7: THE DECEPTIVE POWER OF SHAME
A DISTORTED WORLDVIEW IS COMPOSED of beliefs that attach themselves to our conscious thoughts and influence how we think about various life experiences. These messages produce any number of unhealthy emotions, most profoundly (and most elementally) the totalizing experience of shame. The lies empowered by toxic shame are corrected by what the Bible says is true about God, self, and others, but until they are confronted with this revelation, they retain their deceptive power. This is why shame, from the very beginning, has stood so firmly between human beings and their Creator.
Toxic shame condemns and rejects using lies about identity and worth. We are not speaking here about healthy, corrective shame regulation in the brain’s attachment system, which protects relationships. A little shot of shame is healthy, for example, after we are mean to someone we should love. Combined with truth, the little dose of shame-pain safeguards our cherished relationships. Healthy shame helps us learn to be our true selves—provided it comes with correction, not condemnation—and has an important function in our socialization and in improving our character.[1]
Jesus experienced shame without believing lies or accepting condemnation of himself (Hebrews 12:2). The apostle Paul uses healthy shame as a corrective (see 1 Corinthians 6:5; 15:34). He sees something wrong with people who do not feel healthy shame about sin (Philippians 3:19). Charles Manson, by contrast, diligently removed healthy shame from his followers so that they would mate, kill, and steal without remorse.[2] What we are discussing in this book is the toxic shame that comes from false beliefs.
Shame Damages the Heart
Shame researcher Brené Brown maintains that “shame is a core emotion—it strikes us at our center and radiates through every part of us.”[3] Sociologist Thomas J. Scheff argues that “shame is the master emotion of everyday life.”[4] Psychiatrist Curt Thompson takes it a step further, referring to shame as “evil in its most fundamental mode of operation.”[5] Shame is deceptive and powerful and is perhaps Satan’s most effective weapon for spiritual warfare.
Shame produces feelings of unworthiness. Psychologists Wilkie Au and Noreen Canon Au write, “Shame is rooted in a deep-seated fear that we are flawed, inadequate, and unworthy of love.”[6] The fear produced by shame is the fear of disconnection. Brown explains,
Shame is all about fear. . . . When we are experiencing shame, we are steeped in the fear of being ridiculed, diminished or seen as flawed. We are afraid that we’ve exposed or revealed a part of us that jeopardizes our connection and our worthiness of acceptance.[7]
Scientists have determined that both emotional pain and physical pain are processed in the same area of the brain. In other words, pain is pain regardless of whether it is a broken leg or a broken heart.[8]
How Shame Produces Fear
Shame and the fear of disconnection produce a stress response in the body that causes the brain to release toxic levels of adrenaline and cortisol into the bloodstream, producing biochemical reactions that adversely affect emotional and physical wellness. Caroline Leaf explains,
When cortisol and adrenalin are allowed to race unchecked through the body, they begin to have adverse effects on the cardiovascular system causing high blood pressure, heart palpitations and even aneurysms or strokes. . . . Next, the cortisol bathes the brain’s nerve cells causing memories to literally shrink, affecting the ability to remember and think creatively. This destructive path continues until the body begins to suffer total system breakdown, leading to an emotional black hole, creeping illness and even premature death.[9]
Based on Leaf’s findings, distorted thinking causes emotional and physical damage to the body. Shame affects both aspects of the human soul: material and immaterial. The stress response produced by shame and fear directly affects our capacity to experience the abundant life.
We are adversely affected by the fear of disconnection because we cannot thrive alone: God created us to need the love we can only experience in relationships. Anything that jeopardizes our connection with God and others triggers a stress response in the brain. Sadly, shame begets more shame and inhibits the very relationships people need in order to thrive. Curt Thompson explains,
As it turns out, humans tend to experience no greater distress than when in relationships of intentional, unqualified abandonment—abandoned physically and left out of the mind of the other. With shame, I not only sense that something is deeply wrong with me, but accompanying this is the naturally extended consequence that because of this profound flaw, you will eventually want nothing to do with me and will leave. Paradoxically, then, shame is a leveraging affect that anticipates abandonment while simultaneously initiating movement away—leaving.[10]
Shame and the fear of disconnection create such a high level of emotional distress that we will do almost anything to escape it, including turning to addictions to numb the pain. But there is good news here. Neuroscientists have determined that what we choose to think about can change the negative bias of the brain. In other words, God has given us the ability to rewire our brain by identifying and replacing deeply imbedded, distorted thoughts with new thoughts based on biblical truth. In the same way that negative and distorted thoughts produce toxic emotions, biblically informed thoughts promote life and health.
In the next chapter, I will discuss findings from neuroscience that help us understand how and why our thoughts have such a powerful effect on our Christ-formation. The change is due in part to the pliable nature of the brain that neuroscientists refer to as neuroplasticity.
Restoring My Soul with God
- Choose from the list below any words you would use to complete this sentence: “I am not __________________ enough.”
- good-looking
- good
- strong
- smart
- talented
- graceful
- These “not enough” words are distortions and signs of shame. Choose and reflect on a passage below to help rewire these shame-producing thoughts with God’s truth:
You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit them together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! It is amazing to think about. Your workmanship is marvelous—and how well I know it. You were there while I was being formed in utter seclusion! You saw me before I was born and scheduled each day of my life before I began to breathe. Every day was recorded in your book!
How precious it is, Lord, to realize that you are thinking about me constantly! I can’t even count how many times a day your thoughts turn toward me. And when I waken in the morning, you are still thinking of me!
PSALM 139:13-18, TLB
God made the only one who did not know sin to become sin for us, so that we who did not know righteousness might become the righteousness of God through our union with him.
2 CORINTHIANS 5:21, TPT
Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am.
JOHN 14:1-3, NLT
He handed out gifts above and below, filled heaven with his gifts, filled earth with his gifts. He handed out gifts of apostle, prophet, evangelist, and pastor-teacher to train Christ’s followers in skilled servant work, working within Christ’s body, the church, until we’re all moving rhythmically and easily with each other, efficient and graceful in response to God’s Son, fully mature adults, fully developed within and without, fully alive like Christ.
EPHESIANS 4:10-13, MSG
The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and coheirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
ROMANS 8:15-17, NIV
Restoring My Soul with Others
- Discuss your shame word(s) from above and share the verse(s) that helped you rewire that thought. Describe the experience.
- How would you explain shame to someone?
- Read Genesis 3:6-13 and discuss your thoughts about the cause and effects of shame:
When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
- Why do you think shame is so powerful?
- Does it surprise you that physical and emotional pain register in the same part of the brain? Does this finding validate emotional pain? Discuss.
- What causes you to feel stressed? Why is long-term stress so damaging to your body? What are some ways you could better deal with stressful situations?