the story shame wants to write
My eyebrows furrow. I hit snooze for the seventh time, letting out a child-like grunt, immediately flopping back onto my belly, hugging my pillow tight. My half conscious mind races, precisely calculating just how many minutes it will take to go from my bedroom to the bathroom to the kitchen to my car to my job. I can hardly greet my morning-person of a husband. I am grumpy and I can’t find my keys and the now-dry dishes on the drying mat stare me down and say, “Aren’t you going to put me away before you rush out of here”? I receive the same kind of stare from my devotional and journal, “You failed to open me this morning...again…”. It has become a trend these days— weeks, really. Coy says “have a great day” and I say, “thanks”. We exchange a quick embrace, a kiss, and I’m off.
I get in my car and my bluetooth decides to play a Tim Keller podcast and Kid’s Bop Monster Mash at the same time. Thanks, itunes shuffle. The noise mimics the chaos and roughhousing in my brain. My eyebrows furrow and I shake my head and I yell at my smartphone because it is being stupid and annoying. I try to calm myself, center myself, and pray, despite my grumpy-attitude that seems to have me paralyzed, unable to come up for air. I pull up to school, minutes to spare (literally though) before I greet my nest dwellers. They stagger in, sleepy eyed and smiley. They ask me lots of questions, questions I’ve answered 5 million times already, yesterday and the day before. I mumble to myself, “How is it that you can be so precious and so simultaneously annoying all at the same time?”
It’s early December which, for teachers, means it’s benchmark testing which means wacky schedules, rotating classes, and a whole lot of Go Noodle. Last week I was playing a movie while watching two other classes so the teachers could assess. I re-reminded kids to be quiet, scored DIEBLS booklets, and remained super frowny. It could have been the headache. It could have been the sounds of phlegmy coughs or snotty noses or “Mrs. Sellers, Mrs. Sellers, Mrs. Sellers”. One of my students tiptoed to my table and before a word came off her lips— I snapped, “WHAT!!!?” Her eyes went wide with shock. Then she erupted into laughter. She said, “I was just comin’ over to give you a hug.”
Cue the “Rachel you’re a butthole” track from the playlist entitled, “shame".
Lately, I’ve found myself out of sorts, short-tempered, frowny, agitated, unfocused and unpleasant. I am not happy with my morning habits, I am bored-ish with my work and eager to make a career path change, I am having an awful time concentrating, I still have a hard time accepting affection from my husband, the apartment is dirty and full of empty boxes beckoning me to assemble and pack them, and FOR THE LOVE, I just want to feel grounded and centered and joyful.
Shame has made quite the dramatic entrance these days— his attacks are targeted, fierce, and loud.
“Really, Rachel, get over yourself. You just think you have problems...you are privileged and have a really good life and nothing is actually “wrong” so get over it” (small digression, and we will dig more into this later— telling ourselves we shouldn’t be ashamed of the thing that is causing the shame only reinforces and deepens the shame— it perpetuates the cycle)
“You’re really just lazy. Getting up early isn’t that hard. You can do better than this.”
“I can’t believe you just snapped at a child like that?! Rachel, you’re disgusting. You probably just made them feel terrible about themselves. How does that make you feel now? You’re totally the reason that kid could need therapy later on…"
“You should go eat the whole pantry. Food will fix this pain. All the pretzels and chocolate and granola and peanut butter and bread and dried figs. Actually, you should restrict because you don’t deserve abundance or pleasure. Actually, no, just go eat everything in sight because then you’ll feel numb inside. You won’t have to endure the yucky feelings anymore."
Shame is loud and real and sometimes really difficult to identify, as much of its power lies in its ability to leave us in the dark—wading in feelings of powerlessness, anxiety, panic and/or frustration. Shame tells us that our present circumstances are insurmountable and that we have to endure the dark because it is where we belong and where we ought to stay.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been reading a book called, “The Soul of Shame: Retelling the Stories We Believe About Ourselves”, by Curt Thompson. I’ve been going through it slowly, taking notes along the way because it’s compelling and deep and tugs mightily at my soul. It’s also bringing up a lot of my own shit. So...what does it have to do with my mornings?
It has everything to do with them because my mornings these days have everything to do with a massive, lingering shame-storm, a terrorizing weather system that feels like its never going to pass.
Self-critical, shame-based thought patterns have woven themselves deep into my neurological world— my neural pathways. You may be familiar with the phrase “neurons that fire together, wire together”, and they do. Brain cells adapt and regenerate, thanks to neuroplasticity. The more we practice firing neurons (thoughts) in a particular way, the more easily they are to activate, and the more permanent they become. I’ve spent much of my life firing and listening to shame-based thoughts. They have actually been hardwired into my being and my thinking. Shame is stubborn and tenacious. It is also surmountable.
For shame was never meant to author our stories.
