Shields: The Stories We Hide Behind

From the MacklinConnection podcast, Episode 30

What is a shield, really? Not the physical kind — the kind we build in our own minds.

That's the question Michelle poses to open this conversation with Ron, and his answer reframes the whole idea. A shield, he says, isn't just something you hide behind physically. It's also the story you tell yourself to protect against a perceived threat. And the trouble is, those mental shields can become so well-built that they stop feeling like shields at all — they start to feel permanent, even necessary.

The "Scared Self"

At MacklinConnection, this protective inner narrative has a name: the scared self. It's the story we construct, often without noticing, to keep ourselves safe from something we're afraid of — rejection, failure, embarrassment, being seen as not enough. Ron unpacks what the scared self actually looks like day to day, and how it quietly shapes behavior long after the original threat has passed.

Michelle picks up the thread with her own experience. She describes herself as something of an expert in shields — she's used them her whole life — but says she only recently learned to recognize them for what they are. Underneath every shield, she notes, is a story that she's under attack, and that story is what justifies the defense. She shares a personal example of a shield she's carried, and how seeing that same pattern in someone else was what finally helped her name it in herself. She also traces how this shows up in business contexts — the moments where a shield goes up in a professional setting without her fully realizing it in the moment.

Why We Build Them in the First Place

Ron makes the case that shielding isn't some personal flaw — it's a survival instinct. As a species, we've spent a long time under real or perceived threat, so the impulse to protect ourselves is natural, even reasonable. He shares a personal story of working through one of his own shields, one that had been quietly costing him: it kept him from fully collaborating with others. Once he recognized the shield and worked through it — realizing that his own thoughts and ideas were genuinely enough — he found himself able to create things with people in a way he hadn't before.

From there, Ron identifies two distinct moments that tend to show up once you start paying attention to shields:

1. Noticing your own shield — and choosing to put it down.
2. Noticing someone else's shield — and deciding what to do about it.

Meeting Someone Else's Shield

Michelle's own favorite shield, she admits, is being shy. When she encounters someone else's shield, she has a practice for it — a way of gently inviting the other person to recognize, or lower, their defense. She's candid that this doesn't always go smoothly; sometimes her approach triggers an even bigger shield in response, and she's learned to work with that too, rather than treat it as a failure.

Ron shares his own version of this practice. His approach is to open up first — to offer a story of his own about a time he was in a similarly vulnerable position. The effect, he explains, is rarely about the other person actually listening to his story. Instead, they turn inward, relate it back to their own experience, and start to notice their own shield in the process. He also addresses the harder question of what to do when someone takes advantage of that openness and vulnerability once it's offered.

There's a ripple effect to all of this, Ron notes. When one person lowers their shield, the people around them notice — and that noticing tends to give others permission to lower theirs too. Do this enough, across enough people, and it starts to build something larger: real trust within an organization or group.

How Long Does It Take?

Michelle asks the obvious follow-up: how long does this actually take, in practice? Ron's answer is less about a timeline and more about a stance. His goal isn't to force anyone to lower their shield on a schedule — it's to hold open a space that the other person can choose to step into whenever they're ready. However long that takes, he says, is exactly as long as it needs to be.

Michelle offers a more grounded counterpoint, walking through real examples of timeframes from her own experience — including the moments where she's had to decide to let go of trying with someone. Ron closes the thought with stories of people who came back to him years after he'd first extended that line to them, sometimes long after he'd assumed the moment had passed.

Questions for Reflection

Ron leaves listeners with a few questions to sit with:

• Where does having a shield show up for you?
• Do you notice your own shields, or other people's?
• What strategies have you tried — or want to try?

Listeners can reach Ron at ron@macklinconnection.com .

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