Healing from Shame – Healing 2024

Summary

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Shame is the feeling that we are bad, unlovable, or unworthy at the level of our identity. In the words of Mary’s Fiat, we can find a remedy to counteract shame.

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Reflective Study Guide Questions

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“Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.”

Lk. 1:38

1. Isaac says that shame means we see ourselves as bad, unworthy, or unlovable; we feel ashamed of who we are. Do you ever struggle with feelings like these? Which part of Isaac’s description of shame do you identify with most?

2. The three parts of Mary’s fiat show us three steps to counteract shame. The first step is contained in the word, “Behold.” Mary said this because she wanted the Lord to look at her as she is. How can you work on allowing God to look at you as you are?

3. The second part of Mary’s fiat was, “I am the handmaid of the Lord.” These words show us that Mary knew her identity before God. What is your identity before God? How can you focus on this identity more deeply?

4. The third part of Mary’s Fiat that shows us how to counteract shame are the words, “Let it be done to me according to Your will.” In these words, we can see Mary submitting to God’s will. We can also see that she knows the joy of aligning her will with God’s. How can you work on focusing on the joy that comes from aligning your will to God’s?

Text: Healing from Shame

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Hi, I’m Isaac Wicker. I’m a Catholic therapist, and today we are going to be talking about shame. before we get started, let’s begin in prayer. 

Opening Prayer

In the name of the father, son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Lord, You created us and You call us good. It is hard for us to believe that about ourselves, but You see that in us. You are proud of us, You love us, You delighted us in us. Help us to know that about ourselves, to let it really sink in. Amen. In the name of the Father, son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Shame and Identity

So when we’re talking about shame, the first important thing to note is that shame has to do with our identity. How we see ourselves, that we see our very selves as bad, as disgusting, as unworthy, as unlovable. Shame happens at the level of our identity. “I’m ashamed of who I am.” And so it’s not just like if we’re talking about guilt, guilt has to do with “I’m bothered with what I did, and then I can make amends for it.” But when we’re talking about shame, it’s, “I’m bothered by who I am.” And so what happens is we either feel like we need to hide ourselves or fix ourselves.

Those are usually our two reactions in front of shame. I want to hide myself or I want to fix myself. And shame shows up immediately in the fall, immediately when sin was introduced into the world, shame followed with Adam and Eve. You see it so clearly; they ate of the fruit, And then what do they do? They hide themselves. They hide themselves from God. They hide themselves from each other by clothing themselves. They feel naked and they want to hide. And then God calls them out of hiding, “Why are you hiding?” Because we feel naked. We don’t actually want people to see us anymore because we’re ashamed. 

Living in Shame

I was working with a client once who helped me understand this more. She was amazing. She had raised four kids as a single mother and worked full time and just worked so hard. And that was fighting against years of trauma from her childhood. And she was carrying all of that and all of that hurt and wounds, she was trying to pour it into love, loving her kids, loving her granddaughter. And she’d worked with many different therapists and helpers and social workers throughout her life. And all of them had complimented her in some way, had pointed out the good parts about herself. And I was doing the same. I was like, wow, this is amazing. The attention you give to your granddaughter, the love that you have, your organization skills, but none of those would actually affect her, she just brushed them off. 

And one day, I kind of challenged her on it. I said, “All these people say good things about you, but you don’t believe anything good about you. Why don’t you believe what anybody says? If we’re all saying the same thing, why don’t you believe us?” And she said, “It’s because you don’t really know me. You don’t know how bad I am inside. You don’t know what’s going on inside of me on a deep level. Maybe you see this and that surface level thing, but inside I’m bad.” And so she was stuck in this, this bind where she was so afraid to let anybody see how bad she was that she kept that protected all the time. And because nobody could see it, she was never going to listen to any of their praise, any of their love, any of their compliments. And so no love could get into that place. Nobody could see that place because she was protecting it, but that place was also destroying her. That place was a place of bondage. 

