The Soul of Shame is the book I most often recommend to Christians to read while in counseling. I suggest this book because it spends a significant amount of time exploring the role of neurobiology on the experience of shame and then shifts and talks about the human connection and spiritual components of shame. In short, it is a thorough explanation to shame.
The author of The Soul of Shame, Curt Thompson, is a Psychiatrist on the east coast and is a thought leader in the holistic care paradigm for mental and physical health. (Curt has another book called Anatomy of the Soul, that explored the connection between soul and mind). In The Soul of Shame, Curt is genuine in explaining his own experiences with shame and connects the experiences to science and Scriptures beautifully.
The meat and potatoes of this book are when Curt dreams about what life could look like for us without shame in it; without shaming ourselves and others. In other words, Curt does not just define the problem of shame (though this is incredibly helpful since identifying shame can be difficult), he also walks you through ways you can work through shame, and know you are functioning without shame.
The reason why I think that the conversation around shame is really important because shame tells us that we are bad when we miss expectations (from ourselves and/or others including God). When in reality, we are not bad. We do bad things from time to time like a lie, cheat, function out of greed, etc. But these do not make us bad… they are simply part of what needs to be redeemed/changed in our lives. The Soul of Shame goes to great lengths to identify shame symptoms and cycles because the thought that we are bad is often engrained deeply into our being and causes us to self loathe, isolate and shame on others. Instead of pulling away, Curt via science and Scriptures identify and explain that vulnerability is the key to unlocking shame in our lives, relationships, and roles.
“The act of creation was one of vulnerability, an act in which God was open to wounding, with the anticipated heartache that accompanies it. However, this openness was bracketed by a relational connection that prevents fear and shame from ruling its anticipated future” (p.122).
The Soul of Shame focuses on going back to what causes us to pull away from intimacy as the sources of shame. By reading this book, I would expect and hope that you would be able to identify the roles of shame in your life and have tools to overcome it through close, meaningful, and intentional-safe relationships.
Here is the link to get The Soul of Shame on Amazon.
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