Episode #27:

Healing All The ‘isms’

I’m so excited to share this week’s lesson with you and discuss a hugely important theme. I’ll be talking about the ‘isms’ that so many of us face in today’s world. Racism, sexism, ageism, nationalism – the list is endless! There are so many ‘isms’ to contend with, and like so many others, I have been subjected to many of these throughout my life. But what type of behaviors constitute an ‘ism’, and how should we deal with them?

My definition of an ‘ism’ is when an individual or group of people think, feel, and behave in a way that suggests they are superior to another person or group of people. We may find ourselves as a victim or a perpetrator – sometimes without even knowing it. But we are all equal, and we shouldn’t be putting ourselves above anybody else.

Tune in this week where I’ll discuss why we should all show more compassion to one another, regardless of superficial characteristics. I’ll share some examples of ‘ism’ behavior as well as tips to manage them, and explain how we can use revolutionary love to heal the ‘isms’. Remember, love draws a bigger circle.

WHAT YOU’LL DISCOVER

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What an ‘ism’ is and how to identify it.

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The difference between an ‘ism’ and a neutral characteristic.

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How ‘isms’ show up in your life.

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Why your circumstances do not condone your ‘ism’ behaviors.

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How to practice revolutionary love and compassion for yourself and others.

FEATURED ON THE SHOW

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Check out more episodes of the podcast here!

TRANSCRIPT

Susan Crockett: Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa, the podcast, with Dr. Susan Crockett. You are listening to episode number 27: Healing all the Isms. This episode is dedicated to my daughter, Lindsey.

Female Announcer: Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa, where women learn to love their lives. Do you find yourself frustrated by society’s expectations? Looking for practical advice on how to discover your talents and level up your life? You’ve found the right place. Here’s your host, US News top doctor, robotic surgeon and certified life coach, Dr. Susan Crockett.

Susan Crockett: Hello, my virtuosas. How are you doing today? Have you been practicing with things that we’ve been working on? I am your host, Sue, otherwise known as Dr. Susan Crockett. This is going to be an interesting talk; I’ve been putting it off for about a month.

So a fascinating thing happened this week. It’s been a really beautiful day here in New Braunfels this last week. We have been on lockdown as most of you have been too for a long time. I actually haven’t gotten my hair cut or highlighted since February, yes, and it is July. It’s been the longest I have gone without hair maintenance, I can’t remember when.

So here’s the fascinating thing is I am actually brunette and I do have a few grays but I’m still very brunette. And about 12 years ago I went blond for the first time, I was in my 40s. And oh my gosh, I just loved it, I felt like this is lighter, and me, and happier and I just loved it. And I have been highlighting my hair and doing blond ever since until all of this Covid stuff hit when I decided to try it and let it grow out.

And I actually dyed over the blond with the brown rinse and so I’ve been brunette for the last five months which has been kind of a fascinating social experiment. And in terms of what we’re talking about today, you can make your blond jokes and everything, but I’ve had some real experience now with how people look at me and treat me with brunette and blond hair, fascinating. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

So today’s show I have given a tremendous amount of thought about it, it’s called Healing all the Isms, and I’m going to put isms in quotes. So the isms are racism, sexism, paternalism, exclusivism, maybe adultism, you can probably think of some more, ageism, nationalism, narcissism, one of my favorites. Maybe feminism, in some contexts, maybe, I’m going to let you decide on that as we go through, definitely patriarchism, I’m going to add that one on.

And I started thinking about doing this topic, this teaching, this podcast several months ago with the Black Lives Matter movement when that all came out, and talks about racism were hitting the Facebook, and the podcasts, and the news everywhere. And all of a sudden everybody that I was listening to it was talking about racism. And white supremacy or white privilege and how we should be and not be and sensitivity and all this stuff. And I thought I know that I have some thoughts about this, I know that I have a lot of experience with isms.