So every day she had to live out of shame. Every day she was stuck in shame, didn’t matter what she did, it didn’t matter what other people said. And this relates to a colleague of mine was working with a religious sister, and she kind of opened up her heart and said, “I believe that if God really knew me, He wouldn’t love me.” This is someone who’s dedicated her life to God. And still, there’s this deep fear, This deep shame, and I’m bad. I’m so bad that if people really saw me, they would hate me. If God really saw me, He would reject me that I am unlovable. At the core of my being, I’m unlovable.

And this can destroy us day after day. Because as humans, what we want most in all the world is to be known and loved. We want somebody who sees us, who sees everything about us and loves us, but we’re so afraid to open up and be seen because we feel that if we’re opened up and that we’re seen, they’ll only see ugliness in us and they’ll reject us, they’ll hate us, they’ll throw us out. And we so desperately need to be loved. We need community, we need family. We want to be seen and loved, but we’re so afraid to be seen and rejected, so we’re stuck. 

Mary Leads the Way

And this is where Mary leads the way, Mary, the mother of God in her fiat before the angel. What does she say? She gives us three steps for how to counteract shame. Three steps for how we can begin a new life. She says, “Behold, I’m the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done unto me, according to thy word.” There are three steps. The first is behold. And the second is be it done unto me. Oh, I messed that up. Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done unto me, according to thy word. So those are the three steps. And for a long time, I just kind of completely ignored the word behold, partially because just nobody uses it. And I’m like, I don’t exactly know what that means.

But when I figured out what it meant, it’s actually my favorite part of what she says. Because what is she saying? She’s saying, behold old, which means, “look at me, see me.” What a beautiful disposition before her God. “Here I am, look at me. see me here. I’m your little one. Look at me.” She delights in being seen by God. She opens herself to be seen in all of her littleness. She says, “look at me.” 

You can think of little kids before, before their parents trying to do a trick. They’re like, “Look at me, look at me, Daddy, look Watch me jump.” I’ve got little boys who just loved to run around and climb things and jump off of things and find frogs. “Look at me!” There’s a real childlike delight in just being looked at. “Look at me while I jump! Look at me while I find rocks! Look at me while I run super fast!” That that’s actually an original disposition within us. Look at me. We want to be looked at, We want to be beheld by our father. Look at me, daddy, look at me. So that’s the first move that Mary makes in her Yes. Is to let the father look at her, to call his attention to her. Look at me, daddy. 

Then she says, “I am the handmaid of the Lord.” So within her gaze, within God’s gaze on her, within, she’s being held by God’s loving gaze. And in that loving gaze, she knows herself, she proclaims her identity. She says, “I am the handmaid of the Lord.” But it’s only within, within God’s loving gaze on her that she can say who she is. And even who she is connected with the Lord, “I’m the handmaid of the Lord.” It’s a relationship. She says, ah, I understand who I am. I’m a relationship with you. Yeah, you’re my daddy. Look at me. Yeah, I’m yours. I’m your little girl. This is who I am. And then within that gaze, the father’s love on her and her response of, yeah, I’m yours. 

Then she aligns her will with His will. “Let it be done to me according to your word” I want exactly what you want because you’re my daddy. I know you because you love me, and I know myself because I’m loved by you. And yes, I want exactly what you want. It’s a joyful response. It’s not her trying to submit her will to God’s will, but a joy that comes out of knowing the father’s love and knowing herself as beloved. She says, oh yeah, let’s do that. That sounds fun. That sounds great, I’m in. I wanna do that, daddy. Because she knows who He is, and she knows who she is. She knows herself as beloved. Not some God who’s demanding some task of her that she’s going to muster up the courage to do. But a God who’s like, Hey, yeah, you want to do this with me? It’s going to be really great. And I want you. 

So Mary has these three steps in her answer. Behold, look at me. I am the handmaid of the Lord. I’m yours, I’m yours. Let it be done to me according to thy word. I’m all in. I want to do it. I want to do it with you. I want to go. because you’re going and you’re asking me to go. So these are the steps actually that counteract shame. 

