Shame keeps me in routines that no longer serve me because it stops me from making new experiences. Shame holds me up to standards that I don't even logically believe in. Shame buries my desire for love, connection, friendship until I falsely believe that I could live without them. Shame makes my life very dull and then berates me for how dull my life has become.
I had my 40th birthday party coming up recently. In the week leading up, as a few people flaked out due to life stuff, i couldn't help but feel stupid for throwing a party. Ashamed to want to celebrate a big birthday, make a whole day about me... or I began to tell myself that I wasn't really a 'party person'. I decided to tell some of my friends how vulnerable it was making me feel and how much it actually mattered to me that they came. I didn't want to guilt trip them... I just wanted to share how i was feeling. This shifted it a bit for me. I could really feel the warmth of others more as I connected to that younger part of me ... it also helped me feel more connected when the party did eventually roll around as well. Plus a couple of people pulled out the stops and went to greater lengths to attend! It took discussing it in therapy to name the shame though.... the shame I felt for being 'too much' by the mere thought of throwing a party in my own honour!
As I turn 30 in 6 months I’m not really sure how to celebrate it. I’m living in a new country hopping house sit to house sit and unsure if I’ll be here when I turn 30 so I don’t even think a party would be possible for me since I don’t even know many people here. I feel ashamed that even though I’m broke I’m considering to go fly to hubs of where my friends live in hawaii or my family in Michigan even though it feels like I’d be moving back to old chapters of my life rather than stepping into this new one here in holland.
It’s 6 months away and I’m already thinking about how to celebrate… it feels like the biggest milestone I’ve reached in life besides 21
I convinced myself my whole life that I didn't like birthday for this exact reason, although I couldn't articulate it when I was young. In my last relationship, I celebrated my partner's bday and that allowed me to accept I was also worthy of celebration. Now that the relationship has ended, its been harder again and I talked myself out of 45th bday party for all the same reasons again. I'm so happy you could be vulnerable with your friends and they came through!!
Sometimes shame comes back and surprises me in social settings. I leave an interaction and wonder if I did everything right or if now the other person thinks I'm awful for the way I misspoke, or spoke too much, or maybe I didn't validate an experience enough or lean into their story enough, I got distracted and we changed the subject too quickly, etc. Worse still is being in a large group and overthinking something I've said before I've even left the party! Given too much space my brain will fill the gaps in conversations with everything I've already done wrong tonight for these people to not like me.
Somtimes I battle this by checking in if I'm genuinely worried I offended someone, other time I have to talk myself down and just shake it off knowing this is a common thought pattern. Most of the time, I thank my friends for the hangs and let them know I enjoyed it, and when they agree it was nice I accept that and use it to show my shame it's lying. I throw myself back into social situations despite the risk, and use that as a constant reminder that my thoughts aren't reality, but these people and conversations are, and they are still happening
Oh god, around my weight. I gained a lot of weight extremely quickly and it’s a daily battle against shame telling me I’m not allowed to see friends, date, ride public transit, leave my house, etc. A win would be not waking up and ~loving my body~ but waking up and thinking about something else for a goddamn change.
This reminds me of the "best gay boy in the world" syndrome--Pete Buttegieg is the perfect example. If you have a specific quality you are ashamed of (being gay, wrong weight/size, having a learning disability) then you feel like you have to be absolutely excellent at everything else to have permission to exist. I think a lot of overachievers fit into this category! I know I do.
this encapsulates it perfectly! i’ve never even heard of this before. i feel i must be great because if not it’s like “of course she wouldn’t be good at this because of her weight/x.”
It was like everyone I knew and cared about—friends, coworkers, lovers, even acquaintances—had bought into their relationship with the underweight me, and I’m ashamed of breaching that contract. Ridiculous, obviously, but then that’s shame
I have been thinking so much about this. I got fired from a job 2 months ago and it really opened up the old shame spigot in my consciousness. Who gets fired from a job at 51 for being shitty at the job? How can I have a conversation if I don't have an easy response to the question,"What do you do"? But when I try to see where the shame begins or ends, it's clear that it is not about anything external. It's about every rule and standard I've ever experienced or imagined. Mostly imagined. I can see through the bars of the shame prison and I get some yard time occasionally but often I am just in there, furious and shut down. I want to fix up a shed in my backyard but I know it won't be straightforward and I might start and not finish, or do it wrong, and I might have to ask people I don't know for help. I like to ask for help. But it costs me, every time. I worry about how I sound to them, what they think of me, how lazy or entitled or incompetent they will think I am. Not surprisingly, it's hard to just do things with that level of self-surveillance. I cannot let myself be.
So much empathy for this, and I understand the "shame prison" well. Just want to say that, if it helps, you certainly wouldn't be the first woman over 50 to lose a job not for being shitty at it - even if that's what they told you - but from entrenched and systemic ageism. You're insightful and eloquent and I doubt very much that you were bad at your job, and I'm so sorry if that was projected onto you.
Thank you, Heather for this post, and everyone for such honest and thoughtful comments. I feel as if, at almost 68 years old, if I start writing about my shame I will never be able to stop. I was born with talents and gifts and opportunities, and an IQ that set my father on a course of trying to control everything I did to raise his vision of a genius, but profound emotional neglect and constant orders to never outshine anyone else or draw any attention to myself led to a lifetime of self-sabotage every time I started to have something good (like the home I still dream of, a good job, a graduate degree, marriage) and then of course deepest compounded shame at all my self-inflicted failures. Like others here, I was raised Catholic, so the guilt and shame, especially for unwanted girls, is baked in early. The pandemic took away everything stable that I'd been working incredibly hard to hang onto, and since then I've been isolated even for an introvert. Physically the shame in my body is a bad feeling in the small of my back at 4 am, consistently.
Oh man being a "gifted girl" is such a curse. Your value comes from being smart or good at things! You must perform on command and accept complements graciously, but never ever ever "show off." (How is that even possible???)