But I’m going to do a little different take on it than the social perspective of putting in your place, or not being able to put yourself in place of some of your friends who are dealing with those specific issues. I’m going to talk more in a general application to all of us who have experienced any kind of isms and how to heal that, both for ourselves and for others. This is a really important talk we’re going to do today. So I’m going to give you a lesson with an exercise. And next week we’re going to pick back up on our interviews, but today you’re just getting me, it’s just me.

So let’s start with a definition of an ism. What do I mean when I say an ism? For me, this is my own definition, it’s when one group of people or an individual person thinks, feels and then behaves in a way that suggests that they think they are better than, more than, more moral than or superior to another group of people or individual. Now, an ism is not based on looking at intrinsic characteristics, but rather on the identification of that group or individual from artificial or superficial characteristics.

So let me explain a little bit about what an ism is and what it isn’t. Okay, so we’re not talking about objective observation of neutral circumstances. So you guys who have listened to this podcast and if you’re new then just bear with me for a minute. You know that we teach the CTFAR model about managing our brains and how we think about things. So in the model, the C stands for circumstance or a neutral characteristic. So you’ll notice when I gave my definition of an ism, it’s all about the TFA, about the thinking that begets the feeling, that creates the behavior or the action.

And so that’s where we’re going to target today. We are not talking about neutral characteristics. This is super important, so neutral characteristics are things that are neither good nor bad. In general we think of them as things that could stand up in a court of law or be proven in a court of law. They’re just facts. So skin color, my skin color is peach, her skin color is brown. Those are neutral characteristics, they don’t say anything about my thoughts about it, my feelings about it or my behaviors about it, it’s just an observation of how things appear or are.

So what is not an ism? A good example for racism that I hear sometimes, sometimes my kids will say it when we have conversations about people of different color, they’ll say that it’s racist that I’m even identifying them as people of different color. And it may be in the context of what I’m saying, and kind of have to check myself. But in general if you’re talking about, “That woman over there with the brown skin,” that’s not a racist comment, that is a comment about somebody’s skin color and identifying them as an objective identifier.

And if I said something maligning about that person then that would be ‘racism’. That would qualify as an ism. Now, this doesn’t just have to do with race, this can be about gender identification, sexism, you can think about that’s a boy, or that’s a girl, or that’s somebody who’s transgender or whatever those are, neutral characteristics, it is how they look.

Sports teams are a good example of this, I am a Dallas Cowboy fan, I am a Nagy, that doesn’t say anything about me thinking that I am better than, or less than, or any comparison to anybody else, it’s simply identifying objectively a group or a team that I’m with.

Religion is similar, age is similar, political party is similar, being a Democrat, or a Republican, or a Libertarian, or an Independent; those are identifications of neutral circumstances. Those are not in and of themselves isms as we’re talking about them today.

Another place where this comes up really commonly in medicine is medical risk factors based on genetic clustering. For example, Ashkenazi Jews have higher incidences of specific birth defects. So we’re trained to pattern recognize within medicine to identify risk and benefit ratios for people based on their physical characteristics. And that has nothing to do with thinking that we are better than, or more than, or above than anybody else. It’s a very objective neutral identification of diagnostic criteria for being able to work out that specific genetic person.

Alright, so that’s what isms aren’t. So how do we identify ism behaviors, how do we spot them? And this is something that I want you to become sensitive to, there’s kind of a range from very mild, like sneaky, hard to spot to atrocious. But they all are ism behaviors; they’re all behaviors or characteristics of people acting on the thoughts of isms in the behaviors that come out.

So I want to start with arrogance. So, arrogance is the pure definition of an ism, arrogance with a belief that you’re better than somebody else. Superiority, dismissive of others, disrespect, false pity, have you ever heard anybody say, “It’s too bad they can’t be like us,” or, “Too bad they aren’t as good as us,” or “Poor them”, that type of thought and feeling?

Name calling, this is a big one because name calling is so common in our world, just look at our kids, good grief, I’m a parent of four kids, I have heard so much name calling. And we’re going to talk a little bit more about name calling in the media in this past week, it’s been interesting.

But any time you hear somebody call somebody else another name, you should immediately think that that has the possibility of being ism behaviors. Because people who are identifying people for objective or neutral circumstances don’t feel the need to call them a name, or to degrade them, or to belittle them.

