A Shame & Anger Video

The Calssic Syndrome of Anger & Shame

This seems to be a classic syndrome of anger/shame: a parent leads us into sin, we sin and feel shame, and feel anger at the parent for causing us to sin and anger at God for allowing us to sin. We judge the parent for the sin, judge ourselves, and feel trapped in guilt. This guilt seems so recalcitrant (unable to be removed) that we bury it somewhere deep inside and it becomes a monster which comes out of the cave to scare us everytime something reminds us of the original sin we committed to trap us in guilt. If anyone has any similar experiences please post a comment to let us know. We need to establish an understanding of how to get out of this trap.

One Person's Experience with Anger and Shame

This is the experience of anger and shame reported by someone else: "I felt anger and shame about my abortion. When my parents found out that I was pregnant they decided to quietly resolve the situation by not letting the church know. I felt that their reputation in the church was more important than my feelings of confusion, my sadness. I'm angry at my mother for allowing me--and sort of dragging me--to the clinic. I had no say. My feelings and my thoughts didn't matter to her. Now I feel shameful that I'm angry at her and I can't seem to forgive my parents. I'm angry at myself for allowing them to bring me to the clinic. I'm angry at God for allowing this to happen."

On the Relationship between Guilt and Shame

Once we recognize the presence of buried guilt, and then move on to uncover buried judgement, we often encounter a tangle of anger and shame at the crux of our judgement of another. This is an interesting phenomenon because it is this entanglement of anger and shame that often makes the next step of the process of healing--feeling the hurt of the wound--so difficult.

Progress on Overcoming Guilt-Related Anxiety

The main problem I've been encountering in this fight has been the difficulty in overcoming my own judgemental attitude toward others. I consider that overcoming judgement is a prerequisite to overcoming guilt, as guilt is merely the application of one's own judgement toward self.

For me, overcoming judgement means uncovering one's own feelings of bitterness. These feelings are often buried, as they are unpleasant and not socially acceptable within the family or the community. Asking God to allow oneself to feel their true feelings is a first step toward unburying hidden emotions. In these exercises, calling upon the presence of Christ to hold you in the midst of your ugliness is a necessity to allow one to face his or her own sin.

An excellent resource for anxiety-sufferers

I am very partial to a certain approach to emotional healing which is advocated by a ministry in New York City that is gaining increasing recognition, LIFE Ministry, New York. It was started by a woman who came out of lesbianism and now helps others who are desiring to come out of homosexuality (to overcome the roots of homosexual addiction). The ministry's website has many excellent articles on the causes of anxiety. Here is a link to one: LIFE Ministry

Renouncing the lies in the process

This brings to mind another point which I did not mention in my first blog: each of the stored emotions you deal with has lies associated with it which serve to keep it active in your soul and trap you in the same pain you experienced as a child. These lies must be renounced as they are uncovered. In order to do this it is essential to have the help of a friend who is gifted in this type of deliverance to accompany you in the process.

The need for someone to accompany you

For the person who is starting the journey of liberation and wants to try the approach with Christ I've described in my first blog, I strongly recommend praying first to find another Christian whose been through it to help you in your first sessions of prayer to get in touch with the past truama and pain. Many images and feelings come up which are disturbing and having someone there with you is quite helpful to show you where you have believed lies and what things have you bound.

A Note on Convulsions

I want to note that my own experience of going through convulsions in the process of liberation is not what I expect everyone must go through. This is an area that deserves more research. In my own informal survey of others who have overcome anxiety I've encountered few people who've had the same experience. Therefore, do not think that you too must go through the same experience of convulsions and overloaded emotions when becoming free. I'd like to provide some data on the process as it occurs in a broad population of Christians. I don't have this data now but hope to get it in the future. My blog is just the rudiments of a more comprehensive scientific and theological evaluation of the work of Christ in the anxious and/or depressed christian.

Anxiety and Christ

Overcoming anxiety is not simply a matter of believing that you are safe in God's loving arms and that you need to stop worrying. I believe that overcoming anxiety, especially for those who have an anxiety disorder, involves identifying the hidden causes of your anxiety.

Psychologists theorize that much anxiety is due to two types of suppressed fears: fears of loss--loss of either life, security, love, or some other object of great value--or to fears of guilt. Fears of guilt involve an awareness at some level that I've done something terribly wrong and am worthy of being punished. Psychologists say that the therapy for overcoming such anxiety is to confront the hidden causes of your fear and bring them out in to the open where they can be discussed with the therapist. I whole-heatedly agree. We as Christians do not run from what we fear, we do not ignore what we fear or suppress it, we confront our fears in Christ and overcome them by his truth and love.

In the case of adult victims of childhood abuse the two types of fears, fears of loss of a valued thing, and fear of guilt, are often combined. The hidden anxiety is a contributing factor to many addictive behaviors including addiction to drugs and alcohol, sex and pornography, and is often accompanied by depression, especially when guilt is a significant component.

In my own battle with anxiety I found that some of my anxiety was due to stored up trauma that I had excluded from my conscious memory. Some therapists call this body memories. As a child I had been so overloaded by hurt that I turned off my mind to thinking about it or even feeling it. Nevertheless the pain stayed in me, contributing to a debilitating anxiety that crippled my ability to take risks and lead an emotionally healthy life. Later in my Christian walk, after exhausting my search for quick solutions and pentecostal emotional highs, I decided to confront my anxiety with Christ.

My confrontation was like this: I would lie on my bed and ask Christ to hold me. I would imagine him with me there. I would ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the roots of my anxiety. I would start to remember the pain of my childhood. I would tell Christ how scary it was to remember, how alone I felt at that moment on my bed, how dreadful the feelings coming up were. I would remember his charge to be courageous in him and his promises to protect me. As I remembered the hurtful actions of the adults in my childhood I would begin to feel the same emotions I felt as a boy. I would feel the emotional overload of my capacity to receive pain that I felt as a child. I would relive the trauma there with Christ and as it became unbearable I would tell Christ to take it all, to take the pain because I couldn't bear it. At that point, my body would start to convulse. My convulsions were involuntary. I would shake as if I were having an epileptic seizure. With these convulsions I felt the pain going out of me and into Christ. I felt as if a demonic force was taken off me. In a moment I was free of that specific pain. I felt free and the anxiety was gone. Nevertheless there were many painful memories stored up in me from different occasions and from different experiences, some of specific events, mostly of patterns of treatment I endured. I had to repeat this process for the various different causes of my anxiety. Each time I did the same thing with Christ alone on my bed and each time I felt that cause of my anxiety lift as the emotional overload of my mind and soul was given over to Christ. Each experience was a different type of pain, a different spirit, a different ugliness. Within several months of perhaps 40 different sessions with Christ on my bed, the anxiety of my childhood trauma was gone.

Now I am dealing with anxiety due to guilt. I will report on my progress in the next blog. I encourage anyone who reads this to believe in the power of Christ, to stop looking for easy ways to the victory. You are a Christian, especially a survivor of childhood abuse, you are a warrior, called to war, and open war is already upon you. Do not fear the enemy any longer. Confront it. Gird yourself for battle, take up your sword, put your little hand in Christ's and cross the Jordan. God goes before you.