Faith and Family: Healing from shame and guilt — Guilt comes from ‘sinful choices’; shame a result of ‘attack’ on self worth

Faith and Family: Healing from shame and guilt — Guilt comes from ‘sinful choices’; shame a result of ‘attack’ on self worth

Am I good enough?

At the end of a very long day, Carol sits alone in her kitchen. She replays the afternoon meeting with her boss, who had suggested changes to Carol’s current project plans. The changes were minor but Carol now questions her professional judgment. How could she have overlooked those details? 

She believes she has disappointed her boss and that everyone at work will find out about her stupid mistakes. 

Carol’s mood darkens as she thinks of what her mother would say and recalls the harsh criticism consistently launched from her mother. Her mother tells her she has been hard on her all these years as a form of motivation but Carol takes each negative comment to heart. As self-loathing and self-criticism echo in her thoughts, Carol wonders: When will I be good enough?

 

I often play tennis with my good friend, Joe. He wins most of our matches though they are usually close. In the early days, I would often tell Joe “good try” after winning a point. After listening to my “encouragement” for a few weeks, he asked me to stop praising his effort. Though my words were meant to be positive, the message he was hearing was “good try, but not good enough.” I was guilty of shaming Joe with my words.

Guilt and shame are closely related but very different. Sinful choices can bring guilt. We know we have failed to live up to God’s standard and feel remorseful. Shame is much more subtle and cunning.

Shame leaves us with a persistent sense that not only our efforts but our very selves are not adequate.

Shame was ushered into our world quite early. In the beginning, Adam and Eve were “naked and felt no shame” (Gen. 2:25). In describing the perfection of Eden, the writer could have used many possible words to go with naked, such as “naked and happy,” “naked and strong” or even “naked and unfearful.” But the words “felt no shame” are what God wanted and needed us to hear and understand. Those must be important words.

Soon after the description of how good everything is in God’s wonderful new creation, God’s adversary, Satan, enters, attempting to disrupt such goodness. Eve and Adam respond to Satan’s temptation with sinful, disobedient choices. In the aftermath of their failure, Adam and Eve attempt to hide from God, tentatively leaving them disconnected from God in their guilt.

God’s yearning

However, God does not respond with a shaming tone. In fact we hear God’s yearning for the former relationship with His creation, a relationship that is now broken, ruptured and separated. This is confirmed when God asks, “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9). God is immediately seeking restoration and healing. God’s response provides the example for us to follow.

Sometimes we are quick to make statements that reverberate with judgment. We enter a child’s messy room and ask, “What in the world happened in here?” We watch our child at home plate swing and miss the fastball and we shout out, “Good try.” Judgment is not the point or message we are trying to send with our words. In spite of our intention, however, shame rises in the person who hears our words and feels them as an attack on their effort or their self-worth.

There are other situations where unintended perceptions of shame easily arise. While telling his wife that he just lost his job, a husband can interpret his wife’s frown as fear and sadness. He may internalize her facial expression as implying “you are a failure.” A young mother may hear an older woman’s suggestion as a criticism of her parenting. The comments said in passing by the older woman may haunt the thoughts of the younger woman for days and feed her feelings of inadequacy.

Sometimes the shaming voice comes from inside. Sadly, shame does not need another person or even an event to bring judgment upon us. Curt Thompson, author of “The Soul of Shame,” says we all have a “shame attendant” waiting to offer us criticism, saying such things as “Wow, you didn’t get enough sleep” or “What were you thinking?” As we move past our bathroom mirror to take a shower, the shame attendant in our mind might exclaim, “Looks like you put on more weight.” Such judgment is often subtle — images, thoughts and feelings haunting our minds almost without notice, yet undermining our self-respect and nurturing painful thoughts that we do not measure up to some standard.

So how do we combat shame? Thompson offers three key directives for combating shame: vulnerability, exposure and relationship.

To be vulnerable is “to feel, as did Eve and Adam after their fruit fest, naked and ashamed, … to recognize that we are at the mercy of those whose intentions we cannot guarantee and who can leave us alone,” Thompson writes.

A child who has stolen does not want to admit that sin to his or her parents. A cheating spouse does not want to confess the affair. A drug addict attempting to turn from a life of substance abuse does not want to confront the family, friends and community members who have been hurt because of that addiction.

When we sin, intentionally or not, it hurts those we love. In our shame, the very thing we do not want to do is expose ourselves. However, vulnerability and exposure are the very lifelines that can bring our healing. Shame resides in the broken areas of our lives. In becoming vulnerable and connecting ourselves to another safe person or persons, we can be loved and forgiven. Healing can occur in the face of our ruptured, broken selves. As Thompson states, “To be fully loved — and to fully love — requires that we are fully known.”

Help from others

When we are surrounded by a community of trustworthy believers including family, friends and spiritual mentors, the isolation that shame feeds on can be broken. We can run with perseverance and no longer be entangled by sin and the guilt that results from our sinful choices.

EDITOR’S NOTE — Larry Daniels is a counselor with Pathways Professional Counseling, a ministry of the Alabama Baptist Children’s Homes & Family Ministries that helps individuals and families seek solutions to their problems through professional, affordable counseling from a Christian perspective. Larry serves offices in the Mobile and Baldwin county areas.

For more information, visit www.pathwaysprofessional.org or call 1-866-991-6864.

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