A couple of weeks ago, my best friend and I were visiting my friend who is my ex-partner. By the third day of our visit, I proclaimed myself to be “in a bad mood.” I was moody and quiet, and I didn’t want to open up or talk about it when my best friend asked what was wrong. The truth was that I was upset that my ex-partner wasn’t giving me much attention. But this was so embarrassing for me to admit to myself, because I’d claimed that I’ve moved on and we’re just friends and that I don’t need or want anything more than that from them. Yet there I was, sulking, because that was exactly the reality— we were just friends, nothing extra— and it turned out I still hoped for more. So I was stuck under the cloud of a deeply familiar shame: feeling pathetic for unrequited desire. Ashamed of my naïveté, my ego, my attachment, my pretending. But my best friend, after a while, tried again to ask me why I was so distant, and why I didn’t want to talk. I admitted that I didn’t want to explain it because I was embarrassed about being upset. She said: “The worst enemy of shame is a friend.” The way she said it, the words sounded so utterly true that I laughed out loud in surprise. I surrendered and told her the whole truth of what was bothering me. She didn’t judge me or indulge me. She listened, and offered her perspective, and after one tearful conversation I had released the dark stormy shame-cloud and felt only the light mist of minor, passing sadness.
I don't think of myself as someone who has a lot of shame, but that means when it does hit, I'm totally blindsided!!! I'm generally comfortable with my appearance, my changing body size, I enjoy my talents, I sing in front of people, I don't have imposter syndrome, buuuuuuuut I feel a lot of shame for weaknesses and injuries of my physical body. I'm pale and I get heatstroke easily. I grew up in California and I always had to hide under SPF 50, umbrellas, and long sleeved white shirts while everyone else was in bikinis. I had mild psoriasis and acne. When I get mosquito bites they swell up like golf balls. I was never fast or strong or good at any sports, and I often had bronchitis or pneumonia. I was a loud kid with a lot to say, and as a child, if I stubbed my toe or scraped my knee, my parents would get frustrated about my yelling and tell me "I had a low pain tolerance" (thanks mom) When I had my own child at age 25, I got a horrible birth injury that didn't heal correctly, but I thought I had to just suck it up and deal with the "normal" pain. So I didn't get help, I just froze and compartmentalized. I ended up having vaginal reconstructive surgery TWO YEARS LATER. To this day, I still have a cascade of long term consequences from the injury, but I'm often times too embarrassed to get help. Every time I go to the doctor or OB I just cry my eyeballs out in front of them. There's so much pressure from both conservative and progressive narratives to be a "sex goddess" and "claim your own pleasure" etc etc, I feel like having a defective vagina means I've failed massively at an important part of being human. I've worked out ways to be sexual with my husband but talking about that is really hard because I don't want to be judged by other people's standards.
Well, this was really hard to talk about--I actually can't believe I shared it in public, wow. Let's all be kind to each other in this message thread!
Thanks for writing this down, KL. Shame around physical challenges - so real! It's odd that it's so natural for all of us to feel angry at our bodies when they fail us, and to feel like our so-called defects or malfunctions or illnesses define who we are and what we're worth. It's also a tightrope walk to try new therapies/ treatments / approaches / attitudes around any physical challenge while also accepting the way things are right now. My personal belief after dealing with cancer is that figuring out how to accept and love exactly what is happening in your body, even the 'bad' parts, is fundamental to healing. That sounds annoyingly optimistic, but it's actually practical: You love the whole messy microbiome with all of its troubles and its chaos and you let it be fucked up and you also gently nudge it into a place where you can celebrate it without shame.
Not enough time or space to tackle this here, but I appreciate your very vulnerable words. The tough part is that you have to completely accept where you are and let yourself off the hook but also dare to dive in and enjoy where you are even when it's not where you were. You have to love a new shape and invite unknown future shapes at the same time.
I had a time when I thought my cancer was an opportunity to love UGLY. I do think there's some opportunity to lean into an opposite self here, for you, and to use it to bring you more connection and desire. That's a sketch, not a prescription, but sometimes weird conceptual shifts are the most fruitful and powerful forces in the world when it comes to grappling with the suffocating and paralyzing effects of shame.
Thank you, Heather 🖤 I know exactly what you mean about weird conceptual shifts! I'm not quite there on this issue yet, but I will keep an open heart and see which opposite self emerges.
Ok, so after that giant comment barf, I want to answer some of the specific questions Polly asked. I know when shame is coming on because I feel like I can't talk about it. Like, it lands in the Zone Of Silence, which is weird for me because I generally like talking about things, even hard or sad things. There is definitely a lot of regrets flooding in, like the voice that tells you there were a million things you could have done differently to prevent or mitigate the problem. But at the same time, the actual shame comes from knowing that you ARE trying your best, and your best just wasn't/isn't good enough. That's what makes it different from guilt, to me. Guilt is, I made a choice, I regret it, I would do it differently if I could. Shame is, I dug deep and found out there wasn't a choice, just inadequacy. There wasn't even a possibility of doing it differently, yet the blame is there all the same.
The only way for me to get out of this shame is to think of my body like a good dog. Take it for walks and give it treats and pets, and to not expect it to be more than a scared animal sometimes. And to let the people I love take care of me without thinking about what I owe them back. Raising my dog from a puppy, through injuries, and into old age and passing away healed my shame more than almost anything else.
I often think of this Bible verse (I know, sorry, I'm becoming an old auntie who puts a Bible verse and 5 bucks in your birthday card): "for He knows of what we are made, and remembers that we are dust." We are just small, real, muddy creatures made of dust and earth, and that is ok!
There's a beautiful Eastern Orthodox monk chant of that Psalm that I find really soothing:
When I first read one of your columns about shame (I can't remember which one it is now, but this was before you moved to Substack) I remember having this strange numb feeling, and all I could think was, "well at least I don't have that problem."
