The Not So Breakfast Show
Listen, laugh and learn as we share our latest thoughts about staying relevant, contemporary leadership and doing life right. Ish Cheyne is the Head of Fitness in New Zealand for global fitness juggernaut Les Mills. Sacha Coburn is the COO of Coffee Culture, a leading group of boutique coffee shops, and the co-founder of The Company You Keep.co.nz.
The Not So Breakfast Show
When Shame Hits Different (And WhatsApp Groups Become Weapons)
Episode 218: When Shame Hits Different (And WhatsApp Groups Become Weapons)
Sacha returns from Fiji with a tan and a trauma—being unceremoniously booted from a Harvard WhatsApp group with 160 people, then discovering they had a whole discussion about her "eligibility" while she was locked out. What starts as a petty digital drama becomes a masterclass in understanding the difference between guilt and shame and why some wounds hit us harder than others.
Main Topics
- How Sacha went from Harvard alumna to "Category 6" (yes, her own special category) in a group chat cleanup gone wrong, triggering an unexpectedly visceral shame response
- The crucial difference between feeling bad about what you've done (guilt) versus feeling bad about who you are (shame), and why shame hits so much harder, because there's no clear path to redemption
- The Three Base Human Fears. Why being excluded tapped into Sacha's deepest fear of insignificance, making her feel "very small" and want to disappear entirely
- How shame triggers our ugliest behaviours—arguing, attacking, and trying to make ourselves smaller instead of addressing the real wound underneath
Key Insights
- How you deliver a decision can be more damaging than the decision itself
- When we're hurt, we invent stories to explain what happened, and they're usually wrong
- The "writing to the judge" principle: always communicate as if a neutral third party will read it later
PS: The episode opens with Ish's "birthday tribute" to Sacha—a photo of her with her hands down her pants (tucking in her shirt) set to U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." Sacha's mum was genuinely concerned about her professional reputation. Meanwhile, Ish recommends "Ballerina" (the John Wick spin-off with Ana de Armas) while admitting he can't pronounce the lead actress's name properly.
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