Six and a half years ago, Sariah Davis went through a divorce, an experience that initially left her feeling angry and then intensely ashamed.
“I was just embarrassed about my life,” she says on the All In podcast. “I didn’t want to show my face in church. I didn’t want to run into people in the grocery store.”
Sariah is newly remarried, but she can easily recall the pain of that shame-riddled period and the toll it took on her life:
“Shame destroys your relationship with yourself, with others, and with the Lord. I felt like I had put in the work, that I had done all these checklist things in my life that we talk about. … But we cannot have this expectation that, if we line up all of our marks perfectly, our life is going to go according to our plan.”
Following her divorce, Sariah discovered the concept of shame resilience—famously developed by researcher Brené Brown—and learned that the emotion isn’t something we have to helplessly experience. Here is the four-step process that helped Sariah—and can support anyone in breaking free from shame’s invisible clutches and making room for God’s unconditional love.
Step 1: Recognize the Feeling
People conflate shame with guilt, but the two are fundamentally different emotions and come from different sources.
“Guilt is the feeling that we have done something wrong,” Sariah explains. “This is from the Lord. … It’s a tool. It’s a communicative way that the Spirit talks to us to let us know it’s time to change. It’s time to repent.”
In this way, guilt is a productive emotion that compels us to do better. Shame, however, is destructive.
“Shame is from Satan,” Sariah says. “It is a dark presence in [ourselves] that says we are bad [and] are unworthy of love, of belonging, of connection. It tells us that we want to hide from the world, from others, from the Lord.”
Sariah believes that shame, alongside pride, is one of Satan’s greatest tools, but that the first step in combating it is to recognize it. So, if you feel compelled to hide or believe that you don’t belong somewhere, Sariah suggests taking a moment to ask yourself, “What am I feeling?”
Doing this requires you to analyze the emotion, develop more self-awareness, and learn how shame appears in your body.
Step 2: Learn your Triggers
The second step in combating shame is to learn what your triggers are. Once you recognize that you’re feeling shame, ask yourself why. Take note of the contexts, conversations, and situations it appears in.
For those navigating a divorce, triggers might include sitting alone in sacrament meetings or hearing messages about families that seem picture-perfect from the outside.
Sariah states that once you recognize what your triggers are, you can begin to work through them and eventually understand the deeper source of your shame.
Step 3: Reach Out
Sariah believes that the third step is the most important: Reach out to somebody you trust. This should be a person who has actually earned your trust and won’t further shame you for feeling bad about yourself. You might confide in a trusted Church leader, a ministering brother or sister, a therapist, or a family member.
Confiding in someone is essential because shame longs to remain hidden. “It likes secrecy. That’s where it grows. That’s where it festers,” Sariah says.
Step 4: Work Through It
Once you’ve shared your shame with someone, the fourth step is to seek help and find ways to work through it.
Sariah and her husband use a tactic focused on expressing gratitude. “When you start to notice feelings of inadequacy, shame, fear, anxiety, notice it and then just thank your body,” she says.
She shares the following examples:
- “Thank you for letting me know that I am scared to pray this morning because I forgot to read my scriptures [or] because I yelled at my children last night.”
- “Thank you, self, for letting me know that going to church causes me anxiety.”
- “Thank you, self, for letting me know that I’m feeling really anxious about [doing] this podcast.”
This approach allows you to view shame as something that can teach you instead of paralyze you. Sariah says that going through these four steps doesn’t mean we’ll never fear shame again. Instead, it provides a way to work through it and come out the other end stronger and better informed about our experiences and limiting beliefs.
When we bring the Lord into this process and give Him our shame, He can heal our hearts and restore our hope. To those struggling with shame after a divorce, Sariah counsels:
“Be patient. ... [The Lord] can work with any kind of mess that we think that we’ve created. He can take that, and He can change it, but it takes time—so much time. ... I know you want everything to be fixed right now, but just be patient. Do not give up [on the fact] that the Lord [has] been prepping things in your life for years before this ever even happened to ... set in motion and take care of you if you trust in Him and stick with Him.”
Listen to the full episode with Sariah and her husband, Troy, to learn more about healing from shame, especially after a divorce.
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