Cut to a year of therapy later and HOO BOY. That numbness was clearly self-protective. I've done a ton of work on this in the last few years and your columns have always been beautiful pick-me-ups and reminders that I'm not alone. Something that came to me recently, when I was bouncing down shame mountain again (an often daily occurrence, still) is that I was the one holding onto my shame in a death grip, as though it were the only thing keeping me together. Even as I was falling and terrified, some part of me was sure that my shame was going to help me keep control. I realized that I thought that my shame was the only thing that defined me! As though I would blow away like smoke if I let it go! And since when I thought about it like that it sounded absurd, I said to myself: well, why don't you just let it go and see how that feels?
It felt scary! Freeing and beautiful and wonderful but also fucking terrifying. I still have a hard time understanding why being happy and loving myself and acknowledging reality would be scary (uh, actually, as I type that I can see how childhood trauma might have formed those associations). So, there you go. My current work: shame does not define me. It doesn't even have much to do with me. The notion of a continuous, unchanging self is bullshit anyway.
Love this. Similar: I noticed at some point that my automatic self-questioning and self-doubt were reflexive, defensive, nearly unconscious mechanisms built into my wiring, artifacts of a time when I had no control over my circumstances. They didn't have anything to do with my logical mind, my present self, my current beliefs, my abilities, talents, imagination, and confidence.
Shame wasn't a part of me. I could move forward without it and there wouldn't be negative consequences of that. I would just feel free. I didn't need to confuse anxious overprocessing with valuable feedback. There was no important data to pour over.
New understandings grew out of this, too. There were ways that I seized on every insecurity, thinking I could hone and perfect myself until I was adaptable and flexible and capable of pleasing a wide range of people in a wide range of situations. But this perfectionism of self was eating me alive, training my skills on pointless interactions and doomed friendships, eroding my ideals and my joy.
Sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is say "Maybe this doesn't work" or "Maybe this is working and I'm simply thinking about it too much." The emphasis is on "Do I feel good? Do I like this? Do I want more?" I never gave myself that choice before. My job was to make every half-broken relationship into something that worked smoothly. My job was to convince every skeptic to love the hell out of me. What wasted energy!
It's a testament to my shame that I kept diving straight into the job of persuading skeptics while ignoring the true believers. Some people love you straight out of the gate, too. Those are the ones who'll lead you to more joy and less shame, if you let them.
Whew do I feel this: "I didn't need to confuse anxious overprocessing with valuable feedback." I sometimes have these moments where I go, "but if I don't doubt everything that I think and do, how will I stop myself from being BAD?!" And then I realize, actually, that's not a functional way to be a good person. It's amazing to me how much hard work this can be but also how much it rewards the effort.
In my mid/late 40s, after my father’s death, I got myself into therapy, ended my unsatisfying marriage, and generally burnt my life to the ground to build something much more authentic and joyful from the charred wreckage (along with new bits of sea glass and driftwood and rocks I started noticing). I would like to say that I vanquished Shame, and I did beat it back very dramatically. But there’s one really tenacious kind of shame I haven’t had much luck with: body shame. I’ve worked on it, but there’s still a voice in my head that persistently tells me my primary job in life is to be thin; that the right amount to eat is next to nothing; and that my life full of love and connection, a very nice career and a very satisfying sex life - none of this is really of value, because I’m a size 14. That any woman who is thin is, in the most important way, better than me. And, of course, I’m ashamed that I have shame about this. It’s so superficial, so sexist and retrograde and so obviously wrong. I don’t let it stop me from enjoying meals or sex or wearing clothes that other people tell me I look good in - but that damn voice doesn’t go away.
Shame sucks big time. It also cripples big time. What a waste. I wish I could throw it away in some land fill. Oh well, I guess that's not going to work!
Anyway, at least I am realizing how much shame cripples me...and that's a start. I realize it sometimes stops me from going to social events, going to restaurants, and other kinds of events.
Maybe I should take a page from my wonderful tuxedo cat's behavior. He has absolutely no shame. Doesn't even know what it is. Just walks through life, stumbling now and then, but shrugs if off and ends up purring. I think that's the way to go.
Noticing how much shame you feel can (PARADOXICALLY) kick up even more shame, but the more you notice it, the more mundane shame becomes. You start to notice it in other people, too. Shame is shared by all jittery animals in our jittery culture. Cats step lightly around the influences of others, zero fucks to give, unconcerned, unburdened. Approaching your shame with a cat's curiosity could help, too: This isn't mine, it doesn't belong to me, it was given to me, I carry it around, it's too heavy. I can drop it right here and move without it. It will reappear, but I need to remember that I'm not kept safe or loved by this. My natural self is lighter and more hopeful than this.
I've been watching my cat (8 month old kitten) lately. It's a master class in doing what you want, having absolutely no investment in ego, trying again if you fail, etc. Thanks for mentioning this :)
I’ve been writing for twenty-five years, have been published by small presses, but with every rejection I get as I query agents (almost up to 50!), I feel that same shame I felt in tenth grade when my English teacher handed back my short story with a comment, “This isn’t how stories are written.”
Feel this one intensely. Just as "hurt people hurt people," shamed people shame people, and usually at crucial developmental stages - especially for artists, who have to put their authentic selves into everything they create. I wish I had learned earlier that my goal and role as an artist is to lift others up - essentially, to help banish shame.
I’m applying to grad school right now and the whole process dredges up all the shame I have and then some. I feel ashamed for wanting things, I feel ashamed for not doing even more to be a better candidate, and I feel ashamed for even trying. Some of it is preemptive - I feel ashamed for the disappointments I will face when I hear back in February. The shame won’t stop me from applying, but as Dana said: “the labor of going through it day by day, feeling as bad as it does, is tough work.”
Wanting something you might not get is a big source of shame because our culture tells terrible stories about people who want more than they have or can manage to have. You get called a wanna-be just for having a desire, just for trying, just for practicing at something, particularly if other people associate that activity with fame and fortune.
But having big dreams includes having big desires. Aiming to do something that doesn't frustrate or bore you, something that you're passionate about, necessarily includes competition and also disappointment.
