Shame is an emotion that comes up regularly in my counselling sessions and it can be one of the most difficult emotions for a client to shift. Shame can feel all pervasive and it can be accompanied by feelings of low self esteem, depression and anxiety.
Author and podcast host Brene Brown describes shame as:
“The intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging—something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection.”
When we feel ashamed, we want to keep our distance from other people because we’re worried about what they might think or say about us. We worry that they might judge us or think less of us. A fear of being judged drives us to avoid talking to other people about how we feel and carry the burden of our shame alone.
Our response to shame – that urge to hide away – is a protective one and is instinctive and entirely natural. We feel under threat and so we try to keep ourselves safe by making ourselves small. By keeping quiet, perhaps other people won’t notice us and the danger will pass. At its heart, shame is a survival mechanism.
I often tell clients that shame has served them well – it has helped to keep them safe. But what it hasn’t done is allow them to grow.
Brene Brown says:
“If you put shame in a petri dish, it needs three ingredients to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgement. If you put the same amount of shame in the petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive.”
Shame feeds on secrecy and silence and we keep it in the dark, hiding it from other people, it thrives and grows. Taking the first step to coming to counselling takes courage and continuing to show up every week takes even more courage. But when we’re brave enough to share our darkest fears with someone else – to let the light in – shame can’t survive.
