When we do not realize we are being shamed, we cannot heal. We must recognize when someone is shaming us and reject the lie of their shame. But do we understand the difference between guilt and shame? I discussed that difference in my last post “God’s Generosity with Our Talents” God convicts us of sins we are truly guilty of committing (what we do), but God does not disgrace or us shame us for who we are. Unlike God, many people have shamed us. These people may have been family members, mates, teachers, bosses, or others. When they deny they have shamed us, we will have greater trouble healing from their shame and rejection of our true nature.
We might not recognize we are being shamed if people do not know they have shamed us, or if they hide the fact they are doing so. When people did not mean to shame us and we confront them, they may repent and change how they relate to us. We can quickly heal from their confessed shaming. But some people deny they have shamed us, either because they are misguided, or because they are evil. Shame coming from these deniers is harder to heal from, because we may come to deny the pain these people cause.
Some people cling to pride and a misguided belief they are allowed to treat us a certain way, denying they shame us, while others know they are shaming us but believe they are better than us. My mom was misguided when she hurt me. She accidentally shamed me, even though she loved me. She believed the lie, “Parents should never be confronted for doing anything wrong, and parents should never apologize to their children.” Because of this lie, I could not grow as close to my mom, even though I loved her.
She believed God granted her permission to do whatever she did as a parent. By God’s grace, my mom also believed she should care for us. She cooked balanced meals for us, made sure we took vitamins and saw the doctor. She took us to church and youth group. She carefully chose good gifts for birthdays and Christmas and made really yummy desserts. She never yelled at us and rarely called us names and never hit us. She never abandoned us. Many people never had a mother who did so many good things, and I thank God for all my mom did right.
Perhaps some children do not need words of affirmation and encouragement, and hugs and physical affection, but because I needed these, I felt starved that my mom did not give these freely. Instead of words of praise, she used criticism, perhaps feeling only words of correction encourage a child. She hated hugs and affection, so she did not like us to touch her. But because I needed these and begged for them, my mom got angry and scolded me and told me I was wrong for asking for them. That was shaming, but my mom did not understand it was so hurtful for me.
My mom did not believe in different personalities, so she believed hers was the only “right” personality. This worked perfectly for three of her four children. But my personality was nearly opposite hers, so she thought I was a very naughty child. When I daydreamed, noticed butterflies and bird’s nests, talked about sweet old grannies at church, laughed and sang and danced while doing my chores, I grated on my mom’s nerves. My mom followed recipes exactly. She was horrified by my experimenting, even though it usually worked to produce a good treat. She admitted I was her best cleaner or worker in the kitchen, always thorough with my work, but my cheer, joy, creativity, imagination, curiosity and nontraditional approach to life was deeply irritating to her. She let me know what a very naughty child I was for being like that. Her other three children were so much like her, and this confirmed her belief that I was bad.
She did her best to love me, despite what she believed was my “sin” of being different. She did not know this was very shaming, even though it was God who made me artistic, intuitive, deep-feeling, spontaneous, and very different from her. She did not encourage my creative nature, because she did not relate to it. Instead she tried to push me into ball sports, military-style marching band and other activities that left me feeling ashamed of my inability to do well there and starved for the ability to pursue my innate, God-given abilities. My mom thought she was doing God’s will pushing me to become more like her and my siblings. She did not know she was shaming me by believing who I am is wrong. She just did not know better. She misrepresented God to me, because she did not delight in who I was but tried to push me to be what God had not made me to be. But she did not mean to do the wrong thing. It was her misguided belief that caused her to do this. She did love me.
She is not alone in shaming someone, because we all shame people when we judge them unfairly. But most people are sorry when they realize this sin. Genuine, loving Christians like my mom, shame some people (like me) because they believe they are right or that God gave them a right to do so, and they must not be confronted. I was never able to talk to my mom about this side of her nature, but once I became an adult, she did allow me to ask for some things I needed, like a hug, or at least permission to let me hug her once in a while.
When people feel justified in doing things that shame us, even if they don’t realize they are sinning, as my mom did, we may never be able to get close to them. They may or may not repent some day. Unlike my mom who made unintentional mistakes, some people know they are doing wrong when they misuse us and shame us, but they don’t care. They are not misguided and well meaning, like my mom was. These other people know they are hurting and using us, and they deny their evil actions.
