Dr. Devon Price on Shame & Its Antidote, Expansive Recognition
A conversation about Devon's book Unlearning Shame
Recently I had a lovely conversation with Dr.
Price about his newest book, Unlearning Shame: How We Can Reject Self-Blame Culture and Reclaim Our Power.
Devon has authored two other books, Laziness Does Not Exist, and Unmasking Autism, and is working on a fourth. This transcript is lightly edited for length and clarity, but it remains quite long, so I’ve put in subject headings that I hope will help you come back and pick up where you left off if you don’t have time or bandwidth to read the whole thing in one sitting.
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The Origins of the Concept of Systemic Shame
MARTA: I've been talking about shame for a long time, and I remember maybe five years ago, when I first started my Instagram account, I was thinking about how much neurodivergent people seem to suffer from shame. And then I read some so-called expert who said that ADHD people seem to have so much shame that she thought we should add it to the list of symptoms. Like in the DSM. Not as something that's been done to us, but as something that's intrinsic to our ADHD! And my brain just about exploded.
I though, you have got that so backwards! We are not ashamed intrinsically. We have been shamed. And then suddenly I started to see this as a broader and more structural, political phenomenon.
But I never really expanded that thinking to the extra layers you have developed in your idea of Systemic Shame. I just think it's brilliant to take it out of just the personal experience of shame and to see these interpersonal and then global ways that shame functions in our society. And I wonder, what was the genesis of that? How did it all come together for you?
DEVON: Yeah. This book definitely felt like I was very much that meme of Charlie from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where he has the cork board with all the strings connected, and you're paranoid, drawing connections to everything in the world. But I had been actually thinking about shame for a long time without pinning down that's what it was. A lot of my writing about productivity1 is ultimately about people feeling ashamed that they're not enough, ashamed that they can't meet some standard of production that is actually not possible for almost any human. And shame is also beneath that urge to earn your right to exist. There's a deep and abiding shame of just being alive of, I am bad. My existence is not justified. All of these kinds of things. I hate who I am. All of these kinds of feelings that affect a lot of different populations, but especially a lot of ADHDers really connected to that writing because there is so much shaming that gets directed at them from the time they're very young, for not paying attention in the way others pay attention, for not looking attentive, for not getting things done that people think they should be able to do, and all that stuff.
And then of course writing about autism and unmasking, that's also so much a conversation about shame as well. Masking is just a socially enforced shame around your neurotype not matching with this ideal, this fantasy ideal of the neurotypical, right? Which of course nobody actually measures up to. But the more you deviate from it, the more ashamed you feel if you still internalize that ideal that you're supposed to be neurotypical. And so those things had obviously been kicking around in my head a lot and they had been things I had been working on for myself, and even slowing down and being less productive, even dropping the mask a lot and being a lot more freaky and autistic. But I still really felt very ashamed of being alive and existing and all those good things.
And then there was just the backdrop of how the government handled the pandemic. That was really the genesis of this book for me, looking at how in Chicago, it was especially pronounced here. They would take some measures to address COVID in 2020 in this city—at first they would close down restaurants, they would close down schools, but a lot of the force of public messaging and legal ramifications were directed at individuals. So the mayor would blame black kids on the South side having house parties for the spike in COVID numbers, when she had opened restaurants up. She would force teachers back into schools and then she would say that people having private gatherings was the reason why COVID was going up, or people not wearing masks.
I think especially a lot of government officials fell back on this language of personal responsibility, people being diligent, masking, getting vaccinated, doing the right things. And it's not to say that those aren't the right things to do, but without any analysis of structurally why or why not they're difficult, how we can facilitate them, people were getting competing information and then being blamed for not wearing the right type of mask when they were discouraged from wearing any masks at all for a long time, among many other messaging screw ups.
