Latest / RiseUp - Live Joy Your Way / The Accountability Trap: Discerning Growth from Coercion
Transcript
- Voiceover: [00:00:00] Rise Up Live Joy Your Way from emotional intelligence through cognitive distortions, certified life and wellness. Coach Kamini Wood is on a mission to help people see the magnificence of their own unique human spirit. Through these small bites of self visualization and self-confidence, you can have healthy relationships, success in business and career, and live the life you want to live, Rise Up Live Joy Your Way. Kamini Wood: Hi there, and welcome to another episode of Rise Up Live Joy Your Way, whether it's morning, afternoon, or evening. Thank you for taking some time to hang out here with me today. So today I wanna start with something that might make some people feel uncomfortable. It's a following sentence. Accountability is not always healthy. Now that sentence alone may have triggered something in somebody who's listening because I think culturally accountability is [00:01:00] seen as almost a gold standard for maturity. And so we say things like, you need to take responsibility. Uh, own your part. You can't heal without accountability. And let me be clear, I do agree with those statements, but under one condition, accountability requires a sense of safety. And if safety is missing, what gets labeled as accountability can actually become pressure. It can actually become coercion or it can be forced access. So today I wanna actually see if we can slow things down just a little bit because in my work with many different high achievers and with leaders and survivors of toxic relationships and even teenagers and young adults navigating family dynamics, I have seen a pattern when people are told to take accountability in an in environments that are not safe [00:02:00] enough for repair, it actually creates a sense of confusion and actually can create. More disharmony. So today I want to see if we can just separate, you know, growth discomfort from threat and that, and mutual accountability from, for self blame and repair from exposure. So if you've ever wondered, am I avoiding accountability or am I protecting myself, I'm hoping that this conversation today might be helpful. So as we enter into the conversation, I just want you to take a breath. And just notice what's going on with your own body. As you know, you started to listen to some of that. So the very first thing that I wanna do is just define accountability. True accountability includes, um, a shared reality. There is mutual reflection. There is a willingness to repair. There is a sense of emotional regulation, and there is a capacity [00:03:00] for the truth without retaliation. Accountability is not submission. Self erasure, self abandonment, appeasing somebody's narrative or story or staying accessible to somebody who is actually very destabilizing to your own nervous system. So real accountability would sound something like, okay, I see where I contributed, or I understand the impact I want to take steps to repair. Or even the question of what was that like for you? It also sounds like, uh, that does not feel accurate to me, or it could sound like I'm willing to reflect on the situation and how I showed up, but I'm not willing to accept blame for something I didn't do. Just take a second to notice the difference there. Accountability does not require you to self abandon, so just ask yourself, when I hear the word [00:04:00] accountability. What happens within your own body? When you hear the word accountability, is there some tension or do you feel grounded? Do you feel your yourself bracing for impact or do you feel actually calm? That answer is gonna actually give you a lot of information. So here's where I think things sometimes get complicated in safe relationships, accountability actually does deepen intimacy. It does deepen connection, but in unsafe dynamics, accountability. Accountability conversations can actually, they can become unsafe and well in unsafe dynamics. The accountability conversations actually become weapons, right? The other person weaponizes what you're saying against you. So to break that down neurologically, when your nervous system perceives safety, the prefrontal cortex in your brain stays online. Everything's firing. We're able to make all those rational decisions. Be reflective. You can, you know, you can reflect on things. You can consider different nuances. You can even tolerate [00:05:00] feedback from the other person. Now, when your nervous system perceives a threat, the amygdala is what comes online. Prefrontal cortex tends to go offline. That meaning the thinking brain goes offline. And so that's a very critical distinction because not all discomfort is threat. Sometimes accountability, yes, it feels uncomfortable because, hmm, maybe your ego's a little bit. Challenged and, and feels, you know, um, you feel a little uncomfortable with the fact that maybe there's something you have to take accountability for. That's actually growth. But sometimes accountability actually feels threatening to our system because the environment that we're in has historically punished any type of vulnerability, and that's not growth. That's a sense of conditioning that we've gotten used to. So, just to give you some examples, growth discomfort feels like. Some momentary embarrassment, defensiveness that settles maybe a desire to explain. Uh, that softens into some curiosity. And it does also include some [00:06:00] temporary, what I refer to as activation. However, threat feels like. Chronic anxiety, it feels like hyper vigilance, walking on eggshells, rehearsing conversations over and over again in your mind for hours. The fear of retaliation, the fear of what's the comebacks gonna be, shame, spirals, maybe even some identity erosion. So if you leave accountability conversations, feeling smaller, confused, doubting your reality, um, that's actually really important Data. That's where it's important for you to reflect. Is this accountability or is this something else? So just think of the last time someone said you need to take accountability. What happened in your body? Did you feel safe enough to consider taking accountability? Or did you feel like you needed to defend yourself for your own existence, for your own survival? And it's important for you to be honest with yourself because in your own awareness, that's when you can make changes and you can make shifts. I mean, there's really, there's no prize for you to gut it through and to [00:07:00] force yourself into unsafe spaces. And this, I think, is the part that oftentimes gets forgotten or we skip over it in conversations when we're talking about this concept of, of accountability. You know, accountability only works when there's. A shared power field, so to speak, if there is a major power imbalance, accountability becomes distorted because when there is that power imbalance, we're actually teetering on potential for abuse dynamics to be