Work On Me Thursday

Working on me, boy this could be a loaded entry. I think I've mentioned in previous posts that I have been in counseling for 3 years off and on. What sent me there to begin with was a realization that I had no self worth. Further investigation into my self worth issues revealed that I battle heavily with shame.

I essentially function out of shame. I've been working hard in this area and have made major progress. However; thanks to marriage counseling I'm more aware now that I have even more shame to work on. I feel heavy shame in relation to my husband and our marriage. If you've read my gentle parenting post then you know I'm been following Lori Petro of Teach Through Love. I mention her here because she advises working on your triggers as a parent so you don't pass those things on down to your kids.

Well, one of the videos on Teach Through Loves YouTube channel mentioned that children that are raised with punitive consequences will either rebel and the punitive consequences won't really work or that the child will go into a shell and function under high shame and that effects the kind of adult they will be. In one of her other videos she is interviewing Dr Jonice Webb who discusses how adults function once they grow up if they grow up living with shame.  She explained how parents even witht the best intentions can emotionally neglect their kids. I took her assessment on her website and I show signs and symptoms of childhood emotional neglect. I'm very busy reading the book for my marriage counseling but have three other books lined up to read for myself. One is Healing the Shame that Binds Us and the others are the two titles you see mentioned in the pictures.



What has lead me to these books is my desire to address the shame in my life. I hate drowning in the shame myself but my enormous fear is that if I function out of shame then I'll only be able to guide my children in shame as well. The lies that I told myself for far too many years have molded and shaped me into the wife and mother that I am and though I believe I'm a good mother and an okay wife I don't truly believe that in my heart of hearts. I want to believe in my heart what I know in my head. So for the foreseeable future I think my Thursdays about me will be about these books and hopefully what the Lord continues to heal in me. I'm being extremely vulnerable in these posts but I've seen enough pain in other people and believing lies about themselves that if I can share my story with healing attached maybe it can minister to someone else it's worth it to me.