The stories we tell about wanting, about ambition, about passion, are all twisted and full of shame. We don't greet desire and passion and ambition and drive as worthy and useful even when a person is failing. So it takes some effort to reshape passion and experimenting and failing into things that are good for you, that are respectable and necessary, that are processes that should produce even more passion. Engaging with big dreams should be a sign that a person is thriving, whether or not those dreams happen to be coming true or even if they look likely to come true at any given moment.
Simply daring to dream of something and to do it in whatever form you can is good for you. The dominant narratives about trying and failing must be ignored in order to keep passion alive, to keep showing up, to keep experimenting and failing, to keep pursuing things you love no matter what anyone else thinks.
Reframing your efforts as courageous, and reframing the results of those efforts as secondary, might be in order here. The important thing right now is that you're daring to try. No matter what comes next, resolve to stay in that daring space.
Thank you for this. It struck a chord with me. I was raised Catholic to feel ashamed of everything I am and not trying hard enough and trying too hard to do anything or be anything. Cowgirl
I'm an academic, and in my experience, the whole process around grad school (especially if you're not accustomed to elitist spaces and behaviors) is just gutting in this sense. But when I slowly learned to see the kind of absurdist humor in these basically feudal (and also hyper-capitalist!) rituals of academia, and found my people and my voice alongside them, I actually learned to accept my wanting things and to transmute shame in ways I wouldn't have otherwise. Best of luck!
I’d say shame hasn’t (consciously) been a big presence in my life, but I recently took a planned career break (saved up for it for over a year, knew it was what I wanted, and wanted to use the time to firstly recalibrate/decompress, then potentially travel, & then plot a more satisfying new chapter to move into). I went into it feeling confident and like ‘this is gonna be the start of the rest of my life! What a gift!’
But about a week into the break, shame (which I’d say feels linked to some anxiety too) flared up and since then (it’s been a few weeks now) it’s definitely flitting in and out. Not all the time, but when it does it’s loud. I go from feeling confident and expansive to feeling like I want to curl up in a corner.
How do I talk through those moments… honestly I don’t, I let them come up and have air time, but don’t hold onto them, as give it a few hours and I’ll be feeling better and able to focus on the uplifting things I truly want out of life.
Exercise helps! Just go for a run, a walk, if there’s a sport or activity you like do that as it gets you out of your head, and exercise tends to help you feel more confident anyway (endorphins…)
Another thing that can help is having either a written list or like a collage of all the badass things you’ve done before to refer to for a confidence boost. I think all of us have done scary things in the past and lived to tell the tale. So having a reminder that you’re a badass (with evidence!) really really helps so you don’t overly identify with the shame/smallness that you might be feeling.
Lastly I’d say give yourself grace, but keep trying. Example - for a while I wanted to try making my own dance choreography (I’ve been taking classes as a student for ages, but never tried making my own). There was a lot of resistance and overthinking (‘I’ll be crap, I don’t know where to start, I want it to be good’). After my dance class I’d go to the courtyard where sometimes teachers would practice their own choreo before class, with the idea that I could start to make my own choreo there too. The first time I went, I chickened out - just peeked my head into the courtyard and was like ‘nah’ and went home. The next time I had class, I went to the courtyard, found a spot, put on the song I wanted to work on, grooved along a bit uselessly and left after 5 min. Third attempt, managed to actually stay and do a shoddy 4-count that took me 15min to do. But that was the point where the wheels started moving and I’m now making choreo. It took a MONTH to get to the place where I felt comfortable going there and actually making choreo, with the feeling of ‘I can do this now’. I had to just keep stepping up to the plate on each attempt and gently see how far I could go each time. And what compelled me to keep trying rather than just give up? I’d look at the things that inspired me (in this case, my favourite dancers and choreography pieces) and knew I wanted to do what they did, even if it was in a micro way, at this stage.
Thank you for this! Being inspired by great artists is something that's hard when you're in the grips of shame, but when you surrender to that feeling, your work becomes a kind of prayer in honor of their work. That connection feels good, and no matter how small your creations or contributions are, you're aligned with what you love in ways that keep you breathing and thriving.
Wow that is so true. I always know when I'm truly connecting with one of my "ancestor" influence artists when I WANT people to see their influence in my work. Like, I desire for the influence to be known, instead of being ashamed of being "unoriginal." I know it's right when people comment on the influence and I'm like, yes!!! That's exactly what I was going for!
I’m ashamed to have others know about certain people and places in my past - not because of the events themselves, but because I’m ashamed that these (uncontrollable) things happened to me. The shame adds on to the grief - somehow I don’t know how I’ll ever let this shit go.
Yes, you explained that perfectly. It's such a paradox with shame, how we can be the most embarrassed by things we had no control over. I feel you and I'm sending you blessings. I hope you can find a few special people to confide in and receive their love.
I’ve noticed it when certain people “move on” to milestones in their lives, and I feel left behind. No matter how much I confirm the upside of how my life turned out (“but I’m such a good and interesting person because of what life threw my way!”) I cant’t quite believe the story sometimes. Shame tells me I missed out on what society says I should have wanted or should have done.
People take a lot of solace from the milestones they hit, but many of those milestones feel more like an idea or a faint memory as you get older. I feel like aging is the great equalizer, in other words. I try to tell my friends this, as they lament about things they never accomplished: "We're all the same now. We're all just inventing ourselves day by day, squeezing love and connection and joy out of our lives however we can." I mean, that's always true no matter what age you are. But as you grow older, you understand how empty a lot of those milestones can feel. Deciding for yourself what has value becomes incredibly important. Daring to value what you love, to honor it and align your life with it, transforms the world around you into a brighter, more electric place.
I wish I could heart this a dozen times. I just turned 50 and am thrilled to be 50. I feel so free of milestones - did all that and now I get to do what I want to do.
Shame keeps me in routines that no longer serve me because it stops me from making new experiences. Shame holds me up to standards that I don't even logically believe in. Shame buries my desire for love, connection, friendship until I falsely believe that I could live without them. Shame makes my life very dull and then berates me for how dull my life has become.
Oof, that last part!
Yes, how can shame hold us to standards we don't believe in? It's a strange mystery.
