Dear Friends:
Hopefully, you are beginning to see and understand the role that the Intolerance of Uncertainty has been playing in the background of your life. It’s the home of “if only’s” and “what if’s”, plus a myriad of questions regarding the unknown. It can absolutely ruin each of our lives by either creating problems or stressors, or by making already stressful situations even more stressful. It’s a powerful force that is undermining your sense of well-being. This first step to healing is realizing its role in your life in order to heal from it. Just like a doctor needs to look at the symptoms and properly diagnose a physical problem to know what will remedy the problem, so too with the Intolerance of Uncertainty and the healing of the wellness of our souls!
This week, we are going to look at another factor that I have realized is highly correlated with the Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU). With about 95% of my clients, this factor is present working a side hustle in exacerbating the impact of IU. This factor is low self-esteem and its strongest kindred spirit, shame.
I have begun to see this factor as the equivalent of an autoimmune disease. According to the American Autoimmune Disease Related Disease Association, an autoimmune disease is explained as such:
“One of the functions of the immune system is to protect the body by responding to invading microorganisms, such as a viruses or bacteria, by producing antibodies or sensitized lymphocytes (types of white blood cells). Under normal conditions, an immune response cannot be triggered against the cells of one’s own body. In some cases, however, immune cells make a mistake and attack the very cells that they are meant to protect (emphasis mine.) This can lead to a variety of autoimmune diseases.”
Our immune cells were made to protect us, but they can go awry (when they mistake the good for the enemy). This causes horrible symptoms and can wreck a person’s life and sense of well-being. I have known people with autoimmune diseases (rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, etc.) and all of them suffer greatly with the symptoms. These people did not choose their autoimmune disease nor would they if given the chance.
Psychological and spiritual forms of an autoimmune disease are low self-esteem and shame. Shame, as I describe and use it, is a sense of overall inadequacy, a sense of there being something terribly wrong with a person that cannot be changed or fixed. A shame-based identity and low self-esteem are debilitating conditions of our souls! I believe also that it is one of the most slippery and diabolical tools that the Devil uses against us! If you are what you eat and also what you think, wouldn’t thinking so despicably about yourself lead you to worse behavior, not better???
Let’s see how low self-esteem or shame fits into our ongoing IU chart*:
I was well acquainted with a shame-based identity and from a very early age. I was raised by a step-dad who made me feel worse about myself than any other person or thing on the planet. I had a constant sense that I was too much and yet not enough. (This is something I realized was a tape that played in many people minds as I have met with shame-based clients over the years.) I felt like when things went wrong or something bad happened, it was because of me. In the 4th grade I got a rare opportunity to spend the night at a friend’s house. I was so excited to go and we were having a blast until my friend’s dog ran out onto the highway near their house and was hit and killed. It was awful and before I could fully process the event I remember thinking, “This is my fault! This happened because I am here!”. I think of this now and am devastated for my 4th grade self!
This sense of shame grew throughout my life until, in my 40’s I began to do significant work to heal this. Years later, I developed the following chart to help summarize my journey and to give others the information to help them “diagnose” this autoimmune disease of their souls (right side of the chart) and to provide them with a “remedy” (the left side of the chart). I invite you to spend this week exploring the significance of the role of shame or low self-esteem in your life.
“If you are what you eat and also what you think, wouldn’t thinking so despicably about yourself lead you to worse behavior, not better???”
THE REMEDY
The good news is that we can choose to not have this disease of shame or low self-esteem! Psalm 139:13-14 (ESV) states:
“For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well (emphasis mine).”
For someone with low self-esteem or a shame-based identity, that person’s soul does not know being fearfully and wonderfully made! This person, like I had, has learned a default, auto-pilot way of identifying themselves as not made well and of being lesser than most other people. Romans 12:2 states:
“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind….”
The goal is to switch this way of thinking about ourselves and to rejoice and be thankful for who God created us to be (mistakes and all)! A couple of things that I teach people to help them move to the left side of the chart is to first ask them if they would speak to a friend like they speak to themselves. Typically, the answer is an emphatic “NO!”. So the assignment is to get out of the default setting by saying kind responses to themselves that mimic what they would say to a friend. “What would you say to a friend?” becomes their prompter for self-responses. The second thing I have them start saying is, “I am a gift, mistakes and all!” Keep this new way of thinking up and soon you will have a new, more positive default setting in your thinking that will yield healing results!
Do some self-reflection this week with these ideas and see how prevalent shame and treating yourself poorly are in your life. Then do the work of being “transformed by the renewing of your mind”!
“What would you say to a friend?”
“I am a gift, mistakes and all!”
“I will allow myself a learning curve and enjoy the process instead of resist it!”
“Today I choose to look at things I can enjoy about being me rather than be so critical of myself!”
Blessings to you in your journey toward freedom,
Shari
* (Once in a while, I run across someone who has healthy self-esteem but still suffers with IU. This however, is more rare.)