Shame is a Flight from Intimacy
Shame is one of our deepest and most painful emotions. Shame tells me I’m undone – or rather, I’m done – it’s over. The voice of condemnation rises, and I am now tainted and completely unacceptable to myself, to others and to God. I will be isolated and mocked forever!
Nothing cuts us to the core quite like shame. Jean Paul Satre calls it, “a hemorrhage of the soul.” We hide, as I mentioned in the last blog, as Adam and Eve chose to do. It was the first thing they did when they realized the consequences of their choice to disobey God. Shame is a feeling of being exposed as “ugly and unacceptable” beyond words or comprehension. Shame takes its razor-sharp edge and cuts down to the very core of who I believe myself to be, like nothing else. Rejection and shame lock arms together to destroy self-worth. It is the experience of being caught without defense or cover and condemned to unrelenting humiliation. We hide…and continue to build the seed-coat covering (that protective barrier we erected in our FOO (family of origin) to protect our heart), and we spend our energy insulting and replaying tapes trying to insulate ourselves from anything or anyone that could possibly provoke exposure and reveal to others what we now believe about ourselves. This stifles intimacy. This is when shame justifies avoidance and isolation. Contempt is eager to jump on the band wagon. Contempt for ourselves, turns to contempt for others who have hurt us, and we lash out and blame.
When was the last time you felt shame? Was it when you got called into your supervisor’s office, and had to admit you did something wrong? Was it when your child misbehaved in some public venue, and you felt the eyes of everyone labeling you as an incompetent parent? Was it a time when you failed miserably to live up to a vow, and a past promise you made to yourself? Sort of like Peter, “I’ll lay down my life for you.” Then he denied Jesus three times. You are horribly aware that you failed your own perfectionism and you failed to meet what you knew was right in your heart and God’s directives plainly explained in the Bible. Other times shame comes at the hands of someone else that shatters your heart. During my middle school years, sitting on the couch with my sisters and a cousin cutting up, acting silly, etc. My mom, standing in the middle of the room watching, suddenly blurted out, “Carol, bless you sweetheart, you are so ugly!” I was shocked…as was everyone else. My uncle, dad of my cousin sitting with us, my mother’s brother, corrected her, but the damage was already done. It was if the air got sucked out of the room…everything stopped momentarily; it just hung there until it burned a hole in my heart, but then life went on. Nothing was ever said about it again.
Last week I mentioned that shame is a “painful absorption with self.” In this case, shame turned inward on me, and I only viewed myself from the dot of shame that was put on me as it spread throughout my psyche from the center of my being and consumed me. I carried this horrific shame for a very long time. If, I’m ugly, even to my own mom, I reasoned, I must be really ugly. I have wondered what might have caused my mom to say something like that. When you consider the reality, none of us could probably say we were beautiful in middle school, but that is beside the point, isn’t it? People who carry shame pass it on. I wonder what kind and how much shame my mother carried for her to say that.
I have since made peace with all of that mostly because I choose to believe I am accepted in the beloved and my Heavenly Bridegroom thinks I’m beautiful, and so did my husband. When I was about 47, years old, and 30 years of marriage, while talking with my husband he said, “Carol, you are more beautiful today than the day I met you!” I had to stop, and in split second timing, I chose to receive that. It is through relationships we are broken, and it is through relationships we are healed, along with the choice to believe the truth.
It is very difficult to receive when you have been wounded and have swallowed the lie that you are far from, well let’s forget pretty – shall we say – far from acceptable. Maybe you did not have a human on this earth to reassure you that you are cherished. That does not mean you cannot learn to accept what your heavenly Father’s love and adoration, what your heavenly Bridegroom believes about you, and that indeed you are accepted in the beloved. Last blog I mentioned that there is an anecdote for shame. We do not have to carry it around with us.
The anecdote to shame is brokenness.
The power of shame is never crushed by defending our goodness or our dignity, nor is it melted by sitting in its bucket and allowing the lie to become our identity. Rather it is melted in sorrow when we are overwhelmed that it exposes the idol we have erected. We and others will make grievous mistakes which will bring on a torrent of shameful emotions. We find repentant sorrow when we face our failure and move beyond its horizontal cause and effect. Shame keeps me locked in a sea of rejected unacceptability. I must look shame in the face to deal with the tragic consequences of its idolatrous foundation and acknowledge, “I am broken,” and embrace just how truly broken I am, then lay the idol and the reality of my brokenness at the cross. When brokenness is accepted, and I lay down the idol I’ve created and believed that I’m not that bad; I am broken with the reality that I need a Savior, Jesus, who sacrificed his life and I can come to Him. He will break the chain shame holds me in. The only approach to shame is receiving the grace from God that heals as I recognize I’m lost and undone. I choose to receive the grace of God that heals. I am beautiful and acceptable to Him.
This was a new thought for me…Shame is idolatry? Hmmm, very interesting! This is indeed a different kind of thinking; something I had never considered. Shame is my idol? Ponder this truth and how God desires to break the chains of shame to enable you to live free.
Stay tuned.
