Shame is more common than you think with Dr. Curt Thompson

October 01, 2020

Jennie Allen

Bible teacher, founder of IF:Gathering

Today we have one of our most popular guests back on the podcast! If you have not listened to his first episode, you have to go back and listen. It's a high level of what we're going to do today. Dr. Curt Thompson is in the house and we are so excited!

Every time Curt and I talk, he makes me cry. I'm hoping for a day I don't cry, but it's kind of his specialty. I basically get free counseling by podcasting. We all find ourselves in a very difficult and chaotic time, and we're all fighting a lot of feelings. Some of those feelings, for a lot of people, it's the first time they're really waking up to them and noticing them. I doubt it's the first time they're feeling them. I want to discuss a little bit about shame, because this is such an important thing for you. If you don't know, Dr. Thompson is a psychiatrist as well as an expert, I'm going to blow it, you say it, neuro-something.

You can just say the brain and relationships! Personal neurobiology. Either of those. Whatever works! 

That's why I blow it because I try to do the second one. But brains and people. He has taught me so much on this issue. A lot of what I write about these days is because of Curt's influence in my life. I'm excited for you guys to hear from him. Shame really was a topic that you say as foundational. Your first book was Anatomy of the Soul, but then you came out with this book on shame. It was interesting because you deal with so many issues with people, and this was the first thing you thought, "I really have to focus and zero in on that." Talk just a minute about why.

I think that in the work I was doing, even before the first book was completed, it became evident that at some point, in everybody's care, it didn't matter how severe, it didn't matter the setting, it didn't matter whether we were talking about patients or doing consulting, working with businesses or schools or whatever. This phenomenon of shame would start to show up. To be clear for your listeners, we hear shame and we immediately are aware it's a thing that we feel, but I began to see it as a primary way in which people's lives are disintegrated. We feel it physically, because we're like animals in that regard, it's a fundamental and basic neurophysiological event, long before we think, "I feel shame because my dad did this" or whatever. It's first something we experience in our bodies. Everybody experiences it to some degree. But it's not just a bad feeling. Our brain is constantly in the business of sensing things, and then making sense of things. We're always doing it, 24/7. What we do to make sense of shame often reinforces the very shame experience itself. It isn't just a thing we feel, it becomes a force that disintegrates relationships. And even more powerfully, it disintegrates our ability to create. It disintegrates our capacity to make new things. I've become more and more impressed with this notion that we are made in God's image first to be known by him, but then to create beauty and goodness in the world. That's part of what we are made to do. It's as genetic and natural as breathing to want to make things. Creating beauty is what we're made to do. It's an anathema to evil. It's nauseating to evil. Evil doesn't just use shame to make us feel bad. It uses shame as a way to corrupt our ability to create. Whether that's creating relationships, software, furniture, podcast shows, spiritual formation culture for the women you do in your ministry. I think about my own marriage and the way shame in my own life has kept me from being as actively engaged with my wife as I would want to be. I do something I feel bad about, and instead of thinking, "I've gotta take care of this." I just feel bad about it. Then I feel bad for feeling bad about it. Then I become increasingly more passive, which of course is not helpful for the situation We're in a culture right now, in all the ways things feel fractured, in which shame is really the strongest voice in the room. It's not a particular person. It's this phenomenon that has gained authority. It's in the driver's seat. It's all the more reason for us to be conscience of it in order to take the steps we need to to address it. 

I love that. I mean I hate it, but I love that you put words to it because that's the problem. Walls go up in our relationships and you don't know exactly what to call that wall. I've seen such power in naming things and saying, "this is what it is. This is what you're feeling." Some of you listening right now might be thinking, "Gosh, is that why I'm distant from someone or is that the wall that's between relationships?" You would almost always say probably. That really is a root of almost every other feeling we're going to feel and every other struggle we're going to struggle with. 

