SHAME: LETTING GO OF EMOTIONAL SELF-ABUSE

Having a capacity for shame keeps us from doing something that causes us to be shamed.

It is our capacity for shame that enables us to live comfortably within the boundaries and limits set for us by our capabilities, our relationship with others, and our own sense of dignity and self worth. A capacity for shame keeps us from violating our dignity by exposing ourselves in such a way as to cause discomfort and offense to others.

Not all feelings of shame are destructive to the self. Indeed, the capacity to feel shame seems to be part of the self's maintenance of a healthy sense of limitation and even the core of humility. To be called "shameless" is to judged to be without a sense of discrimination as to what is appropriate and what is inappropriate behavior

In the creation story, the first man and woman "were naked, and were not ashamed" (Gen. 2:25). I have often wondered how they could know that they were not ashamed without some sense of what shame is! I have now concluded that they indeed were created with a capacity for shame and that in the security of that intimacy of relationship with each other, they could be open and exposed to each other without shame actually being felt. Immediately upon overreaching their limits and attempting to "be like God" (3:5), they "knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loin cloths for themselves" (3:7). At this point, they actually felt shame in the presence of each other and, we assume, in the eyes of God, for they hid themselves from the presence of God in the garden. Adam blamed God for "giving him this woman," and the woman blamed the serpent for beguiling her.

It is one thing to have a keen sense of shame as a possible consequence of an action. It is quite another thing to actually feel shame because we have been shamed. Being shamed is a violation of the self which occurs with human interaction. Wherever there is blame there is shame. One continually feeds on the other. Because of the need to conceal the shameful act, shame is buried as a secret within the self. Fear of exposure drives the self deeper into hiding in a desperate attempt to preserve a semblance of decency. When we have been shamed, we put on fig leaves in order to maintain a sense of decorum and acceptability.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SHAME AND GUILT

The experience of being shamed has no motivating power toward health. Once we feel shamed, the capacity for shame no longer functions in a positive sense. Feeling shamed, we are likely to blame and condemn ourselves as though we were guilty of some terrible offense. Guilt has to do with an act which is measured against an objective standard, or against another person. Guilt is the consequence of a violation of this standard. Guilt is removed when one has satisfied the penalty imposed, or is pardoned from the wrong and/or forgiven. The objective nature of the offense is removed from one's record. The removal of guilt may not remove the feeling of shame, which is subjectively rooted in the feeling that the self has no worth.

The confusion between guilt and shame can be the source of much self-condemnation. Often when we continue to feel guilt, we are not experiencing Jacob's discovery, the internalizing of the blessing which now came directly from God's own word. He arrived at that place [Bethel] under the burden of shame, and left with the blessing in his heart. Now he has the blessing, and the shame is gone, along with its power of self-condemnation.

Recovery from feelings of shame is not enough. The self is only empowered and restored through spiritual healing, for shame destroys the blessing that we cannot bestow upon ourselves.

There is a blessing for us, when the hard stone of crushing shame and self condemnation can be turned into a ladder with angels carrying manna from heaven to feed our starved souls! It is wise for us as well to have an outward point of reference for the inner experience of blessing. Bethel marks the place of discovery and the beginning of recovery. There is freedom to continue the journey knowing that the blessing is abiding in our hearts and the stone remains to mark the place.

Shame has to do with a loss to one's identity and being. Long after the guilt has been removed objectively, one can still be caught in the de-humanizing grip of shame. When I feel guilt for having broken a traffic law long after the ticket has been paid, it is really shame that I feel. I experience a loss of personal integrity. My self-worth is threatened. Paying the traffic ticket removes the guilt, but does not restore my sense of personal worth.

Shame does not necessarily disappear even though guilt as an objective offense standing between God and human persons is removed. Shame, as the deeper problem of the self, means that one has suffered loss of being, not merely loss of status. The purpose of divine forgiveness is not only to pardon sin as a legal or objective fault, but to overcome shame which has weakened and destroyed the inner fabric of the self. When we think of atonement for sin as a removal of guilt we must also understand that it has not produced wholeness and health within until the effects of shame on one's personal being has been overcome.

SHAME AS SELF-ABUSE

Shame is not an emotion. It is self-abuse, with the emotions used as instruments of flagellation. Shame attacks the self in the name of the self, inflicting punishment for the sake of crippling, not to correct. Shame, is a form of self-abuse. This is what makes recovery so difficult. Shame cannot be removed by retaliation against others, nor by punishing an offender. Shame does not disappear when one is freed from guilt, nor can it be relieved by reassurances that there is no objective reason for these feelings of self-recrimination. There is no one who is hurt more by shame than the one who feels it.

1. Uncovering the Secret of Shame

Shame thrives on secrecy, and secrecy is its most powerful defense. What shame fears most of all is the uncovering of the self in its wretched and disgusting condition. It is instructive that, in the first recorded instance of shame in the Bible, Adam and Eve covered themselves with fig leaves when they "knew that they were naked" (Genesis 3:7). When God found them hiding in the garden and called out to them, "Where are you?", the man explained, "I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked: and I hid myself" (3:10). "Who told you that you were naked?," replied God.