I can relate. Shame is a very crippling feeling. Keeps you down and trapped, isolated to yourself.
I had my 40th birthday party coming up recently. In the week leading up, as a few people flaked out due to life stuff, i couldn't help but feel stupid for throwing a party. Ashamed to want to celebrate a big birthday, make a whole day about me... or I began to tell myself that I wasn't really a 'party person'. I decided to tell some of my friends how vulnerable it was making me feel and how much it actually mattered to me that they came. I didn't want to guilt trip them... I just wanted to share how i was feeling. This shifted it a bit for me. I could really feel the warmth of others more as I connected to that younger part of me ... it also helped me feel more connected when the party did eventually roll around as well. Plus a couple of people pulled out the stops and went to greater lengths to attend! It took discussing it in therapy to name the shame though.... the shame I felt for being 'too much' by the mere thought of throwing a party in my own honour!
I love that you shared your vulnerability with them - that is something I am working on!
As I turn 30 in 6 months I’m not really sure how to celebrate it. I’m living in a new country hopping house sit to house sit and unsure if I’ll be here when I turn 30 so I don’t even think a party would be possible for me since I don’t even know many people here. I feel ashamed that even though I’m broke I’m considering to go fly to hubs of where my friends live in hawaii or my family in Michigan even though it feels like I’d be moving back to old chapters of my life rather than stepping into this new one here in holland.
It’s 6 months away and I’m already thinking about how to celebrate… it feels like the biggest milestone I’ve reached in life besides 21
I convinced myself my whole life that I didn't like birthday for this exact reason, although I couldn't articulate it when I was young. In my last relationship, I celebrated my partner's bday and that allowed me to accept I was also worthy of celebration. Now that the relationship has ended, its been harder again and I talked myself out of 45th bday party for all the same reasons again. I'm so happy you could be vulnerable with your friends and they came through!!
Sometimes shame comes back and surprises me in social settings. I leave an interaction and wonder if I did everything right or if now the other person thinks I'm awful for the way I misspoke, or spoke too much, or maybe I didn't validate an experience enough or lean into their story enough, I got distracted and we changed the subject too quickly, etc. Worse still is being in a large group and overthinking something I've said before I've even left the party! Given too much space my brain will fill the gaps in conversations with everything I've already done wrong tonight for these people to not like me.
Somtimes I battle this by checking in if I'm genuinely worried I offended someone, other time I have to talk myself down and just shake it off knowing this is a common thought pattern. Most of the time, I thank my friends for the hangs and let them know I enjoyed it, and when they agree it was nice I accept that and use it to show my shame it's lying. I throw myself back into social situations despite the risk, and use that as a constant reminder that my thoughts aren't reality, but these people and conversations are, and they are still happening
Beautifully said.
hard relate + solidarity on this <3
I led a work workshop today and am currently experiencing exactly this. It physically hurts, the shame.
Oh god, around my weight. I gained a lot of weight extremely quickly and it’s a daily battle against shame telling me I’m not allowed to see friends, date, ride public transit, leave my house, etc. A win would be not waking up and ~loving my body~ but waking up and thinking about something else for a goddamn change.
Dear Katie, the important thing is the weight of your heart. Love from Cowgirl
this is so real. i feel that due to my weight everything I do must be perfect.
This reminds me of the "best gay boy in the world" syndrome--Pete Buttegieg is the perfect example. If you have a specific quality you are ashamed of (being gay, wrong weight/size, having a learning disability) then you feel like you have to be absolutely excellent at everything else to have permission to exist. I think a lot of overachievers fit into this category! I know I do.
this encapsulates it perfectly! i’ve never even heard of this before. i feel i must be great because if not it’s like “of course she wouldn’t be good at this because of her weight/x.”
It was like everyone I knew and cared about—friends, coworkers, lovers, even acquaintances—had bought into their relationship with the underweight me, and I’m ashamed of breaching that contract. Ridiculous, obviously, but then that’s shame
I have been thinking so much about this. I got fired from a job 2 months ago and it really opened up the old shame spigot in my consciousness. Who gets fired from a job at 51 for being shitty at the job? How can I have a conversation if I don't have an easy response to the question,"What do you do"? But when I try to see where the shame begins or ends, it's clear that it is not about anything external. It's about every rule and standard I've ever experienced or imagined. Mostly imagined. I can see through the bars of the shame prison and I get some yard time occasionally but often I am just in there, furious and shut down. I want to fix up a shed in my backyard but I know it won't be straightforward and I might start and not finish, or do it wrong, and I might have to ask people I don't know for help. I like to ask for help. But it costs me, every time. I worry about how I sound to them, what they think of me, how lazy or entitled or incompetent they will think I am. Not surprisingly, it's hard to just do things with that level of self-surveillance. I cannot let myself be.
So much empathy for this, and I understand the "shame prison" well. Just want to say that, if it helps, you certainly wouldn't be the first woman over 50 to lose a job not for being shitty at it - even if that's what they told you - but from entrenched and systemic ageism. You're insightful and eloquent and I doubt very much that you were bad at your job, and I'm so sorry if that was projected onto you.
Thank you, Heather for this post, and everyone for such honest and thoughtful comments. I feel as if, at almost 68 years old, if I start writing about my shame I will never be able to stop. I was born with talents and gifts and opportunities, and an IQ that set my father on a course of trying to control everything I did to raise his vision of a genius, but profound emotional neglect and constant orders to never outshine anyone else or draw any attention to myself led to a lifetime of self-sabotage every time I started to have something good (like the home I still dream of, a good job, a graduate degree, marriage) and then of course deepest compounded shame at all my self-inflicted failures. Like others here, I was raised Catholic, so the guilt and shame, especially for unwanted girls, is baked in early. The pandemic took away everything stable that I'd been working incredibly hard to hang onto, and since then I've been isolated even for an introvert. Physically the shame in my body is a bad feeling in the small of my back at 4 am, consistently.
Oh man being a "gifted girl" is such a curse. Your value comes from being smart or good at things! You must perform on command and accept complements graciously, but never ever ever "show off." (How is that even possible???)