It's not the only uncomfortable feeling we have as human beings. We have tons of uncomfortable feelings, or what we might call negative feelings. Feelings that are unpleasant. I'm struck though in the biblical narrative how it is that the writer of Genesis, the Hebrews had lots of different words for describing the state of affairs when Adam and Eve stood on the brink of creation. The man and his wife were naked and it could have been a whole range of things the writer could have said. But the writer said they're unashamed. Of course you read the next chapter and without much time being spent, we're wallowing in it. Then it leads to violence in chapter 4 between the brothers. It really strikes me. It's a big deal because we learn it very early - 15-18 months of age and we're already picking it up. We're already sensing it in our brains. Obviously this doesn't necessarily feel good for parents because you're like, oh, great, my kids are so screwed. Yeah, but this is why the gospel is a story that only God would think of. We would never think of this. We would never come up with the idea that God is going to enter into our shame as a way of pulling us out of it, as opposed to standing at a distance like some parent that says, "why can't you get your crap together?" And punishes for not having our crap together. Instead, he's coming to live in that space in order to get our attention where we actually live, and not try to call our attention from some distant place. In so doing, not just make us feel better, in the same way that evil's intention is not just to make us feel bad, but God's intention with the healing of shame is not just to make us feel better. It is about transforming us in order to recommission us to create icons of beauty and goodness in every domain of life we occupy. It's really difficult to do that without getting the help I need from other people. I know that you have been championing for as long as I've known you the role of community. This is why my brain needs another brain. I need somebody else to come and find me. The neurobiology of shame is such that I am not going to go ask you for help with it.

I would say that this season more than ever has caused a lot of shame. You mentioned that. We're all isolated and we're all watching and our consumption of current events and things is probably bringing out a lot of confusion and shame. Talk about how it's shifted and how maybe the enemy is using it in this season.

I think as I said, I've written a number of essays about this, COVID and its effect. In one of the first essays, I said that it's not just an event that creates or causes anxiety or isolation. It's an event that's revealing our anxiety as it already exists, and the isolation we're already living with. Our response in the middle of COVID is not just something that this social experience is causing, as much as it is revealing. I don't mean that it's not causing any of it, it certainly is, but to a large degree it's also revealing what I have been doing with my life for the past 5-10 years. If I'm being shaped by social media, if that's what has been shaping me over the last 5 years, then COVID comes and I have even less contact with embodied people, I'm going to simply do more of what I've always done. The problem is that the things I've been doing now only become more heightened, more distilled, more intensified, so I become even less connected to people because I'm turning to the things I've been doing up until this to cope with my sense of not being enough, my sense of shame underneath all these things. I'm not someone who thinks technology is bad, but I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to recognize that social media has not made us better people. I'm not condemning it, but it has not made us better people. It's made life more convenient. It's created moments of joy and happiness, but it has created states within us of being more isolated and less truly connected, because we're less embodied. Add to that this reality that through media is how I am receiving my awareness of the world. Most of us, if you just watch my week, and you look at the actual content and contact I have with real human beings, whether that's with patients over Zoom or a few in person, or my family, or my neighborhood. If you just look at that, there's very little about any of that that would lead me to believe that I should be worried, afraid, etc. That's not to deny that we have real problems. I'm simply saying that the real interactions we have with real people are opportunities to actually practice not being afraid. Practice not allowing shame to be running the show. But because of this isolation, we simply turn to our old practices and it only escalates.

What you're saying is so obvious. I hate to say that, but it's obvious to me and has to be said that we are coping with our isolation, we are coping with this season in greater form. My husband was talking to a local person that owns a liquor store, and we were checking on them in the middle of it like, 'how's it going?' Of course she was like, "we've never been better! This is glory days for us." Whether it's alcohol or it's technology or addiction or porn, even just comfort. For me, I have to tell myself, "I'm going to get up and get dressed today." That wasn't something I had to say to myself 6 months ago. I got dressed everyday! I kind of have to decide that this is going to be a day where I'm productive. That's a new mentality for some of us. Let's talk about that coping issue. It's a fear of mine that we don't snap out of it and pull into more of a disciplined, holy path. 

