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Friday, May 2, 2014

Book Review: Remy Diederich, "Healing the Hurts of your past, a guide to overcoming the pain of shame," Cross Point Publishing, 2006, 2012.

Review:
The problem of shame is particularly devastating because it sabotages people's self-worth and ability to function effectively in relationships and ministry due to the lies they internalize about themselves. Diederich, in his book Healing the Hurts of Your Past, says:
        “Shame is not guilt.  Guilt is con-structive. It tells you that you have done something wrong and motivates you to both make amends as well as to seek forgiveness and restoration. There is a remedy for guilt.
          But with shame, there is no remedy. Shame is de-structive.  Shame is not about what you have done. Shame is about who you are. It is a condemnation of you as a person…
          Shame has little to do with the bad things that have happened to you or the bad things that you have done. Shame has everything to do with the lies that you believe about yourself as a result of these events.” (Diederich, Healing the Hurts of your past, a guide to overcoming the pain of shame, Cross Point Publishing 2006, 2012, pp.17, 22).

Many cultures in the world, which base a person’s worth within a community, are shame-based cultures. So, a thorough discussion of the nature and devastation of shame is a valid topic globally. In fact, seventeen of the twenty-two chapters in Diederich’s book unpack the various reasons and roots of shame.  The many shame examples he provides make the concepts easy to understand and apply. This enables people to use this book with others to unmask the various lies of shame that have bound them. 

The short-coming of the book, however, is that the “healing” that Diederich advocates is given very little press. He doesn’t actually detail any practical steps until chapter 20 – and the remaining two chapters are too short to bring the kind of help he advocates.  In addition, he inserts an approach to that healing process, “Theosophic prayer which we’ve used exclusively for our inner healing ministry at Cedarbrook Church since 2003” (p. 146),
without adequately explaining what that approach involves.  After researching more about Theosophic prayer in Google, after I completed the book, I realized he has implicitly demonstrated the method in various chapters of the book. The approach itself has very mixed reviews, however, so he does the readers a disservice by not being more explicit about the process or the implications of “finding a Theosophic counselor” (p.151).  The paucity of material on the healing process makes the book incomplete. Still, the thoroughness with which he describes shame is very helpful.
                                                          M.L. Codman-Wilson, Ph.D. 2014

Excerpts:
“Shame is a very painful topic that most people don’t want to discuss. It’s often rooted in horrible life events like abuse, neglect and cruel circumstances…This book will not heal you but will help you to understand your hurts, see how they’ve impacted your life and then show you the path to healing” (pp. 5-6).

“Our reality doesn’t live up to our expectations. We all live with expectations for the way our lives SHOULD be. There are expectations that people have for us, like our family or friends or teachers, then there are expectations that God has for us – or at least the expectations we think God has for us. Plus there are expectations that we have for ourselves…Many of these expectations we live up to. But unfortunately, we also fall short of many of them. Falling short is part of the human condition…Falling short of our life expectations can be devastating. We see it as a statement of our value. Somewhere along the line we’ve learned that our self-worth is directly related to our performance. And so, if we aren’t performing well, we naturally assume that we are deficient as a person…It is these thoughts that define a shame-based person…The shamed person will spend hours every day trying to look perfect and act perfect so as not to reveal their hidden deficiencies” (pp. 9-11).

Seven Responses to Shame
  1. “Denial – you build an emotional wall between the past and the present…
  2. Suppression…
  3. Cover-up…
  4. Medication...
  5. Suffering…
  6. Suicide…
  7. Turning to God – shame is not something you were designed to live with…You can be confident that God wants to deliver you from your shame” (pp. 13-16).

