"Shame on you!"

"You should be ashamed of yourself!"

"You make me ashamed of you!"

"I am ashamed to be with you!"

"Don't you ever embarrass me again!"

Shame - remember the feeling? You are embarrassed! Your face is red! Your ears burn! Hot tears flow down your face. Your stomach churns! When it's not churning, it's in knots.You are looking for a hole in the ground so you can crawl into. There is no place to hide.

Now some people confuse guilt and shame.

Guilt says I did something wrong; shame says I am wrong.

Guilt says I did something bad; Shame says I am bad.

Guilt says I made a mistake; shame says I am a mistake!

What bondage is wrought by buying into shame! Shame is sometimes and often a more terrible slave than guilt. In my work as a pastor and counselor I find that shame often disables people more dramatically than guilt.

The cure for guilt is straight forward. If I did something wrong, I need to admit the error of my ways and seek forgiveness and decide to change my behavior.

What is the antidote for shame?

First, I must separate my action from who I am. It is true that it is me that did the thing that is bad, but that action doesn't define who I am. I may tell a lie, but that doesn't make me a liar. That is, I am a person who may on occasion tell a lie. When I tell a lie, I admit it, ask forgiveness and determine that I will become a person who tells the truth.

Second, other people's judgment of my actions don't define who I am. When our parent said to us, "I am ashamed of you," we often own this judgment as a definition of our identity. That is, I am a person who goes around making people ashamed to be associated with me. The truth is that I may make mistakes, may break family rules,and may sometimes make poor judgments - but that doesn't mean that I am a mistake. I am a human being who is made in the image of God. I am loved by the maker of the Universe. I am the object of the Creator's affection.

Today is a good day to tell those words of shame to go to the hell they belong.

(c)2006 Ronald Friesen

"You're stupid!"

"You're just a little slut!"

"You're going to grow up just like your old man - a drunken bum!"

"You'll never amount to much!"

Those words sting worse then the bite of a thousand wasps, don't they? You can hear them ringing in your ears as fresh as when they were said 10, 20,30, 50, 70 years ago. Time has not deadened their volume or their accompanying pain.

Many of us bear these words deep in our souls! As raw as a freshly cut, uncooked steak, they bleed all over us.

Some times these words rebound in our minds like the ball in the pinball machine at the arcade. Each time they hit another post or lever, they seem to gain new power and energy to beat us up some more.

Some of us figure out that we are not going to honor these words by letting them become self-fulfilling prophecies. So we have adopt a lifestyle of overcompensation - we work countless hours every day to prove that those lies aren't true. And some of us become very successful - we get great reviews at work, we get promoted. Driven by these words, we work so hard that other areas of our lives often suffer. Our relationships get second and third place as we try to prove the lies wrong. Our physical health begins to collapse under the stress. So we find ourselves outwardly successful but inwardly empty and depleted.

Some of us decide that the pain of those words is so great that the only way to really anaesthesize them is to bury them under alcohol, drugs, and relationships. Some of us even become dependent on these substances to take care of the hurt. We run from one relationship to another to find the one who will accept this insecure, broken person. The side effects of these substances took a toll on us - our health, jobs, relationships, careers, education, retirement were threatened and sometimes even lost to us. We pay a great price for trying to run from those words ringing in our ears.

After all you were only 5 years old when you were hearing them for the first time. They were spoken by a big person. A person who spoke with authority and power. A person who had the power to feed you, clothe you, buy you a new toy. This person was older and smarter - so they had to be right. They were the experts in your life. So you accepted these judgments as the gospel truth.

Accepting them you made them your lifescript!

But wait - is this really you? You who are managing a business, teaching a class, distributing medications in a hospital. You who are raising three children and running a household. You who are writing blogs which others sit, admire and receive hope from.

What is really true of you?

That message screamed at you when you were a child or the person you have become in spite of those words?

Or the person that is making these positive contributions to the world despite those pronouncements of doom and gloom?

I say it's time to send these lies packing to the hell from which they came!

(c)2006 Ronald Friesen

"What do you mean you aren't going to make me happy?"

"It's your job to make me happy."

Next to the lie "You have to make me happy!" is this big lie: "I have to make everybody happy!"

If there was ever a nonstop hamster wheel, this is it. When you get one this one, you will never get off!

Believing that it your job to make everyone in your universe happy will keep you occupied 24/7. You wonder why you come home tired at night? It's exhausting just thinking about it!

Most of us bought into this one at our mother's knees when she told us, "Now go and be good at school today and make Mommy happy." We were programmed to think that it was our job to make Mommy happy.

The tricky part is that Mommy was often happy when we did good! So the pattern started to be reinforced! Hey, Mommy was happy yesterday. She even gave me a chocolate chip cookie! I'll try my best today to make her happy again!