Jesus himself would be working harder if he were here than he was working 6 months ago. For those folks who are working hard to be people of integrity, working hard in their spiritual formation, like they're running hard after Jesus, they're doing community, etc. The circumstances of COVID put our neurobiological realties in a bit of a lockdown situation. They put is in a situation in which the brain is having to work harder than it usually does. There's no question about that. Whereas before, we have some automatic things that are waiting for us, get us out of bed in the morning, get in the shower, go to breakfast, do my thing, because I have a coffee date at 8am. That's what I do. This is all part of the routine, but when it goes away I have a lot less physical, material encounter outside of my own skin that is dependent upon me, because it's not happening. I then have to, as you said, make myself do something with intentionality. Like when you learn to drive at 16, if it's their first time, everything is on high alert. They're just trying to know they've got their seatbelt fastened. Everything is working really, really hard to do this. Then they learn to drive and months and years go by and now they're a competent driver and everything is automatic. All those things they had to learn to do consciously with intention, paying attention, has now dropped into automatic lower brain function. The brain does lots of things automatically, non-consciously, so that they can have a conversation with you in the car while they're driving and everybody's okay. But if then, they suddenly find themselves on a sheet of ice or in a really bad snow storm, suddenly they can't just depend upon their automatic maneuvers anymore. They have to work extra hard to pay attention in ways that they typically don't have to pay attention. Imagine if you're going to be driving in a snow storm for 9 months, that's a lot of extra work we have to do. As such, it's a lot more important that the connections we do have with those people by whom we are deeply known, that we are taking initiative to say to our people, "Jennie, I see how hard you're working just to get out of bed. I just want to let you know that I'm with you in this. I'm not leaving the room." This is hard, and it's not hard because you're a pansy. It's not hard because you're stupid. It's not hard because you're not spiritually mature enough. It's hard because it's driving through a snowstorm. And those are not normal conditions we drive our car in. We need that much more effort, less immersion in social media and more immersion in scripture and spiritual reading. That much less critical conversation and that much more curious conversation in which we are actively engaging people, even if we are not able to go have coffee with them like we usually do or meals in our room with 30 other people. The notion of being connected to people with intentionality has never been more crucial.

Never. I could not agree more. It scares me because I think those patterns over time, you know, this is going to go on longer. It's not over yet. Those patterns over time, what do we become like on the other side? I love that you said Jesus would be working harder. I love that you're giving credit to the fact that basic tasks are harder than they used to be. I needed to hear that. I needed to recognize that in myself to push through it and be more disciplined. I had to diagnose it in a way. All of this is going to lead to more and more shame and paralyzation. That's our hope guys is you would hear this and know you're not alone, you're not the only person that's having a hard time getting dressed right now. This is unique that I have two homeschooling kids here right now. In fact, I have more, because a couple girls are joining my daughter right now because they were tired of being alone, so they planned to do school together. I thought that was actually really well-played. I think there's a lot of unusual circumstances, I don't need to say that, but sometimes we need to hear that we're not alone in how difficult basic tasks are. In your mind, there are antidotes to shame, things to attack shame. I want to talk about those in our time together. Let's hear about what you've been working on lately. I should say first of all, you are in Get Out of Your Head, and a lot of people listening have read that book. So I want to say that he was enemy #1 in this chapter on beauty, and we're going to talk about this because he really did pull me out of isolation. Let's talk about beauty as an antidote to shame.