And so it made me just really attentive to the fact that we offload all of this blame for all of society's failures onto the individual. We create this neurotypical worker ideal. Nobody actually is that ideal. Every person blames themselves and thinks they need to be medicated, therapized, hack their schedule, hack what they're eating, have willpower to be that person. We have these catastrophic public health failures caused by not actually investing in giving people the tools they need to take care of their health or taking care of their health as a society. And then we blame them for being lazy and selfish and all of these things. Once I started thinking about it that way, I just couldn't help but see it everywhere. It's in how we talk about racial justice, it's in how we talk about overcoming body issues—it being this personal journey of self-love instead of a structural issue of seats on airplanes not being big enough for you and doctor's offices not having equipment for your body.
And so I just really wanted to talk about it and its many different ramifications because I think we all internalize it. And I think it poisons just so many conversations about every issue that needs to be addressed in the world. We talk about it in terms of personal responsibility first and foremost.
When Activists Use Shame as a Strategy
MARTA: That's interesting it was COVID that unlocked that wider picture for you. One of the things I've noticed among some disability activists [I actually see this all over on the left but COVID was the particular context we were talking about when I asked this question], people I really admire who are doing important activism around masks and long COVID, is that sometimes some of them use those same kinds of shaming tactics, blaming individuals. And I totally get where that comes from, but I wonder when you see that kind of shaming behavior among activists and good people who really care, I wonder what do you think is the best way to respond to that?
DEVON: It's difficult because I don't want to commit this like almost meta shaming. And sometimes when I do bring this stuff up and say, okay, from a persuasion perspective, from a public health perspective, it doesn't matter if you think people who aren't masking are evil assholes. Let's say even that's true. We know that telling them that is not going to work. And when you bring that up sometimes as I do, you get accused of tone policing disabled people and long COVID sufferers who are feeling immense anguish and immense abandonment in society and putting the onus on them to be the bigger person when it is true that when you look at the world around you, most people are behaving as if they don't care. Even if there are lots of structural reasons for that, that really hurts to see, and it's a massive inequity.
So I think part of why it is such a thorny problem is the collapse of context and audience that happens with the internet, where there needs to be space for disabled people to express their rage, their grief. To be centered, to have social events that are for them and that make accessibility to them the utmost priority. And then there also does need to be public health messaging that makes people feel empowered and positive and not guilty because whether we like it or not, that is what people find more motivating. If they are given tools to help them “do the right thing” and get to feel like they are doing something positive for the world, that is more motivating and positive for themselves. That is more motivating than saying “you're a horrible person.” It's really hard to get somebody back in the game if they've stopped masking, just as an example, if you shame them for what they've already done in the past.
So I've gone at this particular struggle in a bunch of different directions. I think you really do need to start with the emotional validation for the marginalized, and them having space for even talking shit sometimes because that's cathartic and it's certainly earned. It's understandable. It's justifiable. And then I think once it's clear that you're not trying to tone police people, or keep them from expressing that stuff, then you can ease into asking, okay, now we need to talk about situations when the question is, do you want to be right? Or do you want to win? And what grace can we extend to people who are not always going to be or haven't always been the perfect comrades and allies to us? Because, I think when we have that attitude as disabled people, it actually does isolate us a lot more. If you believe that the whole world is full of evil people who don't care about you, disabled people are already really isolated. So I think us being propagandized to believe that it's not even worth trying to connect with other people is really bad for us.
And so we have to find some way to overcome that, even though it comes from a logical place. People have been burned. And so I do understand where people are coming from when they are in that really dismal outlook about others.
Expansive Recognition as an Antidote to Systemic Shame
MARTA: I want to talk about this idea of expansive recognition that you've come up with, which I think is beautiful and healing. Where did that come from and how did you develop that idea?
DEVON: I was trying to think about what is the opposite of shame. I had this conversation with my friend Jess White, who's a writer. And they were the person who really suggested the word recognition as the opposite of shame. And it made a lot of sense for me because shame is an isolation, a hiding away.
