Shame After Firing

Logan Ury shares a story about how men's groups can help process shame.

"I heard this story from someone in a different men's group where a man had been fired from his job like eight years ago and still carried this deep shame - 'I'm not good enough, I'm useless, I was fired because I'm a bad employee.'

Their men's group happens to have about 40-55 people, and when he shared that story as this deep trauma of his life, he heard from a bunch of other guys, 'Oh yeah, that happened to me. That's gonna be a footnote in your life.'

I thought it was such a beautiful story because it took this thing that he felt deeply shameful about - 'I can't provide for my family, I'm a problem' - even though it was years ago and he has a perfectly good job now. Having these older guys say to him 'that happens to everyone, it doesn't matter' kind of helped him just move on.

I think it's a thing where you can talk about the stuff that you sort of only admit to yourself or maybe don't even admit to yourself, and once you get it out there, it kind of goes away versus holding it in. And I think most men are just holding everything in."