You Are Not Your Behavior

Change Happens with Curiosity, Not Shame.

The moment you decide your behavior means something bad about you, curiosity disappears.

And curiosity is the skill that actually allows behavior to change. 

Most of us learned early that bad behavior meant something bad about us. Our caregivers met our worst moments with judgment, punishment, and disconnection. So we learned to hide from those moments — or sprint past them into the perfectionist fantasy of next time.

Dr. Becky Kennedy — if you have young kids you know her, if you don’t you should — has a deceptively simple reframe for this. We are not our behavior. We are good inside, even when we’re acting in ways we’d rather not.

I want to take that concept and show you exactly what it looks like in the moment when it’s hardest to believe.

Most personal development focuses on understanding behavior. But understanding isn’t enough to create change. Because in the moment behavior actually happens, if you feel stressed, judged, or triggered in any way, your nervous system shuts down curiosity. 

When a child’s difficult behavior is met with judgement instead of curiosity, the child learns something subtle but powerful. Not just that the behavior is bad. That they are bad. 

The distinction between bad behavior and bad people is crucial. But most parents and other caregivers like teachers don’t call out behavior, they call out the person. 

When behavior gets interpreted as identity, shame appears. Shame is one of the most powerful shutdown emotions we experience. When shame enters the system, curiosity disappears. 

We hide from shame because shame feels bad. But it also means we are bad. And when we are bad, bad things happen. 

At least that’s what our primitive brain believes. Because of childhood. Because of conditioning. Because of evolution. 

When we’re young we internalize the voice and reaction of our caregivers in difficult moments. And that voice becomes our voice. Their reactions become our reactions. 

This makes evolutionary sense- we need to know what behavior maintains connection and which behavior threatens it.  We need to maximize attachment to our caregivers. It’s how we stay alive. 

So why does this matter to us, fully formed adults? 

Well how your parents or caregivers talked to you is how you talk to you. Especially in moments of tension and stress. Those are also moments of change. If you felt like behavior was bad and then you were bad, shame kicks in. That connection doesn’t go away because you grow up and move out. 

It becomes part of your coding. Those are your neural pathways.

So then you’re an adult who feels like yelling at someone is bad behavior. And yet when you’re triggered, that’s exactly what you do. 

And when you yell- you can almost feel it in real time, the internal voice says you are bad. Not that the behavior is bad. You are bad. You shouldn’t do that. What are you thinking? Who behaves like that?

Enter shame. 

So now you have the double whammy of an external situation which caused an internal trigger and response and feeling ashamed about that response you had. 

This shuts down your thinking, compassionate, curious brain. This cuts you off from the insight you had at therapy. This removes you from the self that can see you don’t want to hurt. 

We don’t want to look at this moment because we’re afraid that we’ll see the truth. That we are bad. Beyond grace. 

So we head back to perfectionist fantasy land where we swear we will not yell again. We go over the incident in our journal or with a therapist. The trouble is, because we feel shame about what happened in the moment, our insight and compassion can’t yet reach it. We understand it intellectually. But emotionally, it can still feel dangerous. 

But there’s another option. Two of them actually. And they both live inside the moment you’re most desperate to escape.

So we know that our kid telling us they don’t like us is a trigger. We know we don’t want to yell. We know that when we yell we feel shame. 

There are two potent 3-second time periods in this example. The first is when the external circumstance triggers something in our brain. 

A kid tells their parent, I don’t like you. That is the first 3-second period. If we can catch it, we want to interrupt the reaction and slow things down. Before we can respond to the child, we have to respond to ourselves. After interrupting, we regulate. 

Take a few slow breaths. Bring awareness from the outside to the inside. Notice what feelings are happening. Notice the desire to fight (yell). Notice if you’re feeling threatened or vulnerable. Remind yourself you’re safe. Get curious. What’s happening in your body. What story is running. What you’re actually feeling underneath the reaction.

If we’re taking a cue from Dr. Becky, this is where we remember that we’re good inside. 

If you catch this first 3-second period, the second never comes. 

But let’s say you miss it. And you yell. Then you immediately spiral into self loathing and shame. You have failed again. You are bad. 

Right there, that’s the second 3-second period. That’s when you have another chance to interrupt and regulate. That’s where you can get curious. 

In both of these cases curiosity isn’t soft or indulgent. It is deeply healing. You are wondering, what is it that’s really going on for me right now, in this very moment? What are the patterns in my body? What lines of code are running? How do I feel unsafe? Why do I feel threatened?

Those moments, after interrupting and creating regulation, are the most potent for the next level of insight. That’s where you get to see the code under the code, the code that’s really running your daily actions. 

Meeting yourself in these moments with curiosity and even compassion allows a new neural pathway and then changed behavior to happen. 

If you keep feeling triggered by your kid yelling you will keep reacting with yelling until you create safety in the moment. 

Regulation here is key. Shame and stress are part of the threat response. And when they’re present there are large parts of your brain and emotional capacity that are severely limited or even inaccessible. 

The prefrontal cortex isn’t online when you’re feeling shame. That’s where your wisdom and insight live. 

Kindly reparenting yourself is not available when you’re triggered or feeling a big emotion like shame. 

That is why you need to build the capacities of interrupting yourself kindly and regulating yourself in the moment. 

This can take as little as 60-90 seconds. About 5 slow breaths. It might take longer at first but as you practice you will become more proficient. 

When you practice this in the moment you build your relationship with yourself, process emotions, and give yourself a legitimate path towards change. 

You are not bad. The behavior you’d rather not engage in isn’t bad- it’s there to protect you. Once you understand this, meeting yourself in the moment and then creating change becomes possible. 

Dr. Becky teaches us to say this to our kids. What I want to offer you is how to say it to yourself — in the moment, when it’s hardest, when the shame is loudest.