The ache of shame is so deep that they become vulnerable and will do anything to feel relief. The inability to feel the appropriate feeling for the circumstance they are in comes from damaged emotions.
Editor's Note: People who have suffered the trauma of childhood sexual abuse very often feel shame throughout their lives. Author Dietrich Desmarais writes about shame and how a person can turn it around for good.
Shame can be a helpful emotion. There is a distinction between toxic and helpful developmental feelings of shame that are necessary for maturity.
Bad shame comes from false beliefs that drive us to hide, feel shameful and worthless. This shame causes us to retreat into a shell and makes us want to disappear. It is the feeling that "someone will not want to be with us". Shame makes us dislike who we are and what we've done [or what's been done to us]. It makes us feel like nobody wants us around or nobody cares about us-worse yet, that nobody should care about us, and that our lives are not worth living.
Good shame develops in a safe and wisdom-guided environment.
When I feel good shame it feels like something appropriate. Good shame guards us from doing things that are harmful, things that are shameful and inappropriate. For example when someone is cruel and mean spirited to another they should be ashamed of themselves for their behavior. When people participate in disgusting and inappropriate behavior as though it was acceptable, they should be ashamed of themselves. We speak of people being SHAMELESS in their behavior.
When others have no sense of shame, they are operating in bad shame and use it to hurt others or feel a sense of power over others. This bad shame is destructive and overrides the boundaries of others.
Bad shame is destructive and numbing causing damage to our emotions. Once a child feels toxic shame, it becomes easy to manipulate the child.
The ache of shame is so deep that they become vulnerable and will do anything to feel relief. The inability to feel the appropriate feeling for the circumstance they are in comes from damaged emotions. Children become confused about what is appropriate and inappropriate. Sometimes parents or leaders fall into the trap of using shame as a motivator, or as a discipline tactic saying things like, "You should be ashamed of yourself" or "You should know better." Bad shame should never be used as a tool to control.
Jesus died to destroy bad shame. One version of Hebrews 12:2 reads "He despised shame". The version quoted below says that Jesus scorned shame. If Jesus despises and scorns shame, it is something He really doesn't like, and He really doesn't want us to suffer from it, or use it to try to change other people's behavior.
"Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart."-Hebrews 1 2:2-3
Generally, people who have been abused carry bad shame because at some level they feel that the things that happened to them were their fault. When this happens it is confusing for them to trust their feelings.
Developmentally their right brain, shame-based emotions, are distorted. They are trapped by left brain distorted beliefs. They may have been told that they were so bad that they had to be beaten all the time, or that they were "so beautiful", according to a sexual abuser, that they brought on sexual abuse by the way they looked or acted. Even if they were not told these things outright, often children take on the responsibility for an authority figure's actions rather than seeing them as the sin of the abuser. There is a sense of condemnation and contamination that goes along with having suffered abuse. Only the purifying love of Christ can completely cleanse us from the effects of other people's sinful behavior, as well as the false guilt and shame that go along with it.
Bad shame is always false because the truth is that God loves and accepts and approves of us, even if we have done something wrong. If His Spirit brings a sense of being aware of having sinned against God against a person, we can come to Him in confession and be forgiven and cleansed. Sometimes we still carry guilt and shame over things that we have confessed over and over and over. What we need to do in those situations is to forgive ourselves, which isn't excusing our behavior but acknowledging it and becoming free of the negative emotions attached to it. We need to learn the difference between conviction and condemnation-conviction is from God and has to do with something specific that God wants us to confess and change. Condemnation is from the devil who just wants to burden us with a general feeling of badness about something that's been confessed already, or something that is really unspecific.
Adapted from Life without Lies by Dietrich Desmarais, © 2015 by Dietrich Desmarais. Published by Indian Life Books
