Cavman Considers

Shame is one of the hidden plagues upon our soul. It affects so much of our lives but goes unnoticed by the ordinary eye. After our intensive counseling this summer, I decided to read The Soul of Shame: Retelling the Stories We Believe About Ourselves by Curt Thompson on the heels of reading Tired of Trying to Measure Up in the fall. While these books address the same issue, they have a very different focus. Jeff VanVonderen is a pastor and counselor but Thompson is a doctor. There is more here about neurobiology. As a Christian, he does incorporate Scripture. He doesn’t address shame systems like VanVonderen, though he does address the need for community in shame resilience (he does draw on Brené Brown). VanVonderen is focused more on how others shame us while Thompson on the internal experience of shame. He does this through the “stories we believe about ourselves”. We don’t always recognize the power of those stories, but they are there.

Overall, this was a very informative book. I started using the workbook. In addition to Brown, he draws on David Benner, Daniel Siegel and Silvan Tomkins among others. Theologically he brings in Lesslie Newbigin, C.S. Lewis and N.T. Wright. Thompson is seeking to integrate what we new about the biology of the mind (common grace) and the soul from Scripture and theology. This will obviously not synch with those into neuthetic counseling. He also sprinkles in a healthy does of people’s stories to help us “see”.

This is a book I want to give to a few people I know. I think it would help them begin to sort out aspects of their lives. Thompson does not offer a miracle cure, nor a quick fix. He approaches this as a problem we will fight til we die. As a result, it could be framed in terms of “being transformed by the renewing our of minds”, creating new neural pathways which takes time. It also requires saying ‘no’ to the old pathways, refusing to go down that road again.

The Story That Shame Is Trying to Tell

Shame “is everywhere and there is virtually nothing left untainted by it.” It is connected to sin which obviously ruins everything. Shame is like colored glasses affecting how we view everything: self, body image, marriages and even our politics. Addressing the shame in our lives seems so incredibly difficult. It is like trying to contain water in our hands.

“Though unpleasant, its interpersonal neuro-biological effects are fascinating, while it simultaneously bends and twists our narratives into painful story lines.”

To heal we must “know which story… we believe we are living in.”

We inhabit stories. We ask others to tell us their story. Like the Bible, our life is a story made up with many shorter stories. Like the Bible, those stories are connected. Unlike the Bible, we often hide some of the most important stories.

If we live in a story of evolutionary naturalism shame is interest, but is mostly just a form of “emotional nausea.” But if we look at it within a biblical worldview, we can see that Evil leverages shame to move us toward sin.

“But 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.”

Shame is a tool. I think it can be used by God, who uses crooked sticks, to draw us into relationship with Him. But it is most often a took in the hands of the Evil One to destroy people and communities. It is part of his arsenal to destroy creation. We are mostly on the same page. However I see shame as a byproduct of sin along with guilt. It is part of the misery.

Thompson sees it as “the emotional weapon that evil uses to (1) corrupt our relationships with God and each other, and (2) to disintegrate any and all gifts of vocational vision and creativity.” He sees shame, not pride and FOMO, as the instrument Satan used to lead Eve and subsequently Adam into sin. “It is both a source and result of evil’s active assault on God’s creation.” I can track with that to a degree, particularly in thinking of addiction. Shame is used to get us to commit additional sin. We try to relieve of the symptoms of shame, but end up deepening our shame.

Since shame is about how we view ourselves, and others view us, since we are relational beings, to heal our shame “requires our being vulnerable with other people in embodied actions.” Thompson lets us know that he will not “address the distinctives that pertain to shame cultures, shame-honor cultures or shame societies vis-à-vis guilt cultures.” He also won’t address the degree to which shame can be a good thing, keeping us from doing evil.

Our Problem with Shame

Because we are interpersonal beings, unaddressed shame can set communities on fire. This is precisely one of the ways Evil uses shame.

Thompson speaks much about creativity. As made in God’s image we were meant to be creative in “subduing and ruling” creation. We take messes and bring some form of glorious order to them. Shame blocks our creativity, growth and flourishing.

