How to Obliterate Shame & Live Outside Cultural Norms

The Need to Obliterate Shame –

Body Image, Sex, Shame, Love, and Faith

It isn’t easy to obliterate shame when it is deep-rooted and generational. But there are steps you can take to remove the triggers, step into your faith and God-led calling, and become a vessel for God.

Obliterate Shame Around Body Image

Robyn originally met Tamra in a Clubhouse room and was impressed with Tamra’s ability to freely talk about her faith. Robyn then saw a post that Tamra put on Instagram about body image and it really resonated with her.

The body image piece is cultivated by a sexism culture. What is the body for versus what is the body a vessel for? For years Tamra saw herself as nothing but a tool for the opposite sex. She felt that everything she did have to be for the pleasure of someone else. Or, that she had to fit a certain frame in order to be loved.

Tamra mentioned how at a time when the cerebral cortex is still developing, teens are exposed to magazines with beautiful, sexual images. We have to consistently blind the eyes of our children from society and the exposure of women’s bodies in a sexual way.

Moving Outside the Box of Cultural Norms to Obliterate Shame

Tamra is on a mission to obliterate shame and one way she is helping women do that is through sharing fitness and nutrition. Everyone goes to body conscientious first. Its mind, body, soul, spirit, and mental health are often pushed aside. The body tends to come up first. Tamra shifted this thinking when she realized that her spirit and soul precede her body when she enters a room. Once she changed her way of thinking, her body became a vessel to steward the Holy Spirit rather than a tool for others’ pleasure.

When we are trying to fit into a box of cultural norms, we use suppression and coping mechanisms to control what we can’t control. Tamra used alcohol, shopping, and other addictions as coping mechanisms. It’s important to look at those coping mechanisms that are preventing us from being what God has called us to be. Freedom only comes when you face what has kept you in a box for so long.

Tamra stressed that from the outside looking in life can look amazing and no one sees the internal distractions and problems. No one offers help when they don’t see that help is needed. The expectations of perfectionism are overwhelming.

The roots of our generations often go deep and influence body image and overall mental health.

Using Landscape Design to Obliterate Shame

In the kitchen, it’s easy to understand. You can clear out everything that isn’t healthy, and keep only what’s whole, or organic. From this perspective, you won’t snack late in the evening because you won’t have that food in your house. If you can curate the space in your home, or life, the likely hood of suppression or using coping mechanisms is less. You can curate your life the same way by not listening to secular music. So much of secular music is sex and drugs, shaming, body image, and things that negatively influence our thinking. Tamra has eliminated anything that alters how she sees herself as the daughter of the King. It seems impossible to eliminate secular things from your life when you are doing it.

But when you leave the life of false identity behind, your life shifts, and people will fall to the wayside. However, when you give up on what isn’t healthy and good for you, you become more intimate in the relationships that remain.

When you do release unhealthy things, you also find more joy and blessings from God and your relationship with Him.

Keys to overcoming shame.

Leading with faith to obliterate shame

When you move forward embracing everything you are in Christ chains are broken for other people. When you are a sold-out Christian, you don’t have to sell anything. As entrepreneurs, if you show up in truth with vulnerability and authenticity, people will know by the fruit that you bear that you are worth hiring.

Most entrepreneurs don’t have an element of joy. They feel overwhelmed, are moving a mile a minute, and feel less than others. There are so many ways you can show up as a leader without shoving the Bible down someone’s throat.

When you let God lead you, you will do what you are meant to be doing and how you are meant to be doing them and serving who you are meant to serve. This also prevents you from living in comparison and expectation, which are unhealthy. God will give you grace for your space.

Your calling and purpose are not a destination but a process and a journey. There is always more to unpack and learn. We can all serve the people that are connected to what is coming through us.

Thinking Through Mental Health

It’s important to look at mental health and be sure you are completely healed. You can’t send things out into the world if you aren’t completely healed. Everything is an opportunity to experience the miraculous and God winks.

If you are struggling to feel like you are a light or that there is a light in the space you are in, understand that the light is actually you. Seek yourself. If you learn to love God well, you will learn to love yourself well. You are made in God’s image.

About Tamra Andress

Tamra is a rising thought leader in spiritual entrepreneurship and a best-selling author. She is an ordained minister on a mission to free and propel women globally by obliterating shame and activating purpose. Her F.I.T. in Faith podcast is globally in the top 2.5% and speaks to thousands weekly across platforms. Her most treasured role in developing the Kindom is as a wife and mama of 2 traveling the world to spread the good news.