Healing the Shame that Binds Us

When I was about sixteen or seventeen, I attended an annual Stake camp for young men preparing for their missions. The whole camp was designed to be like a mission-- you get a companion, you prepare and teach lessons, etc. I was one of two music directors for the camp--the other music director was my companion. I had known him in school for quite a few years, and I found him really attractive. Throughout the camp, I just got so frustrated with myself for not being able to stop thinking about his body. Ironically, the more I wanted to stop thinking about it, the less able I seemed to be.

My deepest secret of "struggling with same gender attraction" led me to the depths of shame. At one of my most painful moments, I wrote this poem:

Mirror, mirror on my wall

Make me thin and make me tall

For I don’t want to look within

To find what makes me feel so small

Wretched man, oh wretched man—

That I was, and that I am.

Consumed of sin and base desire

Of lust and greed, of vexing ire.

Mirror, mirror on my wall

Who’s the fairest one of all?

I want to know his name and face

To feel and feed my deep disgrace

Secret, secret untold pain

Not a soul can know its reign

If they knew my wretched truth,

I fear my life would be in vain.

Cursed mirror on my wall,

You never listened to my call

And when I gazed into your depths

I saw myself, my scars and all.

Lately I've been reading a great book by John Bradshaw called "Healing the Shame that Binds Us." It's about how we are conditioned to feel shame for certain emotions, and the more we feel it, the more we internalize it as a part of our identity (Bradshaw distinguishes between two types of shame--healthy shame and "toxic" shame). As this happens, we believe that we are fundamentally flawed; we believe that there is something wrong with us. That's exactly how I felt at the camp: that there was something wrong with me, and I felt utterly and completely ashamed. I felt like my very nature was wretched. Toxic shame destroys our sense of self, because "as your feelings, needs, and drives are bound by toxic shame, more and more of you is alienated... [and] when one suffers from alienation, it means that one experiences parts of ones self as alien." As you feel contempt for yourself, it makes it so that you cannot share yourself fully with others, and so you feel completely and utterly alone.

It's so relieving to no longer feel ashamed. After accepting that I am attracted to men, and that it's okay, I feel at peace. And I no longer feel guilty for feelings I cannot control. I no longer feel like life is in vain. One thing that I take issue with Church culture is the amount of shaming that takes place. In the 1980s, an LDS Youth named Kip Eliason committed suicide; he felt like he was unworthy to live because he couldn't stop masturbating and was taught by his bishop and others that it was morally wrong. For years in MIA, young men and women would repeat the slogan "it is better to die clean than to live unclean." I think these attitudes are harmful, and I also think that they are changing, which makes me happy.

I hope that each of us can be healed of the shame that binds us. And I don't mean that we can all just do whatever we want whenever we want and feel no guilt--but that we can be guided by the law of love and realize the depth of God's love for each of us. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with who we are.

God created each of us to be something incredible.

"Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, are more than they."

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson, from "In Memorium"