(Ep. 63) Uncovering Shame: Reclaiming Your True Self

What if there's a quiet virus running underneath everything — one that keeps the emotional healing from taking hold, and you don't even know it's there?

In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise go deep on the one thing that may block your healing more than anything else: shame. 

Brian compares it to a virus running low-grade on your operating system — slowing everything down, disrupting even your ability to absorb the Compassion Method — while you keep wondering why things aren't working the way they should. 

Laura calls it what she's called it from the beginning: the root of all anxiety and depression.

Tracing shame back to its origins in the Garden of Eden, Laura and Brian draw a striking distinction: God can free us from sin, but shame is something we do to ourselves — no army drove Adam and Eve into the bushes; they hid on their own. 

From there they explore one of the method's most challenging ideas — that the knowledge of good is as detrimental as the knowledge of evil, because trying to "do better" to escape shame just traps us on the same wheel. 

Brian shares how he spent years reading the Bible in shame, as a checklist of good and bad to fix himself, and missed its heart entirely: that God asks things of us out of love and protection, not to earn His approval. 

The freeing conclusion: you can't fix shame by doing better — the only thing that heals it is compassion.

In this episode: 

🔹 Shame as a "virus" running underneath your healing — and why it's the root of anxiety and depression 

🔹 Shame's origin in the Garden: why we hide ourselves, and why God frees us from sin but not shame 

🔹 Why the knowledge of good is as detrimental as evil — and how "doing better" keeps you stuck 

🔹 Reading the Bible in shame vs. in love — a checklist to fix yourself, or a Father protecting you 

🔹 Why you can't fix shame by doing better — and why only compassion actually heals it

📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868

🔗 Learn more:

https://triggeredandtrue.com

https://lauraduncan.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:28

Hello and welcome everyone to this episode of Triggered and True. Laura, how are you doing today?

SPEAKER_00 0:33

I'm doing good. How you doing, Brian?

SPEAKER_04 0:36

I'm doing good. We had a little time to catch up, but we really didn't talk about like what's going on in our lives too much.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

That's true. We jumped right into what we're going to talk about today. Yeah, exactly. Got right into it because we're excited.

SPEAKER_04 0:48

I do have this tendency to be all business, don't I?

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Yeah. Yeah, a little focused, but I like it.

SPEAKER_04 0:53

Yeah. Well, sometimes I text you when I'm being less business-y. I guess I catch up with you over text less business-y, but you're so in demand, you're hard to get like FaceTime with.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

So yeah, that is true sometimes.

SPEAKER_04 1:05

Right to business. Yeah. So today's topic, uh, the title of today's episode is Uncovering Shame and Reclaiming Your True Self. So this is an episode I'm really, really excited about, which is kind of weird because I was just thinking that.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

I'm like, I'm so excited about shame.

SPEAKER_04 1:24

I'm very excited about it because I think it has the opportunity to open a lot of people's eyes. And it could be for a lot of people, I think, this one nagging thing that's still kind of preventing them from getting the healing through the compassion method. And they might not be aware that there's a virus running on their operating system.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

That's a great analogy.

SPEAKER_04 1:47

And that's what shame is.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

Mm-hmm. So it's disrupting all the, you know, what we're learning about the compassion method, the application of it, everything we're doing with it, it's definitely disrupting that ability, even like the ability to absorb it.

SPEAKER_04 2:01

Yes. And I think comparing it to a virus is really good because when a virus is running on your computer or even in your body, a lot of times it's just operating at a low grade level and you don't, especially on your computer, like, why is this thing so slow? Why is this not doing why when I click on that, it doesn't do what it should do? And you just, you know, but I like that what it should do.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

We're kind of stuck in that.

SPEAKER_04 2:24

Yep. So really shame is a universal barrier to emotional and spiritual health. And I remember when I first met with you, you said something really profound about shame. You said it is the root of all anxiety and depression.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Yep. I know it's a strong statement.

SPEAKER_04 2:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

It's the underlying, it's that virus, like you said, that's under the undercurrent for all those big emotions that we have through anxiety, depression, and whatever else that we're experiencing.

