Week 1: What is Shame?

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐦𝐞? 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐕𝐨𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐁𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐤𝐬

I thought that once I started removing my masks, I would finally feel free. And in many ways, I did. The performer didn’t have to prove her worth quite so desperately. The pleaser didn’t have to carry everyone’s happiness. The perfectionist got a little quieter. The strong one allowed herself to need help. But underneath all those masks, I discovered something I wasn’t prepared for.

Shame.

Not the fleeting embarrassment of getting something wrong. Something deeper. Something older. Something that had been living inside me for decades.

For me, it lived in my solar plexus. A constant churning. A burning sensation that never fully left. Shame sat there alongside guilt, so tangled together that for years I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.

My logical brain knew certain things were true. I knew the abuse I experienced as a child wasn’t my fault. I knew children are never responsible for the harm inflicted upon them. I knew I had done nothing to deserve what happened. But shame had something completely different to say. Shame whispered: “Something must be wrong with you.” “If you were worthy, this wouldn’t have happened.” “If people really knew you, they wouldn’t stay.” “You’re damaged.” “You’re too much.” “You’re not enough.” And the most painful part? I believed it. Not because it was true, but because it was familiar.

Most people confuse shame and guilt. They’re often used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing. Guilt says: “𝐼 𝑚𝑎𝑑𝑒 𝑎 𝑚𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑘𝑒.” Shame says: “𝐼 𝑎𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑚𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑘𝑒.” Guilt focuses on behavior. Shame attacks identity. Guilt can inspire us to make amends, learn, and grow. Shame convinces us that we are fundamentally flawed, unworthy, or broken. One points to something we’ve done while the other points to who we believe we are. And that distinction matters more than many of us realize. Because shame doesn’t just hurt…. it shapes. Shame quietly influences how we move through the world. How much we speak up. How deeply we connect. How fiercely we pursue our dreams. How comfortable we are receiving love. How much of ourselves we allow others to see.

Shame doesn’t usually appear out of nowhere. It has roots. Sometimes those roots are obvious: trauma, abuse, neglect, bullying, rejection, or humiliation. Other times they’re harder to see.
• A critical parent whose love felt conditional.
• A family system where emotions weren’t welcome.
• Religious messages that confused worthiness with perfection.
• Being compared to siblings.
• Feeling different.
• Feeling unwanted.
• Feeling unseen.
• Being adopted and quietly wondering questions nobody seemed comfortable answering.

But we don’t have to experience catastrophic trauma to develop shame, we simply have to repeatedly receive messages that tell us who we are is somehow wrong. Children are remarkably good at making sense of experiences. The problem is that they often make sense of them incorrectly.

A child doesn’t think: “𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑑𝑢𝑙𝑡𝑠 𝑎𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑 𝑚𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑔𝑔𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔.”
A child thinks: “𝑆𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑚𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑏𝑒 𝑤𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑚𝑒.”
A child doesn’t think: “𝐼 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑟𝑒𝑗𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑤𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑢𝑛𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑒𝑒𝑡 𝑚𝑦 𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑑𝑠.”
A child thinks: “𝐼 𝑤𝑎𝑠𝑛’𝑡 𝑒𝑛𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑐ℎ𝑜𝑠𝑒𝑛.”
A child doesn’t think: “𝑇ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑓𝑎𝑚𝑖𝑙𝑦 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑢𝑛ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑡ℎ𝑦 𝑝𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑠.”
A child thinks: “𝐼 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑏𝑒 𝑑𝑖𝑓𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡.”

And those conclusions can follow us well into adulthood. Long after the circumstances that created them have ended.

Many of the masks we talked about in the last series were actually attempts to protect ourselves from shame. The performer tries to earn worth. The pleaser tries to avoid rejection. The perfectionist tries to avoid criticism. The strong one tries to avoid vulnerability. The masks make perfect sense when you understand what they’re protecting. They’re not character flaws, they’re survival strategies.

The problem is that when the masks come off, the voice underneath often becomes impossible to ignore. That voice is where healing begins. Not because we must agree with it. But because we finally hear it and see it for what it is.

For years, I thought healing meant proving shame wrong. Now I think healing is something gentler. It’s learning to recognize shame’s voice without handing it the microphone. It’s noticing the old stories without treating them as facts. It’s understanding where those beliefs came from and choosing not to build our future around them. It’s looking at the wounded parts of ourselves with compassion instead of criticism. It’s remembering that what happened to us is not the same thing as who we are.

The truth is, shame survives in secrecy. It grows in silence, it gains power when it remains unnamed. But once we begin bringing it into the light, something remarkable happens. We realize we are not alone. We realize our shame has a history. We realize it has a voice.

But most importantly, we realize it is not the voice of truth.

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