I Went Viral: Calling Them Out Won't Create Capacity They Don't Have

In this episode, I break down the realization behind my IG video that unexpectedly reached over 1.5 million people and why it hit such a nerve.

What happens when you say the right things, in the right way, at the right time…and it still goes nowhere? Yeah - we’re talking about that.

Spoiler: it’s not always a communication issue. Sometimes, it’s a capacity issue.

💥 Key Takeaways:

• The uncomfortable truth about why some conversations never get resolved
• Why calling someone out can feel good in the moment - but changes absolutely nothing
• The difference between a communication breakdown and a lack of emotional capacity
• Why expecting people to show up like you do will keep you stuck (ask me how I know 🙃)
• What healthy communication actually requires from both people
• Why “just say it better” is not the solution in certain relationships
• The role of boundaries when capacity isn’t there
• How protecting your peace can feel wrong…but be exactly right

🔥 In This Episode, I Talk About My Real-Life Experience With:

• Co-parenting challenges
• Repeated patterns that don’t change
• The urge to call things out (with receipts 😅)
• And the brutal realization that sometimes…saying nothing is actually growth 
  (Not silence out of fear - silence out of awareness.)

If this episode hit home, share it with someone who might need it. Because when you understand yourself…people can finally understand you.

Transcript

Going Viral: The Unexpected Journey

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Breaking news. This just in, Karen Campbell Smith, also known as the Conscious Communication Coach, has gone viral. Sources say a video she posted on Instagram wearing these exact pajamas has more than 1.2 million views. For more on this developing story, let's go to the podcast. I think I still got it. Welcome to the Karen Confidential, real talk about real life and better communication. I'm your host, Karen Campbell Smith, and welcome to my dining room. Also, welcome to the party because we just celebrated my younger son's 16th birthday, and that officially kicks off birthday season. Mine is next. I am not turning 16. And then my older son is turning 20. So there will be a lot of cake coming up. And also, yes, I am in my pajamas. And there's a reason.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Because my next show just made my room.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

I keep saying that, and my kids are like, no. And then I go, should I sit down, be humble? And then they're like, so I just keep doing it. And if you don't know the reference, that's Kendrick Lamar. And the only reason that I know the reference is because I have two teenage sons and I watched the Super Bowl halftime show last year. Anyway, yeah, it's been a wild and crazy couple weeks because I had a post go viral and I've never experienced that before. So I was wearing these pajamas. So I figured I would just rock them again because I don't know. Maybe they have some like mojo going on in them. I'm not sure. This button likes to come undone, so we're gonna keep an eye on her. It's not that kind of podcast. But it was like, I don't know what happened. I it was not any different than any post that I have ever done. I post on social pretty much every day. I've posted in my pajamas before. It was a normal Saturday morning like I've done a million times before. I was sitting on my couch, bedhead, had not brushed my teeth, I was drinking my coffee, I had definitely not washed my face, my dog was sitting on the couch next to me, and I was sitting there thinking through some pretty big emotions that I was trying to process and that I had been trying to process. And I kind of came to this realization and felt like I needed to share it. But the the premise behind the video was I said I was gonna be honest on this podcast, so I'm gonna be honest. Um, my ex not showing up in a great way as a dad. And me thinking that if I continue to call him out on that, that it would change something. And it won't. It was coming to that realization. But it was like things have been happening. He's in a new relationship, she has a kid, he's focusing a lot more time and attention on them than our kids while saying, you guys are my number one priority. And it's like words and actions don't match.