SPEAKER_04 2:52

So I'd like to start with tracing shame's origins, because I think we can learn a lot by looking at where shame first propped into humanity. I have the biblical account of where shame first entered the room, so to speak. All right. So I want to walk through this from the message translation, which is if you've been listening to the podcast, you know that's where I really enjoy spending my time when I'm reading the Bible. And we'll pick it up in Genesis 3, starting in verse 1. The serpent was clever, more clever than any wild animal God had made. He spoke to the woman. Do I understand that God told you not to eat from any tree in the garden? The woman said to the serpent, Not at all. We can eat from the trees in the garden. It's only about the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, Don't eat from it. Don't even touch it, or you'll die. The serpent told the woman, You won't die. God knows that the moment you eat from that tree, you'll see what's really going on. You'll be just like God knowing everything, ranging all the way from good to evil. When the woman saw that the tree looked good, like good eating, and realized what she would get out of it, she'd know everything. She took and ate the fruit and then gave some to her husband, and he ate. Immediately the two of them did see what's really going on. They saw themselves naked. They sowed fig leaves together as makeshift clothes for themselves. When they heard the sound of God strolling in the garden in the evening breeze, the man and his wife hid in the trees of the garden, hid from God. God called to the man, Where are you? He said, I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid. God said, Who told you that you were naked? Did you eat from that tree I told you not to eat from? The man said, The woman you gave me as a companion, she gave me fruit from the tree, and yes I ate it. God said to the woman, What is this that you've done? The serpent seduced me, she said, and I ate. And then um on verse 21, I think is also important, and I'll highlight that. It says, God made leather clothing for Adam and we Adam and his wife and dress them. So God made leather clothing for Adam and his wife and dress them. So that's important um thing to share as well. So they gain an awareness, there's a lot there, there's a lot to unpack. There is a lot there, but they gain their awareness of good and evil, and that immediately leads to shame.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

Yeah, and that's a really important thing to note that it wasn't just their eyes were open and they knew what evil was, they knew what good and evil was. Because many times we think it's just that once they ate that fruit, they they were aware of evil, but they were not aware of good before either.

SPEAKER_04 6:05

Yeah. And one of the things that uh I think is important to note, like that they were naked before.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_04 6:15

Exactly. And then and then when they became uh knowledgeable of good and evil, they looked at their nakedness as evil.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Exactly. Be pre-eating the fruit, nakedness was just part of who they were, and they were neither good nor evil, and nakedness was not good or evil either. But as soon as their eyes were open, they immediately looked at themselves differently. They saw themselves differently.

SPEAKER_04 6:41

Yeah, and as we were talking beforehand, some translations even translate the word naked to evil.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Because after their eyes were open, that evil was connected to it. I mean, excuse me, that naked was connected to evil or negative nakedness.

SPEAKER_04 6:56

Yep. I think it's also really interesting God's response to all this.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

Yeah, no, definitely. Because I mean, we're both very telling. It's very telling you think about the fact that if my kids disobeyed me and did something I told them not to do.

SPEAKER_04 7:10

Something that uh would mess up and all of humanity.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

Yeah, for thousands of years, you know. You know, like my thing would be like, what were you thinking? How many times did I tell you not to do that?

SPEAKER_00 7:20

You know, why would you do that? What's wrong with you? You know, I would have been more in that camp just because I would be so upset that they did something I told them not to do.

SPEAKER_04 7:29

And I think this is a thing that gets a lot of Christians uh kind of up in arms. We get really, really focused on the sin.

SPEAKER_00 7:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:38

Okay. God's not focused on the sin here.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

He's instead That wasn't his first response.

SPEAKER_04 7:44

He's most focused on their self-perception.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

He didn't say, Why did you sin? Why did you disobey me? Why, you know, what's wrong with you? He didn't say any of those things. That was not his intro statement.

SPEAKER_04 7:57

Yeah, so another way of saying that, his concern really is their shame.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

Exactly, that they saw themselves differently, and even more importantly than seeing themselves differently, they saw themselves as um evil or naked in a negative way.

SPEAKER_04 8:15

Yeah. And I think that with our fixation on sin, we really miss that. Because and I think uh I think uh a really broader sense, what what is really missed is that we we think the behavior is the problem. Exactly. And God had a plan to fix that. Yes, and it was already in motion, it was already in motion, and uh verse 21. I wanted to highlight that because that was really a foreshadowing of that.

SPEAKER_00 8:44

That was the first sacrifice.

SPEAKER_04 8:46

Yep, he killed the animals and covered them with their skins.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

Uh you know, a prophet covering, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 8:50

Yep, a prophetic telling of what he would eventually do is that he would be the sacrifice for our sins.

SPEAKER_00 8:56

Once and for all, we no longer have to do have sacrifices to cover us, but we actually be able to be covered as we originally were designed to be covered through with through not having the knowledge of good and evil. That's actually what covers us.

SPEAKER_04 9:11

So I think what gets triggering for a lot of Christians when they hear this is they're like, Well, are you excusing the sin?

SPEAKER_00 9:17

Yes, no, that's a big one. I commonly have that argument or that, you know, worry. I'd say it's even a worry more than an argument, that worry come up of, oh no, like if we're not taking sin serious, if we're not making sin as evil and as bad and problem, then sin is going to go rampant and sin is gonna be the thing that like takes over us, Christianity. And it gets to be, I think, a really scary thought that sin doesn't matter. But we've said over and over again that what you do matters, but you matter more. So that means that our sin matters, but we matter more, and that's what he's illustrating in the very first moment of disobedience.