Hate speech, we’re getting more violent here, hate speech, threats, violent action, and finally, ongoing feuds or wars. These are all ism behaviors that have to do with thoughts of groups of people about other people that they are better than, or more than, or more deserving than, or above another group. So these are ism behaviors.

So let’s talk a little bit about how isms show up in our own lives. I chose to think about this topic in not a purely racial way for a couple of reasons. One is I have to say that I’ve been affected on the victim side of isms from other kinds of isms other than racism. It’s not to say it hasn’t affected me and it’s not a factor in my life, it’s just not the primary way that I have dealt with people thinking that they are superior or better.

I remember one time I brought this great – well, I thought it was a great business idea to my older Hispanic boss, and he pinched me on the cheek and told me I was cute. And I thought, wow, there is an ism. And that’s a mild, very mild story. All of us who are women in medicine have stories, especially those of us who are surgeons, of going through much more drastic ism behaviors from sexism.

Recently, the Black Lives Matter and the racism and the call for awareness and correction of the ism behaviors in our society has really come to the forefront. And that has spawned just a slew of social media and regular media hate speech and rage, and just terrible behavior, terrible ism behavior in our country. So I thought it would be interesting to talk about from a physician’s perspective how we think about healing those types of risks.

So I want to start with a very current incident that happened this past week regarding Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the steps of the Capitol. So I’m not going to go through the whole incident, you can certainly look it up and read the whole detail of the altercation in the interviews that ensued. But basically a male representative got into a discussion or altercation with Representative AOC. And the end result was him calling her, “A fucking bitch,” in front of the media and another representative who was there.

So immediately your flag should go up for name calling when you hear that. So we talked about that as one of the ism behaviors. Now, I’ve got to tell you that politically I don’t usually align myself with AOC, although I have respect for her as a woman who is in an amazing political position. But she had a brilliant response which we’re going to put in our notes. There’s a YouTube video of her response on the floor after he offered an apology, kind of a false apology to the House.

And one of the things he said in his apology was he talked about how he has a wife of 45 years and two daughters. And that having a wife and two daughters obviously makes him not a sexist person or an ism type person. And AOC’s response was just beautiful; it’s a gracious and powerful speech. And I believe that it should be something that every single American listens to, not just for the content but for also the grace for which she articulates her position.

And the most profound quote that I found in it was the quote where she says, “What I do have issue with is using women, wives, and daughters as shields and excuses for poor behavior,” she said. And she went on to talk a little bit more. And she brings up this point that when we think about it, sometimes we hear this regarding other types of isms like racism, we hear people say, “Well, I can’t be a racist because I have friends who are African American.” Or, “I’m not a nationalist because I have friends who are European or – right now we’re reaching a little bit.”

But she makes this brilliant point that bad behavior is bad behavior regardless of who your friends are and to use those friends as a shield to deflect honest reflection. And consideration about our behavior is one of the things that we need to guard against when we’re talking about trying to heal the breach that happens from an ism. And an apology is meant to heal the chasm, or the break in relationship between two people.

So when you are dealing with somebody who confronts you about bad behavior that has to do with isms, trying to deflect is not the right way to do it. The appropriate thing to do is to think about your actions and see if they check any of these boxes, do they tick any of these ism behaviors? And if so, then your goal should be an apology that repairs the relationship, not something that preserves your own ego.

Alright, so the second example I want to give you today, I’m going to give you three. The second one is a YouTube that I came across about two or three weeks ago, it’s a TED Talk about an amazing woman named Valarie Kaur, K.a.u.r. The TED Talk, which we’ll also put a link in, in our notes from today’s talk is 3 Lessons of Revolutionary Love in a Time of Rage, and it’s a recent TED too, but this lady is a Sikh by faith, she’s not a Christian. And so some of the things I’m going to talk about have to do with Christianity. I’m also not putting my Christianity up as a religionism.

