Clawing out from a data-driven shame spiral

In extreme heat

A note before we dive in today: Our small team is based in LA, and as you’ve likely seen, things here this week have been pretty stressful. As a company that defines wellness as including not just physical and mental health but social health too, we want to acknowledge the importance of protecting and showing up for our communities and neighbors—regardless of where they happened to be born. Thank you to everyone engaging in that work this week. Now back to our previously scheduled programming…

Hi there and happy Father’s Day to all who observe,

I personally have become less a fan of the holiday of late (same with Mother’s Day, equal opportunity hater). It’s not that I have a particularly complicated relationship with my dad (in fact we have a really nice relationship, Hi Dad!), nor do I begrudge celebrating him—in fact, I relish the opportunity to bestow upon him random new condiments I think he’ll enjoy. (This year it’s this, sadly only avail in LA for now.) It’s more the performative aspect of both days in a social media era. Honestly, the main feeling I have scrolling on either day is less “Aw what a cute tribute to your dad, random college person I haven’t spoken to in a decade” and more “Am I doing this wrong?”

A lot of social media these days makes me feel like I’m doing it wrong; I’m not going to the right places or wearing the right thing or doing the right workout (or any workout tbh). Sure, it’s kinda an obvious takeaway about a common feeling, but what was less obvious to me is how this week’s contributor Alex Dobrenko characterizes this experience: this feeling of “we’re all out here living but somehow I’m doing it wrong” is… shame.

His piece made me think about the direct line that runs from our apps (including, sorry to say it, dear reader, this Substack app), to this pervasive feeling of shame. Alex explains it better than I can, so I’ll turn it over to him. But in the meantime, maybe give yourself the gift of staying off socials today.

Yours in pickled jalapeño passion,
Jocelyn

Alex Dobrenko is a writer, comedian, and lil guy who lives in Asheville, NC with his two kids and wife and dog Robert. He writes Both Are True, a newsletter of funny, weird, vulnerable stories about his life as a writer, comedian, and lil guy.

One thing that makes Alex feel well: “My friend told me about this ancient Jewish tradition of literally talking out loud to god for 20 minutes without stopping and I tried it yesterday morning but only lasted 3 minutes. This morning I did it again, this time outside, and lasted a full ten minutes of chit chat with god. That made me feel genuinely very nice.”

Me, my shame, and I (plus the metrics that won’t save me): Confessions of a guy addicted to the numbers

"Alex Dobrenko, 89, was a loving father, husband, and friend. But we'll remember him most for his seven NY Times bestsellers, an impressive Substack conversion rate of 3.4%, and his unwavering commitment to staying at his target weight of 146 pounds."

No one’s going to say this at my funeral. Why would they? There’s too much other cool stuff to talk about—that I’m a silly guy, humble, and great at “needing to do some work.”

The stats, in the rearview, won’t matter at all. Yet, I track and obsess over them like a religion of my own self-worth.

How I measure me, let me count the ways

The other night, I performed live at a storytelling competition called The Moth. It was my first time up on stage in over a year, and I got second place!

That’s how I tell people about it, leading always with second place.

Not, “It was cool, I improvised my way through the story and felt super connected to the audience, like I could tell I really had ‘em hooked, and how, seeing my wife Lauren’s reaction, how into it she was, made me feel so attractive and reminded me of the early days of our love when she’d see me perform all the time,” but second place.

“Ohhh, second place, that’s awesome!” people said. No faster way to make my mom proud of me than second place.

Well, there is.

First place.

My email signature reads “both are true (absurd comedy + vulnerable stories -- my top 10 humor newsletter with 17k subscribers.)" Impressive, right? Also a stretch. I’m not in the top 10 anymore, and I’ve recently dipped back down below 17k. Why not update the numbers? Why have them there at all?

Because the numbers feel objective. True. Shorthand for value and worth. Otherwise, what, I’m supposed to… trust my feelings? Like a goddamn psycho?

And of course the big number, literally, my weight.

Every morning at the gym, after completing my patent-pending routine of pooping+working out+pooping again+sauna, I’d head downstairs to the locker room scale, tucked away in a little alcove like a confessional booth for my body. Two weeks ago, I weighed in at 151 pounds.

A new low, but still way too high. I immediately bought a scale to weigh my food but forgot to use it.

Is the shame in the room with you now?

The other day, I hosted the first cowriting group for paid subscribers of my Substack. Ten people showed up, ready and excited to hang and get some stuff done. I couldn’t enjoy a single minute, edging a panic attack for the entire two hours. There was a brick in my stomach and I wanted to vomit, to turn off the computer, to make something different happen because this wasn't good, this wasn't enough. This was small potato bullshit. There weren't enough people here. It felt like a giant, disappointed gorilla was squeezing my chest. I was useless and this was for no one.