Yes. The mixed messages were crazy. Thank you for recognizing that!
A couple of weeks ago, my best friend and I were visiting my friend who is my ex-partner. By the third day of our visit, I proclaimed myself to be “in a bad mood.” I was moody and quiet, and I didn’t want to open up or talk about it when my best friend asked what was wrong. The truth was that I was upset that my ex-partner wasn’t giving me much attention. But this was so embarrassing for me to admit to myself, because I’d claimed that I’ve moved on and we’re just friends and that I don’t need or want anything more than that from them. Yet there I was, sulking, because that was exactly the reality— we were just friends, nothing extra— and it turned out I still hoped for more. So I was stuck under the cloud of a deeply familiar shame: feeling pathetic for unrequited desire. Ashamed of my naïveté, my ego, my attachment, my pretending. But my best friend, after a while, tried again to ask me why I was so distant, and why I didn’t want to talk. I admitted that I didn’t want to explain it because I was embarrassed about being upset. She said: “The worst enemy of shame is a friend.” The way she said it, the words sounded so utterly true that I laughed out loud in surprise. I surrendered and told her the whole truth of what was bothering me. She didn’t judge me or indulge me. She listened, and offered her perspective, and after one tearful conversation I had released the dark stormy shame-cloud and felt only the light mist of minor, passing sadness.
I don't think of myself as someone who has a lot of shame, but that means when it does hit, I'm totally blindsided!!! I'm generally comfortable with my appearance, my changing body size, I enjoy my talents, I sing in front of people, I don't have imposter syndrome, buuuuuuuut I feel a lot of shame for weaknesses and injuries of my physical body. I'm pale and I get heatstroke easily. I grew up in California and I always had to hide under SPF 50, umbrellas, and long sleeved white shirts while everyone else was in bikinis. I had mild psoriasis and acne. When I get mosquito bites they swell up like golf balls. I was never fast or strong or good at any sports, and I often had bronchitis or pneumonia. I was a loud kid with a lot to say, and as a child, if I stubbed my toe or scraped my knee, my parents would get frustrated about my yelling and tell me "I had a low pain tolerance" (thanks mom) When I had my own child at age 25, I got a horrible birth injury that didn't heal correctly, but I thought I had to just suck it up and deal with the "normal" pain. So I didn't get help, I just froze and compartmentalized. I ended up having vaginal reconstructive surgery TWO YEARS LATER. To this day, I still have a cascade of long term consequences from the injury, but I'm often times too embarrassed to get help. Every time I go to the doctor or OB I just cry my eyeballs out in front of them. There's so much pressure from both conservative and progressive narratives to be a "sex goddess" and "claim your own pleasure" etc etc, I feel like having a defective vagina means I've failed massively at an important part of being human. I've worked out ways to be sexual with my husband but talking about that is really hard because I don't want to be judged by other people's standards.
Well, this was really hard to talk about--I actually can't believe I shared it in public, wow. Let's all be kind to each other in this message thread!
Thanks for writing this down, KL. Shame around physical challenges - so real! It's odd that it's so natural for all of us to feel angry at our bodies when they fail us, and to feel like our so-called defects or malfunctions or illnesses define who we are and what we're worth. It's also a tightrope walk to try new therapies/ treatments / approaches / attitudes around any physical challenge while also accepting the way things are right now. My personal belief after dealing with cancer is that figuring out how to accept and love exactly what is happening in your body, even the 'bad' parts, is fundamental to healing. That sounds annoyingly optimistic, but it's actually practical: You love the whole messy microbiome with all of its troubles and its chaos and you let it be fucked up and you also gently nudge it into a place where you can celebrate it without shame.
Not enough time or space to tackle this here, but I appreciate your very vulnerable words. The tough part is that you have to completely accept where you are and let yourself off the hook but also dare to dive in and enjoy where you are even when it's not where you were. You have to love a new shape and invite unknown future shapes at the same time.
I had a time when I thought my cancer was an opportunity to love UGLY. I do think there's some opportunity to lean into an opposite self here, for you, and to use it to bring you more connection and desire. That's a sketch, not a prescription, but sometimes weird conceptual shifts are the most fruitful and powerful forces in the world when it comes to grappling with the suffocating and paralyzing effects of shame.
Thank you, Heather 🖤 I know exactly what you mean about weird conceptual shifts! I'm not quite there on this issue yet, but I will keep an open heart and see which opposite self emerges.
Ok, so after that giant comment barf, I want to answer some of the specific questions Polly asked. I know when shame is coming on because I feel like I can't talk about it. Like, it lands in the Zone Of Silence, which is weird for me because I generally like talking about things, even hard or sad things. There is definitely a lot of regrets flooding in, like the voice that tells you there were a million things you could have done differently to prevent or mitigate the problem. But at the same time, the actual shame comes from knowing that you ARE trying your best, and your best just wasn't/isn't good enough. That's what makes it different from guilt, to me. Guilt is, I made a choice, I regret it, I would do it differently if I could. Shame is, I dug deep and found out there wasn't a choice, just inadequacy. There wasn't even a possibility of doing it differently, yet the blame is there all the same.
The only way for me to get out of this shame is to think of my body like a good dog. Take it for walks and give it treats and pets, and to not expect it to be more than a scared animal sometimes. And to let the people I love take care of me without thinking about what I owe them back. Raising my dog from a puppy, through injuries, and into old age and passing away healed my shame more than almost anything else.
I often think of this Bible verse (I know, sorry, I'm becoming an old auntie who puts a Bible verse and 5 bucks in your birthday card): "for He knows of what we are made, and remembers that we are dust." We are just small, real, muddy creatures made of dust and earth, and that is ok!
There's a beautiful Eastern Orthodox monk chant of that Psalm that I find really soothing:
https://youtu.be/rxg0utxqH8k?si=lJGEO4kZ8FQ73J9U
When I first read one of your columns about shame (I can't remember which one it is now, but this was before you moved to Substack) I remember having this strange numb feeling, and all I could think was, "well at least I don't have that problem."