Even if you just look at the etymology of the word it's about covering and hiding things, not being seen, being unseeable because people just detest what they would see if you were revealed. And so there's a degree of opposing shame that comes from vulnerability or revealment. But we also know that just having the curtains thrown back on something about yourself that you're ashamed of, and having people see it, that's not necessarily safe or always good either.
It has to be people really seeing you in the fullness of your humanity, not whatever your most stigmatized or supposedly worst qualities are, but actually seeing you and holding you fully as a human. And since I was writing about systemic shame, people feeling personally to blame for systemic issues, this really individualistic approach to social problems that capitalism and colonialism and white supremacy have given us, I thought it was really important to emphasize as an alternative to that, seeing yourself as actually interconnected and no longer thinking of yourself as an individual actor. So expansive recognition is really coming to see yourself in a completely new way. If you've lived in a very individualistic society and culture, seeing every little thing that you do as part of this huge tapestry of human being and no longer measuring yourself in terms of just your individual input [where you’re always asking] have you saved enough people? And instead just actually appreciating that, oh my gosh, I am actually always receiving so much care from other people. My life would not be possible without the work of so many other people every single day. And also I am contributing to that in all of these tiny ways that I can just accept and believe in, instead of constantly scrambling like I'm trying to prove that I'm worthy or to earn my right to existence. And I found that really helpful for relaxing a lot of that activist guilt that used to be really bad for me and made it really hard for me to make responsible decisions about where to actually put my energy, because it felt like I had to do everything, which is so absurd.
Individualism is such an absurdity. Like it makes you into your own god of your own universe and your own martyr that has to die for everyone. And it's so self-important. It's so paralyzing. It's not helpful. Once you actually start to realize how much you're reliant upon other people and just be grateful for that, instead of feeling guilty about it, a lot of good things flow out. And giving more in a real way actually does come a lot more naturally once you're weaving your life into other people's lives.
The Structural Nature of Shame About “Executive Dysfunction”
MARTA: I find that's so true. And I think you're absolutely right that this is really old, this individualism, all those values of systemic shame, are old, are part of capitalism, white supremacy, colonialism for sure. But it also seems to me that they have intensified enormously under neoliberalism since the 1980s, and that the neoliberal project really is to crush any kind of collective power, whether it be union organizing or activism, and to convince us that we're just individuals. It's so insidious. It's so insidious the way that even those of us who intellectually don't believe any of that, it still has been so internalized in so many ways. I know this is true for me—I hear you, I read this, I preach it myself, and yet I still feel often that Oh my God, I'm not doing enough. I'm lazy. I should be a better activist. I should be this. I should be that. I compare myself to other people.
You were saying that the expansiveness part of expansive recognition is about the reality of our interconnectedness with everything, and it reminded me of Russell Barkley, who I like to call the “crown prince of executive function,”—he states baldly as a foundational value of his entire theory of executive function that “there is no such thing as the common good.” And I feel like that's so telling. Something I have noticed about shame, in the specific context of of neurodivergent people, is the ways that we are just different gets shamed, and then the shame creates dysfunction, which leads to more shame, which just creates even more dysfunction. We start with difference, but very quickly we become “dysfunctional.” And then we get blamed for our own dysfunction. Like I said earlier, that ADHD “expert” who suggested that shame is itself an intrinsic quality of neurodivergence. It becomes this insidious feedback loop of blaming of the victim, and on a massive scale. It does feel like we feed into that when we accept those values and when we judge ourselves by them. And yet it can be so hard to avoid because it's the air we breathe. Like that expression, a fish doesn't know it's wet.
DEVON: Yeah, I agree with you that it has gotten more heightened under neoliberalism. Because, again, these aren't even just problems with how we think. It's structural, right? And technology and some of the developments of capitalism as it is now and neoliberalism as it is now have made it so much easier for people to be forced into this role of existing as an isolated cog that is supposed to fit in a particular slot in a machine. And, I say this as somebody who has an “email job” where I can work from home, there are lots of people like me. They're at the computer all day long. They get Grub Hub. They might go all week without seeing another human being.
