Layers of Shame

For many years I taught a class about shame and grace as part of a class at George Fox University. I used to do different exercises with it, and one of them was called “layers of shame”. The day the students came in for the exercise, I would have them bring bedsheets. Then I would arrange the students in a circle, with someone sitting in the middle of the circle. The person sitting in the center was kind of our test subject, and they were there to represent the whole class. We would then begin to talk about places of shame. Sometimes the shame was about their personal lives, sometimes it was more theoretical. Each time someone would bring up a new shame illustration, I would have that person go lay a sheet on top of the person in the center of the room.

We would do that again and again and again until that one person had eight or nine or ten sheets over top of them, sort of representing the layers of separation and disconnect that shame causes in relationships.

After the sheets had been added, we would talk to the person who was in the center of the room, blanketed with all these layers of shame. They always said the same sorts of things: they felt it getting darker and darker as the layers piled on; they felt more and more cut off from the relationships in the room. But the funny thing is, they almost always said that, after a while, they got kind of comfortable under there. They were cut off, they were alone, it was dark ... but it was kind of okay. They were so disconnected that they stopped feeling the disconnect after a while. The layers became like a sort of coping mechanism.

But that wasn’t the end of the exercise. After we had piled all the layers on, we began to remove them by talking about redeeming those moments of shame. We would read grace statements, and we would have people go forward, one by one, to take a layer off. Little by little, sort of like going from that tank down to that bike, the person under the layers of shame would find more and more freedom. They would hear more. They would see more. Finally, the last sheet would come off and they were back in the room with us.

Every time I did that exercise, I would have at least one student who would say something like, "I wanted to go up and rip all of the sheets of shame off of the person when we got done with the shame statements. That disconnection and alienation felt so horrible, and I wanted to bring them back all at once so they could be with us again."

Every time somebody said that, do you know what the person underneath the sheets said? "I'm glad you didn't do that. I wasn't ready for 8 - 10 sheets to be taken off of me all at once. I had to kind of reintegrate enough to remember that there are other people in the room. I had to start hearing your voices, seeing the light come in. The weight lifted slowly, and that was a good thing. I wanted to go through the process, to experience each layer of healing."

I will always remember that. We have to appreciate the value of the process as we help ourselves and others find healing. It’s a journey, and it takes time.

Author: Dr. Richard Shaw

Dr. Richard Shaw is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Mental Health Counselor. He is an ordained minister with the International Foursquare Church and he is an Associate Professor of Counseling at George Fox University. He has traveled extensively in the U.S. and overseas to teach and facilitate workshops for his groundbreaking work around shame and grace. Richard is originally from the great state of Nebraska and currently lives with his wife, Karen, in the pacific Northwest. He loves both college and pro football and he enjoys spending time on the Oregon Coast. He has two adult children in education and ministry.

This excerpt is taken from Dr. Shaw’s book, Shame No More.