SPEAKER_04 10:04

Yep, that is the absolute message of the cross because our sin did have a horrible, horrible consequence.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

Yep, definitely. But then if you see how Jesus kept emphasizing over and over again that it wasn't through our works of righteousness, it wasn't through us attaining our own salvation. Which is all shame-based for our salvation, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 10:25

Which is all driven by the shame, the thing he's trying to set us free from anyway.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Exactly. Like you see it in the gospel, you the gospels, you see it in um Romans, you see it with Paul constantly. I think Paul really struggled with shame a lot because he had done so many bad things that even though he'd accepted Jesus, and even though he was one of like the main preachers, teachers, writers of the New Testament, I think he really did struggle with shame about what he did, that it was hard for him to fully receive it. But he's but he does receive it, and you start to see it as he goes through certain books of the Bible, it's a constant conversation. I can think of like six books in the Bible that that comes up in about what we do versus who we are or what we do versus what God did for us.

SPEAKER_04 11:14

Right. And we can remove the thing that caused us shame. So, for instance, in Paul's example, you can remove the negative things he was doing. Pre-svig Christians, pre-salvation, yes. You can stop doing that and turn your life around, but you're still not free from shame necessarily. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 11:33

Necessarily be yes, you can you can change your behaviors and still see yourself as evil. And that's where that's where us trying to work to gain our salvation comes in. That we have to work for it. You know, I know there's that scripture that says you work out your salvation, but that's not if you look up that word, it's not work out in the sense of do good to gain your salvation, because that contradicts it's actually doing what we're doing here today, exactly. It's doing the work within to be able to actually receive the free gift that Jesus gave us.

SPEAKER_02 12:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

Because what keeps us from receiving the gift, what receiv keeps us from receiving love. What is that barrier?

SPEAKER_04 12:20

Yeah, well, it's ultimately shame.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

Yeah, exactly. And even if you become a Christian, even if you accept Jesus, you can still be working to be saved.

SPEAKER_04 12:31

And one of the things that I think it's important to point out, and you've pointed this out in that biblical account, is that you know, God had a plan to take care of sin, and that was on him.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 12:42

We we we couldn't fix that.

SPEAKER_00 12:43

No, we're hiding in the bushes, we are paralyzed. We are that's way beyond our fixing. The best that we can do by taking leaves and covering us. You know, I picture my kids like taking leaves and trying to make clothes out of it to cover themselves. It was probably pretty jinky.

SPEAKER_04 12:58

But shame is the flip of that because ultimately God can't set us free from shame.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

Nope. And that's why it's the root of everything.

SPEAKER_04 13:07

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Jesus, God, Holy Spirit can set us free from sin.

SPEAKER_04 13:13

But we do shame, we do shame to ourselves. Yes, exactly. And you you highlighted that by your comparison was you know, no demonic army showed up and drove Adam and Eve into the bushes. Nope. They did it themselves.

SPEAKER_00 13:25

They did it themselves.

SPEAKER_04 13:27

Yeah, yeah. So we talk a lot about we're we're talking about evil and how that word naked could be considered evil, but there's also another side of this, and that is that the knowledge of good is a detriment as detrimental as the knowledge of evil. So can you expand on that?

SPEAKER_00 13:43

Yeah, definitely. So, you know, when we're constant, kind of goes back to the works and everything like that, and trying to become sin-free on our own, which is motivated by shame. But what ends up happening is we think that the way to get out of shame is if I do better. But it doesn't work because it potentially could work if it was only the tree of the knowledge of evil, and it was only evil, but we all knew good. Then maybe we could do good to get rid of evil. But God's design, his good idea, was that we wouldn't know, have any knowing, any knowledge. Think about not knowing about something, you have no knowledge of another country, you have no knowledge of something. We live in the knowledge era, so we have a lot of knowledge, but just imagine not knowing anything about something, a subject. You have no knowledge. That was his desire that we wouldn't even understand or know what good was. He didn't want us to know what good was. We always highlight evil because of the negative ramifications of evil, but we miss the negative ramifications of good. Because if good was good for us, if the knowledge of good was good for us, we would have known it. Why would God withhold something good from us? Everything he withholds in the Bible is something that's going to hurt us. He withheld the knowledge of good as much as he withheld the knowledge of evil, for us to be able to be who we are, separate from doing.

SPEAKER_04 15:23

Yeah, that's a lot to chew on.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

But we live focused on trying to gain as much good as we can, as much knowledge of good. And that's what I realized for myself was that I was reading the Bible in shame. Because I read the Bible and all the good things I was supposed to do to please God.