Cut to a year of therapy later and HOO BOY. That numbness was clearly self-protective. I've done a ton of work on this in the last few years and your columns have always been beautiful pick-me-ups and reminders that I'm not alone. Something that came to me recently, when I was bouncing down shame mountain again (an often daily occurrence, still) is that I was the one holding onto my shame in a death grip, as though it were the only thing keeping me together. Even as I was falling and terrified, some part of me was sure that my shame was going to help me keep control. I realized that I thought that my shame was the only thing that defined me! As though I would blow away like smoke if I let it go! And since when I thought about it like that it sounded absurd, I said to myself: well, why don't you just let it go and see how that feels?
It felt scary! Freeing and beautiful and wonderful but also fucking terrifying. I still have a hard time understanding why being happy and loving myself and acknowledging reality would be scary (uh, actually, as I type that I can see how childhood trauma might have formed those associations). So, there you go. My current work: shame does not define me. It doesn't even have much to do with me. The notion of a continuous, unchanging self is bullshit anyway.
So thanks, Heather!
Love this. Similar: I noticed at some point that my automatic self-questioning and self-doubt were reflexive, defensive, nearly unconscious mechanisms built into my wiring, artifacts of a time when I had no control over my circumstances. They didn't have anything to do with my logical mind, my present self, my current beliefs, my abilities, talents, imagination, and confidence.
Shame wasn't a part of me. I could move forward without it and there wouldn't be negative consequences of that. I would just feel free. I didn't need to confuse anxious overprocessing with valuable feedback. There was no important data to pour over.
New understandings grew out of this, too. There were ways that I seized on every insecurity, thinking I could hone and perfect myself until I was adaptable and flexible and capable of pleasing a wide range of people in a wide range of situations. But this perfectionism of self was eating me alive, training my skills on pointless interactions and doomed friendships, eroding my ideals and my joy.
Sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is say "Maybe this doesn't work" or "Maybe this is working and I'm simply thinking about it too much." The emphasis is on "Do I feel good? Do I like this? Do I want more?" I never gave myself that choice before. My job was to make every half-broken relationship into something that worked smoothly. My job was to convince every skeptic to love the hell out of me. What wasted energy!
It's a testament to my shame that I kept diving straight into the job of persuading skeptics while ignoring the true believers. Some people love you straight out of the gate, too. Those are the ones who'll lead you to more joy and less shame, if you let them.
Whew do I feel this: "I didn't need to confuse anxious overprocessing with valuable feedback." I sometimes have these moments where I go, "but if I don't doubt everything that I think and do, how will I stop myself from being BAD?!" And then I realize, actually, that's not a functional way to be a good person. It's amazing to me how much hard work this can be but also how much it rewards the effort.
In my mid/late 40s, after my father’s death, I got myself into therapy, ended my unsatisfying marriage, and generally burnt my life to the ground to build something much more authentic and joyful from the charred wreckage (along with new bits of sea glass and driftwood and rocks I started noticing). I would like to say that I vanquished Shame, and I did beat it back very dramatically. But there’s one really tenacious kind of shame I haven’t had much luck with: body shame. I’ve worked on it, but there’s still a voice in my head that persistently tells me my primary job in life is to be thin; that the right amount to eat is next to nothing; and that my life full of love and connection, a very nice career and a very satisfying sex life - none of this is really of value, because I’m a size 14. That any woman who is thin is, in the most important way, better than me. And, of course, I’m ashamed that I have shame about this. It’s so superficial, so sexist and retrograde and so obviously wrong. I don’t let it stop me from enjoying meals or sex or wearing clothes that other people tell me I look good in - but that damn voice doesn’t go away.
Shame sucks big time. It also cripples big time. What a waste. I wish I could throw it away in some land fill. Oh well, I guess that's not going to work!
Anyway, at least I am realizing how much shame cripples me...and that's a start. I realize it sometimes stops me from going to social events, going to restaurants, and other kinds of events.
Maybe I should take a page from my wonderful tuxedo cat's behavior. He has absolutely no shame. Doesn't even know what it is. Just walks through life, stumbling now and then, but shrugs if off and ends up purring. I think that's the way to go.
Noticing how much shame you feel can (PARADOXICALLY) kick up even more shame, but the more you notice it, the more mundane shame becomes. You start to notice it in other people, too. Shame is shared by all jittery animals in our jittery culture. Cats step lightly around the influences of others, zero fucks to give, unconcerned, unburdened. Approaching your shame with a cat's curiosity could help, too: This isn't mine, it doesn't belong to me, it was given to me, I carry it around, it's too heavy. I can drop it right here and move without it. It will reappear, but I need to remember that I'm not kept safe or loved by this. My natural self is lighter and more hopeful than this.
I've been watching my cat (8 month old kitten) lately. It's a master class in doing what you want, having absolutely no investment in ego, trying again if you fail, etc. Thanks for mentioning this :)
I’ve been writing for twenty-five years, have been published by small presses, but with every rejection I get as I query agents (almost up to 50!), I feel that same shame I felt in tenth grade when my English teacher handed back my short story with a comment, “This isn’t how stories are written.”
Feel this one intensely. Just as "hurt people hurt people," shamed people shame people, and usually at crucial developmental stages - especially for artists, who have to put their authentic selves into everything they create. I wish I had learned earlier that my goal and role as an artist is to lift others up - essentially, to help banish shame.
I’m applying to grad school right now and the whole process dredges up all the shame I have and then some. I feel ashamed for wanting things, I feel ashamed for not doing even more to be a better candidate, and I feel ashamed for even trying. Some of it is preemptive - I feel ashamed for the disappointments I will face when I hear back in February. The shame won’t stop me from applying, but as Dana said: “the labor of going through it day by day, feeling as bad as it does, is tough work.”
Wanting something you might not get is a big source of shame because our culture tells terrible stories about people who want more than they have or can manage to have. You get called a wanna-be just for having a desire, just for trying, just for practicing at something, particularly if other people associate that activity with fame and fortune.
