Shame-Based Relationships

[GoldenEagle]

Wow. Our family has been reading up on how to be grace filled people and pass this onto our children. This book is amazing and challenging! What do you think of this excerpt?
 

Relationships can either be grace filled or shame filled. These two look very different in family dynamics. Will post the Grace-Full Relationships list later on this weekend.

 

 

 

In Shame-Based Relationships you will find the following characteristics:

1. Out-loud shaming. The message communicated is: “Something is wrong with you”; “You are defective”; “You don’t measure up”; “Why can’t you be like…”

2. Performance-orientation. The focus is on doing certain good behaviors and avoiding others as a means of earning love, gaining acceptance, acquiring approval, or proving value. Failure to perform results in shame.

3. Unspoken rules. Behavior is governed by rules or standards that are seldom, if ever, spoken out loud. In face, sometimes the only way they are discovered is when they are broken. There is a “can’t-talk-about-it” rule in effect – which means no one is supposed to notice or mention problems; and if you speak about a problem, you are the problem. This forces people to keep quite. There is also a “can’t-win” rule in effect. For instance, children are taught never to lie; they are also told never to tell Grandma her meatloaf tastes bad. No matter how hard you try to keep these contradictory rules, you always fail to perform. And failure to perform results in shame. These rules tend to govern future relationship, unless they are realized and intentionally renounced.

4. Communicating through “coding.” Talking about feelings or needs leaves you ashamed for being so “selfish.” Talking about problems breaks the “can’t-talk-about-it” rule and gets you shamed for being the problem. Therefore, family members learn to say things in code, or they send messages to each other indirectly through other people.

5. Idolatry. Family members are taught to turn to things and people other than God’s acceptance as a measure of their value and identity. The measuring stick becomes: how things look; what people think; religious behavior; acquiring possessions.

6. Putting kids through a hard time. Kids are involved in the messy and imperfect process of finding out about life. But the family cares most about how things look and what people think. Therefore, just being a kid becomes a shaming thing. Children must learn to act like miniature adults in order to avoid shame.

7. Preoccupation with fault and blame. Since there is such a focus on performance in this family, lack of performance must be tracked down and eradicated. Fault and blame are the order of the day. The purpose of the question, “Who is responsible?” is to find out who is to blame. That way the culprit can be shamed, humiliated, and made to feel so bad that he won’t do the behavior again.

8. Strong on “head skills.” Family members become experts at defending themselves. Blaming, rationalizing, minimizing, and denial are just some of the ways people try to push away the shame message – usually in vain.

9. Weak on “heart skills” “Can’t-feel” is another rule governing this system. Feelings are wrong, selfish, or unnecessary. People in shame-based families don’t know who they feel or how to respond to their feelings. These are emotionally reactive people.

10. Needy people. Because love and acceptance was earned on the basis of behavior, but never received apart from performance, shame-based families are characterized by members who are empty on the inside, full-looking on the outside.

- Families Where Grace is in Place, by Jeff VanVoderen Chapter 12

[desi2007]

young people are so profoundly impacted by the words we say, grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers and babysitters. I once read that fathers responsibility for their child, to bring definition to them, and mothers are to build children up and love them. You posted a really tough subject, alot of people walk around with shame in their hearts, most do not care to examine things just another bridge to bear so to speak. I'm learning, the closer I walk with the Lord and the deeper relationship His presence so asounding when the waves of doubt and fear come, there is that extra amount of faith didnt know I had. I will be waiting to see what you have to post on the grace filled. It is interesting to read and to examine our own life with what we read.

[GoldenEagle]

 I will be waiting to see what you have to post on the grace filled. It is interesting to read and to examine our own life with what we read.

Okay sister I've started the grace-filled relationships suggestions. Please check it out below.