Shame is more than emotion. We are not resolving the issue by becoming stoic and emotionless like Mike Heck. Many of our negative emotions are rooted in shame. We can respond to shame with anger to ward off that feeling of unworthiness or incompetence. Not every angry moment, but some.

“… an unending loop is created: sensations and feelings beget thoughts that in turn strengthen the felt experience. And so we see that shame is certainly formed in the world of emotion, but it eventually recruits and involves our thinking, imaging and behaving as well.”

Shame, like anger, is connected with judgment. This is not referring to discerning right from wrong, but the context Jesus noted in the Sermon on the Mount, that of condemnation. This attitude is so prevalent in our thinking we don’t even recognize it most of the time. Shame also turns that critical spirit on ourselves. We can also get locked into the loop of feeling shame because we feel shame. And round and round we go.

“... the fundamental neurobiology of the experience of shame disintegrates different neural networks and their corresponding functions within each individual brain, isolating them, causing the mind to be decreasingly flexible in its capacity to adapt to its environment.“

He’s setting us up for the next chapter. Shame affects our brains. We become less flexible in our ability to adapt. We get “stuck in ruts!” Community is important to help us identify those ruts and begin to think differently to change those networks.

I often think of The Hunger Games book Mockingjay when Peeta was brainwashed. He has been given false memories by the capital. They develop the game of “real not real” to begin to remove false memories and affirm true ones. We suffer from false narratives (loser! stupid!) that need to be replaced with true narratives, especially our gospel identity (Loved! Accepted!).

How Shame Targets the Mind

Shame is rooted in lies. Shame is rooted in our minds.

Thompson defines the mind. Or tries to. He uses the language of interpersonal neurobiology (IPNB). It is “a fluid, emerging process that is both embodied and relational, whose task is to regulate the flow of energy and information.” Our minds are always at work, like sharks. We sense, feel, think, act, imagine. This is both consciously and unconsciously. Both awake or asleep.

Our minds are a combination of nature and nurture; genetics and experiences. Electrochemical communication flows from neuron to neuron. Information is the meaningful perceptions through that electrochemical communication.

“Shame has a tendency to disrupt this process of “regulating the flow of energy and information ” by effectively disconnecting various functions of the mind from one another, leaving each domain of the mind as cut off from one another as we feel ourselves to be disconnected from other people.“

We literally shut down at times. A healthy mind is integrated, all of the spheres of the brain function properly and information flows properly between them. Shame (like trauma) interrupts the flow of information. There is a ton of information here I won’t try to summarize even though he’s summarizing information from his book The Anatomy of the Soul. Biology matters and shame messes up our biology. It hijacks our brains just like anger.

He gets into neuroplasticity, a property of neurons allowing for connections between spheres of the brain. The more we use certain neural networks, the more easily they activate and become more permanent. They become well-worn paths. They become part of the default of our internal operating system.

God, who created us this way, inspired Paul to speak of renewing our minds in a passage Thompson quotes. It is physical change in our bodies that changes how we think and act. Our minds must be renewed by the Word. Those well-worn paths must be interrupted. We need to pay attention to different things, placing value on new things.

Thompson also speaks of the primacy of emotion in a way that reminds me of Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory in which our emotional responses are then justified by reason. Shame takes a slight, nurses it to significance and we are derailed. We need to get to the feeling beneath the self-talk. We need to return to the present but shame tries to keep us trapped in the self-talk, like a broken down car on the side of the road, unable to move forward.

Shame is also about attachment, or rather the loss of attachment. Those false narratives are centered on the loss of attachment through incompetence, ignorance, failure etc. We begin to believe that our acceptance is on the line with every mistake or failure. We don’t experience secure attachment rooted in love, but insecure attachment rooted in performance of some kind (wealth, beauty, athletics, knowledge- think of the cliches in school).

Joy, Shame and the Brain

Thompson gets a bit theological again pondering the chief end of man. He refers to the Westminster Short Catechism, Tolstoy and Lewis to get at joy. We were created to enjoy (and glorify) God. Shame is a joy stealer, a joy destroyer. With secure attachment, difficult times don’t destroy joy. With insecure attachment our joy is always threatened by difficult times.