And that was not possible until relatively very recently. Certainly not on the scale that it's at now, but we've been moving steadily more and more towards that direction for a very long time. And you could mark whatever cultural turning point you want, whether it's the creation of the suburbs and white flight and things like that, or just mobility and gentrification in cities, making families more isolated, and the nuclear family exists as this isolated ideal. But for a variety of different reasons, people don't hang out with their neighbors, hang out with a large family to the extent that they used to, where you see all different types of people and ability levels and quirks and annoying traits that you have to put up with. When you're around that sheer diversity of humanity and you're having to get along with each other, you very quickly recognize we are not all built the same. We are not all serving the same function, if you like, in the world. And thank God we're not all the same, no kind of supportive social structure would exist if everybody was the exact same little productive cog who keeps the same sleep schedule, who does the same kind of work, is motivated by the same kinds of things.
And also we're motivated by the existence of other people around us too. And that's my big sticking point about how so much of executive dysfunction and ADHD gets talked about. It's very human, it's very natural to be socially motivated, to have more of a drive and focus to get things done when there are people around you who are working on something too and are going to appreciate what you're doing and thank you for it. It's easier to cook when there's somebody else to feed. It's easier to fold the laundry when there's somebody else in the room talking to you. That's not an executive dysfunction.
That is a fundamental human thing for most humans. And the fact that we pathologize that now is sickening. And it does tie back to, again, not just our mindsets, not just us making the wrong decisions or being too individualistic in our minds. It's how our homes are set up, how our cities are set up, how our work days are set up, how the modes of production are set up. Like they're designed to isolate us and alienate us from one another.
Ways of Disrupting Shame
MARTA: Sometimes when I read your work or listen to you talk, it seems like you've got it all figured out. Like you never harbor doubts or you never struggle with shame anymore, and I'm sure that's not true because I know people sometimes think that about me as well and it's so not true. But I'm wondering what are the ways that you notice and then are able to disrupt those feelings and quit the toxic self talk and all the rest of it when it does start to come up for you.
DEVON: Yeah I still struggle with it a lot. It's interesting. There are certain things in my life that I've just put aside any worries about anymore that I am free of shame about, but I will still sometimes look in the mirror and be like, I fucking hate you. Like I feel those things. I think the Mad Pride movement and attitude has done a lot for me in embracing that I don't have to ever feel entirely better. Like I can hate myself sometimes and I can still have a life that is basically experienced by me as worthwhile and that I enjoyed having in many moments, as much as I could. I think getting more comfortable with the fact that there are going to be these peaks and waves and these blips of insanity on the radar and that can just happen. I've gotten more comfortable with recognizing that for me, there's always always going to be these moments of insanity in my life. And accepting that almost as a part of who I am or just what being alive means for me.
So for example, for me gender dysphoria can come and go in waves where there are moments where I'm like, I'm so glad that I've gotten here. I feel like I've climbed ashore and found safety. And then I'll have weeks or months where I'm like, I made a mistake. I shouldn't have done this. I've made myself disgusting. All of those societal messages, they come in and they get to you sometimes. And it's not a personal failing for me to internalize everything that's happening in this fucking country and in this world and to feel bad about myself sometimes. And to just allow space for that. Thinking of myself as not just one person also kinds of helps. So I have some friends who are plural—they might've been considered dissociative identity disorder in the past—who really experience themselves as having a bunch of selves inside them. And I resonate with a lot of that too, that there's just parts of me that are going to be like, you're a fuck up. They're screaming out for something and that's not the whole of who I am. And that can exist just as much as there's a part of me who knows I'm a badass. I'm incredible. And that guy's annoying too. They're both annoying to listen to sometimes and they both exist. In my experience of it there's a bunch of different members of the crew, piloting the Enterprise or whatever. And sometimes they're going to have fights and that's okay. There's still a guiding principle that's mostly getting me where I need to go. And I'm also just really lucky that I get to write about all of my biggest problems, and that seems to help other people too. It's just a funny paradox that the more I'm open about what I don't have together, that it comes across as me having my shit together to other people.