What I'm really struck by is, and this isn't just a problem with modernity, that's part it, but it's a problem that dates as old as humanity. We see this in the garden of Eden. Anytime I see a problem, I understand it through the lens of diagnosing the problem. You're a pathology to be diagnosed and treated. You're not first an opportunity for beauty to emerge and be created. No matter what I see, it's a problem. How do I solve the problem? Because that's often how I think of myself. Now I'm not consciously aware that I'm thinking that. I don't wake up in the morning and think, "in what ways today do I need to solve my problematic self?" But when we imagine problems we want to find a way to solve it. I tend to operate out of my logical, left, linear thinking brain. If I see a problem, I'm going to give you a solution for it. If you're asking me how I'm doing, and I tell you, you're not going to say, "did you read my book? Did you do this?" You probably wouldn't do that, but it's what we tend to do as humans. We run this confessional community at our practice, and one our skillsets people have to learn how to develop, and this is especially for dudes. When I get 8 dudes in a room and somebody tells their story and I'll ask the other gentlemen, "tell me what emotions gets evoked?" You hear the story and what do you feel? Immediately, they start to talk about what they think. They give me an analysis. They tell me, "I think you should .Why didn't you " Blah blah blah. We come as problem-solvers, and it's not to say that we shouldn't be solving problems. Studying pathology isn't a bad thing. It's all good, but we have to recognize even underneath that, the mission of solving a problem is in order to free and liberate that person to then go and create what they were made to create. Even behind "what's the problem to be solved" is what is the new thing that God is about to create with this? What's the new thing? On Good Friday, the religious leaders and the Romans understood that they were solving a problem, and God was seeing a beginning of a new creation. What was so strange about it was that none of us who would look at a cruciform, a person crucified by Romans first century AD, would imagine that there's anything about that that's anything but grotesque. There's no beauty in that whatsoever. When we have our shame matrix that gets activated, I want to know what do you do to fix this problem? What are the steps I need to take? When the first thing that has to happen is I actually have to be seen in my shame by somebody else, which when they do, I find myself being seen by someone who is not coming to solve me as a problem, who is with me before they are instructing me. My problem is that my shame is often so dense that I can't imagine that when you do see me, you're not going to want to leave the room. Long before the problem ever gets solved. Which is why I don't ever tell you. Beauty is an antidote to this because God looks at Jesus, and he sees Easter coming. We don't see that. But with Easter, we look back at Good Friday and everything about the crucifixion - Paul even says, Jews want a sign, Greeks want wisdom, we preach beauty coming in the way you never expected. The beautiful thing about this, imagine in any moment if you were to reveal something about you that is shameful, you feel it as you're naming it, if the person to whom you're saying this says, "oh my gosh. You have never been more beautiful in this moment." Of course this doesn't make any sense to us. It's not what they tell me that they've logically processed. It is their eye contact, their tone of voice, what I'm seeing when I see someone who is receiving me as one who is beautiful. So we talk in this new book that I finished writing, I'm inviting the readers to consider that beauty is something that we are made to create, because it is something that we long to become. It isn't something that's just coming from us, it is who, in our most ancient memory, know that we were destined to be. You think about all the different enemy lines that have been drawn in the past 6 months - whether it's politics, economics, wearing masks, etc. If you could only imagine someone on the other side of the enemy line approaching you and saying, "man, I can't wait to have a meal with you. We might be six feet apart but I can't wait to hear your story." That doesn't make any sense to me. Because this is not how enemies work. This notion of our looking and anticipating that beauty is what is going to emerge in any moment, actually shifts in my brain what part of my brain I'm actually using to pay attention to the world. When I am paying attention to the world as a problem to be solved, I see it as this thing that is over there that I analyze and I can easily condemn if I'm not careful. When I see you as someone with whom I want to create, I am seeing you not over there but as with me here. We are going to do things together. I'm going to be in the present moment. It leaves so much less room for shame to have the talking stick and describe why this is a bad idea. But I can't do that unless I also have someone pursuing me in the places where I perceive myself to be unwantable. We tell patients to practice putting themselves in the path of oncoming beauty. That means before you do anything else in your day, you step outside, and this would look weird, but you step outside and find something, maybe a tree, and I want you to go touch the thing. I want you to recognize that the tree didn't get there from you. You didn't make this happen. It's something bigger than you and beyond you. It's something that's living. It's not even talking to you and it's something you couldn't have made happen. It's this recognizing that when we see beauty in the tree, it enables us to practice imagining that this is who we are. We don't imagine ourselves to be icons of beauty, but we are. I don't believe it because I don't hear it from anybody else. We hear from our culture, "you're a beautiful woman" and there's all kinds of clutter in that. When you hear a man tell another man, "you're a beautiful man" everything gets really weird for a nanosecond. It gets very weird, then you watch the one that's heard it crumble under the weight. He didn't hear that from his father. To hear that you're a beautiful soul, to hear that, in the face of what you know to be true about me, how is that possible? We would say it's possible because this is what God sees when he sees Jesus on Good Friday. This notion that beauty becomes something - I don't have to convince you of this, I don't have to argue my political point about this. I just want to invite you to sit with me in this space of beauty and talk about what is it like to be in the presence of this icon. How does that change how I then practice paying attention to this world? Including the people with whom I dwell, especially the people with whom I have enmity. If I'm looking for beauty, whereas before I had no intention of looking for it, it doesn't just change what I see, it changes who I am.

