How to Overcome Shame — Dr. Mark Baker

Shame is a feeling. It’s the feeling of being less. And the feeling of shame itself is not a problem, shame is the feeling that tells you that you’re not God. And believe me it’s important for you to know you’re not God. There are many times in life when you need to know your limits. And you need to know that there are things you can’t do, you shouldn’t do, and that are beyond you.

The feeling of shame itself is not the problem, the problem comes when you feel the feeling of shame over and over again and you become shamed prone. Now shame prone people not only have the feeling of shame, but they have the belief now, that they are not worthy of love. Now this is important. You can’t earn love. It’s not something you can earn, you can earn acceptance, you can earn respect, but you can’t earn love. Love, is something that you are worthy of, and you are worthy of love because you’re created in the image of God. You can’t earn it but you’re worthy of it. Shame is believing the lie that you’re not worthy of love. You’re defective, and you’re disqualified from love and life. Shame is a toxic emotion that when it becomes shame prone, attached to the belief that you’re not worthy of love, can be very debilitating in your life.

So how do we heal this shame promise in our life. It comes through an experience. I can’t just tell you “look you’ve got a problem with being shame prone and you need to stop it, you need to knock it off,” it doesn’t work that way because shame proneness is based on this belief (that you’re not worthy of love) that’s outside of your awareness, so it’s not rational, and the rational brain cannot heal shame proneness.

So what does heal it? An experience. A powerful experience of feeling lovable that overpowers the belief that you’re not, and what produces that experience? Well, Professor Lewis Smedes calls it grace. He says that “grace is the only thing that can heal shame,” and I think he’s right.

Romans 12:2 says “do not be conformed by the patterns of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind”. Now Paul was talking about being spiritually transformed, but I think he’s also giving us here the key to how shame proneness gets healed in your life. You need your mind to not just to think new thoughts but to be transformed. You need to have a powerful experience of grace that overwhelms you in a way that invalidates this unconscious belief that you’re not worthy of love. Once you have that experience of grace, which we call acceptance in psychological terms, it heals that belief that you’re not worthy of love.

What are those things that get you to that experience of grace, what is it that needs to happen in order for you to experience the kind of acceptance that renews your mind? There are three things: 1. It takes the courage to admit that you’ve got these feelings of shame they keep coming up over, and over, and over, again and this belief that you’re unworthy. 2. It takes vulnerability to be able to confess that to God and to other people. 3. It then requires the experience of acceptance once you do.

Now if you experience the grace of God it goes a long way in healing any shame you’ve got in your life, but you have to continue to live in relationships of acceptance or, that feeling of shame proneness will come back. I’m sure you know people like this; they’ve had a powerful spiritual experience and they’ve seemed to have been transformed but, the renewing of their mind didn’t keep on going. In other words, they didn’t keep living in grace build relationships with other people.

So to heal the shame proneness in your life you need to have the courage to admit that you feel shame, the vulnerability to confess it to God and others, and then to live in relationships of acceptance from now on. Then, you’ll know what it feels like to overcome shame in your life.

Over the last couple of decades, psychologists have spent a lot of time studying the difference between guilt, and shame. They’ve come up with the fact that guilt is about what you do, but shame is about who you are. Guilt that’s free of shame as relatively healthy, but shame — the belief that you’re not worthy of love causes all kinds of psychological problems. I’ve been so impressed with this research that I now have written a book about it called Overcoming Shame. Let Go of Others’ Expectations and Embrace God’s Acceptance. If you want to find out about the difference between guilt and shame in your life, then I suggest you pick up a copy so you can learn how to overcome shame for you.

Do you need help, or do you know someone who needs professional help to process their shame proneness? Visit http://laviecounseling.org/. We are the largest Christian counseling center in the Los Angeles area and we’ve been specializing in helping people recover in their marriages as well as with their individual problems for 30 years. I’m sure that we’ve got someone who can come alongside you and help. Visit us today.