Breaking the toxic power of shame
Shame is a toxic, caustic emotion, a destroyer of hope, potential, and even of lives. I don’t think I know of one person who hasn’t at some stage or another felt shame’s barbed sting! I know I have; for many years shame was my constant companion and tormentor. It caused me to wish I’d never been born, to view myself as fundamentally defective – broken and unacceptable, to hide away from others, both emotionally and physically, and it had many other effects on my life too.
Shame can be so painful and debilitating that we end up developing a multitude of strategies to cope with it, and to try to avoid its torture. These coping strategies can be both conscious and unconscious, but in the end they are always numbing and destructive.
Brené Brown describes shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging—something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection.”
Shame is different from guilt. Guilt is related to responsibility and behaviour (I did something bad). it’s related to our moral compass, our inner knowing of right and wrong, or our culture’s expectations of right and wrong. Shame, however, is not focused on responsibility issues, it is related to identity and our inner sense of who we are and who we are not. Shame hits deeper than guilt. Instead of saying “I did something bad” it says “I am bad.”
How shame entered the world
In Genesis chapters 2 and 3 we read that God created Adam and Eve in His image and likeness, and declared that what He made was good. Adam and Eve knew they were naked and they were not ashamed (Genesis 2). Shame had no part in their life at that point. Along comes the serpent with the intent to deceive mankind, to plant doubt in their hearts and minds about God and about themselves. This deception caused them to believe that they were not truly made in the image of God, and therefore not ‘good enough’ as they were! As a result of believing that lie, they began to believe they needed to do something about it… so they ate the fruit, and shame entered their life big-time!
Let’s pick up from Gen 3:7 and see the way that shame worked in their life – “they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. 8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” 10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
Shame, as well as guilt, made them afraid to face God, and so they sought to cover their nakedness and hid from Him. Yet God seeks them out and calls them out from their hiding place, back into His presence. In His rich love and mercy God replaces their man-made coverings with ones He made, showing them that He cared about their feelings of shame and would cover, or deal with, that shame, that feeling of exposure and nakedness. That action of God also looked ahead down the centuries to when Christ would conquer not only the power Satan had over mankind, but also the powers of sin, death, and shame that were released into the world by Adam and Eves’s actions.
Yet throughout the centuries, instead of turning to the God who cares, mankind has largely continued to seek to cover their own shame.
How shame starts in our lives
From the scriptural record, we see that shame started with an outside voice. It is the same today. Rarely does shame ever start internally from our own heart and mind; it starts with an external influence that begins to affect the way we perceive ourselves, and eventually we come to believe that we are fundamentally flawed. Shame’s goal is to steal both our self-acceptance and the knowledge that we are made in the image and likeness of God.
In her book The Body is Not an Apology, Sonya Renee Taylor says, “The voice of doubt, shame, and guilt blaring in our heads is not our voice... It is the “outside voice.” Our authentic voice, our “inside voice,” is the voice of radical self-love!”
For many people, shame establishes its roots in their life when they are young, but for others it may not happen until they are teenagers or adults. It can even be felt as early as in the womb; as our senses and hearing develop we may pick up on any feelings of shame our mother had surrounding our conception or birth. Shame is often sourced in trauma, rejection, feeling unloved or abandoned, and things we had little or no control over. The circumstances that contribute heavily to our feeling shame are things such as struggles with poverty, racism, the social stigma surrounding our identity or appearance, emotional or physical abuse, bullying, childhood trauma and neglect, being made to feel inadequate, mental health disorders, rejection from others or self-rejection, etc. If you can begin to recognise and accept that you are not responsible for the fact that these circumstances existed (or perhaps still exist), this can help you begin to shed some self-blame and unwarranted responsibility.
The impact of shame
Shame can be transient or ongoing, and it can become embedded in our life to such a degree that the feeling of being ‘worthless’, ‘not enough’, or being ‘bad’ becomes part of our identity. It can affect one area of our life or become more widespread, but either way it seeks to define us – bad things happen to us, shame whispers to our heart and mind seeking to strip us of dignity and true identity, saying that we are the problem, we are to blame because somehow we were not ‘good enough’. If we believe the whisper of shame and buy into its lies it will establish a stronghold of shame within our heart and mind, building a thought and belief pattern that over time can become enmeshed with our identity.
If you've experienced shame, you’ll be very aware that it can have a negative impact on your life. Below are some of the potential negative ways that shame can impact you…
A vicious cycle of ongoing torment. Shame is always punitive, seeking to punish. It is a tormentor and a thief. It goes after a person’s sense of worth and value. If not resisted and dealt with straight away, instead of being transient (something that passes quickly), the feeling of shame can become ongoing and can embed itself in our psyche. When it becomes embedded it is a constant tormentor, bringing ongoing feelings of being worthless. Shame torments us and then in our acceptance of shame, we often continue that torment and punishment ourselves.