Navigating Co-Parenting Challenges

SPEAKER_00 3:05

And they see that, and I see that, and I am a justice seeker, and so every ounce of me wants to say, hey, that's some bullshit. Because I got spreadsheets and receipts, and I fucking see it. Like, who are you kidding? And I've done that so many times. Like litigation lawyer type shit, I've come at him with, and it never results in any resolution. And really, when I'm coming at him, yes, it does make me feel good in the moment to call out the hypocrisy and be like, hey, dude, I see you. Like, you're not, you're not fooling anyone. But from a bigger sense, what I want from that interaction is take some accountability and most importantly, like start showing up better, which is an argument I had with him for 25 years. Like, this is not new behavior from him. It's me expecting him to be somebody that he's not capable of being. And I guess I've accepted that, and that's why we're no longer together. I can accept that in a relationship, he was only capable of what he was capable of, and that's why I walked away from the relationship. But I think the harder part for me is as a mom, watching him do this to our kids and be manipulative and tell them one thing and do another and feel the injustice of that and want him to show up better for them and it not happening. So that is not an easy pill to swallow. So I was wrestling with all of that casually on a Saturday morning. And where I finally landed was I can't expect him to have emotional capacity that doesn't exist. And as evidenced by 25 years of me trying to use my words, of me trying to have constructive conversations. I don't always come at people with my fists out ready to fight. I'm pretty good with my words. I think about timing, I think about what I'm saying. I'm the person who, if I'm having a conversation with you, I've had it talking to myself in my car no fewer than 87 times. This brain is a really fun place to be, let me tell you. And I'm actually gonna do an episode on the inner voice because man, she's a lot. She's a lot. So it's not like I don't put thought into the conversations that I have. I'm not just flippantly going at people. Granted, I have moments where I do that when, and I have done that, when big emotion takes over and I just pop the fuck off. Hello, I'm an Aries. But with him, there were 25 years of those kinds of conversations where I did put that effort into it and I knew what my intention was. And

Emotional Capacity: A Hard Realization

SPEAKER_00 5:53

he never had the emotional capacity that I showed up with. He never reciprocated it. And so the epiphany I have that that morning is not everybody has the same emotional capacity. And I've operated in my life expecting me in other people, expecting my emotional capacity in the person sitting across from me. And that's a crazy realization to not be, I didn't come to that till I'm almost 49 years old. And the irony in that is I say it all the time to my kids. I would say it to my ex, like them being disappointed that somebody didn't act the way that they would act in a certain situation. And I have said the words often, you can't expect somebody to act like you act, like you can't expect you out of them. And I was blind and didn't see that that is exactly what I was doing when I was communicating with people. I was expecting me to show up and communicate in the other person. So that morning, I really wanted to say something. I was really frustrated. There were two instances in a 24-hour span that dealt with my younger son. One was a medical situation that I was gonna be out of town for, and I asked his dad to take him. It was something he was very nervous about. Um, and the response that I got was, oh yeah, I gotta coach so and so's kids' football. I'm not gonna say the name of whatever, his new person's son. He now coaches the football team for him. Oh, yeah, we have a game that morning, but I'll figure out how to get him there. Okay. No, I'll I'll handle it. I got it. And I did. And then within the same 24 hours, backstory on this. We have a fair every year. We live in Florida. I hate the fair. Does anybody actually like the fair? It's kind of awful, but my kids wanted to go. And so every year I took my kids to the fair. I say I took them because my ex refused to go. Fuck the fair, hate the people, hate the environment, hate crowds, hate the whole scene. You have fun, take our kids by yourself. And I did every year. Vivid memory. My youngest could have been no more than four, three, four, had a meltdown at the back of the fairgrounds by the Ferris wheel. I had to put him on my back and carry him about two miles from there all the way out to the car. He was done. And so was I when I got home. I was pissed. I was like to my ex, do you think maybe next year you could go with me? Because that really sucked. And still dug his heels in. Absolutely not. Won't catch me at the fair. Nope. And he didn't

The Impact of Boundaries on Relationships

SPEAKER_00 8:49

cut to today, modern day. I had to work the fair for a philanthropic group that I'm a part of. I took my younger son and a few of his friends with me. Who was there with his new person and her son? My ex. And Cole saw him. Earlier in the week, they had a conversation about it, and his dad said, Oh yeah, you're going Friday night? Well, yeah, everybody in the neighborhood goes, but I don't think I'm gonna go because you know I hate the fair. And then he's at the fair. That's a shitty dad moment. Like, my kids are not three. My kids have eyes and ears, and they see the bullshit. You are not making them their priority. And you're being hypocritical of what they experienced their entire childhood. You've never addressed it with them, you've never repaired it with them. You're just showing up as a new version of yourself, new version of yourself that you could never be when you were with us. Like, what do they do with that? I struggle with what to do with that. I'm processing it as a 48-year-old. I am now trying to parent my kids through that because it's a fucking hard thing to process. And it's in their face all the time. He is still involved in their lives. But that particular morning of the viral post, all of that was swirling. All of that had just happened. And I'm sitting there and there's no action that I can take on it. Because I know if I say something, it's just gonna piss me off worse because he's not gonna take accountability. He's gonna gaslight me, he's gonna get defensive, he's gonna deflect back to me. It's happened a million times. I already knew the outcome before I did it. So being an action-oriented kind of person, that is a very hard position for me to be in, to just have to accept, yeah, it's unfair and there isn't gonna be any justice. And it does involve my kids, which makes it about a thousand times worse. So I opened up my phone, I did a quick video about it, and you know, basically said, if you're gonna call somebody out, this is a shitty realization I've come to. If you're gonna call someone out, it only works if they have the emotional capacity to receive it, self-reflect, and take accountability, or you get nowhere. Actually, you get more chaos and you get more pissed off. So I'm learning begrudgingly that growth looks like sometimes seeing a situation and a person for who they are and what it is, clocking it, registering it in your head, and then leaving it right there and not saying anything, which is really fucking hard. And for some reason, almost 1.3 million people resonated with that. In fact, before I did this, it's 1,280,000 views, 71,000 likes, 25,000 shares, 3,000

