Shameless

His eyes grew larger. I clearly hit a nerve. I asked him why he didn’t want to join us for lunch. It seemed fairly simple to me. If it was about money, I’d help, we all struggle sometimes. His cheeks reddened. “I just can’t,” he replied. I didn’t push. It was about money. Money was tight. In his family, maturity equaled financial stability. He didn’t have financial stability. Years of listening to his parent argue about finances had caused an undue worry in him, a fear of absolute financial failure. He held money tightly. There never seemed to be enough in his savings. But he didn’t want anyone to know. It seemed too embarrassing for anyone to know he ever struggled with money. His thoughts were his reality.   

Shame is such a bitch. She’s manipulative, sinister, and crafty. She quietly digs her way into your life. You won’t notice. She hibernates until the worst possible moment, then comes out swinging, often disguised as something else entirely. We mislabel her. We call her “privacy,” “personal,” or “no big deal.” That’s sustenance to her. It keeps her growing.

Shame lives deep within me. I didn’t understand it for a long, long time. It leaked out from time to time. Every time I felt embarrassed by anything my body reacted. My chest seized a bit, eyes welled. It happened when I received any kind of coaching--they knew I wasn’t perfect. It happened when someone rejected me--they know too much to love me. It happened when I hurt someone--I’m not nice or good enough and now they know. I could not identify it and believed something was deeply wrong with me, only adding to the feeling. Shame.

Recently in a book I read, the author described shame as, “the knowledge that someone knows something about you that you’d rather they not know.” He acknowledged that shame can be warranted and the result of a poor choice a person made. However, most of the time, it’s an illegitimate shame resulting from the way a person had been treated in the past. A weight lifted. There wasn’t something wrong with me, I was simply ashamed of so much! I held it all in, hid it, or tried to. Primarily things I had absolutely no control over. What freedom that realization provided. I’m allowed now to let myself show more, show the real me. Everyone fails. 

Shame doesn’t just go away. It’s a process and there are plenty of people out there who want to add to it. They prove this in the way they talk to and treat us. It’s the idea that if they can make you feel like something is bad, or your fault, then nothing has to be theirs. Then we won’t know anything bad in them. Typically, they are dealing with their own feelings of shame. Isn’t that ironic?

Understanding that everyone wrestles with shame at some level helps. We can attempt to not add to it. We can give them grace, give them an out. Communicate in our own ways that it’s not a big deal that we know about what they don’t want us to know about. For the most part, it really is not a big deal anyway. Often the thing we find the worst about ourselves, has no affect on those who learn of it. They love us the same. There is great freedom in that.   You think your shame is more warranted? You think I don’t know how bad you are? You are right, I don’t know. But ask yourself this question: Is it about something you did, something someone did to you? Let go of the things you can. Everyone fails. It’s okay.