SPEAKER_04 15:42

You read the Bible and how to fix yourself.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

I did. I everything I'd read it and go, okay, don't do that, do that, don't do that, do that. Oh, they did that, and that turned out bad. Don't do that. That turned out good, do that. It was always good, bad, good, bad, good, bad. And I missed the whole Bible. That was never what it was meant to be. Yes, does he tell us to do certain things or not do certain things because he loves us so much, just like we love our own kids? We say, Don't touch that hot surface, you're gonna burn yourself. Because we love our kids. Just like God loves us, he tells us to do things that are gonna protect us and and uh take care of us, and so that we don't unnecessarily hurt ourselves or put ourselves in danger. That is the core of why he wants us to do good, is because he loves us and he wants to keep us safe and protected, not so that we do good to please, not that we do good to make him happy with us.

SPEAKER_04 16:41

We have this image of when we do bad, God's like we also we also have this belief that we somehow know what good is.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

I know, and that's where it gets tricky.

SPEAKER_04 16:49

It's like, oh um, help this person because that's good. Well, what if helping them actually hurts them?

SPEAKER_00 16:56

No, exactly. No, and that was actually a huge highlight.

SPEAKER_04 16:59

Yeah, if it's your shame doing it, like you ain't you actually ain't even thinking of doing that because when we're driven by shame, we become extremely selfish.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

Yep. It's all that's funny you use that analogy because I was I was wrestling with God in the beginning of this process because I was having as much of a hard time as some of our listeners might be having, even while we're talking right now. I struggled with this. This wasn't just like, oh, okay, well, then we don't want the knowledge of good and evil. So what we do doesn't matter as much as who we are. Like that was not the conclusion that I came to. And the analogy you just used, that's ironic that you used that, is was the thing that God actually spoke to me. He said, You think things are good that actually can hurt you or hurt others when you live your life based on what you think is right for yourself or right for others, you are actually putting yourself in a position that could actually be hurtful to you and others. And my mind was just like, no, like my heart is pure and I genuinely want to help people and I genuinely know how to help people, you know. Like I felt so like justified in it. But then he actually it played out where I helped somebody and it had a negative um ramification to it or negative consequence from it, and it was just like so opening of my eyes of like, oh, I thought that was good, and I did that to ultimately to please God and hurt one of his kids.

SPEAKER_04 18:26

Yeah. No, I think that if we all are honest with ourselves, there's a lot of things we've done in life that we thought were good, and we were able to maybe see in hindsight that that wasn't such a good idea in the end. And I think I think the key to the Christian life is to be spirit-led. That is the key to the Christian life to be spirit-led. And when we're led by the spirit, good is gonna look different in different settings. Yeah, one one time you come upon a situation where there's a person in need and you help, another time you don't help.

unknown 19:01

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 19:01

Or you don't help the same way, or you don't help the same way.

SPEAKER_01 19:04

Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 19:06

And you cannot be spirit-led if that virus is running on your operating system. So let's let's just be honest.

SPEAKER_00 19:13

So there's degrees of this because even you probably to some extent, me for sure, still and still have shame running, like it's every single person does on this earth because we still have pain, and pain is still connected to shame.

SPEAKER_04 19:28

I was on a walk this morning and I had a I had a thought that I wasn't happy with, and I immediately went into shame. And I since we've got this podcast coming up, but you know, I was a little more aware and I was able to take care of it. But yeah, so so the key then to dealing with shame is not to get excessively focused on shame, but to return back to your true self. Because in your belief, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but it from all of my time around the compassion method, here's the belief. If you are connected to your true self, you can be connected to the spirit of God because you can't you're she stuck in your triggered self, stuck in your shame. You can't connect, you can't connect with yourself, you can't connect with your spouse, you can't, and you can't connect with God.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

Nope, definitely not. Doesn't mean he's not connected to us, but we can't connect to him in that state.

SPEAKER_04 20:21

Yeah, and and we're going to be hearing things, and we could be receiving communication from our spouse, from God or from whoever in our life, and we're running it through that filter, yeah, that shame filter, and we again we're just not going to be hearing it right.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

Yep, exactly. The interpretation is going to be skewed by shame, or the lens will be skewed by shame.

SPEAKER_04 20:46

And and I just believe this too is that if we are connected to our true self made in the image of God, the sin issue gets taken care of because we won't sin. We won't do things that are hurtful to ourselves and others from that place.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Yep, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 21:02

So that is that is the key. And I I highlight Proverbs 4 23 a lot. Above all else, guard your heart, take care of your heart, because all of life throws flows through it.

unknown 21:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:13

So if shame's running on the operating system in our inner world, yeah, yeah, not only are we gonna sin, we're gonna do that, we're gonna sin, we're not gonna be connected to others. Our actions are gonna hurt ourselves and others. Yeah, we're gonna say and do dumb things, and we're going to you know, so and then one of the key things to recognize is that you can't get out of shame by getting better.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

And so that's why it just feeds it, man. Yeah, it feeds it.

