is not motivating. It’s not yummy. It’s not loving. It doesn’t feel good. And it makes it feel like you live with someone really mean because it’s a mean way to talk to yourself.
Now, I realize that there’s a risk with this episode that I’m going to sound like I’m uptight. I’m like, oh, it’s so mean to use this language, like I’m some kind of uptight 1980s mother character. And I’m willing to take that risk. If you listen to the podcast, you probably know I have a sailor mouth. I say a lot of cuss words. I’m kind of out there. I’m kind of silly. So I want you to take it by looking at the whole of who I am.
And also, I think it’s really interesting that it could in our culture be considered uptight, to not want to use abusive language towards myself and others and to encourage you to kind of consider that about whether you want to do that. That’s how normalized it is to call people an asshole, to call someone a prick, to call someone a bitch, to call someone all kinds of things. And I just want you to pause and question that.
That’s what this podcast is always really about. It’s about like, hey, what if we pause and question the way we’ve been doing things? What if we pause and question the way we’ve been thinking about things? What if we pause and question like what are the rules we’re following? Are they our rules? Do we like them? Do we like what happens when we follow them?
And I think that you’ll find that when you pause and then make your own decisions about how you want to think, how you want to talk, how you want to be, how you want to live your life, you’re going to get a life that feels more satisfying and delicious.
It might not look just like my life. You may, and probably will, make different choices about what’s included and what’s not. But just because something’s always been included in the way you think, feel and talk to yourself doesn’t mean it has to stay included. And it doesn’t mean it’s aligned with you having a wonderful experience in this world.
So that’s kind of what I want you to consider today. And I just want you to take a minute to imagine what would your life be like if you never name-called yourself again? No matter what you did, no matter what happened, no matter the ways you failed and messed up, no matter the ways you succeeded and did great. We can’t control other people, but what if you personally never name-called yourself ever again? What might that be like?
Being in the coaching space I heard a lot about people saying like, I’m just not mean to myself anymore. It’s just not a useful way to do things and it doesn’t feel good. And I remember being like, how do they do that? But over the years of working on things with myself and learning new stuff and practicing the tools that I teach y’all about, I sometimes have gotten to, and sometimes I’m in the process of getting to, a place where that makes total sense to me and feels achievable.
It feels like it’s within my grasp. I’m like, oh, that’s how we were taught that we get things done. That’s how we were taught that we achieve, but it doesn’t feel good and things I achieve that way don’t feel good either, so what if I just don’t do it?
And I’m also here to promise you and tell you that you can still hit big goals and have massive achievements and breakthroughs and create a spectacularly wonderful life without name-calling yourself, without being mean to yourself and without trying to motivate yourself with that judging, shaming unkindness.
And you don’t have to do that work on your own. You can come and do that work in a fantastic community in my small group, Satisfied As Fuck. Or you can come and do that work in a cozy private container one on one with just me. I would love to help you work on this because I’m ready for a world where people don’t name-call themselves and where they are having a wonderful time.
And also, we’re going to have some struggles too, but overcoming those struggles with satisfaction and delight and with kindness and gentleness towards ourselves. That’s what I wish for.
All right, that’s what I have for y’all this week. Have a lovely week and I will talk to you next time.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We’ll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you’re feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
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