I’m three weeks into this trip, and I already can’t fit into the pants I wore on the way over.
I am almost constantly eating; it’s like my appetite knows no such thing as satisfaction.
And I’m so embarrassed to hang out with the other students on the study abroad, because I think they’re beginning to pick up on it.
So I’ve started migrating toward the girls who are hungry at any given time and ‘suggesting’ we stop somewhere for an ice cream, pastry, whatever I could get them excited about. (This is so embarrassing to admit, but I’m hoping the transparency helps it resonate with someone out there!)
Slowly the pile of clothes I can wear is shrinking. And the idea of having to go shopping and try things on is too depressing to bear.
This was, of course, just as I was starting to get the hang of Nice, become good friends with my classmates, and enjoy this gorgeous area of the world.
But instead of being able to enjoy the whole experience as much as I could have, my energy and emotion had gone into stressing over my rapidly changing body and my apparent inability to stop the cycle.
Needless to say, I started to seriously resent the whole situation.
I started to resent France.
I started to resent everyone around me who seemed to be balancing their diet just fine, and everyone who was thin.
On the flip side, I tried to throw myself into the mentality that ‘this was pleasure!’ Eating all these delicious treats was fun, an indulgence, and wasn’t I lucky, and this was really sensual living à la Française! …So why was I so miserable?
It turned out that many of the other students in the program had noticed some serious weight gain too, and this was not only a comfort to me, but it became a great excuse. Well, we were all gaining weight, so may as well shrug it off and accept the fact!
The problem was that I was struggling to accept the fact. This was not who I wanted to be. This was not how I wanted my body to look or feel.
And honestly, if I had known what to do then and had been able to start it and see some success, I would have changed. But my lack of knowledge and personal awareness meant I could not improve my situation at that time.
And that’s when shame wakes up, stretches its arms, and pulls you in.
Shame?
If I asked you, when was the last time you felt shame, you might say, when you realized you had forgotten to call a friend back, or when you walked in late to an appointment. But that is much more about embarrassment than about shame.
So what is shame then?
Simply put, shame is the sickening sense we feel when we know we have not measured up. So yes, perhaps you do feel a little shame when you’re late or forgetful because you realize you have not lived up to the etiquette standards of your friends or colleagues. But those are mistakes you can recover from quickly, and shame doesn’t really have a chance to settle in.
The shame I’m talking about goes deeper. So much deeper, in fact, that we often don’t even know it’s there.
Shame hurts. Badly. The realization that we do not measure up is, I think, one of the most miserable sensations our soul can feel.
It’s what Isaiah feels in Isaiah 6:5, when he is faced with the holiness of God, and his utter disgust and despair at his fallen humanness leaves him ‘utterly undone’: “ ‘Woe to me!’ I cried. ‘I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.’ ”
This is what I call ‘holy shame.’ I’m not going to go into too much depth on this now, but this is a healthy, right, and righteous response to encountering the holiness of God and being reminded of how far from flawless we are in comparison. It leads us to humility, to repentance, and therefore to salvation because we are forced to recognize that we are vastly too imperfect to ever save ourselves.
But there is another kind of shame, which is much trickier.
This is what I call ‘cultural shame.’ Cultural shame is the deep emotional reaction we have when we sense that we do not live up to the standards that the world declares are beautiful, worthy, and good. I am going to talk much more about this when we start discussing beauty later this year, but this is an important aspect of our body attitude too. Let’s see how.
You’re at the beach. A girl with the most irritatingly slim and toned body in a great bikini prances by. She is clearly loving life and everyone is watching her. You wish she were on the other side of the earth and you’d like to bury yourself in the sand.
Or you’re at a cocktail party with a lot of unfortunately fit and fantastic looking people. Everyone is laughing and dancing around looking like they don’t have a care in the world, and you feel like a pig with lipstick on. All of a sudden, like a punch in the stomach, you do not want to be having fun. You do not want to be there at all. You wish you had stayed home and watched a movie on the couch, with your friends Ben and Jerry.
These feelings are waves of body shame.
But as we’ve said, shame hurts like all get-out, and makes us feel powerless and vulnerable. So, what we tend to train ourselves to do from a very young age is quickly switch over to a more powerful-feeling emotion. So quickly, in fact, that as we become proficient at this emotion-switch, we don’t even realize that the basis of what we’re feeling is shame at all.
Instead we have a reaction that we feel is justified for one reason or another, and it looks more like:
-Despair: deep and persistent sadness that we will never measure up, never be worthy, never be loved
-Anger and rage: we go ‘off.’ Often spurred by something totally unrelated, we’ll be mean to those around us, but it’s really a reaction to our pain on this issue
-Bitterness: a subtle and steady version of anger that is always simmering right beneath the surface
-Judgement and scorn or self-righteousness: ‘they’ are the evil, sinful ones in the wrong, and we are the ‘right’ and ‘holy’ ones
-Giving up: we throw in the towel. We’ll always be unhealthy, always be overweight or unattractive, etc.
-Shutting it out and escapism: we very intentionally or subconsciously avoid any situations that make us face the issue and remind us of the pain, so we find ways to distract or soothe ourselves
-Bravado and posing: big, loud talk and bold jokes and claims, especially about friends’ bodies or the bodies of the opposite sex
This is a lot to think through, particularly if you’ve never before identified this pain in yourself or in others as shame, and it’s your first time to look at the world this way.
So take some time to digest this, maybe during your commute or in your time with God. Have you felt body shame before? Did you know what it was when it hit? What are your most common reactions?
I’ll poke my head back in after a couple of days with some follow-up thoughts and guidance as far as where to go next with this. God bless you, beautiful 🙂
Till then,
Love and Freedom,
Jackie