Often these users are very deceptive. While they know they are wrong, they don’t want others to know this so they hide their true intentions. They act nice at first and gradually take advantage of us, bit by bit, so slowly we don’t notice. They lure us to trust and rely on them. Once they think we need them, their cruel side comes out.
Their message is always the same. We are not good being our true self. We have to change and become what they want us to be. They want to use us. The first husband (now ex) lied to get me to marry him. During our first two years, I felt like I was going crazy. He insisted he was a good husband, and I was the one with the problem. This hurt me terribly, but I believed him and suffered intense pain, even unwanted weight loss and vertigo. My friends saw his abuse and urged me to stand up to him, which I eventually did. But I was horrified when he did not repent, but instead abandoned me and took as much money as he could get. He said horrible things to me and behind my back to my friends and family. He had his divorce lawyer call and say we were divorced. But then he fell into a depression and wanted to move back in with me, shocking me by saying we were not divorced at all. But I had finally gotten help and told him he could not come back unless he got counseling. In all of this, I still believed he loved me and had just made mistakes.
But he hated counseling, saying the counselor had no right to point out what he did wrong. Eventually he demanded a divorce all over again and admitted he had lied and tricked me to marry him. He actually said he was bitter I did not change and give up being my true self. He said my genuine love for him should have motivated me to abandon believing in God the way I do and instead do whatever he wanted and also become whoever he wanted me to be. Most abusers are not as obvious once they have been caught in their lies. In this man’s case, he only told the truth because he wanted nothing to do with a woman who will not put up with abuse and lies. I was shocked by these truths, because I had believed him, even during our separation.
God used this wicked man’s angry confession to wake me up. Those ugly truths hurt but also helped me to heal. I finally admitted this man had never loved the true me. He only lusted for (never loved at all) the changeling he tried to force me to become. God helped me overcome that man’s shaming, because God reassured me he loves the true Debbie he made me to be, not that man’s false image of a wife. I have prayed for his salvation, but I had to overcome his shame, and I could begin to heal from it, because he finally revealed the truth in his anger.
My mom’s accidental shaming was hidden, for many reasons. She was a good mom in other ways. My siblings could not relate to the shame, because they, being so much like her, pleased her. So I could not talk to them about it. Other children may also have siblings who do not suffer shaming, if they are so much like their mom (or dad.) Parents might support the personality and aptitudes of the children who are like them, because they can relate to them. But some parents might shame a child and not support her interests and aptitudes if they differ. They may not realize the child is different and needs to be encouraged based upon who she is. That is when parents will shame their child, even if by mistake, as my mom did to me, even while she did love me and wanted what she thought was best for me. She did sin, but she did so by mistake, and while loving me.
But because my siblings could not relate to this shaming of my different personality, they would not have believed me if I shared it with them. Likely I tried, but they did not understand. So I denied it hurt and even denied it was happening. But that caused me to believe the lie that I was defective. God had to send people into my life to show me that real people have different personalities, and those different people (like me) are also good people. These differences are not rebellion against a different parent but are God-given talents, like those in the parable of the talents. Those talents were different in amount, but talents can also be different in aptitude.
It was my sister’s brief moment of honesty, after my mom’s death, that enabled me to let go of my denial and admit I felt hurt, even by a mom who loved me and believed she was doing the right thing. My sister said she ached, due to my mom’s lack of physical affection and words of affection. Even though my mom affirmed my sister’s sensible, traditional, logical temperament and aptitudes, my sister admitted she needed hugs and tender words too. Even when my sister later went back to denying the pain, her brief (vulnerable) moment of honesty gave me the freedom to admit my mom unintentionally shamed me.
