Join Angie Austin as she dives deep into the dangers of shame with LaFawn Jantz, discussing Dr. Gregory Jantz’s impactful book, ‘Freedom from Shame’. Discover how shame is not just a fleeting emotion, but one that can attach itself to your identity and affect your day-to-day life. Learn about the ongoing work at A Place of Hope and how LaFawn is courageously continuing her husband’s legacy.
welcome to the good news with angie austin now with the good news here’s angie
SPEAKER 03 :
Hello there, friend. Angie Austin here with the good news, and the good news is one of my favorites is back. LaFawn Jantz is here, and we are talking about Dr. Gregory Jantz’s book, Freedom from Shame, Find Healing for Your Most Toxic Emotion. Okay, here’s the interesting thing, LaFawn. I was kind of surprised when you said that your husband, Dr. Gregory Jantz, said that shame was like one of the most, if not the most toxic emotion. Explain that. I never would have thought about that.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, because he, you know, 45 years, 40 years of working with clients plus and just constantly working with clients who were just so heavy, burdened down by the shame, the guilt, the, you know, all of the negative self-talk related to clients. having a having a boatload of shame that that affected their identity on that level so shame is not just um a momentary thing it’s something that attaches itself to you and affects your identity to your core and so that’s that is that’s why he wrote this book to help people get free from it because you know it’s just absolutely the most destructive toxic emotion that we tend to host
SPEAKER 03 :
And what’s interesting is that we’re supposed to be free from that through our faith. Like if you’re forgiven and you’re a Christian and you accept the Lord as your Savior and you ask for forgiveness for your past sins, you’re supposed to be free from that. But I guess that’s not something that – that comes, you know, easily to some people. And I just want to give a little bit more background about your husband, Dr. Gregory Jantz, author of over, well, how many books is it now? How many are going to come out?
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, my goodness, 46, 47, two more coming after his passing that have come out and two more after those two. Oh, wow. I’ve got to go back and count is what I’ve got to do.
SPEAKER 03 :
When it said over 30 books on the back of this one, I’m like, well, this must be an older one. We’re up towards almost 50. The host of a national radio program, and as you mentioned, he passed in an accident last summer. Good. The regular contributor to Psychology Today, Dr. Jantz was recognized as a leading authority on family relationships and much more. And he appeared on shows like CNN, Fox, ABC, NBC. And under his leadership, the center, a place of hope, has been voted in the top 10 facilities for the treatment of depression in the U.S., which is phenomenal. Really saying something because there’s so many treatment facilities and you’re continuing his work at the center, A Place of Hope, and you still have your employees and your family and you continuing his ministry because you were involved in it all along. And now you’re kind of taking his place.
SPEAKER 04 :
I am. I’m stepping in. I can’t feel his shoes, but just going to keep talking about how the success of what he established so well is still operational today and going beautifully. It’s amazing to me. It’s a miracle. God is just holding us in place and just honoring his life and legacy.
SPEAKER 03 :
I mean, what a way to give a way to honor him, too, because the foundation was there and everything was running and like flowing and that you were able to just say, all right, everybody, you know, like, you know, Dr. Jantz isn’t here with us anymore, but we can do this for him because he set everything up. He’s written all the books. He’s set up the center, a place of hope. And we just have to continue his work to continue his legacy. And, you know, he did that so well that you guys just had to kind of step in and, you know, put the open for business sign up and just continue on.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes. You know, the Lord gave me one dream since he’s passed. And it was it was I felt like his presence brought me underneath the center building in the crawl space of all places. I was, you know, dreading it. But what what I saw was this huge slab of solid rock and it was shiny and smooth. And it was just the comfort I needed to know that we were on standing on solid ground. And so it gave me the idea of the builder because my husband was a builder. He helped people rebuild their lives and he built the center and he built up the staff and he was a builder. And so I think a pivotal point was when I shared with the staff, you know, we are the builders now. We are the ones standing on that solid foundation and we are the ones that will continue the building that’s already begun and we’re the builders. And it was just the perfect analogy. And seem to really solidify the mission and vision of what we’re doing and where we’re going.