What has struck me most (so far) in Thompson’s book is how much he talks about the relationship between attention and emotion being key components to the healing and reversing of shame. He suggests that we become what we pay attention to and teaches that attention is the very things that both drives and enables our neuroplasticity. He refers to Romans 8:5-6, “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace”.
To have your mind "set on something”, he says, is the same as paying attention to it. If we look closely, we see Paul teaching the Romans that what we pay attention to double-backs and actually governs us! So, as Thompson concludes, the reversing of shame patterns has a whole lot to do with getting our attention back on track.
For shame was never meant to author our stories.
The reversing of shame patterns also has a whole lot to do with understanding our emotional lives. The most salient feature that our brain anticipates is our emotional state and what is most primal and potent about shame is its emotional nature. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a form of psychotherapy that helps people become aware of inaccurate or negative thinking and restructure it, is a common and effective form of talk therapy. CBT has helped me tremendously as it relates to restructuring my self-talk. But what exists underneath the self-talk? Emotions. Feelings. Changing self-talk is a crucial part of reversing shame patterns, but what about the residue— that lingering emotion and feeling that (usually) rises up, even after the self-talk has changed. Let me walk you through an example.
It’s easy for me to respond to shames remark, “You’re disgusting and lazy”, with, “Rachel, you’re human and you make mistakes and that is OH.KAY. You are not gross or lazy, you’re just having a bad moment and you’re allowed to have those. Be kind and compassionate to yourself right now.” It’s fairly easy—when you’re committed to doing the work— to respond to shames dramatic stories with reason and truth and rationality. It is severely more difficult, however, to negotiate the feelings of disgusting or lazy or worthless or failure. Why? Because shame is formed in the world of emotion, not language; sensations and feelings beget thoughts that strengthen our felt experiences.
But remember, and re-remember again and again and again,
Shame was never meant to author our stories.
To effectively and wisely begin to heal shame we have to understand neuroplasticity, the role of attention and the primacy of emotion, and— my favorite— the power of story. Thompson says, “Each of us lives in the story we believe we occupy.” I get chills down my spine because that truth resonates deep and it rattles my core. My mornings lately—the furrowed brows and frowns, the irritability and anxiety, the reminders of un-met standards and dirty dishes in the sink—are both causes and results of a giant shame-shit-storm. Often times the story I believe that I occupy is a story that requires me to hustle and protect and perform and numb and please and succeed. It is a story that teaches me that I have to achieve my worth because if I don’t, I will become unlovable and disappointing and a big-fat failure.
I hear my Maker whisper, “Daughter you were not made to live in that story—this is not the one that you occupy and live within. Do you not know that you are already free and beloved? You do not need to work for it, but to rest in it. Because the work you’re trying to achieve has already been accomplished. You are free to believe that you ARE what I call you—even…no…especially, on the hard days. You are loved, dear child, you are loved. Be wild, wild one; be free, free one; be unashamed, beautiful one.”
Shame was never meant to hold the pen—but— he lurks, desperate to steal it from the One who has penned us in His grand, redemptive narrative since the beginning of time. Shame seeks to add in words and phrases to an already perfected, completed story. His intention? To confuse and distract and distort the truth of who we are and the beauty that we are becoming.
Each of us lives in the story we believe we occupy and the story I believe I occupy is a story of a good, good Father who has rescued His daughter. He has rescued. He is rescuing. And He willrescue her— he will rescue me, again and again—from the grip of shame that was never meant to bind her.
When I feel uprooted by the winds of shame, I must practice resilience by re-reminding myself of the story I profess and the story that I know in my core that I belong to. Step one— the self-talk, the re-reminding. But what about the next step? What about dealing with the emotions, the place where shame really resides. I am not a counselor (yet) and I don’t know everything but here is what I think. We let the emotions rise and meet them with deep, deep compassion. Sometimes it looks like sobbing a deep, painful cry. Sometimes it looks like sitting with, even welcoming, emotions that are so uncomfortable that they make you want to escape your own skin. Sometimes it looks like paying attention to what really governs and controls us. Sometimes it looks like a mug of tea shared with a trusted friend or a spouse— this very act weakens the power of shame because we run from isolation, and in doing so, we are able to rest in the comfort of being known and being embraced. Sometimes it looks like getting honest— really honest— about our shame. Healing only comes when it is brought to the light; in order for something to be brought to the light, we have to get brave and explore the dark.
Shame is loud and real— it’s a real shit-head sometimes.
But it was never meant to govern us. Or write our stories. Or hold the power that it does to make us feel like we suck.
He has rescued. Jesus was nailed to a cross and we were chosen.
He is rescuing. He has given us the Spirit.
And He willrescue us from this grip of shame that was never meant to bind us— He is making all things new in His time.
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For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace // Romans 8:5-6