Shame: False, Unhealthy and Undeserved

In a previous post we talked about the difference between Shame and Guilt. We shared that shame is not just feeling bad about what we do, but feeling bad for who we are. Those who have suffered from childhood sexual abuse tend to carry great shame into their adulthood.

How can you tell when you are dealing with this false shame? Lewis Smedes shares 6 attributes of unhealthy shame in his book, Shame and Grace.

Unhealthy shame exaggerates our faults:
Here one doesn't make the distinction between "minor misdemeanors and major fealonies". A petty fault feels like a moral cancer. Every " trivial trasgression feels like a capital case." He gives the example of only remembering all the times he got cross with his boys on a camping trip and feeling like he ruined the trip, whereas his boys only remembered the fun they all had.

Unhealthy shame is Chronic:
Here you have lived with shame for so long it has become part of yourself, your very being. You find that anything can bring it on. A mild critism, a memory of something foolish we said to someone, a feeling that we were overlooked for some honor. Any slightest bit of negative- sets it off.

Unhealthy shame is put on us by others:
Someone taught you very early on to accept a false imagine of who you think you should be. This shame comes from being violated and controlled and feeling unaccepted as a child. And then as adults your perpetuate the shame by putting rigid expectations on what and how we think we "should be".

Unhealthy shame pervades the whole being:
"Unhealthy shame spills over everthing we are".  Guilt is far more narrow minded. With guilt you know what action you feel guilty for, you can narrow in on that specific action and make a change. Unhealthy shame has no aim or focus, it leaves us feeling like "undefined, undifferentiated, free floating failures."

Unhealthy Shame is unspiritual:
"Religion without grace can tie shame around our souls like a choke chain and never offer relief...the pain we feel is not even a distant cousin to spiritual shame/(guilt)"

Unhealthy shame makes shame bent people proud of their shame:
 "A shame bent person reasons this way: Only someone with profound nature and noble ideals could feel as rotten about himself as he does. " He shares an example of a shame driven man who tries to escape his shame by working hard enough to make himself feel acceptable to his hard working father. But his inner shame is never satisfied and so he uses his shame as proof that he is more conscientious than others.

I do not believe that the Lord ever uses shame to motivate us to do or be better. Like Lewis Smedes I do not think that shame is spiritual. Shame is not a healthy motivating attribute and is not something the Lord wants us to feel. The shame you may feel as a childhood victim-- does not belong to you. It was forced upon you by the action of another. How than do we heal that shame? The answer is through GRACE. Through our Saviors grace "we can know that we are accepted without regard to whether we are acceptable." The lord loves us unconditionally. How have you felt of his grace? How does feeling of his grace dissintegrate shame? We will be talking more about this.