Devon’s New Book
MARTA: I heard you mentioned that you're editing another book. That's very exciting.
DEVON: I'm gonna take a break after this one! This one was is gonna be a sequel to Unmasking Autism. It's called Unmasking for Life. And it's all about how after you figure out you have some neurodiversity going on and you go through that personal reflection of rethinking your past, coming to accept yourself a little bit more. That's really just the beginning of figuring out, okay, how am I going to actually make my life work? So the book is really all of the questions I've gotten from readers of Unmasking Autism about, okay, I've realized I'm never going to have a full time job. What does surviving under capitalism look like? Or, okay, I realize I have this disability. My whole family probably is autistic too, but they don't understand it yet. How do I navigate life and family and setting new boundaries with family with this understanding of myself? So it just goes chapter by chapter, different areas of life: relationships, sex and dating, family, work, finding meaning in life That's where I end, which I'm sure will continue to be an ongoing process, aging, just thinking about all this stuff that comes next, like how do you actually live your life unmasked? How do you set it up? So it was really rewarding to write and fun. And so now I'm going to have to do that not as fun part, which is all the marketing BS, but but the writing that's great.
MARTA: When is that coming out?
DEVON: March 2025.
Meta Shame
MARTA: Is there anything else that you would like to say about about unlearning shame?
DEVON: Yeah, we already talked about it, but one thing I do like to send home is, I think people get meta shame, like they get shame over the fact that they feel shame. They feel bad that they feel bad about their body. They feel bad that they feel bad about their sexual orientation. They feel bad about what they do in order to cope. There's so many ways in which we feel like we have some moral obligation to be down on ourselves all of the time, or to try and purify our brains and be confident and overcome all this stuff. And that is still expecting yourself to have willpower in this way.
That's just not realistic or kind to put on an individual person. So I guess the thing that I would say and relate to people is just: It's okay if you feel really horrible things and you think really horrible things about yourself, about other people, about the world. That's not your fault. That's not some scourge or some moral taint in yourself that you need to get rid of. All you have some amount of control over is what choices you make in your behavior and the relationships you prioritize.
And sometimes the amount of control we have in life is just a tiny window of action. Am I going to call this person? Am I going to ask for help? And if that's all you have control over in your life, that is enough. That is meaningful to just make that choice to make your life a little bit different today, a little bit more connected, a little bit less capitalistic, whatever that means for you.
And I don't know what that means for most people, but there's a lot of just tiny things we can do and that's all we have to do.
The Gift of Both Giving and Receiving Help
MARTA: That's lovely. I find so much of your work generous and kind and I feel like that's just so needed right now. We're all so beaten down, and have so much anxiety and despair and dread. A lot of the people that I work with, like in DDS, just even picking themselves up to come to a peer support group can be really overwhelming. And I think that the voice you are sharing in this book is one that is really gentle and kind and helpful.
DEVON: Thank you. And I'll just say, jumping off of that for people who find it really hard to drag themselves to the DDS meeting, drag themselves to ask for help and all the guilt that comes with that—even something that is a small step that's good for you and your own healing, there's so much that's also going to help others that you don't recognize in that moment, especially when you're really wrapped up in shame and depression. Like just showing up to something. Even if you feel like all you're doing is sitting there and gleaning the benefits and not “contributing,” your presence is felt. You being vulnerable and needing support, that helps people. People want to feel helpful. To just be there in whatever ways are good for you as your flawed self, that is doing good for other people too.
