After my presentation on a university campus, John asked to talk. He looked to be in his early 20s and was wearing what students often wear—jeans and a hoodie. 

But why does he have his hoodie pulled up over his head? I wondered. The room is really warm.

I invited Jean to sit down and he plunged into his story. 

“It was always the same at home,” he said. “Every night Dad stared at the TV while Mom cleaned the house. It was like I didn’t exist. Didn’t have a voice. Was invisible.”

“Which left you feeling…?” 

“Like I wasn’t worth loving. Like there must be something wrong with me.” He pulled his hoodie tighter so it shadowed his face.

“Sounds like you felt ashamed.”

When I saw Jean nod without looking at me my mind when to things I knew about shame. It’s a major obstacle to connection that we try to overcome either by:  

working harder to become acceptable or likeable;

attacking in hopes to make ourselves feel better, feel superior; or 

pull away and hide from anything or anyone that make us feel shame. John’s hoodie was a visual expression of what he was doing to his soul. Hiding.

Thing is, those reactions are never sufficient. Even working harder might provide hope for a time, but relationships never feel real because they’re based on performance or pretense. We feel like frauds who have to keep up the show. And when they don’t work at all, we feel even more unworthy of love. Then we reach for relief. Drugs…overeating… porn… drivenness… shopping…the internet…

I was reminded of some of the word Brené Brown has done on shame, connection, and vulnerability. Her research led her to observe that shame is the feeling of being unworthy of connection.

But it was Dr. Dan Allender’s description of shame that guided the direction I took. Allender describes shame as the emotion we feel when what we trust to give us worth fails and makes a fool of us.

How can that help free us of shame? Let’s come back to John. Earlier he said he felt “Like there must be something wrong with me. Like I wasn’t worth loving.”

“Tell me John,” I said, “what gets stirred in you when you hear me say that your parents didn’t shame you?”

His eyes narrowed.

“They hurt you, and missed wonderful opportunities to support and encourage you as you grew up,” I continued, “but did they shame you?” I paused to let him think about that. “They didn’t shame you, you shamed yourself. You shamed yourself by anchoring your sense of worth in their opinion of you, in their response to you. Tune into your shame. It’s telling you that you’ve anchored your soul in someone or something unworthy of the weight of your soul. Shame is a friend calling you back home to yourself and to a better, more reliable source than other people’s opinion of you.”

His eyes shifted to the side, processing what he’d just heard. When he spoke, his voice was barely audible. “I can’t believe I’ve given my parents so much power! What a game changer.” 

He managed to crack a smile before the tears began to flow. Tears of joy, sorrow, wonder and celebration. Homecoming. The beginning of a new chapter in his life–learning to nurture and live his True Self.