From Shame to Grace: An Interview with Dr. Paul Fitzgerald

Dr. Paul Fitzgerald, executive director of HeartConnexion Ministries, has devoted his life to helping people experience grace beyond shame and empower them to find personal wholeness.

There’s no question that shame can keep you from creating the life you want. However, there are ways you can begin healing shame-based wounds. Dr. Paul (as he is affectionately called) has helped thousands of people begin this healing process. He has had a significant impact on my life, too.

Four years ago, Dr. Paul challenged me to take a closer look at my life and to make the choice to breakthrough the fear that was holding me back and was keeping me from finding peace and happiness.

His influence and wisdom helped me to begin learning how to reclaim my life in an authentic and purposeful way. I’m very happy to share Dr. Paul with you today.

Thank you Dr. Paul for granting me the opportunity to interview you. Please tell us about your background.

Alex, my vocational goals were to be in ministry and attended seminary to prepare. While there, I was employed for nearly 16 years in administrative positions for a denomination. I came to a place of feeling drawn back to ministry in a congregational setting and was invited to join the staff of a large congregation.

My assignment was the development of small groups and I created New Hope for Recovery, a support group ministry. People asked me to counsel them from hearing me speak in the programs and I found it frustrating because they were doing most of the things that ministers (and a lot of the self help books) assume will make a life-changing difference. They were mostly doing what I was prepared to tell them to do. I knew that just doing the “right things” more intensively was not the answer.

I vividly recall the day a man left my office and a question came to me: “How do I offer grace for his shame?”

At the time I did not realize how that question would change my life. Now, I know that my theological training was so tightly framed around guilt being the problem and forgiveness being the primary answer that shame became transparent.

Truth can be hiding in plain sight like the infamous arrow in the FedEx logo and until we see it we cannot choose it. I found that shame themes were everywhere in Scripture and I had been blind to them.

From there my search led to earning a Doctor of Ministry in spiritual formation and my research was on the impact of internalized-shame on relationships, self-efficacy and spirituality.

Long story short: I found that the degree to which we internalize shame (i.e. disgrace) is the degree to which we have difficulty internalizing grace.

What is shame and how is it different from guilt?

Guilt is about doing something to violate some specific standard that either we accept or that is imposed on us from an outside authority. Shame is more of a global feeling of being wrong and it is more an internal experience of violating some standard of honor.

We have all experienced guilt without shame when we look at the speedometer and see it above the stated limits but I have never found anyone so ashamed that they turned themselves in to get it off their conscience.

We can also carry shame even after we have asked for forgiveness from the people we have wronged and from God. It can be in the form of feeling stupid, inadequate, broken, damaged, powerless, too vulnerable, dirty, and unacceptable and etc. At its core, internalized-shame gives us the message that we are not enough.

Shame is more complex than guilt in that being shameless is not good like being guiltless can be. A shameless person may be a sociopath who does not have the ability to form a conscience or it may be a mask we put on to cover up our sense of shame. Interestingly, we can be ashamed of being ashamed.

We all need a healthy sense of shame that forms our conscience and helps us live out our values and have character rather than be one. Healthy shame allows us to experience being not-god (imperfect) and not be devastated by our imperfections. It is needed for healthy relationships and healthy spirituality.

Shame internalized is toxic to our quality of life. Not feeling that we are enough can drive some to the extreme of throwing our life away and resisting the love and value others attempt to give us. It seems safer to slap it away than to change our internal self-image; what they see seems like a lie. On the other hand the same internalized shame can drive us to succeed beyond our imagination; but it is never enough to heal the wound of shame.

How can we begin to heal from the wounds shame has caused?

Internalized shame can discount anyone’s affirmation as a lie they are telling us. We may seek to manage everyone’s impression or give up by resigning from life; most of us fall somewhere in the middle of the extremes. Essentially, we feel that if anyone really knew us, we would be rejected, abandoned and die. That feels more true at the core of our belief system than anything else.