The Power of Conscious Communication

SPEAKER_00 11:50

comments. And when I started, when I posted that, I had about 800 followers on Instagram, and I have gained 5,200 followers from it. It's been crazy. Every time I get into it, still, it's been almost three weeks. Every time I get into my phone, notifications, notifications, new followers, new followers. It is the coolest thing because the whole reason that I do what I'm doing, the reason that I share these things that I'm going through is because somewhere, somehow, and I don't know why, I feel like somebody needs, I feel like somebody needs to hear this. If, if nothing else, like I know that a former version of me could have really benefited from hearing some of the things that I now come to know, that I've come to know and that I now know to be true based on my lived experience. So I don't know. I just I have things like that Saturday morning happen where I'm like, you know what, I need to talk about this. And I feel this like instinctual pull to do it. And that particular morning, it went nuts. So since that post, I've done some follow-up posts because within the comments, there were quite a few people who said, So what, you're just supposed to be quiet? Like, no, that's not fair. So my counter to that was, no, this is talking about when you have dealt with the same person and they've shown to you that they have a limited emotional capacity and that any attempt at constructive conversation is not going to get you anywhere. You can't create emotional capacity where there is none, no matter what you do. That is a fact. That is something I have lived and learned, and it is true. You can't. You can model it for somebody, you can bring it to their attention, you can try to have that conversation. But at the end of the day, if they're not ready to receive it and own it and do something about it, you have no control over that. Because healthy relationships, any relationship, whether it's romantic, whether it's a friendship, whether it's with your parents or your kids or family members, like whatever relationship you're talking about, to be healthy, you have to have two people with the emotional capacity to have uncomfortable conversations. You have to have two people that are able to show up vulnerably. And vulnerability is hard for a lot of people because it's scary and it opens you up to potentially being hurt. So a lot of people have a wall-up and they aren't willing to show up vulnerably, but that's a really important part of any constructive, real, honest, open conversation. You need to be able to express your concerns in a respectful way and not attack. You got to think about timing. You have to think about the other person and have relational intelligence and know them well enough to go, you know what, maybe right now isn't the time to do this. Be sensitive to that. You need to have two people to be able to do that and two people that can receive that information without getting defensive and without feeling like they have to defend themselves. Both people have to be able to reflect on that conversation and what's come up and own what they need to own. And then the biggest thing is you can own it and

Finding Peace Through Acceptance

SPEAKER_00 15:07

apologize. But if you don't change that behavior, it doesn't mean shit. That conversation might as well have not happened. In fact, it actually is more damaging to get all the way to that point and that kind of a conversation, get to an apology stage, and then not take it to that final step of repairing it by showing up better. That's how you close the loop. That is the real repair. The rupture is, and it's inevitable to have rupture. No matter what relationship you're in, you're gonna have times where you miscommunicate or you're upset with each other, or they do something that annoys you, or you misunderstand this, or they misunderstand you. It's going to happen. A mark of a good relationship isn't never having arguments or never having disagreements. The strongest relationships are the ones that can get through those things, that can get through the ruptures and work through the repair. The repair is both of the people showing up vulnerably, owning their stuff, and showing up differently moving forward in consideration of the other person, knowing how their actions are impacting that person. There are people who are not capable of this in your life, guaranteed. A lot of the comments that I got is oh my god, it's my parents. Oh my god, it's my marriage. Oh my god, it's my adult kid. What do I do? Well, that's the other realization that I had. You're not going to change them in that situation. When you come to that realization that this person does not have emotional capacity, you have to see them for who they are. No judgment, just they are who they are. You have to decide what you're willing to live with. With my ex, I did I came to the realization that I was not willing to live with that. I could not do that every day of my life. And so ultimately you have to have boundaries. I exercised the ultimate boundary and I ended that relationship. But what I hadn't done in that situation is have short up boundaries after the fact. And that's what I've been working on in the two years since we've split is figuring out how much access I want to give to him, knowing that things are going to happen that piss me off, that I want just a son that I see that I want to be like, I see you're bullshit, but I can't say anything. Like that's my boundary with myself. That's me showing up for myself and building trust in myself because if I don't hold that boundary for myself and I keep going after him, expecting him to change, I'm abandoning myself. I'm doing damage to myself.

