Beyond Shame: What Becomes Possible
This is Part 5 in our series on Shame Written by: Catherine Morrill, MDiv, LMFT.
We've spent this series looking at what chronic shame is, how it develops, and how we begin to loosen its grip. For our final post, we're turning to a different question: What becomes possible when shame has a little less power in our lives?
Okay, so what has shame been keeping us from? Healing from shame isn't merely about feeling less ashamed. It's also about recovering some of what shame has made unavailable to us—the freedom to wonder, experiment, create, learn, risk, and discover parts of ourselves and our lives we haven't yet known.
We can try something we're not already good at. Change our minds. Want things. Imagine a different life. Trust ourselves and one another. Perhaps even receive love without immediately questioning whether we're worthy of it.
Possibility
Shame narrows things. When we experience ourselves as under threat—especially the threat of judgment or rejection—our attention naturally turns toward protection. Research on social-evaluative threat suggests that this kind of stress can interfere with some of the cognitive capacities we rely on to hold information in mind, think flexibly, and consider alternatives.
That makes intuitive sense. When the central question is What's wrong with me? there isn't much room left for What else might be possible?
Shame can constrain whom we allow ourselves to become, what relationships we risk, what we ask for, what we try—even what we permit ourselves to imagine.
Years ago, in a book I picked up at an airport kiosk, I came across an illustration that has stayed with me. In Change Your Questions, Change Your Life, Marilee Adams offers what she calls the Choice Map. The map begins with something happening and then depicts two possible paths. One, the "Judger" path, moves toward blame, reactivity, and questions like What's wrong with me? or Whose fault is this?
The other, the "Learner" path, opens into questions like What actually happened? Why did it affect me so strongly? What can I learn? What am I responsible for? What do I need? What are my choices? What's possible?
While Adams wasn't writing specifically about shame, the map captures something important about it. Shame tends to collapse a question into a conclusion: Something happened, and it tells me someone is to blame—you, me, or perhaps both of us.
Whether the blame turns inward or outward, certainty can take the place of curiosity.
Curiosity reopens the question.
One of the other things I love about Adams's map is the switchback. Even when we've started down the “Judger” path, we're not stuck there. We can notice where we're headed and move toward the “Learner” path instead. We can become curious again.
Creativity
Creativity is a process of learning. It requires experimentation, play, risk, imperfection—and the possibility of getting something wrong. Shame makes those things dangerous. If mistakes expose something unacceptable about me, I'd better stay inside what I already know I can do.
Could it be okay to experiment with something and have it turn out poorly? Could it be okay to be a beginner? Could it even be okay to be mediocre at something—perhaps forever?
What might you try if being good at it weren't the price of admission?
Trust
Shame makes trust difficult. If something is fundamentally wrong with me, then my own perceptions may not be trustworthy. My desires may be suspect. My decisions require second-guessing. And when other people love me, value me, or see something good in me, I may have trouble believing them.
As shame loosens its grip, perhaps we can begin to trust ourselves—not because we will always get things right, but because getting something wrong doesn't have to be catastrophic. We can trust our capacity to discern a direction, make a decision, change our minds, repair when necessary, and love others well enough.
We can also begin to trust the people who have earned our trust. When someone who knows us well sees goodness in us, perhaps we don't have to immediately explain it away. When they love us, perhaps we can let ourselves be loved.
Over time, we may become less preoccupied with how we are being perceived. Less likely to replay the conversation afterward. Less compelled to manage what everyone thinks of us. We can become less self-conscious and more available—to ourselves, to other people, and to the life happening around us.
Perhaps we could even call this a kind of genuine humility—not thinking poorly of ourselves, but needing to think about ourselves less.
And for those whose faith is important, there may be another kind of trust as well. The Psalmist writes, “Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.” What would it mean to imagine our relationship with God this way—not hiding our faces, doubting God’s love, or trying to make ourselves acceptable, but living as people who are already fully seen and loved?
Conclusion
You may not have noticed, but we haven't talked a lot about “healing shame” in this series. That's intentional. We sometimes imagine healing as the absence of the thing that hurt us. But shame may never disappear altogether. Perhaps healing looks less like never feeling shame and more like becoming increasingly free from its power to determine how we understand ourselves and how we live.
We can notice it. Become curious about it. Speak to ourselves differently. Let ourselves be known. And, over time, perhaps discover that there is more room in our lives than we thought.
Room to wonder.
Room to be a beginner.
Room to change our minds.
Room to create something imperfect.
Room to ask for what we need.
Room to love and be loved.
Room to trust ourselves.
Room to trust one another.
What might become possible in your life if shame had a little less say?