I had known for years my dad unintentionally shamed me. All three of my siblings had also been angry with him, due to his temper and unfair treatment. He was very harsh with us. He shamed us for accidents, being slow or tired, crying and being sad or scared. He was hardest on my two older brothers. So my siblings freely talked about their anger towards him (and all have forgiven him.) They never denied my dad’s shaming. Furthermore I could not hide my problem with my dad, because I developed an intense sugar addiction due to my father-hunger. I could not hide that problem, so I had to deal with it. By my late twenties, I got help to heal from that pain. I wrote about that journey in “Embracing Grief” {link at https://threeblessedgals.com/embracing-grief/ } so be sure to read it. My dad apologized and worked on our relationship. I could more easily heal from that shaming, because I recognized it and worked on it. His admission of wrong, and my honesty in admitting he hurt me, helped me to heal. It also helped that my dad had a creative side and was a feeling-type, nontraditional and spontaneous too. He had encouraged my artistic side.
My mom was much more gentle than my dad and never hit us or yelled at us. How could I feel more pain about shaming she did, when she did not mean to do so? I cannot fully answer that question, except to admit it is true. Hidden shame was harder for me to heal from, even though my mom unintentionally shamed me. Even when the first husband intentionally shamed me, he denied it, so that shame also hurt deeply, but I could not figure out why I was hurting so badly. Both people hid the shame they pushed upon me, and it hurt far worse, because they denied it, and I believed their lies. I suppose sin is like that. When it is left to fester in the dark, it becomes more dangerous. In my case, it caused me to believe I was bad, but also to feel crazy, because something felt wrong, but I was told everything was fine.
The shaming I received in my damaged mother-daughter relationship set me up for more shaming later in life, such as that bad marriage. I never admitted I felt shamed by my mom, so I did not recognize shame others placed upon me. I believed their denial of wrong doing, because the mistreatment was familiar. I naively assumed my only childhood issues were with my dad, and I had healed many of those sorrows.
We must not believe people who deny they are wrong when they shame us, lest we fail to heal. My denial enabled me to fall into other bad relationships, from bad bosses to bad roommates. Until I could see the shame in my relationship with my mom, I could not see the shame in other relationships. To heal we must recognize shaming in relationships, especially if family members shamed us when we were young. We repeat our past until we recognize what hurt us. We can even bring our shaming beliefs into other relationships, as my dad did, because his father shamed him. We will either shame others, or we will let them shame us.
Because my mom did so many right things for me, I struggled to admit she did anything wrong. But even a small amount of poison mixed with good food harms the eater. I also struggled with confusion, because I did not want to dishonor my godly mother by admitting she did anything wrong.
What relief I felt when God showed me that truly loving people means acknowledging their good and bad qualities. This true love means we admit they hurt us when they did, as well as admitting they helped and loved us when they did. We cannot truly love a person if we make a caricature of her and pretend she has no flaw or has never hurt us. To deny those truths shames ourselves and even shames the very person we claim to love but idolize instead. God shows us his perfect love by admitting we are sinners yet still loving us (Romans 5: 8, “God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”)
I love and honor my mom and admit she hurt me by mistake but also did many good things for me. I have long since forgiven her. I let God heal me by admitting to him every detail of how my mom (and any other person) hurt me or shamed me. God can only heal the wounds I admit I have. He cannot heal the wounds I hide (Jeremiah 16:14b “You cannot heal a wound by saying it’s not there.”) Patterns of bad relationships, work experiences and other repeating patterns of abuse and errors, reveal we have some unresolved trauma, and potentially more than one trauma. I made the mistake of thinking that once I found healing from my father-wound I was fully healed. I missed this hidden shame, and it kept haunting me.
God has mostly healed me from this shame. Am I fully healed? I sometimes fall back into accepting shame if I am tired, too needy (when not seeking God’s love), or weak in any other way. But the Holy Spirit lives in me, and he reminds me I have slipped into believing a lie again. Now he quickly pulls me back to the truth of God’s love and his delight in having made me the way I am. God does not make mistakes, and my personality is no mistake, only my sin, and that is not God’s fault.
I want to talk more about this subject next week, but I must close, since this post is so long. I know this is a topic of extreme pain for many gals. Too many of you have been shamed and wrongly rejected. So please feel free to write to me and let me know if I can pray for you about this. Feel free to suggest other topics like this one or different ones, because I write these posts from my own experience but also to address things my women friends and daughters are facing. May the Lord bless you this week!