Nobody needs a psychiatrist to explain what shame feels like — we all know, said Curt Thompson, a noted psychiatrist and brain science researcher.
“Having shame is like having nausea and never being able to throw up,” he said. “At times, it’s like that daytime sleepiness that you get in the afternoon, the kind where you can’t fight it no matter how hard you try. We live shame. We breathe it. It’s a part of us.”
And it tells us stories about ourselves, Thompson told a crowd gathered at Pathways Professional Counseling in Birmingham on Sept. 30 for “The Soul of Shame: Retelling the Stories We Believe About Ourselves” conference. The Alabama Baptist and Samford University in Birmingham partnered with Pathways to host the conference.
It’s a dangerous thing that shame can speak into our lives that way, he said. “It’s not just something that makes you feel bad. It’s not just something that destroys relationships. It’s the primary tool that Satan wields to destroy the universe — and to destroy you.”
Sometimes shame happens because of a traumatic, horrendous event. But more often, it’s from dozens of small things that happen every day that cause us to tell ourselves we’re not good enough, Thompson said. “It’s the depth of a thousand cuts.”
And it’s the harbinger of abandonment, he said. “It says when we think about our relationships, ‘I’m not good enough, and therefore you will leave.’”
That’s a shock to a system never created to feel that kind of feeling, Thompson said. From the second we take our first breath, our brain is fighting for healthy community. It needs other people, he said.
“Newborns require interaction with other human brains in order for their brains to reach maturity,” Thompson said. “It’s an embodied, relational process that emerges.”
And it’s in the secure, vulnerable relationships that babies have with their parents that they explore, develop and learn to create. Their brain’s accelerator — the sympathetic system — keeps going until someone hits the brakes.
“It’s like driving with a clutch,” he said, referring to another researcher’s explanation. When children are told “no,” and the brain puts on the brakes through the parasympathetic system, it does so safely and without their brain’s engine stalling. It learns safe limits the healthy way.
But what happens when there’s no clutch — no security of a safe relationship?
Lingering effect
The brain experiences hurt, which make ruptures, Thompson said — and the lingering effect is shame.
“When these ruptures happen and they are not really repaired, we have to learn to cope with them,” he said.
And what typically happens is that the individual chooses to cope with shame alone.
“Shame is isolating,” Thompson said. “We’re born to create in community with others, and when we have experiences, wounds and traumas, they teach our brain that the desire to connect with others that way is fraught with danger.”
And if the clutch isn’t used enough times and enough ruptures are created, “our sympathetic drive eventually says, ‘Nope, I’m not going there,’” he said.
And we tell ourselves the story again — relationships are too painful to take the risk.
“We have to learn to tell ourselves a different story,” Thompson said.
And that story, he said, is that Jesus loves us, redeems us and overcomes the world.
“If that’s the story we’re living, we’re paying attention to those things,” he said. “We starve shame by starving the things that feed it and paying attention to God’s story over and over and over again.”
What are some practical ways to do that?
1. Do a shame inventory.
Thompson said he’s given clients the assignment to keep a small piece of paper in their pocket and take it out and put a mark on it every time they think, feel or behave in a way that’s related to shame.
“It’s just a way to practice recognizing that it happens,” he said. “We’re well practiced biologically at being ashamed. I have to recognize it and stop doing it in order to start new neural networks.”
The first thing that evil is counting on is that we won’t pay attention to shame, so we’ll never focus on healing it, Thompson said. “We have to interrupt the process of our shame. The repair of real ruptures leads to resilience.”
2. Increase your neuroplasticity.
Neuroplasticity — basically the brain’s capability to reorganize itself — is vital for changing our minds, Thompson said. “The apostle Paul says we need a renewing of our minds, and this is part of that.”
Aerobic exercise is one way to loosen your minds to new ways of processing life, he said. Slowing your pace of eating and eating less is another way to be healthier, which in turn means a healthier brain.
Getting enough sleep is vital too, Thompson said — Americans these days are all too prone to “voluntary insomnia,” which increases the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
“Also, try engaging in meaningful novelty, doing something new to stretch your mind,” he said. “Paint or learn a language or throw pottery. Focusing your attention on a task you don’t already have the skillset to do enhances neuroplastic change.”
Engage in mindfulness practices, like meditation on Scripture. Try investing time in centering prayer — a way to mindfully find the clutch, he said.
“In this, you’re trying to harness the attention, the ignition key of the mind,” Thompson said. “We use that to try to stimulate the brain and active growth.”
And lastly — invest in vulnerable relationships, he said.
“When people have the experience of being known by other people in deep and meaningful ways, it changes the brain,” he said. “Shame says, ‘The less I need you, the less you can burn me, and I don’t have to worry that you’re going to ruin my life.’ This says something entirely different.”
3. Build strong community.
Investing in that kind of relationship can help you combat shame when it strikes you in the kind of weak moment that can send you into the rabbit hole, Thompson said.
‘Designed for community’
“Who is the person you reach out to for help, the person with whom you combat your shame? Your brain was designed for community, and we can build healing communities,” he said. “It’s going to take time. But it’s going to depend on the minds of other people in your life too, people who can remind you that condemnation is not part of the package, people who can have real conversations that provide a clutch.”
Anne Lawton, a licensed professional counselor with Pathways, said Thompson reminded participants at the conference that through the death of Jesus Christ, “we are offered victory over shame.”
“We can daily look shame in the face and not let it have victory over our day, through Christ’s strength,” she said.
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