We are open, intolerant of other people’s thoughts about religion, and faith, and spirituality, especially on the show, we’ve said that more than once. So I thought this was a beautiful example of universal themes crossing different faiths and religions. So she is a Sikh by faith, and she has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Religious Studies and International Relations from Stanford University. This lady, you guys, is brilliant. She also has a Master of Arts in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. And she has a JD from Yale Law School, yeah, so she’s an attorney.

So what she’s done is she’s become a social justice activist as well as a lawyer and a filmmaker. She is a thought leader who’s founded this project called the Revolutionary Love Project. And she’s coined this phrase Revolutionary Love as a specific means, as a movement that envisions a world where love is a public ethic. And that it is a force for social justice, which I think is completely fascinating, because I’m claiming this type of love, this revolutionary kind of love, I’m calling it something different, but a similar idea, I’m claiming it as a force for healing as a physician.

Valarie claims it as a force for justice as an attorney, and I think this is just beautiful. So the definition that she proposes for Revolutionary Love is love for others, our opponents and ourselves. There’s three kinds of love, so love for others, it’s easy when you love somebody, your kids, your husband most of the time, your mom, your dad. It’s easy when you are surrounded by people who are in your circle and you love them. But how about loving your opponents? How about those who treat us with ism behaviors, how about loving even them?

How about loving ourselves? So we’ve talked a lot about that on this program, practicing self-love. So when we think about this term of isms, this breach where one group is making themselves feel more superior and acting out on that towards another group, what that creates is two different groups. There is a villain, the perpetrators who are acting like they are better than, or more than, or more deserving than, or superior.

And then the victim is the group that is being put upon. So when we talk about being victims and villains, a lot of times when we’re talking about psychology and healing, we talk about getting out of a victim mentality for ourselves when something’s been done to us, and thinking about how things have been done for us. And that’s a little different than what we’re talking about here, where there’s actually a scenario of a perpetrator and one who’s perpetrated against.

So when we think about revolutionary love, what she’s really suggesting is that we love ourselves if we’re the victim of an ism, like I was...I know it’s a minor thing, but the example that I gave you of my cheek being pinched by the older senior partner and belittling my contribution because I was a cute woman. And not thinking that having love for myself in that moment and not taking it personally, or not meaning that he was right, and not meaning that I was a bad person, being able to stand in my self-knowledge of who I am and my worthiness is the first part of loving ourselves when we are in the victim role.

Now, there’s another type of love that we need to practice there, which is the love of the perpetrator, the villain love. Can I look at that scenario and look at what he did and still love him as a person? That’s a hard one. You don’t see much of that on Facebook, let me tell you, we are all over it. So that is a very fascinating challenge. And we’re going to talk a little bit later about the tools for how you love the ‘villain’.

Now, the flipside also occurs, and none of us are perfect. We live in a world where we have comparisons and thoughts about others and thoughts about ourselves and it’s very easy to be the perpetrator or the villain of an ism. Who amongst us has never thought, my group is better than theirs because we have the answer and they don’t, or they need to come over and think our way because we have the answer, we know the answer?

So can you love yourself even in light of having done that or thought that, or perpetrated that with somebody else? Practicing loving yourself when you’ve been the villain and reaching out to mend that rift in your thoughts and your behavior and treat other people as not less than you is extremely important. And this is a skill that we’re not taught. And also can you have compassion or love for ones you may have victimized, even unwittingly? Maybe you had good intentions; maybe you really thought you were ‘right’ and they wrong. That’s not even the point is it?

The point is our thoughts, feelings and behaviors towards people and eliminating this urge to put ourselves above or in a more exclusive circle than others around us. So that’s my second example. And if you get a minute you should really listen to Valarie’s talk on Revolutionary Love on YouTube, it’s a beautiful TED Talk, very poetically delivered.

Alright, the third example I’m going to give you is actually a religious one. Now, not straight line mainstream Christianity. We’re going to talk about a story in a scripture that is a little bit new to Christianity; it is very, very old. So when I started thinking about this idea of isms and how to heal them, as a Christian from upbringing I thought, well, what did Jesus teach about this? Did he ever deal with this, did he? Did he ever deal with isms?