But having big dreams includes having big desires. Aiming to do something that doesn't frustrate or bore you, something that you're passionate about, necessarily includes competition and also disappointment.
The stories we tell about wanting, about ambition, about passion, are all twisted and full of shame. We don't greet desire and passion and ambition and drive as worthy and useful even when a person is failing. So it takes some effort to reshape passion and experimenting and failing into things that are good for you, that are respectable and necessary, that are processes that should produce even more passion. Engaging with big dreams should be a sign that a person is thriving, whether or not those dreams happen to be coming true or even if they look likely to come true at any given moment.
Simply daring to dream of something and to do it in whatever form you can is good for you. The dominant narratives about trying and failing must be ignored in order to keep passion alive, to keep showing up, to keep experimenting and failing, to keep pursuing things you love no matter what anyone else thinks.
Reframing your efforts as courageous, and reframing the results of those efforts as secondary, might be in order here. The important thing right now is that you're daring to try. No matter what comes next, resolve to stay in that daring space.
Thank you for this. It struck a chord with me. I was raised Catholic to feel ashamed of everything I am and not trying hard enough and trying too hard to do anything or be anything. Cowgirl
I'm an academic, and in my experience, the whole process around grad school (especially if you're not accustomed to elitist spaces and behaviors) is just gutting in this sense. But when I slowly learned to see the kind of absurdist humor in these basically feudal (and also hyper-capitalist!) rituals of academia, and found my people and my voice alongside them, I actually learned to accept my wanting things and to transmute shame in ways I wouldn't have otherwise. Best of luck!
Thank you for this!
I’d say shame hasn’t (consciously) been a big presence in my life, but I recently took a planned career break (saved up for it for over a year, knew it was what I wanted, and wanted to use the time to firstly recalibrate/decompress, then potentially travel, & then plot a more satisfying new chapter to move into). I went into it feeling confident and like ‘this is gonna be the start of the rest of my life! What a gift!’
But about a week into the break, shame (which I’d say feels linked to some anxiety too) flared up and since then (it’s been a few weeks now) it’s definitely flitting in and out. Not all the time, but when it does it’s loud. I go from feeling confident and expansive to feeling like I want to curl up in a corner.
How do I talk through those moments… honestly I don’t, I let them come up and have air time, but don’t hold onto them, as give it a few hours and I’ll be feeling better and able to focus on the uplifting things I truly want out of life.
Exercise helps! Just go for a run, a walk, if there’s a sport or activity you like do that as it gets you out of your head, and exercise tends to help you feel more confident anyway (endorphins…)
Another thing that can help is having either a written list or like a collage of all the badass things you’ve done before to refer to for a confidence boost. I think all of us have done scary things in the past and lived to tell the tale. So having a reminder that you’re a badass (with evidence!) really really helps so you don’t overly identify with the shame/smallness that you might be feeling.
Lastly I’d say give yourself grace, but keep trying. Example - for a while I wanted to try making my own dance choreography (I’ve been taking classes as a student for ages, but never tried making my own). There was a lot of resistance and overthinking (‘I’ll be crap, I don’t know where to start, I want it to be good’). After my dance class I’d go to the courtyard where sometimes teachers would practice their own choreo before class, with the idea that I could start to make my own choreo there too. The first time I went, I chickened out - just peeked my head into the courtyard and was like ‘nah’ and went home. The next time I had class, I went to the courtyard, found a spot, put on the song I wanted to work on, grooved along a bit uselessly and left after 5 min. Third attempt, managed to actually stay and do a shoddy 4-count that took me 15min to do. But that was the point where the wheels started moving and I’m now making choreo. It took a MONTH to get to the place where I felt comfortable going there and actually making choreo, with the feeling of ‘I can do this now’. I had to just keep stepping up to the plate on each attempt and gently see how far I could go each time. And what compelled me to keep trying rather than just give up? I’d look at the things that inspired me (in this case, my favourite dancers and choreography pieces) and knew I wanted to do what they did, even if it was in a micro way, at this stage.
Thank you for this! Being inspired by great artists is something that's hard when you're in the grips of shame, but when you surrender to that feeling, your work becomes a kind of prayer in honor of their work. That connection feels good, and no matter how small your creations or contributions are, you're aligned with what you love in ways that keep you breathing and thriving.
Wow that is so true. I always know when I'm truly connecting with one of my "ancestor" influence artists when I WANT people to see their influence in my work. Like, I desire for the influence to be known, instead of being ashamed of being "unoriginal." I know it's right when people comment on the influence and I'm like, yes!!! That's exactly what I was going for!
I’m ashamed to have others know about certain people and places in my past - not because of the events themselves, but because I’m ashamed that these (uncontrollable) things happened to me. The shame adds on to the grief - somehow I don’t know how I’ll ever let this shit go.
Yes, you explained that perfectly. It's such a paradox with shame, how we can be the most embarrassed by things we had no control over. I feel you and I'm sending you blessings. I hope you can find a few special people to confide in and receive their love.
I’ve noticed it when certain people “move on” to milestones in their lives, and I feel left behind. No matter how much I confirm the upside of how my life turned out (“but I’m such a good and interesting person because of what life threw my way!”) I cant’t quite believe the story sometimes. Shame tells me I missed out on what society says I should have wanted or should have done.
People take a lot of solace from the milestones they hit, but many of those milestones feel more like an idea or a faint memory as you get older. I feel like aging is the great equalizer, in other words. I try to tell my friends this, as they lament about things they never accomplished: "We're all the same now. We're all just inventing ourselves day by day, squeezing love and connection and joy out of our lives however we can." I mean, that's always true no matter what age you are. But as you grow older, you understand how empty a lot of those milestones can feel. Deciding for yourself what has value becomes incredibly important. Daring to value what you love, to honor it and align your life with it, transforms the world around you into a brighter, more electric place.
I wish I could heart this a dozen times. I just turned 50 and am thrilled to be 50. I feel so free of milestones - did all that and now I get to do what I want to do.
yes, yes, yes to this.