Avoidance of relationships, vulnerability, and community. Research shows that shame leads people to avoid vulnerability, to hide and self-conceal, to never share their true selves with their family, friends, or the world. In some cases it causes them to avoid community and friendship, becoming loners who isolate themselves from others because of the intensity of their feelings of shame.
Suppressing emotions. People who feel ashamed of who they are, or ashamed of something that happened to them, often suppress their emotions, not admitting the truth of them even to themselves, and shame often won’t allow them to share their thoughts and feelings with others or let others into their inner world.
Physical and mental health problems. The torment of the mind that shame brings can cause ongoing physical, emotional, and mental health issues. People who live with shame often feel worthless, become depressed, and suffer from anxiety issues and emotional torment. This mental battle is relentless and exhausting. Shame can also be a contributing factor to co-dependency. People who live with shame may engage in behaviours that they know are bad for their health and well-being because they believe they are worthless.
Bullying others to try and bolster self-esteem. It can cause people to inflate their ego to hide the belief that they don’t have value, and compensate for feelings of shame, and can lead to establishing a narcissistic personality.
Over-compensation, perfectionism or overachievement. People who carry shame feel unworthy and lack a sense of their own true value. That sense of being unworthy causes them to overcompensate and seek to prove themselves worthy, or valuable, by trying to be the best, gain that position of significance, be perfect. They may become a workaholic who is always seeking to achieve more in order to prove themselves.
Relapsing back into problem behaviours. People who are ashamed of their behaviour sometimes purposefully continue that behaviour, or relapse back into it after trying to change, because they don’t believe that change or healing is actually possible. This in turn leads to more feelings of shame. Shame then becomes a reason people choose not to take steps toward healing.
Avoidance of healthy risks. Shame causes us to build defences against being devalued by others, and keeps us from making decisions that may lead to others devaluing us. Sometimes this leads to avoiding healthy risks. People who deal with shame sometimes only make decisions about jobs, relationships, and school that they feel certain will have a positive outcome.
Breaking shame’s power
If shame has these effects, and more, then what can be done? How do we find a way out of the hell that shame has us imprisoned in?
Shame is not removed by changing, or fixing, behaviours. It requires an internal restoration of our identity and self-worth, and the changing of our self-image.
Father Richard Rohr says, “Shame is not about what we do, but where we abide.”
In Christ, God has made provision for all mankind to know cleansing from shame. He took upon himself all of mankind’s sin, guilt and shame and dealt with it on the cross, restoring mankind to freedom, love and acceptance. As we turn to Christ and allow Him, in His love, to clothe us with righteousness, our shame is washed away and the truth of the verse in Rom 8:1 which says, “There is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus…” becomes not only our present, but our ongoing, reality. We are restored and see ourselves once again according to our true identity – a person who is made in the image and likeness of God.
We live in line with how we see ourselves, and the world around us. Seeing ourselves as God sees us frees us to live from our true identity, as those made in God’s image – as people who are righteous, holy, and godly in characteristics and nature.
For me, being freed from shame has been an ongoing journey, not a one-time event – a journey of learning to live in God’s love and acceptance, to see myself as He sees me, and to discover the real me, the one underneath the layers of shame. And, as that has happened, dignity, self-acceptance, and knowing my true worth have been restored to me.
This healing and sense of ‘right being’ is what ultimately leads to changes in our behaviour. It is not achieved by having enough backbone or grit, striving to change, or self-flagellation through words or habitual patterns of self-destructive behaviour.
In the world we live in there are few people who do not feel the sting of shame, and its accompanying feelings – feeling dirty, found lacking, inadequate, and unworthy – causing us to compare ourselves with others, become depressed, suffer from anxiety, or even become suicidal. But the good news is, God not only dealt with the power of sin on the cross through Christ, but He also dealt with the power of shame! God calls us to come home to His love, to abide in Him and there He clothes us in Christ, forever covering our shame, not with inferior man-made garments, but with eternal garments made up of God’s love, our true identity as one made in His image and likeness, and righteousness. All these gifts enable us to know peace, joy, and the ability to enjoy life in all its fullness.
For further study
The Bible has a lot to say about shame and the provision that God has made for us to be set free from all shame. Below are some of those verses, take some time to check them out and let Christ minister freedom to you through the truths they contain. Romans 8:1. Ephesians 3:17-20. Also Psalm 3:3. Psalm 34:4-5. Psalm 69:6. Isaiah 54:4-8. Isaiah 61:7. Zephaniah 3:5,19. Romans 10:11. 2 Corinthians 3:17. Hebrews 10:22. 1 John 2:28. Revelation 3:18.