Introduction to shame.

• Put a tack in your shoe: you’ll be distracted by a different kind of pain.
• Pretend you’re visiting an insane asylum on another planet. Your mission is to survive and report back.
• Invite your most abrasive friend/family member along to draw fire as a decoy (e.g. Home for the Holidays).
• Have a competition offering $10 to whoever can hold their breath the longest. This is a cheap way to buy silence.
• Make a list every family member’s deepest secret. Write each secret on a piece of paper with no names. Jumble in a hat. Give one to every family member and ask them to guess whose is whose. Stand back and watch.
• Put a tack in your most annoying family member’s shoe.

There is a difference between shame, guilt, and condemnation.

Shame says there is something wrong with us that makes us embarrassed of ourselves. Whatever this characteristic is, we fear it is unchangeable and we will always be this way, and always have a reason to be ashamed.

Guilt is based on something that we do. We do something wrong, we know we should not have done it, and we feel bad for having done it. Condemnation is the sentencing for a crime. Condemnation is a final judgement which follows us throughout our life and even into eternity. It is the consequences or results for our actions, for our guilt, for what we have done.

Guilt is feeling bad about what you do. Shame is feeling bad about who you are. For example, yesterday, my son was doing a load of laundry in our new washing machine. A new code popped up on this fancy machine and we didn’t know what it meant. My first fearful thought was that the washing machine was broken, and I started thinking about the warranty. My son looked up the code and found out that the load was unbalanced. He needed to go in and make Corrections to redistribute the bed sheets. The error indicated that we had done something wrong, not that there was something wrong with the washing machine. Guilt is like that error code telling us that we have done something wrong. Shame is like being a broken washing machine that cannot be fixed, like the two that are sitting in the backyard of my house.

But shame is broader than just our identity. It has to do with relationships, what others think about us and how others see us. Whereas

guilt is awareness of failure against some standard,

shame is a sense of failure before the eyes of someone else. In other words, guilt is about Disobedience to a law or code, but shame is how I perceive others see me, or how I see myself.

I find it interesting that the Old Testament word group for shame includes disconcerted, disappointed, and confounded. Shame basically means that we feel we are a disappointment that can never be fixed.

Let’s say you fail a test. Should you feel guilty? Should you feel shame? That depends upon the situation. If you did not study for the test and failed it because of something that you did or did not do, and it would be appropriate to feel guilty about failing a test. However, if you have a learning disability, and you have studied to the best of your ability, and you fail the test, there is no need for guilt. You did all that you could to pass the test. However, if you fail the test after having studied, you may feel false guilt. That is guilt that you experience that is not based in reality. If you did the best that you could, you could do no more. There is no reason for guilt.

The problem occurs when you fail a test, and determine that you are a failure, or you are stupid. Statements like that are about your identity, your ability, who you are, and not about what you have done. That is a shame statement.

Just like there is false and true guilt, there is false and true shame. Adam and Eve in the garden experienced appropriate shame. That is because their Disobedience did transform who they were. Because of the Fall, their core was now selfish and self-centered instead of God centered. Their desire was no longer for most to love and serve God, but was now about protecting themselves and taking for themselves what they could. It was a permanent condition.

Their reaction to God after the fall was one of fearing him, wanting to hide, want him to cover up what they had done and who they were, and to blame others for how they became this way. That is exactly what shame does to us in our relationships.

• It makes us afraid of other people,
• it makes us want to hide from them and sometimes from the world as a whole.
• It makes us want to cover ourselves up in fancy clothes, lots of makeup, hairstyles, activities, so no one will see what we truly look like.
• And if anyone criticizes us, we will immediately and instinctively look for someone else to blame Regarding why we are how we are.

The worst part about shame is the feeling that it is a permanent condition, causing a permanent breach between us and God and other people. If you feel like there is just something wrong with you that stops others from loving you and staying with you, that is shame. Now there may be things that you do that legitimately cause other people to pull away from you. But those things can be changed, Behavior can be modified. I’m talking about when you think there is something almost indescribable at your core that will stop you from ever being loved and accepted.

In some ways, this type of Shame is true. In comparison to God and His holy standard, we should feel shame at missing the mark. We all sin and fall short of the glory of God. The Wonder of the cross is that God would send his only son to willingly lay his life down for such screw-ups as we are. And every single person on the Earth has that same Brokenness in them. But that is the depth of Jesus’s love for us. He knows exactly how messed up we are, and that on this side of Heaven, there will be some things in us that will remain broken and cause us to sin against him and other people. That’s why his blood covers and cleanses us, and His holy spirit indwells us to empower us to walk on this Earth as he did.