SPEAKER 03 :
I love that. Okay, so today we’re discussing his book, Freedom from Shame, Find Healing for Your Most Toxic Emotion. And I find the picture on the front very interesting. It shows a bunch of people under black umbrellas, and all you see is a sea of black umbrellas. And then you see this yellow umbrella kind of floating up above, you know, up into the clouds. And so I’m assuming that’s the finding healing.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, that’s the freedom. And, you know, scripture says whom the sun sets free is free indeed. And shame is the toxic emotion that binds us up. It’s an internal emotion. You can’t often see it from the outside, but you can feel it often when someone is overburdened by it. And you can certainly see the effect in their life and in their relationships. So it’s, you know, it’s really important. Not to quote a celebrity, but Lecrae says, guilt says you failed, shame says you’re a failure, but grace says your failures are forgiven. Oh, that’s nice. And so I just, you know, guilt… There’s a difference between guilt versus shame. And it’s one thing to know and admit guilt and acknowledge it. That’s part of our freedom is acknowledging where we are guilty. It’s just that we don’t want to allow it to move into the shame because then we start to blame ourselves, blame other people. It’s a blame game. A shame game is a blame game. And we’re usually at the end of, you know, we’re usually at the end of the stick on that one.
SPEAKER 03 :
You know, I did a women’s conference with a bunch of female speakers and we asked people to kind of submit, you know, write something up that we were going to, you know, give to the Lord. And, you know, basically we were going to like burn all of these, all of the speakers later and that they were all anonymous and that women just placed them, you know, in a basket. And when we read some of them to kind of pray over them, I was stunned at the shame because I’m not a shame person. I really do believe that I’ve been forgiven and set free. Yeah, it’s not really my my bag.
SPEAKER 04 :
And I think because you had a lot to you had I mean, your story, you had a lot to work through. And once you broke through, you know, God is the God of breakthroughs. He allowed you to break through your enemy of shame because you could have carried a lot of shame just like me and the rest of us.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I think for me it was more embarrassment of my circumstances that, you know, the drug addicts in the family, the overdoses in the family, the murder in the family, the, you know, abandonment in the family, the, you know, poverty in the family. It was like, ugh.
SPEAKER 04 :
Those are all shame. You call it embarrassment. You can call it embarrassment. We give it different names, but, you know, that’s just a cover for shame.
SPEAKER 03 :
Interesting. Yeah, and I think forgiveness for me was probably accepting forgiveness from my Savior, but also forgiving others. That was such a key for me. Okay, so now I’m better understanding shame. So we’re talking about why shame is the most toxic, and then at the beginning of the book, he starts with why shame is the most toxic, and then the roots, shoots, and fruits of shame. So let’s talk about that.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, I mean, when you have somebody operating out of shame, you have someone whose identity and the core of who they are has been affected. And it affects everything we do. It tends to make us to want to hide and can cause us to not even know who we are anymore and other people not to know us, really.
SPEAKER 03 :
Let’s talk about replacing the script of shame. That’s where he goes in Chapter 2.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, he does. And that’s part of, you know, don’t let tomorrow spoil today. Worrying about tomorrow’s troubles. I mean, shame just causes you to just go into overdrive. And it’s part of the script, you know, that that needs to be rewritten. And so some of the techniques to do that is to, you know, affirm others. Be generous with your compliments. So in other words, move beyond your shame and begin to do the things that don’t come natural and normal for you. Affirm yourself often. Give yourself compliments through the day to help boost your self-confidence. You’re rewriting your mental script because confidence The old script wants to dominate. The old script says you’re a failure. You are no good. You’re not worthy. And so we’re rewriting that script that we rehearse. And it might feel uncomfortable. It might even feel like you’re telling lies. And yet really what you’re doing is speaking the truth over yourself and others. And so that’s how we begin to rewrite and repair the shame game, if you will.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. To replace that script of shame. Okay. Chapter three, learning to believe in yourself.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes. And how we do that is we’ve got, again, to make sure that we complete chapter two with, you know, rewriting that script, because as he said, shame is the one thing where you can make somebody feel better for a day, but they just will relapse right back into the shame. So Learning to believe in yourself is just really that next step after you’ve been able to really work through rewriting your scripts. And you begin to believe in yourself. What does it mean? You begin to say, I’m more than my mistakes. I’m capable of learning what I need to learn. I have value always. I’m stronger than I think I am. I can make a positive difference in the lives of people around me. So you’re speaking the truth. And you’re moving beyond the damage that shame has attached itself to you. Willing to take a risk. You know, a lot of times shame keeps us hiding and not willing to take a risk. So putting yourself out there again and being willing to love others again. Mother Teresa said… To everyone’s criticism, she said, you know what, love anyway, give anyway, serve anyway. And I remind that to myself often is, you know what, I’m just going to love them anyway. I’m going to keep giving anyway. I’m going to keep serving anyway.