The relation of nakedness to shame no doubt has more than a literary origin in this text. Nakedness is a metaphor of a self perception rather than of physical exposure. To "know that one is naked" is a self-perception which causes fear of exposure to arise. Thus the clothing of oneself is a further metaphor of the self's desperate attempt at concealment. This is the beginning of the ritual abuse of shame. Any threat of exposure causes the self to turn against itself and force into hiding what is deemed too ugly to reveal.

Self-recovery begins when a pattern is broken. This may result from an encounter with another person sufficient to stop ritual abusive behavior. Shame isolates and alienates as the self ritualizes self condemnation, even though one is bound to some social system. Encounter means a breakthrough by which one is arrested in one's tracks, and stopped from continuing an action which is destructive and self defeating.

2. Recovering the Capacity for Shame

Recovery has to do with catching myself in the act of shaming myself. When that process begins, I am in recovery if I "catch myself in time" and shift from self-condemnation to self-evaluation. "Why am I doing this to myself," I ask? "Am I not supposed to like myself rather than to hate myself?"

Recovery is about having a capacity for shame without feeling shamed. This is almost impossible to do when shame has already produced self-imposed alienation and isolation. The capacity for shame has become distorted and twisted into an instrument to be used in the ritual abuse of self-shaming.

Recovery begins with an intervention into this self-abusive dynamic. I believe that it can only happen when someone or something touches the most vulnerable part of us with sufficient innocence to cause us to recover, for a moment at least, a capacity for shame. The painful, but accurate insight that one suffers from shame as a form of self-abuse, must be linked to the assumption that one has the power to do good because one is actually good. This involves recovering the capacity for shame as a positive and healthy core of the self.

Recovery can only follow from uncovering the shame which binds the self and blinds it to its own essential worth. Once the penetration has been made into the vulnerable core of the self and the self has recovered, "just in time," from its programmed ritual of self-abuse, the process of recovery can continue.

3. Discovering the Blessing of Freedom from Shame

The biblical concept of blessing was surely meant to empower the self with a sense of worth and value. Shame produces what some psychologists have called a "narcissistic injury" to the self. The self-love which is a God-created image in the human self through which we seek fulfillment and pleasure, is wounded and crippled by shame. In our desperate search for happiness we seek rights and benefits when what we really need is blessing.

The feeling of being blessed can only be described, it cannot be defined. It is something that one must experience. It cannot be taught but it can be learned. There is no technique by which it can be achieved, but there is a pathway that leads toward it--it is more of a discovery than a discipline. When the apostle Paul contemplated his life through the lens of acceptance in Jesus Christ, he saw that his recovery began when he was intercepted on the Damascus road by the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Having been "stopped in his tracks" by this encounter, he heard the voice of Jesus ask him why he was hurting himself. "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It hurts you to kick against the goads" (Acts 26:14). Thus began his recovery followed by his uncovery. ". . . I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy. . . " (1 Tim. 1:13).

Paul was well aware of the terrible consequences of attempting to fulfill his own need for righteousness. He confessed that he became a "wretched man," captive to his desperate desires so that the "law of sin" was working within him. Yet, in the midst of this confession he cries out, ". . . I delight in the law of God in my inmost self" (Ro. 7:22). At the very core of his being, Paul does not deny or devalue himself. He feels that God has loved him and called him to be a child of God. "We boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God," Paul wrote, and "hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us" (Ro. 5:2,5).

When Jacob fled from his brother Esau, after conspiring to rob him of the birthright, he was in state of turmoil and uncertainty. He had acquired the birthright but had not gained the blessing of inner peace. What appeared to be flight from the only place that he had known and the only family that he had, dysfunctional as it was, turned out to be a pilgrimage to promise. Falling asleep in the wilderness, with a stone for a pillow, he dreamed of angels ascending and descending on a ladder that reached into heaven. Awakening, he cried out: "Surely the Lord is in this place--and I did not know it!" (Gen. 28:16) The hard stone of shame became a ladder of blessing through a vision of God's grace in his life.

Jacob's discovery was the internalizing of the blessing which now came directly from God's own word. He arrived at the place under the burden of shame, and left with the blessing in his heart. Now he has the blessing, and the shame is gone, with its power of self-condemnation. Recovery from feelings of shame is not enough. The self is only empowered and restored through spiritual healing, for shame destroys the blessing that we cannot bestow upon ourselves.

There is a blessing for us, when the hard stone of crushing shame and self-condemnation can be turned into a ladder with angels carrying manna from heaven to feed our starved souls! It is wise for us as well to have an outward point of reference for the inner experience of blessing. Bethel marks the place of discovery and the beginning of recovery. There is freedom to continue the journey knowing that the blessing is abiding in our hearts and the stone remains to mark the place.

Ray S. Anderson, Senior Professor of Theology and Ministry. Fuller Theological Seminary. From: Self Care: A Theology of Personal Empowerment and Spiritual Healing, by Ray S. Anderson, Bridgepoint/Victor Books, Wheaton,1995,, reprinted by Fuller Seminary Press, 2000, pp. 144-165.

www.rayanderson.us

BLESSING

"May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and gave us, by his grace, encouragement eternal and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word."
(2 Thessalonians 2:16)