Engaging Shame to Escape Shame

Shame is part of every day life

You did it again. You can’t believe you let your guard down, it might be a lie, a calendar mistake, forgetting to take the garbage out. And because you did it, it feels as if the world is crashing down. You feel like a little kid and the words “Mom’s going to kill me” are running through your brain and bones—you feel the panic. And then, to make things worse, she sees it in you. She sees you go inside yourself, she see the fear, she sees your 8-year-old inner kid show up. You both see a disproportionate response. She interprets that response as you have more you are hiding. You feel that response because you are in shame. At that moment, it feels like all of the wrongs you’ve ever done to your wife are assaulting you…all at once. 

How do you turn the tide? How you do avoid the personal and relational spirals? There is a way to navigate these waters. There is a way to make good come out of bad. But first: don’t double down into bad.

Three errors in dealing with a mistake

1) The biggest error I see over and over again from the clients in my office is they are slow to own their mistakes. Lying will not make your mistake go away, it will make it worse. 

2) Other guys will act in on their mistakes. Rather than owning their mistake and emotions, they try hitting the eject button. Generally, it goes one of two ways: defensiveness or self-pity. A client will get defensive and angry, rationalizing, blame-shifting, justifying his mistake. That defensiveness is a dead giveaway that you are not in a humble or healthy place. If he doesn’t go defensive, he often will go to self-pity. “It’ll never be enough for you. I made one mistake and you choose to look at the one wrong thing I do, not the nine right things I do.” Self-pity is just as toxic as defensiveness. 

3) A final error in dealing with a mistake is apologizing too quickly. Some guys revert back not to their 8-year-old self, but to their 5-year-old self. “Well, I said I was sorry, what more do you want from me?” The word “sorry” does not have a magical cure-all property about it. It’s the heart behind the “sorry” that matters. So, if you apologize too quickly without understanding the damage you’ve done to your wife, you are apologizing incompletely. When your “sorry” is meant as a means away from the conversation and pain, it is missing the mark. Instead, when your “sorry” is meant as a means toward the pain and greater connection, then it has real meaning. 

So many times shame is so powerful in our lives, we automatically try to escape from it. Shame can make us feel antsy, lifeless, unworthy. It turns our stomach, take the wind out of our sails, and makes us want to hide. But rather than letting shame overtake us, we need to strengthen ourselves against it. We need to leverage it. Shame is teaching us something, if we can endure the lesson. Instead of running from our shame, we need to learn from our shame.

Leveraging and learning from shame

-Use shame as a data point. Shame can expose lies you carry about yourself. It can highlight incomplete recovery work. When the voice in your head is saying “See, you are a terrible person.” Rather than trying to ignore or accept that message, we need to evaluate it. The answer isn’t to stop thinking that thing. Instead, the answer is to start thinking the right thing. Before you can think the right thing, you must address the lie. You are not a terrible person. You’ve done terrible things, but that’s not the truth of who you are.

-Look historically at shame. When shame hits, it not only carries the present mistake, it tends to pull from the past as well. It reminds us of other times we felt like a terrible person for what we have done. Here again, if we listen, we have ears to hear past things that still need healing. Past things that still need truth. We can leverage today’s mistake to help heal past shame that has gone dormant. 

-Invite intimacy because of shame. As shame seeks to make us hide our face, we can actually leverage that to go even deeper in relationship. How? By stating our experience. “I am struggling with the shame message that I am a terrible person because of what I have done.” If you are really brave, you can go one step more and make an ask. “Would you remind me of who I am? Would you tell me again that I am accepted?” It is a very intimate place to be honest and raw. It is all the more so when you invite others to speak into the honest and raw places. 

Next time you feel overwhelmed with shame, pause. Take a deep breath. Engage shame differently, and you can come to the other side with a deeper understanding of yourself and a deeper relationship with someone else. If you need additional help navigating present or historic shame, I am happy to guide you through that healing process…please reach out.