Shame, Blame and Other Games (Part III)

Understand your desire to avoid shame and you’ll start to see where blame comes in. Where pride gets its start. When Adam screwed up in the garden, what did he do? He ran and hid. Shame. When God showed up, he said “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it” (Gen. 3:12). Blame. Imagine a man blaming someone else instead of accepting responsibility for his own decision.

“If it weren’t for (fill in the blank), we’d have solved this thing long ago!”

Blame is shame’s cousin and it may be our favorite way to avoid shame. We can get ourselves completely off the hook. Add a little righteous indignation and we’ve got it down. If we can blame enough stuff on other people, we can convince ourselves that nothing’s ever our fault. But we’ve replaced our shame problem with a pride problem…one that we’re usually blind to and only others can see. Easiest place to see this one? Our marriages. When’s the last time you heard a guy say “Yeah man, my wife does everything right. All our stuff is because of me”?

“He’s often wrong, but never in doubt”

Far less shame in ‘charging on’ than being sure or asking for help. “I don’t know” are three of the most honest, powerful, engaging words you can hear in an organization. Have you heard them around your office lately?

“There’s nothing more dangerous than a hard-charging incompetent.”

There’s more shame in being a coward than being wrong, so we ‘man up’, crank up the testosterone and play hard ball, sometimes even we know deep down we’re wrong.

“He talks incessantly, unencumbered by knowledge.”

Real men don’t back up, right? Some of us keep spewing out words, hoping somewhere along the line, our brains will pull up something that sounds true enough that we can avoid looking stupid and feeling shame.

“Don’t confuse me with the facts…my mind is made up.”

It’s so hard to ‘walk back’ things we say that are just dead wrong. Our male minds stick to ‘the facts’ (even when they’re pretty skinny) rather than experience the shame of being wrong in front of people.

So we have to own this part of our male-ness. Whether it came from nature or nurture doesn’t matter. It’s embedded in us. Our ability to be a good husband, father, leader, mentor and friend depends on our ability to recognize our shame when it starts to raise its ugly head.

Our male-ness isn’t going away and we don’t want it to. But neither do we want to live our whole lives as reactionaries, constantly being jerked around by our innate ‘flight or flight’ nature. By hair-trigger emotions that make us unsafe for our wives, children, extended family, coworkers and friends. It’s hard to make love to a porcupine. No one wants to cozy up to a prickly varmint who can shoot his stickers at you if you’re close by when he gets irritated.

So the answer is to catch yourself emotionally. Resist the ‘fight or flight’ urge by not taking things personally. Realize how little of what’s said is meant to cause you shame. Listen objectively. Consider what’s being said and think about the motive of the person saying it. Once you realize how rare it is for someone to actually ‘shoot at you’ with their words, you’ll relax. You’ll respond differently and become a safer, smarter, healthier, more effective and more lovable person. Maybe even a leader worth following.

Question: Will you ‘rise above’ shame reactions like blame, power, stubbornness, and pride? Will you choose instead to relax, be more open and less defensive? Will you trust God in everything? Tell us here.