MARTA: That's actually one of the core values of peer support in DDS. We have this list of guiding values that we read at the beginning of each peer support session, and one of them is that you're welcome to be here in any way, camera off, camera on, you can come late, you can leave early, you never need to say anything, just your presence here is part of holding the space for everybody else.
I'm such a big believer in peer support, and I do think that it can be like a really key part of that expansive recognition. Being in a room, whether it's a real room or a metaphorical room on zoom, seeing the heads nodding or the little emoji responses in the chat. So you know the weird thing you experienced, the ways you feel freaky, the ways that you feel broken and dysfunctional, knowing that other people feel the same way. It's just so incredibly powerful.
You say that healing from shame is not a linear project, and I agree with that so much. I think there is this notion sometimes that you can't really be in a love relationship authentically until you love yourself, until you have healed yourself. And it just isn't as linear or simplistic as that. In order to heal yourself, you need to be loved, and at the same time you need to be helping others heal by loving them back, even if imperfectly. I do think it becomes this virtuous spiral of loving and being loved, helping and being helped, healing others and being healed. It can't be linear or sequential.
The three circles of systemic shame that you identify, personal, interpersonal, and global—they're all interconnected, right? It’s not like we can just heal one without getting into the others as well. So yeah, I really appreciate the emphasis you have on relationship and community, because I think that there isn't really any hope without that.
DEVON: Rebecca Solnit talks about it in A Paradise Built in Hell. She describes the need to feel needed or the need to feel helpful, that people want to feel capable, that they have made a positive imprint on other people's lives. It is gratifying and empowering and grounding. People rush towards the disaster to try and help more often than not. When there's a big collapse due to a natural disaster or some awful cataclysm, we get fear mongered about all of this rioting and looting that's going to happen, but what's actually happening is people gathering supplies to take care of each other, and people welcoming other people into their homes.
I was just reading this piece a friend sent me yesterday about pathologically demand avoidant kids, and one way to help meet a PDA kid’s need for autonomy, and need to feel like they are a person with status and respect, is to do equalizing exercises. Basically they said, you as the parent pretend that you are the lion in the circus and they're the lion tamer—let your kid be the person in the position of power once in a while. And that will soothe a lot of their trauma that comes from being disempowered in society. And I think disabled people in particular, we feel really powerless a lot of the time and we internalize that powerlessness. And so when we get to help one another, it does give a lot more of a sense of agency and empowerment. That's a need that we have. And the obverse of that means if you need help, you are giving someone a gift and giving them the chance to show up for you and feel capable. Like it's not actually this transactional thing. It is this ecosystem that is thriving together.
MARTA: As somebody who's quite insecurely attached, to use the language that you wrote about in the book, it’s so hard for me to ask for help, but that's a great way to frame it. Because I love it when I can help other people. So if I can just reframe it that way, like this is an opportunity to let other people do something that is good for them as well helping me.
DEVON: Yeah. Yeah. I have very insecure attachment too, I have a lot of guilt around crying or being sad because when it opens up, it's this well, I just need so much comfort. And in the past I had experiences of people where after enough times of “putting up with” me crying, the compassion just wasn't there. And so it's been really refreshing in the last few years of my life to have people who want to help. I have to keep asking, you're not getting sick of me doing this? You're not annoyed with me? Like this actually is meaningful to you, for us to be vulnerable? Right now I'm dealing with a loss in the family, and I was talking to a partner of mine about it, and they were telling me, your friends want to know, your friends will feel weird if you don't tell them for weeks about what's going on. Like they will want to know, they will want to be there for you. And it's doing a positive thing for them to share when you're going through something.
See, especially, Devon’s first book Laziness Does Not Exist.
The best thing I've read in a long while. Thank you!
But a critical question:
What is DDS?
A really liberating read. You know you’re on to something good when you keep saying ‘Yes’ out loud as you read. I especially liked “embracing that I don't have to ever feel entirely better”. I may have to print that out and put it on my wall! Thank you for making this available.