The Truth About Shame

Isaiah 54:4

Shame is quite toxic and can be very damaging to you. Toxic shame is when one is led to believe that he is useless and a living failure in life, and he holds himself accountable for situations and events that happened as a result from a combination of conditions which he doesn’t even have control of. It’s unnecessary guilt, and guilt that should not have been there, in the first place.

There are many people who live their lives in toxic shame. Most of these are victims of crimes, such as rape, sexual assaults, and others. They are victimized at a young age, and they grow up feeling unloved and misled. They feel unloved, and they grow up thinking that they are imperfect and damaged goods. Whenever something bad happens around them, most of the time, they attribute these bad things to them, telling themselves it’s their fault. No matter what they do, it will always be their fault. They will always blame themselves. Toxic shame is prophetic and downward spiral. It is caused by lack of love.

There are 5 telltale signs of a person living in toxic shame:
1. You see your failure as a proof of your worthlessness or a proof of your being a failure in life.
You already have a negative projection of yourself even before anything bad happens, and if something does, it only confirms your negative thoughts about yourself.

2. You forget that you are a human.
You expect all humans to be perfect and because your are not, you feel ashamed of yourself.

3. You blame yourself for what has happened.
You equate every failure that happens around you are being caused by you.

4. You feel hopeless and deprived.
You feel that no matter how you do things you will always end up in failure, and you feel powerless and restricted.

5. You have addictions.
Because you lack the feeling of love and being loved, you turn your hunger of that passion into something else, like sex, gadgets, cars, smoking, drugs or whatever that you think may fill your emptiness.

Once we are able to tell if we are one of these people living in toxic shame, and we know that toxic shame is caused by the absence of love, here are some facts that you have to realize:

1. Based on Isaiah 54:4, God doesn’t care about what mistakes you have done. He loves you as you are, unconditionally.

2. Not everything bad that happens is caused by you. There are many factors that cause things to happen. You don’t control every factor, as you are just a pixel of the whole picture.

3. We are humans, and humans do make mistakes, and that goes even for people we look up to, or once looked up to. The important thing is for us to rise up from our mistakes and move on.

4. With God there is always hope. God loves you. If you turn to Him, cast your burdens upon Him, and just let Him carry the load for you, you feel lighthearted and liberated, no matter what you experience. As long as you know God is on your side, things can never go wrong.

5. If you know that God loves you, has sacrificed His only Son for you, and you know how special you are to Him, then you should feel that love coming from Him, and that is enough to make you love yourself. If God loves you, then who are you not to love yourself, right? Once your love tank is filled, I can guarantee that whatever addictions you might have, will be replaced with God’s love. You will love God, love yourself and love others.

6. God doesn’t look down on us and is forgiving. He loves you and forgives you as long as you repent and make a resolution not to sin again and be on His side.

People might say that it’s hard to fully trust God with everything that’s going on around us. Remember that God loves us so much that He gave us freewill to do whatever we want. The bad things that happen to us has nothing to do with God, but a result of man’s actions. While you may not trust man’s actions and therefore, life may be unfair, know that God is always fair. If you live your life with Him by your side, you will always be at peace, knowing that God will give you justice in the end, in your eternal life, if not on this life. The real rewards will be in Heaven. Seek what is of God rather than what is of the Earth. Our life here is just temporary. The real life is our life thereafter.

Try to understand the cause of your problems, and you’ll understand the cure!