Tuesday, May 14, 2024

Thoughts on Guilt vs. Shame



(This is a comment I threw together in response to a video from Cwic Media:)




The Church's Emotional Resilience class has a wonderful diagram on page 32 - illustrating the difference between "Worth" and "Worthiness". Our worth to God never changes, but our worthiness fluctuates.





I believe guilt and shame both point at the two different things.  As mentioned by the quote from Elder Bednar, guilt has to do with when we feel our worthiness has been set back or we have been distanced from the Lord.

But, as C.S. Lewis and Elder Bednar wonderfully taught, we are dual natured creatures - both spirits with a seed of divinity but also inhabiting the bodies of creatures made of fallen material.  These creatures have instincts that help it survive and spread it's offspring, through things like being aware of the social hierarchy and therefore being able to have a sense of if actions help us be higher or lower in the social order, but also a failsafe that will encourage an individual near the bottom of the social ladder (or is in very poor health) to isolate or even self-sacrifice for the good of the species or the "tribe".

Although our eternal worth is fixed, our biology evaluates our "worth" in terms of social hierarchy, which fluctuates based on comparison to other creatures in the "tribe" / culture.  And anytime we experience that intuition of feeling that our biological worth is threatened or lowered compared to the proximal creatures our biology is exposed to around us, we experience the sensation of "shame".

Now, in religious cultures, the two can often overlap - things that could impact our spiritual worthiness also could threaten our social status, so we could experience both guilt and shame.

Shame can be a tool of the adversary or our vain ambitions to get us to run and hide or avoid confessing our sins because we don't want word to get out, (or how we want to feel about ourselves - i.e. the cancer of pride).

Statistically, women experience a high degree of baseline negative emotion, (i.e. "trait neuroticism" in the "Big 5 Model").  There is a high correlation between those who are high in trait neuroticism and those who have a much greater predisposition to shame, (usually because their biology has a survival strategy much more dependent on relying on others and thus hypersensitive to where their position is in the social hierarchy or anything that might threaten it).  Unfortunately, I believe that many are so hypersensitive and predisposed to shame that they throw the "baby out with the bathwater" and try to attack any standard of worthiness that might trigger feelings of guilt that slip into shame.  (Often, these people also identify themselves as "empathetic", "allies", or "woke" and seek after a type of Jesus that is all love and no standards, i.e. "Teddy Bear Jesus").

I believe this is kind of what Elder Bendar talked about learning to be agents instead of objects, and Elder Oaks talks about how the atonement is there to help free us from all forms of emotional bondage and how our "strengths can be our downfalls").

Thursday, February 22, 2024

What Gottman Left Out

 I've been introduced to many "relationship" and "marriage" experts who claim to have the secret to fool-proof relationships.

They have all sorts of "research" and "statistics" to back up their claims that their system is the magic bullet to lasting relationship bliss.

But ... there has always been something missing.  Something always seemed to be not quite right.

I'm not saying that we should throw the baby out with the bathwater; they often touch on principles that are quite useful and do have a kernel of truth.

It's always bugged me when people will point to these works when someone is having relationship issues, and will be quick to quote a magic bullet-point or two about what will solve the issue, (but seem to be at the same time ignoring the elephant in the room as it were).

I haven't been able to put my finger on it -- until I ran into this gem.



Eureka!

What's missing is all these "relationship" experts are harping on #1 all day long, but seem to completely ignore #2 and #3.

I love Lewis' analogy of a fleet of ships.

You can go on and on all day long about how boats in the fleet shouldn't collide with one another, but until you go in and make sure the "control systems" of the boats are intact then you're just whistlin' Dixie.

So, before you go running to John Gottman's latest work to solve your relationship woe's - make sure your own engine is working properly, your helm is securely attached to the rudder, and you have your destination set.




Sunday, November 20, 2016

Wherever You Go ... There You Are

"Self-Acceptance" is another one of those phrases that has been corrupted and isolated from its adjacent and complementary truths.

Self-acceptance isn't about blithely saying "this-is-who-I-am-and-it's-the-way-I'm-always-going-to-be", (looks like you got that one wrong, Popeye...). It isn't about self-identifying with our weaknesses and shortcomings, or giving up on ever being able to change; it certainly isn't about defending our personal "foibles" and "protrusions of self".

Thursday, July 7, 2016

Natural Man 101: Oute"r" Darkness vs "K"olob

It takes a bit of a investment in time, and he goes about it from a bit of a more secular / morally relativistic perspective, but prepare to have your Natural Man take center stage...


Part 1: (Lays the ground work)





Part 2: (It gets a little foreboding around the 45 minute mark)



Part 3: The nitty-gritty of the mindsets and how these express themselves in our modern day




Pop Quiz: Lucifer is and wants us to be type "___ selective".

Saturday, May 21, 2016

The Devil is a Liberal Progressive

The Devil is a liberal progressive, (read "socialist"). Think about it...

- Promises a "perfect" utopian society
- Promises equality of experience and outcome across all genders ("identified" or otherwise), ages, races, and sexual orientations
- Guarantees there will be no possibility of failure for the individual or the party
- Promises to get rid of all pain, suffering, and unpleasant emotions
- Believes you have the right to feel good, do whatever you like, and be happy right now without anything or anyone getting in your way
- Promises free stuff without having to pay for it or without any accountability or consequences
- Wants to do away with individual ownership of property or means of production
- Proposes bigger government controls to make people do the "right thing"
- Wants to do away with the unbalanced messiness of a Free (Agency) Market; everyone is guaranteed their "fair share" and there will be no "injustice"
- Wants to create a government run (Spiritual) Healthcare System, (see his proposed "Tower of Babel" solution)
- Everyone will have the same opportunity to be educated (by his party's specially selected "curriculum")
- Wants his plan to be put in place by a democratic process (which, ironically, removes all individual voting power soon after you join his "party")
- Tells us our "rights" are not universal, fixed, or bestowed from on high;  they are an ever expanding list of things we "deserve" based on our circumstances, our "passions", our desires, our moods, our feelings, our positions of prominence, our list of letters and periods following our name on our business cards, our "good ideas", someone else's "good ideas", what someone else has, what someone else did to us, what someone else promises us (to get elected), what someone did to someone else a long long time ago, or what the latest behavioral "expert" / scientific theory / pseudo-scientific urban legend / best selling book / magazine article / blogger says we "need" to be happy
- Only asks a small allowance be given to him to run and administer his plan (I.e. all the power and glory be his)
- His plan will only work if everyone joins it, so he and his followers are still actively trying to recruit everyone through literature, debate, social media, advertisements, flyers, rallies, word-of-mouth, and even sometimes face-to-face meetings with influential individuals who may be "on the fence"; he won't stop until everyone is "part of the system"

 (And how's that working out for him or those who choose to go along with it?)