How to find freedom from cycles of navel-gazing and self-loathing.
Jasmine L. Holmes is not a licensed counselor or psychologist. But she is a Christian woman who actively struggles with shame. In her newest book, Never Cast Out: How the Gospel Puts an End to the Story of Shame, she shares candid accounts of dealing with shame spirals and turning to the Bible for hope. Author Abbey Wedgeworth spoke with Holmes about discerning the causes of shame and responding in spiritually profitable ways.
How would you define shame, and what makes it such an important topic?
My earliest memory is a memory of shame. I must have been two and a half years old. My mom told me “no” to something I had asked for. She said it gently, with a tone of No, we’re not going to do that right now. But I felt so terrible and wrong. And I remember thinking I shouldn’t have asked in the first place.
I had no idea, at that moment, that for the rest of my life I would experience that feeling in numerous ways. So when I talk about shame, I’m talking about that negative feeling, that feeling associated with being wrong, being bad, being not enough. It’s that feeling of wanting to hide.
Shame affects so many people, in ways big and small. And for this book, I wanted to be careful to admit that my experiences of shame are small compared to what, say, abuse victims and survivors endure day to day. So I’m talking, if you will, about my little shame that follows me around every day, and I’m not trying to make light of the big shame others suffer.
Why is it so important to attend to even our “little” experiences of shame?
If we fail to recognize them, they compound—they grow. As a mom, for instance, you might have a moment, like I did this morning, of looking around and …
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