The Soul of Shame: Retelling the Stories We Believe About Ourselves

by Curt Thompson

Once shame begins its march from a small slight, growing to geometric expansion, my attentional mechanism goes offline and remains so. Reversing this shaming event is as much about getting my attention back on track as anything else.

emotion holds a place of primacy in the realm of human behavior. By primacy I am not implying that emotion is the most important of our mental functions, but rather that it tends to be primal, or early in the course of our mind’s development.

The derivation of the word emotion includes its Latin root, a-motion, which means “to precede movement.” This suggests that whatever emotion is, it energizes and gives rise to human movement.

If attention is the ignition key of the mind, then emotion is the fuel in the tank the engine runs on.

This implies that what is most primal and potent about shame is its emotional nature. It certainly can emerge in response to information provided for us, and therefore it seems to have its origin in cognition, but its power lies in our felt experience of it.

of all the variables that encourage the development of secure attachment in a child, the single most powerful one is the degree to which the child’s parent has made coherent sense of his or her own story.8

For secure attachment is not primarily about the absence of pain but the presence of joy in the face of those challenging places. It is not about the absence of ruptures but the faithful repair of ruptures, even when repair seems beyond the reach of our imaginations.

The defining relational motif for humankind is not that we need to work as hard as we can, or at least harder than we are. It is not to do our best or to guarantee that our children will have a better life than we had. It is not about being right or the acquisition of power. Each of those (and other visions like them) play into the hand of shame’s anxiety. No—rather, we were created for joy. Not a weak and watery concept of joy that merely dilutes our sadness and pain. Rather it is the hard deck on which all of life finds its legs, a byproduct of deeply connected relationships in which each member is consummately known.

Joy then can be understood as the primary positive developmental affect in whose presence the process is grounded.

shame most primitively and powerfully undermines the process of joyful attachment, integration and creativity.

shame as a neurophysiologic phenomenon is not bad in and of itself. It is, rather, our system’s way of warning of possible impending abandonment,

Guilt is something I feel because I have done something bad. Shame is something I feel because I am bad.

In this sense guilt tends to draw my attention to another and is often accompanied by a desire to resolve the problem by being closer to him or her [admitting a wrongdoing, seeking and being offered forgiveness]. Shame, on the other hand, separates me from others, as my awareness of what I feel is virtually consumed with my own internal sensations.

neurodevelopmentally guilt stands on shame’s shoulders.

we can experience shame without guilt but are unlikely to experience guilt without shame.)

When shame appears, especially in malignant forms, we are often driven to a felt sense of stasis. Our mind feels incapable of thinking. We may feel literally physically frozen in place when experiencing extreme humiliation, and if we are able to move, we feel like going somewhere we can hide and remain hidden without returning to engage others.

Ethan’s father, who had grown up as the son of an angry alcoholic, while affectionate with his children, on occasion was sarcastic or condescending, or displayed impatience when they made mistakes or were unable to perform tasks around the home as well or as quickly as he expected. And there were the brief vents of irritation that would catch everyone off-guard. Ethan’s mother tended to cover these episodes with comments such as, “Your dad has had a hard day” or “Don’t let that bother you; you know he loves you.” The problem was not just that these instances occurred (usually unpredictably) but that Ethan’s father rarely if ever apologized for his behavior. Hence, Ethan did not understand his story as one in which he had sustained terrible abuse. Rather, it illustrates how our experience of shame can form along a range of emotional states (from subtle and silent to grossly large and loud). For example, as Ethan knew, whenever he heard his father sigh when he was impatient with Ethan’s help, the message was clear: Ethan was not enough. Not fast enough, smart enough, experienced enough. Just not enough. These words were never spoken; rather, it was the undertone of the nonverbal communication that carried the weight of the message.

Again, we see that no matter how minor or overwhelming in its forcefulness, for Ethan, much like Jackie, shame is primarily sensed and felt as a shift in emotional tone.

There is no better place for shame to hide than in those stories in which it does not seem to be that prevalent.