Made in the image of God we were made to find joy, in part, through curiosity and creativity. Feeling secure in the world permits us to explore and create. Shame, robbing us of security, robs us of curiosity and creativity. It short circuits joy as a result.

“… shame… is, rather, our system’s way of warning of impending abandonment, although we do not think of it in those terms, and certainly not at very early ages. … we tend to respond to it by relationally moving away from others rather than toward them, which experiencing within our own minds a similar phenomenon of internal disintegration.“

Sound familiar? Probably does. You fear abandonment, or at least emotional distance, over slights. Disintegration is a great way to think about it. We shut down, fall apart. It is like getting dumped.

“I am not able to think coherently, and my logical thought processes, which usually help me make good choices, are unavailable to regulate my right brain, from which all of the emotion is pouring.”

Too often we don’t realize the shame behind this in ourselves, or others. I wish people were more perceptive about this very common problem. “You are experiencing shame. You are not going to be abandoned.” Of course, sometimes people say no one is out to get you, but reject you thereby affirming the message of shame. Shame’s bleak, fatalistic prediction becomes reality.

The Story of Shame You Are Living

We are often disconnected from our own life stories. This means that the events that shape and motivate us are often unknown to us. We can suppress them. We lack awareness and therefore can’t see the source of our symptoms.

“Shame wants to alter our stories by telling its own version, one that is sure to bring trouble wherever it goes.”

We seek to create meaning for events, even if we don’t realize it. We are often unaware of it, doing it unconsciously. But sometimes we are like figure skater Nancy Kerrigan crying out “Why?!” when someone takes a bat to your leg.

We can’t see the lies for what they are. We can’t easily exchange that long-accepted lie for the truth. His distinguishes between macroscopic and microscopic narratives. Whether one holds to creation or evolution is a macroscopic narrative that shapes all of life. Microscopic narratives are smaller, but no less potent at times. They are more personal.

Here Thompson introduces the shame attendant. This was a very helpful concept for me.

“One way to envision shame is as a personal attendant … a completely devoted attendant attuned to every sensation, image, feeling, thought and behavior you have. … your shame attendant’s intention is not good, is not to care for you but rather to infuse nonverbial and verbal elements of judgment into every moment of your life.”

Shame, he says, is like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The attendant is like a voice in our heads, interpreting the events, feeding the fear. It is the voice saying, “I told you so.” I wonder about whether there is a demonic element at work here. Not possession, but influence. Our enemies include the flesh, the world and the devil and all three can contribute to the functioning of the shame attendant. Sometimes we need to tell it to “Shut up!”

Shame and the Biblical Narrative

Shame is part of the biblical narrative. We meet it in Genesis 3 and it is woven through the rest of Scripture.

Shame is connected to vulnerability. Shame flees vulnerability, hates vulnerability. It makes coverings of fig leaves. Evil wants to isolate us and uses shame to do it. Thompson thinks (and I disagree) that shame “is the emotional feature out of which all that we call sin emerges.” I’m still processing this idea that she was deceived into thinking she was not enough.

He does provide a caution not to “project our own psychological interpretations, where it is not warranted, into any story in which we are not direct participants, not least that of Scripture.”

He does begin in Genesis 3 as Satan deceives Eve to shift her faith from God to self. When we do we are disappointed or put to shame. They experience this realizing they are naked, vulnerable, in the presence of another sinner. They didn’t feel safe around one another. Satan has disrupted the relationship between them and God, one another and creation.

“The work of shame can become so socially embedded after years and generations of practice that we are completely unaware of how we passively support the mistreatment of the other.”

It is not amusing to me that the cultural revolution used the chant of “Shame! Shame!” to justify the mistreatment of those who rejected it. We see similar things now. It should not be used to undermine law and order.

In his section on “downloading the virus” I expected to find something about original sin, perhaps even covenant headship. No, sadly. Shame is part of the curse passed down in our corrupt nature for all born of ordinary generation because they are under the headship of Adam (Rom. 5). The closest he comes is “burdened with the ancient code that we received from our first parents.” Close but unclear. He’s mostly focused on how we hide just like Adam and Eve. We also hide parts of ourselves from ourselves. We feel too much shame. We don’t disclose those parts to anyone. We are known, but not fully known by any but God Himself.