Taken from, The Cry of the Soul
Dan Allender and Tremper Longman III
Shame is one of our deepest and most painful emotions. Shame tells me I’m undone – or rather, I’m done – it’s over. The voice of condemnation rises, and I am now tainted and completely unacceptable to myself, to others and to God. I will be isolated and mocked forever!
Nothing cuts us to the core quite like shame. Jean Paul Satre calls it, “a hemorrhage of the soul.” We hide, as I mentioned in the last blog, as Adam and Eve chose to do. It was the first thing they did when they realized the consequences of their choice to disobey God. Shame is a feeling of being exposed as “ugly and unacceptable” beyond words or comprehension. Shame takes its razor-sharp edge and cuts down to the very core of who I believe myself to be, like nothing else. Rejection and shame lock arms together to destroy self-worth. It is the experience of being caught without defense or cover and condemned to unrelenting humiliation. We hide…and continue to build the seed-coat covering (that protective barrier we erected in our FOO (family of origin) to protect our heart), and we spend our energy insulting and replaying tapes trying to insulate ourselves from anything or anyone that could possibly provoke exposure and reveal to others what we now believe about ourselves. This stifles intimacy. This is when shame justifies avoidance and isolation. Contempt is eager to jump on the band wagon. Contempt for ourselves, turns to contempt for others who have hurt us, and we lash out and blame.
When was the last time you felt shame? Was it when you got called into your supervisor’s office, and had to admit you did something wrong? Was it when your child misbehaved in some public venue, and you felt the eyes of everyone labeling you as an incompetent parent? Was it a time when you failed miserably to live up to a vow, and a past promise you made to yourself? Sort of like Peter, “I’ll lay down my life for you.” Then he denied Jesus three times. You are horribly aware that you failed your own perfectionism and you failed to meet what you knew was right in your heart and God’s directives plainly explained in the Bible. Other times shame comes at the hands of someone else that shatters your heart. During my middle school years, sitting on the couch with my sisters and a cousin cutting up, acting silly, etc. My mom, standing in the middle of the room watching, suddenly blurted out, “Carol, bless you sweetheart, you are so ugly!” I was shocked…as was everyone else. My uncle, dad of my cousin sitting with us, my mother’s brother, corrected her, but the damage was already done. It was if the air got sucked out of the room…everything stopped momentarily; it just hung there until it burned a hole in my heart, but then life went on. Nothing was ever said about it again.
Last week I mentioned that shame is a “painful absorption with self.” In this case, shame turned inward on me, and I only viewed myself from the dot of shame that was put on me as it spread throughout my psyche from the center of my being and consumed me. I carried this horrific shame for a very long time. If, I’m ugly, even to my own mom, I reasoned, I must be really ugly. I have wondered what might have caused my mom to say something like that. When you consider the reality, none of us could probably say we were beautiful in middle school, but that is beside the point, isn’t it? People who carry shame pass it on. I wonder what kind and how much shame my mother carried for her to say that.
I have since made peace with all of that mostly because I choose to believe I am accepted in the beloved and my Heavenly Bridegroom thinks I’m beautiful, and so did my husband. When I was about 47, years old, and 30 years of marriage, while talking with my husband he said, “Carol, you are more beautiful today than the day I met you!” I had to stop, and in split second timing, I chose to receive that. It is through relationships we are broken, and it is through relationships we are healed, along with the choice to believe the truth.
It is very difficult to receive when you have been wounded and have swallowed the lie that you are far from, well let’s forget pretty – shall we say – far from acceptable. Maybe you did not have a human on this earth to reassure you that you are cherished. That does not mean you cannot learn to accept what your heavenly Father’s love and adoration, what your heavenly Bridegroom believes about you, and that indeed you are accepted in the beloved. Last blog I mentioned that there is an anecdote for shame. We do not have to carry it around with us.
The anecdote to shame is brokenness.
The power of shame is never crushed by defending our goodness or our dignity, nor is it melted by sitting in its bucket and allowing the lie to become our identity. Rather it is melted in sorrow when we are overwhelmed that it exposes the idol we have erected. We and others will make grievous mistakes which will bring on a torrent of shameful emotions. We find repentant sorrow when we face our failure and move beyond its horizontal cause and effect. Shame keeps me locked in a sea of rejected unacceptability. I must look shame in the face to deal with the tragic consequences of its idolatrous foundation and acknowledge, “I am broken,” and embrace just how truly broken I am, then lay the idol and the reality of my brokenness at the cross. When brokenness is accepted, and I lay down the idol I’ve created and believed that I’m not that bad; I am broken with the reality that I need a Savior, Jesus, who sacrificed his life and I can come to Him. He will break the chain shame holds me in. The only approach to shame is receiving the grace from God that heals as I recognize I’m lost and undone. I choose to receive the grace of God that heals. I am beautiful and acceptable to Him.
This was a new thought for me…Shame is idolatry? Hmmm, very interesting! This is indeed a different kind of thinking; something I had never considered. Shame is my idol? Ponder this truth and how God desires to break the chains of shame to enable you to live free.
Stay tuned.
Taken from, The Cry of the Soul
Dan Allender and Tremper Longman III
RSS Feed