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

by Curt Thompson

The listeners in these groups are not merely empathically feeling something on behalf of the speaker, their role being limited to that of sounding boards, but they also are responding to what they are sensing within themselves about their own story, even without their knowing it at first. In this way we see how telling the truth about our lives—movement in and of itself—begets movement in those who are listening, evokes curiosity and consideration in others about their own brokenness, helping others to knit together different functional parts of their minds and helping them to make sense of things that heretofore have eluded them. This movement is terminally threatening to shame.

it moves people to greater places of connection to and greater integration with one another while each member simultaneously experiences enhanced integration within his or her own mind.

This is what Jesus did—and does—with shame. He seeks it out and does not blink in its presence. He does not pretend it is not there. In the end he did not shy away from crucifixion but approached it head-on, and then scorned, disregarded, despised the shame that it represented.

As we become more acquainted with the shame attendant in each of our individual lives, we see that the whole of shame is larger than the sum of its parts, with each group, no matter its makeup of persons, having its own corporate shame attendant. We push back against the inertia of systemic shame through the weight of a body of people who are collectively engaging in trusting confession, reminding each other of the “great cloud of witnesses.”

Which leads to a second discovery. Because shame is an embodied affect, we need more than facts in order to undermine

Third, we assume that whenever shame is dealt with properly, all interested parties will be happy about it. Our story from John 9 reminds us that this is not always the case.

We want to “know.” And to know in this case is as much about power as it is about knowledge. Power enables us not only to cope with our deep awareness of weak vulnerability, but also eliminates that weakness from our consciousness.

Though we usually think of learning as the acquisition of knowledge, we also acquire knowledge for the power it grants us. But acquiring knowledge depends on admitting that we do not know many things, that we need help from others in order to learn. Learning, in fact, is a declaration of vulnerability. We think nothing of this as young children; in fact, we are completely unaware of it. As we grow older, however, we become more distressed. We fear in the future we will be found to not know enough, to have not worked hard enough, to have not scored well enough. We will not be enough. To admit in our culture that we do not have our lives neatly packaged and wrapped, that we are a mess, that we need help from someone else is tantamount to blasphemy. To admit that we do not know something, are not good at something or have made a mistake—to be vulnerably known—is not one of our best skill sets.

As learners, we live as vulnerable creatures who need the presence of others in order for our education to foster an entire panoply of new objects of goodness and beauty.

Curiosity depends on being relationally safe (which assumes physical safety). And relational safety rests ultimately on the experience of being known. When we sense the safety engendered by being in the presence of someone we can trust, we are launched into new areas of interest.

These dialogues offer space to discuss where people feel vulnerable or weak—the inevitable nakedness that a child, employee or congregant might be feeling.

When we hear praise only for having been successful, a curious thing begins to happen in our mind. We begin to associate feeling good with success. Of course, the problem is that we will not always be successful—and we know this, or at least common sense allows us to suspect this.

For one thing, we are demonstrating empathy when we acknowledge that the work someone is doing is challenging and that we appreciate the effort.

Thus far we have explored the importance of close engagement within our biological and spiritual families as a means of being known and how that enhances our capacity for creativity. We have also seen how empathy strengthens our resilience and willingness to persevere in the face of challenging obstacles.

These ideas speak of a God of action, not of stasis. A God who asks open-ended questions such as “Where are you?” not merely questions with one right answer. And this is not good news for shame, if we are willing to consciously identify its presence and take the proper action to disregard

At issue is that knowing, which represents the necessary information about how things work, is always in service to being known, which represents the relationships for which all of that information matters.

Here, vocation refers to all I do that requires sustained, repeated effort in stewarding the gifts God has given me, gifts that exist in multiple realms of life.

shame will not allow us to listen without bringing its dissonance to bear in every way it can.

And with each act of joyful creation—right down to the diaper we change in the middle of the night—we proclaim the gospel. This can be done more directly when we speak the name of Jesus, but is often told even more powerfully when told obliquely, like all the best novels and movies.

When we resist the disintegration customary of the soul of shame, one byproduct is that we establish space for enhanced creativity. For when the mind is more integrated, it is less distressed.

But shame has a way of translating different into the sense of better or worse. To the degree that shame has a foothold in my heart, I can unconsciously react to difference with judgment directed either at the other or at myself.1 Even when I am consciously aware of and accept the idea that different people have different tasks, those very structures can activate any latent nidus of shame, especially when things go wrong in a community, and for Henry, things were going very wrong.

attention, memory, emotion, attachment—flexibly

As followers of Jesus, it is imperative that we routinely do things that help us remember not only which story we are part of but that our story is reflected by our being part of a community.

“I don’t need you!” This is essentially what our brains say every time we offer even the slightest hint of contempt.

God intends to move us from immaturity to maturity, from disintegration to integration, from places where shame hides to where it, being brought into the light, can be disregarded. Then our attention will be drawn to knowing even as we are known.

In other words, we will be aware of (know) God, others and ourselves in the same manner as we experience God’s awareness of us.

Toward that end we need to pay attention to the things that are the summation of our lives: faith, hope and love. To live faithfully is to trust, to deeply attune to the presence of the Holy Spirit in whom we live and move and have our being. As we live faithfully, we actively imagine that he joyfully delights in being in our presence, and that all we do, we do with God, mindful that we live in dependence on him and each other.

Note the progression from suffering to perseverance to character to hope, and hope of this sort does not put us to shame. In the story the Bible tells, hope is not magic. It does not appear out of thin air on our emotional doorstep. It requires effort to develop. We must do the sometimes painfully hard work of perseverance, of looking at shame repeatedly and disregarding it repeatedly. In so doing the resilience

of character—the flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized and stable states of integration—emerges as the byproduct of our transformation, which enables us to remember a different future.

This is how shame works, viral in nature as it is. It creates a deep fear of vulnerability. When our response is to retreat and hide, working harder to demonstrate our impenetrability, shame spreads to other regions. Not unlike what happens if an abscess is not lanced, the infection spreads to other tissue through the most undefended path.

Moreover, I want to encourage you, despite your fear, to enter into this life of telling a different story than the one shame wants you to believe. I do so because I know from my own experience that it is worth