One of the most common forms of control is shame. It can be a little difficult to see how feeling ashamed is a form of control. Let’s start by reviewing how core shame—the false belief that you are essentially bad—begins. When, as infants and young children, we were neglected, shamed, or physically or sexually abused, we had only two choices about how to see things. We could see the truth, which was that our parents were wounded and did not know how to love us, and that we were helpless to do anything about it. Or we could believe the abuse was our fault—that we caused it because we were defective, inadequate, unworthy, and unlovable.
Because admitting we were helpless might have filled us with the deepest despair, especially as infants when having some power over getting our needs met was a matter of life and death, most of us chose to avoid the truth. Instead of recognizing our parents’ inability to love, we blamed ourselves. We developed core shame (“It’s my fault they don’t love me. I’m worthless”) as a brilliant defense against that despair. After all, if we believe that it is our fault we are not loved, that we are so bad we cause others to be unloving to us, then the power to change this, to get love, is in our hands. We can try to be good or do things right. Thus, we hope to control getting the love we need from others. We do the same thing with God.
We become addicted to shame because it protects us from the truth that we really have no control over others. We can’t make them love us. While we can influence whether others like us or approve of us, we have no actual control over them. Yet, if we operate from the false belief that our best feelings come from others loving us and giving us what our parents didn’t, we will continue to try to control getting this. Until we know that our best feelings come from giving ourselves the love we need and sharing that love with others, we will continue to try to control getting love from others.
Until we give up our illusion of control over others, we will never understand what we do have control over: our own choices and our own intent. Personal power, which is knowing what we do have control over and taking action, eludes us until we accept that we are helpless over other people. The paradox is that we cannot move into personal power until we accept our powerlessness over everything but ourselves.
Giving up control becomes easier when you open to God and discover how irrelevant trying to make God love you is. There is nothing you can do to earn God’s love and nothing you can do to stop it, other than shutting it out of your consciousness. You can abandon God, but God will never abandon you. God’s love for you is as ubiquitous as the air you breathe. When you know you are loved no matter what, control becomes unnecessary.
Despite what some religions say, knowing God and feeling shame are mutually exclusive. When you know God, you also know that the perfect love of God exists within you, that the essence of your soul is love. When you know that you are love, you move beyond shame and beyond the need to try to manipulate anyone or anything into loving you.
For the past year, I attempted to help people heal their core shame, yet over and over I found they could not get free of their awful feelings. Affirmations didn’t help. Therapy didn’t help. Nothing seemed to help. One day when one of my clients was expressing their feelings of shame, I got the sense that shame was not the root feeling. I believe the person’s shame was a protection against far more painful feelings: helplessness and loneliness.