And just off the top of my head I thought of a couple of examples where he did and he was pretty consistent about, you know, it’s really kind of not even the point. Remember when the Jews thought they were better than the Gentiles? Well, he kind of nixed that. And in Galatians there is a teaching that says, “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you were baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female for you are all one in Jesus Christ.”

So this is fascinating because this is in the New Testament when we see so much patriarchism. In fact within the Disciples there was quite a bit of jostling for position and favorite status amongst the apostles, which brings me to the story of Mary Magdalene. So Mary Magdalene was a major character in the life of Jesus. In our traditional Christian upbringing we were taught to understand her as the prostitute, as the penitent prostitute who Jesus cured and then she was one of his followers. And she was actually the first one he appeared to after he was resurrected.

And this story of her being the prostitute has come down and has been a name calling, an ism of Mary over centuries. It was started by a pope who maligned her because of her power as a feminine role within the church and within her teaching. She’s the only woman who has her own gospel. So when the Roman Catholic Church was struggling for power, one of the things that they did to rob women of their power within the church and to create the patriarchies that we have in a lot of places today is name calling, they called her the prostitute.

So one of the things that’s been going on in the last couple of years, if you haven’t been following along is lots of scriptures have been rediscovered that have been buried or set aside. And one of those scriptures is the gospel of Mary, who, it’s the gospel of Mary Magdalene. And the rest of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi and all this interesting stuff. And so I have been very interested from a scholarly perspective of studying the story of this woman who was maligned.

So, recently, scholars have adopted a different approach to Mary. Now, in light of what they’re seeing in the historic documents is they are now viewing her as a strong independent woman who in the least supported Jesus financially and spiritually. And in fact, the position of the Vatican has shifted in the last couple of years; in 2018 she was in fact elevated to the level of a saint. And we just celebrated the Feast of Mary on July 22nd.

So she is now celebrated as the historical apostle to the apostles or the first apostle or the apostle who Jesus loved, which is just a beautiful restoration of love and an understanding of relationship of love in early Christianity. So I’m going to put a link to the text to talk more about that if you’re interested in it. I think it’s a fascinating story, especially in light of the isms.

And at one point in the Gospel of Thomas there is a discussion amongst the apostles about Peter, in particular being upset that Jesus was giving teachings to Mary and that she was a woman, and that she didn’t have that status. And I’m paraphrasing here so give me a little grace here. But basically Jesus said, “I will make her as a man, there is neither male nor female.” Through faith, Jesus made Mary like a man.

Now, it doesn’t mean that he changed her genitalia to male. What he was talking about is he was removing the visible barrier of status between male and female, he was making her equivalent, not the same, but he was making her equivalent spiritually in the eyes of the other males that he was talking to. So that’s in the Gospel of Thomas Saying 114. Fascinating, so I’m going to study a little bit more about that.

Alright, so let’s talk about this revolutionary love and how we practice it. So I have a longstanding saying, I’ve been using it as my personal little tagline for probably 15 years. And that tagline is, love draws a bigger circle, love draws a bigger circle. And what I started out meaning that for – that’s not the right way to say it. So when I first came up with this tagline I thought of it in two different ways. One is that love draws in or attracts a bigger circle of friends, that bring – it attracts more people, it attracts more energy, it attracts, it’s attractive.

And then the other way I was thinking about it is inclusivity. So if you think about how we think about things and faith in particular when we’re little, we have this circle in the center and then as we grow and mature and learn and take in other information about the world and the people around us, our circle gets bigger and bigger, it expands. And we’re more willing to consider ideas other than our own without the core of who we are, or what we believe being threatened. In that manner, love draws a bigger circle.

The third way I’ve come to understand this is that it sees the bigger picture. So, sometimes we can only see our little part, we can only see our little part of the world or our way of thinking. And love doesn’t do that, love has a greater understanding of both sides of the argument and how they fit together even when they seem like yin and yang, they are all working together towards the whole. We are all one. We are all part of the whole.