Building Trust with Yourself

SPEAKER_00 17:53

And I'm in an era where I'm building a relationship with myself. The most important thing that I have is the trust that I'm building with myself. So those boundaries are everything to me. So if you're in a situation like that and you have a person in your life who does not have emotional capacity, you have to have boundaries. And it's going to feel selfish at first, and they will probably try to make you feel like a bad person for having them, especially if it's a parent. But the bottom line is you can't create capacity, but you can't protect your peace. Protecting your peace looks like keeping your mouth shut in situations where it's not going to result in anything positive and limiting access. And yes, you're allowed to do that even with your parents, even with family members, even with your kids if you need to. Access to you is a privilege, not a guaranteed right. Once you are able to accept this reality and start operating from a place of seeing people for who they are and not expecting them to be something that they're not. Not being angry about it, just acceptance. Putting your peace first in those situations, having boundaries, your life will improve. Your communication will improve. You will feel so much less reactive. You will feel so much less emotional. It's it's not overnight, it's not instant. It's over time finding yourself in those situations and choosing differently rather than reacting with big emotion like you have. It's having that boundary of, I'm not gonna say anything because it's not gonna do any good. And it's so freaking hard to do. Oh my God, it's so hard. Especially at first, you're like, but I wanna. I still have that. I still have that. You don't even understand the way that I can eviscerate somebody with my words. It is a pleasure of mine. I am so freaking good at it. She's a really ugly side of me, but damn, she's good. To hold her back, but I have. Like, I have to. It doesn't do me any good. And in doing that, I've become a better communicator. And I'm saying that as somebody who freaking communicates professionally. It's literally what I make a living on. And this is what I struggled with. I struggled to communicate effectively because I didn't understand this. So if I as a professional communicator had a hard time with this, I think it's something that we should be talking about. And I think it's something worth looking at. Where in your life are you reacting from emotion and expecting somebody to be something that they're not, expecting there to be emotional capacity where there isn't any? And think about the ways that that's holding you back. The premise of this concept is understanding that when you focus on what you can control, which is yourself, your reaction, your boundaries, your words, you stop focusing on all the things that you can't control. And

The Inner Voice: Understanding Your Thoughts

SPEAKER_00 21:05

that in turn makes you respond in the moment rather than react from emotion that is very old, very deep, not even probably having to do anything with the situation that's in front of you. That's why your life changes. Being able to recognize when it's a capacity issue and not a communication issue is the skill. And that is when you go from unconsciously communicating to consciously communicating. The basis of my platform, conscious communication, and what I teach, especially in the leadership space, but it applies to any interaction with any human being, is being in check with yourself and knowing what's driving your words before they come out of your mouth. Because Once you can do that, you can communicate better. And when you don't have a handle on that, your conversations are not nearly as effective as you want them to be. Because your emotions are basically taking over all of your words. And you don't even realize it. So the other thing with that is the inner voice in your head that like, and that is actually what the next episode is about. So, with that, that wraps up episode three of the Karen Confidential. I'm really glad that you were here. I think this is a really important conversation. I know for certain that people are interested in this specific topic based on that viral ass post that I just had. To anybody that followed me for that and is watching this podcast because of that, I am really excited that you're here and I'm really grateful that you found me. The next episode, like I said, is going to be on that inner critic that we all have. So I think you're definitely going to want to hear about that too. But for now, oh, should I do News Anchor Boys?

unknown 23:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

That's all for the Karen Confidential. Thanks for joining us. See you tomorrow. Hey, thanks for watching. Can't get enough Karen? Well, share, subscribe, and hit the notification bell for new episodes. You can also follow me on social or visit my website. And if you want to connect, send me an email. Okay, bye.

SPEAKER_01 23:29

Let's go.