Then we transferred that thought to other people in our world - a life partner, brothers, sisters, fathers, grandparents, school teachers, coaches, neighbors, employers, spouses, spiritual leaders, employees and on and on.

And now we are sitting here reading this feeling frustrated, angry, depressed and despairing because there are some people whose need for happiness is so huge that we can never make them happy. This is especially painful when these people are our dear loved ones -a life partner, a parent, a brother or sister, a child or special friend.

Making most people happy seems so easy but now we cannot do this for this person. Of course, we blame ourselves. We must be faulty or bad or wrong or stupid. The problem, we feel, must be entirely with ourselves.

I have some good news for you - these people need to deal with that other lie - "No one can make me happy."

There are some people who are so 'other' centered they think other people, like you and me, should be entirely responsible for their happiness. And, of course, we are responsible people so we own the responsibility. This is called being overresponsible. Being overresponsible can become a character flaw which will seriously damage us if we do not challenge it.

Say to yourself out loud, "I am not responsible for other people's happiness."

Also this is out loud: "I am an imperfect human being who is trying imperfectly to make another imperfect human being perfectly happy."

Having stated this, now say this out loud: "I am an imperfect person who can never perfectly make anyone else happy. Today, I resign from being other people's source or reason for happiness."

And, finally, say this out loud: "I am no longer responsible for anyone's happiness but my own."

There is only one person in the world who was perfect, who knew people perfectly, who loved people perfectly and they put him on a cross outside Jerusalem almost 2,000 years ago.

Today would be a good day to resign as the 'happiness maker' of your universe.

Send this lie to the hell it deserves!

PS. Give yourself a big hug!

(c)2006 Ronald Friesen

There is a common misconception in our society - my happiness depends on what other people say to me or do for me.

People even say this to each other: "You have to make me happy!"

There are several problems with this perspective on the world.

First, no one is a perfect mind-reader. No one can perfectly read your mind so as to perfectly make you happy. You may even signal what might make you happy. You are walking through the mall with your beau, you spot a diamond ring. You hint to him that you would like to have the diamond. A few weeks later he brings it home - you say, 'Thank you' and inwardly cringe because it looks smaller than the one you saw at the jewelry store. He couldn't read your mind perfectly - and consequently, he doesn't make you happy.

Closely related to the first point, no one is perfect. So the chance that someone will perfectly meet all your needs and make you happy is very unlikely. If I meet the perfect girl, I will be perfectly happy. As a counselor, I meet people who have walked this lie. They meet the 'perfect' person and find that their own unfinished business in life destroys their new relationship.

Third, no one HAS to make us happy! Many of us make the assumption it is the duty of other people to make us happy. Why do we think that our happiness depends on someone else? I think some of us learned this at our mothers' knees. We heard our mothers say something like this, "Mommy is very sad when you ___________." Or we heard this, "You don't make me very happy when you ____________." So we learned that it was our job to make Mommy happy. We then translated this to life - it is other people's jobs to make us happy. If people don't make us happy, we are sad and disappointed.

Four, we give our power away. For some reason, we decide that we are the victims of life. We give away responsibility to others. We decide that we are helpless and powerless to create our own happiness. In counseling, I frequently have to lovingly confront this kind of victimology. I often say something like this, "Why do you give all these people this power?" "Why have you decided that they should have all the power and you have none?" This insight is often a new one for these people. We talk about what happened in their lives that caused them to think that they were voiceless and powerless to gain their own power. As these people confront their responsibility to reclaim their own power, they find they have greater power to make themselves happy.

You don't need to be a prisoner of this lie - you can genuinely send it to hell and reclaim your power to make yourself happy!

(c)2006 Ronald Friesen

How often have you heard this one: Time heals all wounds?

I hear this one when I work with grieving people. People experience the death of a loved one and they are told by well-meaning friends: time will heal.

Well, as most people discover time, of itself, doesn't do a bloomin' thing. Time is exactly that - time. The seconds go by, soon minutes are gone, then hours and then days, months and years. All that has moved through that time is the chronomatic ticking of the clock.

People do heal in time - but time, itself, is not the healer.

It is what people do with the time that is the healing power.

Some people talk, some draw, some cry, some laugh over memories, some create momentos, some go for a walk, some invest their grief energy in finding some justice of their senseless loss.

Each of these people did something with their time. They didn't just sit waiting for their pain to lessen. They were actively engaged in dealing with their pain.

The next time someone tries to tell you that time will heal - catch the thought and throw it away. And begin to actively interact with your pain, embrace it and find ways to express it in healthy ways.

(c)2006 Ronald Friesen