The Roots of Shame
  • Abuse (physical, emotional, sexual and spiritual) – Abuse happens when someone crosses the boundaries of another person and enters their personal space for their own gain and to the detriment of their victim…Children are like wet cement. Abuse stamps children with memories that feed them lies for the rest of their lives” (pp. 29, 32).
  • Ridicule – “It is confusing for a child to have their emotions ridiculed (‘Don’t be such a big baby,’ ‘Quit being a scardy-cat’) because it’s not like they choose to have them. Emotions come naturally…When children see that it is not acceptable to express their emotions, they become experts at hiding their emotions, stuffing them or denying them all together” (p. 41).
  • Your Name – Your given name…your nickname…your name given to you as a label can all cause shame (pp. 47-49).
  • Neglect – “Whether you are abused or neglected the message is the same: ‘You are worthless.’ With abuse the message is ‘I can hurt you because you are worthless.’ With neglect, the message is ‘I can ignore you because you are worthless.’ …God created us for a joy that only comes from intimate relationships…There are a number of ways that people manufacture false intimacy – medication, sex, fantasy and violence” (pp. 54, 57-59).
  • Family and personal secrets – “Many families have a ‘don’t talk’ rule about their secrets…These cause children a lot of emotional confusion that leads to shame. They don’t know how to handle the secret…They feel guilty for all their mixed emotions and thoughts…They fear not only exposing the secret but the punishment they will receive for exposing the secret” (pp. 61-64).
  • Traumatic events – “When trauma happens, it’s easy to take the blame on yourself. You think that God is punishing you or that the trauma was somehow your fault” (pp. 65-66).

“Be careful to note that shame is not produced by past events. Shame is produced by what you believe about those events” (p. 29).

Manifestations of Shame
“The subconscious mind works overtime trying to think of ways to keep our sense of worthlessness and inadequacy covered up…The goal of control is to eliminate all the variables in our lives so that everything is predictable. We don’t want any surprises that will expose our weaknesses and make us look bad” (pp.69-70). People use intimidation and manipulation for control, perfectionism – “to make sure no one sees them as inferior” (p.71), procrastination (“the longer you can delay performing a task, the longer you can delay someone seeing that you don’t measure up to the task” (p. 72), isolation, people pleasing, being self-conscious, thinking about how others perceive them, and compulsiveness” (pp. 73-75).

People dealing with shame also use suppression, repression, projection [“not seeing one’s own problem but recognizing it in someone else” (p.80)], care-taking [“so you don’t have to focus on your problems” (p.81], medication, secretiveness, lying, defensiveness, rationalization and minimalizing” (pp. 81-84).

Defining Self Worth
We define self-worth by our accomplishments and the compliments/opinions of other people. “The problem is that if your performance for the day equals zero, and everyone has a low opinion of you, then your self-worth adds up to a big fat zero…The only constant for our self-worth is God’s love for us because God’s love never changes. He loves us no matter how good or how bad our performance is” (p.101).

“Seven truths about yourself that can help heal the hurts of your past:
1.   You are created by God…
2.   You are loved by God…
3.   You are accepted by God…
4.   You are forgiven by God…
5.   You are approved by God…
6.   You are filled by God…
7.   You are transformed by God” (pp. 115-125).
“The transformed abundant life is the picture that you need to keep in your mind at all times. The shamed-based person is so quick to think that God wants to withhold from them because they are so undeserving. But the truth-based person is convinced that God wants to not only bless them abundantly, but use them to be a blessing to others…You can find many books in the book store today that do a good job of telling you the truth of who you are in Christ, but few books will tell you that knowing who you are in Christ will not change you one bit. How can this be? Because the lies you believe undermine these truths. They block the truth from having its effect of your life…So healing the hurts of your past requires more than just remembering who you are. Healing the hurts of your past requires exposing your lies and finding the truth about yourself…Transformation has more to do with revelation than information. Information can help move you in the right direction, that’s why I talk to you about remembering who you are, but the revelation of both the lies and God’s truth is what is needed to make your transformation a reality” (pp.128, 133, 134).

Steps to Freedom
“Sincere followers of Jesus can live in defeat. Intellectually they believe in Jesus; they believe that God loves them and values them. But at a much deeper level, at a heart or soul level, they are convinced that they are worthless. These soul beliefs are stronger than their intellectual beliefs because they were communicated with some kind of trauma…which empowers the lie-based thinking and cements it into place. Until that cement is broken up and the lies are released, it doesn’t matter how much truth you remember” (p. 136).

“Here are some steps to help you find the freedom you’ve been looking for:
  • Admit your shame…
  • Feel the pain…
  • Discover the source (Ask God to take you where you need to go in your mind to resolve these feelings)…
  • Discern the lie…
  • Receive the truth…
  • Find a healthy church…
  • Read the Bible…
  • Find healthy friends…
  • Find a Theophostic counselor…·
  • Learn to set healthy boundaries…
  • Join a small group…
  • Learn to forgive…
  • Serve others” (pp. 139-152).