One of the things that I find most amazing about God is that he meets us where we are. He knows full well the areas of Brokenness in our life, and yet he does not require that we come up to his level before he will love us and provide for us. He knows we are like the grass, here today and gone tomorrow, and yet we are so important to him that every hair on our head is numbered.

One of my favorite stories is when Jesus reinstates Peter. Peter starts out by

• failing to stay awake with Jesus well Jesus praise In The Garden of Gethsemane. Three times he asked Peter James and John to stay awake and pray with him, and three times they went back to sleep.
• Then Peter cut off the ear of a servant.
• He told Jesus that he would give up his life to save Jesus’s life, but instead he lied about even knowing who Jesus was three times.
• After Jesus died, Peter totally gave up and went back to his old life of fishing.

But when Peter saw Jesus on the shore well Peter was fishing, Peter dove into the water to see his Lord. Jesus spoke to him three times, and his words were very important, and have been wrongly translated in several Bibles.

• Jesus asks Peter twice, do you love Agape me?
• Peter twice responds, Lord I phileo love you.

Now this is very, very important. Agape is God’s love that is selfless, generous, and expect nothing in return. Phileo Love is brotherly love that you have for a friend. Now what do you think you would have done if you were Jesus, and you had just asked Peter twice if he selflessly loved you, but Peter said all he had was friendship love for you? I know I would have been disappointed, and possibly retracted my statement.

But that’s not how Jesus is. Instead, Jesus says to Peter, do you phileo love me? He did not make Peter come up to his level, but he met Peter right where he was, and whatever he was capable. He was willing to accept friendship love from Peter because that was all Peter could honestly offer at that point.

It would be foolish of us not to recognize how broken we are, just like the rest of humanity. Some of us may have progressed in our healing more than others, but none the less, we all fall short of being like Jesus. However, Jesus does not look at us as though we fall short. He does not look at us as if there is something horribly wrong with us that will permanently separate us from him, as long as we have accepted him as Lord and savior. He loves us in our Brokenness, so much so that he died for us in this condition, and covered us with his cleansing blood so that we no longer have to be ashamed. When the father looks at us, he sees the righteousness of Christ covering us, and he is never again ashamed of us.

If God and Jesus are not ashamed of us, then why do we feel shame? If the perfect father sees us in all of our imperfection and is not ashamed of us, why do we feel ashamed of ourselves? That is because someone else has made you feel ashamed. It very likely was a parent, or a family situation, or peers who made you feel that you did not measure up and were therefore permanently damaged.

The name for the situation which causes this kind of Shame is called codependency. Rarely will a parent try to make a child feel shame, that there is something permanently wrong with them. However, when they are unable to express love, significance, and acceptance to a child, for whatever reason, a child will believe that they are the reason why their parents cannot love them.

The words I have heard repeatedly in counseling and Recovery have been, but she is my mother. She has to love me. But the truth is, that not all parents are capable of expressing love and acceptance to their children. Many of them are broken because their parents were unable to provide those things for them. Generationally, it could go incredibly far back in your lineage so that no one learned how to express love and acceptance. They just behaved as their parents did, thinking this is how it was to be done.

Even those who were consciously cruel were most likely treated that way themselves by their parents, and are simply repeating what was done to them. But as children, we do not understand that. If a parent does not love us and treat us as if we are important, we immediately assume that we are to blame.

It gets worse when we try even harder to gain their love and acceptance, only to be spurned or ignored or attacked over and over again. That is when shame becomes solidified in our souls. When nothing we can do can make someone else love us, the horrible fear we have always had appears to come true. We think there must be something wrong with us that cannot be fixed that causes others to be unable to love us.

Even where there is no abuse, being ignored is the same thing as being abandoned when you are a child. Not having appropriate and affectionate physical contact for your first 15 years can actually harm a child. The absence of love and attention from a caregiver is detrimental to the development of any child. If you have always felt this way, then chances are that it began with your family of origin.

It is also possible to learn shame from adult relationships. You will be attracted to someone who is equally as broken as you are only in a complementary way. Sometimes you will be attracted to people who are predators, and they will play on your brokenness in order to feed their souls with control, or manipulate you to make them feel better about themselves.

They can say things about you that will crush you and make you wonder if there really is something wrong with you. They can be extremely convincing, especially if they say you are the problem and the reason why things are bad. If you are or were caught in this type of unhealthy relationship, you can be damaged to the point of not believing you are worth anything.

