The Barrier of Shame

Have you ever considered the notion of carried shame? Might you be carrying unprocessed shame from the course of your life experiences? Likely you have not thought too much about the role that carried shame may be playing in your life—possibly affecting your sense of self, your relationship with the people in your life, and even your relationship with God.

Before we proceed further, we need to ask what we mean by shame. Shame in the negative sense (not to be confused with healthy shame which acts as a protective veil for our most intimate, beautiful selves, so as not to allow ourselves to be used) is the subconscious feeling that there is something wrong with me, that on some deep level I am bad, dirty, a failure, unworthy, insufficient… it’s the feeling that makes us want to hide our real selves and work hard to try to be the kind of person that we think we should be, or that we think others want us to be, or even that we think God wants us to be (God in his love wants to continue to heal and transform us so that we are more able to give and receive love, but notice that this is very different than the belief shame tends to bring: that I need to work really hard to earn God’s love).

One good litmus test for whether we have unprocessed shame is whether we think we are loveable just as we are. If we take off our masks and reveal our real selves, with our many “warts” and all, do we think we will still be loved and accepted just as we are? If I’m honest, I still sometimes struggle to accept this, that I am loveable just as I am. Not because I’m good, or because I’ve accomplished things, or because of my gifts, or even because I sincerely desire to become holy. All of these things, while true, are not the reason that I am loveable. And they are not the reason that you are loveable. You are loveable because God made you. God desired you, so he created you.

If reading these last few sentences made you cringe a little inside or made you feel a little uncomfortable, perhaps this is revelatory of some carried shame. Shame makes us feel unworthy of being loved simply for just being. Deep down we feel deeply insufficient (not to be confused with knowing that we need God for everything) and we dislike ourselves, sometimes reject or even subconsciously hate ourselves.

So where does carried shame come from? It can come from any host of wounding, painful experiences, especially in our childhood—experiences of our person being violated in some way (physical and or/emotional and/or sexual abuse/trauma), the experience of being used rather than loved-- experiences of abandonment (emotional and/or physical), and experiences of rejection. How we were parented, especially in areas of discipline and correction, can have a huge impact on our internalizing shame. Were we corrected in a way that made us feel healthy guilt (the feeling and acknowledgment that we did something wrong and have areas to grow) or were we disciplined in a way that made us feel that we as a person were deeply wrong, bad.

Another indicator of carried shame is not being willing to apologize for when we have hurt someone. When we have a lot of carried shame, being called out for something tends to send us immediately into a shame spiral—where instead of being able to see that what we did was hurtful to this person, we jump to the feeling and belief that we are a failure. Again, this comes from not being able to separate out our behaviors from our value as person. An action can be bad but this does not make the person bad or unloveable. But when we have carried shame, our person and our behaviors/mistakes get very blurred internally and it becomes very difficult to take responsibility for a hurtful action because we internalize that I am bad for doing this. So we do everything in our power to evade responsibility.

Growing up one of my parents yelled, criticized, and blamed a lot, and I certainly internalized the feeling that I was the problem… If only I were different, better, I would not be yelled at or blamed, so I thought. Many decades later I have come to realize that I wasn’t the problem. Did I have areas that needed growth? Of course (and I still do). This parent just had a whole lot of unprocessed pain and likely carried shame that trickled out into shaming behaviors towards me.

So what do we do about carried shame? Here are a few pointers to help begin to work through shame. First, if you are a believer, ask God to help you to see yourself as He sees you—He see you with gentleness, love and compassion, regardless of any number of big or little shameful things that you have done. Second, try to be honest about shame’s presence in your life. Simply being willing to recognize it and name it is an important step towards working through it. Third, consider, is there a safe person in your life, someone that you can try sharing on a slightly deeper level some of your real struggles? Maybe don’t begin with the deepest, heaviest stuff, but try sharing something of a little lighter nature at first. See how it goes. Does this person receive you in a non-judgmental way? Do they make you feel comfortable opening up to them? If you do not have anyone that feels like a safe person, this could be an indicator that perhaps finding a good counselor could be a helpful investment. When we have carried shame, the slightest remark that sniffs of judgment, rejection or abandonment can send us into a shame spiral of blaming ourselves and presuming that we are insufficient—our carried shame can cause us to interpret (or misinterpret) other’s comments or behaviors towards us. The real problem with shame’s understandable hyper-sensitivity to other’s comments/behaviors is that it tends to lead us to retreat further into ourselves, to isolate further and ultimately be deprived of the deep, honest, vulnerable relationships that we are made for.

The last tip I will share for helping to work through and lift shame is the (free, yay!) 12-step group Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families (ACA). Of all the resources I have used in my healing journey, ACA has been the most helpful in working through my carried shame. In Step 4 of the 12-steps, you are finally ready to tell your real life story, with the good, the bad and the ugly, without being judged, and there is something so deeply freeing and empowering about understanding and owning your story and verbalizing it to a trusted “fellow traveler” as we call each other in ACA. I love this support group so much, and in case you prefer the comfort of your own home, there are online ACA support groups. Here’s a link to ACA’s site if this piques your interest at all: https://adultchildren.org.