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

by Curt Thompson

unless leadership of an organization is open to curiosity, open to the idea that unless we are known, what we know doesn’t matter, and open to seeking where shame hides, exposing the reality of our naked, vulnerable selves, and disregarding the shame that wants us to hide, we will continue to repeat the interaction that took place in Eden,

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.

It is challenging to create a culture of vulnerability that encourages curiosity in a world so wrapped in shame. But curiosity is an important starting point. It begins in the home, with parents guiding their children’s natural inquisitiveness and interpreting the world for them as they go. Curiosity depends on being relationally safe (which assumes physical safety). And relational safety rests ultimately on the experience of being known.

What Dweck discovered is that an important predictor of long-term learning effectiveness is the praise of effort rather than outcomes.1 In other words, it will do a student (or a child at home or an athlete or my patient or a factory worker) more good when he or she hears something to the effect of “What you are doing is really difficult. I am pleased with how hard you are working at this.” Or “You did well—you must have put a great deal of effort in to your work.”

This is not to say that facts are unimportant to daily life (e.g., giving erythromycin instead of penicillin to a patient; a steel beam can hold only so much weight). But the learning process must create the necessary space for movement of our attention and openness to novelty. We tend to practice learning as a regurgitation of memorized facts rather than possible ideas. When the questions are directed toward facts alone, I pay attention to the narrow bandwidth of facts, closing myself off to a vast array of other possible questions and answers. Thus I fail to see goodness and beauty in places I do not look because the answer could not possibly be there. There is, for certain, only one right answer to the question. And here shame performs some of its most elegant work.

shame works to ruin the creative possibilities of every vocational endeavor by tainting the relationships those endeavors rest on.

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.

It is not always easy to know how to respond to the multiple callings we may hear, but one thing is sure: shame will not allow us to listen without bringing its dissonance to bear in every way it can.

In the multiple realms of vocational expression shame effectively plays its anticreation role. And the antidote lies in the process of vulnerably being known.

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. We then have more access to energy for creative endeavors, energy that was being used previously to manage and regulate shame’s interpersonal, neurobiological networks. In practical terms, the degree that we are able to ferret out shame in whatever vocational institution we occupy, whether parenting or piloting, we will be more effective and more creative in that domain, not least because we are working to reduce our fear of taking risks, fear rooted in our anticipation of making some relationally catastrophic mistake, fear fueled by shame.

But quite counterintuitively, as our IPNB models would also reflect, Paul turns the tables on shame, indicating that the body benefits when its fit and vital parts turn their attention to the more vulnerable parts, seeking them out to create space for them to contribute “indispensably” to the overall health of the body. Here, the IPNB perspective is told as a fundamental theme within the biblical narrative. To flourish, a mind or a community must turn its attention to where shame is hiding in order to create space for even greater growth, even in the way Jesus moves from his place in heaven to join us (Philippians 2:5-8).

It is a way, suggesting a path, suggesting movement, hinting at what he will eventually say, that, “love never fails.” It does not fail because it always has another move to make, another gesture toward connection. And there is no end to its movement. We never “arrive,” but rather are, and even in the new heaven and earth will be traveling, as C. S. Lewis bids us imagine, “further up and further in.”2 Where shame attempts to push us into static inertia, love bids us to move.

In this sense, love is less a noun than an adverb (i.e., lovingly), a word that describes the action of a verb, action taken at wisdom’s pace. And shame is all about stopping movement, shuttering conversation, crushing creative discovery, acting too quickly or too slowly for fear of making mistakes, and avoiding the repair of ruptures that are inevitable with the mobility of intersecting lives.

If I am the best math teacher, but don’t do it lovingly; if I develop the best app, but don’t do it lovingly; if I oversee the best children’s program of any church in my city, but don’t do it lovingly; if I pass important legislation in the Senate, but don’t do it lovingly; if I make as much money as possible for the shareholders of my company, but don’t do it lovingly—I am nothing. I gain nothing.

The point here, however, is that in many respects life is not that complicated. In any instant it boils down to microdecisions we make that generally move us in one of two directions: a more integrated, resilient life of connection with God and others, or a more disintegrated, separated, chaotic and rigid life. Every minute of every day we choose between shame and love.

Our shame attendant wants us to think, feel, sense and image that we are not enough, just as Gavin’s had, and just as evil did with Adam and Eve so long ago. It will tempt us to tell a story in which we are on the brink of abandonment and must do everything we can—on our own—to prevent that from happening. It will seek to divide and conquer our sensations, images, feelings, thoughts and behaviors from one another, leaving us in a disintegrated heap. It will reinforce itself by allowing us to feel ashamed for feeling shame in the first place. It will convince us that to trust others with our most precious feelings will be our emotional death.

Despite how hard the work can sometimes feel, it is worth it. Its worth it to know the liberation of retelling my story so very differently from the way shame would have it be told.