So how do you heal shame? Remember that shame is relational. We feel shame because someone else has told us or acted in a way that conveyed to us that there is something irreparable wrong with us, most likely keeping us from being loved and accepted. So the way to heal shame is to be loved and accepted for who we are and how we are. That can only be done by two persons. It can be done by you, and it can be done by God.

You must come to grips with the fact that you are not now, and never will be perfect. You will always, on this side of Heaven, have things wrong with you. You will have habits and behaviors and idiosyncrasies that will push other people away at times, just as other people get on your nerves at times.

But you have to love and accept yourself regardless of the things that are wrong with you. You have to make a conscious decision to accept yourself the same way you would make a conscious decision to accept someone else who is not perfect. You must also make a conscious decision to accept the opinion of the one who knows you best, who knows you the most intimately inside and out. You must accept God’s opinion of you over anyone else’s.

Throughout your life you will have many different people with many different opinions of you. Granted, many opinions will have a grain of Truth in them, because we are not perfect people. However, you will have to decide whose opinion you will value the most, because they are the authority on the subject of you.

The hardest opinions to overlook are those of family members, original family or extended, especially through marriage. Yet those are the opinions that we must make sure do not take precedence and priority over God’s opinion of you. We want our families to love and accept us, often in very desperate ways. But our families are made up of very broken people as well, and their inability to love you may have absolutely nothing to do with you at all.

God says that he made us with his own hands, fashioning and forming us to be who he needed us to be to fit into his kingdom, his plan, and Achieve his purpose. All of our quirks, all of the things that make us the unique person we are, were built into God’s design for us. He made us this way on purpose, even if we cannot see that purpose or understand why. He does not make mistakes, and he does not make junk.

We just have not been able to see how our very uniquely designed person fits into his very intricate plan. But we must believe that he knows what he is doing, and surrender to his will for our lives. That means coming to terms with and accepting who and how we are, and loving ourselves as he loves us.

Tips to handle the Family during holidays (or any get together):

Get exercise every day you are with them.  It will burn off stress, relax you, and get good feeling hormones released.  You will be less likely to snap at someone if you are relaxed and feeling good.

Tip #1:  Clearly Understand that You Control Your Happiness.

Tip #2: Plan Ahead –  It’s good to use everything and anything that reminds you that you are okay the way you are, that you love and approve of yourself unconditionally and to trust the process, even though it feels unbearable during the present hour. This might include speaking to a therapist or friend to customize a plan.   Many find it helpful to bring a physical reminder of that which gives you inner strength, like a positive affirmation that hits home, a quote or a prayer, a token or sentimental object. It creates a bubble of light protecting us and helping us create emotional independence.

Tip #3: Let Go of Expectations

We all have a part of us who relentlessly hopes that certain people, whether that be mom or dad, brother or sister, husband or wife, will transform – and we will finally receive what we have always longed for.

Prepare to accept them as they are and for how they behave. Trust the bigger picture that they are in your life for a reason, a good reason. Love and accept them for who they are. Everyone matters and has value, even those who are difficult.

Tip #4: Set Good Boundaries – Other people’s behavior is actually more a reflection of them, e.g., their insecurities, fears, immaturity, brokenness, not you. We are masters of taking things personally, thinking self centrically that other people’s actions, thoughts and decisions are all a reflection of what that means about our worth or how they feel about us. Most of the time this is an illusion. – the length of time you spend with your family and how many events you attend. During the holidays, you can limit the length of the family dinner or gathering. Don’t be afraid to say no.

Tip #5: Pause Before Opening Your Mouth. For the “what goes in your mouth”, watch your alcohol intake. This will help the “what comes out” factor. Overall, when we respond reactively, it rarely works out well. We plant a seed that only yields bitter fruits. Allowing yourself to pause, using all your strength to wait before you speak, can save not only drama and conflict, but also your own energy and power. It feels good in the second we react, but then we can be filled with regret and that unpleasant feeling when we have lost control.

Tip #6: Arrive Appreciative, Ready to Give – appreciating what you have rather than focusing on what you lack or don’t have. Chip in to help to keep yourself busy.

Tip #7: Allow Time to Recover –  you will likely be drained and need some time and self care to rejuvenate. Consider it like giving charity where you don’t expect to receive anything in return- you are there to give time, money, care, patience, love- whatever the case may be. And at the same time, just know you will need to fill your chalice back up. Do your best to be at peace with this process and realize you are not a victim.