Gradually it dawned on her that whenever she wanted his advice, he was willing to offer it, but she initiated the conversation. He did not pursue her.

two important features of being human. First, we can experience shame by virtue of what does not happen in our lives, in this case the lack of words and actions of affirmation on the part of Miriam’s father. Second, like any of us, Miriam received the message, albeit subtly, that she was at risk of being left if she did not work hard enough to prevent it.

storytelling is the feature that ultimately sets us apart from the rest of the earth’s creatures—and the feature that shame intends to most powerfully exploit in order to lay waste to any attempts we would make to join God in creating a world of goodness and beauty.

For if we believe we live in a world created by the God whose character and acts are found in the pages of the Bible, then shame is no mere artifact. It has purpose in a larger narrative, an interpersonal neurobiological instrument that is intentionally and skillfully used to distract and disrupt the story God is telling.

But others’ contribution to your narrative never stops. For even as we acquire language and mobility, growing in our independence and agency with the dawning awareness of our capacity to direct our own thoughts and respond to our own feelings, we are always interacting with other people. And their versions of the world—our world in particular—continue to shape and influence the way we understand and tell our unfolding narrative. First our parents, then teachers, friends, coaches, spouses, children, employers, employees and even panhandlers on the street are writing in the margins of our autobiographies. We are tempted to believe we are solo artists, but we are more like featured soloists in a symphony.

Shame interferes with good listening at every level and every opportunity. How many times have I, while in conversation with someone, found myself only superficially attuned to what he or she is saying as I prepare what I want to say, sensing that if I do not get to offer my contribution I will feel a lessening? We all know this moment. We do not realize that shame is at work via the sensory networks by which I feel the urgency to speak rather than listen. In this way, shame is a shared process whose mission is to disrupt connection between people.

Thus, if we tell ourselves, using imagery and sensations as much as words, that our life isn’t going anywhere, we literally wire our brain to continue in that pattern of storytelling. It becomes an embodied reality, and no amount of theological facts that state otherwise, apart from equally embodied action, will necessarily change the story’s outcome.

learned, part of the problem with shame and storytelling is that a great deal of my story is being told nonconsciously, albeit willfully.

its nature is that it will not necessarily present itself in the front and center of your story, but rather off to the side, distracting you just enough to be nettlesome but not to draw your attention to it so much that you might actually do something about it.

evil’s maleficent intent is wielded no more forcefully (yet subtly as part of its tactical prowess) than through the use of shame.

“Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame” (v. 25)? The writer has my attention. He could have chosen from an entire panoply of words or phrases to describe humankind’s emotional state at this point. He could have said the man and woman were naked and really happy (who wouldn’t be?), or they were naked and strong or confident, or they were naked and without fear or anger or sadness or disappointment or regret. And to be certain, all of these may have been true. With so many to choose from, why the emphasis on shame? It would seem that it is no accident.

The vulnerability of nakedness is the antithesis of shame. We are maximally creative when we are simultaneously maximally vulnerable and intimately connected, and evil knows this. To twist goodness into the seven deadliest versions of its opposite, shame is necessary and effective, and its virulence explicitly exploits our vulnerability.

the writer wants us to pay attention to shame not just because it happens to show up later but because of its central role in all that ends in a curse. It is the emotional feature out of which all that we call sin emerges. As such, in the biblical narrative when we experience shame, we are not simply encountering one of an array of possible emotions; rather we are engaging evil in its most fundamental mode of operation.

in order for us to doubt anything, at the moment we do we simultaneously put our trust in something else.

Doubt, though concerned with facts, is not primarily about them but rather about our emotional sensation of connection, security and confidence.

doubt is planted as a way to discredit not so much Eve’s rendition of the facts, which could easily be resolved by waiting for God’s next stroll through the garden. It is used to rupture relational connections. It is one thing to use doubt in the service of creating goodness and beauty, and of enriching relationships. It is quite another to do the opposite.

