Haunted By Half-Truths

It makes sense in my mind but... now I need to figure out how to explain it.

My mom's sitting across from me at the head of the table. We're in her kitchen. It's mid morning and we're fully down the rabbit hole in a conversation about neuroplasticity (yes, I'm absolutely the one that brought it up). It'd started with a joke... one of those half-truths that isn't so much "ha-ha funny" as it is ironic. I'd said that maybe my calling was in academia, as a psychological researcher.

Mom then shoots me a knowing look with a half-grin to acknowledge my half-truth. Absentmindedly, I crack the knuckle of my pointer finger with my thumb. I pull my gaze away from its scan of nothing in particular among the countertop cabinets to look back toward her with a bit of pretend pompousness. We both know why it's funny, even if we're not laughing.

I wasn't that great a student.

Well, ok... I was "very capable" as my high school teachers would've said, but my grades maybe didn't always reflect my true level of capability. I know now that there are plenty of legitimate reasons for that—my neurodivergence chief among them, which was undiagnosed at the time. Still, back then, I carried a lot of shame around those less-than-stellar grades and their, seemingly unexplainable, incongruence with my abilities.

Shame; that's how this conversational rabbit hole adventure in the kitchen had unraveled.

Mom looked back at me and tilted her head with the weight of a fresh thought.  "That would really be something" she said. After a quick pause she added, "if you could help teens learn about how to have healthier relationships with shame, that would be amazing."

I'd just explained how I've never heard of a named theory, or body of work, that outlines the cognitive-emotional equivalent of neuroplasticity. Nothing that describes it as part of an integrated, biological system. Basically, I described how it's scientifically proven that an old dog can in fact learn new tricks. That's neuroplasticity. So, I want to know what to call an old dog's ability to manage (or even resolve) the shame they feel about the false belief that they can't learn new tricks. That way... they (we) can go on learning new tricks, sans shame.

I've been thinking more and more about how, as humans, our relationship with accountability depends on our relationship with shame. When I was a teen, I hid the fact that I struggled to get assignments done in school because I was ashamed of it. I continued to struggle like that until I defused the shame that interfered with my ability to hold myself accountable. It required trust. I needed to believe that I'd be supported after divulging my shame.

"Some of this," I explained to mom, "comes from Brené Brown's work, some from Andrew Huberman, Gabor Maté, Carol Dweck, and Adam Grant. Some from Angela Duckworth and Richard Schwartz..." I trailed off.

Mom's eyes were glazing over.

I leaned forward.

"I've accidentally been working toward my PhD in Behavioral Psychology all these years... without getting any credit for it!"

Sure, it was a joke. I'd delivered the line with an air of faux incredulity.

And we smirked at each other.

But my half-truth hung there, lingering in the air between us.

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Our Daily MAP Year Prompt
236/365

What's a half-truth you joke about, but that could be a whole truth depending on the audience?

onward.

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