7| Shame and Language

11/20/17 • 45 min

Shame is our topic this episode -- and how to begin building resilience against it. Check out the beginning of our arc on these topics with Trauma (Ep 3), Anger (Ep 4) Anxiety (Ep 5&6) and now Shame. We define shame from Brene Brown: Shame is an intense painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love or belonging. And Curt Thompson "The Soul of Shame" The feeling of: “I am not enough; there is something wrong with me; I am bad or I don’t matter.” The fear that something we’ve done or failed to do, an ideal that we’ve not lived up to, or a goal that we’ve not accomplished makes us unworthy of affection or love.

12 Categories where Shame is Triggered: -Appearance and body image -Money and work -Motherhood/fatherhood -Family -Parenting -Mental and physical health -Addiction -Sex -Aging -Religion -Being stereotyped or labeled

We first learn that we're worthy of love or affection from our first caretakers (typically Mom and Dad). Bonding, oxytocin chemicals, skin-to-skin contact and how getting our physical needs met meets our emotional needs for the first fear years of life.

Brandon mentioned this article on Romanian Orphanage & Attachment Story: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/romanian-orphans-subjected-to-deprivation-must-now-deal-with-disfunction/2014/01/30/a9dbea6c-5d13-11e3-be07-006c776266ed_story.html?utm_term=.f2cf5a79a370

If this doesn’t happen, it will result in shame (at the very least). If we have difficult relationships with our first caretakers, it can lead to this sense that “I can’t attach” or “I don’t belong” or I’m not worthy of love,” “I’m invisible."

Brene Brown's Exercise:

Thinking about shame from a physical body perspective: fill in the blank.

I physically feel shame in/on my ________________ It feels like ______________________ I know I’m in shame when I feel _______________ If I could taste shame, it would taste like ________________ If I could smell shame, it would smell like ________________ If I could touch shame, it would feel like _________________ Considering these Statements:

I want to be perceived as ____________ and ____________ I do NOT want to be perceived as ______________

Brene Brown's Exercise:

Thinking about shame from a physical body perspective: fill in the blank.

I want to be perceived as ____________ and ____________ I do NOT want to be perceived as ______________

Previous Episode

6| Anxiety and Peace Cont'd

How does anxiety tie in with our FOO (Family of Origin) or COO (Church of Origin). Brandon talks about his Obsessive Compulsive symptoms that he felt tied to his family background.

Panic Attacks and how we (and others) define anxiety -- do you "fight" anxiety? Or do you feel the need to allow it, without fighting it in order to move through?

How did your FOO and your COO effect your ability to calm yourself down? Secure attachment with our first caretakers (i.e. Parents) is a way that we experience safety, security, & comfort. Power and Intimacy (Imminence & Transcendence), in balance, are what we need as kids to feel safe, and it's what we need in our relationship with God as adults to manage adult stress.

Grief & Lament helps us to manage and label what was missing in our lives in order to move into a place of accepting what we needed in our FOO, and how to move towards wholeness.

12 Steps from Celebrate Recovery: https://www.celebraterecovery.com/index.php/about-us/twelve-steps

We talk bible-- the experience of experiencing God in both imminence and transcendence, like in Exodus 33. Susette reviewed how this passage brings her a sense of comfort and wonder in the midst of anxiety.

Towards the end of the episode, our personality differences show about our experience with God (in a way that we both like very much.)

Check out desirelinepodcast/listen.

In episode 6 post is our Anxiety Ladder Exercise. The Welcoming Prayer is part of Ep 5 post.

Next Episode

8| Shame and Love

Continuing conversation about how we experience Shame in our lives, how it effects our perspective of how we're loved by others, and how any shame we experience is NOT truth. Brandon explores scripture and the biblical narrative of shame, starting with Genesis 3 ending with Revelation 21 about how shame is something that God of the Hebrew Bible, and Jesus of the Gospels saw in people, and sought to love us in a way that helped us fight it. Jesus came to set us free to the original "nakedness", our ability to be vulnerable without fear and shame.

"Shame" in the bible is often explained as "covered" in shame. It's something that we feel at our root that we don't belong in relationship, and can lean into other behaviors or postures, some that are hedonistic, some that are moralistic (rigid religiosity, addiction, pornography, etc.).

Guilt or conviction are good motivators for transformation, but shame is not. If you're experiencing shame, it's not the voice of Jesus.

The Desire Line: Out of our deep desire for him, we're walking towards Him--maybe not in the way that we've always been taught.

Please subscribe on iTunes, and subscribe, rate, and review us. It really helps. You can check out the exercises we discuss on this podcast on our website: desirelinepodcast.com/listen, under Episode 8.