No Shame November: Helping a friend through shame
I hope your Thanksgiving weekend has been a rich time with family and friends.
This month I'm posting short videos on Instagram to suggest that we can live our regular lives with no shame. It's been shocking to see how many people have viewed these reels.
I've recalled how prevalent shame is in our day-to-day culture and wrote out thoughts on how I would guide people helping people move through shame. So I've written down some thoughts here for you today.
This guidance offers steps to have holy conversations in order to replace shame with joy.
Shame is a deep sense that "I am not enough" and connects a soul to a narrative of insecurity. In the garden, Adam and Eve experienced their nakedness and immediately hid. To this day, shame still has us ducking, diving and hiding behind bushes.
These bushes could be anything from good performance, image, materialism to anything that covers our perceived flawed self.
Because shame strikes us at our core and it is a powerful emotion. The soul care provider must be empathetic and allow vulnerability. Each conversation patiently builds on the other to uncover a path towards joy.
Follow-up is important because shame pushes people back into hiding especially if they were vulnerable. If shame promotes isolation and secrecy then our presence must be safe and nonjudgmental. Okay, let's jump in!
Holy Conversation #1
Listen well, hold space for all the feelings
Ask questions without judgement, try not to offer advice or fix. Attempting to correct early will hinder vulnerability. Validate before you evaluate.
See their soul as a bucket wanting to empty out their thoughts and emotions. Shame hates this because vulnerability and empathy are its biggest enemies.
Try not to be distracted or look at your phone.
As they share about shame and get their emotions out, distance is created between them and the struggle. As distance is created, they can begin to see the shame narrative for what it is. When you feel shame acutely, with no distance it's hard to evaluate the source.
Emphasize what they shared was sacred and important. Thank them for their honesty. Say, "it is an honor to witness what you are going through."
Simply offer them an opportunity to chat about the next phase which is "personifying shame."
"If you put shame in a Petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in a Petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive."-Dr. Brene Brown
Holy Conversation #2
Personify shame and name its unique influence
Shame is like a little person who walks around with you to point out everything wrong about you. Give that little person a name. Know its personality, background and how they talk to you. I found Curt Thompson's book, The Soul of Shame helpful in personifying shame.
Be skilled at identifying shame's voice. Ask questions like: When does it speak the loudest? What is a word of phrase it uses most frequently? Take inventory of its messaging in a given day. What are your unique ways that shame pushes you into hiding? Again, personifying shame creates space for the person to distance themselves enough to be able to identify its influence. Shame wants to be undetected and sound like your own voice that it cannot be recognized.
Reflecting on the voices of the Serpent in Genesis 3 and Pharaoh in Exodus 3 could be helpful. In the next conversation you will discern God's response to these voices.
"If we do not understand our history of how shame has come to be our partner in life, we are, as George Santayana reflected, condemned to repeat it" Dr. Curt Thompson, The Soul of Shame p. 98.
Holy Conversation # 3
Put the loving Presence of God up against shame personified
Helping doesn't always translate into a "fix" but more importantly becomes "fixing" your eyes on Jesus. Once feelings are validated and shame is evaluated then we can consider God's response.
Ask questions that point towards an encounter with God. Consider what God is saying? What is God's real response to the shame narrative you've lived from?
Discern together how the hiding bush of shame is becomes the burning bush of God's presence. Moses claimed that he wasn't enough and God's response is I AM. "Take off your shoes this is holy ground."
Prayerfully listen together. Allow time and some silence to let the Spirit confront the shame that has been named.
Hopefully you've earned the right to speak. Recap by telling the story of God's response to shame. Reflect on the cross of Christ and the freedom we have from shame. Affirm your friend that the reality of the God's response and embrace can be a daily experience.
Scripture mediation has been a very helpful practice in my own journey with shame.
The Trinity and Scripture Meditation
I've found it helpful to study the doctrine of the Trinity and meditate on Scriptures relating to Father, Son and Spirit (below).RealizingGod's trinitarian response to shame has truly transformed my mind, emotions and will. Dr. Curt Thompson emphasizes this idea below.
"In the Trinity we see something that we must pay attention to: God does not leave. The loving relationship shared between Father, Son and Spirit is the ground on which all other models of life and creativity rest. In this relationship of constant self-giving, vulnerable and joyful love, shame has no oxygen to breathe. The ever-present movement of this three-part, shared relationship toward one another - working with one another, trusting one another, delighting in one another - provides the basis for why God created the world in vulnerability, and then made himself vulnerable in coming to it in Jesus. This imaged trinitarian relationship is where all healing begins for followers of Jesus (Soul of Shame page 125)."
Our life in hidden with Christ in God is a reality to be experienced! Meditating on these passages has helped me internalize God's love and bring it into my everyday life.
John 13-17
Hebrews 11-12
Colossians 2-3
Romans 6
I hope this help you and your conversations with your struggling friend.
Happy Thanksgiving!
John