SPEAKER_04 21:42

You're feeding the beast if you're trying to get better.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

Yep, because as you try to get better, you're actually supporting the shame system in your life because you're trying to be good. And if I get gooder, if I get better, then I'm gonna be okay. So we're frantically doing good. But eventually, what goes up must come down. Right. And so what we realize is oh, I'm actually feeding it, and shame's getting worse the better I try to do. And we see that commonly with Christians. They volunteer for everything. They, you know, want to teach, they want to do classes, they want to um, you know, help others, they want to evangelize, they want to do all these things to get rid of the nagging frantic feeling of am I enough? Am I okay? Am I Evil? Am I good enough? And it's never answered. The more you do, it just feeds it. That's why it's so important that we focus on, like you're saying, coming back to who we are, coming back to who God is and being able to connect with compassion, because compassion is the antidote of shame. Compassion allows us to be with ourselves, which allows God to be with us and reverses it from we matter to God, but what we do do matters more. That's how we're living. God loves me, but what I do matters more. But as we're with ourselves, and as we allow God to be with us and others to be with us, we're able to actually go from that place of not being being connected with what we do to be connected to who we are. And this is the beautiful thing. The behaviors that we have always come from somewhere. Nobody wakes up one morning out of nowhere and says, I want to just go do something horrible today, Christian or non-Christian. It's a series of events that starts an early childhood development that creates a programming of sin. Coming from the first time that we experience shame, the first time shame entered the room of our life.

SPEAKER_04 23:51

Yeah, the first time we experienced pain, exactly unmet need.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

Yes, you you read the story of Genesis, the Genesis of shame. That's the first time it entered the world. But when when's the first time that entered our world? When's the first time as a child that you first believed that what you did mattered more than who you are? Because kids don't come into the world like that.

SPEAKER_04 24:20

Or when's the first time you had your identity confusion?

SPEAKER_00 24:23

Yes, exactly, because shame will confuse your identity.

unknown 24:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 24:28

That's one of the most going from child of God, pure innocent.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

No matter what.

SPEAKER_04 24:36

Free from the knowledge of good and evil. Because we all had that. You know, we had that period of our life. Yeah. For some people, it was tragically, tragically short. But we all had that blissful period. And then then some, but then when shame entered the room, when that pain and unmet need happened, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

We started to not believe in who we were anymore. And that is the beginning. And that's what makes me so bad about so sad about shame. Because it's not just the franticness that comes from trying to do to be loved. It's also connected to I don't know who I am. So I need to do to have value. I need to do to have worth. I need to do to be okay with in my own skin. And to me, it's like a good analogy would be is if you're um a foster child and God's the parent, the foster parent, and you have to do things to make sure that you get a stay.

SPEAKER_04 25:35

Right.

SPEAKER_00 25:35

You're always doing things to make sure they're okay with you.

SPEAKER_04 25:38

And this is what shame ultimately is what got Jesus so riled up. Yep, exactly. I mean the Pharisees. Oh, yeah. I mean, that was oh, that was just all shame driven.

SPEAKER_00 25:50

And it was so emphasized in the very same scriptures. If you look at the prostitute and be connected, you look at the Pharisees, I still believe that he loved them and he wanted to be connected to them too.

SPEAKER_04 26:00

Oh, absolutely. Because he he also said that he weeped over them and wanted to gather them like a hen gathers their chicks. Okay. So exactly he loved them. It's just that you know, love doesn't have to be.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

Yeah, exactly. But he loved them so much that he was, I believe it wasn't so much that he was mad at them, he was mad at shame keeping them from him, from God.

SPEAKER_04 26:25

Yeah, and the difference between like when Jesus gets upset and I get upset, you know, I'm just mad. Yeah, I'm just blowing off steam. Yeah, I'm just I'm just you know, that's that's why man's anger doesn't bring about the righteous life to God's desires. But because when I get angry, I'm just blowing off steam. But when he gets angry, it's coming from his identity, it's coming from who he is. Yep, you know, and he's and he was confronting who we are. Yes, he was confronting shame.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

Yeah, he was saying to Pharisees, that's not who you are.

SPEAKER_04 26:54

No, if you assume do not hold this over people, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 26:58

And if yeah, because not only were they experiencing shame, but they were shaming others, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 27:02

And we're all Pharisees too. We gotta get that through. I know, I know.

SPEAKER_00 27:05

I always thought that I was like, but what if we are? Because we all are because we are, yeah. Any moment that we step into shame, which ultimately means that we step into the judgment seat, yeah, as soon as we step into shame, we are a Pharisee to ourselves or to others. And what did Jesus do? He ate with the sinners, he walked with them, he talked with them, he was with them. He wasn't offended by their sin. He was offended by the Pharisees by shame.

SPEAKER_04 27:37

Yep. So when I was preparing for this, I looked back at the transcripts from we because we had two other episodes where we talked a lot about shame, episodes two and twenty two. And and you already said this, but I really wanted to just kind of reiterate it because I think this is where a lot of freedom can come. You talk about not fixing or battling shame, you know, it's not a flaw. It's not a character flaw, it's not anything other than um it's just something that's covering our pain and unmet needs.