Information about shame can help us connect the dots between our life experiences and the symptoms of our life struggles to experience the quality of life we want but it is rarely enough to break the power of shame at a deep level. We don’t acquire shame intellectually but through experiencing it.

Finding a safe environment where we can begin to trust enough and share parts of our story that led to internalizing shame is key. If those we tell shame us then it is wounding but if we can share it and not die, and they don’t die, then some of shame’s power dies.

Having a spiritual community (using the term more broadly than a church) where taking risks to talk, express our deepest feelings, and where people celebrate our beginnings of change (rather than waiting to see if we get it right) are all key to the process.

Lewis Smedes in his book Shame and Grace: Healing the Shame We Don’t Deserve points out that no one can shame us more than someone from whom we expect to receive grace.

That creates a great risk and wonderful opportunity as a parent to either pass on shame to the next generation or to pass on grace and healing. The same is true of our spiritual communities. We expect grace from them and when they wound us is can be incredibly deep and damaging.

You speak a lot about the importance of “giving ourselves grace.” Please explain what this means and how it can be accomplished.

Sometimes we would rather find specific guilt in ourselves or others than not. If something negative happens and we can identify what we (or someone else) did to cause it, then we can decide to not let that happen again. That gives us the feeling of being back in control and we like control.

One of our deepest fears is powerlessness and when we can’t find something to blame that either we did or in someone else’s choices, then we are left without the illusion that we can prevent it from happening again. So there is a natural affinity for finding someone guilty.

Spiritually, our internalized shame makes “accepting the acceptance” of God difficult. In the scriptural story of the Prodigal Son there is a point where the Father ignores the son’s suggestion to be a servant and wants him to put on the “robe, ring and sandals” that symbolized that he was enough to be restored. But, it had to be uncomfortable accepting his acceptance while he smelled like pigs and in front of the community he humiliated by his behavior.

While orthodox Christian faith affirms that grace is the gift of God and we can’t earn it by good behavior, we all seem to feel and act as if it was something that becomes an obligation that we have to be good enough to deserve. We may find ourselves resisting grace as if God needs to raise His standards.

Forgiveness is a core issue for all of us to work through to prevent it becoming bitterness. And being bitter is like taking rat poison while we wait for someone else to die. It really takes a toll on us rather then the offender. Core to forgiving others is forgiving ourselves. It may be for being stupid, or being powerless, or whatever. But, unless we can forgive ourselves and embrace our imperfections we will struggle to forgive others.

At a deep level refusing to forgive ourselves is a way to defend something painful from happening again. Letting go of it can seem too vulnerable but holding on to it is to continue to give power to the old source of the wound and to have our future defined by what happened in our past.

What is the mission, or purpose, of HeartConnexion Ministries?

The mission of HeartConnexion Ministries is to help people experience grace beyond shame that impacts the quality of their life. The symptoms of shame may mask the root of the issue and the word shame may not connect with the issues that seem to have someone stuck.

The issue is not terminology but finding a way out of being stuck in old repeating patterns and choices that prevent us from having deep “heart connections” with those closest to us and with God.

We want to help people experience the deeply freeing impact that grace can have beyond shame and to become people who impact their world by living grace-fully.

Why should someone consider attending a BreakThrough Seminar? What are the expected benefits?

The term “stuck” is not very technical but it is often used by people who attend BreakThrough. I often tell people, “Don’t waste a good crisis.” Most of us are not prepared to make core changes until it is more painful being where we are than to change. Some of us have a high tolerance of pain and often find a short-term band-aid that dulls the pain and avoids making significant changes.

Living with old shame wounds often results in feeling empty, disconnected from others and from ourselves. Frequently, people who attend will share that they feel like they lost themselves and don’t know who there are really.

The ultimate benefit of attending BreakThrough is finding the freedom beyond the fear that shame creates and being a person of choice. When we can finally see the truth that shame hides and see the lie that shame creates, then we have the power to choose. It is not automatic that we choose, but until we see the possibility of an alternative the lie of shame seems like the only truth there is for us.

Thanks Alex for letting me share.

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