Recovery from shame is a daily battle. And over time the battle gets easier. Shame doesn’t have to defeat us or harm us. We can become shame resilient if we work toward vulnerability. Remember, vulnerability is the remedy for shame. As Brené Brown said, “Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity.”1
My prayer and hope for you is that this concept of progress over perfection frees you to be imperfect! I pray it fuels you to accept your imperfections and be gentler with yourself as well as have more grace for other imperfect people. Be compassionate with yourself. You are not a failure because you made a mistake. Remind yourself that mistakes are opportunities to grow and learn so we don’t repeat them. It’s time to accept that our mistakes are sometimes a necessary detour (not a dead end) to our purpose being fulfilled. There is nothing more freeing than not having anything to hide.
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We now know that recovery applies to everyone because we all have struggles, dysfunction in our upbringing, and stress that will continue to happen in our lives daily. Trauma is real, but so is resilience. You are stronger and more resilient than you think! It is up to us to make the choice to handle life in a way that benefits us. We can learn to manage the stress, grief, change, life transitions, and situations that come our way both past and present and become flexible to pivot as changes come our way. We can learn to treat the real source of our issues and find solutions to any problem that comes our way. We can choose to forgive and accept that reconciliation will be a process. We don’t need to wait to be forgiven by others to forgive ourselves. Forgiveness is a choice; reconciliation is a process. It may not look the way we thought it would, but reconciliation is ours for the taking.
I meet people all over the country when I travel, and many send me messages on social media saying they have a desire to stop drinking or using a particular substance, person, or thing to satiate or medicate themselves. However, after acknowledging that they have a problem, asking for help, and receiving my recommendations, many offer excuses as to why they can’t do what it takes to get sober. I can hear the codependency loud and clear as they say some true things, such as that finances are an issue and they can’t get to rehab or that they can’t leave their kids for that long. I know, I said the same things. Problem is, my kids were already losing me the longer I prolonged getting the help I needed. I was killing myself slowly. By making the financial sacrifice and getting help, I gave them the best gift ever — a healthy mom. Making excuses about why not to get help is more about shame and the manipulative nature of addiction to keep you sick.
More free resources than you may realize are available to you or your loved one, but you have to research which program best suits your needs or the needs of your loved one’s recovery journey. Remember, recovery applies to everyone and will look different for us all. It will be messy, exhausting, and downright hard sometimes. Here is the deal: you can make your own misery, or you can make yourself strong. The amount of work is the same. You can choose to stop making excuses and do something today to change your life even if it is as small as choosing to get into counseling or to stop eating fried food or sweets. Getting vulnerable with another person is hard, and abstaining from food we love is hard. I get it. But staying isolated and left to your own stinking thinking is making you depressed. You feel shame and pain when you have to get two seats on an airplane because you are overweight. Both are hard. The suffering is the same. How badly do you want to get well? Choose your “hard” today.
For those who have a loved one still in an addiction, I hope you realize how important your own recovery and need to establish boundaries is. You can’t do it alone, and help is available for you also. You are worth the care and investment in your healing. Dealing with the impact of the addiction on you will help set you free, and you, too, can get unstuck and thrive in your own life even if your loved one doesn’t get sober. You are worth the investment of discovering ways to process your hurts, hang-ups, and habits to keep your emotional health in order. Remember, the loved ones of those in addiction are just as sick emotionally as the person in the addiction. Don’t forget about you in it all.
Those of you who are leaders in the church may still be wondering, Will this discredit me in my ministry if people find out I was struggling while leading or that I still am struggling? I thought about that, too, and tortured myself over it. Bottom line is, I got help. I got honest. I got well, and now I help others do the same. If I keep worrying about what others will think, I will stay in the bondage that led me to drink in the first place — the disease of codependency.
It’s time to admit it. You cannot quit it until you admit it! - God’s power can’t come in to make you strong until you admit you are weak!
Don’t allow fear and shame to hold you back from all that God desires for you and those in your sphere of influence to experience through your healing and redemption story. Choose progress over perfection any day! -
Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead (New York: Avery, 2013), 35.
Excerpted with permission from Reframe Your Shame, copyright Irene Rollins. * |
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If you’re battling shame, know that most often it isn’t an instantaneous process. It’s a daily battle. Let’s not let shame take center stage when Jesus came to set us free! We can become shame resilient if we work toward vulnerability in full honesty. Thank Jesus! |
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From Lost to Found: Giving Up What You Think You Want for What Will Set You Free |
As a marriage and family therapist, one of Nicole Zasowski’s greatest joys is helping her clients grow in emotional freedom. What she couldn’t see for many years is that she was living her own life outside of that freedom, clinging to behaviors like shame, performance, and control in order to feel valued and safe. It was only when she was confronted with her own devastating pain and loss that Nicole realized her current way of life was failing her. She then discovered that sometimes God’s rescue looks like prying our fingers off what we think we want so that we can receive what we truly need. And often, on the far side of pain we don’t prefer, we find transformation we would not trade.
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What if the pain and mistakes of your past are exactly what God wants to use to redeem your future? A difficult childhood, public infidelity, and a fight with cancer--Kasey Van Norman has walked a rocky road of regret and loss. Shockingly, God would take her back to move her forward, uprooting her undealt-with wounds, secret shame, and intimacy-sabotaging patterns of behavior. No longer running from her past, but instead, allowing herself to be defined by it, Kasey discovered a God more intentional and loving than she'd ever believed him to be.
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