To be okay as a human is first and foremost about being connected to God and others. It is not ultimately about having enough information, skill, intelligence or experience. Neither is it about being youthful, svelte or ripped, nor having enough money, sex or power. And when doubt involves any of these, you can be confident that shame is the emotional feature that is deeply at work.

The discomfort that accompanies the early onset of doubt can foster this alteration of memory, and it happens all the time in our daily interactions. How many times have I changed my remembered version of an interaction with someone when my underlying sense of confidence has been shaken if only ever so slightly? This is a hallmark feature of shame’s activity. It reflects the distress of a disintegrating process

In stating flatly that the woman will not die, the serpent offers her a new rendition of the truth. A startling one, to be sure. But this is not merely a factual sleight of hand. To be told that you will be like God may seem like a good thing. I would love to hear that. But the subtle corollary to this idea is that, given the prohibition to the fruit of this particular tree, by implication God does not want you to be like him. God does not want you to have what he has. He does not want you to be as close and as connected to him as you might think he does. And by further implication, therefore, you are not as important as you think. You, as it turns out, are less than you think. You. Are. Not. Enough.

shame is primarily an emotion that undermines us not so much via our left-mode, rational processing but by eroding our felt sense of connection and safety, something that supersedes the linguistic, logical, linear, factual mode of mental activity. As such, in brain time, to be less than, to be inadequate, is felt, sensed and imaged long before we think it.

the serpent has no trouble talking about God rather than inviting the woman to have a conversation with God.

The serpent adds that Eve’s eyes will be opened by eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Notice that he does not say that she will open her eyes, an act of intention on her part, but rather that they will be opened by someone or something else. What irony, in seeking to become like God she seems to miss the point that it will require something outside of her to provide what she is looking for.

Here is where the primal emotional evocation of shame, from which proceeds all that we call sin, emerges. And all sin, all idolatry, all coping strategies in which I indulge are ways for me to satiate my hunger for relationship, my longing to be known and loved, my desire to be desired.

Hiding is the natural response to shame.

This is one of shame’s most powerful characteristics. When it lassos a group of people, shifting from its individual to corporate expression, shame’s energy and intensity expands geometrically, the whole of its presence becoming far greater than the sum of its individual parts. The group’s capacity for vulnerability shrinks, and the notion of being known disappears in favor of the need for protection from the very members that compose it.

God’s inquiry appears genuine. There is no immediate evidence that it is offered in an accusing manner: “I know what you’ve done, and now you have hell to pay!” Given the context of the whole story, especially the intimacy with which God approached his creation in Genesis 2, it is reasonable to assume that there may be urgency in his step and his voice, given his longing for connection with the couple and his awareness that it is already teetering on the brink of extinction, but accusation is not to be found.

Despite the fact that God quickly follows his who question with a what question, he approaches the problem as one that has its source primarily in the emotional context of relationship. He asks who informed the man and woman that they were naked. Is this not a nod to how our shame is relationally leveraged? An invitation to solve the matter together, relationally, rather than by themselves?

Our shame screams out in judgment of those closest to us.

The fingerprints of God’s intention cover every square inch of our experience. We thirst for deep connection in our families, churches and yes in our workplaces. We deeply desire, even if we are not conscious of it, to be able to explore new things without worrying about making mistakes. We want to walk into a room without the anxiety of not being attractive, interesting or funny enough. We want to go to school and learn because we yearn for discovery, not because we worry we won’t get into the best college, yet another blot on my record that reminds me I am not enough. We want to parent our children in ways that provide opportunity for growth without the understated, let alone blatant, message that they are not meeting our expectations. We want to tackle meaningful, hard conversations in our communities of faith about human origins or sexuality or economics without bracing against the specter of accusation. We long for our politicians to govern with curiosity, justice and mercy, rather than being governed by the fear of the shaming vulnerability of losing power. We long for people groups that have historically known nothing but enmity to peacefully create space for being known and leave the nuclear weapon of contempt outside the conversation.

In reality, vulnerability is not something we choose or that is true in a given moment, while the rest of the time it is not. Rather, it is something we are.

To be human is to be vulnerable.