“We inhabit a world in which we have inherited, genetically, epigenetically, generationally and culturally, the tendency to hide in response to the fear that is evoked by awakening our vulnerability.“

He hints at the solution which he’ll explore more in the next chapter: relationship.

“The solution lies, ironically, in doing the very thing that shame convinces us is the most dangerous, threatening act we could commit.“

Shame’s Remedy: Vulnerability

To be vulnerable is to feel like Adam and Eve that day: naked and ashamed. It is to feel exposed to others. We all have had the dream of being naked or nearly so in front of others in the wrong context. Well, I don’t. Mine are about the inability to fix a problem that delays the worship service. And there is always a bigger than usual crowd. There is always the danger of rejection.

None of us is who we want to be. This is physically, emotionally, vocationally, relationally. We hid, and we also engage in self-protection. The only way to heal from our shame is to bring it into relationship. Or as Steve Brown says, “Demons die in the light.”

Here is where I wish I could edit the book. He clearly hasn’t thought through or has rejected classical theism with the notion of the vulnerable God. As the God-man, Jesus was vulnerable. Being fully human Jesus was vulnerable. But God isn’t seeing as how God is impassible or unable to suffer. Yes, we speak of God as if He had emotions like us but He is unchanging (immutable). But the good news is that God did beat the bushes to find Adam and Eve, and Jesus was sent to find His people in the trees they hide in (oddly by being hung on a tree).

The only way to a deeper connection, a deeper relationship is self-revelation. That cannot only be the good, attractive parts of who we are. This is why betrayal hurts so much. You have invested in a relationship, shared yourself including unpleasant things and that person turns away and may even use those things against you.

Love necessarily involves being known and knowing another. God knows us fully, reveals Himself to us, and in Christ fully receives all who come to Him. This is the secure attachment that enables us to form other secure attachments.

We don’t need to share all with all. Be wise but be known by someone. We also don’t need the “grand gesture” that so often sets us up for reject because the other person doesn’t have similar feelings. But we put it all out there to be seen by others too. That is not what vulnerability is about.

Our Healing Cloud of Witnesses

Thompson brings us to Hebrews in this chapter. He uses the imagery of the great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us. He wants us to fix our eyes on Jesus because shame seeks to distract us.

But he also brings us to the baptism and temptation of Jesus. Jesus’ identity is affirmed by the Father, and then questioned by the Adversary. It is just like Eden again. He clings to what He knows. He responds with Scripture. This is not some kind of therapy but is facing the lie with the truth.

“As he listens to his Father’s voice reminding him who he is, Jesus remains intimately connected to his Father.”

We listen to one another, becoming more aware of how others experience us. Other vulnerable people will resonate with your story (unhealthy and protected people won’t). We have to begin to “hunt down” our shame, discover where it hides. We need to pay attention to the work of our shame attendant, not feel more shame but to scorn it, disregard it as Jesus did the shame of the cross.

We do this most effectively in a committed group of people. This is what life groups, community groups etc. are meant to be like. Vulnerable and accepting. In the past I’ve tried to model this. It failed as most people continued to hide behind a facade, and eventually kicked me out. And this lead us to …

Redeeming Shame in Our Nurturing Communities

Thompson addresses our families of origin (first families) and how shame is expressed or how we twist relatively unimportant comments into huge things. It often isn’t obvious. It could be the hard to please parent that communicates unknowingly that you are not enough. It is the distant parent who says without words that you are not worth getting close to. He gets into our attachment patterns.

My goal is not to go deeper in this. I hope you find this a book that would be helpful to read. I plan to read it again. This is a book worth discussing with others (there is a discussion guide in the back of the book as well as a separate workbook. This is not a book about the theology proper. It is a book that integrates, in a good way, neurobiology and the biblical narrative so we can see how shame is an attack on our dignity as image bearers, and that in the gospel God provides what is needed to walk the path toward wholeness or integration.