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

by Curt Thompson

It seems that virtually every generation has to go about the process of discovering shame again for the first time. This all reminds us that for all of our hope in cultural progression, in the deepest recesses of our souls, we sense that that is an illusion.

To effectively enter into the healing of shame requires us to know the place it holds in our story as a human race, and that requires us to know which story, exactly, we believe we are living in. This book, therefore, is not just a book about shame. It is a book about storytelling—the stories we tell about ourselves (which of course include others and especially God), how we tell them and, more importantly, the story that shame is trying to tell about us.

Each of us lives within a story we believe we occupy. Not all of us are equally conscious of this. Depending on which story we believe is the big story, the one that unites all the other stories and is the real story about the world, shame will be understood and dealt with accordingly.

I believe we live in a world in which good and evil are not just events that happen to us but rather expressions of something or someone whose intention is for good or for evil. And I will suggest that shame is used with this intention to dismantle us as individuals and communities, and destroy all of God’s creation.

This, then, is a book about the story of shame. The one we tell about it, the one it tells about us, and even more so the one God has been telling about all of us from the beginning. Most important, this book also examines how the story of the Bible offers us a way not only to understand shame but also to effectively put it to death, even if that takes a lifetime to accomplish. But putting shame to death is not simply about addressing it as a deeply destructive emotional and relational nuisance. For we cannot speak of shame without speaking of creation and God’s intention for it. From the beginning it has been God’s purpose for this world to be one of emerging goodness, beauty and joy. Evil has wielded shame as a primary weapon to see to it that that world never happens.

Consequently, to combat shame is not merely to wrestle against something we detest. It is to do that very thing that provides the necessary space for each of us to live like God, become like Jesus and grow up to be who we were born to be.

Shame is a primary means to prevent us from using the gifts we have been given.

One of the purposes of this book is to emphasize that what we do with shame on an individual level has potentially geometric consequences for any of the social systems we occupy, be that our family, place of employment, church or larger community.

One way to approach its essence is to understand it as an undercurrent of sensed emotion, of which we may have either a slight or robust impression that, should we put words to it, would declare some version of I am not enough; There is something wrong with me; I am bad; or I don’t matter.

although the description of our experience of shame is often couched in words, its essence is first felt. Though I may say, “I should have been better at that” or “I’m not good enough,” the power of those moments lies in our emotional response to the evoking stimulus, be that a comment, a glance or a recollection of that day in third grade when your teacher pointed out in front of the rest of the class that you weren’t that bright.

by shame I am not talking about something that necessarily requires the intensity of extreme humiliation. Rather, it is born out of a sense of “there being something wrong” with me or of “not being enough,” and therefore exudes the aroma of being unable or powerless to change one’s condition or circumstances.

the felt sense that I do not have what it takes to tolerate this moment or circumstance.

he worried about what people would think of him if they knew about how much he worried.

it was not until we began to explore the nature of his experience as one that was felt, sensed and imaged as much as it was thought that he began to gain some traction in overcoming his problem.

I won’t be able to figure out what to do if the work starts to drop off.

Sooner or later I’m going to be found out to be the fraud I am.

I do not have what it takes. When it will count most, I will not be enough.

shame leads us to cloak ourselves with invisibility to prevent further intensification of the emotion.

his father’s opportunity to criticize his ideas—all in the name of needing to make sure Stephen’s thinking was sound about everything. Eventually this gave birth to not only a way of studying but also living in general that made the management of feeling “not smart enough” his number one emotional priority. Given his otherwise amiable and kind demeanor, no one would have guessed the degree to which he covertly lived in the midst of his shame.

Isolation and disconnection are natural consequences of hiding and resisting reengagement.

I need the community in order for my mind to be integrated, and with a more integrated mind I will be more able to work toward a more integrated community, which reinforces the cycle. Shame both actively dismantles and further prohibits this process of integration, leading to disconnection between mental processes within an individual’s mind as well as between individual members within a community.

The work required to overcome the inertia of shame and turn in a posture of vulnerability toward someone else can initially feel overwhelming.

it is helpful to remember that part of shame’s power lies in its ability to isolate, both within and between minds. The very thing that has the power to heal this emotional nausea is the reunion of those parts of us that have been separated.

We fear the shame that we will feel when we speak of that very shame. In some circumstances we anticipate this vulnerable exposure to be so great that it will be almost life threatening. But it is in the movement toward another, toward connection with someone who is safe, that we come to know life and freedom from this prison.