SPEAKER 03 :
I think about Joyce Meyer and everything that her father put her through with the sexual abuse and just abuse in general. At some point, she felt compelled to take care of him in his older years, and that was it, and love him anyway. He actually came to Christ later in his life, and it was a full circle relationship. Not many people would have been able to do that after Christ. What she did, when you read the details of the abuse that he subjected her to, it was pretty mind-blowing. And the fact that she could take care of him and then, as a pastor, lead him to Christ and help him transform his life when he was such a despicable character. Wow. Absolutely. Yeah. It’s like you said, love them anyway. But believe in yourself. I think that scripture can help with that, too, because we really do learn that you’re complete through Christ. And I think that gave me a lot of peace where I no longer in my younger years, I felt I had to hide or, you know, I’d have my friends drop me off down the street from our low income housing apartment because I didn’t want them to know where I lived. Because one time some guy had said, oh, my gosh, his house was so nice. They had a little river, a little stream that ran through the living room. And so he wanted the low income housing. And he said, oh, my parents knew you lived here. They would never let me date you. It was funny because I ran into him in college and I dated the captain of the football team at the University of Colorado. And I was, you know, a straight A student and, you know, doing really well and had a really respectable, nice Christian boyfriend. And I ran into him and he was all like, you know, impressed that, you know, like he just was kind of taken. He loved the football team. Yeah. Yeah, and then I was just like, oh, my gosh, you looked down on me for where I lived, and now I’ve far surpassed ever wanting to date you.
SPEAKER 04 :
You’re not competitive or anything, are you? Yeah, right, right, right.
SPEAKER 03 :
All right, number four is achieving lasting freedom from shame.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, achieving lasting freedom from shame means that you are developing your own healthy self-esteem and You are now able to move beyond your own shame and starting to serve others, looking for reasons to encourage others and to believe in their ability to also make decisions like you’re not feeling like you need to control other people so they won’t hurt you anymore. You know, you speak the truth as you see it without fear of rejection and no intent to harm others. Like you’ve got yourself cleaned out from the inside out. And it shows by how you are developing not only self-esteem, but self-confidence in your relationships. And so intimacy comes back. You’re able to have healthy relationships where it’s not a control or your boundaries aren’t constantly being crossed. So you feel like you need to run away and hide again.
SPEAKER 03 :
All right. Then the last thing Dr. Jantz said was, what is the antidote for every toxic thing that comes into our lives? And he says, I believe it’s gratitude. And I love the whole idea of a golden list of gratitude list. Okay. You can find LaFawn Jantz. You’ve got Google, the center, a place of hope, the center, a place of hope. LaFawn, thank you so much.
SPEAKER 04 :
Thank you, Anthony.
SPEAKER 01 :
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SPEAKER 05 :
Sterling is listening to the mighty 670 KLT Denver.
SPEAKER 03 :
Hey there, friend. Angie Austin here with the Good News. Excited to talk about the book Stay the Course with Catherine Pesor. And she is joining us to give us the lowdown, you know, help us get a little scripture into our lives today. Welcome, Catherine. Thank you, Angie. It’s so good to be here. All right. Let’s just start with an overview of the book, would you?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes. Stay the Course is a devotional handbook to survive and thrive in your first year of college and beyond. And it’s written for high school graduates. to help them transition in the summer to get ready for college and then some advice and motivation and encouragement that they need to survive that first year because it’s a critical time for them. So many of our students in their freshman year are just not prepared for the independence and the choices that they have to make and the study habits that they need. They’re just not quite ready for it sometimes. And so this book is designed to help them through that first year to be successful.
SPEAKER 03 :
You know, I think about these kids because I’ve got three in high school right now. Pardon me. When you say, you know, they’re not ready, I mean, they still are kids in so many aspects. I mean, even my son, who’s 18, he’s going to University of Colorado. He’s leaving this summer, actually, to go to school for summer school. And he’s so mature. He’s been running his own business since he was 12. Pardon me. But with his sisters, he is like a 12-year-old. And his interactions sometimes with other kids his age leave a lot to be desired in terms of maturity. But he’s so mature, comparatively speaking, to a lot of his contemporaries. So I can’t imagine the skills some of these kids are going to school with or without, for that matter.