So the person listening that is thinking to themselves, "I don't know how to apply this. No one is going to tell me that. No one is going to listen to me in that way. No one sees me that way." What would you say to them?

I would say a couple things. One is, it does make a difference, in one of the blog posts that I wrote about COVID, I talked about the important of our doing things that tend to be creative in nature. It can be simple. You're doing sidewalk chalk with your kids. You're drawing, painting, journaling, baking, you're going to make things. It's important that we practice doing this in order for us to live into who we were made to be. We were made to be makers. If I'm not making, I'm condemning. Those are my choices. If I'm not making, I'm condemning. So if I'm condemning, it means I'm spending time not making. Maybe I don't because I'm afraid I don't have what it takes to make. I'm afraid I'll make mistakes, it won't be good enough, shame will follow me there. It's that very act, and for us to do it with one another. I would not be able to be in the kitchen with 4 other people, but I want to know that Jennie and I are going to bake a new recipe. We're going to ask our family to do this together. We're going to go for a walk some place and look for beauty and name it and sit with it. You might say, "I have all these things to do!" The doing is not going to make us better people or be able to tolerate COVID. So practicing creativity in the smallest of ways is a big thing. Then another thing is that we're not just practicing it, but we're actively putting ourselves in the path of it. It's really important for us to be actively listening to really good music. It's important for us to spend some time reading good literature. It's important for us to get online because many museums aren't open, but be present with some really great artwork. I have a friend that's coming out with a book on artwork and how it shapes Christian spirituality. It will be a book I want all my friends to read. It is a way for us to actively engage with the world in a way that the beauty that we sense is actually able to transform us. If you spend time in nature or with great artwork, and then ask yourself some questions about what you feel, what you sense, what does it inspire you to do, inspire you to create? Evil doesn't want any of this to happen. I will have all kinds of ways in which beauty will be interrupted. We'll make up excuses We look for answers and solutions, which are all helpful in their time, but even those answers are in order for us to create as we are made to. I think about the racial tension, and the question I want to be about answering is, how am I not just solving the problem but how am I creating new relationships with people that I don't have right now? How am I doing that? I can't solve racism comprehensively, but I can make relationships. I can listen. I can act. If I am recognizing that to do this is the creation of beauty, it's not just the negation of something bad, it's the creation of something beautiful, it changes the nature of how my brain is operating. It changes the side of my brain that I am paying attention to the world through. It allows me to be more present and more importantly it prevents shame from having the place in my life and its attempt to disintegrate the whole thing.

Curt I am so excited for your new book - it comes out next year. The second it comes out you guys will hear about it. This is something you have forced in me, and I say that because I'm the most reluctant to go there. I am a problem solver and I think there's an answer, so being present with beauty and with God and people, you have taught me a lot in that realm. There's nothing more important right now. There's not a better antidote to what we are facing and feeling than being present with God and present with people. That is our way forward. That is how the world will change. All of the other stuff will get worked out - hopefully in the presence of loving people and loving god