SPEAKER_01 28:12

Yep, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 28:13

If we go to the root, if we go to the root, if we use a process like the compassion method to get to the root, um that's where freedom comes. That's where you will get free from shame. And I love how, and for me, obviously connecting it to faith means a lot. And I just love by studying the approach that God had with Adam and Eve when they sinned. Compassionate inquiry.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

Like he was curious, even though he probably already knew the answer. Yeah. He was curious.

SPEAKER_04 28:45

Rhetorical question, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_00 28:46

Yeah, but his posture towards them was curious.

SPEAKER_04 28:49

Yes. Yeah, very what was he curious about? Yeah. Well, how did you get this self-perception? Who told you that you were evil? Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

Exactly. That was his biggest concern. That was opening statement, was that of all the things he could say, his opening statement was, Who told you that you were naked, that you were evil?

SPEAKER_02 29:11

Who told you?

SPEAKER_00 29:13

Because he didn't want them to believe that that's who they were. That was his biggest concern, and that's his biggest concern with us. He doesn't want us to believe that we're evil because we sinned.

SPEAKER_04 29:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:28

Because we're Christians and we continue to sin.

SPEAKER_04 29:32

Hell yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

On purpose or not.

unknown 29:36

Right.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

We make mistakes, we sin. But he's saying that I don't want you to see your that as who you are. Same thing when our kids are little. We don't want them to see like if they make a mistake, we don't want to say they say they um they steal something. We don't want to say you're a thief. That's who you are. Because you stole, therefore, you're a thief. But that's not who they are. That was his biggest concern.

SPEAKER_04 30:04

Yeah. And I think that yeah, that's his biggest concern. And then our biggest concern needs to be thinking through how we can, you know, I always tell people like with the compassion method, remote control exercise, all that stuff, but the first thing you have to know is that you're triggered. Like the first thing you have, you have to be aware that this is happening to you.

SPEAKER_00 30:27

Yeah, and it triggers yourself up that you're hiding. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:31

Like when I first came to you and I was having you know extreme anxiety attacks. Well, it was obvious something was going on. Like, you know, but where it's most dangerous, maybe even frustrating for me, is when things start going well and you get a level of healing, it's a lot harder to recognize when shame is in the room.

SPEAKER_01 30:54

Yep.

unknown 30:54

Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 30:55

It's a lot harder to recognize. So I wanted to take a few moments to just talk about how to identify when shame is present. Yeah. And obviously, anxiety, depression, all of those things ultimately have a root of that. But a lot of times we're anxious and we don't know we're anxious.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:15

Okay. So one of the things that I'm learning to recognize when it comes into my operating system is the words I should. And I was talking to my aunt about this uh this past week. She was with us, and um, and she really helped bring that out too, where she was talking about how she learned to identify shame is by listening when she had this internal dialogue. I should do this. I should do that. I should, I should, I should, I should.

SPEAKER_00 31:47

And to add one thing to that, when you think other people should as well.

SPEAKER_04 31:51

There you go.

SPEAKER_00 31:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:52

That person should be doing that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 31:55

Yeah. Um, so that's a really big one. So when that when that message is coming through your head, you know that there's potentially shame moving. I think another one is um feeling deficient or inadequate.

SPEAKER_00 32:09

Yep. Imposter syndrome, that's a popular thing. That's actually rooted in shame.

SPEAKER_04 32:14

Yeah. Or feeling that there's something wrong with me. Yeah, and the strong desire to fix. If I could just take care of this one character flaw.

SPEAKER_00 32:22

Yep. If I just didn't do this thing, you know, because everyone usually has an area of weakness in their life, an area of addiction or area of something that they go to. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:32

If I could just fix that, I'd be okay. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 32:34

And it can be like really terrible things, but it can also be good things too. If I can just get to church, if I go to church four times this week, then maybe I'll be enough.

SPEAKER_04 32:43

But less, like we said, even if you stop doing, or if it's something that uh brings you shame, uh, an activity or something you do that is shameful, even if you stop doing it, the shame's still gonna be there unless you go to the room.

SPEAKER_00 32:56

Exactly. And that's why people change their behaviors, but they still feel like it's it hasn't changed internally. You make external changes that don't impact our internal world. We want our internal, we want it to be the reverse. We want our internal world to make the external changes, not the external changes to satisfy our inner shame, inner lack.

SPEAKER_04 33:22

Another really big um identifier of shame was showed up really strong in the biblical account. Um, what did Adam do when God asked him what he did?

SPEAKER_00 33:32

She did it. That woman that you gave me. No, she first he first blames God. He's like, that woman that you gave me.

SPEAKER_04 33:38

Oh, yeah, I missed that part. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:41

She did it. Yes, yes. So there was a double blame. Yeah, exactly. I didn't think about that until you read that, but it's true.