SPEAKER 05 :
That’s a great example. I used to tell my college students that you are 12-year-olds or kindergartners trapped in an almost adult body because some of that adolescent behavior just pops out sometimes.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, and I ask him why. I ask him why. I’m like, why do you do that? Like, you know, he’s like poking a bear in a cage with his little sisters. I’m like, why? And then he gets this devilish grin and he says, because it’s fun.
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, no, no. And some of them never outgrow that.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s true. His dad’s like, they’re very similar in maturity level, those two. Oh, my gosh, it must have been 11 o’clock last night, and my husband’s wrestling with, I have five pets, wrestling with them in the bed while I’m trying to sleep, right? And so he’s throwing them around, and they’re jumping, and they’re barking, and I’m like, are you kidding me? Like, it’s 11 o’clock at night. Let me go to bed so they come by naturally. All right. According to some studies I was reading in some of your material, between 70 and 80 percent of high school kids who enter college as Christians leave with little or no faith. That is scary. So talk to me about that.
SPEAKER 05 :
That is scary. And actually, I was not aware of that particular statistic until a friend pointed it out to me. And I believe it’s because they are just bombarded with so many changes all at once. They’re confronted with other peers, other students, and even with some adults, some of the professors that don’t necessarily believe the way that they do. And they’re exposed to a lot of information, a lot of knowledge. And I do believe that it’s important for our students to learn how other cultures lived and even other religions, because the more knowledge we have and the more information that we have, when we are suddenly bombarded with these beliefs that others are trying to persuade us towards. So I think it’s important that we learn about other religions and other philosophies and the way people believe only though, to build a knowledge base so that we can successfully defend our own faith, you know, be a, a, not from the standpoint of apologizing, but from the standpoint of defending our faith and being confident in how we profess our faith openly. So when they’re confronted by all these changing ideas and different ideas, they become vulnerable to new information because we go to college to learn new things. And then all of a sudden, we’re presented with these things. But our children, students, they’re young adults by this time, they need such a strong foundation. And then they need us to be their parents and other adults that care about them to be praying for them and to be a listening ear when they call and say, hey, mom, dad, I heard this stuff today and it’s confusing to me. You encourage them to go ahead and talk about it and let them know that we’re praying for them because it’s such a sudden change. All of a sudden they’re leaving the security of their home and home church if they were are able to have a church family that supports them, they’re leaving that and they’re thrust into this new environment that everything’s just so different.
SPEAKER 03 :
They need our prayer. I think about the University of Colorado where I went, and I’m not in the Bible Belt like you are. And I didn’t have groups of Christian friends then. And I think about my kids now and how many groups they’re in that involve Christians, like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Young Life, and then their own church youth group. And then Young Life, the kids have now kind of volunteered to do their own Bible study one day a week before school. So they get to get up at like 530 or six o’clock in the morning to do that on their own. Like my daughter did Fellowship of Christian Athletes this morning. And So up at 530 and then she doesn’t get home from practice until I don’t know, maybe 830. So it’s a really long day for them to volunteer to get up early to do these things. So I was thinking about what I could have done differently at the University of Colorado. And so I just sent a text to my son while you were talking and said, stay in your Christian groups in college birds of a feather flock together. Because if they don’t seek it out, it’s not going to find them. They have to go to these groups where there are Christian kids and make friends with these kids. My son does that now. He has his friends with kids at other high schools and they go to these Christian groups together. And so he doesn’t really have that many friends at his own high school, but he has friends in these other high schools that have these, you know, groups that he goes to. So if you can seek out those groups in college and start meeting other Christians, it’s easier than trying to find the Christians in your classroom because there are going to be a lot more kids who aren’t involved in going to church, etc. Then you will find kids doing it. So finding their groups is the easiest way to find them, I think.
SPEAKER 05 :
You are absolutely right, and thanks so much for pointing that out. And you’re right in that they have to seek those groups out, and they are there. They might not be easily found, but there will be a list of all the organizations. The school will have a list of all of the organizations that are approved. And even in the community, they might find a church in the community that has a college group that meets there once a week in the evenings or something that supports all of the college students, too. So, yes, thank you for pointing that out.