happening. You know, a parent, adult child, um, you know, there's a history of there's a history of control when you have a parent and adult child that, that dynamic shifts because when you have a natural parent child relationship, there is a power dynamic. So it's really on the parent to create a sense of safety for the child to learn how to take accountability. When we're thinking about workplaces, Boston employee, if it's psychologically unsafe, again, how is that, how is the employee gonna feel empowered to take accountability? In partner relationships. If one partner chronically [00:08:00] gaslights, another one. Uh, we think about just the world in general, public figure and a follower, that dynamic legal financial dependency, those can be power dynamics as well. So when someone with more power says you need to take accountability, what they might actually mean is you need to adapt. So I don't have to change. And that's not accountability. That's I. Would refer to that as just being asymmetrical. Uh, true accountability requires this sense of mutual vulnerability. Um, if one person is reflecting while the other person is denying or deflecting or retaliating, then how does that person even take accountability? So, you know, as I'm going through this, I just want you to, you know, pay attention to what, what's resonating and what's not, obviously, what's not resonating. You leave what is maybe some more thinking and just discernment would be. Would, would be welcome. Now, let's, I, I don't wanna just swing to the, you know, the other extreme. Avoiding accountability is a real thing. Okay. So I'm not here [00:09:00] saying nobody should ever take accountability because I do think that there is some, sometimes we do see people hiding behind, um, just language such as, okay, that was, that triggered me, or That's toxic, or, I just need to put a boundary here. What we actually mean is, I don't like to be challenged when we're saying those things. So there are moments where we have to regulate ourselves and to stay in the conversation. You know, if someone respectfully says, when you said that, I felt dismissed, and your, your first instinct is to say, I did nothing wrong. Or, um, you're being toxic, or, we, I need a boundary here. I mean, that's, that's a moment to pause because in a safe dynamic that discomfort's not danger. I mean, sure, it feels uncomfortable that that person said. What you just said didn't make me feel good. But that's not a threat, and that's information and maturity does require that capacity to hear that, okay, what I just said made an impact on this other person. But I don't need to collapse into shame. I don't need to collapse into, you know, escalating defense. I don't need to completely just [00:10:00] run away. You know, that's where growth work is. So. It's important to just ask yourself, is this person that I'm in relationship with here, is this person capable of reflecting on their own behavior and have they historically respected my boundaries? And is there room for mutual repair? And then a really important question is, do I feel physically safe in this conversation? Because then that's gonna breed into am I actually just reacting from discomfort or is there a real threat here? And discernment lives in those questions when you can actually. Process. Through some of those questions, you can see whether accountability is is something you should engage in. So I just also wanna name something clearly here too. 'cause I think sometimes we miss things with language. Accountability. Language can be we weaponized. So accountability language being weaponized might sound something like you need to own your own part or you are too sensitive. Um, you just need to communicate better. Now in [00:11:00] chronically unsafe relationships, these phrases often follow, um, naming harm, calling out manipulation, um, and the pattern becomes you speak up. They reframe it as you're immature, and then you're asked to reflect. They avoid the reflection, and then you start to internalize self-doubt. And so over time, what ends up happening is your nervous system learns, all right, you know what? It's just better for me to stay small. It's better for me to shrink. It's better for me to actually just not say anything. Just don't say anything. Um, and that's not accountability. That's actually just gaslighting wrapped up in growth language. So it's just important to pay attention to those, those differences. If any of this is resonating, I just invite you to take a breath. This is not about. Shame, blame calling you weak, saying that something's wrong with you. It's really just about becoming more aware. So you know, what do we do with this information? We can stop asking things like, am I accountable enough? And we can start asking, am I in a space in this relationship or in this [00:12:00] dynamic where it is safe enough to take accountability? And that shift can actually change a lot because accountability is not self-sacrifice. It's, it's a form of relational repair. And repair does require regulation, a shared reality, power, balance, uh, mutual ownership and emotional maturity. So if those conditions are present, it's important to stay, to reflect, to grow. And if those conditions are not absent, or if those conditions are absent and they're repeatedly absent, um, I would venture to say that maybe you're not avoiding accountability, but maybe in that particular case, you are protecting your own self and honoring your own nervous system. The most emotionally mature people know when to lean in and when to step back. Discernment is not defensiveness. Discernment is true wisdom under an emotionally regulated state. So before we wrap up today, just here are some questions that you might wanna take with you to just consider, where in my life am I being invited into healthy accountability, [00:13:00] and where in my life am I maybe being pressured into a form of self blame? At all. And what does safety actually feel like in my body when I, when I am in a safe environment, how does my body actually feel? And it's really important to pay attention to that 'cause your body will talk to you first when you're in a situation. Accountability deepens connection when that safety is present. Without that safety accountability actually can really lean into coercion or manipulation. And your job is not to tolerate harm in the name of growth. Your job is to develop the discernment to know. The difference. So if this was helpful for you or you'd like to find out how coaching could be helpful in other areas where you might wanna grow and expand, feel free to reach out to me anytime at coachwithkamini.com and until next time, stay well. Voiceover: Thank you for listening to Rise Up Live Joy Your Way. For more information, Book a chat with Kamini at [00:14:00] www.chatwithKamini.com, or visit her website at www.kaminiwood.com. You can also find Kamini on Facebook or Instagram username, it's authentic me. Thank you for listening!