SPEAKER_04 33:46

That was a double shotgun barrel blame going on.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

She's like, if you never would have given me that woman, I never would have done that.

SPEAKER_04 33:53

Yeah. And because that woman, she's the problem. She gave me the fruit.

SPEAKER_00 33:57

Yeah, exactly. No, blame, because we can see it so evidently in that story.

SPEAKER_04 34:01

But the woman's not off the hook because one verse later, when she was confronted, what is this that you have done? Who did she blame? Well, it was the serpent's fault.

SPEAKER_00 34:10

Yeah, exactly. We're gonna always be doing the hot potato game of trying to displace the shame that we feel through blame.

SPEAKER_04 34:17

But here's how you hear how you know you're free, though. Yeah, you say, and this is this would have been like so amazing, obviously, if they could have had this awareness, but be like, yeah, I did it. I'm sorry. Yeah, that was bad. It broke relationship with us, and I'm bad that I'm sad that I did it, but I'm really sad because it hurt our relationship.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

But it shows us that they couldn't have true repentance because they were covered in shame, and that's why Jesus had to come. Yeah, because they couldn't bridge the gap between what they did and who they are, right? If they would have known who they are and they would have known who God is, they could have had true repentance and turned from their thinking from the knowledge of good and evil and turned back to God, but they are actually being ruled by the knowledge of good and evil, and that kept them from repentance, and that's a really key thing. True repentance will never come from the knowledge of good and evil, right? If you do better, it doesn't it doesn't cause repentance. No, repentance is the vulnerability to say, I need you, I can't, I need you.

SPEAKER_04 35:31

Well, and and true repentance can't come until shame is dealt with.

SPEAKER_00 35:38

Yep, exactly, because we're repenting through the lens of shame, which isn't true repentance.

SPEAKER_04 35:42

Nope. We're repenting because we got caught, we're repenting because we feel guilty. We feel guilty, you know, and and this is where I really I never saw this as another way to recognize you're stuck in shame is the defensiveness and the pridefulness.

SPEAKER_00 35:58

Yeah, that's a really good one.

SPEAKER_04 36:00

Right. Because the pride I get a lot better now because if you're if you think that what you did is who you are, yeah, okay, man, you cannot own what you did. No, so being defensive and prideful about it is one way to not own it. Yeah, it's like if you owned it, you would be agreeing with this lie that's running through your head that what I did is who I am.

SPEAKER_00 36:27

Yep, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 36:28

Because if if that shame in the operating system is telling you that, whispering that in your ear, and if you have that identity confusion that you did bad, you are bad, you can't admit it.

SPEAKER_01 36:40

You can't repent of it, you can't even admit you did it.

SPEAKER_00 36:42

No, exactly. And that's where you're gonna be so protective of your good works, you know what I mean? Like you're gonna be so protective to defend how good you are to protect yourself, or you're gonna move on, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 36:54

Or you're going to start over and try to fix it by doing better in another relationship, in another job, in another whatever.

SPEAKER_00 37:04

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 37:05

You're just running, man. And it's it's it's horrible to watch, you know. I have an opportunity right now, and it just breaks my heart to watch somebody being run really, really hard by shame.

unknown 37:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:18

And but yet I know that, you know, that's still running in my life too. You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_00 37:24

Yep. It's still there.

unknown 37:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:26

That key that I caught, it's funny you brought that up because I just had a client I was working with yesterday that we highlighted how important it is in those moments to not necessarily we we're gonna acknowledge whatever's happening. We're gonna acknowledge if if that shame is leading to negative behaviors, we're gonna acknowledge it and say, you know, hey, that's not good for you. But what's most important, even more important than that, is to see the person for who they are, even when they can't. When you hold space for who a person really is and you see them for who they are, not for what they do, we see what they do and it matters. But when we genuinely believe that who they are matters more than what they do, that's the true north for them to come home to themselves. But if we agree with them and believe that what they're doing is horrible and wrong, or we or they're not seeing it, we need to make them see it, it's defeating the whole purpose. Our part is not necessarily to judge what a person's doing, our part is to actually be able to stay connected to who that person is or to who we are.

SPEAKER_04 38:38

Well, it starts with staying connected to who we are.

SPEAKER_00 38:40

Yeah, exactly. It has to start within us. We cannot stay true, we cannot see who another person is if we cannot see who we are. But as I'm connected to me, I can see you. And you know how we think often, and sometimes we can ruminate on maybe what a decision someone's making that's not good, and we'll think about oh, how bad it is and how much it's gonna hurt them and how you know negative it is. But what if we ruminated on who they are? They're wise, they're creative, they're strategic, they're kind, we focused on who they are, we ruminated on who they are, it would change how we saw what they did.

SPEAKER_04 39:23

That's really good. That's a lot of food for thought for me.