SPEAKER 03 :
And I wonder, too, you know, we just got back this weekend from seeing, I guess it was, three, but we kind of saw four Christian schools. My daughter’s a volleyball player and that league is called the NAIA league for the Christian schools. And they’re small and a lot of them are in the middle of cornfields, et cetera. But what I like is that, you know, the Bible and Bible study and worship that it is included in the school curriculum and that the majority of the kids, they asked my daughter for like her testimony as she was applying for the school. And so with the in fact, the coach at this last school she went to was a pastor for 14 years before he became a volleyball coach. And now he’s been I think it’s about the same that he’s been coaching volleyball the amount of time. So he asked Hope what they were studying, which scriptures or what book of the Bible they were studying in her Bible study. She goes, well, we don’t have a leader anymore. So it’s just us kids. So we’ll just take a scripture and then we’ll discuss it. So it was like she couldn’t really answer his white Bible. My husband’s like, girl, you aren’t very organized. She’s like, well, we’re just kids. We’re just picking out scripture and we talk about it. We don’t study the whole book of the Bible. They’re just doing the best they can, right?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, good for them for taking the initiative to go out. And they can be so much of a good influence on other students who’ve not had that opportunity to grow up in a Christian home or have a support group like that. So it’s wonderful that they’re doing that, and I hope that they will witness to others.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, I think for her, you know, if she does choose one of these Christian schools, it’ll be easier than for my son, who’s in a more secular environment. But what do you see as some of the reasons that these kids, these young people, are dropping their faith in college?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, they’re at such a vulnerable age anyway, 18. Between being a child and being an adult, and they’re struggling with with their freedom, all of a sudden that they have all these choices and temptations and no one to tell them, well, I don’t think you should really be doing that. No one to get them up in the morning. And they’re just suddenly exposed to so many other opportunities. And not all of them are good. Yeah. So their views that they’ve grown up with are suddenly challenged. And unless they have that really, really strong foundation, that sounds like that your children do. And that’s wonderful. But so many of our students don’t have that strong background. And so they become confused by all these conflicting information that they’re getting. And they don’t know which way to turn. That’s why it’s so important, as you’ve encouraged your children, is to find those groups and have your own support group. Because once they become aware that there are other ways of believing, unless they have the strong foundation and the knowledge… to refute those new philosophies and beliefs that they’ve been exposed to, then they’re going to sink into it and be absorbed into that different viewpoint. And then they’ll discover that there’s all these other opportunities of things that are really not so good that they never would have been doing before, but then all of a sudden they’re recognizing, well, you know, there’s nobody here to tell me what to do. I can make my own choices. And at that age, some of their own choices are not good.
SPEAKER 03 :
Right, right. And let’s talk a little about that because we’re trying to prepare our kids as they head off, you know, college and to have, you know, a moral compass and self-discipline and know that there’s a time for them to have fun, a time to study. What are some of the experiences that you’ve had with students who were unprepared for college and the environment?
SPEAKER 05 :
We like to believe that we’ve taught our students, our children, everything we need to know before we send them off, but we can’t prepare for every eventuality. And what I have found that students have the most difficulty coping with is their independence because then all of a sudden they can set their own schedule, they can decide whether they’re going to school or not, and if something else tempts them away from that, they may make the wrong choice and go into whatever that temptation is. But when I’ve worked, I’ve worked with students, college students over 25 years, and one of the things that they really struggle with is self-discipline and time management because no one’s telling them what to do. They make their own schedule. So I would just remind them, you know, go to class every time, every time, even if you’re not… haven’t done your homework, go to class and always be prepared and keep up with your assignments. Hang in there and do them. And if someone tries to tempt you away from doing what you need to do to be academically successful, then that person is really not being your friend because you have come to this university or this college to set your path for your future career. And anything that comes between you and that goal is not going to be a positive thing for you. If someone’s trying to keep you from going to class, if somebody’s trying to invite you to go out to eat when you should be studying for your exam, or if someone’s inviting you to participate in activities that are unhealthy or immoral, then you are the one that has to make the choice as to whether or not you’re going to let the short-term decision affect your long-term goal or not. So I try to get them to look ahead to the future and not decide, well, I don’t need to go to this class and study for this test because I’ll have another opportunity later. It doesn’t work that way in college. Every single decision that they make academically will affect their final outcome.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, I certainly appreciate your expertise. The book is called Stay the Course, Catherine Pesor. And I just really appreciate you. What a blessing to have you on the program. It’s obviously very timely for me and hopefully for some of you listening who have kids and or grandkids who are going to be heading off to college or you’re just preparing them right now. Thank you, Catherine. You are welcome. Thank you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thank you for listening to The Good News with Angie Austin on AM670 KLTT.