So how do we revolutionary love? One is to consider drawing your love circle bigger, love draws a bigger circle. What would that mean to you? In order to do this you have to ask yourself a couple of things, one is just have curiosity. Why do the people who say the other things about the other political candidate on Facebook say them? What is their perspective that they think that you may be able to learn from or why do you think they act or think that way? And then how do you think someone who loves them thinks about them?

So this is particularly important in terms of healing, the victim, villain mentality. In order to be able to see somebody you feel has been a villain towards you, or put you in a victim role, how do you reverse that? One is to think about their mother or somebody else who loves them. And what do you think or how do you think they see them? Can you do that with your opponents?

A second way to do revolutionary love is to have compassion. Can you have a compassion for your enemies? Can you think they’re doing the best that they can with what they have? Can you understand that they are human and they make mistakes, even if they won’t acknowledge them or apologize for them? This practice of revolutionary love is about changing our hearts, about changing ourselves, we do it for ourselves.

And then lastly, gratitude, so gratitude is one of the things that AOC mentions at the end of her speech on the floor of the House this past week. And I thought it was just amazing. So, being grateful for the challenges that we go through, being grateful for the opportunities that it gives us to speak up and to grow and to expand our circle, those are all amazing ways to practice revolutionary love.

The last example I came across in practicing revolutionary love, not surprisingly, comes from a classic biblical text, it’s read at almost every wedding I’ve ever been to, First Corinthians 13:4. And you’ve probably heard this a million times. But I think it’s worth reading here in a different light. I want you to try to pick out what love is, the characteristics of love because those are the things that we need to practice, the thoughts and the feelings that we practice for the actions of revolutionary love within our own life.

So I want you to think about these words in terms of the practices that you can pull out. So love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud ‘arrogant’. It does not dishonor others. It doesn’t slander, it doesn’t name call. It is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. In other words, it’s easily forgiving and moving on. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preserves.

Okay my virtuosas, so for your exercise this week, I’d like for you to practice on your Facebook and your Instagram, and your social medias looking through posts to identify the ism behaviors. Look through and try to figure those triggers out, see where you can see them, see where you can spot them. See if you can see where people are talking to each other with ism behaviors. And become aware of those same things creeping into your own words or life, even if you feel like that’s not something that you usually deal with.

I want you to pay attention to your interactions and your thoughts at work, with your kids and your spouse. And in thinking about your place in the world and how you fit in with the global picture of the world. And I challenge you to practice revolutionary love; it will change your heart. It will grow your love circle bigger around you and it will change the world around you, I promise you.

Okay, so what I’ve shown you today, we’ve talked about what our isms are and what they aren’t. We’ve talked about how to identify ism behaviors and become aware of them in your own life. We’ve also talked about the cure, revolutionary love, which is how to heal the isms. And then we talked practically about how to practice revolutionary love. You all, this was a big talk, this was a long time coming, it took me a long time to do it. And I appreciate you being willing to practice this with me.

So here’s what I’m listening to and reading this week. I am listening to one of my favorite songs by Bob Schneider who’s a local Austin artist. The song is The World Exploded into Love. And that’s all I’m going to say about that. It’s just, if you want an incredible music with an incredible video to lift you up, click on the link in the notes and go take a look on YouTube.

And what I’m reading is a book by Meggan Watterson who is another woman who has a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. And she has written a book, she is a scholar about first century Christianity and has written a book called Mary Magdalene Revealed: The First Apostle, Her Feminist Gospel, and The Christianity We Haven’t Tried Yet.

Alright, so next week we’re going to talk with Jennifer Bogard about rebuilding your life from love after the divorce, amazing interview. And that’s all I’ve got for today. So, remember my friends, love draws a bigger circle.

Okay, my virtuosas, have a wonderful week. Love always, Sue. And I will see you next week in episode 28.
Female Announcer: Thanks for listening to this episode of Becoming Virtuosa. If you want to find out more, come check out virtuosacoaching.com. That’s virtuosa - with an A - coaching.com. See you next week.

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