Lost, I went to church aka the gym, worked out, skipped both poops, and hit the sauna, upping my time to twenty minutes to maximize weight loss as directed by the pallbearer of all things data, Dr. Andrew “Protocol” Huberman.

After about fifteen minutes, even with my wool sauna hat on, I started getting light-headed. My breath shallow, nose hairs burning, the heat roasting me from the inside, I needed to get out, but some part of me demanded I stay there and surrender to the experience.

It was right then that I had a bit of an epiphany.

My need to escape the unbearable heat of the sauna was like an Off-Off-Broadway performance of how it always felt inside my brain. The heat was the shame I felt about being myself, and my desperate need to escape the sauna was my checking the subscriber count, hopping on the scale, and running to the numbers, the data, the quantified facts of worth I’d use to disprove the horrible feeling that, as Cate Hall put it, “your whole adult personality has been devised to avoid.”

Except this time, I decided to stay.

Hello shame, my old friend

Shame is the realization that a) you’re alive, in free-fall, but b) you shouldn’t be. It’s the itchy sense that you’re doing it wrong, somehow. If only you were different, you’d be better, you’d have control, you’d stop falling or maybe it just wouldn’t hurt so much or others would like you more as you fell. It doesn’t need to make much sense because the need is primal—make this free fall stop, whatever it takes.

Enter the numbers—the weight, the subscribers, the rankings—as a promise of salvation as both story and fact. Quantified and trackable, they are a starting point from which I can improve. Maybe, the twisted logic goes, if I weigh less and have more subscribers, then I'll stop falling. Maybe then the pain and fear will go away.

Chögyam Trungpa once said, “The bad news is you’re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there’s no ground.”

Shame is forgetting the second part and clinging onto anything you can grab—the scale reads 149 instead of 151, the subscriber count ticks up, the Moth judges hold up their scorecards, and for a moment I’m distracted enough to forget I’m falling.

Then I realize holy shit, I’m still falling, and the cycle continues.

But what if shame isn’t a problem to be solved? What if shame is simply a misreading of the fundamental story of self? And that salvation comes simply from surrendering to the free-fall, to the “shame,” to the truth of me as I am outside of any quantified self.

And maybe that’s the best option I’ve got for a life that isn’t so… self-flagellating. A life that’s… peaceful? Is such a thing possible?

After the twenty minutes were up, I walked out of the sauna and past the scale. I didn’t weigh myself then nor have I since. I also started No Number June and turned off all visibility into my stats on Substack. They still sometimes show up, but I’m seeing them 95% less.

Am I healed and holy? Not even close. I still panic and try to cling, there’s just less to grab onto.

But boy do I keep trying to grab. Literally this morning alone, I pinched my love handles 300 times to check if I was gaining weight. Anything to not surrender to the fall. Obviously! It’s terrifying. Fear of heights is a huge fear for humans because no shit it is! Just falling? With nothing to hold onto? Get real.

Same with the numbers on Substack. Am I doing “well”? I have no idea. I’m falling. Without so much to hold onto, I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel, so I must regrettably feel whatever I’m feeling already.

There’s no ground. Sometimes it’s blissful and nice and most of the time it’s not, but it feels more real than clinging. Weightless, groundless, and scared as shit but, at least in brief moments, unashamed of being myself.

I lied earlier, about no one reading out my stats at my funeral. I’m gonna make sure they do, as a bit, but I’ll definitely goose them first, so people know just how good I was.

FIND ALEX ON

➚ Substack

Since reading Alex’s essay we’ve been thinking about how much of the anxiety and shame he’s describing is related to our phones. A quick scroll reveals that the majority of our apps ask us to track our performance and share it with people; which makes sense, they want us to get addicted to the tracking and then to get other people addicted too. It’s a feature, not a bug.

So where are the apps that exist just to let users enjoy doing a thing in their own little non-social, non-quantified vacuum? A few favorites from the team:

• Merlin bird watching app: No leaderboards, no friending, just your own lifetime bird list

• Pattern: Astrology App that’s somehow, as a gift from God, not trying to keep you on a streak.

• Rock Identifier (android | apple): same deal as bird app, but for rocks. Long live nerdy nature apps!

• Libby: Free library e-book app. Libraries are pure, even on the internet.

Those are the only ones we could think of. But maaaaybe it’s telling that we can’t think of phone apps that match these parameters. Maybe escaping the shame free fall depends on putting down the phone and engaging with the world around you. (Actually there is one new app that we like that helps with this: Mozi, designed to help you discover where your friends are—i.e. if you happen to be at the same concert—and meet up with them IRL.) So yes, touch grass, go for a walk, meet a friend for a drink, play with a dog, etc. There’s no data that will tell you if you’re doing that stuff “right.” And that’s the point.

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Absorbed 🟠

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Thanks for reading, and hope the rest of your Sunday is more relaxing sauna than sweltering subway car.