In Anatomy of the Soul I explored interpersonal neurobiology and its intersection with Christian spiritual formation.

the mind is as relational as it is embodied. By this I mean that the very emergence of the mind’s capacity to do what it does is crucially dependent on the presence of relationships. From the day we enter the world, our neurons are firing not only out of the depths of genetically influenced patterns but also in response to the myriad of social interactions we sense and perceive when we encounter other people.

Daniel Siegel conceived the expression “interpersonal neurobiology” in his landmark work The Developing Mind. In his later work, Mindsight, he has described nine different domains or functions of the mind and how their integration contributes to robust mental health. Integration, therefore, refers to the growth and maturation of each domain in its ability to do what it is designed to do, while simultaneously linking with other domains. Thus they are in fluid communication with each other.

the nine domains of the mind as described by Siegel are as follows.

Consciousness refers to our general level of awareness of what we are sensing, perceiving, feeling, thinking and doing at any given moment.

Vertical. Our brains develop from the bottom up; that is to say, our brain stem (responsible for our heart and respiratory rates, appetite, sleep–wake cycle, elements of sexual arousal, and our flight or fight response, to name a few) develops first, followed by our limbic circuitry (one particular area where a great deal of what we perceive as emotion emerges), followed by our neocortex (the part of the brain responsible for processing sensory input from within our body and the environment, making decisions, reflection, logical processing, concrete creativity, the capacity to employ restraint, and consideration of consequences for our actions, just to name a very few).

Horizontal. The brain also develops laterally as two halves, the right and left hemispheres, with the right’s growth in connection of its neurons tending to outpace the left’s in the first eighteen to twenty-four months of life, the left quickly beginning to catch up soon after.

Memory. Memory is, among other things, as much about anticipating the future as it is about recalling the past. We remember things in order to predict what our futures will be like:

Narrative. As our minds develop, eventually we try to make sense of our lives. We take the input from our awareness of our conscious, vertical, horizontal and memory domains, and begin to tell our stories, with most of that content being nonverbal and nonconscious in nature.

State. The phrase state of mind, as it turns out, represents a real, embodied phenomenon. Neuroscientists think of mental states as being highly correlated with specific neural network activity.

Much of what creates trouble for us in life is related to our unexpected movement from one state to another or our inattentiveness to that type of transition.

Interpersonal. For all that convinces me that my mind is limited to “me,” the truth remains that a great deal of my mind’s activity is wrapped up with thinking about or interacting with other people’s minds.

Temporal. As far as we know, humans are the only creatures who have the capacity to reflect on their past and their future.

Transpirational. Siegel coined transpirational to refer to the process of attending to the preceding eight domains simultaneously.

In the same manner that God intends that our minds grow in maturity and connection, just as we do with each other, it is one of shame’s primary features to disrupt and dis-integrate that very process, functionally leading to either rigid or chaotic states of mind and behavior, lived out intra- and interpersonally.

we see that the more we practice firing neurons in a particular way, the more easy it is to activate that particular pathway, and thus the more entrenched those patterns become, desirable or undesirable though they may be.

Neuroplasticity is the feature of flexible adaptation that makes possible the connection (or pruning) of neural networks and thus the formation and permanence of shame patterns. And attention is the function that drives the movement of neuroplasticity.

Attention is the engine of the mind’s train that pulls along the rest of the functional cars. Ultimately we become what we pay attention to, and the options available to us at any time are myriad, the most important of which being located within us.

Depending on how her parents approach her, the baby will attach in a relatively secure or insecure fashion. To the degree that parents have done the necessary work to develop their own integrated minds, they will be able to foster secure attachment in their child.

Secure attachment is fostered in environments in which there is a premium placed on empathy, attunement, mindfulness and the proper setting of limits—features

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.

Not surprisingly, therefore, our patterns of attachment deeply influence the way we experience our relationship with God. For he has to deal with the same brain that we do; he engages the same proclivities we have for avoiding or being anxious about the intimacy of relationships. It is not as if we get to put our brains, which are wired in a particular way through our attachment patterns, on the shelf and somehow draw on a separate one when it comes to dealing with God. He comes to the same set of neural networks that our friends, parents, spouse, children or enemies do.

One of the important features of the mind that emerges from our attachment processes is not just that but how we tell stories.

We recall that integration is a contingent process, one in which the mind of the child is working interdependently and in response to the intentions of the adult, a process out of which joy emerges. This joy circles back to reinforce the positive anticipation of further interaction between the parent and child. It is also noteworthy that this affective response of joy is not solely isolated within the child’s mind, but is shared.

As children age the nature of their curiosity, exploration and creativity naturally becomes more complex. To the degree that joy precedes and follows this growth, established in the matrix of secure attachment, integration of the highest order ensues.

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