A Challenge of Our Faith

But if you’re like me, you can have this initial reaction of, well, Mary’s perfect. Of course she wants to be looked at by God. Of course she’s happy, but I’m just broken. I’m kind of messed up, there’s something wrong with me. I don’t want all that on display before God. That sounds scary. Maybe I can say, look at part of me. but how can I let Him see all of me? And I think this is actually the, the whole challenge of our faith, it’s not so much following all the, the ways of virtue. It’s not so much building up ourselves and following the rules and going to mass. 

But the real crux, the real challenge we’re called to, is letting ourselves be seen and loved. Letting the Father look at us and letting Him love us. And when He looks at us and loves us, that calls out all of the arrest of the responses. It’s within His love that we know who we are. It’s within His love that we can trust His will. It’s within His love that we can act in the world. But it starts with allowing Him to look at us. So I don’t actually have like an easy trick for just being like, yeah, this is how you let God look at you when you feel messed up. It’s a practice. It’s just something hard you need to do, but it gets easier with time. 

Make it Relational as Possible, as Quickly as Possible

A priest, in a homily once was talking about, riding a lawnmower. And he’s, he’s great. I really love the guy. He backed up a lawnmower, like over one of the brick retaining walls. And it got stuck. It got stuck like halfway, and he couldn’t do anything about it. So he couldn’t even like, try to fix it himself. So he was just like in this very embarrassed place where he knew eventually he was going to have to admit his mistake and ask for help. His first response really surprised me. His first response was, “Jesus, look at me now, look at me now. I just rode a lawnmower over the back of this wall, and now it’s stuck, and I feel so embarrassed. Look at me now, Jesus.” 

But it just, it didn’t just come to him that one time out of inspiration, but he’d been practicing that Every time he felt proud, every time he felt ashamed, he was in the habit of saying, look at me now. Look at me. And we can do that too. Look at me when I get so frustrated with my kids. Look at me when I lose my temper, look at me when I’m impatient, look at me when I give a great talk. Like I used to think it was shameful to be, or prideful maybe is a better word, to really delight in my own work. But I don’t think that anymore. Now I just say, daddy, Look. Look what I did. Just like my kids, when they’re super excited about what they did, they just say, look, daddy. And we can do that with everything. 

I tell my clients pretty often when they’re relating to God, just make it as relational as possible, as quickly as possible. Be messy. We like to try to be pious, we like to try to be prayerful, we like to try to be prepared. We don’t like to make mistakes like stuttering when we’re giving a talk. But instead, let’s be messy with Him. Let’s be super simple. Say, daddy, I’m scared. I just messed up. I am angry and I don’t know what to do about it. I’m really sad right now. This part of me really hurts, I feel rejected. I don’t know how to love my wife well right now. Make it as relational as possible, as quickly as possible. Just tell Him super simple, super simple. Daddy, that person seems hurt and I want to help, but I don’t know what to do. Can you be with me now? Can you look at me now? I feel really dumb because I messed that, I messed that up and I don’t know what to do. Or I’m scared I’m not going to make enough money next year, And I don’t know what to do. 

So in facing shame, what disarms it is this really simple vulnerability. Daddy, look at me, Jesus, look at me now. And then in His gaze, we reestablish our own identity. We come to know who we are because we know whose we are. We know our dignity again. And that allows us to move and do great things in the world. If we just hold onto our shame, we’re stuck thinking that’s who we are. And then all of our activity is around that. But within His gaze, He tells us something new. 

He says, you are my beloved son with you. I am well pleased. And then hearing that, I just want to go change the world. I want to do cool, exciting things. I want to start again. I want to make a good apology to my wife. I want to really love my kids. I want to reengage within His love for me. I want to, I want to go out into the world with my whole self because I’m His. Let it be done to me, according to your word. Let me go. I want to do it. I want to be part of it. But in shame, I close down and say, I can’t do it, Nope. I just want to protect myself from the world. It’s too much. I hate it, and it hates me. 

So I want to invite you again, be simple, be super simple with the Father. Make everything as relational as possible, as quickly as possible. Jesus, look at me now. Daddy, here I am. Behold me, behold me in all that I am. 

About Isaac Wicker

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