SPEAKER_00 39:28

For all of us, you know, because of our own shame, when someone else does something good or evil, primarily we usually we focus on what's evil. When someone does something that we don't agree with or we think is wrong, our first reaction is judgment based on our own shame and how we judge ourselves. So good store starting point is to be able to first recognize why it bothers you within you first.

SPEAKER_04 40:00

Yeah. Lori, you're always bringing it back to you. Bringing it back to me.

SPEAKER_00 40:05

You're on we're doing a podcast right now.

SPEAKER_04 40:08

We kind of want to focus on these other people doing bad stuff, but nope, bring it back to my heart.

SPEAKER_01 40:13

It's so much, it's it feels so much better to focus on what other people are doing and not what we're doing.

SPEAKER_04 40:19

Well, actually, to focus on what I'm doing. So I was thinking of doing a two two part to this, and I'm kind of just dropping this on you right now, Laura. So I um I went back through our 85 pages of typed notes that I have from my two years of meeting one-on-one with you. And with the help of groc, and with the help of groc, I was able to look at my experience dealing with shame as I talked to you about it over those two years. And I was thinking on the next episode, we could just get very specific about my process going through it. Yeah, because even though my process is unique to me, this process is not unique.

SPEAKER_00 41:00

Exactly. We are all universally going through this, even if we go through it in our own unique way. And I think several of the points, because um, I saw that in the notes, like you know, several of the points you made, I do believe that are gonna be more universal as well, even though it was your own process.

SPEAKER_04 41:16

I really believe as I was reading through the notes, I was like, people's search situations are different and their circumstances are different, but they are gonna see themselves in this.

SPEAKER_00 41:28

So I think that's a really great idea. Like for everyone that's listening, like we are unpacking shame. We're giving more understanding of what it is, we're giving more examples of what it is, more examples of how it originated. But really, at the end of the day, when you hear Brian's story of shame, it's actually gonna bring it all home because we can talk about it almost ambiguously, like shame and what we do and who we are. But when you actually put it down into real examples of it, I think that's when we really see it come alive. Because otherwise we're listening to it just as knowledge. But when we hear your story and how it personally impacted you, it can then personally impact us. And that's really the goal of the compassion method. It's not just to gain knowledge of shame, but it's actually to heal shame and the specifics of what that looks like.

SPEAKER_04 42:17

Yeah, absolutely. Well, between now and then, I think how I'd I think how we can leave this with our viewers, or one thing I would like to share would be to focus on the fact that shame is a universal thing. It's running on all of our operating systems, whether we're aware of it or not. We we gave you some great indicators of you know where it came from, obviously, originally, but then also how to identify what's going on in your life with it and like what you're doing that I should, or they should, or they should, as Laura said, they should be doing that. The feelings of deficiency, the blame, the defensiveness, the pridefulness, and kind of a call to action would be to just be curious, be curious with your life, with yourself, and just be curious, just being like, okay, God, where where is shame kind of eating my lunch and I don't even know it?

SPEAKER_00 43:17

Yeah, no, I think that's a great call to action. And then when we go through part two, you can take those areas that you recognize, oh yeah, I felt like I should do that, and I felt deficient in this, and I kept blaming this, and I had a lot of pride in that area. When we start to recognize the different things, bring, write it down, bring it with you. So as we're as Brian's sharing his story of how he received healing in different areas of his life from shame, you can actually be doing the same thing, potentially in a different, you might have a different thing that causes shame, but it's going to be the same process to heal shame. So if you actually have those things in front of you, well, we're going through that process with Brian, you're going to be able to do that for yourself as well.

SPEAKER_04 44:01

So that's your homework, everybody.

SPEAKER_00 44:02

Yep, we got homework. And the next thing we need to actually be able to apply and heal shame because, like we said before, you cannot do better. You can't fix shame. No. The only way to overcome shame in your life is through compassion. And the application of compassion heals shame. Not just the knowledge of shame, but actually the healing of shame.

SPEAKER_04 44:30

Great. Well, thank you, everyone, for joining us for this episode. Thank you, Laura, for sharing all of your wonderful wisdom and giving me something that I'm gonna have to go back and listen to again.

SPEAKER_00 44:40

Yes, always make it applicable because it's real, it's real for me, it's real for you.

SPEAKER_04 44:45

So we're doing this podcast, and then she splashes over and does a uh like we're having a one-on-one. And I'm like, wait a second.

SPEAKER_01 44:52

Wait a second, how'd we get here?

SPEAKER_04 44:54

How did I get on the hot seat? You know, I'm just supposed to be here, you know, facilitating a conversation, not be on the hot seat, but anyway, but I appreciate it and uh look forward to uh connecting and sharing more uh on our next episode. So thank you everyone for listening. Bye bye.

SPEAKER_00 45:12

Yeah, bye everyone.