Shedding Shame

New Ways for a New World #2

When devastating things happen in the world, I know how to process with my friends, family, and community, but I’m never quite sure what to do publicly. Do you know this feeling? I want to post something, say something, do something, but it often doesn’t feel right. I don’t want to be performative, invite trolls, or hold people’s B.S. responses. But I feel so mad and sad and disgusted and want to share that, too. Do you see how many I’s are in this sentence?

Renee Good was murdered this week by ICE thugs in Minnesota in a horrible tragic way in front of her wife. We are being gaslit by this administration’s response. It’s dirty, rotten, awful.

And here I am spinning around on all my I’s?

That’s what shame does to us–it turns us against ourselves, makes us doubt, destabilizes us, wastes time in our minds, and leads us on endless I loops.

When it comes to shame, drawing back to these two simple concepts have helped me the most:

1. Brene Brown says the difference between shame and guilt is this: Shame = “I am bad” and Guilt = “I did something bad.”

2. My therapist (who helped save me from the shame of my son’s suicide) shared this game-changing thought: “Shame is a false sense of control”. It’s easier to feel shame than a whole bunch of other feelings–grief, rage, powerlessness, loneliness–so we use it as a go-to.

As I have navigated these last few very churny days, I find it fascinating how quickly I can go to “I am bad, flawed, wrong, not enough, not who and how I should be” in any kind of dissonant situation. Through decades of time in recovery groups, therapy, and healing spaces, shouldn’t that reflex be completely gone? Nope, it doesn’t work that way.

I believe healing is shortening the time we stay stuck in ugly place. Now I have better tools to pull myself off the edge more quickly and back to this essential reminder for these crazy times: I’m just a human, wrestling with complex feelings and hard things in a world that makes everything very confusing.

And of course shame is a go-to as a “false sense of control” when we feel so powerless about so much!

Earlier this week I focused on the first practice of New Ways for a New World–Owning Our Agency. Today I wanted to circle back to why shedding shame is so crucial if we want to keep our heads above water and contribute to creating a better world.

Shame limits and holds us back.

Shame wastes time and energy that can be spent in such better ways.

Shame chips away at our security.

Shame immobilizes us.

In these wild and weird times with so many people deconstructing from formerly held beliefs (and feeling shame that we ever believed or voted or ascribed to certain ways), seeking healing, and wanting to advocate for and create a better world, we will have to get better at shedding shame.

Owning our agency, standing in our own truth and freedom, definitely folds into shedding shame. Part of owning our agency is actively rejecting the terrible messages many of us were taught through toxic theology–that we were born bad, our hearts can’t be trusted, we aren’t anything apart from certain beliefs—or untangling from shame-centered families, relationships, and systems. While it wasn’t our fault we got taught it, it’s now our responsibility to untangle from it and refuse to let it guide us anymore even when it tries to.

Other ways I see shame really messing with us:

• The feeling of “not enough” is so pervasive–not a good enough parent, friend, activist, ______ (you fill in the blank)

• We have a desire to advocate, support, “do something” in the face of so much injustice, but because the onslaught is relentless, we are constantly falling short.

• A pervasive, heavy feeling of having our whiteness, our Christian-ness, our ______ (whatever it is) be the cause of where we’re at today.

• As we age, wrestling with what we could’ve, should’ve, would’ve done but didn’t.

Ugh, these things can really paralyze us and choke off life and possibility if we’re not careful. My hope for me, for anyone who knows these feelings, is to bring it to the light and do what we can to shed shame. Some things that might help:

• Practice right-sizing ourselves, a 12 step recovery principle. We’re not too big and important, and also not a lowly worm–just human, doing the best we can with what we have (more on that in Turning Over Tables)

• Quit comparing ourselves to false images or expectations–social media is such a detriment to this, and it’s up to us to stop scrolling (easier said than done). Getting off of our screens and outside in nature helps–the trees don’t lie.

• Process where the shame messages came from. For me, on this dumb one the past few days, it’s some kind of false message about having to be good, say the right things, do the right things and make sure people know it.

• Get out of our heads and into our bodies through movement, volunteering, connecting with kindreds and community in tangible ways.

Shame separates us from love.

It separates us from our truest true which is good, unique, and is needed in this world.

It separates us from each other.

And that’s the last thing we need right now.

Shedding shame is our ongoing work, and it won’t be a one-and done ongoing and essential if we’re going to live freely, fully, and engaged in this new world. It makes me think of these words by Trisha Hersey in Rest as Resistance:

“Loving ourselves and each other deepens our disruption of the dominant systems. They want us unwell, fearful, exhausted, and without deep self-love because you are easier to manipulate when you are distracted by what is not real or true.”

Today, I am sending courage to all of us as we grieve, refuse to be gaslit and manipulated, practice shedding shame, own our agency, and do all we can to anchor in loving ourselves, others, and our honoring our truest true.

Next up on Monday on New Ways for a New World #3— Dismantling Binaries

With you from Colorado,

PS: In the middle of this churn-y week, there was also a sweet gift! The pre-order available of a project that I am so honored to be part of—Rachel Held Evan’s Braving the Truth: Essential Essays for Reimagining Faith—edited by Sarah Bessey. Oh, I miss Rachel’s voice right now and think this project will help many. You can preorder now and it’s releasing February 24th. My reflection is centered on her post called “I Am Ashamed” and I didn’t even make the connection to the timing until I am writing these words here! Yeah, here’s a little snippet of what I wrote: “What would she be posting today? Who would she make mad today? (a sure sign that she was on the right track). What would she be calling us to? What prophetic comfort would she offer to help us straighten our backs and still hold our heads high?”